Traces of the Divine - 4
The guy who had just laid his serious wound bare for all the world to see was being dragged off by the fairies, fists clenched in his hair. It was the sort of spectacle that would have drawn interest even from people with no connection to me at all.
Fortunately, the elder's house sat alone and set apart even within the Elf Sanctuary, so we didn't pull aggro from the rest of the elves. Whether that really counted as fortunate, I wasn't sure—but it was what it was.
"We're out! We're out!"
"Mom, can we see her? Can we see her?"
"Happy! Happy!"
Once outside, the fairies let go of my hair and whirled around above my head, making a racket.
Kids, I get how you feel, but just because we're outside doesn't mean you can see her right this second… I never even said I was going to show you immediately.
"Children!"
I was about to open my mouth while roughly smoothing down my mussed hair when the elder rushed out after us and shouted at the fairies.
"How can you torment someone who's hurt!"
At that, the hands tidying my hair froze. I hadn't expected to be treated like a patient.
Granted, the scar's shape was still there, so the misunderstanding was understandable—but the pain had been gone for a long time. If a little hair-pulling was enough to put a strain on me, I'd be some porcelain-fragile wreck who couldn't even stand. I am not that fragile.
"Karl, are you all right? Nothing strange going on?"
"D-Don't tell me the wound opened—"
"I'm fine. It didn't even hit the scar."
Before the bitter aftertaste could even fade, the rest of the party turned their eyes on my wound in a steady stream. I am not that fragile…
"Don't be mad, don't be mad…"
"Mom said we could see her…"
"Sorry… sorry…"
Meanwhile the fairies, who seemed to obey the elder who looked after them reasonably well, showed proper remorse once they were scolded. They even apologized to me, not just to her. It was almost moving how well the elder had raised them.
"But what do you mean, you can see your mother again?"
Watching the dejected fairies drift along in slow flight, the elder spoke up carefully.
Whether the fairies' mother was the World Tree or Constantina, I didn't know—but either way, she was a presence an elven elder would miss just as much. So regardless of having just scolded the fairies, the elder couldn't help being interested.
"It seems the World Tree may be able to revive."
I gave her exactly the answer she wanted to hear.
"…Revive?"
The elder murmured it in a dazed voice.
I was only moving according to what Eternal Blue Sky had said, so I didn't know the details myself—but if things went well, the World Tree would rise again after roughly three hundred years.
Eternal Blue Sky, who had been complaining that the fairies would kill her if they tore her power away, had carefully continued:
"If the fairies take the power, the divine force gets shredded to pieces and has nowhere to stay—but if you gather the divine force in your body into one place, I can hold on. You don't exactly love having me lodged inside you either, right?"
In other words: I'll leave quietly, so help me out a little. From my perspective, getting rid of the force that was blocking my recovery—and of an illegal tenant I hadn't even known was there—was a good deal. If people found out a god was living in my body, I probably wouldn't even be able to go to the bathroom in peace.
The only sticking point was that I'd be betraying the fairies who'd been dancing with joy at the thought of getting a god's power—
"While I was in your body, I noticed a tree doing a World Tree impression. Stick me in there and I'll take responsibility for turning it into the real thing. The fairies will like that too."
"Is that even possible?"
"You can't turn just any tree into a World Tree. But that one had sacred relics hanging all over it. That much should be enough."
So the elder's efforts toward reviving the World Tree hadn't been wasted after all.
Then again, the fact that the fairies who had once made the World Tree their home were still alive meant the imitation had succeeded in its own way. The elder herself might feel bitter that no new fairies were being born—but any other elf probably couldn't even have managed to maintain the status quo.
"Once the World Tree revives, the spirits will use it as a gate, fairies will be born again, and Constantina will be able to communicate with the elves. Divine force will flow back and forth centered on the World Tree, so even if I skim a little off the top, I'll have no problem living as a god."
She'd said it boldly, like she intended to take a middleman's cut—but this was the revival of the World Tree. It wasn't a monopoly; a mere fee was something both Constantina and the elves would tolerate. Hell, they might even enshrine her as a guardian deity for the hero of the World Tree's rebirth.
So, just as Eternal Blue Sky had asked, I laid my hand on the tree standing beside the elder's house—
A fluorescent tree?
The scar on my body flashed once, and then the entire tree began to glitter. It was still broad daylight, and yet the feeling hit hard: Yeah. That is a lot of light.
"Huh? Wha—whaaa?"
"It's glowing! Glowing!"
"This is Auntie Sky's energy. But—Mom's energy is in it too!"
"Mom, can we see her? Will our home come back?"
"Wow! Wow!"
The moment the tree lit up, the fairies erupted into a frenzy. To someone with no divine connection like me it was just a glowing tree, but to fairies sensitive to a god's power, something else seemed visible.
"Mother's… energy?"
"This is remarkable. For a mere living thing to hold this much power…"
Even the elder, who had seen the true World Tree, and Tanian, the Saint, reacted as if something was seriously wrong. Every circumstance pointed toward the World Tree's revival; it was hard to write off as mere hype or misunderstanding.
Honestly, I was pretty shocked myself. I'd half-believed it because a god had said so, but there had been a lingering unease that this was a god reduced to illegal tenancy—that it might just be a desperate thrash to cling to life right before the fairies finished her off. Thankfully, even fallen, a god was still a god.
"Darling, what on earth is this?"
When the sacred relics hanging from the tree also began to shine, the Demon Duke spoke, eyes full of confusion.
A tree that lit up the moment I touched it, fairies and elves thrown into turmoil, talk of the World Tree's revival—if you watched all of that in real time and felt nothing, you'd have to be emotionally dead. Even I, who wasn't an elf, found it fascinating; for the Demon Duke, who carried elven blood, it must have been that much more so.
"A god was freeloading."
"H-Huh?"
Unfortunately, that was all I could say. I didn't understand the principle either—what else was I supposed to tell her?
"Human! Thank you! Thank you!"
"Our benefactor, our benefactor!"
"We'll tell Mom for sure! We'll tell the spirit uncles and aunties too!"
Still, watching the fairies rush over and cling to me was enough to guess that things had worked out.
— I'm grateful too. Thanks to you, I'll be able to live comfortably from now on.
See? Even the god was thanking m—
What the hell.
I flinched at the voice ringing through my skull. Did I have a wiretap in my ear?
— Keh heh. You're the first person ever to swear right in a god's face.
Eternal Blue Sky's voice still echoing in my head snapped me back to my senses at once.
What's going on? Weren't you supposed to leave?
Since she seemed to be reading my thoughts, I pressed her inside my head.
You said you were leaving. Leaving my body. This isn't leaving—this is opening a second location outside me.
— I did leave. But I stayed in your body for about three years, so there's still a bit of residue left, I think?
The answer that came back after the grilling was distinctly awkward. So she'd moved out, but still left traces of living in the old place? How exactly was I supposed to clean that up?
— At longest it'll be three days before the residue vanishes too, so don't worry. My power isn't strong enough for mere residue to hang around long.
Fortunately she explained herself before I could press further. The reasoning—that she was weak, so it would end quickly—was a strange one, but she didn't seem to be lying, so I had no choice but to let it go.
— And this tree is in better shape than I expected. Ten years at the latest and it'll be a World Tree. To elves and fairies, ten years is a blink.
I'll pass that along to the elder.
That was good news too. Once they knew the concrete timeline, both the elder and the fairies would be delighted.
— …Anyway, thank you. Truly. You helped me even though I'm not the god you believe in.
I couldn't find a proper answer to that. It hadn't been for Eternal Blue Sky's sake—it had been for my own convenience. And even if it hadn't been profitable, all I'd done was put my hand on a tree; it hadn't been hard work.
If what had nested in my body had been Kagan instead of a god, I wouldn't have helped at all—I'd have seriously considered blowing myself up. But a god was, in the end, a god. Not a secular monarch with the right to order subordinates around or the duty to take responsibility for them—just a presence that answered faith and stayed in its place.
So I held no particular grudge against the god. Whether that calm came from never having grabbed a god by the collar and fought them myself, or from my mental world simply being strange, I couldn't say.
— Ah. Once the residue is gone, the wound will be able to heal too. You can call it a holy stigma now instead of a curse.
Oh.
— Of course, unlike Enen's stigmata, it won't have any powers. You wouldn't expect that from a god who can barely manage her own body, right?
…No.
Truthfully, I had hoped a little.
The elder's house, which had been quiet, grew noisy before long.
Elves flocked in, captivated by the self-illuminating World Tree (pending promotion). Fairies, their generosity apparently exploding at the news that the World Tree would revive within ten years, played with the human young duke.
"Come, make yourself at home and rest easy."
"Ah—yes…"
"Do you like tea, by any chance? We have leaves the elves have cultivated since our ancestors' time."
"I would gratefully accept, if you're offering."
And all of it thanks to the elder, who was looking at me with eyes dripping with affection.
Barely an hour earlier I had been stuck in an ambiguous position: her granddaughter's lover, but a human; a race she didn't care to associate with, but a prospective grandson-in-law. The elder herself hadn't known how to treat me and had stayed neutral.
But the moment I told her the World Tree would revive within ten years, that neutrality rocketed straight into total solidarity. I wondered if she was taking a human's word a little too readily—but as an elf who had seen the World Tree herself, maybe something about it had clicked.
"Heh heh. Well then. It's been a long time since we had so many guests—I'll have to put in some effort."
In any case, now that she and I were of one heart, she turned that same thoroughly gentle attitude on the rest of the party who'd come with me.
Humans being hosted by an elven elder—something no one else would ever experience. Just having that experience was more than enough to make the school trip worthwhile.
Even if it was only day one of the trip.
…Day one.
My head spun. It felt like we'd been through so much already—and it was still only day one?
It feels like weeks have gone by.
Starting tomorrow, I really hoped for a normal itinerary.