Settling into a New World?
"Wh-what is this?!"
I blurted it out, thrown by a landscape that had changed in a heartbeat. Whether I panicked or not made no difference to the elf woman who had dragged me here; she was grinning from ear to ear. I thrashed in her arms.
"L-let me go!"
"Ah! Yes, World Tree!"
The moment I screamed to be put down, she set me lightly on the ground. I bolted, meaning to dive straight back through the gate, but the gate we had come through was already gone. Which meant I could not return to the home I knew.
"Uu... uuu..."
Would I never see Bora, Haru, and Maru again? Grief crashed over me all at once. Kidnapped, just like that—it was absurd. I wilted, and the whimpering started. I could feel the elf woman fluster at the sight of me, arms flailing up and down as she stared.
"World Tree! Please, compose yourself!"
"How am I supposed to compose myself?! Send me home!"
At that she fell silent. Don't tell me she had no intention of sending me back. This elf was a terrible person! But watching me come apart seemed to settle something in her, and when she spoke again her face was grim with resolve.
"A... a month?"
"Yes. Upon my name, I swear that in one month I will send you back to your own dimension!"
A month was not so very long. I studied the elf woman with doubtful eyes. A new world... I was a little curious, I'll admit. And she did not seem to be lying. Now that I was here, there was no other choice anyway.
"Fine. Then you'll send me back in a month?"
"Yes!"
"And my name isn't World Tree. It's Hana!"
"Yes, I understand—God Hana!"
She had taken my name, fastened an honorific to it, and landed without a flicker of doubt on God. And so began my strange life under one roof with this elf woman.
Beaming, Rinea ushered God Hana into her house. Ordinary folk were forbidden entry here, which meant she could have God Hana all to herself. Fortunately, the day she had vanished was a day the World Tree's sanctuary was closed for cleaning, so no one even realized Rinea was gone.
But I'm sure I was over there for more than a week...
She had spent over a week in another dimension, yet here only two or three days seemed to have passed. Time sometimes flowed differently between dimensions, so Rinea let it go. Cleaning grounds this vast alone ought to have been impossible, but Rinea was different. With spirits and magic working in concert, even a tract the size of a city could be kept by a single person.
"Little ones! Let's begin again today!"
She clapped, and the command went out to the spirits. For Rinea, whose affinity with them bordered on the absolute, asking a favor of the spirits was the easiest thing in the world. At the sound of her hands they scattered in every direction and set about their work.
With the day's great cleaning underway, Rinea headed home. It was time to explain this world to God Hana. Meeting a pure God Hana who carried no memories of a past life was a novel experience indeed.
Rinea began to explain this world, and the life of the elves, to her. I listened hard. If I had to live here for a month, cooperating would be easier, and hearing how the elves lived was, quietly, rather fun.
"So... like this!"
Rinea explained with her whole body. Parts of it stayed fuzzy, but I grasped the gist. This was another dimension, a world of humans and other races, a world that held the magic and spirits I had only ever seen in movies. She also claimed I was the soul of the World Tree. That part seemed like a lie. I was, quite clearly, a man who had lived in Korea.
Flash.
Rinea opened her eyes on the bed and turned her head. Beside her, Hana slept with her mouth hanging open. Smiling brightly, Rinea studied that face from every angle. To think this was the World Tree's body... She had beaten impossible odds to find the World Tree, and she was reaping the reward in full. Fighting down a dreadful urge to poke those cheeks, she rose and went to her work.
The place where the World Tree now stayed was the elves' sanctuary. Visiting it once every ten years was an elven rite. There were so many elves, though, that tens of thousands came on pilgrimage every single day. Rinea did not know it, but for Hana the easiest comparison was Mecca, the holy city of Islam.
Elves scattered across the whole world came here to see the one and only World Tree, and not once in a lifetime—they came often. In this world their numbers were enormous. Tens of millions, at the very least.
Their lifespans stretched past a thousand years, though their birth rate was low. Even so, their numbers climbed without end. They held fast to the World Tree's teaching: love one another. What would the World Tree say now? If they learned that her incarnate body was sitting in Rinea's house, it would be absolute chaos.
In Christian terms, it would be Jesus appearing in the flesh—not some imagined portrait from paintings and media, but a body the World Tree herself had chosen, as if to declare that this was truly what she looked like. They would be gazing upon the face of a god.
Rinea smiled as she prepared to open the sanctuary. She did not manage it alone. Handling the pilgrimage of tens of thousands of elves by herself was physically impossible, so the government sent elves to help manage the pilgrims.
"Hello, ma'am! Hello, sir!"
"Hello, Rinea! You look especially cheerful today."
She was greeting a couple on their thirtieth visit. Rinea's memory was excellent, and she remembered the faces of the elves who came—not every face among tens of millions, of course.
The World Tree was immense, spreading all the way to the end of the sky, and that alone made it overwhelmingly majestic. The trunk by itself might have matched a full-sized soccer stadium. It stood in the very center of the capital, so the approach was excellent. Like New York, the great city held a park set apart within it, and there a place had been prepared for the World Tree.
All around were shops selling every kind of souvenir. With so many people passing through, the place was like a festival ground, full of food and things to do.
"Souvenirs modeled on the World Tree, right here! Take one each!"
"Rings braided from the World Tree's leaves! Far sturdier than any ordinary ring!"
Shopkeepers had come out into the street to hawk their wares. Carvings modeled on the shape of the World Tree sold so well that nearly every elven home had at least one. They sold even better because humans and other races came out of curiosity as well. From another species' point of view, the whole thing was a marvel, and they bought the carvings as souvenirs and carried them home.
"Ugh..."
I sat up, shielding my eyes with a hand against the sunlight pouring in. Unlike the building where I used to sleep, there were no curtains to block the light, so once the sun rose I had no choice but to wake. Dazzling sun struck my face head-on; there was no staying asleep. It was as if the light were slapping my cheeks this way and that, ordering me to get up.
"Nnngh..."
Eyes still shut, I shifted toward a corner to escape it. Nowhere on the bed was safe. In the end I had to get up.
Rising and looking around, I saw that Rinea was already awake and had started her work. Talking with her late into the night had calmed me somewhat. It felt like a worldview suddenly expanding, the way it does in a science-fiction movie. Of course, gates appearing in the modern world had already made life science fiction. I had heard that in the old days there were no gates at all. If children born now heard someone say that, they would stare in blank confusion and treat the speaker like a lunatic.