The Shining World Tree
Trot, trot.
I took Rinea's hand and walked. Seen from outside, we might easily have passed for sisters—an older girl just starting high school, and a little sister still in elementary school. This was elf society, of course, so mother and daughter would have been just as plausible. Elves, I had been told, scarcely aged at all.
"Heh..."
That was when I spotted the food at a street stall. Rinea had treated me to delicious meat at lunch, but evening was already well along since that meal, and my stomach had begun to complain. I couldn't tell what kind of meat it was, but the skewers sent up a rich, tempting aroma.
"Hm?"
Noticing I had come to a dead stop, Rinea turned her head. She followed the line of my gaze, then smiled as she spoke.
"Shall I buy you one of those, my God?"
That was exactly what I had been hoping to hear. I nodded with fierce enthusiasm, and at once Rinea drew a wallet from her pocket and approached the stall. I edged in beside her to watch the purchase. Another world or not, people who formed a society weren't so different from one another: money changed hands, and goods came back. An ordinary sight. Rinea lifted a skewer so plump it looked delicious just sitting there and held it out to me.
"Please eat it before it cools, my God!"
"Whoa!"
I couldn't claim the food here surpassed what I had known back home, but dishes sold in another world always carried a flavor all their own. Cleanliness mattered most, of course. From what I could see, they weren't preparing it with filthy hands the way one sometimes saw in poorer countries. They seemed to take hygiene quite seriously.
I accepted the skewer from Rinea with due ceremony and bit in. I had no idea what animal the meat came from, but skewers like this were never really about the meat. You ate them for the sauce glazed over it. Had there been no seasoning at all, I was certain the dish would have vanished in short order—because an unseasoned skewer was nothing but tire-tough meat to gnaw and gnaw!
"Ooh, it's good!"
My verdict after a single bite was that it was perfectly edible. The culinary tradition had to be entirely different, and yet the taste felt strangely familiar. Food was like that. Trace any dish back far enough, and it usually shared the same roots.
When I finished, I kept hold of the stick, meaning to throw it away myself—only for Rinea to take it from me. I was not the sort of ill-mannered person who handed garbage to the very benefactor who had bought me the skewer.
And so we trotted on once more toward the World Tree. Everyone making their way here wore a smile and was enjoying the festival. Simply arriving at the holy ground seemed to fill them with tremendous satisfaction. Whether people were always like this, or whether this place alone was special, I couldn't say.
The tree was immense. Truly immense—so vast I felt I could have seen it from nearly a hundred kilometers away. It was an odd comparison, but the thing was on the scale of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear blast. A tree so enormous that the mere sight of it stirred a sense of reverence.
As at a museum, visitors were permitted only to look from a distance. Touching it, or even drawing near enough to try, was impossible. For about a hundred meters around the World Tree stretched an empty zone where entry was forbidden. You could see it perfectly well from afar, so there was little reason to come closer. Even so, watching the leaves drift down from high above, a thought occurred to me.
When autumn comes, this place is going to be an absolute mess. The leaves matched the gigantic tree: each one was about the size of a sheet of printer paper. Not many were falling, and whenever one did, the people nearby shot over and snatched it up at once. They seemed to regard them as special souvenirs.
The sight reminded me of a baseball stadium—fans scrambling for a foul ball or a home-run ball. If those leaves had weighed as much as enormous bowling balls, it would have been a catastrophe of the highest order. I didn't even want to imagine what would follow. People were injured by tiny hailstones; if leaves of this size possessed that kind of mass and fell from such a height, this could never have been a place where anyone lived.
"Right this way, World Tree!"
Rinea slipped off somewhere, then lightly stepped across a spot where a curious magic circle had risen into the air. Once we passed through what amounted to a passage, the World Tree stood vivid and immediate before my eyes. A tree others were not even permitted to touch, and she was showing it to me from a breath away.
I didn't know it then, but had Rinea brought an ordinary elf this close to the World Tree, she would have been scolded without mercy. It was a restricted zone that no one but a shrine maiden could enter at will. For me, though, it hardly seemed to matter. I was the soul of the World Tree, Rinea's thinking went; if anyone had a problem with it, they were welcome to come and see for themselves.
Stepping in beneath the trunk, I found a vast hollow. The tree was so huge that, from outside, even a space this large would have looked like nothing more than a tiny hole.
"This is where we hold the rites for the World Tree!"
"Ooh... but is it all right to show me something like this?"
"Of course. Anyone who objects to the World Tree beholding the World Tree is out of their mind."
From what I had heard, Rinea's duties consisted solely of tending the World Tree, and perhaps that was why she was so tough. A tourist site like this drew every manner of nightmare customer, and her nerves had surely hardened to match. Otherwise she could never have endured a place that saw tens of thousands of visitors in a single day.
Shrine maiden or not, the work was still a service job, and among the countless elves she met there were bound to be strange ones. I gazed blankly around the hollow. Ornaments glittered everywhere, hung about as if to proclaim that ceremonies were held in this place.
"What's this?"
Curious about the ritual implements, I asked. In truth there wasn't much worth seeing, and I wanted to go home, but Rinea was watching me with such sparkling eyes that I decided to say something. If I simply turned on my heel and left, I could already picture her trudging home with a crestfallen face.
The moment I spoke, color bloomed across her face. She lifted the object and launched into a rapid explanation. To my eyes it was nothing but a ceramic ritual vessel, yet Rinea insisted it was an exceedingly rare treasure steeped in several thousand years of tradition.
Should it ever reach auction, she said, its value alone would easily purchase a fine mansion. My eyes flew open at once. One bowl, worth a luxury house... I smacked my lips and stared at the vessel.
She had told me the things kept here were implements for rites performed on my behalf. In that case, wouldn't it be all right if I carried a few off with me...? I decided, of course, to let the thought remain a thought. I had no intention of driving a stake into the ground and living here.
I had already resolved to stay like a tourist and then be on my way, so I made up my mind not to grow greedy over money. Besides, I had no particular need of the thing. According to Rinea it was necessary for the work she did, which meant its owner was already decided.
After looking over the objects that shone all over with curious patterns, I prepared to turn back. I meant to ask Rinea to buy me the meat I had spotted earlier at the stall. The street food was intense, but that intensity was precisely what made it so tempting.
"Hm? What's this?"
I picked up something like a mysterious feather duster resting atop a box. The instant Rinea saw me, she cried out in alarm.
"That is a branch that binds the rite to the World Tree..."
The moment I held it, a blinding light burst forth. Radiance flooded the dim hollow, where only a few lamps had been burning, and lit the place bright as day. Frankly, it seemed to blaze even harder than a flashbang.
"Wow! Look at that!"
Elves who had come to visit the World Tree cried out in wonder as the tree suddenly began to shine.
The leaves upon the branches were pouring forth white light. Hung so high overhead, they looked like starlight spilling from the heavens. Even merchants who had worked in this place for centuries were witnessing the sight for the first time, and could only stand with their mouths hanging open before that beautiful cascade of light.