It’s funny to see that, even in two different worlds, people come up with the same sorts of rituals, I thought.
I gave the clerk a brief history of evil-repelling bells and told him that they were used even outside of the forest, and his shoulders dropped. “I see. Looks like I still have a lot to learn about this world.”
“Well, culture is a complex thing. Some traditions end up mashed together, while others disappear or take on a completely different meaning.”
Take the Stargazing Festival, for instance: it started off as a ceremony to guide the souls lost in space-time back home. But over four hundred years had passed since the first iteration of the festival, and all of the lost souls had been purified already, so there was technically no need to hold it anymore. Yet it hadn’t disappeared; it had simply changed its purpose and its form. Not only that, but each region had its own way of celebrating it. The joint wedding ceremony and the martial arts tournament continued to this day, albeit in different forms and at different times than before. As for the purifying dance, it had been replaced by the parade. Priests still performed a proper purifying dance on the day of the winter solstice, but it was held at the church itself and was a much more modest event.
“Lady Witch, Lady Witch! Teto thinks that the little bell would look very cute on you!” Teto said, holding out one of the evil-repelling bells to me.
“Teto, that shape...”
“It’s cute, isn’t it? Teto thinks it’d look very nice if you pinned it under the red ribbon on your robe!”
The bell she had picked was shaped like a hanging temple bell. I pictured it pinned to my ribbon and was instantly reminded of those classic Christmas bells from my previous life.
“Thank you for picking it out for me, Teto. Let’s see... I think these ones would look nice on you,” I said, taking two hair ornaments shaped like ribbons with little bells on them, thinking that they’d look nice on Teto’s pigtails.
“Thank you, Lady Witch! Let’s buy them!”
I paid for the bells and we put them on each other. I brought a hand to my chest and gently felt the bell under my ribbon, causing it to make a soft tinkling sound. Teto seemed to really like the sound of the bells in her hair; she wouldn’t stop shaking her head from side to side to make them jingle. Right as we finished our purchases, things started getting noisy outside.
“Lady Witch, Lady Teto, the parade is about to begin!” the shop clerk told us.
I hadn’t noticed, but the sun had already set, and it was time for the festival’s main event: the parade. We exited the shop and saw something approaching from the other side of the main avenue.
“Whoaaa!”
Magical devices illuminated the town while illusions darted across the sky and cheerful music started playing.
“It’s time for the parade! Everyone, please join us!”
Parade floats appeared on the other end of the avenue, illuminating their surroundings. Performers in costumes stood on the platforms, dancing and waving at the crowd, while a group dressed like Winter Solstice Bears ran alongside the floats, giving high fives to the spectators. One of the floats had mages using their powers to create all sorts of mesmerizing illusions while priestesses danced and sang. Fireworks bursting overhead mingled with the cheery music in a joyous cacophony. This didn’t deter the spectators from cheering at the top of their lungs as they swung their light sticks to the beat.
“These are the sticks that shop clerk gave us, hm? So that’s how you use them,” I noted.
“It looks like so much fun!” Teto exclaimed.
It reminded me of those glow sticks people would swing during nighttime events in my past life.
“First a parade, now glow sticks... This really feels like an amusement park, huh?” I muttered with a chuckle.
I let some mana into my own light stick and started swinging it from left to right, following the moves of the rest of the crowd. But then I felt a peculiar presence appear in the air, and I started looking around.
“Ah,” I muttered, my gaze landing on a certain something.
“Lady Witch? Is something wrong?” Teto asked me.
“There are ghosts among the crowd.”
This town was quite close to the center of the forest, so the mana concentration of the air was quite high. Add to that the fact that it was the Winter Solstice, the day when the spirits were at their strongest, and you had the perfect conditions for ghosts to temporarily materialize into the realm of the living. All of them seemed to be enjoying the festival along with the spectators, watching the parade and rocking their bodies to the beat of the music. But then the sound of the evil-repelling bells intensified, and the ghosts started disappearing one after the other.
“They’re gone!” Teto gasped.
“They must’ve gotten their fill of the festival,” I noted as I watched their souls ascend to the sky among the magic lights and illusions coloring the sky.
“The Stargazing Festival might’ve changed a lot since the first time, but in the end, it still serves the same purpose, hm?” I mused out loud.
None of the tools used during the festival were actually imbued with Purification Magic. Perhaps people believed so strongly that the bells they were wearing could repel evil spirits and ghosts that they actually gained the power to guide souls to the realm of the dead.
Teto and I stayed until the end of the festival before heading back to the mansion, the bells on our clothes jingling softly with each step we took.