Another half a year went by.
After six months of listening to my parents conversing, I’d begun to pick up some of the language. My English grades had never been great, but I guess it’s true what they say about how sticking solely to your native tongue makes it harder to advance in your studies. Or maybe, given that I had a new body, my brain was better suited to learning this time? I felt like I had an unusual knack for remembering things, perhaps because I was still so young.
Around this time, I started learning to crawl as well. Being able to move was a marvelous thing. I’d never been so grateful to have control of my own body.
“As soon as you take your eyes off him, he slips off somewhere,” my mother said.
“Hey, so long as he’s good and healthy,” my father replied, watching me as I crawled around. “I was worried back when he was born and he never cried.”
“He doesn’t cry now, either, does he?”
I wasn’t exactly the age to whine because I was hungry. The times I let the wailing out were when I tried, and invariably failed, to stop myself from soiling my pants.
Even though I could only crawl, I learned a lot from being able to move around. The first thing I learned was that this was definitely the home of a rich family. The house was a wooden, two-story structure with over five separate rooms, and we had the one maid on staff. At first, I’d assumed she was my aunt or something, but given her deferential attitude toward my mother and father, I doubted she was family.
Our house was located in the countryside. Outside the windows stretched a peaceful, pastoral landscape.
There were few other houses, just two or three nestled amidst the wheat fields on any given side. We really were out in the sticks. I couldn’t see any telephone poles or streetlights. There might not even be a power station nearby. I’d heard that in some countries they ran power cables underground, but if that were the case here, it was strange that our house didn’t have electricity.
This place was way too pastoral. It grated on me, since I was used to the comforts of modern civilization. Here I was, having been reborn, practically dying to get my hands on a computer.
But all of that changed early one afternoon.
As the things I could do were pretty limited, I decided I’d look at the scenery. I clambered onto a chair as I usually did in order to get a peek out through the window, and then my eyes went wide.
My father was in our yard, swinging a sword around.
What in the world was he doing? He was old enough to know better than that. Was this the kind of person my dad was? Some sort of fantasy dweeb?
Uh-oh. In my daze of astonishment, I started slipping from the chair.
My underdeveloped hands grabbed the chair, but couldn’t support my weight—not with how top-heavy my head made me—and I fell.
I hit the floor with a thud and immediately heard a cry of alarm. I saw my mother drop the load of laundry she was carrying, her face going pale as she brought her hand to her mouth.
“Rudy! Are you all right?!” She rushed to my side and picked me up. As she met my gaze, her expression slackened with relief, and she stroked my head. “Aw, you’re fine, see?”
Easy there, lady, I thought. Careful with my head. I just whacked that thing.
Given how panicked she’d looked, I must have had a pretty nasty fall. I mean, I did land right on my head. Maybe I was going to be permanently stupid. Not that that would be a change from the usual.
My head was throbbing. I tried to reach for the chair, but couldn’t muster the energy. My mother didn’t seem so nervous now, though, so I probably wasn’t bleeding or anything. Just a bump or something, in all likelihood.
She peered carefully at my head. The look on her face suggested that, injury or not, she was taking this pretty seriously. Finally, she rested her hand atop my head. “Just to be on the safe side…” she began. “Let this divine power be as satisfying nourishment, giving one who has lost their strength the strength to rise again—Healing!”
What the heck? Was that this country’s version of kissing the boo-boo to make it all better? Or was she another fantasy nerd like my sword-swinging father? Was this a case of the Fighter marrying the Cleric?
But as I thought that, my mother’s hand shone with a dim light, and the pain in my head was instantly gone.
Bwuh?
“There we go,” she said. “All better! You know, Mommy used to be a pretty famous adventurer.” Her voice rang with pride.
My mind reeled in confusion, various terms whirling through my mind: sword, fighter, adventurer, healing, incantation, cleric…
Seriously—what just happened?
My father, having heard my mother’s earlier scream, poked his head through the window. “What’s the matter?” he asked. He was sweating, probably from swinging that sword of his around.
“Honey, you have to be more attentive,” my mother chided. “Rudy managed to climb up onto the chair. He could have been seriously hurt.”
My father seemed much more composed. “Hey, boys will be boys. Kid’s got a lot of energy.”
This sort of back-and-forth was pretty common with my parents. But this time, my mother wasn’t simply backing down, probably because of how I’d hit my head. “Honey, he isn’t even a year old yet. Would it kill you to show some more concern?”
“It’s like I said: falling and stumbling and getting bumps and bruises is how kids grow up to be tough. Besides, if he does get hurt, you can just heal him!”
“I’m just worried that he might get hurt so badly that I can’t heal him.”
“He’ll be fine,” my father assured her.
My mother clutched me more tightly, her face going red.
“You were worried early on about how he wouldn’t cry. If he’s this much of a little scamp, then he’ll be fine,” my father continued, and then he leaned in to give my mother a kiss.
All right, you two. Get a room, will ya?
After that, my parents took me into the other room to put me to bed, then headed upstairs to make me a baby brother or sister. I could tell because I could hear the creaking and moaning coming from the second floor. I guess there was life outside the internet.
And also…magic?
✦ ✦ ✦
In the wake of all that, I paid extra-close attention to the conversations my parents had with one another and the help. In so doing, I noticed them using a lot of words I wasn’t familiar with. Most of these were the names of countries and regions and territories—all clearly proper nouns that I’d never heard before.
I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but by this point, that could only mean one thing: I wasn’t on Earth anymore; I was in a different world.
A world of swords and sorcery.
And it occurred to me: if I lived in this world, I could do all those things, too. After all, this was a place of high fantasy, one that didn’t obey the same rules of common sense as my past life. I could live as a typical person, doing the typical things for this world. Where I stumbled, I would get back up, dust myself off, and forge onward.
My former self had died full of regret, died feeling frustrated at his powerlessness and how he’d never accomplished anything. But now I knew all of my missteps. With all the knowledge and experience from my past life, I could finally do it.
I could finally live life right.