Magic has been all around me, ever since I was born.
If my mother twirls her fingers in an arc, objects immediately start to levitate, and if my father utters an incantation, flames burst from his fingertips and destroy demons. It is very cool to watch.
The old lady who lives next door uses magic on her flower bed, making the flowers sing every morning, and quite noisily at that. The old man who lives across the street, as if to counter her flowers’ song, casts a spell on his own vegetable field and makes them sing as well, probably out of spite for the old lady.
But his vegetables sing in somewhat lower tones than the old lady’s flowers, and so contrary to what one might expect, the combination of the two results in a pleasant harmony. I don’t think the old man has realized that.
Well then, why don’t I try? I think, and wave my fingers around as hard as I can. Yes! To the right, to the left, up, down; I try shaking my fingers all around. I even try making them dance in the air. Thanks to that, perhaps, yes, something happens: it seems like I’ve caused a bit of a breeze... My bangs fluttered a bit, didn’t they?
But nothing around me levitates, and no flames erupt from my fingers. The flowers do not sing, and I cannot make anything harmonize.
I’m just a young girl, so I don’t really know anything about incantations.
“Nanalie, we’re leaving soon!”
“Okaaaay!”
I hear my mother’s voice and turn away from the window in my room, where I was watching the islands float in the sky.
Starting today, I’ll be attending the kingdom’s Royal School of Magic. I’ve just finished packing my luggage. As it’s a boarding school, I won’t be able to come back home whenever I want to, so I’m a little worried that I’m going to forget to pack something.
Well, I suppose even if I do forget something, it’s not that important, so I guess I might as well not get all flustered.
And even though I said I won’t be able to easily come back home, it does seem like the school has long vacations, so it’s not like I’ll never be able to return. If I do need something, I’ll make arrangements to get it during one of the breaks.
I’m twelve years old now. I’ll be attending the Royal School for six years, until I turn eighteen.
“Alrighty then.”
Some slightly dirty white walls. A rickety wooden bookshelf that would be difficult to call “pretty.” On top of a desk near the window lies a box full of the textbooks I used as a student at the village schoolhouse.
A canopy hangs down from the ceiling over the simple bed. A long time ago, back when I was much younger than I am now and aspired to have a bed like a princess, my father had fixed a couple of rusty hooks in the ceiling and hung the sheets around my bed.
The stuffed toy bear I had begged my mother for a long time ago is looking down at me from his place up on top of the brown wardrobe.
I leave my room, carry out all of my luggage, and straighten the sleeves on my thin blue dress.
I twirl around and look back at the room whose owner will be gone for a while, this little space of mine, and try to burn the image in my mind—and then I rush off to where my mother is waiting.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
A small village in the Kingdom of Doran.
I, Nanalie Hel, was born here, with an archaeologist for a mother and a sorcerer-exorcist for a father.
We are neither aristocrats nor merchants, merely a very normal household, and we live among other families much like ourselves.
If there’s anything that can be said to be “unusual” about our family, it’s that my mother is an archaeologist. Or rather, she used to be. A long time ago, she used to travel all over to investigate different ruins, but she hasn’t done much of that recently.
My father’s job as a sorcerer, on the other hand, is quite normal in our kingdom and in the world at large. Down at Harré’s Sorcerer’s Guild, he makes most of his money by exorcising demons, as well as taking on a wide variety of other kinds of assignments. You have to be able to use a certain degree of magic as a sorcerer, because the job itself is actually fairly dangerous. Depending on the assignment, it might be easy or difficult work, but the harder jobs pay more.
“Daaaaaad, it’s early!”
“Can’t start complaining about that at this point, Nanalie.”
While I’ve never been to work with my mother, a long time ago, I went twice with my father.
As a little kid, I was afflicted with a special kind of curiosity, constantly asking him questions like “What’re you always doing at work?” “Where do you go?” “What island is that?” and “What kind of job do you do?” I was curious about everything in the world, and probably caused no end of nuisance for all the adults around me with my questions. Perhaps my father was good at hiding it, but he never showed any annoyance at my questions. Even just thinking about it now makes me realize what an irritating little child I must have been.
The job I accompanied him on was a comparatively easy one—a request that had a reward of only about twenty pegalo. (If I had to say how much “twenty pegalo” is worth, it’s about how much our family spends on food for one day.)
Harré is a kind of office that supplies jobs to the sorcerers that frequent the place daily. My first time visiting there with my father is an experience I’ll never forget.
“Welcome, little lady.”
I was quite excited, and was totally absorbed in taking in the décor. I had originally thought it would be a very stiff and serious place, but it was actually completely the opposite, with an atmosphere that felt a lot like the tavern my father often went to. Both the walls and the floor were made of wooden boards, making it seem quite warm and friendly. They also seemed to have a place to eat somewhere inside, as I remember smelling the pleasant aroma of some spicy meat.
“D’ya have anything that I can do with my kid?”
While I was in the middle of looking at everything, Father was asking the receptionist lady to find an assignment for him. It took her a long time. Since it had to be a job where it was okay to take a child along, I’m sure it was difficult to pick one out. Or so I think, looking back at it now.
And then it seemed like they had decided on a job, because the receptionist looked down and waved at me with a smile as I stood there, holding my father’s hand. “Good luck, and take care!” she said to me as we left.
I think I remember the request itself being quite easy—just doing a bit of work by helping out an old lady in her fields.
It all ended sooner than I had expected. Since I had been imagining something rather more fantastical, I was a little disappointed with the whole experience.
After all, there hadn’t been anything different about the work we did on the job from what we did at home.
“Welcome back. You’ve done well. Our little lady here has done a good job as well, hasn’t she?”
That’s what she said to me and my father when we returned to Harré after we had completed the job.
The receptionist had welcomed us with probably nothing more than a perfectly perfunctory greeting, but for some reason her expression, and the bright smile she gave us, stuck in my mind so firmly that I froze for a moment and stared at her, utterly and totally transfixed.
“...? Is something the matter?”
“Nanalie?”
Even if I had been ordered to explain myself in that moment, the feeling wasn’t something that I understood that well myself. It was something close to love at first sight, I think.
Regardless of what exactly I was feeling, to me, as the child I was, she looked positively radiant.
The dignified way in which she carefully gave us the documents for a job. The way her facial expression was the same regardless of whether the job was a dangerous or a boring one.
When we left she would wish us “good luck,” and when we returned to make our report she would greet us with a smile and those magic words: “Welcome back, you’ve done well.”
“Waa—!”