Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 3 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A Peaceful Slumber

It was the season when cold and warm blended together.

The breeze blowing over the plains held the lingering cool of winter.

The early spring sun was warm, pleasantly contrasting with the chill of the winter wind. A girl was flying over a field of flowers on a broom, her eyes fixed straight ahead. She rubbed her arms every now and again.

She was a witch and a traveler.

She wore a black robe, a pointy black hat, and a star-shaped brooch—proof she was a witch.

Her ashen hair peeked out from under her hat and trailed behind her, blowing in the brisk breeze.

Her lapis eyes were focused on a small city ahead, standing quietly between the blue sky and the grassy plain.

“So that place is next, huh…?”

Well, well, what a place for it.

Who on earth could she be? Who was this girl, traveling as always? Passing through the beautiful scenery as always?

That’s right. She’s me.

As always.

“Excuse me!”

I landed my broom in front of the gate and called out to anyone who might be there, but I didn’t get an answer.

It seemed like the kind of place where a person would suddenly pop up to greet a traveler, but my approach was met with silence. I grew concerned.

What’s going on here? Can I just go in? I thought for sure there would be a guard at the gate or something.

Well, if no one’s coming out, I guess I can just head in.

And so I set foot inside.

“…Oh!”

Rows of traditional houses, with plain-colored brick walls and tiled roofs, lined both sides of the street. They had small cracks here and there and some dull, dirty spots, but in the uniform townscape, these imperfections simply seemed like part of the scenery. An atmosphere of calm quiet hung over the town like a blanket.

There wasn’t a single person in sight.

I wandered around for a short while and found a large plaza.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

There was a huge hole in the center of the plaza, and the earth that had been excavated from it was piled high as a mountain. In the middle of an otherwise-empty city, this place bore a scar left by human hands.

“……”

When I peered into the hole, I understood why I hadn’t encountered another living soul.

Within the enormous pit lay a pile of bodies wrapped in cloth.

A massive quantity of them.

The reason I hadn’t seen any other people was because they had all been gathered here.

“…Hmm. Who’s there?”

I was staring into the grave in blank amazement when there came a voice. It sounded like a girl.

When I turned around, she was looking down on me from up in the sky. She was sitting astride a broom and gripping a wand in one hand. The girl, who had her golden hair knotted into a bun behind her head, wore neither a robe nor a pointy black hat.

However, that she was a mage was clear, as floating behind her broom were many more bodies wrapped in cloth. She seemed to be levitating them with magic.

She addressed me as she carefully lowered her haul into the pit. “You’re not from this country.”

I nodded. “I’m a traveler. I made my way here on my broom.”

“Is that so…? I suppose you wanted to spend the night or something?”

“That was my plan.”

Until I saw this awful spectacle, that is.

“I think it would be best if you reconsider.”

“I think you might be right about that.”

Nodding slowly, the girl landed her broom in front of me. She was roughly a head taller than me, and as I looked up at her, she gazed down at me.

“Well, you can see the state the place is in. In any case, the city will be sealed tomorrow.”

“…What happened?”

As far as I can see, everyone is dead, but…

As if the girl could see into my mind as I looked down into the grave where she had just piled the people, she said, following my gaze, “All of these people were asleep, trapped in a slumber that mimics death.”

She cast her eyes downward.

Apparently, there had been a famous prophet in this city.

When the prophet was young, he predicted the future for the sake of his neighbors, including the weather, crop yields, the whereabouts of lost pets, the days’ fortunes, even people’s life spans and their fated partners.

Although not every prediction came true with perfect accuracy, most of them did, perhaps because the prophet’s words carried some mysterious magic power. Even when a prediction missed the mark, he could deflect with the convenient explanation that “Your fate must have changed since I foretold the prophecy.” If you ask me, the people who lived here had been a little too willing to believe.

Anyway, enraptured by his mystifying power, the citizens all relied on the prophet and often rushed to him without a second thought. The prophet grew older, and by the time his face was lined with wrinkles, one could say he was revered as the most important person in the entire country.

The girl I had encountered earlier—her name was Charlotte—had also been a believer.

However, even with the power to see the future, he couldn’t cheat death, which slowly but surely came for everyone. About six months ago, surrounded by many of his countrymen, the prophet peacefully breathed his last, as if he were simply falling asleep.

After his death, the citizens became terribly frightened. It was not the loss of their prophet that scared them, though.

Just before he passed, the prophet had made one final, terrifying prediction: “In half a year’s time, this city shall be destroyed.”

They didn’t know precisely when in the allotted time it would happen. They also didn’t know what would be the cause of this disaster, but the prophet’s skill and the ambiguousness of his words filled the citizens with an unbearable sense of dread.

In less than half a year, most of the residents had abandoned the city. They feared they would perish along with their homes.

Eventually, fewer than one hundred remained.

These were the people who loved their city more than anything else.

They lived quietly, dreading the devastation that would visit them at some unknown hour.

Then, just four nights ago, something had happened.

Charlotte had gotten into bed as always, and when she eventually drifted off into slumber, she had a very strange dream.

“Oh, hello there. You’re Charlotte, aren’t you?”

In this dream, a demon appeared before her. The demon was the spitting image of Charlotte but had crooked horns growing out of its head and bat wings sprouting from its back. It was a curious creature.

“And you are?”

“I’m someone who can grant your wish. You’re merely passing the days in this city until your death, aren’t you? That’s far too pitiful, so I’m going to grant you a wish in this dream. There are no limits. You can ask me for anything your heart desires. I’ll show you your ideal world.”

“Um, that’s awfully suspicious…”

“Because I’m a demon?”

Charlotte didn’t really understand her misgivings, but since this was a dream, where even the absurd is ordinary, she decided not to think about it too deeply.

“So what kind of wish would you like to make? I’ll give you three days to live out your perfect fantasy.”

“……”

Since she was in a dream, she couldn’t come up with a good objection.

So she made a wish.

“All right, I want to become a mage,” she’d said.

Then, as Charlotte told it, the three days she spent in her dream were truly ideal. She flew through the sky on a broom, she summoned all kinds of things with spells, and she whiled away her time using magic just as she pleased.

Time in the dream passed by in a flash, and in the middle of the third day, the demon appeared before her again.

“How was it? Did you have fun? By the way, if you want, you could live this dream again. After all, even if you go back to the real world, you won’t have anything to do but wait for death, right? In that case, don’t you think you’d be happier living a fun life in this endless dream?”

What the demon was saying was true. Even if she awoke, all that awaited Charlotte was the sorrowful anticipation of the end.

But she did not accept the demon’s offer.

At that point, I tilted my head in confusion. “Why not?” I asked.

Charlotte answered, “Think about it. Sure, I would be happy if I could continue living in the dream, and there would be no need to sit around waiting for death. But can that really be called living? No matter how splendid the dream, I would have to wake up at some point, right? Eventually, I would have to return to the real world. Even if death is just around the corner, locking myself away in the perfect dream isn’t really living, I think.”

“…You’re probably right.”

“So I refused the demon’s offer.”

As if it had known all along that she was going to shake her head “no,” the demon only muttered, “Oh, is that so?” It was a truly indifferent response. And then… “If you truly wish to return to reality, I’ll give you a parting gift. You know, to remember me by.”

“…Huh.”

Thinking this was a strange dream indeed, Charlotte nodded.

“You enjoyed being a mage in your dream, right? I’m going to give you the ability to use magic in the real world, too. When you open your eyes, you should be able to perform spells and such exactly as you could in your dream.”

“…Huh.”

Thinking what a silly conversation it was, Charlotte had said, “Thanks.” She was appropriately cool about it.

After all, this was an imagined exchange, and she was certain that when she returned to reality, there would be nothing waiting for her but the slow creep toward death. Given that, it was possible her response was a touch dismissive.

“I’ve stolen more than enough lives, so there’s no harm making one dream come true—consider this a freebie. You’ll be able to use magic in the real world. No strings attached.”

Finally, the demon smiled. Charlotte said it was clearly forced.

“It was nothing more than idle banter, but just as the demon in my dream had said, I awoke with the ability to use magic. I can fly through the air on a broom, and I can summon just about anything with a spell.”

Charlotte spoke dispassionately to the end. “I was sure everyone else would also have emerged from their dreams having received something incredible. Thinking this, I flew all over the city.”

“……”

“And this is what I found.”

“…No one else woke up?”

She nodded slowly.

“It looks like they all traded the burdens of life for blissful dreams.”

Charlotte told me she had awoken to find her fellow citizens had all passed away, so peacefully that they looked as if they were still asleep.

It was obvious what had happened.

Charlotte had dug a grave for her deceased neighbors, wrapped their lifeless corpses in cloth, and tossed them into the pit.

“By the way, the bodies I just dropped off were the last of them. I’m the only one left.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Let’s see. Well, after filling in the hole, I’m thinking I should leave this place,” she said. “Honestly, I was planning to perish along with the city, to accept the destruction that had been foretold, but now I’ve got magic powers. It would be a waste to simply stay here and die.”

“In other words?”

“I’m going to leave.”

Then she waved her wand.

Soil piled up on top of the bodies, and before long, the hole itself had vanished.

I decided to leave before the day ended.

I didn’t want to be in this city, deserted and mostly destroyed, blanketed by an eerie atmosphere, any longer than necessary.

After exchanging a few parting words with Charlotte, I passed through the gate again and headed for the plains.

“……”

The city would be destroyed tomorrow.

Just as the prophet had predicted, there wouldn’t be a single person left half a year after his death. Though in truth, the city wouldn’t have been destroyed and would have continued to exist had he said nothing.

I was certain the ruin had only befallen this place because that’s what everyone had expected to happen. This ending had been invited by the trusting hearts of the people, and a demon had taken advantage of them.

In this life, if you always went around expecting the worst, everything would naturally become gloomy. If you spent every day looking for the easy way out, though, you’d lose perspective and, before you knew it, might lose your life as well. Just like the citizens who’d abandoned their waking lives in favor of an endless dream.

“……”

In the end, it was important to have balance. Dealing in extremes could leave one broken.

That’s why…

For the time being, I’m more than happy leaving things as they are. Both good and bad.

I’ll tell the tale of my travels plainly and simply.

As always.