I had actually tried asking them a few quick questions about the world, but they all got brushed off. It was still too early for those questions. That talk would have to come after I built up a certain amount of academic knowledge, and after I managed to get the others to see me as someone who could hold a conversation at that level.
“Hmm, reading. Reading. I’ll be blunt. If it doesn’t earn me coin, I’m not a bit interested. You’re too young for it anyway, kid.”
“But I wanna understand.”
“Too young. Shoo, shoo.” He waved a hand at me lazily.
Unlike Mary the mummy, who looked after me at every opportunity, and Blood the skeleton, who spent plenty of time with me, the ghost called Gus treated me with indifference. He thought nothing of snubbing me, and if I asked anything of him, he would often irritably turn me down.
He was obstinate and sometimes arrogant, and usually hard to approach. But for all his flaws, there was no doubt in my mind that he was the most intelligent of the three. From his diction to his turns of phrase, I sensed that he was quite educated.
“But I wanna understand.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Come on! I wanna understand! Pleeeeease!” I pitched a fit, like the child I was. When was the last time I had pleaded with a parental figure like this? For old times’ sake, I started having a little fun with it. “Please! Please, please, please! Come on, Gus! Pretty, pretty please?!” I felt like such a kid. The age of my body was probably holding back my mental state. That made sense, come to think of it. My brain was a child’s, too. But then, why did my consciousness and perception feel so adult?
Sensing that too much deep thought about this would leave me lost in the maze comprised by my brain, mind, and soul, I decided not to go into that, and just whine some more instead.
“By the gods! All right, all right, fine!” After muttering something about kids, Gus sighed and looked at me. “You’re a real piece of work. So you want to learn to read?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t really understand this world’s writing.
“Hmmm… Well, then, first things first…” Gus extended a hand toward the bookshelf against the wall, and a single book floated toward him.
Psychokinesis? Well, ghosts were a thing, so sure, why not. The paranormal had completely ceased to surprise me recently.
“You’d better learn the letters.” He had opened the book to a list of letters which resembled an alphabet. But—
“No, those are okay.”
“Okay? What’s okay?”
“I can read those already.” I understood this part. I had been living in this temple for more than a year now, surrounded by reliefs, looking at the pictures and text engraved in them as I listened to everyone talk.
Comparing the frequency of the different sounds in speech to the frequency of the letters in the texts had given me a basic understanding. The pronunciation of “E” was the most frequent, followed by “A” and “T,” so I started with those and the rest quickly followed.
So, I could already read these.
“Excuse me?” Gus gawked at me.
“I can already read them.”
“What’s this say?”
“It says, ‘The vibrant petals of a fragrant flower, carried on the wind. The world, like my life, is ever-changing.’ Right?”
Easy-peasy.
“Did Blood or Mary teach you that?”
“No. I listened to everyone talking, looked at the letters, and figured it out myself.” Life in the temple was not very stimulating, and there was a limit to how much moving around my juvenile body could handle. I had endless time to think, so I had been spending it on this, using it like a puzzle to stave off boredom.
“Will…” For a while, Gus seemed to be deep in thought, and then he directed a question at me in a serious tone. “What is it that you’re trying to understand, then?”
“The nice-looking complicated ones on the gods and stuff.”
From what I’d deciphered from the inscriptions in various parts of the temple, this world’s letters were an alphabet of phonograms. However, on the gods’ reliefs and other, similar places, complex pictographic characters suddenly appeared. Those were the ones I didn’t understand. What were they, and how was I supposed to read them? Or were they simply there for decoration?
“Ah, the Words of Creation. They’re used in the ancient magics.”
“Creation… Magic…” Now we’re talking creation and magic, huh.
“Hmm. Where do I begin…”
“The beginning,” I replied.
Too much was better than too little. I was blessed with a pretty good memory. And anyway, if I couldn’t remember everything, I could just ask again, as many times as I needed.
“Get comfortable, then. This is going to take a while. We start long, long ago, longer than you can imagine, when the world was just beginning. Back then, the world was still a thick, boiling pot of chaos, where the Great Mana swirled with heat, and was unable to hold a form.”
I didn’t expect him to begin with the Creation.
“We’re… We’re starting there?”
“We’re starting there.” He was dead serious.
“In the chaos, the First God appeared from a place known to no one, and God said, ‘Let there be earth,’ and mana solidified at God’s feet, and became the earth, and mana thinned above God’s head, and became the skies. And so the heavens and the earth were parted.
“We call this God simply ‘the Creator’ or ‘the Progenitor,’ because a true name was never passed down.”
I felt what I’d heard bore a certain resemblance to the creation narratives of Christianity and Greek mythology.
“After this, the Creator spoke the Words and engraved the Signs, made the sun and the moon, split day from night, and gathered water to separate the oceans and the earth.
“Fire was born, wind was born, trees were born. The gods were born, and people and animals were born.
“And when the Creator had made the world, and was satisfied of its beauty, he said to himself, without thinking, that it was ‘good.’ But to make something ‘good’ is also to make something else ‘evil,’ just as solidifying the ground created the heavens.
“And so it was that malice and the evil gods were born. The Creator tried to take back his word, but not even the gods can return a word to the mouth that uttered it.
“The evil gods that were born into the world killed the Creator, and so life and death were born. And after that began the age of many gods and many legends.” Gus took a brief pause.
“The words and signs used in this creation story are the Words of Creation,” he finished.
Ah, so that was how it all linked up.
“So they’re the words that made the world?”
“That’s right. These Words and Signs… Well, let’s call them letters. Words and letters have power.”
Power. Power, huh?
“What can they do?”
“Hmm, let me see…” Gus’s finger danced in the air. A mysterious phosphorescence dwelt in his fingertip and left behind a trail as it moved, drawing two flowing and complex pictographs in midair. His finger slowed, and carefully, deliberately, added the second symbol’s final dot.
“Whoa!” I scrambled backwards. The letters drawn in midair had suddenly become a leaping flame that burned a brilliant red. The flame hung in midair, and I could feel its heat. It was real fire.
“Enough for a demonstration, I hope?” Gus muttered one or two melodic, rhythmic verses under his breath. The burning flame vanished entirely, as if it had all been nothing but an illusion.