Guardian of the Dream
Part Three - The Flower's Path
Chapter 1 - Oto the Archivist
Shuga was walking in the northern, isolated part of the Star Palace, headed for the star chart warehouse. The halls weren’t lit at this time of day, so he moved in shadows. He’d been thinking about Torogai’s suggestion to combine magic weaving and star reading since she’d made it, but the suggestion also frustrated him: he didn’t have time for theories. The situation was too urgent. As he wracked his brain, her realized that there was one Star Reader that might be able to help him in this crisis.
The Star Palace had about thirty Star Readers in residence. Every four years, a hundred boys from all over the country gathered to take the Trial of the Stars, but only about ten of those became acolytes each time. Out of those acolytes, those who became fully-fledged Star Readers were even fewer. To become a Star Reader, it was necessary to study for at least ten years. Some acolytes took as long as thirty years to earn their Star Reader credentials.
The man that Shuga was going to see had taken close to thirty years to become a Star Reader. He was a plump man, unassuming; he never called much attention to himself. His duties involved overseeing the archives of old star charts. He was so shy that he almost never spoke to anyone, but Shuga had encouraged him into telling a few stories, once or twice. He might not talk much, but he always had interesting things to say. Having an interested listener also seemed to please him.
Shuga opened the large, heavy doors to the star chart storehouse and stepped inside. The scent of old paper was thick in the musty air. The storehouse was always dark, in order to prevent the sun from damaging the paper. Four thin fluted windows lined one wall, but the curtains were drawn over most of them.
It was sunset. The scrolls on their shelves--some piled high to the ceiling--looked like they were nestled in their beds, sleeping.
"Oto, can you please come out?" Shuga's voice echoed off the walls.
A shadow appeared from behind the shelf on Shuga's right.
"Oh. Hello, Shuga." Oto, the archivist, put away the scroll he was holding. He wiped both of his hands on his clothes, then walked toward Shuga.
"Are you busy now?" Shuga asked.
He responded with, "No, no. Were you looking for something?"
Shuga looked around the storehouse as if he was searching for something specific. "Is there anyone other than us in the storehouse right now?"
Oto frowned a little. "Yes. Two trainees are cleaning. If there’s something you don't want others to hear, then we should go to my private room."
Shuga followed Oto into a tiny room at the back of the storehouse. It was mostly occupied by a desk piled high with star charts. There was just enough room left over for a small shelf containing the items necessary for brewing tea. The room was spotless: there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust.
Oto looked out the window to verify that no one was in earshot, then offered Shuga a seat.
Shuga looked at him, then said, "I've come today to ask you about the results of your research."
Oto blinked. "Huh? Shuga, I don't have any results to report…"
"A while back, you spoke of the mysterious coincidences that you’ve observed in our nation’s history."
Oto blushed. “Oh, that. I don’t consider that proper research, you know. It’s just an idea I had.”
Shuga leaned forward and lowered his voice. "If I recall correctly, you noticed something odd when Crown Prince Chagum defeated the water spirit. Last time, I didn’t have the time to listen to everything, but the circumstances have changed. I would like you to tell me everything you know and remember."
Oto’s expression tensed with fear. "But, Shuga…"
"Please trust me, Oto. We all fear speaking about the legend of the first Mikado needlessly, but I swear that I won’t do anything that would cause you trouble."
Oto didn’t answer for awhile. He seemed at a loss for what to say. When he did speak, his voice was hushed. "On the day of the summer solstice, when I found out that the Crown Prince had defeated the water demon, I remembered that our holy founder, Emperor Torugal, also defeated a water demon. I looked at the old star chart for the summer solstice--the one from two hundred years ago. I was looking for similarities."
He paused for breath, then said, "At first, the Portent of Drought was the only thing that seemed the same, but as I looked more carefully, I started to notice that some of the other omens matched up, too.
“That got me interested, so I went and looked up the map that was made during the summer solstice, about a hundred years ago now. Even there, many of the same omens matched up. But we’re talking about the same solstice, and only a hundred years apart, so I guessed that they would be similar. There’s nothing strange about that."
Oto was beginning to show interest in his topic. His eyes brightened, and his gaze became somehow sharper, as if he was seeing straight to the heart of things. “When I had some spare time, I chose some random intervals in the star charts--eight or ten years apart--and then compared the charts for the summer and winter solstices. Overlaying the daily maps from the past year or two and tracking the movement of the omens is the duty of Star Readers. Compared to that, jumping around and comparing different years and times however I wished was child’s play. I've told you all this because you always listen to my nonsense, but I don’t think my results are that revolutionary.”
Oto offered Shuga a rueful smile. "Still... I noticed something quite odd. I’ve told you before about the similarity of the omens on the summer solstices a hundred years apart, but if we allow for small differences in shapes and times... it seems to me like the similarities increase. But I was trying to find things that looked similar, so I might have just been seeing what I expected to see."
Shuga wasn't looking at Oto. His entire attention was fixed on a strange premonition that consumed his thoughts. He felt like he was on the knife edge of making a very important discovery. Oto himself didn’t seem to realize that what he was saying was extraordinary in the slightest. It could overturn everything the Star Readers believed about how Tendo worked. Shuga could see the implications of what Oto was saying far better than Oto could.
"Shuga?" Oto peered closely at Shuga's face. He must have noticed the change in Shuga’s expression. Shuga blinked and focused on Oto again. "Oto, are there omen similarities like that for this year as well?"
Oto’s smile was excitedly childlike, as if he’d been hoping that Shuga would ask that question. “That’s the reason I told you that I was noticing so many similarities in the first place. Wait a moment, please, and I’ll show you something.”
Oto stood up, went back to the main part of the storehouse, and returned with his hands full of scrolls. Shuga caught the two topmost scrolls before they fell from the stack.
"Thank you," Oto said, a little flustered. He spread out a few of the star charts on the desk, then began his explanation. Shuga lost track of time as Oto talked him through everything he’d discovered. They only stopped after sunset, when it became too dark to read in the storeroom.
Shuga took Oto’s hands in both his and thanked him profusely. “Oto. You might not have realized it until today, but this might end up being a great discovery."
Oto laughed, embarrassed. "You're exaggerating. I was glad to do this research as a hobby, but I never expected much to come out of it.”
Shuga said his goodbyes to Oto, then returned to his chambers in a state of excitement. Oto’s interpretation of his own research made sense, of course--Oto knew nothing besides Tendo. Shuga’s excitement came from his understanding of magic weaving along with Tendo.
Tendo stated that the world was made up of the mortal realm, the heavenly realm ruled by the gods, and the demon realm ruled by evil powers. These realms were believed to be independent, not overlapping worlds. Yakoo lore was different. The same three realms existed for the Yakoo, but the Yakoo believed that the worlds could overlap and influence one another.
What Torogai had taught Shuga was undoubtedly the truth. It was obvious that other worlds overlapped with this one, like the time when Crown Prince Chagum became a host for a spirit from another world. That spirit was born in their own world and crossed over into another.
The similarities between omens that Oto had shown Shuga today reminded him of the crossing of two sea currents. The same similarities were observed every eight years, and also every hundred years. Oto laughed and thought that it was all a coincidence. Shuga assumed no coincidences. The signs overlapped at these intervals--not just some signs, but many of them. That was significant.
Shuga felt like he was drawing features on a map in his mind, and that this map was finally taking shape and becoming something useful. It was a complex mental map with lots of moving pieces, like stars drifting in and out of their places in the night sky.
The omens that Oto had observed last year were the same omens observed one hundred years before. Another star chart that was more recent showed far more differences than in those two charts side-by-side, and this year’s differences were even more significant. Did this year's differences have anything to do with the Flower?
Shuga felt like he’d taken one step forward and two steps back. There was still so much information that he needed. He might need to experiment himself to figure all of it out, assuming he had the time.
It was exciting to have something so interesting to research, but the problem of time dampened his enthusiasm somewhat. Still, there was no time like the present. He wouldn’t be getting more time to work with, and he had no idea how much time he had, so he decided to buckle down and learn as much as he could as fast as possible.
Torogai was right, Shuga thought. Knowledge might not be useful right away, but that doesn’t make it useless. His impulse was the same one that had propelled people to make huge new discoveries throughout history.
This is my dream, isn't it? To make the next great discovery?
Shuga walked down the dark halls to his chambers, smiling the entire time.
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