Taken

Chapter 1: Awakening (Kaguya's Perspective)

I woke sluggishly, thinking maybe I'd try to cram in a few more minutes' sleep before beginning the day, but as soon as I opened my eyes, I was wide awake. I hated the sensation when I woke up in an unfamiliar place, because it always took a second to remember why I was there. It was alarming waking up in unfamiliar clothes (shudder) in a strange room with no idea how I got there. Slowly I began to remember how I'd found Bambi-san and she'd let me stay here. I still didn't know how to get her to have a real conversation with me, but I'd keep working on it. For the moment, I just got out of bed and took my school clothes to find somewhere to wash them before putting them on, and then to find food.

As I'd hoped, modern conveniences were available, and while my clothes were washing I went to the kitchen to fix breakfast. I wondered as I walked whether I should fix something for Bambi-san as well, just as a nice gesture, but she had beaten me to it. I found her there already, combining brownish powders with miscellaneous liquids in a large bowl. She formed a pastry of some kind and put it in the oven to bake, taking a break but staying in the kitchen to monitor its progress. She sat quietly and did not seem to get bored watching her pie bake.

"I was thinking about fixing you something while I was in here, Bambi-san, but it looks like you've got something already," I commented.

"There's enough there for both of us. Your friend informed me that he does not eat," she replied. I had nothing to do, then.

"Thanks," was all I could think of to say. "So, what is it?" I managed later.

"It's a sweet pastry made from birds' eggs, grains, sugar, and a few other miscellaneous things. I believe you have something like it in Eden."

"I noticed the people who brought me here called my world Eden. We call it Earth there."

"All of the worlds are Earth; this is Earth right here. There are nine Earths, each in a separate world or dimension. Your Earth is in Eden, and this world is Telene."

"Oh," I replied, unable to think of anything more to say. Perhaps it was not so much that Bambi-san was cold, but that I was a terrible conversationalist. When the food was ready, I bit into it cautiously and discovered it was indeed very like pancakes. Bambi-san was a good cook, but I guessed she'd have to be, having no one else around to help cook.

"This is good," I offered after a pause that felt very awkward to me. She thanked me and continued eating silently except for the clink of her fork on her plate. At least I was breaking the awkward pauses into manageable chunks. I finished before she did and waited to take her plate to the sink for her. I was determined to do something for her since I hadn't gotten to cook like I'd planned, and thought maybe she'd thank me and we could at least speak.

"Thank you," she said in her customary, even tone. There was my opening.

"No problem. I used to do dishes all the time at home," I began, proud of myself for thinking of something other than just the required reply. Sadly, my efforts were wasted, eliciting no response from Bambi-san. She just continued to sit. It was the first time I could recall her remaining in a room with me of her own free will once there was no longer a concrete reason to be there, like eating. I went and sat next to her thinking perhaps this was a small breakthrough. Maybe it was, or maybe not; I couldn't tell, since she still didn't speak to me. After a few moments, I felt so awkward I just left. Maybe a book would provide more of a diversion.

I went to the study I'd found the previous day, and surprisingly, all of the books were in Japanese. How odd that this Earth seemed to have the same languages as mine when everything else was so different… although I didn't think most people on my Earth realized there were others; maybe because Bambi-san knew of the others, she had made a point of learning their languages. That had to be it. Maybe in another room, there would be books in English, or in languages from some of the other eight Earths. I guess I'd been lucky to find the ones in Japanese. I picked up a volume, hoping I could gain some insight into Bambi-san's interests by what books she owned and be able to engage her in better conversations.

After a while, I gave up. She had books on everything. A lot of them were about Telenian subjects, so I guessed scholars had translated them to Japanese. Not a single one was by a Japanese author, or at least not one with a Japanese name. They ranged every topic, though, and it seemed there was nothing Bambi-san did not want to read about. Actually, that gave me an idea. If she didn't want to talk about anything, maybe she'd want to read about it. I would write to her. I set about writing what was on my mind, how I wanted to be her friend, everything. She would understand it better this way, because I wasn't as shy about saying what I thought in writing. It was perfect.

Later, I sought her out to give her the note, and it didn't take terribly long to find her. She was within the range of a few rooms I'd wandered and learned my way around. Most of the castle I hadn't even seen yet. I'd have to explore it sometime with Gold, though knowing him, he probably had already done so and had a map of the place in his head. I found Bambi-san out on a balcony watching the clouds by herself. I guessed she did everything by herself unless I tagged along. I edged up to her and gave her the paper with my looping calligraphy on it. To my surprise, she just looked at it for a second, clearly not reading it.

"What is this?" She asked, "Are these letters?"

I just stuttered a few meaningless syllables, unsure if my handwriting was bad, or if I'd misunderstood when I thought she could read Japanese. Maybe those books belonged to someone else, or-

"I don't have a fancy chip like yours, I can't read just anything. I can understand when you speak your language, but it doesn't translate writing," she explained.

"Ch-Chip?"

"You have a microchip implanted in your brain that translates all languages spoken in the nine worlds. I don't know your language, it's the chip that translates for me when you speak."

"But there are books in there in Japanese… can you not read them?"

"They are written in Telenian. Your chip is better than mine; it translates for you when you read as well as when someone speaks. When I asked you that math problem before I let you in, I was testing your chip. You knew it was math, which meant your chip was advanced enough to understand Telenian, but you couldn't do it, which meant your chip wasn't advanced enough to calculate it for you."

I took a few seconds to absorb that, and then a question suddenly cam to mind. "If I have that chip that lets me understand all the languages, how come I have so much trouble with English?"

"If a four-year-old could understand all known languages, it would arouse suspicion, so your chip was deactivated when you were sent to Eden. Whoever brought you back must have activated it without your knowing."

"Brought me… back?"

"Yes. You are not originally from Eden; no one is, really. It was considered uninhabitable until someone got the idea to use it as a penal colony. Everyone in Eden is really descended from one or more of the other eight worlds. You, though, were actually born away from Eden and taken there later for safekeeping. It's a bunch of old history no one really cares about; really all they want is for you to choose their world, and if they get that, they don't care about the rest."

"Choose their world? Wait, if I was taken to Earth for safekeeping, why did Seeu bring me back here where I'm a lot less safe? The first people I saw here attacked me!"

"Seeu brought you back… that makes sense. He was great friends with your brother."

"I have a brother?"

She nodded. "He died in the Great War three hundred years ago, and Seeu has been alone ever since. Seeu probably cares about you more than anyone in the eight worlds besides Eden. To most people, you are a concept or a commodity, but to Seeu you are real. You probably remind him of your brother. He almost certainly brought you back because Kura, the emperor of the seventh world, Geo, is looking for you, and Kura's intentions are always less than honorable."

"Three hundred years!"

"People don't live long in an overpopulated prison, I guess… we live a lot longer here in the other worlds."

"What was that about choosing worlds? And why is the emperor looking for me?"

"There is a legend that a girl with black hair and blue eyes will come and save one of the nine worlds from an impending disaster that would otherwise destroy all worlds. Kura has gotten it into his head that it's you, and he probably wants to exploit the people's belief in you to make himself more powerful. It's the kind of person he is. Seeu would want to save you from Kura because it's the kind of person he is. He was devastated when all his people died."

"His people?"

"Seeu is a prince… technically a king now, maybe, except that all of his subjects are dead, so he's the only person left in all of Asu. That's the second world. There was a virus that killed everyone, but the royal family was sealed up in their palace so they wouldn't be infected. Seeu was the only survivor."

"I see," I gazed downward, contemplating Seeu's apparent solitude and how sad he must have been to see all those people die. I looked up after what I thought was a polite interval of silence, and Bambi-san had turned away again, watching the clouds, not caring if I was there or ten thousand miles away. It seemed she could only be engaged in conversations of length if she was explaining something to me. She never wanted to talk about something we both knew about, and likely didn't see the point, since if we both knew, no information was being passed along.

I couldn't think of anything I could explain to her. She had admitted she didn't know Japanese, and I obviously did, but why would she want to learn it when a chip in her brain translated everything for her anyway? If she learned it, she could read it, but she didn't seem to care much about that. I couldn't teach her anything, so I'd just have to settle for being taught everything I could get her to teach me. I would have to find things I didn't understand and ask her about them. That shouldn't be too hard. I understood practically nothing about this brand new world, or my own, for that matter.

I had something of a to-do list, so finally something occupied my thoughts. I needed to familiarize myself with the entire castle, taking along Gold in case something should happen in an unknown area of it, and find topics to have Bambi-san explain to me. Maybe I had just needed to find the right way to talk to her. She really seemed like the academic type, so I'd have to interest her in things an academic type person wants to talk about. Everything was going great.