After that, Thio took Caroline out to look for a job. Considering her “Excellent Health” he assumed an easy manual job would be best. It became quickly clear that she was weak. She couldn’t lift average sized bags or pull carts and even carrying a full bucket of water was a struggle.
“Caroline… why are you so weak?” Thio finally asked. Even he could easily lift a bucket of water.
“I’ve never done this kind of heavy lifting before.”
He covered his eyes with his hand. “A bucket of water isn’t heavy lifting.”
“That bucket was huge!” She sulked back at him.
“No, it was normal. NORMAL.”
He sighed. What kind of pampered life did she live before coming here? How was he suppose to get her a job if she was totally ignorant of every-day things and couldn’t even lift a bucket of water?
“Hey, hey!” She grabbed his sleeve, suddenly excited and pointing at a near by building. “Is that an Adventurer’s Guild?”
“…yes?”
“Can we go in? I want to go in!”
“Caroline, you can’t carry water, there’s no way you can be an Adventurer.”
She made an annoyed face at him. “I just want to see inside!”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never been in one!” She clasped her hands together, begging. “Please! Pretty please?”
“Well…” Thio couldn’t think of an obvious downside, so he agreed.
Just about every town in the Golden Empire had an Adventurer’s Guild. They were a pseudo-international organization: each country had their own guild, and the guilds would cooperate with each other for large scale missions. Some guilds were very friendly, automatically accepting transfer requests and expediting citizenship applications for members. Other guilds would consider prior-guild experience a plus, but not guarantee, of acceptance.
The Adventurer’s Guild in the Empire was massive due to the size of the country it was located in. It was the biggest guild of it’s kind on the Continent, giving it a great deal of influence. If you became famous in the Empire as Adventurer, you became an international sensation.
Hillsdale’s Guild was modest in size. They mostly worked as guards for travelers and monster exterminators. The latter sounding more impressive than it actually was: there were very few strong monsters in the area. Most of the monsters where small fry and considered pests.
There was a bell that rang upon their entry.
“It just looks like an office.” Caroline sounded disappointed after entering. Well, that’s exactly what it looked like because it was. It was a wood slatted rectangular room. There was a large window to the left and a door to the right. Wood chairs lined a wall, all empty.
Thio raised an eyebrow. “What did you expect?”
“I dunno, a bigger room or more people…”
Movement caught their attention behind the window on the left. A large burly man was getting himself situated and opened the window, welcoming gruffly automatically, “How may I help you?”
Then seeing who it was, changed to a more friendly tone, “Eh? Thio is that you? What are you doing here?”
Thio made his living doing odd-jobs around town. The guild would occasionally hire him to do deliveries or send and receive messages for them. On those occasions, he was contacted directly, so the guild was expecting him. Since he’d walked in unannounced there was bound to be some confusion.
“Guildmaster,” Thio greeted. “I’m showing someone around town and they wanted to see the inside of the Guild. What are you doing at the front desk anyway? Where’s Mariel?”
The Guildmaster glanced at Caroline curiously.
“Mariel had her baby.”
“Congratulations to her then!”
“Yeah, yeah. But while she’s not here, I’ve got to work in her place. She said it was going to be a month, minimum, before she could be back.” The Guildmaster huffed in annoyance.
“Ah, that must be tough. I’m surprised you don’t have a backup for her in cases like this.”
“Ha! Do you realize how difficult that would be? In a town of this size, she’s a one-in-a-million!”
“Really? What does her job require?”
“Reading, writing, math, book-keeping, and just a lot of boring office work.”
Thio glanced at Caroline, “I see what you mean. A person like that would usually work at the Bankers Guild, rather than the Adventurer’s Guild.”
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“Exactly. Who would work here if they could get a cushy job over there?”
“I’d work here.” Caroline spoke up.
At the Guildmaster’s doubtful expression, she continued:
“I can read, write, math, all that stuff. That’d be easy. And I think working at with Adventurer’s would be way more fun than with Bankers.”
The Guildmaster burst out laughing, and waved them both over. He pulled out a chalk board and a piece of paper. Tapping the paper, he explained: “Solve these problems and write the answers over here.”
“Will… will I get to work here if I do?” Caroline asked, feeling a bit nervous and uncertain.
“Hm… maybe.”
With nothing to lose, Caroline bent over the paper to read it. She blinked several times. These were really easy math problems. Basic addition, subtraction, division, etc. There was even a very simple word problem at the end. Just like when she read Thio’s little black book, she felt the same disconnect with the math. What she was seeing shouldn’t have made sense to her, but it did. It took about 5 minutes to get through all the problems.
“I’m done.” She announced politely, turning the slate to the older gentleman.
“Already?” He mumbled, sounding hesitantly impressed and pulled out another piece of paper to compare with the answers. He gave a long whistle when he was done. “You got them all right, and so quickly too!”
Caroline felt a little confused. If she’d taken a long time on basic math problems like that, she’d feel really embarrassed. That was the kind of stuff 12 year olds could do back in her old home.
Wiping off the slate, the Guildmaster gave it back to her, instructing: “I’d like you to dictate for me, can you do that?”
The girl shrugged, “Sure.”
The Guildmaster than spent several minutes reciting recipes, work orders, and Guild instructions. They weren’t very long, and he spoke at a reasonable speed. After he was done, she handed the slate back to him.
He read through it, this time not hiding his admiration.
“How did a girl like you end up being so educated?” He couldn’t help asking.
“Pardon?” Caroline frowned. What was that “girl like you” comment suppose to mean? Wasn’t all the stuff he was asking really simple?
“He’s just surprised someone poor is so educated.” Thio explained hastily.
“But you can read can’t you?”
“I’m self-taught.” Thio patted his chest proudly. “It took time and connections, and even paying some people, for me to learn though. Most poor people consider that a waste of time. They could either be using that money to survive or they’re too lazy to bother.”
The Guildmaster looked at Caroline curiously. “Excuse me, but why does this need explaining? It’s pretty straight forward?”
“Sorry, I’m not from around here.” Caroline offered. “I just arrived today.”
“Hm…” The Guildmaster looked slightly uncertain. “Are you a foreigner then?”
She tapped her chin once. “I think so? My mind is all messed up so…”
“Huh??”
“Ah, Guildmaster,” Thio interjected. “Someone has put her under some kind of curse.”
“A curse?” He leaned back. Curses weren’t something to sneeze at.
“If you look up her information, you’ll see what I mean.”
The Guildmaster cocked his head, but cast the spell. After examining it for a moment, he raised his eyebrows.
“Sealed? Origin? I’ve never seen this before.”
“As I suspected, it’s not just me.” Thio muttered and then nodded. “Someone sealed her information. Not just from outsiders, but also from herself. The curse has affected her memory. It seems like she sees her past as pictures, but she has no names for them. When she tries to describe things to me, it comes out as gibberish.”
“That’s quite a curse.” And it was. Any magic to do with mind alteration was incredibly complex. To mess with a persons past memories but not effect their ability to read, write, or do complex math problems. Astounding.
Caroline thought a little differently. While she might be cursed, she was doing a fine job of describing things to Thio. It’s just that there seemed to be no equivalent to the things she was seeing in her mind. And, after a great deal of experimenting while job hunting, she concluded that the only words she knew were for things that already existed in this world.
The lamp in his room was a good example. She knew the word for that. There was a parallel to this world’s lamp and lamps from her world. Carriages, horses, and even her own name, she had words for all of those, because they existed in both worlds.
The only exception was magic. There was absolutely no magic in her world, she was sure, but she knew what it was anyway. It made her a little uncertain of her theory, but seeing as that was the only outlier…
“I wonder why she was cursed.” The Guildmaster continued and turned to Caroline. “Do you remember who cursed you?”
“No. Leading up to me being here, it’s all a strange blur.” Caroline was a little distressed by this. She really didn’t remember what led up to here suddenly appearing in this other world. When she tried to concentrate on specific days (like yesterday), she came up with a blank.
The Guildmaster shook his head. “Whoever cursed you made sure you couldn’t trace anything back to them then. Very clever, very dastardly. But why keep you alive? Wouldn’t killing you be easier? Very strange too. I hope this Mystery Criminal isn’t still around town.”
“If they are, they aren’t showing themselves. I’ve walked her all over town and no one knows her.”
“I think it would be prudent to let the Head Guard know, even so. Someone powerful enough to curse like that.. It’s a risk to the whole town.”
Thio had not actually thought of that. He felt a little abashed for missing something so obvious.
“I’ll make sure to head over to the Guard Station next then.”
“See that you do.”
Thio cleared his throat. “Anyway, would you be interested in hiring this girl? Even if she’s cursed?”
“Well…”
“I can’t support her. She’s got no family here. She needs a job. And for safety, the Adventurer’s Guild is one of the best places in town.”
“True… but that curse…”
“Yeah, it’s a risk. But whoever did this also didn’t kill her. I’d go so far as to say they went out of their way NOT to kill her. That says something about that person. Whatever they’re hiding, they don’t want to kill people.”
“Perhaps.” The Guildmaster stroked his whiskery chin.
“Look, even you were impressed at how well she did on those tests, right? And she even likes you more than the Bankers. How often do you find people like that? Even if Mariel comes back, that baby will still take up a lot of time. Having someone there to fill the gaps will be useful. And who knows, she may find other ways to be helpful.”
The Guildmaster snorted. “You’re really trying to sell this girl, aren’t you?”
“Well, I trust you sir. I have confidence that if she works for you, that she’ll be in good hands.”
The Guildmaster waved his hand, chuckling. “Alright, alright, no need to stroke my pride. I do need someone, so why not? She’s hired.”
“Thank you sir!” “Thank you!” Came two happy replies.
“Yes, yes, your welcome. Come in tomorrow, bright and early, to get trained… uh… What was your name again?”
“Caroline Matthews!”
“Hm. Surname. You a Lord’s kid or something?”
“Uh, no.”
“So that you remember at least.”
“I remember what my parents look like, where we lived, I just don’t remember much else.”
“I see. And you’re sure they aren’t in the area?”
“Absolutely.” She quietly thought: they’re not even on the same planet!
“In that case, welcome to the Adventurer’s Guild, Miss Matthews!”