InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 43

I do not own InuYasha or any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi

Chapter 43

As Miroku and InuYasha moved in to meet the newcomers, Rin looked up from her sewing to see all four of them heading for the front of the house at the same time.

The boy, about fourteen, looked quite weary, but the girl tied on his back was several years younger, about eight or nine.  She was quite pale, with dark circles under her eyes, breathing shallowly.

Putting her sewing down carefully, and getting up, Rin walked over to the boy “She’s not awake?”  

He shook his head no.  “No, she’s sick.  Do you know - ” but then he noticed the two men walking his way.  Seeing InuYasha, he blanched. “Youkai! Run!”

“Don’t worry,” Rin said.  She gave him a reassuring smile when she saw how frightened he was.  “That’s just InuYasha-ojisan.  He lives here, and helps protect the village.”

“Ojisan?” the boy said, surprised at the term of respect. “Is he really your uncle?”

“Not really,” Rin said. “Rin just calls him that to be polite.”

“Maybe I . . . ” He  almost turned away, but seeing the monk with him, took a deep breath.  “He travels with a monk?”

“Yes,” Rin replied.  “That’s Miroku-ojisan.  The Houshi-sama and his family live in the village, too.”

The boy shook his head at the situation, but as the two men drew close, he bowed toward the monk.  “Excuse me, Houshi-sama,” he said.  “My father told me that was a miko in this village who was good at healing.  Do you know what house is hers?”

“You’ve reached the right house,” Miroku said. “But she’s out of the house for a moment.  What’s wrong?”

The youth sagged, and shifted the weight of his sister slightly.  The girl didn’t stir. “Is there someone who can send for her?”

“Keh,” InuYasha said.  “We can, if you let us know why.”

The boy chose not to look at the hanyou.  “Chichi-ue sent me here.  I’ve been walking half the day.  Something’s very wrong with  my sister.”

Miroku looked at the girl, and ran a hand just above her hair, not touching.  “There’s some magic affecting her.  What’s been going on?”

“Youkai magic,” the boy said, nodding.  “She can’t stay awake more than an hour or two and she’s been getting weaker and weaker each day.  No one in our village can help her.” He sighed, and bowed his head, looking at his feet. “Our headman thought it might be a fox possession, but nothing he tried helped.  Then my father remembered the miko here. Once, she healed my father after a youkai attack when everybody thought he might die from it.  He couldn’t leave himself, so he sent me.  Do you think she can help her?”

“Maybe,” Miroku replied.  “I’m sure she’ll do her best.  She’s a very good healer. Rin-chan?  Will you go get Kaede-sama?”

The girl nodded and ran off.

“Let’s get her inside,” Miroku said, opening the door.  “What’s your name, boy?”

“I’m Hiseo,” the youth said.  “My sister Yume’s not the only one in our village like this, but she’s the worst.  Our elders have sent for help, but nobody’s come who can do anything yet.”

Miroku pressed his hand on the girl’s forehead.  She was cool to the touch, with no fever.  “Where did you say you were from?”

Carefully, Hiseo unfastened the knot that held the unconscious girl to his back, while Miroku helped lower her to the ground. “We live in Kagemura, just past the marketplace.  You’ve heard of it?” Hiseo said.  

Miroku looked at InuYasha, and the hanyou sighed.  “Yes, boy, we’ve heard of it,” Miroku said. “I suspect we’re going to hear even more about it before your sister goes home.  Let’s get her comfortable.”

It did not take Kaede and Kagome long to return.  Seeing the girl on the floor, she quickly had InuYasha and Miroku build up a straw pallet to move the girl onto, and after that began her examination.

The miko shooed away from the girl’s bedside, so the two men retreated to the wall of the hut where they sat as Kaede did her work, although she kept Kagome close, explaining to the young woman what she was doing every step.  InuYasha watched through hooded eyes, his sword propped against his shoulder, his face emotionless, but his ears revealing his unease.  Miroku, sitting next to him, was less withdrawn, but still thoughtful. Hiseo, though, looking up anxiously from time to time,  sat next to the small, unconscious body, while the miko used gentle hands to try to understand what was wrong.

Rin watched them all as she tended the fire pit, poking at the flames under a kettle of water, ready to help the older miko make whatever medicine she thought would be useful. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” she asked.

Kaede, her examination over, took a deep breath.  “I expect so, child, if we can get to the cause of why she’s like this.  Kagome-chan, there’s a coverlet in the chest to the right.  Could you get it?”

Kagome nodded, and went over to the chest, and carefully pulled things out until she found it.  As she repacked the other items,  the older miko pursed her lips, then looked up at the youth sitting next to his sister.

“She’s weak, but there is no wound or injury that I can find, and she has no fever,” Kaede said.  “I can feel that she has been touched with some magic, but I can’t quite make out its source, except that it has drained her energy. You were right, getting her away from the village, I think.  It could have killed her if she stayed near whatever has been doing this.”

The boy gave her a nervous smile.  “But she’ll get better now?”

“If we can keep her away or shielded from what is doing this to her,” Kaede said, nodding. “So, Hiseo-kun, tell me again how she got this way.”  

Kagome gave him a small smile, and Rin an encouraging nod of her head.  

The boy chewed a bit on his bottom lip as he looked at her, then around at Kagome who was  unfolding the cloth to cover Yume, and then at Rin and finally, turning towards Miroku, who also gave him a nod.

“It really will help,” the monk said.  

Hiseo found he found his voice. “It started, maybe three weeks ago. Strange things started happening in my village at night.”

“Like what?” Miroku asked. “Tell us everything unusual, even  if you don’t think it’s important.”

“At first it was stuff like jars and baskets left outside getting  tipped over at night,” Hiseo continued, looking at his sister.  He brushed a wisp of hair out of her face. “The elders got all the boys together and gave us a hard talking to, sure it was one of us.  I thought the headman was going to give us all a beating, especially after one of his storehouses got broken into.” He crossed his arms, and held them close, rocking almost imperceivably. “But then eerie things started happening. One of the old men said he heard strange noises at night by the well, like growls, and my cousin Aya said she saw a floating light moving between the houses.  She swore that nobody was carrying it.  Other people saw stuff like that too.  Yukio-ojisan said the light chased him from one end of the village to the other.”

“Then what happened?” Kaede said.

“Animals began disappearing - my neighbor’s rooster, a dog the headman had, and then a few days later an ox was found who was too weak to get up. It died that day.” He sighed.  “My uncle really was upset when he found Mika. Now he has to get another ox to plow his rice fields.”

“That is sad,” Rin said, adding another stick to the fire under the kettle. “Rin would hate it if anything happened to Ah-Un.”

Hiseo gave her a curious look, but continued. “After that, Osamu-sama the headman called in a yamabushi he heard was good at chasing off bad things.  He investigated and poked around and then prayed over the village.  He said it was it was a black kitsune.”

“Feh,” InuYasha said, snorting.

“Kitsune get blamed for many things. So,” Miroku said, looking at the boy who seemed surprised by InuYasha’s response, “what did this fine yamabushi have your village do?”

“The holy man gathered everybody in the center of the village and burned a lot of incense around us all. He had us give him a pile of clothes and food as a sacrifice to the fox spirits, and then danced around the village, chanting and sprinkling salt and drawing signs on all the houses.  My father wasn’t impressed, and thought we were wasting our stuff, and he wasn’t the only one.  But he added stuff to the pile just like everybody else. The next day, the offerings and the holy man were gone.”

“Did it help?” Kaede asked.

The boy shook his head. “When the sun went down, the lights at night grew stronger, and more people saw things that night  than ever before.”   

Hiseo  watched Kagome as she finished covering  the girl.  The younger miko brought the covers up to the girl’s armpits, laying her hands gently on the cloth.  “There. That should keep her from getting too cold,” Kagome said.
  
“Thank you,” the boy said.

“Sounds like your yamabushi just made the youkai mad,” InuYasha said, scowling.  “Probably wanted to let your people know what it thought of the guy.”

The boy shrugged. “Nobody would go out after dark after that, because they were afraid they’d see the fox fire dance through the streets. And the sickness - this time it wasn’t just animals getting weak - people did, too.”  He rested a hand on his sister’s arm. “About four days ago, we had trouble waking my sister up.  Three days ago, she wouldn’t stay up much more than an hour at a time.  The priest in the next village came over and prayed over her and put an amulet around her neck, but it didn’t help.”

“So,” Kaede said, “How did you end up here?  It’s a good long walk from Kagemura, especially with such a load on your back.”

“My otousan grabbed me this morning before I went out to the fields, and put my sister on my back and tied her on so she wouldn’t slip off, then sent me here.” He bowed towards Kaede. “He said to tell you to remember Masuo, and how you healed him when he had a run-in with the Spider Woman.”

Kaede thought a moment, and then her face lit up as she recalled the incident. “Ah, I remember that.  There was a spider youkai luring travelers to her lair by the river about an hour’s walk from here.  A young woman got caught by her trap, and your father was very brave, but almost died saving her.”

“That was my mother,” Hiseo said.

“I was wondering what happened to her.  I never heard.  Your father was very ill for a while, because of the spider’s venom, but she stayed with him until he could walk back.  I wondered if they wed.” Kaede rested her hand on the girl’s forehead and looked back up at the youth.  “Now to figure out what is afflicting your sister. Has anybody died recently in your village?”

The boy shook his head.  “Not recently.  About three months before all this started.”

The old miko rested her hand on the girl’s hair.  “Probably not a ghost then, or at least not a recent one.  Angry ghosts can manifest as lights and also drain life, but I suspect it would have started soon after the death. Well, if it’s an attack by some sort of local youkai, she’ll get better just being away from your village.  If it’s a possession, we’ll have to see.”

InuYasha had been tilting his head to one side and sniffing.  He got up from his place by the wall and knelt down next to Kagome.  “She doesn’t smell like she’s been fox-touched at all.”

“Well then, what do you smell?” Kaede asked.

InuYasha looked up at the boy, who despite his reluctance to meet the hanyou’s eyes, looked up at him curiously, then he turned back to Kaede. “The only thing not human on her that I can smell is cat.”