InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 229

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

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


Chapter 228

Miroku stepped past the last of the willow trees to reach a grassy field. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see dry ground,” he said. “I need to rest.” He found a spot in the full sun and sat down, spreading his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his arms. “That water was too cold.”

InuYasha lay Maeme on the ground near him. She groaned, then curled into a ball. As Kagome knelt next to her, Miroku glanced at the despondent woman. “We’re going to need to get her warm soon.”

“Soon, but you need to catch your breath,” Sango said as she knelt down next to her husband. “I’m sorry, Miroku. I left your robes on the rock. I...I....” She swallowed. “I was just too worried to think about them.”

“Sango,” he said, looking up into her beautiful face. “I don’t like to worry you like that. We’ll get them later. I won’t worry you like that often, I can assure you.” Too tired to let his arms hold him up any more, he collapsed totally onto the ground. “But I can’t promise never.”

She took his hand in hers and interlaced their fingers. “I know. I...Sometimes I wish Kirara wasn’t with Kohaku,” she said. “Like on days like today.”

He lifted their joined hands.

“That would have made it a bit easier, yes,” he said, leaning into her touch. “I still probably would have gotten wet, though.” He smiled, lifted up his other, slightly trembling arm, and touched her cheek. “But maybe not quite so thoroughly.”

“It’s a good thing Sango knows how to yell loudly,” InuYasha said.

The two looked up at him.  

“That’s why I’m here, you know. Otherwise, I would have been up at my place eating lunch while your stupid ass got swept down past the rocks at the Courtesan Spider den, and out to sea.” He gave the woman a small, silly grin. “And then, Sango would have found your lousy body, got Sesshoumaru to use his sword on you, and killed us both for being stupid.”

“Maybe,” she said, giving the hanyou a grateful smile.

“I always wondered what a monk wore under all those robes,” a familiar voice said.

Miroku looked up, to see the smiling face of Daitaro. The old farmer held up the black and purple garments that belonged to the monk. “Found these by the rock. They look familiar?”
The monk nodded. “Now you know. But all you really had to do was ask.”

“But think of all the excitement I would have missed otherwise,” the old man said. He handed Sango the monk’s robes, then sat down next to the two and unslung his jug. “Have a drink.”

Daitaro held out his sake jug, and Miroku took it from the old farmer. He took a solid drink from it. “As good as always,” he said.“Where’d you come from, anyway? I figured you’d be close to home today.”

“You’re right about that,” Daitaro said, nodding. He offered it to InuYasha who shook his head no, so he sat it up against his thigh. “It was Furume-chan. She’s a good girl, but was so excited that I didn’t know whether to expect a funeral or a rescue when I got here, so I came prepared for both.” The old peasant grinned. “A rescue is much better. I brought sake and blankets, and Genjo and Mariko to help out - I figured they’d be handy in case of either. Almost had to lock Shinjiro and Chime-chan up to keep them from following.”

“Sorry to interfere with your day’s plans, Daitaro-sama,” Miroku said, laying back down.

“Not your fault someone needed to play hero.” He took a small drink of his own potion and offered it back to the monk, who shook his head no. “But I didn’t expect this one, though,” Daitaro said, nodding at InuYasha. “If I had, I would have taken more time to get here.”

“I’m glad you showed up anyway. Did you say blanket? A blanket would be nice now,” the monk said. “It’s getting a little cold.”

Daitaro gestured to his daughter-in-law, who was carrying a basket on her back instead of her son. She swung it to the ground and took out a yellow and brown cloth, which she proceeded to wrap around the monk.

“Not the best day for a swim,” she said. She dug into her basket, and pulled out another length of cloth. “I have another if you need it.”

“Thank you, Mariko-sama.” He pulled the cloth close. “This is good for right now. I’m sure Maeme-sama needs it more than I do.”  

“Do you want me to make a fire?” Genjo, squatting next to his father, asked. “That might warm you better.”

“I’m hoping we won’t need to be here that long,” Miroku said. “Soon as I feel like I can start walking, we can leave.”

“Keh,” the hanyou said. “I could always sling you over my shoulder.”

“Like Daikokuten the kitchen god?” Genjo asked. He scratched the back of his neck, thinking. “We could use one of the blankets for his bag.” He looked at the hanyou, grinning. “That’d be something to see.”

“InuYasha as one of luck gods?” Daitaro said, nodding. “Now that would be a sight. Might be worth it.”

InuYasha looked at his friend and gave him a wicked smirk. “All that Miroku luck in the bag...we could do it.”

“I’ve had enough excitement today,” the monk said, giving the whole group a dark look. “I’ll walk back. Even if I have to crawl.”

The men laughed.


While the men bantered, Sango left Miroku’s side to walk over to Maeme, where Kagome was sitting by her side, taking her pulse. Mariko followed close behind.

“Is she injured?” Sango asked as Mariko prepared to cover her with a blanket.

Maeme lay there, her eyes closed, curled up, not moving except for the low, even rise and fall of her chest. She had ripped the sleeve of one arm during the struggle to get to shore, but she was not bleeding. The unconscious woman shivered, her wet clothes plastered to her skin, but she made no other movement.


“Nothing obvious,” Kagome said. She had her hand around Maeme’s wrist. Mariko gently tucked the blanket around all of the unconscious woman’s body except for where Kagome was checking her life signs. “Her pulse feels all right, maybe a little slow.”

“Why is she still out of it?” Mariko asked. She pulled out another blanket and began spreading it over Maeme.

“Chilled and exhausted, mostly I think, but I think Kaede ought to look her over,” the young miko said. “And we need to get her somewhere warm as soon as possible.”

Mariko looked down on the unconscious woman. “We can take her to my place. It’s the closest.”

“No,” Miroku said, sitting up and watching the women.

“No?” Mariko asked, surprised. “Why?”

“You’re going to be busy enough with the wedding tonight,” the monk said. “Besides that, I promised Maeme-sama that I would take care of her.” He looked over at his wife. “It was the only way I could get her to cooperate. I promised her that her husband would not touch her if she let me save her.” He looked at Sango. “You know how he treats her.”

Sango nodded.

“It’s a shameful thing,” Genjo said. “You need to tell them that tomorrow when the elders meet, Otousan.”

Daitaro nodded. “Oh, they’ll get an earful from me.”

“I want her at our house,” Miroku said. “It’s the only way I know right now to make sure I can keep my promise to her.”

Sango looked at her husband. She could see worry and fatigue in her husband’s eyes, and honest sincerity, and the desire to do a good thing, not a hint of anything else, unless it was worry that she would take him the wrong way. “I understand, Miroku,” Sango said, nodding. She looked back at the unconscious woman.  “Her life has been . . . not good.”

“She was worried about him hurting her?” Kagome asked. “In this condition? Would he really do that?”

“That wouldn’t matter much to Seiji,” Daitaro said, nodding, “Especially once he got to drinking. Her trying this - it’ll probably make him madder than hell, even if he pushed her to it.” He shook his head. “He’s got weird notions about being insulted and how things really work, and especially doesn’t like to admit if he’s at fault.” The old man stood up. “Well, then. Soon as everybody gets their breath, I guess we ought to head up the hill.”


A few minutes later, they started walking towards Miroku’s house. Daitaro’s son was carrying the blanketed form of the unconscious woman, and Miroku, also blanketed, walked with them. Sango walked next to her husband. Behind them, InuYasha and Kagome followed, along with Mariko and Daitaro.

“You’re sure you don’t want to let us put her in my house?” Mariko said. “It’s separate from Daitaro-otousan’s building. You know we wouldn’t mind.”

“That’s true,” Genjo said.

The monk shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s a good thing to do today. Your family’s going to be too busy, and I wouldn’t want Chime to have to deal with whatever bad luck is involved in this.”

“My poor woman has been going crazy this week,” Daitaro said. “But she wouldn’t feel like she’d be getting any bad luck, you know.”

“I believe you, Daitaro-sama,” Sango said. “But still, we’ll take her,” Sango said. “There’s no way I want to let her go home like this. We know what...her husband...is like.” She almost spit at the word husband. “This way, you don’t have to worry about him tonight.”

“Just don’t blame luck. Today’s luck can’t be that bad, even for Maeme-chan,” Daitaro said. “She may have fallen in the river, but you were there to rescue her, Houshi-sama. That’s one of the deeper places in the river near here. And the old catfish who guards the river decided you were both worthy, and left you alone.”

“There’s a catfish kami in this stretch of the river?” Miroku asked. “I hadn’t heard of him before.”

“There are a couple of them,” Daitaro said. “One where you were, and one further upstream. Both of them have the reputation of eating people with bad hearts.” He sighed. “Shame it wasn’t Seiji instead of Maeme. Might have been the end of our troubles.”

“Alas, he’s also lucky, too, sitting in the lockup, where we can’t go push him in,” Genjo said.

“I guess,” said the older man. “And besides you two not drawing attention of the old catfish, you yourself were lucky that InuYasha was coming back when he did. That’s quite a chain of good luck it seems to me.”

“Maybe so, maybe so,” Miroku said, nodding.

“In a weird way,” the hanyou said. “A chain of good luck to make the bad luck sweeter?”

“It’s all a matter of how you choose to look at things,” Genjo said. “I’d rather see the good.”

“I was not lucky about the temperature of the water,” the monk said. “It was cold.”

“Spring flood time, the water’s always cold,” Genjo said. “That might not be luck. That might just be circumstances.”

“Genjo’s right. I prefer,” the old man said, lifting his jug, but then regretfully shaking his head, and letting it fall back on its cords, “to consider the chain of positives.”

“So if you want to leave her with us,” Mariko said, “none of us will think it’s bad luck.”

“I promised her I would take care to make sure she’s safe if she’d let me rescue her,” Miroku said. “so we will warm up at my place.”

“Another piece of luck,” Daitaro said. “She found the man most likely to try to make sure some good comes out of all this mess. Don’t know what the elders will say about all this, though. They don’t like to step between a man and his woman. But this...I don’t know. Going to be an interesting elder’s meeting tomorrow. Anything you might find out about what’s been going on might help.”

“Maybe so,” Sango said. “But first things first. We need to get her home and warmed up. Until she gets warm and wakes up, we’re not going to find out much.”

Miroku nodded. “We’ll figure it all out later. First things first. We’ll take care of her. You enjoy your wedding. Tomorrow we’ll decide what’s next.”

“That’s a good plan,” the old farmer said. “No doubt Chime would agree with you totally.”