InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 309

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


Chapter 309


The pain in Kagome’s head throbbed like a knife was passing through it, and the light pouring through the window didn’t help it at all.

She sat on the floor of her house, where InuYasha had gently placed her after they got home. Peering through squinting eyes, she watched, surprised as her husband closed the shutters to the windows, plunging the little house into a blissful shadow.

“I bet that’ll help,” he said as he went and got out their bedding and smoothed it out.  “Never thought I’d be laying this out during the day without planning on joining you,” he said.

“There’s always later,” she said, smiling slightly.  It was all she could manage, and even that was uncomfortable.  She undid the ties to her chihaya and shrugged, letting it start to slip down her shoulders.  

She must have grimaced, because InuYasha was there in a flash, helping her slide out of it.  He folded it and put it on the chest.  Turning back towards her, he lifted her up.  “Lean on me,” he said.

“Always,” she replied, and wrapped her arms around him.

Grinning a silly grin, he unfastened the obi to her  hakama, and let them puddle to the floor.  “Any other time...”  She leaned into his chest, and let him help her out of them, and didn’t fight at all when he carried her to the futon, and he gently laid her on the bedding.

“I’ll make some tea,” he said, picking up the red garment.

“That sounds good.”

The next thing he did was stir up a little fire to make tea water, and wet a cloth to put over her forehead.  She didn’t fight him on any of this, and found that although it didn’t kill the pain, it helped a little, each thing.

“Where did you learn to help headaches?” she asked.  Even the sound of her own voice was almost too loud the way her head felt.

“My mother.  She would get bad ones every now and then,” he said, preparing the teapot.  He kept his own voice soft.  “The only thing that seemed to help her was a nasty potion one of her ladies knew how to make and to lay down in a dark, quiet room.”  His ear flicked as he watched her.  “I’m afraid when I was really small, I wasn’t quiet enough.”

“It’s hard for little ones to understand what’s going on,” she said.  “It’s hard for adults, sometimes, too.”

“You’ve been doing too much.  At least that’s what Miroku thinks.  Kind of like if you started chopping wood, and chopped too much at first, and you’d be sore from it.”  He stuck another stick on his fire, trying to get the tea water to boil faster.  “At least he said something like that.  You need to rest.”

“Hard to rest when I feel so bad,” she said.

He moved away from the fire, and sat down next to her, and rewetted the cloth for her forehead.  “Hard to do anything else when you feel so bad,” he said, replacing the cloth on her forehead.  “This would help my mother some.”  He got behind the head of the futon and began gently rubbing her head at the temples, and moved down to her neck.

She sighed a little as his fingers went to work.  “These last few days...”

“Worse than when you had those test things?” he asked, not stopping his gentle massage.

“Yeah.  I’m used to not getting enough sleep, but they never gave me headaches like these.”  She gave him a little smile.  “Maybe it means I’m getting older.”

“Or this takes more out of you than your test things did,” he said, gently kissing the top of her head.

Suddenly there was a hiss as the water on the fire bubbled over the top.  InuYasha hurried up to take it off the fire and carefully poured it over the leaves in the teapot.  As he was reaching for Kagome’s favorite teacup, there was a knock on the door.

“That better be the Baaba,” he said under his breath, going to the door.  Turning to face Kagome, he gave her a small smile. “I’ll be right back.”

She nodded.  And turning to face the door, he took a deep breath and all the anger he had been suppressing to keep from bothering his wife in her time of need came rushing to his face.  He stepped out of the door.



While InuYasha helped Kagome get as comfortable as he could,  Miroku and the others reached the main street of the village.

“We have come, my friends, to the parting of our ways,” Susumu said.

“If you’re not planning on walking up the hill with us, indeed we have. So, Susumu, what are you going to do now?” Miroku asked.  “Will you still be hunting for Yoshimi’s whereabouts?”

The sluggishness of the village that they saw earlier in the morning had vanished as people were out and about doing their business.  Denjiro was coming down the street, pushing a hand cart covered with a tarp.  He waved at the little group, but didn’t stop. Three boys were racing down the street, a big white dog following behind.  Benika was heading up the shrine steps.  A woman sang as she hung up her laundry. Someone beyond Kaede’s house was calling for their son to go fetch the water.

“I’ll have to tell my otousan about Yoshimi.  I’m sure we’ll be trying to run him down until we know what’s going on with him.  And Haha-ue will want to know about our young cousin needing to go home after everything that happened.  Not telling her that would be worse than not telling Chichi-ue about Yoshimi not being home.”  He sighed.  “Not really how I wanted to spend my first day on guard duty and night watch, but these things happen.  And yourself?”

“Home and to check up on InuYasha,” Miroku said.  “Maybe after he’s through telling me all my failures, there will be enough of me to tend to my rounds, and maybe seeing about getting Maeme back home.”

“Not checking on Kagome-chan?” Susumu asked.  “I thought that would be your first item of business.”

“Oh, I’ll be sure to check on her,” the monk said.  “But I know InuYasha.  He may have been acting calm for Kagome, surprisingly calm, I might say, but I suspect he’s ready to pound something to let out his frustrations.  It’s possible it could be me.  There might be a Miroku-sized hole in the ground from here to the underworld by the time you get that way on your rounds.  If you can’t find me, drop down a rope!”

“Oh, I’ll be sure to do that, Houshi-sama!”  Susumu said,  “But somehow, I don’t expect it.  What I am expecting is Haha-ue sending me hither and yon to see how our cousin is doing, and Otousan making me run through the forest at the edge of the village searching for the wayward, at the same time.”  Waving farewell as he headed home to Tameo’s.

Sukeo shifted the bundle he carried on his back, clean clothing his mother had asked him to bring, and looked up at the monk.  “Would...could InuYasha-sama really do that?  Punch a hole in the ground to reach the underworld and send you down it?”

Miroku gave the boy a quick shake of his head.  “No, I don’t think he’d do that.  But he sometimes does punch the ground hard when he’s really upset, and it can make a hole.  And I know he worries about Kagome-sama.”  Miroku sighed.  “I just hope he doesn’t think any of us there intended to let her to do anything to make her ill.”

“He’s a smart man,” Fumio said.  “He should know better than that.”

“He should, but sometimes he reacts first, and then thinks,” Miroku said.  

Fumio nodded.  “He definitely did when he was younger. I seem to remember those two had some rather...loud arguments.”

“They both can be pretty stubborn when they aren’t thinking clearly,” the monk said, nodding.  “And InuYasha can sometimes get caught up in his own thoughts, and see things from a dark angle.  That does not always turn out for the best.”

“Can’t we all?” the smith said.  “Well, we better get moving so we can see if there’s anything we can do to help.”

Miroku gave him a nod, and the three began the walk up the hill.


Back up at the top of the hill, InuYasha stepped outside of his house.  A rather tired Kaede stood there, in front of Choujiro and  Aki.  At a nod from the hanyou,  Choujiro tugged on Aki’s sleeve, and the two of them headed towards the back to pick up his tools.

After they left, InuYasha crossed his arms and let a scowl creep across his face as he tried to decide what to tell the old miko.  It looked like his old self, in the early days after Kagome had released him, when he would try to hide his fear and anxiety under a mask of intimidating body language.  Kaede, reading it for what it was, steeled her shoulders and gave him a no-nonsense look back.

“So, InuYasha, do not look at me that way.  I am not here to add to your distress,” the old miko said.  “I have done nothing to cause you a problem.  You are the one who sent for me, and Choujiro-sama was quite certain it was an emergency with Kagome-chan.”

InuYasha dropped his arms, and let out a sigh.  His ear flicked, revealing his anxiety.  “Keh. I...I didn’t…I didn’t mean to make you feel like that, Baaba.  Kagome just feels so bad.  Her head is really hurting.”

Kaede nodded.  “Let me go in and examine her.  But first, tell me what happened.  Choujiro said this happened while she was purifying Seiji’s house?  Purification usually comes so effortlessly for her.  That is odd.”

“Bah.  This wasn’t your usual youki purification.  It was something else.”

“There are other magics, I will admit, that can be used for ill,” the old woman said, nodding.  

“Just go take care of her,” the hanyou snapped.  “She’s in a lot of pain!”

“I need to know what’s wounded her,” Kaede said.  Her patience was beginning to fray. “If I don’t, it might be that I don’t give her the right medicine.  It’s possible to make things worse, you know.”

InuYasha, frustrated by her interrogation, closed his eyes  and  he took a deep breath.  “Kagome did some sort of purification at Seiji’s house.  It was strong. Everything around the house glowed pink, like her sacred arrows do.  It even blew all the old wards that he had hung up around the building off.  They hit the ground, and some of’em burned.  I didn’t get a good look at what happened.  Miroku can tell you more when he gets back.  They made me stand away from what they were doing.”

All this delay made him tense up again, and he clinched his fists.

“I take it that did not please you,” Kaede said.

“Feh.”  His scowl came back full-force. “Said my youki was interfering.  You remember how I was when we went to check on the boy.  Something in the way the wards at the house were set up.”

“I remember,” Kaede said nodding.  “So it was how the house was warded, not just the fact you were nervous about Yoshimi?”

“That’s what Miroku said. And even the kami showed up.”

“Kazuo appeared?” This surprised the old miko.  She tilted her head and brought a finger to her face and tapped it against her lips.

“He and two other farmer looking ones, and a woman.  I think she’s the kami of the shrine.”

“My, my,” Kaede said.  “That’s an awful lot of power in one place.”

“Keh, you can say that.  Kazuo said they were worried about something being trapped in the house.  Whatever Kagome did, must have worked. But when it was over, she fell to the ground, and couldn’t stand up without it making her dizzy.  And her head hurts bad.”

“Did she hit her head?” the miko asked.

“No.”  He shook his head. “She landed on her hands and knees.  At first she was weak, like when she healed Haname yesterday, and then the headache started up.  We waited a few minutes, but it didn’t get better.  In fact, it got worse, so I brought her home where it’s quiet, and had Choujiro get you.”

Kaede nodded. “That was a good choice.  Quiet does help with headache. Where’s Miroku?  I’d like to ask him what they were doing.”

“He stayed behind to finish blessing the house.  I guess he’ll be back soon.”

“Well, let me examine her.  I’ll know more about what’s going on once I do that. I can follow up with him later.”

The two of them entered the little house.