InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 310

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


Chapter 310

“I closed the shutters,” InuYasha said as he held up the door mat to let Kaede into the house. “Tell me if it’s too dim for you.  I can light the lamp if you need it.”

“That was a good move,” the old miko said. “It can help with some types of headaches.”

The room was quite dim, but not nighttime black.  Some filtered light came through the shutter slats and from the fire pit.  Kaede stood their a moment and let her eyes adjust to the lack of light.  Kagome lay on the futon,  one arm thrown over her eyes, blocking out even the little filtered light in the room.  Her other hand clenched the bedding.

“Well,” Kaede said in a soft voice, “I hear you had an unusual experience this morning, Kagome-chan. I would have liked to have seen that, from what they’re telling me.”

Kagome  threw back her arm, and looked at the older woman. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Kaede-obaasan.  I don’t know why, but my head hurts so much.”  She threw off the quilt InuYasha had covered her with and struggled to sit herself up. She was pale, paler than normal, and holding herself with a tension that made her discomfort obvious.  


“Wait a minute, woman, and let me help,” InuYasha said, rushing past Kaede to his wife’s side to help her get up. Carefully, with one hand behind her back, he got her into an upright position. She gave the miko a weak, but sincere smile once she made it to a sitting position. “That was harder than it should have been.”

“Still dizzy?” he asked.

“Not as bad as earlier, I think,” she said, then turned her attention to the older woman, who was carefully observing her with her single eye that missed very little.

“What happened at Seiji’s house was interesting until afterwards,” the young miko said.  “I’d never done anything like that before.” She looked up at InuYasha who was hovering next to her, his right ear twitching as he tried to project a calm he didn’t feel. Taking his hand, she gave it a squeeze. “Tea?” she asked.

“Damn, I forgot,” he said, looking at her apologetically. “It ought to be still warm enough. Or do you want me to make a fresh pot?”

“It’ll be fine,” she said. “Besides, I’m thirsty. I don’t want to wait.”

The hanyou nodded and stood up.

“So it was interesting until you did what you did,” Kaede said. The older woman put her basket down and sat next to her apprentice, almost in the same spot that the hanyou had vacated. “Sometimes, it’s the afterwards that are worse than the task,” she said. “Now give me your wrist.  I need to check you out before I can determine what is causing your head to hurt so badly.”

Kagome dutifully handed it over.



While Kaede began her examination of her young apprentice, Tameo the headman stood at the door to his office, watching the last of his morning official business walk away. He had just sent one of his workers over to check on how Momoe was doing now that the fire at her place was out, and to get an idea of what she lost from Seiji’s ruthlessness.

He sighed, tired from the morning’s demands and the wedding, and then the chaos of Seiji’s choice from the night before.

“Maybe I should take a nap,” he said, then shook his head. “There’s something. It just doesn’t feel like I ought to relax yet. Maybe I’m just being foolish, but...”

Instead he leaned against the door frame and looked out over his little domain. His daughter-in-law Emi, Susumu’s wife, was out in the courtyard behind the house, washing clothes.  Yorime, her daughter, was herding the children in the space between the office and the main house in a game of ball. As he watched, she tossed the ball to one of the other children and helped her mother hand up a sheet.

Kinjiro, after having delivered the news about Kagome, finally had a touch of a smile on his face. He stopped by the verandah in front of the main house, where Matsume sat, spinning hemp fiber in the shade. She looked up at her husband, a happy glow to her face and stopped her work for a moment. Kinjiro bent over and rested his cheek on her head, and let his hand rest gently on her baby bump.

“I see Haha-ue found the right work for you today,” Kinjiro said. “Don’t let anybody try to get you to do any laundry.”

“I promise,” Matsume replied, giggling. “You know Hisa-okaasan would lock me up in the house if she found me trying.”

“That’s because Haha-ue’s smart.” He took her hand, gave it a little squeeze. “Tell Chichi-ue I’m off to do some real work in the southern beanfield, and maybe I’ll check up on the eggplants,” he sad.

“Real work?” she asked, giving him a fond smile.

“Exactly.” He hefted his hoe over his shoulder and headed to the front of the compound and off to the fields beyond.

Tameo chuckled as he watched his youngest son get busy. “The kami only knows where he got that urge to work from,” he muttered, as he looked towards the back of the area.  Riki, the wife of Jun was working in the kitchen vegetable garden, snuggled behind the main house and the outbuildings and the path to the family shrine,  a hoe in her own hands and a broad rush hat on her head. He watched as she tugged a weed and toss it to the side. Her younger children were playing with the children Yorime was watching; her oldest boy was helping, pulling sine weeds himself, and putting others his mother gave him into a basket. These Tameo was sure were going to go into the cook pot later today. Isao, using a wooden yoke, was carrying two buckets of water, one for the garden and one for the laundry.  A dog with one brown ear and one white  lay in a warm bit of sun sleeping.  Chickens wandered about, scratching and clucking, for the moment at peace. A gray tabby cat seemed fascinated by the washed laundry as it hung on the line, sitting close by and watching it sway in the wind, but evidently not fascinated enough to bother Emi’s hard work, and Emi was content to ignore it.

Even his grandson Mitsuo was playing nicely with Jun’s son about his own age.

In many ways, it was not shaping up to be a bad day. All the most pressing needs of the village had been done early in the day, and Tameo stepped out of his office fairly sure he could get some of his other work, work on his own lands done, for a change.  

Still, he felt on edge. He walked across the yard separating the office from the main house, tossed the ball back to the children when it came rolling by his feet, and headed inside his home.

Already the smells of lunch were wafting through the building.  There was a pot on the iron hook, and another pot set on a tripod, slightly off to the side.  Hisa was rinsing a bunch of tatsoi in a bowl on her work table. For once, the house was quiet.

He sat himself down on his mat near the fire pit, propped his head on one hand, and sighed.

Hisa looked up.  “Done in the office?”

“For right now.  If nothing else happens,” he said.

“Want some tea?” she asked.

“Sounds good,” he said.  

One of the children outside yelled, “Go get it, Suzume!”

“Emi’s trying to run them ragged out there before lunch?” Tameo asked as his wife handed him a cup.

“It helps make lunch smoother,” Hisa said. “You look tired, husband.”

“Maybe I am,” he said. “Yesterday was rather...eventful. And today, well it started too early.”

“Yes it did.”  She went back to her work table. “Still, it’s been mostly good.”

“Maybe,” he said, staring at the pale green liquid in his cup. He took a sip.

“I thought after you came out of the meeting this morning that you couldn’t believe how well the day had started,” Hisa said. She reached for her knife, and began chopping the vegetables she had washed.

“It did start off quite well, true,” the headman said. We got Sukeo-kun’s situation squared away immediately. We sort of have an agreement about putting up a new storage building for Momoe. That’s a lot for our hardheads to get accomplished in one morning.” He took another sip of his tea.

“But...” Hisa said. “What’s bothering you?”

“I didn’t like the news about Kagome-chan. I wonder what happened? I just feel a little edgy about things.” He turned the cup in his hand. “I’m not sure why.”

“I’m sure Kaede-chan will get her feeling better soon.  She’s young, and the young bounce back quickly.”  

A shadow fell across the open doorway, and Susumu walked in. He slipped off his sandals and hopped up onto the floor to join his father and sat down on his mat. Hisa stopped what she was doing, and poured another cup of tea and handed it to her son.

“How did you know, Ha-ha?” he asked as she passed it to him.

“Practice,” she said, giving him a smile before heading back to her work table.

For a moment, there was no sound except Hisa’s chopping vegetables and the filtered sound of children playing. Tameo broke the quiet first.

“So tell me about what happened at Seiji’s place, son. Your brother came by and told us something happened there, and that Kagome-chan had to be carried home afterwards.”

“Ah, you’ve heard already? It was rather spectacular,” Susumu said. “There was something, some spirit or something that the monk and our cousin could pick up on. Kagome-chan said it was crying out in pain.  She put her hand on the wood of the house, and suddenly, the whole building lit up, like it was encased in a pink fire. Then suddenly all the stupid wards and plaques and ofuda just blew off. Never saw anything like that before.”

“I bet,” the headman said. “Wish I could have seen it. I’ve heard how she can purify.  But I’ve never heard of something like that before, except in stories.”

Susumu nodded. “It was like something in a story about a Yin-yang master. Kind of scary. I wonder if I can look at her the same way after today.”

“I’m sure you can,” Hisa said, bringing a bowl of vegetables to put in her soup pot.  She lifted the lid and a delicious-smelling steam rose out of the pot. “She’s still the same person that set InuYasha free and fought that awful youkai that attacked the village three years ago.”

“I guess that’s true,” Susumu said. “But it was still impressive. It took a lot out of her though. She couldn’t stand up afterwards, and I think she had a really bad headache. But she purified the whole house. There was even something on Seiji’s godshelf that just shattered when she did whatever it was she did. Houshi-sama was even impressed.” He sighed. “But if doing things like this is so hard on her, should she even be doing it at all?”

“I don’t know, son,” Tameo said. “We’ll leave that to people like Kaede-chan and the monk to figure out.”

Susumu nodded and took a sip of his tea. “And there was no sign of Yoshimi. InuYasha said he didn’t think he had even been to the house since yesterday.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” Tameo said with a sigh. “That family...those brothers...”

“But InuYasha said something else you’ll find interesting. He said Kazuo appeared to him, and said Yoshimi was off in the woods. I bet he’s scared. If we’re lucky, he’ll be ready to run off with that woman from Morimura he’s been talking about.”

“Let’s hope the kami make it so.” Tameo drained his teacup. “Maybe I should pay a visit to the shrine.”