InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ A Tale of Ever After ❯ Chapter 316

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


Chapter 316


In the southwest corner of the village, in the last homestead before the village boundary and the unclaimed forest beyond,  Kisoi stepped out of one of the storage buildings and headed to the front of the house.  On his shoulder he carried a hoe, and he had a seed bag strapped across his chest.

His wife Nana was doing laundry.  The boys were playing where she could keep an eye on them. Neither of the two littles were outside.  He intentionally walked near her.

“The weather’s too good to just sit around,” he said.

Nana looked up from where she was scrubbing a towel, and blew a stray bit of hair out of her eyes and glanced up at the sky. “Might rain by evening,” she said. “Hope my laundry dries in time.”

“These last couple of days have gone really well,” Kisoi said. “Nothing like the stories they told us about...about the big guy over there. He’s just like having another six year old under our roof.”

Nana gave the towel another dunking. “I think even Okaasan is calming down. She called him her big puppy this morning at breakfast.”

Kisoi shifted his hoe and tilted his head. “I missed that. That’s impressive.”

“So,” she said, wringing out the towel. “You think it’s safe enough to go work in the bean field? What if something comes up?” Not meeting his eyes, she went to hang the cloth up on the line.

“I’ll just be going to the little field behind those trees,” he said, pointing his hoe in the direction he was headed. “It’s close enough that if you yell, I ought to be able to hear you.  And Hiroki’s over at the second son’s house.  He’d come help, or his uncle would tear him a new one if he refused.”

“I guess you’re right,” Nana said, picking up the last item out of her laundry basket and tossing it into the water.

Kisoi walked up to his wife and wrapped his free arm around her. “I just need to do something. I really do. There’s not enough work right here. I’m afraid I’ll get grumpy and say the wrong thing and who knows what’ll happen.”

She sighed and leaned into his shoulder.  “I saw how fidgety you were getting, husband. Go, but don’t go far. Morio’s been an angel since they’ve brought him here, and he may act like he’s just a six year old, but...”

“Rather strong for six.  I know.  Yell if you need me.” He pulled away from his wife, gave her hand a squeeze, and headed towards the line of trees.

Unseen by her or her husband or even the boys playing in the yard, and really, unseeable by all but the most skilled eyes, two faint golden lights sailed through the air as Kisoi left and landed on the roof.

“So where’s Yoshio?”  Hitoshi-no-kami asked his companion from their perch above the yard. “He should be here even more than me – Chiya and Michio are under his auspices, after all.”

“Something to do at Toshiro’s. Someone stopped at the shrine there,” Kazuo said. “He’ll be here if he can get away. Otherwise, we’ll just have to make do.”

“Make do, make do, make do.” The kami, not happy with what was going on, adjusted his rush hat. “If you hadn’t been stirring the pot...”

“I’m not the one who let the Yamabushi get his claws into his ko,” Kazuo said, tapping his hoe.

“No, but you’re the one who made sure they’d be paying for that mistake a long time,” Hitoshi said.

“That was Joben’s choice,” Kazuo said. “I didn’t make him.”

“I know, I know,” Hitoshi said, resting his left elbow on his knee, and his chin into his left hand.  “But it really bothers me, watching what you did to him, anyway.  Just look at them.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Kazuo said, the two kami turned their attention to the people below them.

As they watched, Nana scrubbed the last of her laundry, a length of blue cloth she used as a baby carrier.  The boys had lined their dirt fortress with a series of sticks. Touru was on the left side of the play fort, Hidaki on the right, and Morio, adult in build but so childlike in actions sat in the middle.  By some set of rules only they understood, one by one, first Touru, then Hidaka, then Morio, knocked down the sticks.

“The Oni guards have fallen,” Morio announced. “Now we get the Oni’s generals.”

“Be careful,” Hidaka said. “The generals are sneakier than the guards.”

Nana began wringing out the blue cloth. “Yes, you listen to Hidaka,” she said. “Don’t let any of them sneak up on you.”

“We won’t,” Morio said. “We’re smarter than they are!  Right?”

The two younger boys cheered him on.

As the last of the water she was able to squeeze out splashed into the laundry tub, one by one, the last of the oni general sticks fell over.

“You can’t hide from us, Oni King!” Morio bellowed. “Either surrender or die!”

His voice was a deep rich voice, almost musical. Nana thought, not for the first time as she watched the three of them together, that if she closed her eyes, she would really believe he was attacking an oni, his voice the voice of the leader of the attackers, one that had some authority and power in it.

Or had, once upon a time, before he had tried to kidnap the young miko, and the kami punished him for his sins.  Instead of a warhorse under him, or the staff of a proper yamabushi in his hands, Morio, thinking like a child of six summers, squatted down between the boys, wielding a wooden horse with a painted soldier on its back, looking perfectly content and oblivious to the rest of the world.

“And he thinks I’m his mother. How odd the world is,” she whispered.

“We’re coming, Oni King, for the Emperor’s daughter you stole, and the magic treasure and you can’t stop us!” he said.

A large stick had been placed on the top of the boys’ dirt fortress. That stick was evidently the monster the three were after, because all three boys aimed their toy horses in its direction.

“If only all monsters were so easy to handle,” Nana said, shaking the last drops off her baby carrier wrap. She hung it up on the line to begin drying, where it dripped and moved in the breeze along with the sheets and towels and baby things she had been working on. Picking up her laundry basket, she began to head back inside, where her mother was taking care of Katsuo and the baby Uma. But before she took too steps, suddenly Morio stood straight up, dropped his horse and began to tremble.

“Something’s coming,” he said. At first his voice was a whisper, but it increased with his panic.  “I can feel it. I can hear it!  It’s looking for me!” He covered his head with his hands and began to look for something to use as a weapon or shield. “Don’t let the youkai get me, Haha-ue!”

Nana dropped the laundry basket and hurried over to where the boys were playing. She wrapped her arms around the man. “It’s all right, Morio-chan. Okaa is here.”  

“I’m scared, Haha-ue. I saw it! It’s big and has wings and claws...” He bent over and hid his face in her shoulder, and clung to her for dear life in his panic. “And its eyes are so red...”

The woman sighed, then grabbed his right arm, and put her hand over the rosary wrapped around his wrist. She could feel a tingle of power coming off of it; it was no mere ornament. “Remember what Houshi-sama told you to do when you felt or sensed the monsters?”

“Not to move or run,” he said. “So I didn’t.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his nose with the back of his left hand.

“We have two choices. You can stand here perfectly still and as long as you do it, the monster won’t be able to find you. Or you can also go back into the house. Houshi-sama fixed it so no monsters can get into your room. They won’t be even able to tell that you’re nearby. And you can move around.  Would you like that? I’m sure Touru and Hidaka would keep you company if you’d like. And it’s almost lunch time.  All three of you could have your lunch there. I hear Obaasan has some chimaki.”

The man, dropping his chin to his chest and not meeting her eyes, nodded. “It’s really hard for me to stand still very long.”

Touru, brushing the dirt off of his knees, said, “Chimaki?”

“One for each of you if you and Hidaka bring the toys in,” Nana said. “But if Katsuo’s asleep, be sure to let him rest.”

Touru nodded and picked up the door, while Hidaka, the oldest, went up to Morio and took him by the hand.  “Come on, Morio. I’ll let you play with my top.”

“You will?” the childlike man said, surprised.  

“Sure,” Hidaka said. “I want to see what you can do with it. We haven’t played tops together yet.”

While Nana looked on, Hidaka, acting very much like the older brother even with the size difference between the two, led Morio into the house.

“I don’t know what panicked him this time, but thank you, Houshi-sama, for telling me what to do,” Nana said. She walked over and picked up her laundry basket and helped Touru pick up the toys.

“Did you really have to show that poor man you punished such a nasty monster?” Hitoshi-no-kami asked. “I think it even frightened me, and I knew it was an illusion.”

Kazuo rubbed his eboshi hat back and forth across his head. “Eh, it seemed for the best. With everything else going on today, I’m not sure if we were ready to have Haname run into both Morio and Chiya at the same time. The sparks that might raise could even put Tsuneo over the edge.”

Hitoshi nodded. "You might have a point there.”

“And I didn’t have much time to try anything else.  Look,” Kazuo said, pointing to a knot of people. “There they are.  

Chime’s sweet voice rang out just as Nana was about to enter the house. “Nana-chan!  Just the person I was hoping to see!”


Up on the hill,  InuYasha  sat in the front of his house, holding a tea cup in his hands. “I don’t think I’m going to make Kagome any more tea.  Every time I have, something’s happened. First, Kaede came by.  Now she’s asleep. That’s good but what am I supposed to do with it?  What am I supposed to do with me?” He stared at the pale green liquid, searching its depths like it could answer all his questions.

Suddenly, he drained the liquid and put the cup down. “I have to do something while she rests.” Narrowing his eyes in determination, he stood up, grabbed the water buckets, and headed down to the stream. “At least this won’t make too much noise.”  

As he neared the stream, he scanned the area under the trees with half a smile on his face. No one was there.  A single bird took off as he neared, but otherwise it was just the trees, the breeze, and the stream.

“No monk,” he said to himself as he lowered the first bucket into the water to let it fill up. “Almost expected to see him here. I guess Kaede-baaba or maybe Sango is keeping him busy.” Overhead a crow cawed, as if agreeing with him.

InuYasha for once found the midday quiet irritating. “Maybe it’s because I don’t want to make any noises that will wake Kagome up,” he said aloud, just to hear something besides the wind in the trees and the sound of the water flowing.  

He switched buckets, and with it, his isolation. It started softly, his ear flicking at a sound that shouldn’t have been there. It didn’t sound like a rabbit or a deer moving through the forest. It wasn’t a bird. It didn’t sound like Miroku coming back, either – there was no brass jingling or regular rhythm of his staff tapping the ground. The wind was coming from uphill, and didn’t bring any scents that would let him know who was coming.  He chose not to tense up, waiting for the bucket to fill, actually more curious than anything, and soon a soft voice answered his questions about who was headed his way.

The soft voice resolved into words as it neared.

“Little flower in the sun,
how quickly you grow up
would you grow in my garden
all summer long?

“I would sprinkle you with water
and watch how you blossom
if you grew in my garden
from spring until fall.”

InuYasha lifted up his second bucket, and walked over to where the first waited.

“Little flower in the sun
growing in the field -”

“Was that flower called Rin?” the hanyou asked.

There was a giggle as Rin rounded the last bend and stepped up into the clearing where InuYasha stood waiting.

“Oh, InuYasha-ojisan, Rin doesn’t think there’s a flower named after her,” the girl said.