InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Wish You Were Here ( Chapter 15 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents


“Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?” – Pink Floyd

Two of the individuals affected by the catastrophe on the Plateau were, for better or for worse, quite capable of returning to their former state of mind almost as if nothing had happened at all. These were Sesshoumaru and Rin.

For Sesshoumaru, the occasion had meant little beyond the probable demise of his half-brother. It was just another event, a light on a string of events, much the same as many others in his life. The presence of Kagome in his house was, to be sure, unusual and even irksome, but he shrugged it off as a matter of small consequence and convenience. That he had always treated the revival of Rin, the service of Jaken, and the rivalries with both his brother and Naraku, in exactly the same manner did not impress him in the least, if indeed he even noticed it. The rains had been the most bothersome part of the affair, but they were past, and the trouble they had caused would soon be gone also, after effecting him for a negligible time. After all, what was a few months to him?

Despite his cousin’s effort to point it out to him, Sesshoumaru remained ignorant of the repetitious nature of his character—or perhaps he was tenaciously committed to maintaining it. Whatever the case, there was only one person whom he would have ever allowed the freedom of advising him (though he would never admit it). Unfortunately, she was the last person on earth to improve him, because in truth she was too much like him.

Rin had always been a child removed, and she was growing into a woman apart. The destruction of that terrible day, the wake of ruin left by the rains, and, most of all, the terrible state of Kagome when brought to the Hyouden, all had a deep impact on Rin. For a time every bit as brief as Sesshoumaru’s concern, she lost her immunity to anxiety and she was a victim of conscience. For the first time in her life she was burdened by grief, fear, and dread.

All the same, upon Kagome’s showing unmistakable signs of recovery, these afflictions passed, and Rin lost no time in returning to her previous state. She was dutiful in her care of the miko, but she laughed at every worry and waved aside every concern, as though no one in the world suffered from want and need. She could not nor should not be blamed; it was simply her nature reasserting itself.

Jaken appeared unchanged, but that was far from the truth. He worried for Rin more than ever, after seeing her possession, her enigmatic dread, and her astounding grief, only to witness her transform back into her former self as if nothing had happened. He was intelligent enough to realize that he should have been pleased, but instead he felt sick and nervous. When he saw that his lord was likewise unchanged, and that the great dog demon was not in the least at a loss to explain his actions, as though nothing in the world were unusual in keeping a human priestess at his house, Jaken swallowed his dread and said nothing. He could not shake free from the notion that he was stuck in a dream. He walked about the house with a sense of wariness, as if he expected reality to sneak up behind him and clobber him on the head.

“Am I wrong?” he would mutter to himself. “Is it right that they are so static? Isn’t that what I would wish for?”

“No,” he answered himself. “No, it just isn’t natural. It will have to be paid for.”

He was convinced that the house itself agreed with him. It was a very old house, as was almost everything in it, and such things have a way of catching the electricity of life and putting it to their own purposes. Only a day or two after Kagome had been brought to the Hyouden, he was heating water for tea and, dismayed that it was taking so long to boil, went to the pot to investigate. Instead of water, he found inside a mass of writhing, white worms. With a startled epithet, he flung the pot away. A splash of hot water, and nothing else, landed on the planks of the kitchen floor and disappeared into the wood and seams.

Only a few days after that, he was in the sick room. Rin was changing the dressing on Kagome’s wounds. Jaken had come in to say something to her, but then he forgot what it was. Feeling rather foolish, he turned to leave and caught a glimpse of himself in the old mirror that someone had long ago left leaning against the far wall.

He saw the room exactly as it should be, except for himself. He found that he was staring at the back of his own head. Jaken cringed.

“Stop it,” he growled. “Stop it.”

“Jaken-sama?” Rin looked up. “Did you say something?”

Jaken did not answer and he left the room muttering to himself. This was only the beginning of his disquiet. He could not leave the window open in the kitchen anymore because it often would close with a smart snap and blow out the cooking fire. Mats turned up their corners to trip him and ancient paintings shifted their ink so they could laugh and wink at him from their stately repose. The pots, plates, ladles, cups, and chopsticks that had been in the house for generations could no longer be trusted. They burned food before it was hot, froze food directly before it reached the lips, changed tea to egg soup, curdled milk, and blackened fruit.

Jaken was a mute witness to all of this, but Sesshoumaru and Rin noticed nothing. Even when Kagome was awake, she spent the chief of her time in a feverish state. Jaken and Yuka, miles and centuries apart, had something in common: they both believed they had become wardens of a mad house.

Three days after the rains had ceased, Jaken sat in the open window of the kitchen, one foot dangling out over the north wall. The salty air from the sea was scrubbing the land, but it had not yet been enough to cleanse it of the stench of death. Jaken endured it for the privilege of seeing the sun shine on the distant sea. It was for this reason that he was first aware of the return of Sesshoumaru’s cousin, Tamotsu. Jaken looked out and saw the dog demon approaching, accompanied by two extraordinary persons. He gaped for a moment, then said to himself.

“Oh, shit.”

***

Souta’s shoes squeaked against the smoothed sidewalk. It was the only sound on the empty street that spread before him, bathed in the rosy light of the sunrise. It was warm for October, and the sky had cleared overnight. The sunlight washed over the city for the first time in months.

But Souta did not notice it. He was sunk in reliving his nightmares and he trudged along on autopilot, until a low, crying sound tugged at his attention. It came from above him.

He looked up and saw a small, scraggly looking owl sitting on the lowest limb of one of the trees that lined the street. Its wide eyes regarded him as it turned its head almost parallel to the tree trunk. Again, it cried.

What? Whaaat?

The large and liquid eyes stared at him without blinking. Souta shivered.

Whaaat?

It was a bad omen. He picked up his pace.

At the steps of the Higurashi shrine he found an old woman, as small as a doll, wandering back and forth on the sidewalk, shuffling her feet and smoking a tobacco pipe.

“Obaa-san?” he said. “Do you need something?”

The old woman turned on him in surprise, and Souta thought for a minute he saw her hair slip out from under her knitted cap and thought that it was a bright red. When he looked closer he saw that her hair was white, and he leapt to the conclusion that her forehead was bleeding.

“Are you hurt?” he cried in alarm, coming to her.

“No, no, no,” the woman waved him off with impatience. She brushed a scrawny, sparrow hand across her forehead and then nothing was there.

“Don’t you worry about me, son, you’ll have plenty to worry about as it is.”

“Huh?” Souta could not think of anything else to say.

“Hurry home, boy,” she crackled. “You’re needed.”

Souta backed away from her, feeling numb and somehow useless. He turned and ran up the long stairs.

As he ran he thought of his sister. He was always thinking of her. She had become the monarch enthroned in his head. Everything boiled down to “what will Kagome say?”, “how will this effect Kagome?”, or “what will we do if Kagome…?”.

If Kagome doesn’t come back.

Yuka had thought him detached from the doings of the shrine, but Souta was just biding his time. Ever since the rains began and he had gone into his sister’s room and found the white snowdrops on the windowsill dying, Souta waited. Even if his sister were gone forever, unreachable across the void he could not yet understand, Inuyasha would return. Inuyasha would find a way to return to tell them something.

So while the rain continued to fall, his mother teetered on the precipice of reality, his grandfather broke his ties with it altogether, and Yuka immersed herself in the useless business of the shrine, Souta waited.

That morning it was no longer raining. Souta entered his family’s shrine and looked around for a sign. Before he even went into the house to drop off his bag, he searched the courtyard aimlessly, and wandered to the wellhouse. There he found a heavy padlock on the door.

How did this escape my notice? he thought in alarm.

Unwilling to drop his pack in the mud, he pulled the straps tighter and went to a nearby shed to fetch a mallet.

It took many swings, perhaps more than a dozen, to break the lock. It finally surrendered with a loud crack and fell to the ground. Souta picked it up and put it in the shed next to the mallet.

He came into the house through the courtyard door that led to the kitchen and found his mother sitting at the table, head hung in misery. Yuka was standing with her still-damp hair tied in a knot, dressed in jeans and a light sweater, and holding a cup of coffee. She was leaning against the counter, studying him.

“Why did you do that?” she asked him, sipping from her cup.

“Do what?” he returned, though he knew full well what she meant.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction, for a second, then she sipped again.

“The door, the lock,” she said. “Why did you break it?”

“Why did you put it there?”

“How do you know I did?”

Souta did not say anything, but waited.

“I put it there,” she said finally, “so people wouldn’t wander in and get hurt. The building is in disrepair and that old well is uncovered. Someone could fall in. We’d get sued.”

Someone could fall in. Souta did not know whether to laugh or cry, so he did neither.

“The shrine would get sued, you mean,” he answered, putting his bag in a chair and a hand on his mother’s shoulder. “Not you.”

Yuka said nothing.

“That door cannot be locked,” Souta declared in the hollow air of the kitchen.

“Why?”

Yuka put her coffee on the table, and Souta noticed the sun that fell on the caramel color, and the steam that cast a ghostly shadow on the wood.

Yuka was staring at him. His mother looked down at her hands and said nothing.

“Just because, it can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because! 221; Souta shouted with some heat. “It’s not your business anyway!”

He turned and left, fearing she would question him further. He stomped upstairs, dragging his feet, too old for his legs, and went down the hall to Kagome’s room. He hesitated, and listened to the house. He heard someone go out the back door, the screen slapping back against the wooden frame with a squeal, and thought it was probably Yuka going out into the courtyard.

He entered the room. Sunlight was coming in through the window, which Yuka had left open.

I wonder if she would, he thought, if she knew what could come in it.

Souta gasped when he saw the flowers. They were upright, reaching their bright white blooms to the light on strong stems. He went to the window and waved his hand over them, their soft and silky tips grazing his palm.

Well at least Kagome will be happy that they didn’t die.

That they didn’t die. The thought wrung his stomach for a moment, until he pushed it away.

A sudden sound made him jump clear out of his skin, and only a terrific effort kept him from screaming like a little girl and running out of the room. Yuka’s bedside alarm radio—damnit, that’s Kagome’s alarm, Kagome’s!—had gone off.

“With every mistake…we must surely be learning…”

“God I hope so,” he whispered under his breath, before turning it off.

***

Inuyasha stood balancing on one foot. Then the other. Now back again.

Now…stretch!

He had been traveling for two weeks. The sun was making short work of all the moisture in the earth, but it was too little too late for most people, and Inuyasha could not go more than half a day, it seemed, without being solicited for some kind of assistance. What was worse, was that the aid often moved him away from his goal. Someone needed to get to long lost relatives that had fled from the floods and were now across an impassable swamp. Someone else needed a special medicine, which could only be found in such-and-such far away forest. Of course, while in route on one rescue mission he would run into others who were just as desperate, and he would have to go back to them.

Thus he was circling ever south and westward, instead of the north and eastward that would take him to Edo.

Now he was perched on the roof ridge of a hut he had just finished building.

Well alright, the villagers helped a little.

Inuyasha paced up and down, tapping his foot in various places to verify that the thatch, joists, and sheathing were all sound. The villagers looked up with weary faces that belied their hopeful anticipation, amazement, and gratitude. For the one hundred and eighty-sixth time that day, Inuyasha wondered why they were so eager to accept the aid of a demon. It never occurred to him to ask.

It had occurred to him to refuse their requests, of course. It always did. After all, he should have been looking for his friends.

At the same time, however, if they had survived, then, well, they had survived. Rushing to them now would probably not make a difference either way. And wouldn’t it be nice to bore them all to tears with an endless and detailed account of all his good deeds, and how they had been such a burden, such a pain in his neck, but he had done it anyway because, after all, he was the poor, put upon hero?

There were a few places on the sharply steeped roof that needed attention, and Inuyasha pointed these out, calling for more slats, thatch, and wrapping. After some time, wooden slats and wrapping were carried up one of the ladders. The man who presented them bowed and then looked at him for a moment. With a start, Inuyasha recognized him.

“Nobunaga?”

“Hello, Inuyasha-sama!”

The young man walked carefully to where Inuyasha was sitting and laid down his burden. Inuyasha, somewhat dazed, watched him start to work on the places in the roof that still needed work. He was not sure if the young man before him was working on the roof in reality and was not a dream or hallucination. Considering the state of his mind during the rains period, his doubt of his own senses was not to be wondered at.

“Hey,” he said at last, “I thought you were with lord so-and-so.””

“Lord so-and-so is gone, along with most of his kin,” the young man answered.

“Oh.”

Inuyasha started to help him and, while he did so, he stole the occasional glance at him, noting that he had aged, at least a little, and that his eyes were distant.

“War?” Inuyasha supplied.

Nobunaga shook his head. “The rains.”

“Oh.”

Inuyasha unrolled a bundle of straw and wondered if Kagome would know what to say.

As if Inuyasha’s thoughts had put her there in the air between them, Nobunaga, without looking up, inquired as to her well-being.

Inuyasha at first thought to lie, which would have been easier, but he was astonished to hear himself saying aloud:

“I really don’t know, Nobunaga. I’m afraid I lost her.”

Nobunaga looked up sharply, his face expressive for once.

“What? Is she dead?”

Inuyasha’s insides grimaced, but he only shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t know.”

“Why aren’t you with her?”

Inuyasha interpreted this as an accusation.

“Don’t talk to me! I’m trying to find her!”

“You are?”

“Oh, well,” Inuyasha said in a huff. “Maybe when I do find her, you can explain to her why I should have left helpless people to sleep in the mud.”

Nobunaga lowered his eyes and did not answer. He bent over his work again. After several minutes of silence, he spoke.

“This is the last of the dry thatch anyway. You’ve done all you can for these people.”

“Huh?” Inuyasha looked around in alarm. “But this is only one house!”

“But a large one,” Nobunaga returned. “It’s better than nothing.”

Inuyasha stared away for some time.

“Are you staying here then?” he asked finally.

Nobunaga shrugged. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. I’ve been moving around, trying to help people recover.”

This surprised Inuyasha, but he didn’t know why. Did he think he was the only one?

Nobunaga did not look up from his work, but he said in a low voice that was almost lost on the wind and only perceptible to Inuyasha’s ears: “I loved the way she laughed.”

Inuyasha caught his breath. He realized that he was holding a conversation with someone who remembered Kagome, who remembered her laugh, her tears, her kindness and her bossiness. In finding this unexpected fellowship he was only reminded more painfully of his own solitude, aggravated by so many weeks among strangers, among people who did not see the truth when they looked at him.

Since leaving Botan, no one Inuyasha had encountered could have shared more in his measureless understanding of solitude than Nobunaga, who in youth had been vivacious and open but had wasted it nursing the barb of a lonely love. He had thus grown into a taciturn pack animal, tall and strong, appearing capable of uprooting a house if he shook off his placidness.

“Well, if that’s the way it is,” Inuyasha said, “then I might as well go on.”

“You’re going to look for her?”

“I said I was, didn’t I!”

The villagers tried to get him to stay of course, and they tried even harder to give him something to eat or something else of value. He could not consider taking anything from the pitiful store of food they had left, and nothing else they had could be of any use to him. He took his leave of Nobunaga, saying nothing more than “take care”, and he went into the forest to sleep.

***

A silver birch against the cerulean sky was enough to make Shippou want to weep. When the rains had ended, he had looked up at the dazzling stars hoping for nothing more than hope itself, and found only a gaping hole where Kagome had been. When the sun rose the following morning, the light spread out over a land washed clean of everything he remembered, yet his memories remained stronger than ever. Before lunchtime he realized that the interminable rains had been cloaking his heartbreak.

The rains had not so heavily affected Kagura because, indeed, her whole life had been spent as though it had been raining. At least, that’s how she remembered it. Bereft though she was of her powers, she was still a demon, and had not suffered the lack of food and clean water that inflicted the land.

Shippou had not suffered those inflictions either, not to any significant degree, but now, under the October sun, every step in this strange, friendless land became unbearable. His nose was overcome by the smells of steaming earth, disease, decay, and rust. Lakes lay where there had been valleys. Fields and meadows were now choked wetlands. He forced his feet to continue moving forward through a metamorphosed land of pitiless indifference, despite the heavy chain dragging him down to the acknowledgment of the collapse of his past.

Kagura walked on without noticing the distress of her companion. They had been trying to travel straight south through the mountains, toward the Hyouden, but it had been difficult because the hills were still subject to sudden and bothersome mudslides and the valleys were mostly flooded. Kagura was about to suggest that they find or build a boat and simply float the rest of the way when she noticed Shippou was not beside her.

She turned and saw that he was several yards behind, taking tottering steps and leaning on every tree along the way.

“What’s the matter with you?” she called back.

He held up his hand and then lowered himself to the ground, murmuring something.

“What?” she called back.

Then she sighed in repressed annoyance and walked back to him.

“I just need to stop,” he hung his head. “I need to think for a minute.”

“If you’re trying to think of what to do when we get there,” Kagura said, “I highly suggest you think of something good. I for one can’t imagine what you plan to say to Sesshoumaru.”

Shippou paid no attention to her. His eyes narrowed and Kagura got the impression that he was listening for something.

“What is it?”

“Shhh!” he hissed. “Wait a sec.”

Then his eyes widened.

“Look out!” he cried, leaping forward and throwing her to the ground.

***

A week had passed since their wedding under the stars, and Sango was still a virgin. Since she and Miroku were still living with Momiji under a rock near the crashing waves of the ocean, this was not surprising, and was not the subject of their first marital spat.

The discord arose when Sango realized that Miroku had no intention of searching for their friends, including Kirara, or of pursuing Naraku.

Momiji was dreaming of sun-drenched fields of gold, where she and Kyotou walked hand in hand, when she was rudely awakened by Sango’s piercing voice.

“How can you say that?” the demon slayer was demanding.

Momiji popped open one bleary eye. Dawn was just breaking, and the newlyweds were standing outside the shelter. Momiji did not move, but watched their legs and listened.

“You said it yourself, Sango,” it was the voice of Miroku. “By moving forward, we triumph. Going down that old road is not moving forward.”

“I didn’t mean we should forsake our friends!”

“Sango, I’m sorry—they are probably already dead.”

Momiji did not hear the response to this from the demon slayer, if there was one, but the monk went on.

“Kagome was in the very center of it. And Inuyasha…if he survived it, he would have found us by now. Maybe he got the same idea. Maybe he gave up.”

The name Inuyasha rang a bell in Momiji’s head. She remembered a dog-demon, or was he a half-demon? She wasn’t sure.

“Inuyasha would never give up!” Sango declared with fervor. Momiji could tell that she was standing now very close to her new husband.

Something hit the ground. The monk had been carrying something, driftwood for the fire perhaps, and he had thrown it down.

“And look where it got him, Sango!” he was shouting now. “Look where it got him!”

“You don’t have to yell, monk,” Sango’s voice was cold.

Miroku started to turn away, but stopped or was stopped.

“What are we supposed to do?” Sango asked him. “Wait around for your curse to carry you off? Are you planning that to be the end for both of us? Or were you just going to wonder off alone into the forest one day to make a hole in it?”

Momiji was very still. She did not understand this exchange at all, but it sounded alarming, and it must have been something of heavy seriousness, because Sango’s questions were followed by a shocked silence.

Then Miroku turned and walked away.

“Don’t walk away from me!” Sango shouted, before going after him.

Momiji sighed and pulled her ratty blanket over her head.

***

Once it was clear that the apparition of Kagome was not returning, Kikyou turned her back to leave. Taking steps filled with resolved, she crossed the enigmatic flowers, going back the way she came.

The flowers showed no sign of ending. Kikyou stopped for a moment and spoke aloud.

“There must be a way out, because I must leave.”

In the next instant, she was standing at the mouth of the cave. At first, she did not notice it, but gradually she became aware that a hand was gripping hers. She looked up and saw Kohaku looking down at her, his expression grave.

“Kikyou-sama,” he said. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Kikyou peered up at him in bewilderment.

“When did you get so tall?”

Kohaku knitted his brow.

“Umm…recently?” he suggested.

Kikyou realized then that she had been seeing him as the same boy that she had first seen in Naraku’s possession. Five years had passed since then and she had been unable, or unwilling, to notice. She saw him now as tall as Inuyasha, with broad shoulders, and she blushed to think of all the nights they spent lying in the dark with their backs together.

“I am sorry, Kohaku-san,” she said. “I have done you a great injustice. I will try to not repeat it.”

“Kikyou-sama?”

“Come,” she placed a hand on his shoulder. “It is time to go.”

Upon leaving the cave, they were both obliged to cover their eyes.

“What is that light?” Kikyou asked, wincing.

Kohaku stood blinking. Then he extended his arms and looked up at the sky.

“It is the sun!” he cried. “Kikyou-sama, look, it’s morning!”

Kikyou shaded her eyes and looked around. The sky was bright and blue, the kind of blue that only happened in October. It appeared to be the middle of the morning. Dawn was long past, and the sun was a white disc in the sky. There was not a cloud in sight.

As they stood transfixed by the unexpected phenomenon, Kikyou heard a low rumble. She glanced to her right and saw the demon cat, Kirara, sitting and looking at them, her pink eyes curious and expecting.

“Kirara, are you okay?” Kohaku went to her and rubbed her head.

The cat closed her eyes and responded by pressing her ears into his neck. Then there was nothing next to Kohaku but a puff of smoke. Kikyou started. Kohaku now held a small, yellow kitten in his hands, pressing his face into her tiny nose.

“This is her other form?” Kikyou asked him.

“Yep. Cute, huh?”

Kikyou stood silent and still for a moment, then Kohaku heard her bow fall to the ground with a clatter. He looked up in surprise to see her reaching for Kirara. She caught the small demon up in her arms and pressed her cheek to the diminutive nose.

“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, squeezing the cat (a little too hard) and rocking her back and forth. “How adorable!”

Kohaku smiled to himself. So she is a girl, after all.

“Ah, Kikyou-sama,” he interrupted her raptures gently. “What now?”

“Hmm?” Kikyou glanced up. “Oh, right. I think I know which way to go.”

She let Kirara down. The cat demon trotted to Kohaku’s side.

“Oh?”

“Yes, you see, I always hear her heart beating,” Kikyou explained. “That probably sounds weird to you, but I do, and I think I can follow it.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Kagome.”

“Ah yes, Kagome-sama.”

“You remember her?” Kikyou asked.

“Yes,” he said simply.

The memory seemed to pain him, so Kikyou did not ask him more.

“Kikyou-sama, it’s not that I’m not grateful.”

Kikyou looked at him, confused.

“But I think I should be looking for my sister.”

Kikyou had not expected that, but she realized that she should have. She stood there outside the cave, in the light of the first morning, forbidding herself to cry.

“I do not think we should separate, Kohaku-san,” she said.

“I know, but…” he trailed off.

“Did not your sister travel with Kagome? I never knew her name, but she was a demon slayer, correct?”

Kikyou looked at Kirara.

“Now that I think of it, I’m fairly sure I have seen this cat before.”

There was a silent and crowded pause.

“It’s getting easier, isn’t it?” Kohaku asked in almost a whisper.

Kikyou did not trust herself to answer.

“As I was saying,” she said after a few moments, “perhaps your path still lays with me?”

Kohaku smiled. It was like the sun rising again.

“Right. You’re right, of course, Kikyou-sama.”

He placed Kirara on his shoulder.

“So then, which way do we go?”

Their first task was to return to the former village of the demon slayers, to salvage what they could for a journey of unknown length. They found blankets that were tattered and full of holes, but still better than nothing. It did not take more than the clear autumn air to remind them that the rains had swallowed the summer, and winter would be soon on its way. Food was not to be found, nor clean water (which worried Kikyou the most), but they did find medicine and herbs, dry and crumbling but still worthy.

They both left the village with packs strapped across their backs. Kikyou had also found more arrows, and her quiver was full. Kohaku carried his usual chained sickle, but also a large knife he had found in the village and now wore strapped to his waist. The path took them past the cave again, but they both refused to look at it. They headed southwest.

The sun blazed down, white and radiant like a single daisy in a blue field. Despite this, traveling was still unpleasant. The earth was now steaming and the air seemed heavy and putrid. Most paths were still either trenches through swamps or slicks of mud. After the first day, Kikyou looked down at her clothes and surmised that it might even be difficult to persuade someone that she was a miko. At least before, the rain had continuously washed away the worst of it.

Around midday Kohaku persuaded his companion to wait for him while he searched for food. After an hour, he returned with a few small skinned animals. It took almost another hour to find fuel that would burn. Kikyou did not watch as he cooked them, she preferred to not guess what they might have been.

That night, as they settled before another puny, crackling fire, Kohaku asked her if she might favor him with a song before they went to sleep. The request startled Kikyou with its normalcy. To sit in front of a fire, under the stars, and sing songs was just such a normal, living, thing to do. She had enjoyed singing once, when every forest still looked new to her, but she imagined that none now living remembered that about her.

Except maybe Kaede. Kikyou realized with guilt that she had not thought of her sister since before her rebirth. She wondered how she had fared during the rains and could not help but feel the urge to turn around and go in that direction.

But no, her task was clear, and she knew by the pull of Kagome’s beating heart that her path did not lie in that direction.

“Kikyou-sama?” Kohaku was looking at her intently. “I am sorry if I offended you. You needn’t be troubled.”

“What?” Kikyou looked up. “Oh, no, I was just thinking…of what to sing.”

Kikyou thought back over her past and tried to remember a song, but she could only recall “Kagome, Kagome”, and saying that out loud into the dark wilderness seemed unwise. So instead she dredged through the lush gully of her heart for something prodigious, and she sang of her last experience as a false human, only reimagined and redrawn, as everything was now reimagined and redrawn.

By the river at sunset
To marching drums I was drawn
The rhythm now I forget
No one else could hear the noise
I followed some unknown intention
Prisoner of all her secret joys

From the rim of the sun did come
Where once they did make grain
The new sound of old Death
She didn’t know I was listening
So she sang out loud and long
To the sunset and the twilight and forever
Of her task, her nothing, and her never
I heard her secret joys
I heard her pluck the strings
As if there were never an end
To life, to rebirth, to Spring

Her words became the pulling string
I was brought to her and on my knees
I saw her laugh as she did hear
My tiny heartbeat in her ear
“You’re already mine”Oh, I saw her sign
The ocean of life churning in her eyes
The souls, before her away they fly
I cried and begged and hid my face
And she said these magic words:

“You are not the one, I will return, but you are not the one.”

She said these magic words and I fell down into the dreaming world for days

“You are not the one, I will return, but you are not the one.”
“I’m just passing you by, girl, passing you by, on my way, on my way.”

After a few moments of silence, Kikyou laughed, a small and cheerless sound.

“That must sound like nonsense.”

“No,” Kohaku answered slowly, staring into the fire. “No, I understood it. It is difficult isn’t it? Coming back?

Kikyou still did not trust herself to answer.

***

And I said I would do this, why? Tamotsu thought to himself with consternation.

Tamotsu began to consider the possibility that he was going insane. Perhaps this was all a figment of his imagination. The earthquake, the mostly dead miko, the possession of Rin, the rains—all were products of his insanity. In reality, he was probably chained in the cellar of the Hyouden, raving and frothing at the mouth.

It worried him that this thought was so comforting. You’ve really messed up somewhere when involuntary confinement feels like a win.

He had left the Hyouden with the intent of finding a priestess—one, measly, stupid little priestess—and instead found only disease, starvation, and misery. Humans were perishing in droves, brought down by lack of food and clean water or by floods and mudslides. Many had succumbed to the poison that was carried in the rain in its earliest days.

Demons did not fare much better. Lower forms of demon needed food and drink almost as much as humans, and only the carrion feeders slept will full stomachs. Higher demons did not need sustenance, or did not need as much, but that was small comfort to those that watched their palace crumbled off the mountainside, their cave fill with pestilential water, or their house become buried in mud. Many warred bitterly with humans and other demons for resources, relatively dry patches of earth being the most precious. There was plenty of death to go around.

Now he sat on a crag that jutted up out of a noxious swamp, his only company one valiant birch tree that clung to life. The few mikos he had come across so far had little power to speak of, either because they had never had it, or because they had been drained by deprivation. After more than three months of the most miserable travel he could remember (and he had a long memory), the rains had finally cleared. It was a small triumph to be able to walk under the sun, but the land remained desolate. As he sat thinking of what to do next and wondering if the Hyouden would still be standing when he returned, he heard voices drifting to his sharp ears from far away. It was the sound of singing.

You are not the one, I will return, but you are not the one.
She said these magic words and I fell down into the dreaming world for days.
You are not the one, I will return, but you are not the one.
I’m just passing you by, girl, passing you by, on my way, on my way.

His nose picked up the scent of humans, which he surmised were about a half a mile ahead of him and a little off the road. Not wishing for unnecessary exertion, he approached them with caution. When he caught sight of them he saw that there were two of them and that one was a priestess, for she was wearing the garb that he now recognized. The other was a young man who seemed to be her bodyguard.

Tamotsu walked straight into the light of their fire and placed himself directly in front of them. Even though they appeared to be almost asleep, he was prepared for an immediate reaction of fight or flight. When the man nearly cut his ear off with a curved blade that he sent flying on a chain, Tamotsu was therefore only mildly irritated.

“Wait, Kohaku-san!” the woman said.

The boy, Kohaku, paid no attention to her.

“Where did you get that weapon?” he screamed at the dog demon.

Tamotsu glanced over his shoulder. During the months of countless trials and disasters he had forgotten the weight of the strange weapon he carried.

“This?” he asked. “Do you know it?”

“Answer me, demon!” the boy shouted at him.

“You are hardly in the position to give orders,” Tamotsu returned, fixing him with a cold stare. “And how would cutting my face off get your questions answered?”

The boy lowered his weapon, but only slightly.

“That is the Hiraikotsu,” he said, indicating the weapon. “But there is only left who wields it. So I ask you again, where did you get that weapon?”

Tamotsu sighed. Since this was the closest he had come to a real miko in weeks, he decided to play along, at least for now.

“I found this amongst the ruin and destruction of a battle, three months ago,” he said. “When the rains started.”

The boys expression turned to one of dread.

“Tell me,” Tamotsu continued. “Did this ‘one person’ travel with Kagome?”

As soon as that name left Tamotsu’s lips, the boy raised his weapon again, and the woman had placed an arrow on her bow and leveled it at his chest in less than three seconds. He could feel the potential for purification singeing his chest.

Uh oh, he thought, slight miscalculation.

“Where is she?” the woman’s voice was cold and stern.

“Back the way I came,” Tamotsu answered with a nonchalant jab of his thumb over his shoulder. “If you want to see her, come with me.”

The two travelers eyed him suspiciously, then looked at each other. Tamotsu rolled his eyes.

“If I wanted to eat you, I would have by now.”

“You would have tried,” the woman said.

“Right,” Tamotsu conceded. “As you say. As long as you come with me. I have traveled for months looking for you.”

“Why?” the woman asked him.

“Well, I could say that it was because she needs healing, because I want to get her out of Sesshoumaru’s hair, or because I told Rin that I would.”

Tamotsu scratched the back of his neck and looked up at the night sky, as if to reaffirm to himself that it really wasn’t raining anymore.

“But I think we both know I did it because I was supposed to.”

He sighed.

“It’s going to get really boring,” he complained, “if from now on I know everything is so neatly ordered and arranged.”

The woman stared at him, attempting to register this sudden abundance of new information. She lowered her weapon and returned the arrow to its place.

“My name is Kikyou,” she said.

Kohaku had long stopped listening to them. He had withdrawn some distance away, and was holding Kirara to his face.

“Kohaku-san,” Kikyou called. “We should go.”

Kohaku rejoined her.

“I was hoping Kirara could give some clues as to what happened that day. But I don’t think she remembers.”

He lowered his head, and Kikyou placed a soft, comforting hand on his neck.

“Do not despair,” she said. “I believe that we will all be reunited before the end. I believe we have to be.”

Kohaku shook his head, but did not answer. After a few minutes, he leveled his gaze at Tamotsu.

“Do you think we can trust him?” he asked bluntly.

“You’re a real polite one, aren’t you?” Tamotsu retorted.

“I’m not sure if you know this, Kohaku-san,” Kikyou said, “but Sesshoumaru-sama is Inuyasha’s brother.”

“Half-brother,” Tamotsu corrected automatically, before turning to stare at her. “Wait, what? How do you know that?”

Kikyou smiled at him.

“You look so much like him,” she said to Tamotsu. “Sesshoumaru-sama, I mean.”

“Yes, he does,” Kohaku agreed.

“So you do know him?” Kikyou turned to him.

“I feel like I do, or did,” Kohaku answered. “It’s still fuzzy. But I can see the resemblance.”

“Yes, it is said that the older brother resembles the mother, and the younger the father,” Tamotsu said, flustered. “But, how do you know Inuyasha?”

“That is a long story, and one that I hardly think you’d believe anyway,” Kikyou said. “I wish to waste no time getting to Kagome.”

“In that case,” Tamotsu put both hands around her waist and hoisted her over his shoulder in one movement.

“Iieee!” Kikyou shrieked, before she could regain her dignity. “Put me down this instant!”

“Get your hands off of her!” Kohaku shouted, brandishing his weapon again.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Tamotsu chuckled. “I’ll get your pretty little thing back to you unspoiled, more or less.”

“Don’t you dare insult Kikyou-sama like that!”

Kikyou decided she had had just about enough of this frivolity.

“Put me down at once, dog demon, or I’ll—

She broke off, glancing toward Kohaku. She whispered the rest in Tamotsu’s ear.

Tamotsu’s face betrayed a disgusted terror, and he dropped Kikyou on the ground without ceremony. She stood up and dusted the back of her hakama.

“That hurt,” she complained.

“Not near as much as what you threatened me with,” he accused.

“Well, I trust we’ll have no further trouble,” she said.

“So in spite of all this talk of wanting to hurry,” he grumbled, “you aim to walk all the way there.”

“Kirara, that’s your cue,” Kohaku said, letting the little cat demon jump to the ground.

Tamotsu’s confusion evaporated when she transformed into something roughly the size of an ox.

“Oh, no way!” he exclaimed, suddenly delighted. “I’ve never seen a nekomata!”

“You can admire her later,” Kikyou said after she and Kohaku were securely mounted. “Lead the way.”

***

The rains had come alarmingly close to decimating his house, and they had decimated his land. A half-dead human miko was being nursed back to health down the hall from his bedroom, nursed by a human adolescent girl, who had just recently been possessed by the spirit of his dead mother.

She was dead, right?

Oh, and the human miko was his brother’s lover.

Half-brother, he corrected himself.

She was his lover, right?

Damn. He was not sure, and it was inconceivable that he would ask her.

With every day it was becoming more difficult to ignore the sense of change and dread that had been with him since he had first discovered the spider demons were missing.

Just the same, he tried repeating to himself often, the same as it ever was.

Was that good or bad?

Damn.

Sesshoumaru closed his eyes.

“Sesshoumaru-sama?” Jaken had come into the room.

Sesshoumaru’s eyes remained closed.

“Tamotsu has returned.”

No answer.

“He and another human miko are at the door.”

Sesshoumaru open his eyes and turned his head toward his servant. Jaken trembled and avoided eye contact.

“Jaken,” his cold voice made Jaken cringe. “I apologize.”

Jaken gawked at him.

“I believe,” Sesshoumaru continued, “that I have just suffered some cataclysm of the brain. I heard you say Tamotsu had brought another human here, but that cannot be.”

Jaken looked like he was going to be sick, and he prostrated himself on the floor.

“I tried to tell him to go away, Sesshoumaru-sama!” he blubbered. “But he would not listen to me. And this miko that’s with him, she will not leave either. I think you know each other.”

Sesshoumaru reattached his sword to his hip and made his way to the front of the house.

Damn. Did every road in this cursed country lead to his door?

He was not at all prepared for what was waiting for him. Standing outside his north door, where only a short length of grass separated the threshold from the cliffs of the sea, stood Tamotsu in the autumn moonlight. Some sort of small animal perched on his shoulder and Sesshoumaru realized it was a demon cat. Next to him stood the same young man who had been the brainwashed puppet of Naraku. Off to the right, standing with a bow almost as tall as she was, was the miko who had imprisoned his half brother to a tree, more than fifty years ago.

At least, it looked like her.

“Sesshoumaru!” Tamotsu greeted him joyfully. “You won’t believe me, but how I’ve missed you! But then, the trip I’ve had, let me tell you.”

Sesshoumaru did not look at him. He drew his sword and leveled it at the woman.

“Who are you,” he asked her, “that come to my door without leave? You resemble someone I know but that I owe no hospitality, and you cannot possibly be her anyway. What are you playing at?”

The woman did not answer, but the man next to her drew his weapon, a chained scythe. Sesshoumaru’s gaze did not leave the woman.

“That is not the first time you’ve drawn your weapon for me, witless boy,” he grated. “But it will be the last.”

The woman had an arrow pointed at Sesshoumaru’s chest in a blurred moment. The kitten on Tamotsu’s shoulder leapt to the ground and transformed into a flaming cat demon, with two tails and larger than the greatest tiger.

Tamotsu stared at the four of them.

“Damn!” he exclaimed. “Nobody ever tells me anything!”

[End of Chapter Sixteen]

[Next Chapter: Long, Long Way to Go]

Author’s Notes:
Kikyou’s song is loosely based on the song “Fever”, by Neko Case (featured on the album Middle Cyclone). Thanks for reading!