InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ In Deep Woods ❯ Chapter 10

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

In Deep Woods, 10:


“Ha!”  Fenn laughed.  “You could say that.”

Trace scowled but did not move from his spot beside Megumi.

“If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine,” Fenn said quite seriously, squatting down next to Kazuki.  “I let it go too far.  So I’m fixing it.”  His eyes met Trace’s with a hint of challenge.  “You said Trace is on borrowed time.  That’s true.  You all are.”  He smiled.  “Remember when you were a child, Kazuki?  You followed my creatures in and out of time.  You did it just a little while ago when you came here.  How do you think that’s possible?”

Kazuki frowned at him, annoyed at having to converse civilly with a being who looked like Trace.  But Fenn had never been his enemy.  “Not time, space,” he corrected.  “The only time travel I ever did was back and forth to the Sengoku Jidai.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Fenn said softly.  “Every time you move through space, you displace time to do it.  You chose to believe you were as limited as your father was with his great sword Tetsusaiga, but you know it’s not true.  Mayumi knew it.  She followed Trace back to the time when your grandfather, the Inu no Taisho, was alive.   But she never went back.  Ask yourself why Mayumi never went back.”

Kazuki knew why.  She was afraid she would mess something up, make it worse.  Wasn’t that what Trace had been trying to do in the first place—change the course of time?  Inuyasha and his children had come to the conclusion that their time travel was part of what was meant to happen, and that they couldn’t change it because it already had happened.  But that theory only held as long as they acted as if the time stream was a single line, from one time to another, five hundred years apart.

“Why can only you and your brother and sister—and Megumi here—of all your family, walk in between?  Why did Trace target you?”

Trace looked up, angry.  “Leave me out of this.  This is your story,” he said.  “Nothing to do with me.”

“You think so?”  Fenn smiled again, a little tiredly.  He had already used up much of the energy he had stolen from Megumi in talking.

Megumi leaned against Trace and rubbed her forehead.  “I’d like to know,” she said.  “Why can we do this when no one else can—except your creatures—and Trace.”

“Trace is my creature,” Fenn said, ignoring the glare the other youkai shot his way.  “I’ve asked myself that question many times since little Kazuki followed my off-shoots in between when he was just a little lad.  I believe Tetsusaiga, itself a creature which can transcend both time and space, had a lot to do with setting the path in the boy’s mind.  When he met my offshoots, he recognized that path and so was able to follow it.”

“And Mayumi?  And Koji?”  

“They copied their older brother.  You had to show each of them, at least once, am I right?”

Kazuki thought back.  He used to take Koji with him to the Sengoku Jidi, often without his parents’ knowledge, when Koji was just a baby.  He brought Mayumi with him, too, although if he hadn’t, he had no doubt she would have followed him on her own eventually.  She used to be so jealous of the fact that he was the oldest and that their parents let him travel in between on his own without benefit of Tetsusaiga.  He almost smiled, before he remembered he was supposed to be mad.

“But why can I do it?” Megumi asked.

Trace took her hand.  “Your mother took you in between before you were born,” he said.  “You’ve always known the way.”

“There are limits,” Fenn said.  “You have to know where you are going, or you have to follow someone who has gone there before.  That’s why you can so easily move short distances—you can see where you intend to come out.”

“Wait, wait, wait.”  Kazuki held up his hand.  “Before she was born?  That could apply to Koji, too.  Even to Mayumi.”  There was another child who had travelled in between in the womb.  Mayumi’s youngest, Megumi’s sister Asuka, had been conceived in the past, but her mother had gone in between before she was born in order to correct a birth defect which would have killed her had she stayed in the past.  “Can Asuka?”

“You have to be aware of it before you can do it.  Mayumi doesn’t want her daughter to know.”  Fenn glanced at Megumi.  Mayumi didn’t want either daughter to know, but it was too late now.  Fenn   had not told Megumi how to walk in between.  He had only freed her memories.  Trace was the one who had shown her the way.

“You say we can go anywhere in time?”  Kazuki asked cautiously.

“Anywhere you have already been—or anywhere you can follow.”  Fenn clarified.

“Then why—Tetsusaiga—the Sengoku Jidai—the well?”  Questions tumbled out of Kazuki’s mouth.  His past, all he had been brought up to believe about his unique family and their destiny, all that he had suffered and lost, was being challenged.

“Ah, the well.  I was very interested in the well,” Fenn said, remembering when he had gone to Japan for Inuyasha and Kagome’s wedding.  By that time, the well had stopped functioning.  Tetsusaiga had absorbed the time-traveling capabilities of the well, and since it had connected Kagome’s and Inuyasha’s world at that one point, that’s what Inuyasha expected of it.  Even when he later made his home in America, and little Kazuki accidentally activated those same time-traveling capabilities in Tetsusaiga, the sword showed him the oft-used path and dumped the boy back out at the site of the old well.  So Inuyasha assumed that’s the only place Tetsusaiga could bring them.  Or so Fenn surmised, with the bits and pieces of the story he had picked up from Inuyasha and Kagome over the years.  “Your father expected Tetsusaiga to function the same way the well once did, and that’s what happened—for him.  You kids weren’t so set in your ways.”

That’s all there was to it?  Kazuki gaped at Fenn.  After Sachi died, Kazuki had wanted nothing to do with going back to the past again.  For Mayumi, it was a different story.  She had her love there, her family.  It took the threat of losing a child to force her to leave her life there behind and come back to the time she was born in, which was doubly hard for her because she had already known she would one day leave her husband—only she didn’t know how, or why.  It colored her entire life, as Sachi’s death had colored his—they both vowed never to travel in between again shortly after Asuka was born.  Only Koji, the youngest of the three siblings, and the only one who had remained in the present, continued to move through space, though not through time as Kazuki had previously understood it, not having been through such life-changing experiences as his two older siblings.

Kazuki had broken that vow to pursue Megumi and Trace.  He stared hard at the youkai who had plagued their family for centuries, who had cost Kazuki his wife and who had tried to destroy Midoriko in hopes of preventing the jewel from ever being formed.  He growled low in his throat.  “That doesn’t explain him,” he said.

Fenn sighed.  “Trace is my offshoot.  He is exactly like me.  He is not limited in time or space—or at least he used to be.  He’s changed now.  I suppose I’m changed too.  It’s inevitable.  We are each of us the sum of our experiences.  I like your family.  Inuyasha is my friend.  I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

Kazuki jerked his thumb at Trace.  “Can he say that?  Even if he did, I wouldn’t believe him.”

Trace bared his teeth in a vicious smile.

“Why did Trace come after your family?”

“Power.  He wanted our power.  He hated us.”

“You are only half right,” Fenn answered, and again Trace scowled at him.  “Trace wanted your power, and he mistakenly thought that the jewel was what gave your family their power.  But he never hated you.  He envied you, what you had and he never did.  And that is my fault.”

“Ha.”  Trace stood abruptly, echoing Fenn’s early sharp laugh.  “You don’t know what I think.  You didn’t then, and you still don’t.”  He turned to Kazuki.  “Go ahead, hate me.  Try to kill me.  I don’t care.  I’m not the same weak creature your family kept imprisoned here for hundreds of years.  I’m strong now.  Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.  He can do what he wants.  But if I were you, I’d keep my distance.  You shouldn’t trust Fenn so much.  He was right about one thing—he is exactly like me.”

There were only a few places Trace could go, but all of them were better than here.  He turned in between and disappeared.  Megumi glanced once at her uncle, begging for understanding with her eyes, before she followed him.

“Leave them be,” Fenn said, putting a restraining hand on Kazuki’s arm.  “He won’t go far.  He really has changed, can’t you see?  He is more—here—than before.  Living in a body for centuries tends to tie one’s spirit to the physical form.  Trace is becoming more like the rest of you.  He wants this, whether or not he will admit it to himself.  The girl is good for him—and he’s good for her.  He won’t hurt her.”

“Can you guarantee that?” Kazuki asked, but he sat back down.  Uneasily, he glanced at the hand that rested casually on his arm.  He trusted Fenn, despite what Trace had said.  He left his arm where it was to prove it to himself.

“Right now?”  Fenn lifted his eyebrow.  “I’m not even sure I could get out of this cave if it came to it.  No guarantees, but I don’t think I’m wrong.”

Yet Trace had stepped back.  He had not allowed Fenn to touch him.  Kazuki gritted his teeth.  “Why are you playing this game?” he asked.  “What do you hope to accomplish?”

“Me?  Nothing much.  I enjoy talking to Kagome.  It’s been a while since she and I have talked philosophy.  Eventually, she’ll figure it out.  Then we’ll see.”

“And you expect me to keep quiet until then?”

Fenn cocked his head to the side.  “Whatever you’re going to do, you need to figure it out in the next two minutes.  Your mother is on her way in.  You’re lucky she doesn’t have your sense of smell, or none of us would have a choice in the matter.”

Kazuki decided he’d rather have his revenge than be stuck here explaining the story to his parents, who were bound to be mad at him, somehow.  Or at least his father would be.  He looked inward, and saw the path that Trace and Megumi had taken.  There were still some matters he needed to discuss with the dark-haired youkai, and not necessarily with words.  “One week,” he said to Fenn.  “I’ll give you one week.”

Fenn just laughed, as Kazuki disappeared from sight.





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