InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 12 ( Chapter 12 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 12:

 

 

Our son was born early the next spring. He had his father's eyes and ears, but my hair. I guessed that meant I didn't need to keep dying it anymore. I got a few strange looks from some of the wolf youkai, right after the baby was born, which went away as soon as my hair took on its natural color, at about the time we held his naming ceremony.

 

Rather than immediately equating my silver coloring with some of my more remarkable inuyoukai relatives, the wolf youkai took it in their stride. Apparently, it was more common than I thought for youkai to have white or light hair. There was a bat hanyou on the coast whose father also had that coloring, and several youkai living in the nearby hills had it, too.

 

When we met at the slayer village for the naming ceremony, Auntie Sango told me we had originally dyed my hair, and my brother's, so that we could blend in more easily among the humans. It had nothing to do with my father after all, except that light hair was a known youkai trait in those days. They would be surprised to find that, in my time, lots of people dyed their hair all different colors and it had nothing to do with being human or youkai. I remembered Mama telling me that she and Papa had shown Auntie Sango and Uncle Miroku photos of some of their college friends from the States once, and they immediately assumed they must be youkai because of their hair color. Go figure.

 

So I decided that, since I would be living mainly with the wolf youkai and not among humans, I would let my hair go back to its natural color. Daichi fully supported my decision; he loved my true color. We named our son Gintaro, and watched while Uncle Miroku added his name to our family scroll. It was going to be one mixed-up scroll, that's for sure.

 

Neither Sesshomaru nor Shippo was present for the ceremony. Why would they have been? The wolves were allies, but not relatives—at least not that they knew of, yet. Happily, Kazuki and his new wife Sachi witnessed Gintaro's naming ceremony, and my son got to spend some quality time with his uncle and new Auntie. Kazuki, because he lived in the slayer village and dealt quite often with human outsiders, kept his hair dyed black. He still went out on patrol with the other slayers, and it made things easier if the humans they met thought of him as one of them. I understood; it was the life he had chosen.

 

I strapped Gintaro to my back with a flat square of cloth for the journey home. I was vaguely disappointed that my parents hadn't at least attempted to come to the ceremony, although I knew it was impossible. Kouga would have recognized them. Still, it was a milestone in my life, like my wedding. I wanted them to be there. All the way home, I kept casting glances over my shoulder, hoping to catch some sign that they were near, but I didn't.

 

Daichi went out to hunt with his father and some of the others when we got back, while I took a basket of soiled clothes down to the little stream at the foot of our mountain to wash. I knelt by the water's edge, Gintaro drowsing on my back as I scrubbed the laundry he had dirtied. As a rule, we preferred to let him drip-dry, but I had put him in diapers for our trip to the slayer village.

 

Something made me look up. Across the stream from me stood my mother. Part of me rejoiced. She came! Mama was here! Another part of me was apprehensive. Was she still mad at me? Slowly, I straightened up, letting the laundry fall half in, half out of the water.

 

She crossed the stream to me, smiling softly, and picked up the fallen clothes and began to scrub. “I used to do this too,” she commented, “when I lived here.” By `here,' she meant in this time.

 

“Thanks,” I said. “Mama--?”

 

“Let's finish these first,” she answered me, and for a while we just scrubbed, and rinsed, and shook, and then hung the clothes over some nearby bushes to dry. It felt good being with Mama again, doing ordinary things. Not that I'd ever done laundry by hand before I came here. But still.

 

Gintaro stirred and Mama finally turned her attention to him as if she had just noticed him tied to my back. I hid a smile. I knew she had come to see him, as much as she'd come to see me. I quickly unfastened him and held him out to my mother. She took him and her eyes filled with happy tears. “Gintaro,” she murmured, running a fingertip over the points of his soft little youkai ears. So, they had been nearby at the naming ceremony. She knew his name. How could I have doubted they would come?

 

“Where's Papa?” I asked, looking around. I knew Inuyasha would never leave his Kagome alone for long. Mama raised her eyes from her grandson's face long enough to glance to the left. I followed her glance and saw him, ten feet up on a branch, leaning casually against the trunk of a tree. He gave me a wave as he noticed my look, then jumped down and was next to us in a flash.

 

“Let me hold Gintaro,” he demanded, and Mama handed him over. Papa grinned broadly, showing fang, and pronounced, “He's all right, you can hardly notice the wolf smell.”

 

That wasn't true. Gintaro smelled a lot like Daichi in my opinion. I didn't say anything, though. Papa was just trying to give me a compliment.

 

Papa monopolized Gintaro, which left my mother and me staring awkwardly at each other. I couldn't stand this. “Mama,” I said, and my voice broke. Papa was cooing to the baby and made it seem as if he just coincidentally turned his back to us when he heard my voice.

 

“Mayumi.” Mama opened her arms and I fell into them as if no time had passed for us, and she was my Mama and I was her little girl. “I can't believe my baby is a mama,” she said, and I smiled.

 

“I can hardly believe it, either,” I confessed. “Mama, I'm so glad you came.”

 

“Keh,” scoffed Papa, from further upstream. “As if we'd miss the birth of our first grandchild.”

 

We reminisced for a while longer, and then it was time for them to go. I hugged Mama, then I hugged Papa too and took back Gintaro from him. “Thank you,” I whispered to them both.

 

Papa patted Gintaro gently on the head, ruffling his spiky white hair, then turned his eyes to me. “You better wash the kid,” he said, before melting into the woods with my mother beside him.

 

I sniffed experimentally. Oh, yeah. Gintaro smelled pretty strongly of Papa now. “Let's get you washed, Little Mister,” I said to my son mock-sternly.

 

We went back to the settlement fresh and clean and with fresh-smelling laundry. I was grateful my parents had come to see me, even though I knew it wouldn't happen very often. The thing was, we all knew in the future none of Kouga's relatives had known Inuyasha, so as Gintaro grew older, we would have to keep him away from my parents because that's what had happened. Stupid time.

 

Kazuki's situation was different. Miroku and Sango knew the truth about us and our parents. Would Kazuki tell his wife, their daughter? There wasn't anything from the future that indicated whether the knowledge had been passed down. Then again, Sachi was human, as were her parents. Eventually, they would die, and the knowledge might have died with them. Time would tell. If Kazuki and Sachi had children, they would be hanyou. You'd think the children would be aware of their heritage, wouldn't you? Then again, perhaps not, because my parents said no one in their time knew that they had survived since the feudal era.

 

 

During those early years in the wolf settlement, Daichi was often away on patrol with some of the older wolves. They continued the process my father had started before I was born, when he inadvertently destroyed the well, of eradicating dangerous youkai. It was a turning point for youkai, as we became more assimilated into human society. Some of the more feral youkai still remained only partially on the physical plane. Most humans couldn't sense them at all, but they could feel the damage that these insubstantial youkai caused. They presented a danger to the rest of us, who for the most part kept our humanlike forms. So, Daichi, Kouga, Kohaku, Sesshomaru, and the slayers routinely patrolled the land to destroy these youkai who had become a threat to all of our safety.

 

I would have been happy going out on patrol with Daichi, but I was busy having babies. Because of my hanyou blood, I had an easier time of it than most full youkai women, a trait, I've been told, that continues on even in my time. My next pregnancy was barely two years after Gintaro, and this time I had twins, both boys, with Daichi's features and my coloring. My mother-in-law, Ayame, helped me with the children, and I learned how to be a youkai mother from her. Don't let the rumors fool you; it isn't all instinct, believe me. What I knew about being youkai I learned from my father. I had memories of him carrying me through our woods at home, of him catching rabbits and letting me memorize different scents. But most of my memories were of Saturday morning cartoons, and cereal with milk, and being very very careful not to let anyone see that I was different. Not a lot of that was useful here, in this time and place.

 

Ayame gave me a silver bracelet after Gintaro was born. She said it was Daichi's, and should be passed down to the eldest son. My eyes widened. I recognized that silver bracelet. Kazuki had one just like it, in his drawer back home. Hiroshi had one too. Mama had bought this one at a department store as a present when Daichi was born. Years later, in the 21st century, Ayame had gone to that same department store, once she had learned the truth about my mother and father, and bought an identical bracelet to give to Kagome's first son, Kazuki. So now there were three. Would it mess up the flow of time or something if Kazuki passed his down to his and Sachi's firstborn?

 

When I heard the news that Sachi was pregnant, I insisted on traveling to the slayer village to see her. I was the youkai; she was the human. It was only natural that I should go. My twin boys were about six months old at the time, and I wanted to take them, as well as Gintaro, along with me. It was the first time Daichi and I had a fight.

 

“Absolutely not,” he stated flatly. The rest of the wolf pack agreed with him. One of the downsides of living in a pack society was that everybody knew everybody else's business, and decisions tended to be group decisions. Most of the time, it didn't bother me. Until now.

 

“I don't care what you think. You can take me, or I can go by myself, but I'm going.” Mama would have been proud, although I suspect Papa would have agreed with Daichi.

 

He folded his arms across his chest. “Fine,” he said. “I'll bring you. But the children stay here.” His mother nodded. She would take care of the boys for us.

 

“What? Why?” I was still nursing the twins. “They'll be safe enough with both of us.”

 

“It's too dangerous,” he said. “If you insist on going, the children will remain here.”

 

I was fuming. Did he think I was incapable of taking care of my own kids? I was at least as powerful as he was, and I could deal with rogue youkai if I had to. This was ridiculous.

 

“Mayumi.” Kouga took my two hands and tried to calm me down. “The kids are wolf youkai. Daichi is worried about how they will react around humans if you bring them into the slayer village. Give them a few more years to get used to the idea that humans aren't prey.”

 

“Oh.” I deflated. I could see his point. My babies reacted according to instinct. This was not the time to teach them that humans weren't food. Why couldn't Daichi have just said that? It was going to be uncomfortable for me, not nursing, but it was time for me to wean the twins anyway.

 

I left Gintaro with Ayame too. He could help his Grandma look after his brothers while I was gone. Daichi accompanied me to the village gate, but he didn't go inside. We had sort of made up on our trip to the village. It was nice being alone with him in the woods. We didn't see or sense a single youkai, either, although there were plenty of human soldiers we had to avoid. I was suddenly very glad I hadn't brought the children. Daichi told me he would wait for me in the forest outside the village. He was familiar with the slayers, but he was still uncomfortable around humans for long periods of time. I smiled to myself—boy, would he change in the future. That thought sobered me. Dai. I wondered how he was doing.

 

“Sachi!” I shouted, as I rushed to give her a hug. It was a custom from my time that she and her sister had readily adopted. I had a hard time getting my arms around her girth—she was ready to pop any day now. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

 

Sachi smiled wryly. “How do you think?”

 

She looked wonderful, all glowing and happy. I worried about her, though. Pregnancy was a lot riskier in this era than it was in mine, and she was only human. Would she and her baby be safe? I hoped so. “Where's Kazuki?” I asked.

 

“He's out on patrol,” Sachi replied. “He should be back soon. He's been a little bit overprotective of me lately.” We both laughed at that.

 

Kazuki came in an hour later, followed by our little brother Koji. So that's where he'd been. He must have gone home. Kazuki still popped back and forth fairly regularly to see our family.

 

“School vacation?” I asked Koji, trying to calculate the date. Our little brother was growing up. He was all gangly, arms and legs, as he grew into his height. He, too, had dyed his hair to blend in, and I could smell the bean paste he had rubbed across his skin. Neither Kazuki nor I bothered with the scent mask anymore. He didn't need it, living in a human village, and it turned out that I didn't either. My own scent was different enough from Mama and Papa's that no one yet had made the connection. I had tied a kerchief across my hair more for the sensibilities of the humans than for any real disguise. The slayer village all knew we were hanyou. I noticed Koji and Kazuki had scarves tied across their ears, too. No wonder Kazuki went home every so often. It must be awful to have to cover up all the time. I hoped, for the child's sake, that his baby would be born with more human shaped ears.

 

“Yeah.” Koji answered me, his eyes lighting up as he went on to tell me of his life at home. We spoke partially in English, partially in Japanese in deference to Sachi who looked baffled at the English words. But we three kids had grown up in the States. Our parents spoke Japanese at home, but everywhere else we heard English—on TV, at school, everywhere else. It was natural for us to speak it. “I'm getting my driver's license soon,” Koji said, and my eyebrows rose. He was already old enough for that? “Well, my permit,” he clarified in answer to my raised brows.

 

I felt a twinge of regret. I'd missed out on all that. I had never gotten to drive. Like every kid, I had looked forward to the day I could get my driving permit all through my childhood. Then I had to go and do something stupid, like fall in love, and move away to a place that had no cars and no chance for me to ever get my license. Not for hundreds of years, at least. “Yay,” I said weakly, giving my brother a little grin.

 

Mama and Papa were in the feudal era, too, although they no longer came to the village. I should have figured they'd be nearby with Kazuki's first child on the way any day now. They were doing their part to clear the area of hostile youkai, too. Kazuki sometimes met them to go out on patrol; sometimes, Miroku and even Sango went along with them, and it was like the old days for my parents, only Kazuki got to be a part of it. I regretted that, also. But I had made my bed, and truly, I loved the life I had here.

 

It would have been great if Sachi had had the baby while I was there, but it didn't work out that way. I left a few days later, promising to get together soon. I reminded Kazuki about his silver bracelet, too, and he popped back home and got it. Might as well muddy the waters of time a little more. Sachi and Kazuki's son was born with human-ish ears, although they did come to little points, not as noticeable as my Gintaro's, but enough. His hair was white as moonlight, though, like Papa's, and Kazuki told me the child had power. As Papa always said, blood will tell.