InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mayumi's Story ❯ Chapter 22 ( Chapter 22 )

Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi

 

 

Mayumi's Story, Chapter 22:

 

 

Taking out the strange youkai was easier said than done. Papa thought he had done it when he destroyed the first well all those years ago. If it was the same youkai. Fenn said he had killed him in the swamps of North America a few centuries before my parents arrived. He'd even shown them the youkai's skeleton. Now I had to wonder if it was all a cover-up. I hated to think ill of dear Uncle Fenn, who had always been good to me, but I was beginning to suspect his motives.

 

“Fenn, Fenn, Fenn,” a mocking voice spoke in my ear. I jumped. There had been no sound, no scent. There never was.

 

“You!” I said accusingly.

 

The strange youkai moved aside my washing and sat on the ground beside me. “You all think Fenn is your friend.”

 

I scooted back to put some distance between us, though it wouldn't have mattered if he really meant to hurt me, because he could just disappear and reappear beside me. Then again, so could I. “Stay out of my thoughts!” I growled. Then, “How do you know Fenn?”

 

The strange youkai laughed. “I won't make it that easy for you,” he said. “Just don't think Fenn will help you.”

 

“I don't,” I said. Then, because he seemed to be alone for a change and not particularly threatening, I asked. “Do you have a name? I can't keep calling you `the strange youkai.'

 

“Names—you mean like Fenn? What's in a name? Names are for mortal creatures, not for one such as I.”

 

He spoke as if he wasn't youkai the same as I was. I snorted, and he lifted an eyebrow, having caught my stray thought.

 

“I am not like you,” he said, eyes hard. “I'm not like any of you.”

 

“Yet you're like Fenn,” I guessed, and he scowled.

 

“Fenn is not like me,” he replied. That didn't really answer the question, but I didn't press him on it any further. He was communicating—that was the important thing.

 

“Why are you after us?” I whispered. It seemed like I asked him that question every time we met, yet he never gave me a satisfactory answer.

 

“Because you don't listen,” he hissed, and his mood turned angry.

 

“Then why don't you explain it to me?” I said softly, hoping to get more with sweetness than I had with hostility.

 

He picked up that thought, too, and abruptly stood. Just then I began to sense his creatures all around him, all around us. How did he do that? With sense, came scent, and with scent came form. That wasn't supposed to be how it worked.

 

He grinned, evilly, I would have said, but I'd been taught that pure youkai just were, and labels of good and evil came through contact with man. The strange youkai didn't seem to like man very much, so I doubted he would have had much contact, aside from harassing our friends to get to us.

 

“That's right,” he said, still grinning, easily reading my thoughts. “I have no need of humanity like you and your kind do.” He sauntered away, not bothering to disappear, and let his now-pervasive scent trail behind him. “If you must,” he called over his shoulder, “then you may call me Trace.”

 

I watched, gape-mouthed, as he and his creatures rounded the bend and were lost to my sight. Their smell lingered in my nostrils for some time afterward. I wondered how far away he needed to be before he could no longer hear my thoughts. Because his words didn't match his form. His creatures had the look of chaos about them, but he—he himself looked human in every situation I'd ever encountered him! I wondered if he saw the irony in that.

 

I didn't have time to worry about the strange youkai, or Trace, as he now called himself. I didn't believe for a minute that he gave me that name for my benefit—it fit him too well. Trace, the youkai who leaves no trace. Although I had a sneaking suspicion that he hadn't had a name before today.

 

I put Trace out of my mind since I couldn't do anything about him right now anyway. Daichi and I were going on a journey clear across Japan! I was so excited! Of course, we would be playing the human again, but I didn't mind. I got to dress up, meet other people, see places I'd only learned about from my mother's history books.

 

We would be gone for several months, so I put a note in my secret cave, in case my parents came looking for me. Without Kazuki here, I had no way, except the one I refused to take, of contacting them directly. I didn't want them to worry, and I figured they could keep an eye out for the strange youkai, and protect the village if need be, while I was gone. I didn't tell them in my note that the strange youkai now had a name; that could wait until I saw them face to face.

 

Daichi and I traveled as youkai, swift and silent, through forests and over mountains unless we sensed the presence of humans. It was our time to be together, and we took full advantage of it. I pitied the poor humans with their plodding animals and their puny strength. They had to climb, constrained by the limitations of their earthbound bodies, while we could leap, buoyed up by the part of us that was pure spirit.

 

Whenever we did meet up with humans, we played our parts to perfection. I had dyed my hair before we left, and we both hid our telltale ears, the most obvious sign of our differences. People in this time still believed in youkai, so it was a challenge to appear to be something we were not. I'm not saying I was ashamed of my human blood—some of my relatives were more than a little human, and Mama, of course, was all human. But I didn't think of myself that way.

 

We chased rumors of peace. It was bound to happen eventually, and the only reason we knew about it was because the numbers of virulent youkai which fed off war and death had started to dwindle. Sesshomaru noticed it first, and was astute enough to realize it was not just a result of his purges. So he brought the matter to Kouga's attention, who suggested Daichi and I could feel out the human community and find out whether the continual fighting had finally begun to slack off.

 

The end result: road trip!

 

I wished I had paid more attention in history class, not that my one year of high school freshman world studies even touched much on Japan. I could have saved us a little trouble. We were still a few years too early. But in the end, I lived the history I hadn't managed to study when I was younger. I can tell you that peace doesn't just suddenly replace war. Even if many of the villages we passed no longer had their men conscripted for the local daimyo to use in their petty wars, they still suffered from the lack of manpower to till their fields and harvest their crops. Not all the villagers turned soldiers were content to quietly go home and pick up where they'd left off. Many became bandits who had gotten into the habit of preying on those who were weaker than they were. There were still plenty of lesser youkai who thrived in those places.

 

Daichi and I attached ourselves to other human groups whenever possible when we traveled in populated areas. We weren't always accepted easily, because we were strangers, not because we were youkai. Sometimes it was impossible, and we traveled alone.

 

We had made it down to the southern part of Japan by the end of the first month, and some of the things I was seeing had me very nervous. Guns. Foreigners had brought guns to Japan, and while I was fairly certain guns couldn't kill one of us, I wasn't one hundred percent positive. I'd seen Takeo die. I knew youkai could die, no matter what that strange—Trace—said. I still didn't know how I had disappeared from the past. I could have been killed, for all I knew. I tried to steer Daichi away from humans with guns, but naturally, he was very curious to see what guns were all about. Typical guy.

 

We were alone, walking along a path that followed the seashore, when we encountered the stranger. He was tall, and he had hair on his face. He also carried a musket.

 

Daichi moved way too quickly and sniffed at the man and his gun. Daichi wasn't nearly as good at playing human as I was. The man's eyes widened, and he began sputtering in a strange language. Because we were youkai, we got the gist even if we didn't understand the words. He was praying. He was a priest—a Jesuit priest, as it turned out, and Daichi had seriously spooked him. I tried to calm the situation.

 

“Como esta?” I said, relying on my high school Spanish from more than half a century ago. It was the wrong thing to say.

 

The priest's eyes practically bugged out of his head, and I realized two things: one, he wasn't Spanish, he was Portuguese, and two, Japanese women like me had no business knowing any Spanish at all! I'd put my foot in it, all right.

 

He shakily raised the musket, all the while praying loudly in what I now realized was Portuguese. I couldn't let him shoot the musket. Moving with a speed that gave away what I was, I knocked the gun out of his hands and hurled it into the sea below. Daichi gave me a wounded look; he had wanted to inspect the gun more closely. “Sorry, sorry,” I said to the priest, and also to Daichi, speaking Japanese so that there would be no confusion. The priest now grabbed the cross around his neck, which completely baffled Daichi, and fell to his knees, waiting, I presume, for the stroke of death which he believed we would deliver shortly. I almost hated to disappoint him. “Come on, Daichi,” I murmured to my husband, “we need to leave, now.”

 

With one last longing look at the water where the musket had disappeared, Daichi turned and followed me as I took off at right angles to the sea. There was no need for subterfuge now; the priest had seen us for what we were. What he would make of it, after we left, I had no idea. We streaked off, faster than anything human could move, while the priest prostrated himself on the ground, shaking in fear I could still smell. I really hoped I hadn't screwed up time some more.

 

Sesshomaru was gratified to have our information when we returned. He missed having a human liaison, since Kohaku had died. At least now he knew what was going on in the human world, and could make the inevitable connections as to how it affected our world.

 

Papa thought my run-in with the Jesuit priest was hilarious. He wasn't quite so amused when I told him about Trace. Believe it or not, he got mad at me for not telling him sooner that the strange youkai—Trace—had been talking to me on and off for several years.

 

Trace. His name was more appropriate than I had first thought. He might not think so, in his arrogance, but he did leave a trace of himself every time he visited. Someday I would figure him out, and then I would get him.