InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mika- the Inu Ookami Hanyou ❯ The Baby in the Well ( Prologue )

The Baby in the Well

 

Modern Era Japan: April 1979, Higurashi Shrine

Ayame's thoughts drifted in her mind as leaves in a stream, constant, yet bouncing off one another. She breathed on the window, forming a fog spot. She drew several squiggly lines to match the pouring rain outside. Fresh air was what she needed, not to mention a cigarette. She sighed and looked across the room at her new husband, Jason. She smiled, knowing he was here with her and the meeting with her family had gone so well only a few short months ago.

 

She stretched as she got up, not realizing she had been sitting for so long. Ayame grabbed her cigarettes off the table in the dinning area and her jacket from the hook, by the door. A shiver raced up her spine as she put the jacket on, not realizing it was so cold and damp as she stepped out onto the front steps. As she had her thumb on the lighter, ready to ignite the flame, something stopped Ayame. It was a sound, barely audible. The same instant the sound hit her ears; alarms went of in her brain and body simultaneously. The sound was a baby. The baby was crying, but not just crying, it was screaming. She flew off the porch throwing her cigarette and lighter aside without even realizing it. The screaming was coming from the well.

 

“How could that be?” she thought. Ayame had not heard the baby when she was outside earlier and had not seen anyone go inside the well house for months. She was running on pure instinct and adrenaline now. Flying through the puddles, she did not feel the cold water and the sharp rocks as they tore at her bare feet. Ayame tried to yank open the doors, but a chain with a padlock rattled in response. With the sound of the rattling chains the infant screamed louder and more hysterically. “Damn it!!” she cried out in frustration as she slammed her hands on the doors. “The one time father actually listened and locked the well down this had to happen,” she thought. She turned and bolted to the tool shed. Once inside the well, panic once again struck her. Everyone had pitched in with cleaning and organizing the shed during the spring cleaning a few days earlier while Jason was out on maneuvers. Ayame looked around and frantically started to pull things off the shelves as she looked for an ax. When she finally grabbed it and turned to leave a gust of wind slammed the door shut. Ayame pushed it open and raced back out into the pouring rain. Once again she could hear the infant in her own mind it seemed the infant was crying for her. When Ayame reached the well house doors, she lifted the ax and with all her might she swung at the door. Because of the screaming child and the urgency of the situation, she put the head in the middle of the door, no where near the chains. Being a little more careful the next few times the ax found its mark. She had to swing several times before the chains finally broke. Ayame threw the ax aside, grabbed the chains and pulled them off the heavy doors. She threw the doors open and looked inside. She could barely see anything, but she didn't need her sense of sight to find the baby. Its terrified screams gave away its position. She hesitated before entering any further however, when it dawned on her.

 

“The well…the baby was in the well. But how could that be? Surely father would have heard the baby before locking up, right,” Ayame thought as she scanned the area around the well opening. She shook her head and entered the well house as she did so; she took off her jacket and peered into the well. Ayame spotted the infant directly in the center. She looked around thinking of a way she could get into the well without harming it. There was a rope that was tied to a beam directly above the well. There used to be a bell above the well opening. She thanked her mother for insisting on leaving the rope as she untied it. She let it drop. “Perfect.” It ended about 3 feet above the baby. Not only would the rope let her get to the baby but it would ring the bell alerting the others. She also grabbed a nearby basket to put the baby in to bring up as she grabbed onto the rope and put the basket around her neck. She looked through the well house doorway at the house. She almost abandoned the idea to rescue the infant. Ayame felt a strong desire to go get Jason, but as she looked at the baby quickly abandoned the idea and tightened her grip on the rope. She had not idea how she was going to do this, all she knew was she had too. She stepped off the edge of the well and climbed down the rope. It was very hard to see anything in the well and she cursed at herself for not grabbing a flashlight out of the shed as well. By the time she reached the bottom of the well, her ears and head were ringing from the intensified sound of the crying baby the second her feet hit the solid ground, she grabbed the child and held the infant close to her chest.

 

Trying to keep her voice from shaking, she comforted the child. “Hush little one, I have you now. It's ok, it's ok now.” Human contact and the sound of Ayame's voice, and heart beat seemed to calm the baby down a little. Ayame wrapped the infant as tightly as she could in the blankets the infant was wrapped and put it in the basket. She put the basket around one side of her neck and to the left side of her body so she could look at the child. By the time they got to the top Ayame's hands were blistered and her arms felt like dead weights.

 

“I have to get to the house and alert Jason!” grabbing the infant and covering its head, she made a mad dash to the house. “Help Jason, Father. Help!” she cried out as she sprinted toward the door. “A light!” she thought. Someone had heard her. The door opened and father's shadow encompassed the door way.

 

“What is going on out here?” he said. By the sound and tone of his voice, she knew he had been jolted out of a deep sleep by his daughter's out cry.

 

“Father, hurry, get blankets, hurry quickly!” as the words escaped from her mouth Ayame collapsed on the porch. She knew she was going to fall, as she suddenly became light headed with tingling fingers were indications of the exhausted state of her body. The baby was protected by the position she fell however, she made sure of that. Her father rushed to her side.

 

“The baby…the well, the baby was in the well…” she mustered all of her strength to say this as she pointed to the well.

 

“What, Ayame, you are not making sense, dear. The baby was in the well?” With that said he gathered her and the baby up in his large arms and proceeded to carry them to the house. Before Ayame passed out from exhaustion she felt the warmth of the house and heard her mother and husband. “It was going to be okay,” she thought as she looked at the baby, “It was going to be okay.”

 

Upon hearing the crying baby entering the home, Ayame's mother grabbed a discarded baby bottle from the Shrine's lost and found box. She quickly washed the bottle as she heated some milk. Once the milk had been warmed sufficiently Mother filled the bottle and handed it to Midori who was trying to calm the infant as Jason and Father took care of Ayame.

 

“Here, the baby sounds famished. Once we get something into the child we can take it to the hospital and turn it over to the authorities,” Mother said. The others looked at Mother as the child noisily sucked down the bottle.

 

“No, this child is staying here. It came to us as if by a miracle. I'm not letting go of this child!” Ayame demanded. Despite her ordeal in reaching the child, Ayame's spirit remained strong. “When I lost my only unborn child last month, Mother, we found out that I can never have children. No amount of treatments will ever change it. This child is here for a reason, and I plan on raising it as my own whether you like it or not!”

 

As the confrontation heated, Midori quietly excused herself from the room, taking the now quiet infant upstairs to her bedroom. She carefully removed the infant from the blanket, the pendant slid onto the bed. Midori, unaware of the pendant, continued to fuss with the child, changing her into a new diaper and an outfit also from a discarded diaper bag. Ayame slid next to her younger sister as she gazed at the quiet infant.

 

“Mother insists that we at least take her to the hospital to make sure that everything is okay.”

 

Looking back at her sister, Midori replied, “I agree with her. Although I feel that you're right. This little girl is a blessing. With her fair complexion, she'll fit in as your `daughter' without many questions. But there is something rather odd about her as well.” Midori carefully revealed the infant's left shoulder where the tiny black characters were barely visible under the tender pink skin.

 

“What do they mean?”

 

Midori replied, “Without a magnifying glass, I'm not sure, but two of the characters are dog and wolf.” She handed the now dressed infant to Ayame.

 

As Midori gathered the blankets to be placed in the wash, Ayame noticed the pendant lying on the bed. “Where did this come from?” She carefully picked it up and examined the howling wolf pendant. “This is very lovely, and expertly crafted. Is this yours?”

 

Midori looked at the pendant as she replied, “No, it's not mine. I think it fell out of the blankets. What are those markings on the wolf?” They both looked at the pendant intently, deciphering the characters.

 

“I believe that it says `Mika.' What a wonderful name for this child. A new moon, like a fresh start is what this family needs. Let's get her bundled up a little more and have her checked out by the hospital.” Midori continued taking the blankets Mika had been wrapped in to the laundry room as Ayame wrapped her in a cast off baby blanket.

 

With Jason in tow, Ayame took the infant to the local hospital where she received a thorough examination by doctors. Few questions were asked of the couple as to how they acquired the infant, seeing her resemblance to European descent. Once the infant was given a clean bill of health, Ayame handed Jason the child and said, “I give you a daughter, Mika Naomi Jones.” Jason held the infant up, looking into her bright blue eyes.

 

“Mika Naomi Jones. I'm glad to finally be formally introduced to you. I will love and cherish you as if you were my own flesh and blood,” He murmured. He laid the child to his shoulder and held her tight. Ayame moved to embrace her husband and daughter. That evening as they returned to the shrine, Jason and Ayame swore never to reveal Mika's mysterious arrival until she was old enough to understand.

 

They lived in Japan until Mika turned three years old when Jason had been reassigned to a teaching position at his home town high school in Jerome, Idaho as the newly formed Naval Junior Reserved Officer Training Corp. For the next fifteen years the Jones family lived like any other family with a home in the country, until an accident changed everything for one girl who thought that she had a normal, ordinary family.