InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Moon Behind Clouds ❯ Chapter 4

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Chapter 4


“She’s going out after the demon herself . . .” Sesshomaru thought.

Kikyo had just finished changing back into her old kimono and gone out the door to her room as he thought it. She was already down the hall and into the main room when he opened his door. By the time he got to the porch, she was well down the path. He could just see the glow of her white kimono in the distance when he got there. But she was not going towards the mountain. She was headed away from the village, out towards the forest.

It was easy to follow her in the moonlight. There was still a heavy mist in the air from the rain, and it gave everything around a painted effect, making it all seem more than real, if that were possible. The path wove right, then left. Sesshomaru had to be careful to step quietly, because the same glow that made it so easy for him to follow her would also make it very easy for her to catch sight of him, should she turn around. But Kikyo was intent on something else.

Up ahead was what had once been a tiny cemetery. Tragically, in the last few weeks it had gotten much larger. The path curved sharply to go around it, but Kikyo’s feet made a straight line as she walked out among the graves. The older burials were closer to the road. She walked past them, the sweep of her robe, with its huge sleeves, both exaggerating and concealing her movements by turns. One moment she seemed to hover as she surveyed the various markers, then she would flit like a ghost amid the tombs. She made her way to the back, to the section with the freshest graves.

The rain had brought up a heavy scent of soil, and as some of the burials were a few weeks old now, there tickled in with it a hint of putrefaction. Kikyo stopped here, and Sesshomaru watched her, to see what she would do. For a moment she stood looking at the ground sadly. But it was a strange sort of sadness, not the grief in mourning someone that one knew, or the less tangible heaviness of contemplating life cut short. It was no normal grief at all, such as the living feel for the dead. This was the grief of the dead for the dead. In the moonlight, her white skin was both lovely -- and hideous.

Kikyo held out her arm, and the sleeve of her kimono hung open. It billowed, but not in the breeze, for there was no breeze. Then a blue light could be seen, like the moon showing through a faint mist, but the moon was not behind Kikyo, it was overhead, and already going down in the other half of the sky. Sesshomaru watched to see what this light could be. As he watched, there came from the folds of her sleeve a blue shape, with the body of a snake, but the head of a dragon. Effortlessly it flowed out, without making any kind of sound, and began to wind its way among the tombs. It flowed over one stone, wrapped around another: it was searching for something. When it found the grave of the young woman whose funeral procession they had witnessed on their way into town it stopped, then reared up before diving beneath the soil.

Kikyo lowered her arm. A moment later, the spectral serpent emerged from the ground, carrying beneath it a glowing blue light. It flowed up from the grave, and back to Kikyo, who raised her other arm. The blue light disappeared into her other sleeve, where it could be seen moving until it stopped in the middle of her chest, where her heart would have been. Kikyo lurched backwards, not standing so much as suspended in the air while the light grew in intensity until it was almost blinding. Then she pitched forward, and it began to fade.

She hung there like that for several moments. When she moved to lift her head, her arms and shoulders remained motionless. It was as if her body was a marionette, and it was only through sheer force of will that her spirit was able to make it move, to pull its strings, to make it seem to go on living. Even her face had a kind of clumsiness to it. Her eyes half rolled, barely able to focus. Her hair, so long and pretty, that should have been her pride as a woman, hung in a bedraggled mess. Her eyes met Sesshomaru’s, and she began to laugh at the thought of him seeing her like this.

“Now he knows what I really am”, she thought to herself. “How wretched and revolting I must be.”

But Sesshomaru did not look revolted. And he did not laugh.

“DEVIL!”

Kikyo and Sesshomaru turned to see to whom the voice belonged.

“Witch! Harlot! Fiend! How dare you defile this place, and steal the souls of the young women of this village! I only call you devil because I know no worse word!”

It was the monk from the inn. Sesshomaru started to move, but Kikyo shot out her hand to stop him. She took one tottering step forward, then another, before she could stand up again.

“You fool! Do you think that I am going to live forever!? This body is crudely made, and my soul is but loosely bound to it -- what is it to you if the souls of these poor girls sojourn with me for a season, until I too perish, and we all cross over together? Who better to console them than I -- a maiden whose life was also cut short? Who better knows their sorrows, of lives unlived, of dreams unfulfilled, because they were also my own? Go away, monk! Your muttering and chanting aren’t wanted here!”

As she spoke, the fire in which her other body had burned seemed to leap up in her eyes. The monk stumbled backwards, over one of the stones, then jumping up, turned, and fled.

“Hmpfh!” Kikyo said, turning her back to him. Sesshomaru looked at her as calmly as ever. A long, awkward moment passed. Kikyo reached up and loosed the ribbon from her hair so she could fix her ponytail, then retied it. Sesshomaru turned half way around, so that he stood in profile.

“Do you mean to go after the demon tonight?”, he asked her.

“No. Better to wait until morning.”

A lazy breeze moved among the graves, swatting at Kikyo’s hair, and the billows of Sesshomaru’s sleeves.

“Then we should return to the inn”, he said. Then he turned, and walked away.

“Hmpfh”, Kikyo said again, only this time without her earlier indignation. Then she set off after him.

“We should be careful”, she said as they approached the inn. “We don’t know what sort of trouble that monk might have set up for us.

Sesshomaru looked unconcerned. He walked right up to the edge of the inn’s wooden porch, and looked to either side, to see if there were any unpleasant surprises. But nothing happened. Kikyo went on ahead of him. She had almost made it to the door when she let out a small gasp.

“Footprints!”

The ground was still quite wet from all the rain, and very muddy. In her haste to get back unseen, she had forgotten about her own lack of shoes, and had left a muddy track of cemetery soil right across the porch.

“How could I have been so careless?”, she said, and she began to frantically look around beside the door. “They must have a rag or a bucket or something so I --”

Just then the glowing ball of light from the night watchman’s lantern loomed around the corner, like the moon coming out from behind a cloud. It began to move down the street.

“Oh no, he’ll see us”, she whispered, “What are we going to -- oofh!”

In her haste to turn around, she had run right into Sesshomaru. The light from the lamp grew larger, as it continued towards them. Without another moment or another word, he bent and picked Kikyo up, and carried her through the door.

He brought her through the main room, down the hall, to the end of the hall. He did not set her down until he was inside the door to her room. The lantern passed by the front of the inn without stopping.

“Thank you, I -- I was very foolish, I --”

But Sesshomaru turned and walked away. A moment later he came back, and handed Kikyo a damp cloth. Neither of them said anything while she hurriedly wiped her feet, and then the place where she had been standing. Then Sesshomaru took the cloth from her, and still without a word, went down the hallway. He looked out the door, down the street to where he could see the orb of the watchman’s light swaying lazily as it moved away from him, and he knew that it’s bearer was lax in his duty, and had not seen them. He watched the light grow smaller and smaller. When it was quite far away, Sesshomaru went out onto the porch, and carefully wiped each one of Kikyo’s footprints away.

Kikyo waited for some minutes in her room, before she drew the two panels of her door shut. She did not see him again until morning.