InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Mountainside ❯ The Helpmeet ( Chapter 2 )

Here we go! Inuyasha is the property of Rumiko Takahashi and "The Country Wife" is the public-doman work of W. Wyncherly.

 

(bows to andy1)

 

 

But first, random Twilight stuff:

 

EDWARD: (to Bella) You'd better stay away from me. I find you so crazy intoxicating that I want to eat you.

BELLA: Is that some kind of Northwestern talk? We'll I'm hip. I think you're hot too.

EDWARD: No, I mean that literally.

BELLA: HOT.

EDWARD: I want to stalk you like a bunny and suck out your corpuscles in a very non-metaphorical manner!!

BELLA: Pick me up at eight!

EDWARD: (shakes her) I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, GODDAMMIT!

BELLA: AWESOME!

EDWARD: Gyah!

 

 

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Miroku walked briskly in the early morning light, yet another reason why he had to get out of this town rising to the surface: Mistress Barako's brew might taste like the wrong end of a rafting pole, but it could still leave a fellow feeling as though his head had been split open. It took all of his monkly discipline to maintain a mild and composed expression.

 

He flicked his eyes around the street. The ratting siftings of the stews looked back at him with a hundred eyes that they weren't supposed to have. This town wasn't that big to begin with, and this wasn't one of its better neighborhoods. The fact that a local monk smelled like an old lady was probably the least of anyone's worries. What had possessed him to settle here, or in one place at all? The jealous husbands all knew him by sight and there were only so many times that a fellow could convince the same innkeeper that a malicious demon presence had settled on his roof. Superfluous exorcism wasn't exactly a repeat business industry. He stifled a sign and knocked on the shopkeeper's door.

 

The door opened, and Miroku's unlikely helpmeet met his polite smile with the barest hint of a scowl.

The apothecary was a relative newcomer to Town-on-the-Mountain. She'd turned up a few months back and set up shop offering healing herbs and other treatments. The novelty of a young beautiful woman with no husband and no visible interest in finding one had set gossiping tongues wagging. She was a witch from the southlands, come to ensnare the spirits of the townsfolk. She was a courtesan driven from Kyoto by jealous rivals, and the boy who lived with her was the son of a great nobleman. She was a priestess from Musashi who had come in secret to protect the settlement from the demons of the peak. However, the girl's unending modesty had eventually bored the overworked maids and plump housewives back to their usual fare of cheating husbands and Inuyasha.

Staying in town to find Inuyasha a girl was all well and good, but a man had to make provision for his own needs. With his reputation an open secret through the entire town and most of the outlying settlements, it was time to get ...drastic. Somewhere between the buzz of having a new project and the unholy shrieking of bad sake, Miroku had come up with a plan, and such a plan. Another few mugs and he'd managed the courage to put it into motion.

It would have done his old master Mushin proud. Or had him beating his head against the floor in shame.

"Good morning, madame," Miroku greeted the woman.

"Good morning, Houshi-sama," she replied with a little bow that somehow managed to convey every inch of her disapproval.

"And may I ask how you have fared on the mission I gave you yesterday?" Miroku prompted.

The apothecary folded her arms across her chest. "Well it was beneath my dignity as a taijiya and an honest woman, but I have done as you asked."

Miroku blinked. "A taijiya?" He recovered quickly, "Ah I'd been wondering why my local herbmaster would stride about her shop with such uncanny grace. It seems we have even more in common than I'd thought," he said warmly. "Tell me, what do you think of our treaty with the spirits? Do you think it will last?"

"A person can hope," she answered levelly. "I have no wish to return to my former profession. My knowledge of herbs and healing has allowed me to earn an honest living," she said. "I have no fear of peace."

"But surely you work elsewhere, serving a more ...respectable clientele," Miroku suggested carefully.

Her narrowed eyes bored into his. Miroku kept his face mild. He'd stared down scavenging centipedes the size of horses, met the eight gaping eyes of the spiderhead demons. A feisty young woman with an attitude? Oh, but it would take more than that to make him quail.

"In any case," he continued, unfazed, "about yesterday."

"I went to of the greatest gossipmongers in town and repeated the information you gave me, as you gave it to me."

"No embellishments?" Miroku asked playfully.

"None from me," the woman answered. "But I expect the story will be exaggerated plenty before noon today."

"Isn't that always the way of it?" Miroku asked.

"I wouldn't know, Houshi-sama," she answered coldly. "I do not gossip."

Except for pay, Miroku mused but held his tongue. True or not, it was likely to get him a good smack in the face, and the former demon hunter looked like she had an arm on her.

"And you weren't obvious about it, I trust?" Miroku went on. "You did let them pry it out of you?"

"Just as you asked," answered the woman. "I behaved as if it were the most awful secret."

Miroku smiled. "But the real secret is between you and me, my dear," he answered, holding out a respectable-sized pouch.

The apothecary narrowed her eyes suspiciously, plucking the pouch up with one calloused hand. "I don't need to count this, do I?" she asked.

"Madame, you wound me," Miroku answered.

The woman's eyes narrowed as she weighed the purse in her palm, but she set it aside without further comment.

"I owe you my thanks," Miroku said, inclining his head politely. He moved to go, but then hesitated. "But I must ask..."

"Yes, priest?"

"When I first raised this issue with you the other day, you did not seem nearly so..." he searched her cold eyes as he searched for the word, "...judgmental."

"I was always judgmental," she told him frankly. "I had simply come to a different conclusion."

He raised an eyebrow expectantly, genuinely curious.

"I had thought that you wished me to spread these lies about you—"

"Not so loud!" Miroku interrupted.

"—because you wished to dispense with your current ways. I thought perhaps that this was some means of distancing yourself from your former companions without giving offense."

Miroku's eyebrows twitched in true surprise. That certainly explained why someone who conducted herself so formally would stoop to the methods he'd required, but there was another feeling growing inside his chest.

She'd actually ...though highly of him. It was an unfamiliar and not entirely comfortable sensation.

"...but once I repeated the knowledge to Mistress Mura down by the south well, it became clear that this plan had other uses," the woman went on. "Am I right?" she asked. "That is what you mean to do, isn't it?"

"Yes," Miroku admitted with a smile. "I must confess that you have me exactly."

"I will keep to my end of the bargain," the apothecary promised. "But I ask that you find other cohorts if you should ever concoct a similar scheme."

Miroku nodded respectfully. "As you wish," he said. "But I expect my current one to suffice."

 

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drf 24 (at) columbia (dot) edu