InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Punishment ❯ Chapter 7: Dreams ( Chapter 7 )

A/N: This is a warning for this chapter. This chapter is very graphic with some of its violence and as such should not be viewed by anyone who does not believe they can handle this brand of violence. Because of this one scene, I am bumping up the rating for this chapter to PG-13

 

 

Chapter 7: Dreams

 

 

Kagome left the ground almost running; she had meant to go back but the idea of going home seemed almost unbearable. It was there, in that dreadful little cupboard of a place that the thought of it had been maturing in her mind for more than a month. She walked on, not heeding where she went.

 

Her nervous shuddering seemed to turn into a fever; she even felt chilly; in that terrible heat she was cold. Driven by an inner compulsion, she tried to make herself interested in everything and everybody she met, but with little success. She kept relapsing into abstraction, and when she again raised her head with a start and looked around, she could remember neither what she had been just thinking of nor which way she had just come.

 

In this fashion she walked straight across the wood and into the town near where Mamoru and his family were camped. At first the greenery and freshness eased her tired eyes. But these pleasant new sensations eventually gave way to painful and irritating ones.

 

Occasionally she would stop in front of some picturesque home in its green setting, look and see well-dressed ladies and children running about the gardens. He took a particular interest in the flowers and looked at them the longest of all. Splendid ladies and gentleman passed her on horseback, and he gazed after them with curious eyes and forgot them before they were out of sight.

 

A few yards along her legs felt suddenly heavy and she began to feel very sleepy. She turned homewards, but by the time she reached the edge of the wood she was too exhausted to go on, and she turned into the wood into some bushes and let herself fall to the ground and was asleep at once.

 

A sick person's dreams are most often extraordinarily distinct and vivid and extremely life-like. A scene may be composed of the most unnatural elements, but the setting and presentation are so plausible, the details so subtle, so unexpected, so artistically in harmony with the whole picture, that the dreamer could not invent them for themselves in their waking state. Such morbid dreams always make a strong impression on the dreamer's already disturbed and excited nerves, and are remembered for a long time.

 

Kagome had a horrible dream, she dreamt that she was a child again; however, she was in the feudal era. She was seven, walking with her father along a dusty road with her father through the village. The afternoon was grey and sultry, the place exactly as it was that day, except the dream was more vivid than her recollection.

 

She saw the little town as clearly as if she held it in her little hand. A few paces in front of them stood a large public area where men liked to come and drink. This place made an unpleasant impression on her, even frightened her.

 

There was such a crowd there, so much shouting, laughing, and cursing, such hoarse bawling of songs, such frequent brawls, and so many people lounging about outside, drunk, with horrible distorted faces.

 

The road winding past the large house was always dusty, some three hundred yards further the road wound again past a large cemetery. While she and her father were passing the public house, she was holding her fathers hand and looking fearfully over her shoulder at the house.

 

There seemed to be some sort of special festivity going on; which attracted her attention; there was a crowd of townsfolk and peasants and all kinds of rabble, all in their best clothes, and all drunk and bawling out songs. Near the entrance stood a cart, not an ordinary peasant's cart, but one of the huge ones drawn by great cart-horses.

 

The strange part about this one was that a peasant's small, lean, decrepit old pale horse was harnessed to it. Suddenly there was a din of shouting and singing as a number of peasants, big men in red and blue kimono's, came out of the house roaring drunk.

 

“Get in, everybody! Get in!” shouted one, a young man with a thick neck and fleshy face as red as a beet, “I'll take the lot of you. Get in!” There was a burst of laughter and shouting.

 

“What, with that broken-down old nag?”

 

“You must be out of your wits, Mikharu, to put that old mare on that cart!”

 

“The poor beast must be twenty years old if she's a day, lads!”

 

“Get in! I'll take all of you,” shouted Mikharu again, jumping in first himself.

 

He gathered up the reins and stood upright at the front of the cart. “Matvey has taken the bay,” he shouted from the cart, “and as for the old mare, lads, she's just breaking my heart. It can kill her for all I care; she's only eating her head off. Get in, I tell you! I'll make her gallop! She'll gallop all right!” And he took up the whip, enjoying the thought of beating the old nag.

 

“Well, get in, than!” Laughed the crowd. “You heard him say he'd get a gallop out of her! She can't have galloped for ten years, I dare say.”

 

“She's going to go now!”

 

“Come on, lads, bring your whips. No being sorry for her!”

 

“That's it; let her have it!”

 

They all clambered into Mikharu's wagon, with roars of laughter. There were six of them, and there was still room for more. They took up with them a fat, red-faced peasant-woman in red cotton. She was eating and laughing.

 

The crowd round about was laughing too, and indeed, who could help laughing at the idea that such a sorry beast was going to pull such a load, and at a gallop? Two of the lads in the cart picked up their whips to help Mikharu. There was a roar of “Gee up!” and the wretched old nag tugged with all her might, but far from galloping she could barely stir at all, but simply scraped with her feet, grunting and flinching from the blows that landed on her like hail from the three whips.

 

The laughter in the cart and among the crowd redoubled, but Mikharu lost his temper and began raining blow on the little mare in a passion of anger, as if he really expected her to gallop.

 

“Let me come as well, lads,” Shouted a fellow from the crowd, attracted by the sport.

 

“Get in, everybody get in,” cried Mikharu, “She'll pull you all. I'll give it her!” and he lashed away, so furious he hardly knew what he was doing.

 

“Papa, papa,” cried Kagome, “look what they are doing, papa! They are beating the poor horse!”

 

“Come away,” said her father, “They are drunk and playing the fool, the brutes. Come away; don't look!” And he tried to draw the girl away.

 

But she tore herself away from her fathers grasp and ran heedlessly towards the horse. The poor creature was in a sad state. She was panting and kept stopping and than beginning to tug again, almost ready to drop.

 

“Beat her to death!” howled Mikharu, “That's what it's come to. I'll give it to her!”

 

“You're a brute beast, no better than the demons!” cried an old man in the crowd.

 

“The idea of such a horse pulling a load like that!” added another.

 

“You'll founder the poor old thing,” shouted a third.

 

“You keep out of this! She's mine, isn't she? I can do what I like with my own. Get in, some more of you! Everybody get in! She's damn well going to gallop! …”

 

Suddenly there was a great explosion of laughter that drowned everything else: the old mare had rebelled against the hail of blows and was lashing out feebly with her hoofs. Even the old man could not help laughing. Indeed, it was ludicrous that such a decrepit old mare should still have a kick left in her.

 

Two men in the crowd got whips, ran to the horse, one on each side, and began to lash at her ribs.

 

“Hit her on the nose and across the eyes, beat her across the eyes!” yelled Mikharu.

 

“Let's have a song, lads!” someone shouted from the wagon, and others joined in.

 

Somebody struck up a coarse song, somebody else whistled the chorus. The fat women went on eating and giggling.

 

Kagome ran towards the horse, than round in front, and saw them lashing her across the eyes, and actually striking her very eyeballs. She was weeping. Her heart seemed to rise into her throat, and tears rained from her eyes. One of the whips stung her face, but she did not feel it; she was wringing her hands and crying aloud.

 

She ran to a grey-haired, grey-bearded old man, who was shaking his head in pity for the poor animal. A peasant-woman took her by the hand and tried to lead her away, but she tore herself loose and ran towards the mare. She was almost at her last breath, but she began kicking again.

 

“The demon's fly away with you!” shouted Mikharu in a fury.

 

He flung away his whip, stooped down and dragged up from the floor of the cart a long, thick wooden shaft, grasped one end with both hands, and swung it with an effort over the wretched animal.

 

Cries arose: “He'll kill her!” “He'll crush her!”

 

“She's my property!” yelled Mikharu, and with a mighty swing let the shaft fall. There was a heavy thud.

 

“Lash her, lash her! Why are you stopping?” shouted voices in the crowd.

 

Mikharu flourished the heavy bar again and brought it down with another great swing on the back of the wretched creature. Her back legs gave way under her, but she staggered up, tugging and jerking one way and the other to get away; six whips rained blows on her from every side, and the shaft rose and fell a third time, and than a fourth, with a rhythmical swing. Mikharu was frenzied with rage at not having killed her with one blow.

 

“She's tough!” yelled one of the crowd.

 

“This time she'll go down, for certain, lads. She's finished,” shouted another.

 

“Take an axe to her! Finish her off at one go!” cried a third.

 

“Oh, may you all be bitten to death by wasps!” shrieked Mikharu furiously, dropping the shaft and swooping down again to drag out an even bigger shaft.

 

“Look out!” he yelled, and crashed it down with all his strength on the poor old mare.

 

The blow was a crushing one; the mare staggered, sank down, and than made another effort to get up, but the heavier bar struck another swinging blow on her back, and she fell as if her legs had been cut from under her.

 

“Finish her!” shouted Mikharu, and jumped down, quite beside himself, from the cart. A few of the young men, as drunk and red in the face as he, snatched up whatever came to hand--whips, sticks, the other shaft--and ran to the dying mare. Mikharu stationed himself at the side and belabored her back at random with his large pole. The wretched animal stretched out her muzzle, drew a deep laboring breath, and died.

 

The crowd was still shouting.

 

“He's done for her!”

 

“All the same, she didn't gallop!”

 

“My own property!” cried Mikharu, who, with bloodshot eyes, was standing with his shaft in his hands and looking sorry that there was no longer anything to beat.

 

Many voices in the crowd were now calling, “Shame! You're no better than a demon!”

 

The poor little girl was quite beside herself. She pushed herself, shrieking, through the crowd to the mare, put her arms round the dead muzzle dabbled with blood and kissed the poor eyes and mouth…Than she got up and rushed furiously at Mikharu with her fists clenched.

 

At that moment her father, who had been looking for her for a long time, caught her up and carried her out of the crowd.

 

“Come along, come along!” he said. “Let us go home.”

 

“Papa, why did they…kill…the poor horse?” Kagome sobbed, catching her breath. The words forced themselves out of her choking throat in a scream.

 

“They are drunk, they are playing the fool. It is none of our business. Let us go.” She put her arm around her father, but her breast was convulsed with sobs. She struggled with breath, tried to cry out, and awoke.

 

She woke up panting and sweating, her hair damp with perspiration, and sprang up in alarm.

 

“Thank Kami, it was only a dream,” she said, sitting down under a tree and drawing long breaths. “But why did I dream it? Can I be starting some sort of fever? It was such a horrible dream…”

 

 

 

 

A/N

I would really like to hear response to this chapter.

I have been attempting some foreshadowing in the previous chapters, but never as blatant as this.

To all who have read this story thus far:

Thank you.