InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Rebound ❯ Part 3 ( Chapter 3 )

"Why should I come back with you?" he asked. "I don't understand your world. There's no place for me in your world. What would I do there?"

"What do you do here?" she responded.

His cheeks turned pink. "I have…work, I cut wood, the villagers trade with me…" He looked away, his mouth a thin line. He had nothing; he was a charity case, and he knew it. "I have seen your time. There is no forest, nothing I could do that would be helpful or worthwhile. I have no learning, no-high school, no university. I've read your books, I know people in your Tokyo must have learning, an education. I have nothing. What would I do?"

She said quietly, "Well, after a few months, you'd walk."

They were silent for a minute, during which he would not look at her face. Finally he said, "Well. That's a temptation, isn't it? Greater than the temptation of the Shikon no Tama." He looked up. "Let's take care of that foot before your…your mi-cro-or-ga-nisms…give it an infection."

He reached for the foot. Subdued, she let him have it. "You really did read that first aid book, didn't you?" she said.

He turned the flashlight on the sole of her foot. "And the biology book," he said. "And math, which is not so hard as you said. And English, which is very hard. And history." He sighed. "By my reckoning, it's now the year 1584 of the common era. We heard news months ago that Lord Idiot Nobunaga had been assassinated. In a few years my old home of Kyushu will fall to Hideyoshi, and eventually our Houjou will be defeated."

She reacted to the name; he raised an eyebrow. "The man I-the man whose wedding-he was a Houjou," she explained.

"Ah, Kagome was a samurai's woman," he said, running the light up and down her foot.

"Not a samurai," she said. "A systems analyst."

"I don't know what that is," he said.

"Neither do I," she said.

Inuyasha lowered the light and grinned at her over her foot. "I am a man who cuts wood," he said. "That you can understand."

"Come back with me," she said.

"No wood to cut there," he replied.

"Please," she said. "You could keep me company."

"Ah," he said. "Then it would be my turn for ribaundo."

Kagome bit her lip. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know my own heart anymore."

"That," he said, "is something I understand."

Suddenly Kagome felt overwhelmed by a terrible need. She glanced surreptitiously around the room: nothing that looked like a chamber pot. "Inuyasha," she said. "Do you have-I have to-is there an outhouse?"

He stared at her blankly. "Outhouse?" he said. "There's a forest."

Kagome lay back, closed her eyes and groaned. "I hate this era," she said. "I mean, not everything. But this part-I hate this part."

She opened her eyes. He was kneeling over her in his odd one-legged way, holding out his hand. She let him pull her up. He clambered awkwardly to his feet-foot-and with the help of the crutch braced himself to haul her to her feet-foot. They were quite a pair. He hurried her, as best they could hurry, out the door and into the trees, him hobbling on his crutch. She winced and stepped carefully on her heel, trying not to drive the splinter further into her sole.

They stopped at a relatively secluded patch of brush.

"Turn around," she said.

"As you command, Lady Kagome," he said, turning his back. "Don't piss on your foot or you'll have to wash it again."

She snorted. "I'll have to wash it again anyway, but not from that. Urine is sterile."

"`Urine is sterile,'" he repeated. "What's that in real words?"

She sighed. "Don't be difficult. Piss is clean. No microorganisms."

"Huh," he said. "How about that? Stinks, though. But not as much as shit. Shit's not sterile, is it?"

"No," she said. She was standing barelegged in a cluster of saplings, her bladder aching, trying to convince herself to strip off her panties and go. "No," she repeated, "shit's about as unsterile as you get."

"Bad planning on someone's part, putting them so close together," he said casually.

She burst out in giggles; her bladder sphincter screamed. "I can't believe I'm standing in the woods having this conversation with you," she laughed.

"Are you going to go?" he asked.

"I'm psyching myself up," she said.

"Damn," he said. "Women."

"Men," she replied. It had been an ongoing source of amusement for the males of their group. The girls would tiptoe off quietly, desperate for privacy; Kagome always brought along extra packets of tissue for the grateful Sango. The guys would just find a tree. On one occasion she and Inuyasha had been heatedly bickering and without breaking off his end of the argument he had undone his trousers, sent a stream off into the brush, and tied himself up again, entirely unaware of Kagome's sudden dumbfounded silence. Did he remember that? Probably not.

Damn. Her tiny black purse was sitting back in her mother's kitchen. "I can't do this," she said. "I don't have any tissues."

"Whole bush full of leaves right in front of you," he said.

"Go away," she said.

"I'll just have to come back for you," he said. He leaned against the nearest tree.

She was really desperate. Grabbing a sapling for support, she stood on one leg and slipped off the black silk panties, looping them over one arm. "If you turn around, I swear I'll kill you," she said.

"I'm not that desperate to watch a woman piss," he said airily.

Kagome made a face at his back. "You are the rudest man I've ever met in my entire life," she told him.

"You knew that when you jumped into the well," he said. He shifted position against the tree with an exaggerated sigh.

Holding her breath, she set her feet as far apart as possible and crouched, then squinted her eyes closed and released the stream. It thundered to the dry earth like the spray from a garden hose. "You did have to go," Inuyasha observed. "That's what happens when you drink so much."

Kagome shrieked and looked around for something to throw at him, but the only thing at hand was the panties. "You bastard!" she yelled. "You fucking bastard!"

He half turned, laughing. "Is this my Kagome?" he asked. "She gets drunk, she curses, she pisses in the woods…"

"I'm going to kill you," she said. "Inuyasha, I'm going to strangle you with my bare hands." He turned the rest of the way, grinning broadly now. "Aaah!" she screamed. "Don't look at me!" She had splashed her own legs, and the panties still dangled from her arm.

He leaned backward, bracing himself against the tree, and held out his hands to fend her off. "Black ones!" he said. "When did you start wearing black ones?" She lunged at him, lost her footing, and sprawled on the ground, trying desperately to cover herself with her skirt.

In the blink of an eye he was beside her on his good knee, the crutch on the ground, the laughter fading from his eyes. "Kagome!" he cried, and lifted her off the forest floor.

She righted herself and clung to him, both of them kneeling now, the soft linen of his kimono warm next to her face. His arms were around her, his hand in her hair, stroking her neck and the unfamiliar edge of her shingled bob. Weepy as she was, she almost cried again in grief for her shorn hair, one more part of the Lady Kagome that seemed irretrievably gone. She pulled away, sorry to have lost the laughter of a moment before. "I'm all right," she said. "I'm just a mess."

"Stay here with me," he said. "I'll get you some decent sake, and you can curse and piss in the woods all you want."

She smiled at him and touched her hand to his cheek, brushing back a long lock of salt-and-pepper hair. "I can't," she said. "I can't. I have a mother to worry about, I have a brother. I have people who need me. There are patients who need me. I can't even stay here very long today. I have to be at the hospital tonight, from an hour before midnight until well after dawn. People will be counting on me. I have to be there, and I have to be clean, and I have to be sober, and I have to have had enough sleep that I won't make a mistake that will cause somebody to die."

He sat back and smiled at her sadly. "It was never meant to be that Kagome would belong to us here," he said.

"No," she whispered. "I don't think so."

He reached for the crutch and again they found their respective feet and hobbled back to the hut. "Let's take care of that foot, then," he said. "Outside here, I think. The light's better." He helped her to the bucket outside the door and ladled water into a bowl for her to wash herself, standing quiet and helpful as she used a bit of cloth to wipe her face, her arms, her thighs and ankles. He steadied her without comment as she unceremoniously stepped into the black silk panties, then helped her onto the grass into a patch of sunlight that had found its way through the leaves of the great tree. Once again, he carefully sponged the foot, looking for the sliver of wood, peering closer in response to her gasp as he touched the end. He tried unsuccessfully to grab the end with his fingernails-how easily his claws would have done the job! He had brought the flashlight, but the batteries were running down. She remembered the penlight on the Shikon no Tama keychain and handed him her keys, with a little apologetic grimace. He was getting frustrated, the heat of the day helping to wear down his unnatural patience.

Suddenly he leaned forward and took the ball of her foot in his mouth, sucking and biting it. She gave a little yelp but clenched her teeth and held still. After a moment he grinned, pulled away, and spat. "Got it!" he cried. He held up the light and examined the foot closely. "Got it all," he said.

"You got it!" she crowed. "Do I have a hickey on my foot now?"

"Yes, ma'am," he told her, and he leaned forward and nipped her big toe. A thrill shot from her toe all the way up her leg. She quickly brought her knees together and threw one arm across her breasts.

He let her have the foot back, and she tucked her legs close, bending briefly to inspect her newly liberated sole. There was an embarrassed pause; then he said, "If you-if they were to fix my leg. How would that be done?"

"It would depend on what it looks like inside," she said. "We have special cameras-special machines that make a picture of the inside of the body without cutting it open." He nodded, accepting that. "It would have to be done surgically-meaning they will cut it open, a doctor specially trained for that uses medicine to stop the pain and cuts into the leg. Probably they'll have to re-fracture it-"

"No," he said. "No. Forget it. Just forget about it. No." It was as though a curtain had been drawn from his face to reveal unvarnished horror, to reveal the young man who had lost everything, lying helpless in a pile of corpses, waiting to be butchered, waiting to die of thirst or hunger or disease, his body washed over by the pain of his shattered leg and by the coffee-colored water that looked like an enemy even as it silently saved his life. Had he thought of her as he lay in that dreadful place? No; more likely he had thought of Kikyou, of Hanae with her lifeless baby, promising them all that he would join them soon. Perhaps the life-preserving water had indeed been his enemy.

She set a hand on his shoulder. "It's not like that," she said. "You would be asleep through the…the procedure. When you awake there will be pain, but there is medicine to help that, and it's not-there won't be the hopelessness."

He closed his eyes, and then said quietly, "Kagome, Kagome, I'm sorry. I'm not…not ready."

She pulled him toward her and held him close. "It won't be terrible, I promise you," she said. She was using the salesman's trick, the doctor's trick: talk about it as though there were no choice, as though it had to happen. "You'll have good care, there will be someone with you. I'll be there for the whole thing. They'll repair it, it will be in a-a cast, a device to hold it still so it heals properly. That will be itchy and boring, but I'll bring you books, if you want, and keep you company, you can have television and games, and then they'll work with you to build the muscles, to teach you to walk on it again…" She floundered. This felt like the most significant thing she had ever said in her life, and she wasn't breaking through to him.

He sat back, touched her face as she had touched his, and looked off into the distance. "There are graves," he said. "Kikyou, Kaede, Hanae, my child, they are … a little ways from here, outside the village. I visit them…not every day, but … if I am gone, there is no one."

She looked down, choosing her words carefully. "My home…my old home, my mother's home now…is this place, this place many years from now. They-the graves are still there. They are all still there."

"I know your home," he said. "I know about the city of Tokyo. It is all stone. The forest is lost under stone and buildings. I could never find them."

"They're there," she said. "If you pace it out, we can figure out where." He gave her a sour look. "I'll pace it out," she corrected. "Show me." She stood up; the foot was just vaguely sore now. She reached out a hand and helped pull him upright.

The graves were outside the village, at the edge of the forest. The two of them knelt together, clapping their hands in prayer. Here was Kaede, who had been their mother and mentor on this side. Here was Kikyou, her rival, her inspiration. His love. And a village girl named Hanae, and a baby never named, the grave marked by one of the little jizo that protected miscarried infants. From now on, I will care for you, Kagome promised them. I will find you and take care of you, take care of the heart of Inuyasha.

"I'll need to write this down," she said. Inuyasha now wore the crimson jacket of his kimono. He surprised her by producing from its folds a modern notebook and a pencil. They were from her backpack. Kagome flipped through the book in wonder at her own schoolgirl handwriting, the occasional marginal notes in her own hand and that of a classmate-who? -This class is sooooo boring. -Nishida has something hanging out of his nose!!! -Gross!!! -7 more minutes to go!!! I'm dying!!!!! -What are you doing Saturday afternoon? Do you want to come to the pool? -I think I have something else to do. Sorry.

Saturday? she thought. Sorry. Saturday I have to fix what I shattered, find what I lost, save the world, and have my heart broken. When I get back I'm going to be a doctor, because once you start saving the world you can never stop again. She tore a blank sheet from the back of the book and handed it back to Inuyasha; she would not deprive him of the notebook, that little bit of her he had kept all those years. Wordlessly he tucked it back into the kimono. Accompanied by the solemn Inuyasha and a handful of curious villagers, she carefully paced out the distance from the tree to the graves, and from the well to the graves, and then from the well to the god-tree, in case her paces would be different on the other side once she had shoes. She folded the paper and tucked it into her brassiere, and they stood silent before one another. The villagers waited a few paces away.

"That's the crazy man," said a child, "the one we bring food sometimes."

"Come with me," she said.

"No," he said. "I'm sorry." He held her hand then, silent in midday sunshine, the breeze lifting his long hair a bit.

She sighed. "I have to go back now," she said.

"I know," he replied. "I'll walk you to the well." They started into the forest; the villagers watched for a moment and then went back to their lives.

The well in its clearing sat bathed in sunshine, the warm smell of summer rising all around it. How could she ask him to leave? The beauty of this place, the wildness of it, had always seemed to be tied up with his soul. She looked into his eyes. They were dark; the golden animal eyes were gone, sacrificed forever to the object he had coveted, the object she had brought back to his hands to destroy him.

"Won't you change your mind?" she asked. "Won't you at least try to follow me?"

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

Her heart leapt. "But you might?" she said.

"I don't know," he repeated. "I'm-I might try," he said. "I don't know if it will let me through."

"When?" she asked. "Today? I don't know if it will be open very long. I've tried before. I really have. I don't know why it let me through this time-I tried so many times! I swear I did."

"It's all right," he said. "I know you did. It closed up right after you last time. I tried to follow you," he said. "You forgot your backpack."

She bowed her head, overwhelmed with gratitude. He had not just abandoned her, he had tried to follow after. What if she had had him in her own time, on her own turf, that one last time? But no; she could not begrudge Kikyou those ten short months.

He bent awkwardly to the ground and came up holding her shoe. "This must be yours, I suppose," he said, looking at it as though it were some particularly unappealing species of spider. "This is a shoe? You wear such a thing now?" He placed a finger on the long spike heel. She laughed, and they said simultaneously, "The wedding."

"If you come after me," she said, "when will you come."

He looked at the sky. "I don't know," he said.

"I won't be at the shrine after tonight," she said. "I have to be at the hospital at 2300 hours," she said, "so I'll have to leave at least a half hour before that." She looked at her watch. "That's a little more than ten hours from now. I'll stay at the shrine until then, but after my shift I'll have to go home to my own place."

He leaned down to look at the watch; on an impulse, she slipped it off her arm and handed it to him. "Here," she said, "This hand tells the hours, and the other the minutes. When the little hand gets to here, to the 10, I'll be getting ready to go to the hospital. The other hand counts five minutes for each number. The sweep hand does one minute for each turn around the dial."

He stood watching it, said, "I see. They are moving, very slowly."

"If you don't come," she said suddenly, "I'll try to come back. If you don't come through by 9 o'clock-when the small hand is here," she said, pointing-"I'll make one more try to come through the well, just to say goodbye." She had to stop and swallow at the word. "That won't be the last time I try, but I don't know why I'm here," she said. "I don't know if it's the wedding, or the solstice, or the sake-I don't know why I made it through. Maybe this is it, or maybe we have to wait another twenty years. I don't know."

"I'll think about it," he said. "Kagome, I'll think about it, I promise. I might come. I don't know. If I'm going to do it, I'll try to do it before you leave the shrine tonight. I won't leave you hanging."

"Keep the watch," she said. "Keep the watch. I don't know if it will let me back, but maybe it will let you through. I'll try at 2100 hours, at 9 o'clock. I'll bring you more books," she said. "I'll bring you whatever you want."

"More books," he said. "I'd like more books. And-something else of yours, anything of you-I don't know what."

"Come through," she said. "Come soon. I have to go, I'm going to cry again."

He dropped the shoe and embraced her, wrapping his arms around her. He was warm, the crimson kimono soft and familiar against her face. He gently pulled her away and reached into the kimono. "Your notebook," he said.

"Keep it," she said, "or bring it to me." He set it down on the rim of the well. She fingered the cloth at his chest. "I know what's missing," she murmured. "The prayer beads."

"I have them," he said. "In a box in my house. You can't have those back."

Then he leaned down and at last, at long last, they kissed.

It was not how they would have kissed years ago, when they were both almost children. She pressed herself to him, and he to her, breast to breast, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. It was a deep soul kiss, his tongue exploring her mouth, her own taking in the gap in the teeth, the slickness of the palate. His hand was under her dress, stroking the black silk of her underthings, pressing her hips into his. A grownup kiss, a kiss full of experience and regret and hunger. And then it was over, and it was time for her to go back through the well.

As he had done years ago, he held her hand as she stepped on the rim of the well. "If you decide to come," she said, "tell somebody. Tell one of the villagers. Don't do something stupid and…die at the bottom of the well because you broke your other damned leg."

"If I try it, I'll be fine," he said.

"Tell someone!" she commanded.

"All right, all right. I'll tell someone," he said. "If I decide to try it."

She looked down into the well. Even at noon, the bottom was dark far below. What if the well were already closed? What if she couldn't get home? What if she went crashing to the bottom, breaking her legs, her neck… She closed her eyes and placed her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. Inuyasha said, "Kagome?" She opened her eyes and found his deep brown ones looking into hers. No golden eyes. No fangs. No claws. No dog ears. And now this face, this grown-up man's face, would forever be the face of Inuyasha in her memory.

"If you don't come," she said, "If you stay here and marry again and have a child, you have to make the midwife wash her hands."

"Kagome," he said again.

She raised her voice. "This is important, Inuyasha!" she said. "This is the most important thing I've ever said to you. You have to do this! You have to…draw your sword and stand over her, but you can't let anybody touch your wife or baby with dirty hands, do you understand? Inuyasha!"

"Kagome," he answered. "I understand."

"If you don't come through, I'll try to come back with some books," she said. And then she jumped into the well. For the first and only time in her life she looked upward as she jumped, and so for the first and only time she saw what she would have seen any and all of the times she had ever jumped in as he watched: his sorrowful face, the eyes wide with longing, memorizing her own face as though he would never see it again.

She landed on something hard and sharp: the stiletto heel of her upturned shoe. She rubbed her behind. If Inuyasha came through the well, he would find her with an unsightly bruise on her right cheek. If he came through the well. Probably he wouldn't.

Probably he wouldn't be coming. Even now, the well might have closed behind her. She looked at the shoe in her hand, remembering that the other lay on the grass on the other side where Inuyasha had dropped it. Would the prince come looking for the maiden-well, the woman who lost the shoe? Or would he just start trying it on the feet that were available on his side? She stuffed the shoe into her pocket with the remainder of the sake, then groped for the ladder and leaned her forehead against it. She had to get some sleep. She wouldn't think about it now, because she couldn't stand to think, to see that face disappearing above her.

The ladder was old but solid. She was older and less nimble. She climbed out of the well with scraped knees and elbows into the dim light of the well house. It was warm; outside the sun was beating down on the ancient roof. She stepped out into the courtyard of the shrine, blinded by daylight. The sounds were back, traffic and trains and airplanes; on the other side had been birdsong. She closed her eyes against the light and listened. A grove surrounded the shrine complex, all that was left of Inuyasha's forest. The birdsong was still there; the descendants of the birds that had sung to her and Inuyasha that morning were singing to her now. She limped across the courtyard, the flagstones hot beneath her feet. Inuyasha had always been barefoot; this was how the stones had felt to him. She needed sleep, she needed a bath, she needed love.

Something behind the house caught her attention. A service drive wound its way up from the street to the back of the shrine complex. There at the top of the drive was her car. She walked toward it slowly, in amazement. How had it come to be here? She looked in the driver's window; there was a naked key in the ignition. When Mr. Perfect had left he had remembered to take everything, but he had forgotten to return her car key. What other keys had he forgotten to return? The key to her apartment? Her mailbox? Her heart? Kagome wondered if he had returned the car himself, or simply given the key to someone else. What if he had had second thoughts? What if the car had been an excuse to find her here? She pictured him looking around the empty shrine, the house and the other buildings, never guessing that she had jumped into the well, never imagining what lay on the other side. Surely Miyu was his destiny. Perhaps that was why the well had opened: to keep him out of harm's way. Perhaps Higurashi Kagome meant nothing to destiny, a pawn to be sacrificed or shuttled out of the way in other people's games.

She kept a set of clothing in the car, and sensible shoes. She opened the trunk: a shirt, jeans, underwear, socks, athletic shoes, neatly packed in a duffel bag next to her black bag, the doctor's equivalent of a bow and arrow. A few books-medical journals, a novel, a book on emergency room logistics. Nothing Inuyasha would want. Were her high school books still here in the house? Probably some of her brother's college texts were still around.

The cats greeted her at the door. There was no sign that Souta had come by. She stopped in the kitchen, opened a can of cat food, and tossed the nylons into the garbage. She took the sweater with her upstairs to her old room; it would need dry cleaning, as would the little black dress. She left the clean cotton underwear on her bed, deciding to wash out the black silk and hang it to dry in the summer sun while she bathed. He had liked those black silk panties; she didn't want to disappoint him. In the right cup of the bra she found the piece of notebook paper. That was something she'd do before she slept today.

She showered, shampooed her hair and scrubbed her dirty skin, and then settled in the bath for a soak, willing herself not to doze, not to miss him if he should come. She stepped naked from the tub and toweled off, delighting in the smell of her clean self. He had loved her scent. This time she had been smoky from the wedding, and dirty, and probably reeking of sake. Was that why he hadn't come back with her? Because she smelled bad? But maybe he would come.

She was hungry. She dressed in the jeans and shirt with the black silk underneath, found her keys, and quickly walked across the street to a small café and grabbed a sandwich to take out. There was a market nearby; she bought some beef, some green beans and onions, some strawberries. If he came, there would be dinner, a simple donburi, and plenty of it in case Souta should show up with or without his girlfriend. She hurried back; no sign of him. Had he come and found the house empty? Surely he would have waited. She started rice in the rice cooker, then took out the sheet of notebook paper.

She first paced out the distance from the well to the tree; that would tell her how much to adjust her figures, now that she was wearing shoes. Then she paced from the well. It looked as though she would end up on the pavement, and her heart fell, but she stopped inside the perimeter of the shrine, inside the grove, more than a meter from the fence. There was a little tree on the spot, a sapling born of the god-tree's seed. She needed something to mark the spot; she slipped the yellow Shikon no Tama from the keyring and threaded it over a branch: for prayers in loving memory of the dead. She paced back to the god-tree; the measurement was right on. She retraced her steps and again found herself at the little tree that nourished itself on the remains of the young girl who had once been her rival, and the girl who had come after her, and the baby who lived only a moment. She knelt and clapped her hands. I'm sorry, she told them silently, sorry you were left alone so long. I promise I will come often to visit you.

If Inuyasha did not come through the well, it would mean there was another grave in this place.

She placed a hand on the tree, overwhelmed with grief at the impossible thought that the man with whom she had laughed and cried that morning, the man who had been warm in her arms and in her mouth, the angry, sad, resigned, ribald, vital man who that very day had kissed her and teased her and tried to fix the part of her that was hurt, was here, was dust, had been dust in this place when she drew her first breath and for all the years she was a child here, all the years of her growing up and coming to adulthood. She was too tired to cry anymore; she turned and walked uphill to the god-tree and rested her hand, as she had done on its little offshoot below. "Inuyasha," she said aloud, "I'm here at the tree. It's your turn to come through the well and heal the hole in my heart." But nothing happened, and he didn't appear.

She had to sleep. Of course he knew the way to her old room, but irrationally she feared he would be unable to climb the stairs and would turn and go home. She pulled an aluminum lounge chair from the storage shed and set it up near the well house, under the shade of the god-tree. She pictured him coming out, coming upon her asleep, touching her hair. Surely he would not turn away, seeing her there. She stretched out there in the dappled sunlight and slept.

Her stomach awakened her. It was late afternoon, almost dinnertime. The afternoon was hot, and she was still alone. She folded the chair and returned it to the shed, then went into the house. The kitchen smelled of rice. If Inuyasha came, he would be pleased at that homey smell. She ran upstairs to her brother's bedroom. His books were still there, high school and undergrad basic science books, basic literature, political science, sociology-she tried to choose an interesting assortment, but not more than she could carry. She rummaged in his closet, found an old backpack. At 2100 hours she would jump into the well, hoping not to break anything or die. If she made it through, she would bring him the books-she hoped he would be waiting for her. This time they would make love, on the ground under the tree if necessary. If he didn't come through to her side first.

She carried the books to the kitchen table and began slicing the beef into thin strips. She browned it with a bit of onion, found the bottled sauce in the cupboard, the sake in the pocket of the white angora sweater. She remembered his face above her at the rim of the well. Would he come to her? The dinner would be good. She'd open him a beer, if he wanted to try it; no alcohol for herself. There was no sign of Souta; it would be just the two of them, eating and talking quietly, if he came. They would eat, she would fix him a bath, they would make love-maybe right there in the bathroom, certainly in her narrow bed afterward; there would be time to talk, to love, to doze, and then her alarm would go off and she'd head for the hospital. If Inuyasha came through the well.

She thought of the little tree with its yellow marker. "You can't be there," she said aloud. "You have to come be with me." And still nothing happened, so she kept fixing dinner, washing the strawberries and chopping the vegetables, and it was while she was french-cutting the green beans that she heard the door of the well house slam.

She didn't run, just listened. There was a pause, and a clacking sound and a scraping, very slow-geta on the flagstones. She didn't go to greet him, partly because she thought it might embarrass him to have her see him hobbling on his crutch, and partly because she was afraid to find out that the sounds were something else, some workman on the street. Then suddenly she heard the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the ground, and she began to run.

As a matter of fact, she was mistaken. He had made it almost halfway from the little shrine to the house. He wore the familiar kimono and carried-all sorts of things. The sound had been her middle-school backpack, which lay open on the ground, a trail of books fanning outward: her life, her teenaged life, all but forgotten and now come back home. He stood upright on his crutch, aiming a stream of invective at the fallen bag. There was another pack on his left shoulder, a makeshift one equally as large as her backpack; a shaft of wood stuck out of it and she realized he must have brought everything, even the ax.

She hurried to his side, calling his name. "Kagome," he answered. The katana was at his belt, and her heart warmed. They were not teenagers, but still young enough; perhaps he would yet touch Tetsusaiga's hilt to his child's hand. She caught his shoulders in a quick embrace and they kissed again-not passionately this time but the small, gentle kiss of people who expected to kiss one another every day of their lives. "You came," she said. "I hoped you would come." She smiled to see her gold watch around his wrist. "How did you get up the ladder with all of this?"

"I made a few trips," he said. His face was tired, and she could see by his stance that the leg was painful. She knelt to pick up the scattered books, marveling as she saw them. All those unpleasant hours of studying, her whole life depending on these books she had forgotten existed.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I've started some food."

He sighed and closed his eyes, drooping on the crutch. "Food," he said. "Food would be very good."

"I found it," she said. "I found the grave. It's on the shrine grounds. It's in a good place, a green place. You'll be happy," she told him. "We can go look at it after dinner, or whenever you want. I talked to them," she said. "They know someone cares about them. You need to eat and to give that leg a rest." She tucked the books into the backpack "You came after all," she said. "I was afraid you wouldn't."

"You left this behind," he said. He reached into his kimono and handed her something. It was her shoe, her stiletto-heeled open-toed black patent leather pump, come back through the centuries to be reunited with its mate. "I didn't know if you would need it so I thought I'd better try to get it back to you."

She looked down. "Thank you," she said. "Does that mean-you'll stay awhile, won't you? Just for-until we see about your leg. It doesn't have to be forever. There are still wild places in the world, beautiful places. If you can't get back and you're not happy, you can try those places."

He looked over her shoulder. "I brought my stuff," he said simply. "I can try it. I'd like to have this leg working again."

"I thought I'd fix you a hot bath," she said. "It would really make that leg feel better."

He grimaced. "Hot day for it," he said.

"Great for aching muscles," she said. "Once you've had the surgery, part of the therapy for that leg will be long, hot soaks."

"You're going to be my doctor now?" he said.

"I was always your doctor," she told him. "And I was thinking I'd wash your back."

"Only my back?" he asked.

"Your back, to begin with," she answered. "Do you want dinner first, or the bath?"

He stopped and paid her the compliment of looking her up and down. The boy she had known had been shy; he would never have looked at her so boldly, but the girl she had been would never have offered to wash his back. He was trying to decide. Approach-approach conflict; he must be really hungry. "Dinner won't take much time. Why don't I feed us first. We'll still have time for a bath, and some time together."

"Sounds good," he said.

Suddenly she noticed he had draped the prayer beads around his neck, just as he had worn them long ago.

She shouldered her backpack. It was terribly heavy, but so, she could see, was the bag that held the remnants of his old life. He staggered a bit under the weight and she was frightened for him, but then he straightened and took a step. She wished she could carry him to the house, but she could no more carry him than he could carry her. The best they could do was distribute the burden between them, the pieces of their old life together and the lives they were living now, all the things that would bind them together and push them apart. They found a rhythm and started for the house, talking as they went, keeping each other company for the rest of the walk home.

When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful. -Barbara Bloom

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