InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Repertoire ❯ Chapter 1

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Repertoire

When I was born, it was said that the firmament wept, dour tears that fell and fell until they drowned the villagers. Plangent cries came with the cataclysms. Soon afterwards, my mother died. Kikyou told me that the canaries refused to sing that season, and our father pursued his wife off a promontory, but our village did not reside by the sea. My sister liked to lie sporadically, always sanguine when she did it.

Father's inopportune demise was rather ignominious, and he was imprecated because of it. She didn't want the truth to be promulgated throughout the province. Our father died a drunkard; he was imbibing his final liquor when his stomach burst. None of us mourned for long. He was the village fool married to the village scholar who was parent to the village priestess who suffered a tragic life.

I was the sister of the village priestess.

A person once told me that Kikyou was destitute of qualms and other characteristics intrinsic of a human. She certainly acted like that, a thrall to her rectitude and forever perambulating the world to exculpate the innocent. Yes, what a flagitious energumen.

I told her what the person said, and my sister simply laughed. Laughed and laughed at her little sister who was so credulous as to believe the prattles of an anile lunatic. I blushed at her words and mumbled something secretive and embarrassing into the folds of her clothing. She patted my head and hoisted the wicker basket higher upon her back. I could hear her bones creaking and groaning from the strain, aches that she dismissed as chimerical.

We walked further down the anfractuous path. A woman approached us and greeted Kikyou. Her face was beautiful, but austere. The thick paste of rouge reeked of fermented rose. I grimaced at her. She paid me no attention, but asked Kikyou if she would perform a small exorcism. A mundane thing for my sister, though generously recompensed, assuredly. Kikyou merely sighed and obliged, only because she was not used to recumbence.

“Kaede, Tsubaki is ruthless. You must never trust her. She is more than capable of handling a feeble youkai,” my sister warned.

“Then why did she ask for our assistance?” I asked.

Kikyou stopped brushing my hair and cupped my chin; her hand was icy and sharp nails slightly dug into my skin. I winced. “Because we have to play at her game. You don't want to lose, do you?” she replied, eyes darting like vitriolic beads, tin.

I shook my head resolutely.

She smiled, haunting and terrifying. An agelast smiling, I didn't know whether to be more nonplussed at the irony or her words.

An arrow resonated through the air, glorious and cloyingly sacrosanct—her anathema. Tsubaki seethed at Kikyou's minor victory. The other priestess scattered spells into the air, paper petals riding the wind, harbingers of death.

I rushed to my sister and brandished my own bow at the dancing youkai, butterflies gyrating indiscriminately, bemused and erratic.

“You know, I do wish you the best.” Tsubaki nodded.

My sister raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh? Is that so? Well, I extend the same courtesy to you, then.”

I stood by them, silent and irenic. They contrasted dramatically, standing there with pale, decaying souls. Ascetic Kikyou, with a life as staid as an eremitic who abnegates all pleasure and Tsubaki, intrepid and frightening with the silvery hair of an envious crone.

But they were both insane, two halves of the same whole.

“Kikyou, take this advice, from one priestess to another. You must never allow any man to have your heart, for if you do, you'll die a horrible death.” Tsubaki's eyes gleamed, effulgent wickedness.

“I'll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Sweet, dying autumn deteriorated to nothing…exsiccated and expunged. I saw the flocks depart our village, destined to return the following spring. They swept over us, humans toiling in the fields, harvesting the last piece of tuber before the first frost appeared. I stretched my arms out to greet them, a feathery canopy enshrouding us wretched specks of flesh.

Kikyou, the peripatetic priestess, was gone, this time with a hanyou trailing after her.

“My name is Kaede,” I responded tersely.

The incapacitated man grunted, cacophonous complaints of an epigone, muttered in vain, whose music is just as ugly. His stare was disconcerting, but I tried to remain stoic and laconic, exactly like Kikyou. He shifted slightly, astute man. “Fine, Kaede, where is your sister today? I miss her.”

My eyelids flickered in chagrin. “She's out slaying youkai because that's her duty, you know.”

“When will she be back? I yearn for her sweet scent.” He was teasing me, but I won't stray from nonchalance.

“I don't know.”

Onigumo, the spider king, trenchant yet oblique, longed for Kikyou in a way I wish he did not. Apolaustic, rendered debilitated and hung onto the edges of life with sharpened claws, thrashing for life…life that belongs to another. He was edacious and knew how to obtain what he desired.

“The birds are singing, damn fiends,” Onigumo whispered.

“They always sing, every year without fail, even before you were born.”

He chuckled cruelly, deprecating the unwanted child. “Then let them sing their hearts out, lest winter arrives sooner this year.”

I could feel the palpitations smoldering the tissues surrounding the essential muscle, terminating the haven that ensured their survival. I bit my lip, pain worse than the one that entailed the avulsions acquired from an unpropitious battle.

“You okay, girl?”

I grit my teeth and continue to pound the herbs, cold stone mortar like a corpse. “I'm fine, and my name is Kaede.”

“Fetch me some food, then.”

“I'm not your dog.”

“Your sister has a puppy. I want one, too.”

“Then go ask Inuyasha.”

I stood to leave, brusquely set aside the crushed medicine. Sometimes, I wish Kikyou wasn't so kind.

He called behind me, “Tell Kikyou that I like her lips colored red. Incarnadine snow, a sight only seen after the traitors' rapine.”

I knew the dread before knowing it. I didn't need to ascertain what happened, not their asseverations, desperate behests to flee, anything.

“My sister is dead!” I yelled, strident and blind.

Someone shook my shoulder, imploring. He spoke, endeavored to be empathetic. “Kaede-san, let go of her.”

“No! She's so cold…and pale. That bastard,” I wailed, practically sobbing and certainly insensate.

My eyes roamed from Kikyou's retroussé nose to the caliginous skies above the houses, whelmed and shattered.

No melodies from dainty, yellow canaries, songs they added to their repertoire year after year, never the same.

A silent spring, lifeless…all of us, on the verge of destruction, ignorant and sanctimonious. I didn't know who to blame, only to frenetically search for any plausible answer.

“There can never be an armistice, only an interstice, false peace and hope.”

And he will never see her again, either.

finis