InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Kagome ( Chapter 13 )

The Edge of Resistance

Book One: The Dreaming World

 

 

Chapter 14: Kagome

 

 

"You said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!" - Emily Bronte

 

***

 

There was no way for Kagome to know then how long she spent walking in the dreaming world, but the reader knows by now that it was three months, one week, and two days. For most of that time, she believed she was dead.

 

There was fire, and ash, and the terrible knowledge that Naraku would absorb her and carry her tormented soul in the house of his inferno for an eternity. She called for Kikyou and she closed her hands around something hard and round, like a marble.

 

It wasn't the Jewel, but she tried to pull it toward her anyway.

 

Something broke, something shattered. Then there was nothing, but black.

 

Then she was sitting in the sun, on the green, green grass. Inuyasha was perched on a branch in a tree above her, fuming about something. Sango and Miroku were sitting apart, talking together in murmuring tones. White daisies were piled in her lap and Shippou was handing her some more. She sensed that Inuyasha wanted to leave.

 

Then he was on the ground with his sword drawn, his mouth twisted in hatred.

 

“What is it?” Kagome's voice sounded shrill in her own ears, but she did not understand why she had asked that.

 

“Naraku!” someone answered.

 

“No,” Kagome said. “No, it isn't!”

 

She stood up and her friends turn to stare at her.

 

“No it isn't!” she shouted at them. “Don't you see? Why are we here again?”

 

Her friends just stared at her, and then Sango handed her something. Kagome looked down and saw that she was holding a stick with a grilled fish on it.

 

“Is one enough, Kagome-chan?” Sango asked her.

 

They were gathered around a campfire, and night had wrapped around their shoulders like a cloak. Inuyasha sat against a tree, tapping his foot in the air and chewing on fish.

 

“We'll start going north tomorrow,” he said, still chewing. “We'll find leads about Naraku.”

 

“And then what?” Kagome asked him, staring at the food like it was a charred alien.

 

Shippou looked up from his meal in surprise.

 

“What do you mean, `then what'?” Inuyasha said. “Then we defeat Naraku.”

 

“No,” Kagome shook her head, tears landing on her knees.

 

“Kagome-chan?” Sango put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

 

“No!” Kagome screamed, throwing the fish into the fire. “I don't want to do this anymore!”

 

She stood up and backed away. They were staring at her, and maybe calling her name, but she did not heed them because she knew they weren't real. She turned and ran into the night. Coming to a hilltop, Kagome looked up at the pitiless stars.

 

“If this is my hell,” she cried, “my punishment, well, then fuck you!”

 

Then she was sitting in her mother's kitchen.

 

The first sound she heard was a ticking clock. Hanging by the humming white refrigerator was one of those uncanny, black and white cats, with enormous eyes that swung back and forth every second. Kagome wondered what possessed her mother to put such a hideous item on the wall. Then a new sound made her jump. It was sudden music, hissing and distorted, coming from somewhere in the room. She searched with her eyes and found an old alarm clock radio, sitting on the counter next to the toaster oven.

 

I look at the world and I notice its turning…

 

The numbers on the clock glowed like burning embers—like Naraku's eyes—she thought, before chasing the thought away like a wayward cat at her door.

 

Her mother entered the room, and Kagome stopped breathing.

 

“Mama,” she cried, bursting into tears.

 

But Kagome's mother gave no sign that she even saw her. She struggled with a heavy shoulder bag, bringing it to the table and dumping out the contents with relief. Books cascaded out of the bag, tumbling to the table, chairs, and some hitting the floor. Higurashi bent and picked them up, and began stacking all of them into neat rows.

 

With every mistake, we must surely be learning…

 

“Mama,” Kagome said again, in a small, trembling voice.

 

Higurashi did not look up. She sat in a chair and began studying one of the books.

 

I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping…

 

Time crawled on. Kagome sat quietly beside her mother for hours, convinced that the poor woman could not see her because she was dead.

 

Higurashi read through most of the books that night. Kagome sat next to her, trying to persuade the air to move only a little, trying to reach her, to comfort her. She lowered her head and wept for her futility.

 

Memories returned to her unbidden. She remembered visiting the beach when she was small, walking behind her mother and trying to match her stride, leaping from step to step.

 

“Oh, mama,” she cried. “I'm so sorry. I've always been so useless. I'm so sorry!”

 

Then, when the cat told her it was midnight, Yuka walked into the room, much to Kagome's amazement.

 

Kagome leapt to her feet without thinking.

 

“Yuka-chan!”

 

Of course, Yuka did not see her. She offered Higurashi some tea, which was politely refused. Then Kagome's oldest friend began pressing the woman for information about Kagome. Where is she? When is she coming back? Why does no one hear from her? And Kagome realized with a frightened confusion that Yuka was living at the shrine, and that she had not covered her tracks as much as she had thought.

 

Kagome became annoyed. Yuka was pushing her mother for answers she would never have. She was only making this situation more difficult.

 

“Leave her be, Yuka!” she shouted, but Yuka gave no sign that she had heard her.

 

In frustration, Kagome swung her arm at a stack of books, hoping to knock at least one of them down to stop the conversation. Nothing happened to the books, but the air of her exasperation seemed to reach her mother. Higurashi turned on Yuka with virulence and ordered her to bed.

 

Kagome realized at once that she might have made a mistake. She watched the two women look at each other for a moment, only a brief moment, in silence. She watched as a sharp shadow fell like a blade between them.

 

The air became black and orange. Higurashi, Yuka, and the kitchen were gone, and Kagome was standing in the dark. It was quiet, and cold, and after a few moments Kagome detected the sound of trickling water.

 

Her eyes adjusted to the light, and Kagome realized she was standing in a cave, where there many others, some lying down, some sitting. The people were ragged, starved, and altogether wretched. Someone was sitting on the ground right next to her, and she lowered to her knees to speak to them.

 

Her throat closed against a tidal wave of tears. It was Inuyasha. His robes were caked with mud and a rose colored moss grew on his hair. His hands, which he wrung in front of his lowered head, were filthy and caked over with old blood.

 

“Oh, Inuyasha,” she sobbed. “Oh, Inuyasha!”

 

She realized the voice was not coming from her own throat. Another girl was sitting in front of Inuyasha, trying to reach him through his insanity. She was dressed as a miko, and Kagome felt positive she had seen her somewhere before. The girl reached out for Inuyasha and took his hands.

 

“Pretend I'm her,” she said. “Pretend I'm her and say it now.”

 

Kagome's heart sank. Oh no, no don't. I can't stand it.

 

“I'm sorry,” she heard him murmur.

 

Kagome stopped breathing.

 

“I'm sorry I was never good enough for you,” he went on without mercy.

 

In the new prison cell of her private universe, Kagome screamed.

 

Inuyasha wept along with the young priestess, unaware that Kagome was soaking his shoulder with ethereal tears.

 

She cried for what felt like hours, and when her sobbing subsided she noticed it was quiet. She lifted her head and found that Inuyasha and the familiar miko were gone.

 

Kagome was beginning to get used to this, but she still wondered to herself, who's driving this bus?

 

This time the light grew around her, and she noticed with a start that she was standing in the rain. She cast her eyes upward and saw an ominous black, gray, and red sky. She cast her eyes downward and saw Kagura crumpled at her feet. A tree was on her back, but Kagome could see her ashen face.

 

With a strangled cry, Kagome dropped to her knees. Why? Why was she here? How could they be so cruel?

 

“It's not my fault!” Kagome screamed without making a sound. “I did my best, I'm not to blame!”

 

“Kagura! Can you hear me? Say something!”

 

Kagome looked around for the source of that voice. Her heart leapt in her chest when she saw Shippou, bloody and ragged, stumbling toward her over rocks and fallen trees. He began to struggle with the debris, trying to free Kagura, who did not respond. Kagome stared at the scene and did not know whether to feel triumph or despair.

 

He struggled in vain, his feet often slipping, sending him to the mud on his face. After the third time he did not get up again, but lay there, staring. It seemed as though he looked right at Kagome, but she knew he did not see her.

 

“Shippou,” she whispered, coming to his side. “Don't give up, Shippou. Come on now, get up, you can do it!”

 

Kagome was shocked when he stood up and transformed into an ogre. She began to fear that she was in a nightmare, and almost started to run away, but in this form Shippou was more than strong enough to lift the tree.

 

Kagome watched him, returned to his normal form, crawl to Kagura. She watched him struggle to wake her. She heard him scream at her.

 

Kagome is dead! She is fucking dead!

 

Kagome realized then that she could not feel the rain. Had she ever heard Shippou use that word before? Was he this tall when she had died?

 

She looked at them again and Shippou was standing once more. He was reaching for Kagura. Kagome, without thinking, went to his side and reached for Kagura's arm. She could not be sure if she had truly helped pull the demoness up from ground, but it felt as though she had.

 

She needed to know what they would do next—where they would go and what they would say to each other. It would be a long time, however, but she found out anything about it, because the next moment found her standing in a hut where the mud floors were caked in blue bellflowers. In the center of the one room was a bed raised on layers of bamboo. Miroku was on the bed, sitting up on his elbows, talking to someone in front of him. Kagome looked at the foot of the bed and saw another young priestess, that again she recognized by could not place. She could see Sango, lying beside him, so wasted Kagome feared she might be dead. She was facing away from her, and Kagome could see the girl's spine like a column of thread spools.

 

My god, what have I done?

 

She had not heard what passed between Miroku and the young priestess. Miroku put his feet on the ground, and hung his head in his hands.

 

“It's been raining,” the woman said to him.

 

“Raining…” Miroku did not seem to understand what she meant.

 

“Since before you came here. Since the explosion.”

 

“It's been raining for a month?” Miroku asked her.

 

Kagome was stunned. How had that much time passed? Was there a connection between the rain and her confrontation with Naraku?

 

It's not my fault! I did my best; I'm not to blame!

 

The priestess was trying to persuade Miroku to stand, but Kagome could see his despair. She came and stood beside the priestess and looked into Miroku's sunken eyes and knew he was thinking of her.

 

“Miroku-sama,” she whispered.

 

“I have tried praying, monk,” the priestess told him. “No gods or saints have come.”

 

“I guess…” Miroku responded, “let's not waste our time thinking how that's not fair?”

 

Kagome thought this was an odd thing to say, but she was moved to reach out her hand and tug on the robes that draped his shoulders. The cloth at her fingertips felt so real.

 

Miroku struggled to his feet.

 

Kagome saw that she had returned to the cave. She looked around, hoping to see Inuyasha again, but it did not take her long to realize that this was a different cave. She saw the crystal tomb of Midoriko looming over her and her mind boiled with rage.

 

“This is all your doing, isn't it?” she shouted, her shrill voice shaking the crystal.

 

“If I'm dead,” she continued, “isn't that punishment enough? Do you hate me so much?”

 

There was no answer. Kagome's voice echoed in her chest like a knock inside a tin can.

 

She listened to the drip of water that seemed to be the rhythm of all caves. She strained her ears to focus on this sound. She heard a heart beating that was not her own, she heard her mother sighing, she heard the land decaying and rusting.

 

“Why would I hate you?”

 

Kagome looked up to see the priestess, Midoriko, standing before her. She could not muster surprise, and did not even lose her concentration.

 

“Because I broke the jewel,” she answered without hesitation.

 

“Such was your destiny,” the woman replied.

 

Kagome stared at her.

 

“If the jewel had remained with you, whole, you would have been unable to defend it, and Naraku would have obtained it then.”

 

“He almost has the entire thing now!” Kagome protested.

 

“Yet he does not. And you and your allies are stronger than you were then.”

 

Kagome gaped at the woman. Was she teasing her? Or just plain clueless?

 

“Hello?! I'm dead here!”

 

“Dead?” Midoriko repeated, turning the word over in her mouth and knitting her brows, as if she'd only just heard of it. “You speak that word, to me?”

 

Kagome was disconcerted, and somewhat frightened. She backed away.

 

“That word is not so permanent as you think. Perhaps you should speak with Kikyou-sama on the matter.”

 

“What do you mean?” Kagome whispered, unable to comprehend anything that was being said.

 

“You will see,” the priestess answered. “But of course, breaking the jewel was not the thing you wanted to say, was it? It was not what you thought when you saw me.”

 

Kagome's leaden tongue stayed still in her mouth. Her throat burned with unshed tears.

 

“That is alright,” Midoriko murmured. “You do not have to say it. And I forgive you, and everyone else.”

 

Kagome's head was caught in a febrile haze. The cave filled with a bright expanse of rosy light, but still she sensed a darkness behind her greater than the most dreadful abyss of the sea. She thought she heard someone say behind her, “I'm not blind, I can see it coming”, but she could not turn. At last, the situation presented itself in her mind like the missing pieces of a puzzle.

 

Only part of me is awake.

 

“Yes,” the priestess answered. “The rest of you would have only gotten in the way. It will be a great deal easier now for you to understand and accept what I must tell you.”

 

“Am I dead, or not?”

 

“No, Kagome-sama, I can assure you that you are most definitely not dead.”

 

“Then where am I?”

 

“You will find that out soon enough. For now, I will tell you that you are safe.”

 

Kagome considered that and could find nothing wrong with it. Behind her, she heard someone shout: “It's not my fault! I'm not to blame! It's your fault! Your fault, your fault, all your fault!”

 

Kagome shivered, and then she heard a dozen indistinguishable voices cry out with cutting spite: “I don't need you!”

 

“What's behind me?” she gasped.

 

“Yesterdays,” Midoriko shrugged. “You cannot go back there.”

 

Kagome had no desire to turn around.

 

“How are you doing this?” she asked in a querulous whisper. “Aren't you supposed to be…”

 

“Dead?” Midoriko supplied with ease. “You are going to have to work on letting that word go, but suffice it to say that I can do many things to accomplish my task.”

 

“Your task?” Kagome asked.

 

“Yes, that is what I need to talk to you about.”

 

The miko paused. “Something is broken, Kagome-sama, and you are going to help fix it.”

 

“Broken? What's broken?”

 

Midoriko pursed her lips and was silent for a moment. Kagome watched her, and was surprised at how beautiful she was. Her beauty was not dramatic, but clean and simple, like a single daisy in a field.

 

“Fate?” the woman suggested. “Destiny? The Universe?”

 

“I…I don't understand,” Kagome admitted.

 

“You see, Kagome-sama,” Midoriko explained, “everything that exists, exists as a piece of the whole, like stones in a wall. Perhaps that is too oversimplified, but it will do for now.”

 

Midoriko went on.

 

“At some point in the past, a stone was removed at the wrong place and at the wrong time, and then it was replaced by another stone that was, in essence, a mistake.”

 

Kagome saw the sunrise fall on the answer.

 

“Naraku.”

 

“Exactly. Naraku is at this moment becoming the final expression of that mistake.” Midoriko paused again. “You already realize that you and your allies grossly underestimated him.”

 

Kagome remembered the callous inevitability of it all.

 

“Yes.”

 

“He is actually much older than you know,” the other miko told her. “It's just that he has been evolving, and has not always been as he is today, or even as Kikyou knew him.”

 

“But then, it's not really him, is it?” Kagome asked. “I mean, it's not just the demon that was spawned from Onigumo that we're fighting?”

 

“Right again,” Midoriko congratulated her. “There is a greater power behind what you see. The Enemy has many faces, but that which hides behind the faces has no face, and no name. The essence of Naraku has been around much, much longer than the demon you call `Naraku' or the man that was known as `Onigumo'”.

 

“How much longer?”

 

“The numbers would be meaningless to you.”

 

“Then how can we ever win?” Kagome demanded in helpless exasperation.

 

“Naraku is the expression of the Mistake's potential to overrun things. There is still another potential out there, the one that was originally intended. The two potentials are equal, more or less, and we are fighting for the original one. So you see you are not as out matched as you might think.”

 

“Are you saying that I'm as powerful as Naraku?” Kagome asked dubiously. “Or that you are?”

 

“Certainly not. Naraku is almost the sole container of the Mistake's potential. You share your responsibility with many others.”

 

“Does potential really have that much power?” Kagome asked.

 

Midoriko sounded amused. “Possibility has enormous power, Kagome-sama.”

 

Kagome turned over this information in her mind.

 

“I wonder if Naraku knows he is a mistake,” she mused out loud. “This all would have been almost worth it if he knew that.”

 

“I would imagine,” Midoriko said, “that he feels the same way about you.”

 

Kagome did not have an answer to that, and she found that she preferred to not consider Naraku's way of thinking anyway. She began to realize what the miko was really getting at.

 

“You're saying that we have to work together.”

 

“Yes. That is why I am talking to you now, and that is why it has to be you who fixes it. You are not endowed with enormous fighting powers, sacred or otherwise, but your strength lies elsewhere. You are the only one who can do what needs to be done.”

 

“And what is that?”

 

“You will know details when it is necessary for you to know them. If you know them too soon, it may interfere, and do more harm than good. And we cannot see all ends. On the plateau, for example, there was a possibility that you would die. There was also a possibility that you would succeed.”

 

“But I did neither,” Kagome protested.

 

“No,” Midoriko told her. “You succeeded. Because of you, Naraku has lost something he can never replace.”

 

“You mean Kagura.”

 

“Right. Whatever happens now, that fight has already been won, and that single event set off a chain of events that must occur in order for us to succeed. Furthermore, without that event, you would never have broken the cycle in which you were trapped.”

 

“What would have happened if I had died?”

 

“Then Naraku, and the power behind him, would have succeeded. Naraku would have gone on to glut himself on the misery and death of the inhabitants of this world.”

 

“And the power behind him?” Kagome asked.

 

“The potential would have become reality. It is a reality that ultimately leads to chaos and destruction.” Midoriko paused. “Let me put it this way, you are the chisel I will use to knock out the incorrect stone so it can be replaced with the right one. If we are successful, all will be restored to the original design.”

 

“And if we fail?”

 

“The wall falls down.”

 

Kagome felt her mind cringing, and a sliver of ice ran through her heart.

 

“Do not cower, Kagome-sama, do not flinch. You cannot afford it. There is no possible way to convey to you the time and distances involved, the races and species whose existence hangs now on your weakest breath but who will never be able to see the light of your sun.”

 

Kagome swallowed. She recognized the terror and horror that was knocking at the door of her mind, though it was remote, like a tiny tower on a far away mountain. She saw in her mind's eye a swirl of infinite stars and she swallowed hard.

 

“You're not really Midoriko, are you?” she asked at last.

 

“I am, and I am not. But that is not for you to know.”

 

“I can see why you chose to tell me all this when I was half dead,” she said at last, with some bitterness that she failed to hide.

 

She drew in a deep breath and raised her chin.

 

“So, what is it that you want me to do?”

 

“You have a highly developed sense of duty. I am glad of that,” the miko sounded genuinely happy. “The first thing you have to do is to recover. You are actually in terrible condition.”

 

“Really?” Kagome was a little surprised. “I mean, I remember some of what happened. I know it was bad. But I don't seem to be feeling much pain.”

 

“That is because you have been medicated,” Midoriko told her.

 

Kagome assumed that meant that Inuyasha had taken her back to the modern era. For the first time since the Plateau, she experienced relief.

 

“Do not get excited,” Midoriko warned her. “You have a long and difficult road ahead of you. The main purpose of this visit was to explain these things to you so that you know the `whys' when the time comes to take orders.”

 

“Okay, I think I can I understand that. But what about my friends and my mother, was all that a dream?”

 

“A favor,” Midoriko answered. “After all you had suffered, and will suffer, I wanted you to know that they were still alive, which is a greater luxury than they themselves are afforded at the moment.”

 

“And one more thing,” the miko's tone was ominous. “You must never, EVER stand alone. If you, or any of your allies, meet Naraku like that again, you will not survive, and everything that has ever happened will be meaningless. I have not moved all these pieces through a universe of death to have it all end like that.”

 

Before Kagome could answer, or question her further, the miko's presence was gone. The light in the cave, however, did not dim but grew brighter and brighter. She stood for a moment in a blinding white plain, until she saw an azure sky above bearing the brilliant, white disc of the sun. She was surrounded by fields of blue bellflowers that reached to all horizons.

 

She looked down and brushed a few blooms with her foot. What was the deal with these flowers, anyway?

 

Kagome could not reckon clearly how much time she spent wandering the fields of bellflowers. During this time she thought back on her conversation with Midoriko, and the “visits” she had paid to her friends. Why couldn't they know she was still alive? Why weren't they together? How was she supposed to find them?

 

Lost in thought, she stumbled upon something solid and rectangular, set amongst the blue fields.

 

“Okay,” she mumbled, staring at it. “That's…random.”

 

Feeling her logic growing fuzzy like in dreams, Kagome lifted herself to sit on the stone table.

 

A man was sitting beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw long white hair and armor and concluded straight away that it was Sesshoumaru. She flinched and tensed her muscles to make a run for it.

 

“Sorry,” he waved a nonchalant hand. “Wrong dog demon.”

 

Kagome gaped at him stupidly. It was Inuyasha's father! She had seen him only once before, in a brief apparition at the gates of the underworld, but even if she had not there could be no mistake. His golden eyes and his sharp features cut holes in her soul. The minute she looked at his face, she wondered what Sesshoumaru's mother looked like.

 

Because he must favor her very much.

 

“I'm s-sorry,” she stammered, feeling ignorant and gauche. “I…I don't know your name.”

 

“Ichiro.”

 

“Ichiro?” somehow she was not surprised. “Ichiro. It's a powerful name. Why are you here, Ichiro-sama?”

 

“Midoriko has had her turn, now we need to have a little chat.”

 

His easy, unpolished manner made her want to cry. They were just so much alike.

 

“I hope,” he said, “that you've learned your lesson well.”

 

Kagome swallowed tears.

 

“Yes,” was all she could say.

 

“You won't make the same mistakes again?”

 

“No.”

 

“Good. Maybe you can keep my sons from making them too.”

 

“Sons?” Kagome was numb and dazed, and thought she had misunderstood and was in serious danger of coming off as an idiot.

 

“Yes, your allies.”

 

“Ah, wait a minute, wait a minute,” Kagome jumped. “Sorry to interrupt you, but your eldest son is not my ally at all, at all.

 

He was still sitting on the other end of the stone, leaning back on his arms. He peered at her out of the corner of his eye.

 

“He is if I say he is.”

 

Kagome smiled and quickly waved her hands.

 

“Yes, okay, so sorry!”

 

She sighed and lowered her head.

 

He must think I'm so useless.

 

“Why do you keep saying that?” he asked her.

 

“Saying what, my lord?”

 

“Useless.”

 

“How…” she began asking.

 

“There are no secrets in the dreaming world,” he said.

 

“Then, why can't I know what you're thinking?”

 

He looked at her as though she had asked him why he thought it necessary to breathe that way.

 

“I'm not in the dreaming world,” he said. “You are.”

 

“Then,” she folded her hands on her lap to hide her timidity. “Then can you tell me where you are?”

 

He answered only with a long gaze.

 

“That's not for me to know?” she supplied.

 

“You're getting better at this.”

 

“So…then,” Kagome bit her lip, trying to come up with her perfect question.

 

“May I ask what can I know?”

 

He grinned. “Good question.”

 

“I'm here,” he continued, “to give you very specific information: a list of allies, though it won't be complete, and you won't understand all of it.”

 

Kagome had nothing to say to that.

 

“My sons, like I've said. You will also receive aid from my wife, if you need it.”

 

“Do you mean Izayoi?” Kagome asked before she could tell her mouth to shut up.

 

“Alas, no,” he answered. He was quiet for a moment, and his eyes withdrew to some far off place. Kagome winced and cursed her thoughtlessness.

 

“Izayoi's part in this tale was finished when she bore Inuyasha. She rests now in peaceful lands where there are no burdens or sorrows.”

 

He was quiet again. Then he looked up and smiled.

 

“No, I mean Chiyoko.”

 

“Ah, yes, my lord,” Kagome said quickly, not daring to question to him.

 

Kagome wondered if dead people went insane.

 

“There's Midoriko, of course. The others I will not name specifically, but you already know them, though you won't expect many of them. One of them is on her way now.”

 

“Here?” Kagome looked around.

 

“Any minute now,” he answered.

 

Kagome grew nervous.

 

He'll leave then, she thought.

 

“My lord,” she lowered her head. “Can't you tell me anything else? What is happening? Why is it happening? What am I supposed to do?”

 

“You know,” Ichiro mused, as if he had not heard her. “Sometime when you make a mistake, you have to go around and around and around, trying to fix it. Sometimes, you repeat it before you recognize it.”

 

“Are you talking about my mistakes?”

 

“No.”

 

“So…someone made a mistake,” Kagome strained to understand. “And, until it is addressed…we just keep repeating…”

 

The answer stabbed her in the heart.

 

“The same thing over and over!” she exclaimed. “Of course! I understand. That's why I felt so trapped. That's why I felt like nothing ever changed—because it really didn't! It couldn't!”

 

The revelation was like understanding how to speak and listen, after a lifetime of dark dumbness. She relished the feeling of clarity, while Ichiro looked on and smiled a small smile.

 

“Very good,” he said. “But you should know that the tendency to repeat is a symptom of the Mistake, and will continue to be an issue until it's corrected. You can resist, however.”

 

Kagome pictured the library in her mind, where she stored that information away with great care.

 

“She's nearly here,” Ichiro stood up. “I may see you again.”

 

Then he was gone.

 

Kagome realized that she was lying on the stone table now, covered in those stupid flowers. She could not recall how this had happened, but it was hardly the oddest thing she had lately experienced. She felt like an actress in a play and was afraid to move, fearing she would do or say the wrong thing, fail to follow the cues, and end up setting everything off in the wrong direction.

 

She looked up and saw Kikyou looking down at her. Kagome's blood ran cold.

 

“All night,” the other miko said, “all I hear, all I hear is your heart.”

 

She looked hypnotized.

 

“How come?” Kagome responded without hesitation, listening to herself with a detached wonder.

 

Kikyou's cheeks and chin were wet with tears. Kagome sat up, shoving the flowers aside and shaking them from her hair.

 

I'm not ready to just lie here, she thought. I'm not dead!

 

“Kikyou, what is it? Are you hurt?”

 

Kikyou did not answer, but she wiped the tears from her cheeks.

Kagome looked around, dazed. “How did you get here?”

 

Kikyou stared at her. “Kagome? Is that really you?”

 

“Of course it is! What's with you?”

 

Kikyou took hold of the Kagome's arms and shook her.

 

“Where are you Kagome?” she demanded. “Are you sleeping somewhere? Safe? Hurry and tell me before this ends.”

 

“What?” Kagome looked around and tried to pull away.

 

“Kagome, this isn't real.” Kikyou's voice was as hard as ever. “You're asleep somewhere. You must tell me where that is!”

 

“I don't know!” Kagome shouted, finally. “The last thing I remember is…”

 

She trailed off as she realized that Kikyou's hands were warm and calloused, soft and hard at the same time. Kagome's heart pounded painfully in her chest.

 

“Why did you do that? Foolish girl!” Kikyou demanded.

 

Kagome did not even hear her. She was sifting through memories not her own, casting her thought back three months to a remote riverside. She saw eyes as black as the blackest ocean, and she began weeping.

 

“Death came for me?” she asked in a quivering voice.

 

“Yes,” Kikyou answered. “But you were lucky; she came to me by mistake.”

 

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.” Kagome continued to weep.

 

“Stop that!” Kikyou snapped.

 

“Kagome, wake up. I'm ordering you to wake up.”

 

Kagome raised her head to the ceiling of white light. A glacial voice resounded above their heads, like the toll of heavy bells.

 

“No more delay. You must wake up and you must do it now.”

 

“Who is that?” Kikyou asked her, looking around.

 

“I don't know…” Kagome mumbled.

 

Her head was too heavy to lift and she felt herself sinking and lifting at the same time.

 

Though she was still questioning her, Kikyou seemed to move away. She became veiled in a hazy mesh.

 

“Wait…Kikyou…” Kagome whispered and, with enormous effort, reached out her hand. “Kikyou…all you need…”

 

Kagome's throat stopped working. She stared mutely at her outstretched hand. A hideous, angry red line ran from the wrist and up the entire length of her arm.

 

Kagome tried to call out, but found herself suddenly gagged. She choked on a hard, metallic taste on her tongue. Reaching to her mouth she pulled out something round and unrelenting. It was a silver bracelet, with a scarlet star-stone in its center.

 

“Kagome, I will not tell you again.”

 

Kagome tried to turn around, but was pulled back and up. She had the impression that she was emerging from water.

 

She sat up gasping for air. She was on an unfamiliar bed, in a strange room. Her eyes were bleary, a general ache covered her, and Kagome felt an incredible weight of weariness in every region of her body. A gray veil was swept from her vision and the first thing she saw was the face of Sesshoumaru.

 

Kagome screamed in terror and immediately threw up her arms.

 

“What's happening? Where's Inuyasha?”

 

There were others in the room, but they did not answer her. Kagome told herself that she was probably still dreaming, but then Jaken opened the window and declared, with quaking joy, that the rain was finally ending. Kagome's stomach recoiled and her mind tried to slink away in denial. But the sentinels of the past bared her way with inflexible and unmistakable determination. She had crossed over the precipice of uncertainty, the penumbra of dreams, and into the world of the things that have not happened yet.

 

[End of chapter 14, ending “the rains” period]

 

[End of Book One]

 

[Continue the story in “The Dissidents”, book two of The Edge of Resistance. Kagome recuperates in the Hyouden, while the countryside recovers from the cataclysmic rains. A new power is rising, one that turns allies against allies. Many strings of fate become reunited once again. The inhabitants of the Higurashi shrine do not remain untouched, and somewhere a forgotten ally struggles on alone.]