InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Prologue to Book Two: The Dissidents ( Chapter 14 )

Author Notes:

So I've decided to keep all the books of Edge of Resistance under the same title in mediaminer. I think it'll be better, but I don't know, maybe it will just be confusing. We'll see…I can always change it later.

 

Oh, and also…canon? What's canon? :P

 

***

 

The Edge of Resistance

Book Two: The Dissidents

 

PROLOGUE

 

“I can feel it,

coming back again

Like a roll of thunder,

chasing the wind

Forces pulling from the center of the earth again

I can feel it…”

-Live

 

***

 

 

The world was so much younger then. In those days the realms of magic and of the mundane were inexorably mixed together, like a soup of rice and cayenne pepper.

 

Her sonorous heart never faltered, her laughter sprayed on the fresh, green world like broken glass, and the greatest gift of all was that her freedom was so absolute and so indifferent. Even in tender childhood, when the world was so new that the stars lack names and to indicate them it was necessary to point, she knew great power and strength, but it could not corrupt her. Only freedom mattered. Chiyoko sprinted across streams of clear water that ran over polished stones, round and enormous like dragon eggs. She would laugh and run like a deer, wild and snowy hair streaming behind her.

 

The people of that land, human and demon, existed in a peace that could only predate want. They could not help but admire her and they congratulated her parents, saying how wonderful it must be to have such a beautiful and joyous child.

 

Her parents did not answer them that the girl was worse than a mule. When they draped her in luxurious fabrics, she laughed and tossed them from a window, and ran about all day clad only in a smock she made from sailing cloth. When they braided her hair into intricate patterns, she cut it off (luckily, it grew back over night). When they presented her with the applications of princes, she heartlessly laughed and declared that she would never tie herself to a man stupid enough to get saddled with a kingdom. When suitors sang of their suffering outside her window, she sent servants to fetch physicians, and wondered aloud in earnest what sort of disease she could be. They presented her with lavish and magical gifts from faraway lands, including a flying carpet from India, a pair of mechanized dancing cats from China, and a tiny porcelain pistol from Portugal that would expel a nepenthe of orchids when you pulled the trigger. Chiyoko accepted them with genuine joy, and then proceeded to give them out to her friends, for such things had no hold on her mind.

 

Her parents kept these complaints to themselves, but in their hearts they suspected the girl was not right in the head.

 

Chiyoko was apart, but for uncounted centuries she was content to run wild in the free lands and to give no thought to her otherness. She grew slowly, if at all, and did not notice that her life was static while the world around began to show its age.

 

One day, she was dashing in and out of the lush, green shades of a summer forest, when she came face to face with an ogre. Ogres have notorious appetites, but it is just as well known that they have small brains and kill and eat without discrimination.

 

So it was that Chiyoko was obliged to decapitate him, which she always preferred as a method of quick and easy disposal. What she did not realize was that, before her arrival, the ogre had been in the midst of stuffing himself with a village worth of humans.

 

“Midoriko-sama!” she heard a villager say. “It's another demon. Destroy it before she starts to eat us too!”

 

Chiyoko wrinkled her dainty nose.

 

“Eat a human?” she asked. “Why would I do such a disgusting thing?”

 

The villagers paid no attention to her, but continued to encourage and entreat the priestess, who had arrived at the scene only in time to see the ogre's death.

 

When Chiyoko turned to look at the priestess, she saw a pretty but rather ordinary looking woman, petite with long black hair pulled away from a heart-shaped face and let loose down her back. She was ordinary, but when Chiyoko looked into those almond eyes, her slumber in the warm, green lizard silence of her lengthened adolescence came to an abrupt end. Thus an age of the world, when life was a fusion of fantastic and common and when time moved slowly but clearly forward, was ended, and there was no returning.

 

Midoriko stared back at Chiyoko for a moment, then turned to the villagers.

 

“It is alright,” she said. “Go back to the village. I will be there shortly to help you enshrine the dead.”

 

The villagers hesitated, but could not argue, and they filed out of the clearing, making their way to their huts in the forest.

 

Midoriko turned to the dog demon.

 

“I never dreamed I'd see you so soon,” she said, smiling.

 

“Who are you?” Chiyoko asked her breathlessly. “Do I know you?”

 

“Yes,” the miko answered. “And no.”

 

The priestess returned to the village, but Chiyoko, trapped by her undeniable fate, would not leave her side. The villagers stared in fright and amazement at the bare-foot, wild-looking girl with white hair and decided to believe that Midoriko had tamed the demon child as a pet.

 

That night, after the dirges had all been sung, and the people had returned to their hearths, Midoriko and Chiyoko talked together until morning. The families of the ogre's victims filled the wind with their lamentations.

 

“I do not want this,” Chiyoko said at dawn.

 

“No, none of us do.”

 

“It doesn't seem fair.”

 

“That is because it is not,” the miko answered.

 

“Do I have to leave now?”

 

“There is no reason to wait. It will only make it more difficult.”

 

But Chiyoko did say goodbye to her family. In spite of the difficulties they had had with their daughter, her father hung his head and her mother wept openly. They did not understand, but Chiyoko assured them that it was her destiny, and that they were not required to understand. She left and never saw them again.

 

Her first task, the first of many, was so absurd to her that she released her broken glass laugh the minute she heard it.

 

“You must be joking, Midoriko-sama,” she exclaimed. “One pup is as good as another.”

 

Midoriko gave her a look that said one day, you'll understand.

 

So Chiyoko spent the next few centuries arranging marriages, alliances, and even the occasional assassination. Midoriko passed on instructions to her, though after a short time Chiyoko came to be familiar with that shock of recognition she felt when she would come face to face with someone whose fate was not their own. Soon she was able to feel the presence of these souls, and the strings that secured them, pulling with forcefulness on the atmosphere.

 

The guidance came, however, even after the body of Midoriko was encased in a crystal tomb. They had always understood that the body meant nothing, so the only reason this event had any effect on them was that Midoriko's soul was preoccupied with the endless battle that continued to rage in the Shikon no Tama, and therefore Chiyoko “saw” her less often.

 

One day, when Chiyoko reached to the priestess across the quiet dark of the weird unlife in which they dwelt, Midoriko said to her:

 

“It is time for you to go back.”

 

“I guess there's no point in complaining about it.”

 

“You may find some joy, Chiyoko-kun,” Midoriko said to her. “But remember, you cannot stay forever.”

 

Chiyoko went to the western lands and searched until she found the right spot. It was a small river that cradled a plateau, set high and flat amongst a jagged mountain rage. Chiyoko placed herself primly on a smooth rock near the river bank, pinched her cheeks and fluffed her hair, and waited.

 

While she waited, she looked around and thought how the world looked much less young. For no reason, she thought of her parents, and realized she could no longer remember what they looked like.

 

Then he came. The one she awaited came around a bend in the river, and she noted with satisfaction that he was handsome. He had white hair of course, as all dog demons she had ever known did, and it was long and tied at the crown of his head. His features were sharp and distinct, with golden eyes. That will make this easier, she thought. He did not look surprised to find her there.

 

“Am I late?” he asked her, and she thought his voice sounded nice too.

 

“So I see I am not the only one who knows a thing or two,” she said to him.

 

“There's a lot of prophets out there,” he answered.

 

His easy manner was comforting.

 

“So then I suppose you figure you don't have to court me.” Chiyoko smiled ruefully. “That's rather disappointing. I've waited a long time for this, you know.”

 

He laughed, and then reached out a hand to her. When she took it, she could not help but notice that it trembled a little. A thrill of fear and anxiety tickled her lower stomach.

 

“Come,” he said. “Let's go home.”

 

Chiyoko was the mistress of the Hyouden for many years. The lord of the Hyouden had, until then, lived a life of seclusion, taciturn and severe, but her natural joyousness spread over those lands in a bright expanse of spring. It was during their reign that the power of the Hyouden grew, not out of conquest, as everyone of later generations would believe, but out of love. Demon tribes in the surrounding areas swore fealty to the couple, and humans paid tribute, all out of an adoration of Chiyoko's effortless exuberance. She hosted gatherings of lavish gaiety at the Hyouden, and it became known as the finest place to eat and drink, laugh and sing, for a hundred leagues in any direction.

 

The lord failed to convince his mistress why it was inappropriate to invite humans. It was then that he learned just how long she had been waiting for him, for she said that in her childhood humans and demons lived together in perfect peace, and that had not happened in all the long years of his own life. She could not understand why discourse would have arisen between the two kindred. He tried to explain to her how they now suspected and envied each other, sometimes digressing into outright hatred, but she would not hear of it.

 

“A time will come when you'll have to tolerate them more than you could imagine,” she warned him.

 

“So you are privy to information I do not have.” It was not a question.

 

Chiyoko only shrugged. “So it goes.”

 

The humans were too polite to refuse the invitation, despite their fear, and the demons were too afraid of offending her to offer any impertinence over the issue. In Chiyoko's unbending shadow, it was easy to forget any grievance anyway. The music thundered in the halls and the storerooms overflowed with food and they laughed: “Cease! Clear the tables! Life is brief!” The greatest gift of all was that no one knew how short the time would be.

 

Those days were so simple and joyous, so real and prodigious, that Chiyoko lost count of the years, and sometimes forgot why she was there. Then the day came that she and her husband had anticipated with both dread and desire. Chiyoko announced that she was pregnant.

 

That night, Chiyoko and Ichiro lay in the quiet dark, their foreheads touching.

 

“So it's almost over then,” Ichiro gave voice to the sentence that had hung in the air all day.

 

“Yes,” she answered. “And let's not waste our time thinking how that's not fair.”

 

“You've learned your lessons well.”

 

He ran his fingers through her hair, white and electric like his own.

 

“I'll take good care of him,” he whispered.

 

Chiyoko swallowed her resentment, and her heart came up instead.

 

“There are times,” she whispered, “when I think I'd make a deal with the gods, or whoever is behind all this, to get them to swap our places.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

 

“I will leave some of me with you, for his sake,” she said. “Wield it wisely.”

 

Ichiro of the West announced the birth of his son and the death of his beloved wife in one breath. Those who loved and served him did not know how to react. Chiyoko had come into their lives like a tornado of laughter, a storm of spring, and it seemed to them that she had evaporated just as quickly.

 

How unexpected, they shook their heads, she was so young and strong!

 

Over time, the Hyouden slipped back into the old ways, though those who lived in that land still paid tribute to Ichiro, and later to his heir, out of respect for the beloved they had lost.

 

Chiyoko herself did not have much time to spend on her grief, for straight away she was to begin her next task: guarding the gates of the dead. She waited by the gate day after day, year after year—never amongst the living, yet never leaving them. Long and empty years flowed away. She counted down the days until Ichiro would come to her. When that day came, he was not surprised to see her, but his eyes were curious.

 

“Is this your task?” he asked her, looking around with mild interest.

 

“One of many,” she said.

 

Chiyoko had forgotten how his voice vibrated in her chest. Her mind wandered into the solar fields of the past, when his body rocked with hers, but she waved those thoughts away and they skittered into the quiet dark again. She took his hand and led him forth.

 

“Your gate is different,” she said to him, “because you can't leave yet, not entirely. But of course, you probably already know that.”

 

“We will pass the final gate together, someday,” he said to her.

 

“We will see,” was all she said.

 

It was not long after when Chiyoko went, in spirit unseen, to attend the birth of the Guardian.

 

“Soon, as it will seem to us, many more will come,” Midoriko said to her. “Finally, all your labors will see their fruit.

 

“That last one was rather unfair,” Chiyoko said, not bothering to hide her bitterness.

 

“Chiyoko-kun, you know these orders do not come from me.”

 

“Yes, so you say, but can't I just be angry sometimes?”

 

“If you wish,” Midoriko shrugged. “But do not let it consume you. You still have work to do.”

 

Midoriko had been correct. Chiyoko did not have time to turn around twice before she had to rush to the birth of the Cyclone, followed by the Queen With No Country. The Wanderer and the Jewel were born within a week of each other and many leagues apart. Then there was a quiet period where time dragged on again and nothing happened.

 

In spirit, she stood next to the Wanderer the day the Guardian was imprisoned on a tree. That day, the Wanderer came to her gates, and Chiyoko let her pass without a word.

 

About ten years later, give or take, the Holy Man and the Solitary were born, two years apart. Another ten years passed and an arrival was expected that Chiyoko anticipated more than any other. She had established this line centuries ago, but the family had become nomadic merchants and she had lost track of them over the years. As the foretold hour approached she took great pains to find them and to attend the birth in person, rather than merely in spirit, disguised as a servant.

 

When the new mother held the infant in her arms, it looked like any other: wet, red, and altogether traumatized. This child did not sound like any other, however. This child did not cry, but instead she looked at the world with wide, luminous eyes that seemed to take in everything. Chiyoko took the infant and cleansed it in a gentle rapture, watching the signs in the air that only she could see, signs that announced the arrival of the Bearer.

 

“What will you call her, my lady?” Chiyoko asked the mother, giving the babe back to her, with some regret.

 

The woman held the child close again, her face shining and absorbed.

 

“Rin,” she answered.

 

This was the last birth she would witness in person, so Chiyoko returned to her gates, and waited. She felt Midoriko and Ichiro moving through time and space, working on their own tasks, and she wondered what they were and if she would ever know. She watched in silence as the Bearer came to her gate and then vanished again. She listened everyday to the beating of her son's titan heart. She shuddered when she felt the fabric of time wrinkle together—the first occurrence but not the last.

 

Chiyoko exhaled a long breath, as if she had been holding it for centuries.

 

“She is here,” she uttered into the quiet dark.