InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ How Soon is Now? ( Chapter 19 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Lalieth 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Adventure / Action / Drama / Romance / Fantasy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 06.06.2010 | Updated On: 10.20.2012 | Pages: 10 | Words: 9.6K | Visits: 570 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy / Adventure / Action / Drama / Romance / Fantasy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 06.06.2010 | Updated On: 10.20.2012 | Pages: 10 | Words: 9.6K | Visits: 570 | Status: Work In Progress
Author’s notes: I’m sorry this chapter has taken so long. The main reason is that I am now looking for a job. Since I still have a job, that means I have a lot less free time on my hands. If you don’t know, you’re lucky, but looking for a job requires a lot of time and effort.
Also, this chapter is different than the previous few chapters in that we get to visit everyone this time, instead of just a couple of characters. It’s also my longest yet.
The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents
With a determined step, she entered Kagome’s room only an hour after daybreak. Kikyou had been awake already for several hours. Kagome was still asleep.
She stood next to the sleeping girl.
“Kagome, wake up,” she commanded.
Kagome stirred, opened one bleary eye, and closed it again.
Kikyou would not repeat herself. She picked up a jug of water that had been sitting there all night and emptied its contents on Kagome’s head.
Kagome sat up straight as an arrow, wiping her face and swearing.
“Kikyou! What the hell?”
“I said to wake up.”
Kagome glared at her. The effect was made less intimidating by her dripping hair.
“OK, so I’m awake,” she said. “What’s so important you had to try to drown me?”
“Do not exaggerate.”
Kikyou put the jug back on the floor then straightened and held her hand out to the other miko.
“Come on.”
Kagome stared at her.
“Let us go, Kagome. We have much to do today.”
“Kikyou…Kikyou, I can’t, you know I can’t.”
“Do not be such a baby,” Kikyou answered. “I am not going to coddle you anymore. Get up.”
Kagome glared at her again, then her eyes narrowed.
“I see. So now your true nature emerges again. It’s really rather comforting, in a way. But it doesn’t matter. Rin took care of me before you got here and she will continue to do so.”
“No,” Kikyou said firmly, “she will not.”
“And why not?”
“I will not allow it.”
“Kikyou!” Kagome slammed her fists down on her bedding. “What do you want from me? I said I can’t. I would know wouldn’t I? You don’t know what I’m going through!”
“You are such a brat.”
“Takes one to know one!” Kagome shouted at her.
Kikyou looked at her, her expression puzzled.
“I beg your pardon?”
Kagome bit her lower lip and flushed.
“Nothing,” she said in a sullen tone, crossing her arms and looking away.
“Fine,” Kikyou said. “Let that strange girl take care of you. You can sit here feeling sorry for yourself if you want to, but I am leaving.”
“Leaving?” Kagome looked up in alarm. “Where are you going?”
“What do you care?”
“Midoriko said we had to stay together!”
Kikyou shrugged. “Maybe you can explain to her why you refused to go with me.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Kagome,” Kikyou said, “the others, including Inuyasha, are still out there. I will find them. I will bring them all together, and I will lead them to confront Naraku, and all the while you can sit here enjoying your invalidism. In fact, I’ll have no choice but to tell Inuyasha when I see him that you chose to stay with his brother.”
Kagome gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Would I not?” Kikyou’s expression was unconcerned.
“Besides,” she added with a superior, dismissive little sniff. “We have no need of you anyway.”
Kagome leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing.
“You go too far!” she screamed at her.
“My goodness,” Kikyou smirked at her. “She lives.”
Kagome flushed and looked down at her guilty feet.
“It hurts,” she said, after a long silence.
Kikyou was not sure if the girl was referring to her legs or to what Kikyou had said. She decided that it didn’t matter.
“Yes dear, I know,” her expression softened, and she extended her hand again. “But precious things must be purchased. I will help you through it.”
Kagome raised her head and looked at her for a moment. Then she reached out and took Kikyou’s hand.
***
Kagome and her friends had endured long torture under the Rains, being cast about in dreams like tiny ships on storm-lashed seas. Now they were all awake and moving, but in a dry and desolate world of uncertainty and alienation. Sesshoumaru’s turn, however, was just beginning. In truth, he might have been spared, but for one small oversight.
It began with his desire to sleep. It was not a need that would incapacitate a human or a demon less than himself. It was rather a slight ache, a longing to be suspended in a dark place without gravity, without dust, and without senses. He would have known it to be nostalgia, if he had possessed the experience to recognize such a thing.
He could not close his eyes for long without seeing the frenzied stars in a collusion of infinite energy. Raging power and endless time collapsed in a single moment and gave way the very next instant to a towering, unimaginable silence. It was a nothing that was beyond mortal comprehension—and mortal he felt himself to be, more mortal than anything that crawled upon the earth. The heatless vacuum wrapped around him with devastating determination. There was no pain, only a sense of annihilating pressure and, worse—oh so much worse than everything else—was the recognition of inevitability.
Sesshoumaru never got any further than this before opening his eyes, sometimes in a cold sweat but always with a quickened heart. Most of the time he never got half as far.
Kikyou and Kohaku had been in his home for more than two months when he decided that he was quite irritated.
At first he considered the possibility that Kikyou was behind it all. The first time he had been treated to this vision was when she had touched him on the day she had arrived. She had shown no sign, however, that she was aware of what had happened, and now she avoided him. He discounted the possibility that she was behind it, at least directly.
It so happened that Sesshoumaru was passing near the door to the sick room one day when he heard the miko’s voice explaining in a patient tone.
“This is how it must be done, Midoriko said so.”
In Sesshoumaru’s mind the pieces fit together all at once. He knew of the cave where the ancient miko was forever enshrined. He also knew that her soul, or part of it, was still in the Shikon no Tama. It only stood to reason that her awareness was still active in the world, and that she could still interfere with events among the living.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to him. He resolved that very day to travel to the shrine and see if he might engage her in some way. He wondered if he destroyed the shrine—which he was sure would be no great task—if she would then be unable to manipulate his sleep and cast visions at him from afar. There was only one way to find out.
Having a task and a clear goal at hand made him feel better already. He insisted that Tamotsu accompany him, which was a convenient excuse for getting his idiot cousin away from that other miko, the wounded one. Sesshoumaru found his attentions to her to be a trifle disconcerting.
Lucky for Sesshoumaru, they never made it to Midoriko’s cave. What she may have been obliged to do to persuade him to give up this insane venture can only be guessed. Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu did not even make it more than five minutes out of the lands of the Hyouden. Moving northeast, they soon encountered startling evidence that the country was sundered by more than hardship and want.
They flew high above the treetops, higher than most birds. Tamotsu glanced to his left and saw a sullen red sky. At first he assumed it was the sunset, but then it occurred to him that it was quite early in the day for sunset.
Well, it’s getting on in winter I guess. Day’s are shorter.
Tamotsu came to a sudden stop. Since when did the sun set in the north?
“Sesshoumaru!” he called. “What is that?”
Sesshoumaru, still heading east at a good speed, felt a cold knot form in his gut. The last time Tamotsu said that, he had ended up with three extra humans in his house. Still, he stopped and turned, and saw the angry and blazing northern sky.
“It’s just a brush fire,” he said.
“It’s awfully close to the Hyouden, Sesshoumaru,” his cousin said. “We should check it out.”
Sesshoumaru did not answer, but he followed Tamotsu a short distance in that direction.
They saw demons they had never seen before—small and black, they covered the land in a voracious, writhing carpet. Smoke rose to create a dirty, grey fog over the forest. Villages that nestled in the mountains and valleys were in flames, setting the hills aglow, as though they were drenched in blazing blood. Here and there, scattered across many miles, Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu could see the signs and hear the sounds of turmoil and struggle, as some humans and demons attempted to resist the implacable tide of destruction.
“What has happened?” Tamotsu cried in dismay.
Sesshoumaru said nothing. He looked to the north at the glowing forest and then to the east. Tamotsu meanwhile, was staring at him and chewing his lower lip.
You’re not that far gone, are you?
Sesshoumaru’s back stiffened and he turned to his cousin with hard eyes.
“Are you going to just stand there?” he demanded. “The more we kill today, the less we’ll have to kill tomorrow.”
After that, Sesshoumaru and his cousin spent almost every hour of each day hunting and destroying these spider-like demons. They were not much larger than the average human and though their many limbs were strong and wiry, they were nothing compared to the two dog demons. They lacked any leadership or organization; their only apparent goal was to consume, break, and burn. Their only advantage was in sheer numbers. It seemed that for every one that Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu smashed into oblivion a dozen more would appear, from the woods, from the hills, from cracks in the very ground. This did not worry Sesshoumaru, however, because it kept him too busy to think about sleep, stars, prophecies, or human priestesses.
He could not help but notice one strange thing about them. It was Tamotsu who brought it up.
“Have you noticed they don’t smell like anything?” he said one day. “I mean, sometimes they smell like blood and humans, but that’s what’s on them.”
“I have noticed. They also do not have a sense of demon to them.”
“Right,” Tamotsu agreed as he coolly lopped off the head of one of them. “If you don’t see or hear them, you wouldn’t know that they are there.”
A week or so later, Tamotsu informed Sesshoumaru that he had learned that almost all humans to the north had disappeared, either killed or fled, and that the new monster was called “Tsuchigumo”, though still no one knew from whence they came.
Sesshoumaru did not care what they were called and he continued entertaining himself by counting how many he could kill in a day. Tamotsu was cheerfully exterminating large groups of the demons in another part of the valley, when Sesshoumaru, almost wading through corpses, first saw her.
After destroying a small band of the demonic vermin, he found a wolf demoness, huddling with fear at the bottom of a black pit of carcasses. She realized the battle was finished, and she raised her head with caution.
When she saw him, she leapt to her feet and exclaimed:
“Sesshoumaru-sama! Thank you!”
Sesshoumaru was silent. She looked young, but careworn. She wore gray fur across her shoulders and a short sword strapped to her waist. Her wealth of red hair was gathered at each side of her head and was covered with a veil of irises imbued with a strange holiness.
“This foe is beyond you,” he said. “Go home.”
She drew herself up.
“I cannot go back,” she said in a clear, stern voice. “These monsters are everywhere, more so than you realize, maybe. They are harassing my people and ruining our lands. I must find a way to get rid of them.”
“That is quite absurd,” Sesshoumaru said. “You will never be able to do anything of the kind. You are on the road seeking your own death.”
“So be it,” she said without a hint of emotion. “But…maybe if you help me…”
“Your fate and that of your kindred does not concern me,” he turned to leave.
“I have sacred jewel shards!” she called after him.
Sesshoumaru stopped, and the demoness looked triumphant.
“What do you hope to gain by lying?” he asked. “Do you not think I would sense sacred jewel fragments?”
“Well…” she faltered, crestfallen. “I mean I have access to them. They’re not with me, of course!”
Sesshoumaru sighed. He may as well clear up the matter.
“I happen to know,” he said, “that Naraku has all but three of the shards. One is in my possession as we speak, and the other two are still with the wolf-demon, Kouga. Are these then what you would use to tempt me?”
The she-wolf’s eyes widened. Her mouth was open, but she could not answer.
“They are not yours to give, nor would I be interested even could you produce them. As I said, go home.”
He left her standing there in the mountains beyond the northern most reaches of his lands, staring after him with unshed tears stinging her eyes.
***
Kaede’s arthritic hands chafed under the stiff and coarse sheets. It seemed to her that she had washed and hung hundreds in the past few weeks. A never-ending marching line of sheets, a white, ghostly army, hung on twine cords stretched from tree to tree behind the village, billowing and whipping in the cold wind. They were taken each morning from the beds of people too weak or sick to get up to relieve themselves. Kaede waded hip deep in laundry and was up to her elbows in human filth every day. Not a day passed when she did not wander what had happened to Inuyasha and Kagome, and to her sister Kikyou.
There was so little to eat, and no medicine to speak of. Behind the flapping sheets the ground was rippled with the pathetic little mounds of the recently departed. Because the disaster and the absence of Inuyasha and Kagome coincided, she could not help thinking that if they would just come back, it would all get better somehow. She would pause in her work and gaze toward the northwest.
You can’t get here fast enough.
Dusk was stalking another day when a sudden shadow passed above her. Kaede looked up from her chore of repairing a doorframe in her house. She caught a glimpse of a large shape that appeared to be flying through the air, heading toward the southern end of the village.
Demon, she thought and, by instinct, ducked inside to gather up a bow and arrows. When she emerged, she heard screaming and horrible crunching and tearing sounds. She ran in the direction of the mayhem, limping because of a stiffened knee.
There was blood, clumps of hair, bits of bones, and rags of flesh scattered on the ground. She raised her bow and pointed the first arrow at a towering demon that looked like an ogre. She knew she was dead, however, when she saw the spider imprint on his back.
Well, it’s about time. I’m too old for this shit anyway. I never expected to live this long.
She released her shot, but her arrow could not muster the power to break into that monster’s foul frame. It did get his attention, however, and he turned his massive head and red, beady eyes in her direction. She now thought him more of a troll than an ogre. He was enormous and sinewy, with a shag of black hair covering most of him. His teeth were rows of sharp yellow daggers and his hands sported black and red claws.
“What do you want here?” she demanded.
“Are you a priestess?” he growled in a voice like tumbling rocks.
“I am. Who, or what, are you?”
He did not answer. He leapt forward on frog-like legs and came down behind her, sending turf and grass spraying everywhere. Clumps of it landed and caught in her gray hair.
She turned, but not quick enough. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder. The force sent her to the ground even before she could feel the claws that cut a gash in her back. She lay on the ground, knowing that not moving would mean the end, but not able to gather the strength of will to even blink. She saw the blood staining the grass and thought,
It’s almost like Kikyou’s wound.
She heard shouting, screaming, and children crying. On her stomach, she shifted her head so she could see the final blow coming.
“Where is the priestess called Kagome?” the monster asked her.
Kaede was surprised. She shifted her eyes to look at him, then looked around. When she tried to speak, the words came out in an unintelligible and pathetic wheeze.
It was not to be easy. She was not so weak as she supposed. He kicked her in her wounded shoulder and it seemed to shatter like glass and she screamed, but still, she did not die.
“Where is she?” he roared.
Kaede shuddered in ragged breaths.
“I…don’t…know. I swear. Think…think she’s dead.”
“Where is her family?”
Kaede’s forehead creased. She looked at him again.
“I…never…knew them…no one…does.”
He kicked her again, but Kaede only groaned this time. She noted with satisfaction that she was unable to feel anything. Her vision blurred and a grayish dark began to overtake it at the edges. It would soon be over now. She closed her eyes.
Kagome, Kagome, who stands behind you now?
The pain was gone, and a numb and pleasant drowsiness replaced it. She was troubled by confusion for only for a moment when she heard Kikyou humming a soft tune and felt her brushing her hair, and she inhaled the warm smell of dough that came from her mother’s hands.
These precious things.
In that moment, when Inuyasha collided with Jinenji, when Kagome’s grandfather turned to white bones and ash, when Shippou said goodbye to Hachi, and when Sesshoumaru shrugged off the wolf demonness, Kaede was gone—just one last, black supernova, and it was over.
***
Inside Yuka, there was a voice that told her that she had made a terrible mistake by moving into the Higurashi shrine. The voice began to grow louder the day Souta struck her.
The worst thing about it was that she knew it to be entirely against his character, not only because he was by nature a sweet and gentle boy, but also because he was a coward. In the silence that followed, she knew with cold certainty that something was driving him insane. He thought he saw contempt in her eyes, but it was actually pity and dread.
What if it’s the house, or the shrine? What if I’m insane too and I just don’t know it? What then?
That night, after they had delivered Grandfather Higurashi’s remains to the funeral home, Yuka lay in Kagome’s bed, shivering and wide awake, staring out at the full moon.
When exhaustion finally overcame her, she fell into restless dreams, dreams that she had repeated many times before.
She is driving, not in the city but along a narrow and winding road that ribboned through the mountains. It is dark, and the beams of her little car did not seem capable of penetrating the night. She is seized by a terror of running headlong off the edge and into a bottomless chasm below.
Just stop! her mind screeched at her, just hit the brake!
She does not, not then, but something always stops her anyway. A shadowy figure darts in from nowhere and blurs in front of the weak headlights. With a cry of dismay, Yuka slams on the brakes. She hears the screech of tires followed by a pitiful, aching yelp.
The car stops. Her hand gropes for the door handle.
No! Don’t go outside!
“Why not?” she asks out loud.
Oiwa is out there!
But Yuka knows that Oiwa is just an old legend, a pale shade, so she opens the door. She walks to the front of her car. In the low, yellow light of the headlights she sees that she has struck an animal. It lies on the road, crumpled and bloodied.
What is it?
“I don’t know.”
She bends over the creature, but when she does, its eyes snap open and it snarls. She jumps back.
It’s a wolf.
There are no wolves in Japan anymore.
The wolf is not affected by this revelation. He rises and limps away from the road. At the edge of the forest, he turns to look at her. Yuka, frozen in fear and fascination, feels a tug, an urge to follow. His golden eyes are curious. He stares at her, then turns his head to the woods, then turns to her again.
“No,” she whispers, the words steaming in the cold. “I cannot.”
She does not see him move, but his figure dissolves into the dark trees.
Yuka awoke with the first pale light of the winter morning. Her eyes were gritty and burning, as though she had not slept a moment. She went through that day with Higurashi, Souta, and the smoke and white bones that was all that remained of the little, senile old man she had not really known.
The man who drove them home (some distant relative, but Yuka never found out precisely) thought that the trio was numbed and silent from their loss. He was better off thinking that.
Yuka climbed the staircase to Kagome’s room, hung her dress coat in the closet and put her patent leather pumps under the bed. She went to the window, slid it open, and looked out at the courtyard. Souta, in his black suit and thin tie, stood under the tree.
The doorbell rang and startled Yuka so that she turned with a sudden jerk and bumped Kagome’s desk with her hip. The little glass bottle with the cork stopper rolled off the edge and shattered. She saw that it had fallen just right, or just wrong, to hit the edge of a metal wastebasket.
Visitors had come to pay their respects to the Higurashi family. Yuka almost forgot to breathe when she saw Eri and Ayumi standing on the threshold, dressed in somber black. The image, with its old familiarity and comforting normalcy, threw her into a state of affliction. She could not even manage a simple greeting before bursting into tears.
They assumed she was distraught over Grandfather Higurashi’s passing. Ayumi wrapped her arms around her friend and stroked her hair.
“There, there,” she said. “He was old, Yuka, it was his time.”
Yuka only cried harder. She wanted to explain to them how she was trapped in a madhouse, how she was certain that Kagome’s vengeful spirit was driving them all insane, but she could not manage her breathing enough to speak. She was led back into the house and asked to sit down on a chair in the dining room.
Eri bid Ayumi to stay with Yuka while she searched for Mrs. Higurashi.
Yuka continued to sob, with Ayumi’s hand on her back, wishing with brutal desperation that she could tell them everything, could somehow make them understand.
By this time, Ayumi was beginning to think that Yuka’s mourning was excessive for someone she hardly knew, and she wondered if there wasn’t something else to it, but she said nothing.
Eri found Higurashi in the kitchen, cramming books, small bags of food, and bottles of water into an oversized pack.
“Please excuse me, Higurashi-san,” she bowed. “Yuka let us in. Ayumi and I came to tell you how sorry we were for your loss.”
Higurashi turned in a start and stared at her. Eri was shocked at the woman’s appearance. Her hair was tangled and her eyes were bright and wild.
“Higurashi-san?”
“I…I thank you, Ayumi-chan, but I have to go.”
“Oh, but, it’s late and cold out,” Eri said, ignoring that she had been called the wrong name. “If you need something, perhaps we can get it for you? It would be no trouble.”
“No, no I need to go to the library.”
Now Eri was beginning to feel alarmed.
“Higurashi-san,” she asked in a soothing tone, as all people do when addressing someone who is either sick or crazy, “where is Souta?”
Higurashi just shook her head and would not look at her.
“Higurashi-san,” Eri reached out to grab her arm, but just then, Yuka appeared in the room.
Ayumi was standing behind her looking like a person lost and desperate for a solution.
Yuka did not speak to them. She walked past them and out the kitchen door into the courtyard.
While Yuka had been with her friends in the living room, Souta had returned to the house and had climbed the stairs to his sister’s room. He walked in and went to the window and stood staring at the old well house, listening to his breath vibrate in the overwhelming emptiness that filled that room.
He was about to leave when he noticed the flowers, the little snowdrops, drooping on the windowsill. They looked lifeless.
A chill went through him and he shuddered. Without warning, he was overcome by a dark drowsiness. He stumbled to the bed and fell on it, and descended into a coma-like sleep.
Souta stood in the courtyard again, under the great tree. He was still wearing his funeral clothes. He turned and looked up at this sister’s window and saw Yuka looking down at him. He turned away, puzzled. Had he not been here before? Yes, and then he had gone upstairs to his sister’s room. He thought, in a fuzzy, half-formed logic, that he should do the same thing again, and he turned to go into the house.
A creaking rattle yanked his attention back again. He turned and saw, to his horror, that the well house door was locked again. The rattle was someone pulling and pushing on the door, violently trying to get out.
Oh no! Kagome!
At once elated that she had returned and terrified that she would be stuck in there forever, he ran to the shed to get the bolt cutters again. When he had returned, the desperate rattle had ceased. His stomach heaved, but he went up to the door anyway.
He stopped. Something was wrong. He heard breathing on the other side of that door, groaning, slobbering breathing. An eerie red light beamed through the cracks in the wood. His blood began to pound in his ears. He felt waves of malice pouring at him.
Dear mother, he thought in a blind panic, don’t let it get me!
Souta awoke with a jerk. He was on his sister’s bed, and according to the clock he had been asleep for less than ten minutes. Nonetheless, he felt more awake than ever. His heart was slamming blood through his temples. Shaking, he rose to his feet and went to close the window.
It was only a dream, he thought. After everything that’s happened, it’s no wonder.
When he reached for the window, he saw to his amazement that Yuka and his mother were standing in the courtyard. Two other women were with them and after a moment or two he discerned that they were Eri and Ayumi.
What the devil are they doing here? Haven’t we got enough to worry about?
His blood ran cold. Why were they all staring at the well house? What did they see?
What did they hear?
Yuka was standing much closer to it than the others. He saw that she was, in fact, moving toward it. He began to shake again. Reaching into his bones for strength, he leaned out the window and shouted to her,
“Yuka! Get away from there!”
***
After he had calmed himself enough to quit the activity of inventing profanities, Inuyasha plopped down in the field to consider his options. After a moment or two, he sensed that Jinenji was behind him. The giant sat down beside Inuyasha and looked at him with a steady gaze, but said nothing.
“Ah,” Inuyasha shrugged. “It’s not like I’m mad at your or anything. I just realized that I’m going in circles. I think it’s somebody’s idea of a joke.”
Jinenji nodded but did not say anything.
“I don’t like being pulled by strings.”
“That must be very frustrating,” the giant said at last.
“Yeah.”
“Where is Kagome-chan?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find her.”
Jinenji stood up, his large blue eyes alarmed. “Let’s go then. I’ll help you!”
Inuyasha started to give him the same response he had given Nobunaga, but then he stopped. What was he making such a fuss about? What difference did it make if someone wanted, actually wanted, to travel with him? Why was he being so difficult? What if, for once, he didn’t argue? What would happen if he just said, “yes, that’d be great”? Tidal waves? Earthquakes? Shit.
“Do you have any supplies?” he asked the giant. “Like food and water?”
Jinenji looked back to his house. “I think I have a few things that could be useful. How much should we take?”
“As much as we can carry,” Inuyasha answered. “I don’t know how long it will take and I need to go back to pick up a couple of humans.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’ll explain on the way.”
They filled packs with tender, flint, food, and containers of water. Inuyasha was startled to see that Jinenji still had some of the clear, durable bottles that Kagome used to carry. Seeing them hurt, badly.
Inuyasha explained everything to the gentle giant—the Plateau, where he had spent the terrible period of the Rains, and what he had done since then. He even opened up to him enough to share some general theories that he had rattling around in his admittedly less-than-brilliant mind. He said he believed that the Rains had been related to what happened on the Plateau and to Kagome specifically. Jinenji agreed that, if that were true, the cessation of the downpour was a good sign. When he learned that the Rains had ended at the same time that Inuyasha started moving again, he proposed that it was probably not a coincidence.
Jinenji had his own information to share. Through him, Inuyasha learned that the spider-like demons were called “Tsuchigumo”, and that what he had seen of them had only been the extreme fringe.
“There are masses of them to the north and to the west,” Jinenji said. “It is said that they outnumber the stars.”
“You know, there’s a thing about Naraku and spiders.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he seems to be attracted to dark and ugly things. He bears a spider symbol on his back, and so do all of his detachments. I guess that’s probably not a coincidence either.”
Jinenji pursed his lips. “No, probably not.”
After they had stuffed several packs, Jinenji asked him, “When do you want to leave?”
“Do you have any plans for now?”
“No.”
They stepped out of Jinenji’s shack and the giant pulled the door close. He took out a blade, one that would have been a short sword to a child but to him was a small pocketknife, and he carved a symbol into the wood door.
“What’s that?” Inuyasha asked him.
“It says 'plague',” Jinenji said. “Lots of diseases have been going around lately. It will discourage looters.”
“Do you think that’ll work? I bet lots of people overuse it.”
The giant shrugged. “Some may ignore it, but most believe it doesn’t pay to take chances.”
“Which way?” he asked his new traveling companion.“Back the way I came,” Inuyasha jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the valley.
They were both half-demons, which meant that they did not need to sleep and eat as much as humans, so they made good time. They camped for two nights in the dark forest that covered the foothills before they made it back to where Inuyasha had last seen Nobunaga and Nazuna.
***
Following Hachi’s directions, it took Shippou and Kagura less than three days to locate the demon sword smith, Totosai. He had not left his island. The water had long drained away, but Totosai was creative. To discourage visitors, he replaced it with lava instead. The Tsuchigumo were nothing to take lightly, but they couldn’t fly.
Shippou could, however. Totosai was sitting in the doorway of a small hut smoking a long stemmed pipe when a hawk of outrageous proportions circled down around his head and landed in his little dirt lawn. The old man jumped to his feet sputtering and cursing when he saw that it was none other than the young kitsune, Shippou.
“What in the name of the eight great islands are you doing?” he screamed at them.
Shippou looked at him in surprise. “I thought you’d be glad to see me!”
“Yeah?” he said, glaring down at them. “Well I thought you and the rest of them would be putting a stop to all this! Why aren’t you? Where’s Inuyasha?”
“I don’t know, Totosai, we got separated.”
“I see.” He noticed Kagura, and leered at her with his bugged eyes. “Who’s your friend?”
Shippou jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s Kagura. She’s with me. Actually, she’s why I’m here.
“I’m not interested, if you’re looking to sell her. I’ve got enough to worry about.”
“What? What the hell gave you a crazy idea like that?”
Totosai blinked at him. “Huh? What’s that boy? I’m a little hard of hearing.”
Shippou rolled his eyes.
Kagura, meanwhile, was busy sputtering with inarticulate outrage.
“She needs a weapon, Totosai,” Shippou said.
The old man’s eyes became intent.
“What happened to her old one?” he asked.
Shippou started. “Do you know her then?”
“I think I’ve seen her before, doing errands for that half-demon, Naraku.” He shifted his gaze to Kagura. “We’ve done well for ourselves, eh?”
“I guess you could say that,” Kagura answered through clenched teeth.
“So? What happened to your old one?”
“I’m not sure. I remember breaking it. I think I threw it away. It was…hateful.”
“Hateful?” Shippou asked.
“It burned me to touch it.”
“Oh,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That seems promising.”
It was the high-pitched whine of the air that warned her. Kagura threw herself to the side without thinking as a giant hammer crashed into the ground where she had been standing, sending chunks of sod and mud catapulting through the air.
“Totosai!” Shippou shouted. “What are you doing? She’s not with him anymore!”
“Pfft!” Totosai scoffed. “I don’t care about that. But I need to see her powers if I’m going to make her a weapon.”
“I don’t have any you old fool!” Kagura screamed at him. “That’s why I’m here!”
She dodged another strike. This one landed so hard the earth shook.
“I can’t make you a demon weapon if you don’t have demon powers. You are a demon. They are in there somewhere. You’d better start thinking of something.”
With no effort, he swung the titanic hammer in a low arch, sweeping it through the lava. He picked it up, meaning to bring a lava-encrusted blow down on her head.
“Totosai, I’m warning you!” Shippou shouted, as the air around him began to shift.
Totosai stopped for a moment, giving him a sidelong glance.
“Momo!” he shouted. “Take care of him, would ya?”
Shippou did not have time to react before a three-eyed cow came thundering from behind the hut, stamping fire and breathing steam.
“Oh, fucking shit!” Shippou shouted before rolling out from under a stampede of hooves.
The cow turned with amazing agility and was on him again in a moment. With no other plan available, Shippou grabbed the horns. He found himself seated atop the cow’s head.
This was not to Momo’s liking. The beast bellowed with rage and began thrashing his head and hindquarters in all directions.
Totosai lifted his hammer again. Kagura saw the blow coming, and saw Shippou being tossed about like a leaf in a storm. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to run, she wanted to help Shippou, and most of all she wanted to kill this old geezer. The whistle of the air told her that the hammer was moving again.
“No!” she shouted in desperation. “Be there!”
Then there was no hammer. Totosai stared in dismay at his weapon, which was now sinking in the lava some fifty yards away. She hadn’t pushed it, or thrown it, or even touched it. She had just told it to be somewhere else!
He heard the sound of the fox kit still being jostled about on the head of his cow, as if he were riding in a cart with a broken wheel and trying to sing at the same time.
“Momo, stop,” he said absently, still staring at the hammer that was cheerfully floating away down his molten river.
Shippou landed with a thump and a groan on the ground.
***
Despite the general state of privation that shadowed the country, Sango and Miroku dwelt in near domestic bliss. Sango had not given up on the notion of looking for their friends or of pursuing Naraku but, like Sesshoumaru, she had decided that if she were patient the solution would come to her.
As Kyotou had predicted, the village began to gradually re-populate. Most of the arrivals were people who had lived there before, but mixed in were some individuals who had been wandering for so long that they could no longer recall where they had been before the Rains. They had stumbled upon the village and decided that this was as good a place to land as any.
Among the arrivals were Kyotou’s wife and Suzume, the apprentice who had followed Kyotou as Momiji’s replacement when Momiji stayed behind with the unconscious Miroku and Sango. Her reunion with Momiji was tearful on both sides.
Most did not know Sango and Miroku, and could not connect their common clothes and healthy faces with the dead strangers that had been found when the Rains began and then had miraculously come back to life. Momiji saw no reason to educate them.
Sango and Miroku might have gone on like this for much longer, if not for the Movement and the Warrant.
The Movement was the first infection that spread to the village. Some of the newcomers brought it with them, and travelers on the road were bent on spreading it to anyone who would listen. At first, it was limited to muttering over jugs of watered down rice wine, and to rumors whispered between neighbors. It seemed a small thing, something that would pass, but when Sango first caught wind of it, she was worried.
One night, after they had been in their new home for a few weeks, Sango related what she had heard to her husband.
“Some say the old gods are all evil tricksters, and that those who serve them are really deceitful devils. Others say the gods are angry, that the old ways are wrong and that the people have been misled by the priests and monks.”
Miroku was troubled, but tried not to show it.
“It will pass,” he said. “When times are difficult, it is natural to look for explanations, and for someone to blame. But it will pass.”
“All the same,” she said, “we should not make it generally known that you are a monk.”
Miroku sighed. “I’m not sure if I am a monk anymore.”
Sango did not know what to say to that, but she was distressed.
“I wish we could hide your prayer beads,” she fretted.
“There’s nothing for it,” he said, toying with the string of beads around his right hand. “I have to wear them.”
They did not say anything else, fearful that the conversation would turn toward the subject of hunting Naraku and thus to an old argument.
After that conversation, Miroku began to notice sharp, shifty glances between men if Momiji walked past. Once, he caught one man fingering a knife and leering at her back, but when he looked again the man was using the knife to clean his fingernails. Unable to convince himself that it had meant nothing, he kept a closer watch over her from then on.
Momiji was not as ignorant of the growing hostility as Miroku supposed. Suzume had given her a full account of everything that had happened to their people since they had left the village. She recounted where they had gone, how they had survived, and listed those that did not make it. She also explained how the first whispers of the Movement had reached her, and who had given into it first. By the time they followed Kyotou back to their home, some spoke openly to Suzume about her role in a corrupt culture that had caused so much suffering.
Suzume was still young despite her hardships, and she was dumbfounded that she could be doing anything wrong by following what she had been taught her entire life.
She warned Momiji that among the most ardent converts to the Movement was Kyotou’s wife. This did not surprise Momiji. If anyone would enjoy seeing her hanged or thrown on a bonfire, it was that one.
Momiji and Suzume continued in their duties with increased vigor. They tended the sick and wounded, comforted the dying, cared for children whose parents had to work rebuilding the village, and they performed purification rituals over every new house, shed, or animal pen. Momiji hoped that such displays of tender devotion would remind the people of how she had always been there for them, and how important it was to have the cohesive bond of spirituality.
One night she returned exhausted to her own hut, which she now shared with Suzume again, intent on falling into bed. Suzume burst into the little house in a whirlwind of panic.
“Wait, Momiji-sama!”
She went to the hard, narrow bed and threw back the covers. Momiji recoiled with a startled oath. A thick-bodied, mottled brown snake lay coiled in the bed, hissing and spitting warnings. Suzume explained that she had chanced to overhear two women giggling about the prank.
The next day, Momiji found a moment to speak to Kyotou in private. She was careful that others would not see him conversing with her.
“I’m certain it was her,” she told him. “I have done no evil to your wife. Please, restrain her!”
“I might have been a happier man for a long time now if I could do such a thing,” he said. “That woman is wicked. And besides, Momiji-san, she believes you have done and continue to do her great evil.”
“You cannot believe that Movement nonsense!”
“Of course not! But that is not of what I speak anyway,” his expression darkened and he stared at her intently.
Momiji flushed. “That’s not fair. Kyotou-sama, with regards to you, I have never…I mean I haven’t—
He turned without warning and grabbed her arms. Momiji bit her lip to keep from crying out as he dragged her behind a dark net of juniper trees. The sun had long sunk behind the hills and the purple sky darkened with every minute. She could see Kyotou’s eyes shining in front of her face.
“The time has come, Momiji,” he whispered. “There’s no reason to stay here anymore.”
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“What were all those reasons? I don’t even remember, but they’re gone now.”
“Kyotou…”
“And you, you are in great danger here,” he leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. “I won’t be able to protect you, or myself, much longer I think.”
“These people,” Momiji whispered, “know not what they do. They still need us!”
“If we wait too long, I fear we will not escape at all.”
The denouement came sooner than even Kyotou feared. The very next day, a newcomer arrived in the village, worn and travel stained. He demanded to see the leader and his manner was so haughty and severe that none dared detain him and he was taken to Kyotou.
It happened that Miroku was in Kyotou’s company at that time. They were speaking in quiet, urgent tones about the precariousness of their situation in the village.
He came into Kyotou’s hut, one of the most dilapidated in the village because the chief had worked on every other structure first, and he gave a short, perfunctory bow. He was an average looking man, with a scarred face and graying hair. He wore a sword openly, strapped to his belt.
“Where are you from?” Kyotou asked him.
“Far away,” the man shrugged.
Kyotou’s face darkened.
“What business brings you here?”
“Have you heard of the great Henshin-sama?”
“Henshin-sama? Sounds like some kind of demon.”
The man’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.
“Most certainly not,” he declared. “He is both a mighty and a righteous leader, who is seeking to spread his protection over all these lands.”
“So he is another warlord then. I have no use for any of that.”
“Do not be so quick to dismiss him and what he offers,” now the man’s eyes shone with an unwholesome zeal. “He has already begun cleansing the land of the infection that has brought us so much misery.”
Miroku’s eyes widened. “Are you saying he is behind the Movement?”
The man looked at Miroku as if noticing him for the first time and he sneered.
“I was addressing the lord of this place, not you.”
Kyotou was silent for a moment. His instincts told him that the situation portended a danger, though hidden.
“Answer the question,” he ordered.
“We are the Movement,” the man declared, almost frothing at the mouth. “And so are you. So are all men who would be free of the yoke of evil demons, treacherous monks, and wicked priestesses.”
“What do you want of us?”
“Only one thing,” he answered in a more calm tone. “I have been sent with a message. You need only accept it.”
He held out a rolled parchment. “This has been spread or is being spread across every corner of the country. You would be wise to heed it.”
Kyotou took it, and the man turned his back and left without another world. He left the village and was never seen or heard from again.
Kyotou unrolled the document, read it quickly, then turned to Miroku. He looked at him for a moment, shaking his head.
“Holy shit,” he said at last. “We’re in for it now.”
“What does it say?” Miroku asked.
“Can you read?”
Miroku nodded.
“Then see for yourself,” he pushed the document into Miroku’s hands and then sat down in front of his small fire, placing his head in his hands.
Far away to the west, in the Hyouden, Kikyou had begun training Kagome to regain the use of both her legs and her priestess skills. To the north, Totosai was instructing Kagura on using her powers, while Inuyasha and Jinenji searched for Nobunaga and Nazuna. To the east, Kaede was on her funeral pyre. But Miroku knew none of this when he unrolled the parchment and read the following:
May there be mercy for their wicked souls in the next life, for they shall find none in this one!
There followed a list that described, in less-than-flattering detail, Miroku, Sango, and every one of their former companions. In addition, the list included Kikyou, Kohaku, Kagura, Kaede, Kouga, and Sesshoumaru. The accusations were specified as afflicting curses, practicing black magic, harboring and comforting enemies of the peace, theft, and murder.
Miroku stood staring at the document, his hands shaking, and the words blurring in front of his tears.
“Do you know who is behind this?” Kyotou asked.
“Naraku,” Miroku spat out the name.
“He is your enemy?”
“He is everyone’s enemy,” Miroku said through his clenched teeth. “No matter what this document says. This is just another one of his old tricks. He’s the one who is behind all the misery. He’s responsible for everything!”
Kyotou peered at him, scratching his chin.
“I’ve heard you and your wife arguing about him before. If he’s so terrible, why were you against pursuing him? You don’t strike me as the cowardly type.”
“I’m not afraid,” Miroku sighed and sat down on the floor. “I’m just tired. Tired of doing the same thing over and over.”
“Well, don’t do that. Go kill him.”
Miroku gave a short laugh, a mirthless sound. It was the only way he could sum up five years of useless suffering.
After some silence, Kyotou spoke again. “Whatever you decide to do about this enemy, we cannot stay here.”
“We?” Miroku looked up, surprised.
“Momiji-san is not safe here either. Or Suzi-chan for that matter. I will not send them out to wilderness alone.”
“I will look after them.”
“There are other reasons,” Kyotou said in a short tone that did not invite more questioning.
Miroku let it drop.
“We will leave tonight, when everyone else is long asleep. Go home and prepare yourself and your wife.”
“Yes, Kyotou-sama,” Miroku bowed briefly and left, still clutching the crumpled warrant.
[Next Chapter: Light Years]
Also, this chapter is different than the previous few chapters in that we get to visit everyone this time, instead of just a couple of characters. It’s also my longest yet.
The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents
Chapter Twenty: How Soon is Now?
“When you say it's gonna happen "now"well, when exactly do you mean?See I've already waited too longand all my hope is gone.” – The Smiths***
The first thing they had to do was get Kagome on her feet. Kikyou came to realize that this would not occur in its own time. Kagome had made a few short, breathless journeys in the upper hall, but she still spent most of her time in bed. Kikyou saw that, if they were to ever get on with things, she would have to be firm.With a determined step, she entered Kagome’s room only an hour after daybreak. Kikyou had been awake already for several hours. Kagome was still asleep.
She stood next to the sleeping girl.
“Kagome, wake up,” she commanded.
Kagome stirred, opened one bleary eye, and closed it again.
Kikyou would not repeat herself. She picked up a jug of water that had been sitting there all night and emptied its contents on Kagome’s head.
Kagome sat up straight as an arrow, wiping her face and swearing.
“Kikyou! What the hell?”
“I said to wake up.”
Kagome glared at her. The effect was made less intimidating by her dripping hair.
“OK, so I’m awake,” she said. “What’s so important you had to try to drown me?”
“Do not exaggerate.”
Kikyou put the jug back on the floor then straightened and held her hand out to the other miko.
“Come on.”
Kagome stared at her.
“Let us go, Kagome. We have much to do today.”
“Kikyou…Kikyou, I can’t, you know I can’t.”
“Do not be such a baby,” Kikyou answered. “I am not going to coddle you anymore. Get up.”
Kagome glared at her again, then her eyes narrowed.
“I see. So now your true nature emerges again. It’s really rather comforting, in a way. But it doesn’t matter. Rin took care of me before you got here and she will continue to do so.”
“No,” Kikyou said firmly, “she will not.”
“And why not?”
“I will not allow it.”
“Kikyou!” Kagome slammed her fists down on her bedding. “What do you want from me? I said I can’t. I would know wouldn’t I? You don’t know what I’m going through!”
“You are such a brat.”
“Takes one to know one!” Kagome shouted at her.
Kikyou looked at her, her expression puzzled.
“I beg your pardon?”
Kagome bit her lower lip and flushed.
“Nothing,” she said in a sullen tone, crossing her arms and looking away.
“Fine,” Kikyou said. “Let that strange girl take care of you. You can sit here feeling sorry for yourself if you want to, but I am leaving.”
“Leaving?” Kagome looked up in alarm. “Where are you going?”
“What do you care?”
“Midoriko said we had to stay together!”
Kikyou shrugged. “Maybe you can explain to her why you refused to go with me.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Kagome,” Kikyou said, “the others, including Inuyasha, are still out there. I will find them. I will bring them all together, and I will lead them to confront Naraku, and all the while you can sit here enjoying your invalidism. In fact, I’ll have no choice but to tell Inuyasha when I see him that you chose to stay with his brother.”
Kagome gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Would I not?” Kikyou’s expression was unconcerned.
“Besides,” she added with a superior, dismissive little sniff. “We have no need of you anyway.”
Kagome leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing.
“You go too far!” she screamed at her.
“My goodness,” Kikyou smirked at her. “She lives.”
Kagome flushed and looked down at her guilty feet.
“It hurts,” she said, after a long silence.
Kikyou was not sure if the girl was referring to her legs or to what Kikyou had said. She decided that it didn’t matter.
“Yes dear, I know,” her expression softened, and she extended her hand again. “But precious things must be purchased. I will help you through it.”
Kagome raised her head and looked at her for a moment. Then she reached out and took Kikyou’s hand.
***
Kagome and her friends had endured long torture under the Rains, being cast about in dreams like tiny ships on storm-lashed seas. Now they were all awake and moving, but in a dry and desolate world of uncertainty and alienation. Sesshoumaru’s turn, however, was just beginning. In truth, he might have been spared, but for one small oversight.
It began with his desire to sleep. It was not a need that would incapacitate a human or a demon less than himself. It was rather a slight ache, a longing to be suspended in a dark place without gravity, without dust, and without senses. He would have known it to be nostalgia, if he had possessed the experience to recognize such a thing.
He could not close his eyes for long without seeing the frenzied stars in a collusion of infinite energy. Raging power and endless time collapsed in a single moment and gave way the very next instant to a towering, unimaginable silence. It was a nothing that was beyond mortal comprehension—and mortal he felt himself to be, more mortal than anything that crawled upon the earth. The heatless vacuum wrapped around him with devastating determination. There was no pain, only a sense of annihilating pressure and, worse—oh so much worse than everything else—was the recognition of inevitability.
Sesshoumaru never got any further than this before opening his eyes, sometimes in a cold sweat but always with a quickened heart. Most of the time he never got half as far.
Kikyou and Kohaku had been in his home for more than two months when he decided that he was quite irritated.
At first he considered the possibility that Kikyou was behind it all. The first time he had been treated to this vision was when she had touched him on the day she had arrived. She had shown no sign, however, that she was aware of what had happened, and now she avoided him. He discounted the possibility that she was behind it, at least directly.
It so happened that Sesshoumaru was passing near the door to the sick room one day when he heard the miko’s voice explaining in a patient tone.
“This is how it must be done, Midoriko said so.”
In Sesshoumaru’s mind the pieces fit together all at once. He knew of the cave where the ancient miko was forever enshrined. He also knew that her soul, or part of it, was still in the Shikon no Tama. It only stood to reason that her awareness was still active in the world, and that she could still interfere with events among the living.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to him. He resolved that very day to travel to the shrine and see if he might engage her in some way. He wondered if he destroyed the shrine—which he was sure would be no great task—if she would then be unable to manipulate his sleep and cast visions at him from afar. There was only one way to find out.
Having a task and a clear goal at hand made him feel better already. He insisted that Tamotsu accompany him, which was a convenient excuse for getting his idiot cousin away from that other miko, the wounded one. Sesshoumaru found his attentions to her to be a trifle disconcerting.
Lucky for Sesshoumaru, they never made it to Midoriko’s cave. What she may have been obliged to do to persuade him to give up this insane venture can only be guessed. Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu did not even make it more than five minutes out of the lands of the Hyouden. Moving northeast, they soon encountered startling evidence that the country was sundered by more than hardship and want.
They flew high above the treetops, higher than most birds. Tamotsu glanced to his left and saw a sullen red sky. At first he assumed it was the sunset, but then it occurred to him that it was quite early in the day for sunset.
Well, it’s getting on in winter I guess. Day’s are shorter.
Tamotsu came to a sudden stop. Since when did the sun set in the north?
“Sesshoumaru!” he called. “What is that?”
Sesshoumaru, still heading east at a good speed, felt a cold knot form in his gut. The last time Tamotsu said that, he had ended up with three extra humans in his house. Still, he stopped and turned, and saw the angry and blazing northern sky.
“It’s just a brush fire,” he said.
“It’s awfully close to the Hyouden, Sesshoumaru,” his cousin said. “We should check it out.”
Sesshoumaru did not answer, but he followed Tamotsu a short distance in that direction.
They saw demons they had never seen before—small and black, they covered the land in a voracious, writhing carpet. Smoke rose to create a dirty, grey fog over the forest. Villages that nestled in the mountains and valleys were in flames, setting the hills aglow, as though they were drenched in blazing blood. Here and there, scattered across many miles, Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu could see the signs and hear the sounds of turmoil and struggle, as some humans and demons attempted to resist the implacable tide of destruction.
“What has happened?” Tamotsu cried in dismay.
Sesshoumaru said nothing. He looked to the north at the glowing forest and then to the east. Tamotsu meanwhile, was staring at him and chewing his lower lip.
You’re not that far gone, are you?
Sesshoumaru’s back stiffened and he turned to his cousin with hard eyes.
“Are you going to just stand there?” he demanded. “The more we kill today, the less we’ll have to kill tomorrow.”
After that, Sesshoumaru and his cousin spent almost every hour of each day hunting and destroying these spider-like demons. They were not much larger than the average human and though their many limbs were strong and wiry, they were nothing compared to the two dog demons. They lacked any leadership or organization; their only apparent goal was to consume, break, and burn. Their only advantage was in sheer numbers. It seemed that for every one that Sesshoumaru and Tamotsu smashed into oblivion a dozen more would appear, from the woods, from the hills, from cracks in the very ground. This did not worry Sesshoumaru, however, because it kept him too busy to think about sleep, stars, prophecies, or human priestesses.
He could not help but notice one strange thing about them. It was Tamotsu who brought it up.
“Have you noticed they don’t smell like anything?” he said one day. “I mean, sometimes they smell like blood and humans, but that’s what’s on them.”
“I have noticed. They also do not have a sense of demon to them.”
“Right,” Tamotsu agreed as he coolly lopped off the head of one of them. “If you don’t see or hear them, you wouldn’t know that they are there.”
A week or so later, Tamotsu informed Sesshoumaru that he had learned that almost all humans to the north had disappeared, either killed or fled, and that the new monster was called “Tsuchigumo”, though still no one knew from whence they came.
Sesshoumaru did not care what they were called and he continued entertaining himself by counting how many he could kill in a day. Tamotsu was cheerfully exterminating large groups of the demons in another part of the valley, when Sesshoumaru, almost wading through corpses, first saw her.
After destroying a small band of the demonic vermin, he found a wolf demoness, huddling with fear at the bottom of a black pit of carcasses. She realized the battle was finished, and she raised her head with caution.
When she saw him, she leapt to her feet and exclaimed:
“Sesshoumaru-sama! Thank you!”
Sesshoumaru was silent. She looked young, but careworn. She wore gray fur across her shoulders and a short sword strapped to her waist. Her wealth of red hair was gathered at each side of her head and was covered with a veil of irises imbued with a strange holiness.
“This foe is beyond you,” he said. “Go home.”
She drew herself up.
“I cannot go back,” she said in a clear, stern voice. “These monsters are everywhere, more so than you realize, maybe. They are harassing my people and ruining our lands. I must find a way to get rid of them.”
“That is quite absurd,” Sesshoumaru said. “You will never be able to do anything of the kind. You are on the road seeking your own death.”
“So be it,” she said without a hint of emotion. “But…maybe if you help me…”
“Your fate and that of your kindred does not concern me,” he turned to leave.
“I have sacred jewel shards!” she called after him.
Sesshoumaru stopped, and the demoness looked triumphant.
“What do you hope to gain by lying?” he asked. “Do you not think I would sense sacred jewel fragments?”
“Well…” she faltered, crestfallen. “I mean I have access to them. They’re not with me, of course!”
Sesshoumaru sighed. He may as well clear up the matter.
“I happen to know,” he said, “that Naraku has all but three of the shards. One is in my possession as we speak, and the other two are still with the wolf-demon, Kouga. Are these then what you would use to tempt me?”
The she-wolf’s eyes widened. Her mouth was open, but she could not answer.
“They are not yours to give, nor would I be interested even could you produce them. As I said, go home.”
He left her standing there in the mountains beyond the northern most reaches of his lands, staring after him with unshed tears stinging her eyes.
***
Kaede’s arthritic hands chafed under the stiff and coarse sheets. It seemed to her that she had washed and hung hundreds in the past few weeks. A never-ending marching line of sheets, a white, ghostly army, hung on twine cords stretched from tree to tree behind the village, billowing and whipping in the cold wind. They were taken each morning from the beds of people too weak or sick to get up to relieve themselves. Kaede waded hip deep in laundry and was up to her elbows in human filth every day. Not a day passed when she did not wander what had happened to Inuyasha and Kagome, and to her sister Kikyou.
There was so little to eat, and no medicine to speak of. Behind the flapping sheets the ground was rippled with the pathetic little mounds of the recently departed. Because the disaster and the absence of Inuyasha and Kagome coincided, she could not help thinking that if they would just come back, it would all get better somehow. She would pause in her work and gaze toward the northwest.
You can’t get here fast enough.
Dusk was stalking another day when a sudden shadow passed above her. Kaede looked up from her chore of repairing a doorframe in her house. She caught a glimpse of a large shape that appeared to be flying through the air, heading toward the southern end of the village.
Demon, she thought and, by instinct, ducked inside to gather up a bow and arrows. When she emerged, she heard screaming and horrible crunching and tearing sounds. She ran in the direction of the mayhem, limping because of a stiffened knee.
There was blood, clumps of hair, bits of bones, and rags of flesh scattered on the ground. She raised her bow and pointed the first arrow at a towering demon that looked like an ogre. She knew she was dead, however, when she saw the spider imprint on his back.
Well, it’s about time. I’m too old for this shit anyway. I never expected to live this long.
She released her shot, but her arrow could not muster the power to break into that monster’s foul frame. It did get his attention, however, and he turned his massive head and red, beady eyes in her direction. She now thought him more of a troll than an ogre. He was enormous and sinewy, with a shag of black hair covering most of him. His teeth were rows of sharp yellow daggers and his hands sported black and red claws.
“What do you want here?” she demanded.
“Are you a priestess?” he growled in a voice like tumbling rocks.
“I am. Who, or what, are you?”
He did not answer. He leapt forward on frog-like legs and came down behind her, sending turf and grass spraying everywhere. Clumps of it landed and caught in her gray hair.
She turned, but not quick enough. A heavy hand came down on her shoulder. The force sent her to the ground even before she could feel the claws that cut a gash in her back. She lay on the ground, knowing that not moving would mean the end, but not able to gather the strength of will to even blink. She saw the blood staining the grass and thought,
It’s almost like Kikyou’s wound.
She heard shouting, screaming, and children crying. On her stomach, she shifted her head so she could see the final blow coming.
“Where is the priestess called Kagome?” the monster asked her.
Kaede was surprised. She shifted her eyes to look at him, then looked around. When she tried to speak, the words came out in an unintelligible and pathetic wheeze.
It was not to be easy. She was not so weak as she supposed. He kicked her in her wounded shoulder and it seemed to shatter like glass and she screamed, but still, she did not die.
“Where is she?” he roared.
Kaede shuddered in ragged breaths.
“I…don’t…know. I swear. Think…think she’s dead.”
“Where is her family?”
Kaede’s forehead creased. She looked at him again.
“I…never…knew them…no one…does.”
He kicked her again, but Kaede only groaned this time. She noted with satisfaction that she was unable to feel anything. Her vision blurred and a grayish dark began to overtake it at the edges. It would soon be over now. She closed her eyes.
Kagome, Kagome, who stands behind you now?
The pain was gone, and a numb and pleasant drowsiness replaced it. She was troubled by confusion for only for a moment when she heard Kikyou humming a soft tune and felt her brushing her hair, and she inhaled the warm smell of dough that came from her mother’s hands.
These precious things.
In that moment, when Inuyasha collided with Jinenji, when Kagome’s grandfather turned to white bones and ash, when Shippou said goodbye to Hachi, and when Sesshoumaru shrugged off the wolf demonness, Kaede was gone—just one last, black supernova, and it was over.
***
Inside Yuka, there was a voice that told her that she had made a terrible mistake by moving into the Higurashi shrine. The voice began to grow louder the day Souta struck her.
The worst thing about it was that she knew it to be entirely against his character, not only because he was by nature a sweet and gentle boy, but also because he was a coward. In the silence that followed, she knew with cold certainty that something was driving him insane. He thought he saw contempt in her eyes, but it was actually pity and dread.
What if it’s the house, or the shrine? What if I’m insane too and I just don’t know it? What then?
That night, after they had delivered Grandfather Higurashi’s remains to the funeral home, Yuka lay in Kagome’s bed, shivering and wide awake, staring out at the full moon.
When exhaustion finally overcame her, she fell into restless dreams, dreams that she had repeated many times before.
She is driving, not in the city but along a narrow and winding road that ribboned through the mountains. It is dark, and the beams of her little car did not seem capable of penetrating the night. She is seized by a terror of running headlong off the edge and into a bottomless chasm below.
Just stop! her mind screeched at her, just hit the brake!
She does not, not then, but something always stops her anyway. A shadowy figure darts in from nowhere and blurs in front of the weak headlights. With a cry of dismay, Yuka slams on the brakes. She hears the screech of tires followed by a pitiful, aching yelp.
The car stops. Her hand gropes for the door handle.
No! Don’t go outside!
“Why not?” she asks out loud.
Oiwa is out there!
But Yuka knows that Oiwa is just an old legend, a pale shade, so she opens the door. She walks to the front of her car. In the low, yellow light of the headlights she sees that she has struck an animal. It lies on the road, crumpled and bloodied.
What is it?
“I don’t know.”
She bends over the creature, but when she does, its eyes snap open and it snarls. She jumps back.
It’s a wolf.
There are no wolves in Japan anymore.
The wolf is not affected by this revelation. He rises and limps away from the road. At the edge of the forest, he turns to look at her. Yuka, frozen in fear and fascination, feels a tug, an urge to follow. His golden eyes are curious. He stares at her, then turns his head to the woods, then turns to her again.
“No,” she whispers, the words steaming in the cold. “I cannot.”
She does not see him move, but his figure dissolves into the dark trees.
Yuka awoke with the first pale light of the winter morning. Her eyes were gritty and burning, as though she had not slept a moment. She went through that day with Higurashi, Souta, and the smoke and white bones that was all that remained of the little, senile old man she had not really known.
The man who drove them home (some distant relative, but Yuka never found out precisely) thought that the trio was numbed and silent from their loss. He was better off thinking that.
Yuka climbed the staircase to Kagome’s room, hung her dress coat in the closet and put her patent leather pumps under the bed. She went to the window, slid it open, and looked out at the courtyard. Souta, in his black suit and thin tie, stood under the tree.
The doorbell rang and startled Yuka so that she turned with a sudden jerk and bumped Kagome’s desk with her hip. The little glass bottle with the cork stopper rolled off the edge and shattered. She saw that it had fallen just right, or just wrong, to hit the edge of a metal wastebasket.
Visitors had come to pay their respects to the Higurashi family. Yuka almost forgot to breathe when she saw Eri and Ayumi standing on the threshold, dressed in somber black. The image, with its old familiarity and comforting normalcy, threw her into a state of affliction. She could not even manage a simple greeting before bursting into tears.
They assumed she was distraught over Grandfather Higurashi’s passing. Ayumi wrapped her arms around her friend and stroked her hair.
“There, there,” she said. “He was old, Yuka, it was his time.”
Yuka only cried harder. She wanted to explain to them how she was trapped in a madhouse, how she was certain that Kagome’s vengeful spirit was driving them all insane, but she could not manage her breathing enough to speak. She was led back into the house and asked to sit down on a chair in the dining room.
Eri bid Ayumi to stay with Yuka while she searched for Mrs. Higurashi.
Yuka continued to sob, with Ayumi’s hand on her back, wishing with brutal desperation that she could tell them everything, could somehow make them understand.
By this time, Ayumi was beginning to think that Yuka’s mourning was excessive for someone she hardly knew, and she wondered if there wasn’t something else to it, but she said nothing.
Eri found Higurashi in the kitchen, cramming books, small bags of food, and bottles of water into an oversized pack.
“Please excuse me, Higurashi-san,” she bowed. “Yuka let us in. Ayumi and I came to tell you how sorry we were for your loss.”
Higurashi turned in a start and stared at her. Eri was shocked at the woman’s appearance. Her hair was tangled and her eyes were bright and wild.
“Higurashi-san?”
“I…I thank you, Ayumi-chan, but I have to go.”
“Oh, but, it’s late and cold out,” Eri said, ignoring that she had been called the wrong name. “If you need something, perhaps we can get it for you? It would be no trouble.”
“No, no I need to go to the library.”
Now Eri was beginning to feel alarmed.
“Higurashi-san,” she asked in a soothing tone, as all people do when addressing someone who is either sick or crazy, “where is Souta?”
Higurashi just shook her head and would not look at her.
“Higurashi-san,” Eri reached out to grab her arm, but just then, Yuka appeared in the room.
Ayumi was standing behind her looking like a person lost and desperate for a solution.
Yuka did not speak to them. She walked past them and out the kitchen door into the courtyard.
While Yuka had been with her friends in the living room, Souta had returned to the house and had climbed the stairs to his sister’s room. He walked in and went to the window and stood staring at the old well house, listening to his breath vibrate in the overwhelming emptiness that filled that room.
He was about to leave when he noticed the flowers, the little snowdrops, drooping on the windowsill. They looked lifeless.
A chill went through him and he shuddered. Without warning, he was overcome by a dark drowsiness. He stumbled to the bed and fell on it, and descended into a coma-like sleep.
Souta stood in the courtyard again, under the great tree. He was still wearing his funeral clothes. He turned and looked up at this sister’s window and saw Yuka looking down at him. He turned away, puzzled. Had he not been here before? Yes, and then he had gone upstairs to his sister’s room. He thought, in a fuzzy, half-formed logic, that he should do the same thing again, and he turned to go into the house.
A creaking rattle yanked his attention back again. He turned and saw, to his horror, that the well house door was locked again. The rattle was someone pulling and pushing on the door, violently trying to get out.
Oh no! Kagome!
At once elated that she had returned and terrified that she would be stuck in there forever, he ran to the shed to get the bolt cutters again. When he had returned, the desperate rattle had ceased. His stomach heaved, but he went up to the door anyway.
He stopped. Something was wrong. He heard breathing on the other side of that door, groaning, slobbering breathing. An eerie red light beamed through the cracks in the wood. His blood began to pound in his ears. He felt waves of malice pouring at him.
Dear mother, he thought in a blind panic, don’t let it get me!
Souta awoke with a jerk. He was on his sister’s bed, and according to the clock he had been asleep for less than ten minutes. Nonetheless, he felt more awake than ever. His heart was slamming blood through his temples. Shaking, he rose to his feet and went to close the window.
It was only a dream, he thought. After everything that’s happened, it’s no wonder.
When he reached for the window, he saw to his amazement that Yuka and his mother were standing in the courtyard. Two other women were with them and after a moment or two he discerned that they were Eri and Ayumi.
What the devil are they doing here? Haven’t we got enough to worry about?
His blood ran cold. Why were they all staring at the well house? What did they see?
What did they hear?
Yuka was standing much closer to it than the others. He saw that she was, in fact, moving toward it. He began to shake again. Reaching into his bones for strength, he leaned out the window and shouted to her,
“Yuka! Get away from there!”
***
After he had calmed himself enough to quit the activity of inventing profanities, Inuyasha plopped down in the field to consider his options. After a moment or two, he sensed that Jinenji was behind him. The giant sat down beside Inuyasha and looked at him with a steady gaze, but said nothing.
“Ah,” Inuyasha shrugged. “It’s not like I’m mad at your or anything. I just realized that I’m going in circles. I think it’s somebody’s idea of a joke.”
Jinenji nodded but did not say anything.
“I don’t like being pulled by strings.”
“That must be very frustrating,” the giant said at last.
“Yeah.”
“Where is Kagome-chan?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find her.”
Jinenji stood up, his large blue eyes alarmed. “Let’s go then. I’ll help you!”
Inuyasha started to give him the same response he had given Nobunaga, but then he stopped. What was he making such a fuss about? What difference did it make if someone wanted, actually wanted, to travel with him? Why was he being so difficult? What if, for once, he didn’t argue? What would happen if he just said, “yes, that’d be great”? Tidal waves? Earthquakes? Shit.
“Do you have any supplies?” he asked the giant. “Like food and water?”
Jinenji looked back to his house. “I think I have a few things that could be useful. How much should we take?”
“As much as we can carry,” Inuyasha answered. “I don’t know how long it will take and I need to go back to pick up a couple of humans.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’ll explain on the way.”
They filled packs with tender, flint, food, and containers of water. Inuyasha was startled to see that Jinenji still had some of the clear, durable bottles that Kagome used to carry. Seeing them hurt, badly.
Inuyasha explained everything to the gentle giant—the Plateau, where he had spent the terrible period of the Rains, and what he had done since then. He even opened up to him enough to share some general theories that he had rattling around in his admittedly less-than-brilliant mind. He said he believed that the Rains had been related to what happened on the Plateau and to Kagome specifically. Jinenji agreed that, if that were true, the cessation of the downpour was a good sign. When he learned that the Rains had ended at the same time that Inuyasha started moving again, he proposed that it was probably not a coincidence.
Jinenji had his own information to share. Through him, Inuyasha learned that the spider-like demons were called “Tsuchigumo”, and that what he had seen of them had only been the extreme fringe.
“There are masses of them to the north and to the west,” Jinenji said. “It is said that they outnumber the stars.”
“You know, there’s a thing about Naraku and spiders.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he seems to be attracted to dark and ugly things. He bears a spider symbol on his back, and so do all of his detachments. I guess that’s probably not a coincidence either.”
Jinenji pursed his lips. “No, probably not.”
After they had stuffed several packs, Jinenji asked him, “When do you want to leave?”
“Do you have any plans for now?”
“No.”
They stepped out of Jinenji’s shack and the giant pulled the door close. He took out a blade, one that would have been a short sword to a child but to him was a small pocketknife, and he carved a symbol into the wood door.
“What’s that?” Inuyasha asked him.
“It says 'plague',” Jinenji said. “Lots of diseases have been going around lately. It will discourage looters.”
“Do you think that’ll work? I bet lots of people overuse it.”
The giant shrugged. “Some may ignore it, but most believe it doesn’t pay to take chances.”
“Which way?” he asked his new traveling companion.“Back the way I came,” Inuyasha jerked his thumb over his shoulder, toward the valley.
They were both half-demons, which meant that they did not need to sleep and eat as much as humans, so they made good time. They camped for two nights in the dark forest that covered the foothills before they made it back to where Inuyasha had last seen Nobunaga and Nazuna.
***
Following Hachi’s directions, it took Shippou and Kagura less than three days to locate the demon sword smith, Totosai. He had not left his island. The water had long drained away, but Totosai was creative. To discourage visitors, he replaced it with lava instead. The Tsuchigumo were nothing to take lightly, but they couldn’t fly.
Shippou could, however. Totosai was sitting in the doorway of a small hut smoking a long stemmed pipe when a hawk of outrageous proportions circled down around his head and landed in his little dirt lawn. The old man jumped to his feet sputtering and cursing when he saw that it was none other than the young kitsune, Shippou.
“What in the name of the eight great islands are you doing?” he screamed at them.
Shippou looked at him in surprise. “I thought you’d be glad to see me!”
“Yeah?” he said, glaring down at them. “Well I thought you and the rest of them would be putting a stop to all this! Why aren’t you? Where’s Inuyasha?”
“I don’t know, Totosai, we got separated.”
“I see.” He noticed Kagura, and leered at her with his bugged eyes. “Who’s your friend?”
Shippou jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s Kagura. She’s with me. Actually, she’s why I’m here.
“I’m not interested, if you’re looking to sell her. I’ve got enough to worry about.”
“What? What the hell gave you a crazy idea like that?”
Totosai blinked at him. “Huh? What’s that boy? I’m a little hard of hearing.”
Shippou rolled his eyes.
Kagura, meanwhile, was busy sputtering with inarticulate outrage.
“She needs a weapon, Totosai,” Shippou said.
The old man’s eyes became intent.
“What happened to her old one?” he asked.
Shippou started. “Do you know her then?”
“I think I’ve seen her before, doing errands for that half-demon, Naraku.” He shifted his gaze to Kagura. “We’ve done well for ourselves, eh?”
“I guess you could say that,” Kagura answered through clenched teeth.
“So? What happened to your old one?”
“I’m not sure. I remember breaking it. I think I threw it away. It was…hateful.”
“Hateful?” Shippou asked.
“It burned me to touch it.”
“Oh,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That seems promising.”
It was the high-pitched whine of the air that warned her. Kagura threw herself to the side without thinking as a giant hammer crashed into the ground where she had been standing, sending chunks of sod and mud catapulting through the air.
“Totosai!” Shippou shouted. “What are you doing? She’s not with him anymore!”
“Pfft!” Totosai scoffed. “I don’t care about that. But I need to see her powers if I’m going to make her a weapon.”
“I don’t have any you old fool!” Kagura screamed at him. “That’s why I’m here!”
She dodged another strike. This one landed so hard the earth shook.
“I can’t make you a demon weapon if you don’t have demon powers. You are a demon. They are in there somewhere. You’d better start thinking of something.”
With no effort, he swung the titanic hammer in a low arch, sweeping it through the lava. He picked it up, meaning to bring a lava-encrusted blow down on her head.
“Totosai, I’m warning you!” Shippou shouted, as the air around him began to shift.
Totosai stopped for a moment, giving him a sidelong glance.
“Momo!” he shouted. “Take care of him, would ya?”
Shippou did not have time to react before a three-eyed cow came thundering from behind the hut, stamping fire and breathing steam.
“Oh, fucking shit!” Shippou shouted before rolling out from under a stampede of hooves.
The cow turned with amazing agility and was on him again in a moment. With no other plan available, Shippou grabbed the horns. He found himself seated atop the cow’s head.
This was not to Momo’s liking. The beast bellowed with rage and began thrashing his head and hindquarters in all directions.
Totosai lifted his hammer again. Kagura saw the blow coming, and saw Shippou being tossed about like a leaf in a storm. Her heart was pounding. She wanted to run, she wanted to help Shippou, and most of all she wanted to kill this old geezer. The whistle of the air told her that the hammer was moving again.
“No!” she shouted in desperation. “Be there!”
Then there was no hammer. Totosai stared in dismay at his weapon, which was now sinking in the lava some fifty yards away. She hadn’t pushed it, or thrown it, or even touched it. She had just told it to be somewhere else!
He heard the sound of the fox kit still being jostled about on the head of his cow, as if he were riding in a cart with a broken wheel and trying to sing at the same time.
“Momo, stop,” he said absently, still staring at the hammer that was cheerfully floating away down his molten river.
Shippou landed with a thump and a groan on the ground.
***
Despite the general state of privation that shadowed the country, Sango and Miroku dwelt in near domestic bliss. Sango had not given up on the notion of looking for their friends or of pursuing Naraku but, like Sesshoumaru, she had decided that if she were patient the solution would come to her.
As Kyotou had predicted, the village began to gradually re-populate. Most of the arrivals were people who had lived there before, but mixed in were some individuals who had been wandering for so long that they could no longer recall where they had been before the Rains. They had stumbled upon the village and decided that this was as good a place to land as any.
Among the arrivals were Kyotou’s wife and Suzume, the apprentice who had followed Kyotou as Momiji’s replacement when Momiji stayed behind with the unconscious Miroku and Sango. Her reunion with Momiji was tearful on both sides.
Most did not know Sango and Miroku, and could not connect their common clothes and healthy faces with the dead strangers that had been found when the Rains began and then had miraculously come back to life. Momiji saw no reason to educate them.
Sango and Miroku might have gone on like this for much longer, if not for the Movement and the Warrant.
The Movement was the first infection that spread to the village. Some of the newcomers brought it with them, and travelers on the road were bent on spreading it to anyone who would listen. At first, it was limited to muttering over jugs of watered down rice wine, and to rumors whispered between neighbors. It seemed a small thing, something that would pass, but when Sango first caught wind of it, she was worried.
One night, after they had been in their new home for a few weeks, Sango related what she had heard to her husband.
“Some say the old gods are all evil tricksters, and that those who serve them are really deceitful devils. Others say the gods are angry, that the old ways are wrong and that the people have been misled by the priests and monks.”
Miroku was troubled, but tried not to show it.
“It will pass,” he said. “When times are difficult, it is natural to look for explanations, and for someone to blame. But it will pass.”
“All the same,” she said, “we should not make it generally known that you are a monk.”
Miroku sighed. “I’m not sure if I am a monk anymore.”
Sango did not know what to say to that, but she was distressed.
“I wish we could hide your prayer beads,” she fretted.
“There’s nothing for it,” he said, toying with the string of beads around his right hand. “I have to wear them.”
They did not say anything else, fearful that the conversation would turn toward the subject of hunting Naraku and thus to an old argument.
After that conversation, Miroku began to notice sharp, shifty glances between men if Momiji walked past. Once, he caught one man fingering a knife and leering at her back, but when he looked again the man was using the knife to clean his fingernails. Unable to convince himself that it had meant nothing, he kept a closer watch over her from then on.
Momiji was not as ignorant of the growing hostility as Miroku supposed. Suzume had given her a full account of everything that had happened to their people since they had left the village. She recounted where they had gone, how they had survived, and listed those that did not make it. She also explained how the first whispers of the Movement had reached her, and who had given into it first. By the time they followed Kyotou back to their home, some spoke openly to Suzume about her role in a corrupt culture that had caused so much suffering.
Suzume was still young despite her hardships, and she was dumbfounded that she could be doing anything wrong by following what she had been taught her entire life.
She warned Momiji that among the most ardent converts to the Movement was Kyotou’s wife. This did not surprise Momiji. If anyone would enjoy seeing her hanged or thrown on a bonfire, it was that one.
Momiji and Suzume continued in their duties with increased vigor. They tended the sick and wounded, comforted the dying, cared for children whose parents had to work rebuilding the village, and they performed purification rituals over every new house, shed, or animal pen. Momiji hoped that such displays of tender devotion would remind the people of how she had always been there for them, and how important it was to have the cohesive bond of spirituality.
One night she returned exhausted to her own hut, which she now shared with Suzume again, intent on falling into bed. Suzume burst into the little house in a whirlwind of panic.
“Wait, Momiji-sama!”
She went to the hard, narrow bed and threw back the covers. Momiji recoiled with a startled oath. A thick-bodied, mottled brown snake lay coiled in the bed, hissing and spitting warnings. Suzume explained that she had chanced to overhear two women giggling about the prank.
The next day, Momiji found a moment to speak to Kyotou in private. She was careful that others would not see him conversing with her.
“I’m certain it was her,” she told him. “I have done no evil to your wife. Please, restrain her!”
“I might have been a happier man for a long time now if I could do such a thing,” he said. “That woman is wicked. And besides, Momiji-san, she believes you have done and continue to do her great evil.”
“You cannot believe that Movement nonsense!”
“Of course not! But that is not of what I speak anyway,” his expression darkened and he stared at her intently.
Momiji flushed. “That’s not fair. Kyotou-sama, with regards to you, I have never…I mean I haven’t—
He turned without warning and grabbed her arms. Momiji bit her lip to keep from crying out as he dragged her behind a dark net of juniper trees. The sun had long sunk behind the hills and the purple sky darkened with every minute. She could see Kyotou’s eyes shining in front of her face.
“The time has come, Momiji,” he whispered. “There’s no reason to stay here anymore.”
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“What were all those reasons? I don’t even remember, but they’re gone now.”
“Kyotou…”
“And you, you are in great danger here,” he leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. “I won’t be able to protect you, or myself, much longer I think.”
“These people,” Momiji whispered, “know not what they do. They still need us!”
“If we wait too long, I fear we will not escape at all.”
The denouement came sooner than even Kyotou feared. The very next day, a newcomer arrived in the village, worn and travel stained. He demanded to see the leader and his manner was so haughty and severe that none dared detain him and he was taken to Kyotou.
It happened that Miroku was in Kyotou’s company at that time. They were speaking in quiet, urgent tones about the precariousness of their situation in the village.
He came into Kyotou’s hut, one of the most dilapidated in the village because the chief had worked on every other structure first, and he gave a short, perfunctory bow. He was an average looking man, with a scarred face and graying hair. He wore a sword openly, strapped to his belt.
“Where are you from?” Kyotou asked him.
“Far away,” the man shrugged.
Kyotou’s face darkened.
“What business brings you here?”
“Have you heard of the great Henshin-sama?”
“Henshin-sama? Sounds like some kind of demon.”
The man’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.
“Most certainly not,” he declared. “He is both a mighty and a righteous leader, who is seeking to spread his protection over all these lands.”
“So he is another warlord then. I have no use for any of that.”
“Do not be so quick to dismiss him and what he offers,” now the man’s eyes shone with an unwholesome zeal. “He has already begun cleansing the land of the infection that has brought us so much misery.”
Miroku’s eyes widened. “Are you saying he is behind the Movement?”
The man looked at Miroku as if noticing him for the first time and he sneered.
“I was addressing the lord of this place, not you.”
Kyotou was silent for a moment. His instincts told him that the situation portended a danger, though hidden.
“Answer the question,” he ordered.
“We are the Movement,” the man declared, almost frothing at the mouth. “And so are you. So are all men who would be free of the yoke of evil demons, treacherous monks, and wicked priestesses.”
“What do you want of us?”
“Only one thing,” he answered in a more calm tone. “I have been sent with a message. You need only accept it.”
He held out a rolled parchment. “This has been spread or is being spread across every corner of the country. You would be wise to heed it.”
Kyotou took it, and the man turned his back and left without another world. He left the village and was never seen or heard from again.
Kyotou unrolled the document, read it quickly, then turned to Miroku. He looked at him for a moment, shaking his head.
“Holy shit,” he said at last. “We’re in for it now.”
“What does it say?” Miroku asked.
“Can you read?”
Miroku nodded.
“Then see for yourself,” he pushed the document into Miroku’s hands and then sat down in front of his small fire, placing his head in his hands.
Far away to the west, in the Hyouden, Kikyou had begun training Kagome to regain the use of both her legs and her priestess skills. To the north, Totosai was instructing Kagura on using her powers, while Inuyasha and Jinenji searched for Nobunaga and Nazuna. To the east, Kaede was on her funeral pyre. But Miroku knew none of this when he unrolled the parchment and read the following:
Warrant
Being that the Lord Henshin has sought to restore peace and prosperity to the land, and that he is charged with the sacred duty of protecting all good people from the influence of evil, this warrant has been issued for the following persons for high crimes of plotting to inflict suffering, of inciting disease and starvation with black magic, of various acts of perverseness, and, most heinous of all, of dissidence. The following dissidents must be arrested on sight, taken dead or alive and, if alive, put to death.May there be mercy for their wicked souls in the next life, for they shall find none in this one!
There followed a list that described, in less-than-flattering detail, Miroku, Sango, and every one of their former companions. In addition, the list included Kikyou, Kohaku, Kagura, Kaede, Kouga, and Sesshoumaru. The accusations were specified as afflicting curses, practicing black magic, harboring and comforting enemies of the peace, theft, and murder.
Miroku stood staring at the document, his hands shaking, and the words blurring in front of his tears.
“Do you know who is behind this?” Kyotou asked.
“Naraku,” Miroku spat out the name.
“He is your enemy?”
“He is everyone’s enemy,” Miroku said through his clenched teeth. “No matter what this document says. This is just another one of his old tricks. He’s the one who is behind all the misery. He’s responsible for everything!”
Kyotou peered at him, scratching his chin.
“I’ve heard you and your wife arguing about him before. If he’s so terrible, why were you against pursuing him? You don’t strike me as the cowardly type.”
“I’m not afraid,” Miroku sighed and sat down on the floor. “I’m just tired. Tired of doing the same thing over and over.”
“Well, don’t do that. Go kill him.”
Miroku gave a short laugh, a mirthless sound. It was the only way he could sum up five years of useless suffering.
After some silence, Kyotou spoke again. “Whatever you decide to do about this enemy, we cannot stay here.”
“We?” Miroku looked up, surprised.
“Momiji-san is not safe here either. Or Suzi-chan for that matter. I will not send them out to wilderness alone.”
“I will look after them.”
“There are other reasons,” Kyotou said in a short tone that did not invite more questioning.
Miroku let it drop.
“We will leave tonight, when everyone else is long asleep. Go home and prepare yourself and your wife.”
“Yes, Kyotou-sama,” Miroku bowed briefly and left, still clutching the crumpled warrant.
***
[End of Chapter Twenty][Next Chapter: Light Years]