InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Edge of Resistance ❯ Winter ( Chapter 22 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

The Edge of Resistance
Book Two: The Dissidents

“It sure been a cold, cold winter
My feet been draggin' 'cross the ground
And the fields have all been brown and fallow
And the springtime take a long way around.” – The Rolling Stones

Kagome could scarcely contain her elation when she understood that it had all been a bad dream.

The plateau, her wrecked body, Sesshoumaru’s house…Kikyou’s reformation.

Well, that last part made her rather sad, but still, it was better to have everything back to normal.

Do you really want that again? A nagging voice in her mind was not satisfied, but Kagome refused to listen. She thought her heart might burst with joy at the thought that she was still safe and sound in Inuyasha’s company.

Though at the moment she was alone in her bedroom. When she had opened her eyes that morning, she was in her own bed on a sunny morning in July. It was the day after her birthday. She had never gone back to the Feudal Era. She had never traveled with the others through the mountains or slept under the amethyst glare of Midoriko's shrine. She had never had lunch with the others on the plateau under the beating sun. Kagura's desolate eyes, Sango's despair, the finality of Naraku's violence, the ash and fire, all a dream.

After all, didn't it have to be a dream? What could be more reasonable? Shouldn't everything return to normal? To be incapacitated for so long, to have her coma-state spell the beginning and the ending of apocalyptic rain, to have Kikyou arrive as a normal woman for no apparent reason, and, not the least, to be living under Sesshoumaru's roof—these  things were crazy, abnormal, unreasonable. Of course they were, because they were a dream.

She sat up and stretched, and then sat gazing out of the window at the grounds of the shrine. Inuyasha, she was sure, would appear at any moment to take her back to the Feudal Era. She decided to try and beat him to breakfast.

Wait, the little nag disagreed, didn’t you already go back?

“No,” she said aloud. “That was just a dream.”

She jumped violently when the alarm radio erupted in sudden song. She had set it for seven o’clock.

“You're gonna carry that weight, carry that weight a long time.”

Kagome slapped her palm down on the top of it with such force that it stung. Her heart was pounding, and she thought it was because the unexpected noise had startled her. She dismissed it and stood up.

When she put her feet down on the carpet, a sharp sting bit into her big toe.

“Ouch!” she sat down on the bed again and brought the foot up to examine it. There was a splotch of bright red blood where the toe met her foot. She saw that there was a similar stain on the carpet, a spot like a splatter of red watercolor paint.

With cautious movements, she knelt and lowered her head so she could see if something was sticking up out of the floor. What she found were dozens of tiny shards of glass. She found one piece that still bore some semblance to the rim of a…

“My little bottle,” she said, bemused, picking up the piece she’d just found, as well as the cork stopper that lay nearby.

It was the little bottle she had used to keep jewel shards, back when she still had a lot of them. What had caused it to shatter?

She shrugged and, being mindful to avoid the dangerous section of carpet, got to her feet and left the room.

“Mother, the car is here,” she heard Souta’s voice break the silence as she was coming down the stairs.

“Souta?” she called. “Where are you?”

No one answered. She turned at the bottom of the stairs and went into the kitchen.

When she entered the room, Kagome stopped and stared. Instead of the cheerful and ordered room she expected, there were towers of books on almost every surface, including a few precariously leaning stacks on the floor. The ticking of the eerie Felix clock was loud and it echoed over her head.

“What is this?”

You know what it is, the little nag answered, you’ve been here before.

“No. It couldn’t be.”

She heard footsteps and other noises coming from the front of the house. She turned and ran out of the kitchen, through the hall and past the staircase, and into the living room. As she passed a cabinet with glass doors she caught a glimpsed of a tall figure not her own, a man with long, white hair. She caught herself, but when she looked again it was nothing. Breathless and tripping, she hurried on and was just in time to catch Souta and her mother passing through the door.

“Wait!” she called out.

They turned, but instead of looking at her, they looked up the stairs. Kagome heard feet coming down the steps.

It must be grandfather.

She turned and saw that it was not. Yuka, wearing a black dress that was simple, even severe, and carrying a black, wide-rimmed hat, was coming down.

“Yuka?”

Her old friend paid no attention to her as she walked past.

“Oh god, no. Not this again,” Kagome’s voice started to break. “It’s not fair!”

She turned back to her family.

“Don’t you look at me like you don’t see me!”

Why are they wearing black?

The realization sank into her like tepid oil, smothering.

It must be Jiisan. He’s gone.

Yuka did not speak to Souta or Higurashi. Encased in black down to their knuckles, their skin looked so white that Kagome had the immediate impression that they were somehow bleeding to death in their stiff and suffocating funeral clothes. The three exchanged guarded, unhappy glances, and then they were gone.

Bleary eyed and trembling, Kagome stumbled back into the kitchen. She stepped around the stacks of books and wondered aimlessly into the garden behind the back door. She cringed and shivered.

It’s not July.

She looked around. The place was empty; the grim gray winter hung dead in the air.

“So it wasn’t a dream,” she said out loud, “but neither is this, is it? How do I get out?”

With no other target, she turned her gaze to the Tree of Ages.

“Well?” she demanded. “If you’re so smart, how do I get out?”

No answer. Savaged by the biting cold, Kagome turned to go back in the house.

Furtive movements on the edge of her vision made her jump and almost scream. She whirled around and saw that someone was standing under the tree. The figure seemed…wrong, strange and twisted. They wore red. Was it Inuyasha?

Kagome blinked back her tears, trying to clear her sight. She walked toward the figure with slow, fearful steps.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

It wasn’t just red; it was blood. Not Inuyasha, someone else, someone covered in blood, wrong and twisted by wounds and…by…death.

By death!

“Who are you?”

I think you know.

“No, no I don’t!”

But she did. She was close enough now. The figure opened its mouth to speak, but nothing came out but clots of more blood. Kagome clenched her eyes shut.

It was Ayame.

Kagome’s heart hammered in her chest until she felt it break, actually heard it crack and fracture like rock candy. The sudden sound of flapping wings came bursting out of the bushes nearby. Kagome’s nerve broke, and she screamed as a murder of crows took to the sky.

***

The bond between them was driving Kikyou crazy. Tied by fate to a demon’s house (and not just any demon but Inuyasha’s brother) and tethered by her soul to an untrained, unreserved, overemotional girl, Kikyou began to spend more and more time staring out of the window in the alien bedroom that had become hers.

Ours.

She gazed out over the flooded plain of the Tenryu, toward the distant peaks of the Hakusan, watching each day as the land became a dry tundra, searching with hope for a flash of red on the horizon.

You can’t get here fast enough.

On one night she was awakened without warning by a sudden storm that exploded inside her skull. By the time she was coherent, she was already almost weeping. Her chest constricted and she blinked back tears. She sat up, gasping for breath and clutching her hands over her heart as if she could thus restrain it and force back into its place.

What has happened?

The first sound she heard was Kagome’s muffled whimper. The girl tossed and turned on her bed, the same bed on which she had recovered from the Plateau. Kikyou threw off her blankets and crossed the room, shivering in the cold dark. The windows were closed, but there was no moon anyway. She could only make out Kagome’s face, cringing and shaking on her pillow.

“Kagome? What is the matter?”

The only answer was more whimpering. Kikyou reached out and grabbed Kagome’s shoulders.

“Kagome, wake up,” she pleaded, shaking the girl.

She even pulled her arms until she was sitting up. Kagome’s hand fluttered to her cheeks to wipe away the tears, but they did not stop flowing. With a low cry, she threw her arms around Kikyou and fell into another bout of hysterical sobbing.

This pain…in my chest…I can’t stand it!

“Kagome, please,” Kikyou tried to keep her voice even. “Stop crying. It was just a dream.”

Kagome pulled away, shook her head violently, and wiped her face again.

“No, no it wasn’t,” she cried, gasping for breath. “I was really there. They can move me through time and space. It’s nothing to them.”

“Who?”

Kagome snorted. “I don’t know. Midoriko, I guess. Or those she works for. I don’t know, but they’ve done it before.”

Kikyou wanted to chide her that she was being ridiculous, but she remembered standing with the ancient priestess in the strange meadow with wooden seats, artificial lights, and faded stars. She remembered the hot food that peeled out of a paper box.

“What did you see?” she asked instead.

“My family. I think my grandfather is dead…has died since I went away. Oh god! They must be so worried about me!”

This induced more weeping. It was some minutes before she could speak again.

“I also saw Ayame,” Kagome whispered.

“I am not familiar with that name.”

“She is a wolf demon,” the girl explained. “I haven’t seen her in a long time. She’s…associated with Kouga. Do you know Kouga-kun?”

“I have crossed paths with him before, I think,” Kikyou said. “The wolf demon who has also sworn to destroy Naraku.”

“That’s him,” Kagome took deep breaths.

The worst of her hysterics seemed to have passed. Kikyou felt the pain ebb out of her chest and she shuddered.

“I saw her,” Kagome went on. “She was standing under the Tree of Ages, covered in blood. She was dead. She is dead.”

“Kagome, you are being absurd,” Kikyou told her, rather out of habit than out of any real conviction. “These are just dreams, nightmares.”

“You’re telling me that you haven’t had strange dreams lately, that were more than just dreams?”

Kikyou stared at her. She was at a loss for an answer. Kagome pulled one of the blankets up around her shoulders and stood up.

“It’s cold as hell in here,” she said. “I’ll try to build a fire. Can’t sleep anyway.”

***

On several occasions during his interminable annihilation of the Tsuchigumo, Sesshoumaru would become troubled by a sense of futile infinity. An image would sometimes flicker behind his eyes, as if lit by a summer storm, of corpses and ruin stretching from every horizon.

It was not that he was ever in any danger, no, of course not. Yet he felt himself in the merciless grip of forever, and sometimes something close to panic would nudge into his awareness, fluttering its tiny, sharp wings on the edge of his brain.

What if it goes on and on like this forever?

To Sesshoumaru, forever was a very long time.

At these moments, to guard his sanity, he felt driven to pause in these labors and return to his home. He would fly back to the house, sometimes with Tamotsu, sometimes alone, and he always noted with satisfaction that a clean sphere of inactivity still existed around the Hyouden. The vile and lowly spider-like demons were not audacious enough to come near it. He often registered the presence of Kohaku in the heavy, dark forest of firs that hugged the eastern edge of his land, in pursuits that seemed as endless as his own.

In the house he would find Rin waiting for him as she always did, appearing for all the world as if nothing were in the least bit unusual. She would greet him with the same exuberance as she did when she was a tiny and gap-toothed girl. That, as a blooming woman, she still ran about in a loose yukuta, with bare feet if the weather was not too cold, with her hair loose and flying behind her, made it easy to forget that any time had touched her at all.

Jaken would greet him with enthusiasm, bowing multiple times and asking questions which Sesshoumaru usually did not bother to answer.

Ah-Un spent his time in the yard outside the kitchen, and a simple bowing of his two long necks was his only greeting. He appeared to Sesshoumaru to be waiting for someone else.

All of this was familiar, but the alien presence of two extra humans, humans who gave off an air of both ripe maturity and also of a deadly purity, was undeniable. On most of his return visits, they were closeted in the same room where the younger miko had made her recovery. She no longer kept to her listless bed, however, but they spent all of their time preparing for something. He did not know what, but he didn't care. He never sought out their presence, but on occasion they did cross paths.

Once, as he was returning home, he saw that they were shooting arrows into bundles of straw, bound with twine and rags. He said nothing to them and they did not look up.

Another time, he encountered the older miko in a hallway. She was carrying a wide, shallow box, and she lowered her head as he passed. A sensation tugged at him, like a sharp thread caught on his finger. He did not try to resist his curiosity.

“What is in that?”

“Demonic slugs, my lord,” she answered, lifting the lid an inch or two and closing it tight again.

“You carry such things into the house?”

“I will not let them infest your house, my lord,” she assured him. “I was going to see if I could get her to purify them, as an exercise.”

“This was not successful?”

“Her highness does not care to be around slugs, it would seem,” she answered with some distaste, “and she says she will not kill helpless things.”

“Foolishness.”

“I quite agree, my lord.”

She bowed again and when he made no move to leave or further the conversation, she shrugged slightly and hurried down the hall.

On another day, Sesshoumaru decided he wanted to cleanse himself of dirt and blood that came from a week of endless battle, but when he approached the door to the cellar that contained the steaming pools under the house, he heard a low melody that stopped him.

“And when we’re older, and full of cancer
It doesn’t matter now, come on get happy
Because nothing lasts forever,
But I will always love you.”

His hand froze on its way to the screen door, and Sesshoumaru listened with mild, perplexed curiosity to his own heart pounding. His wrist pulled on the door frame before he realized it, and the slight scrape of wood against wood left a frozen echo within him.

“Is someone there?” It was not Rin’s voice.

He heard a splash, and then what sounded like bare, wet feet padding on stone. Sesshoumaru did something then that he had never done before in all his long life: he fled.

He attempted the bath again later. This time, the cellar was empty. The room was quiet and the only movement came from the tendrils of steam rising up from the spring-fed pools. He was standing waist deep in the warm water before he realized he was not alone after all.

She stood in the shallow end of the pool. He saw that her hair was red, and that irises still clung to it, though they were dimmed and blackened, like her dark green eyes. He recognized her.

“You are on the road seeking your own death.”

“So be it.”

He lifted his hand to attack. It did not matter to him why she was there. For a wolf demoness to enter his house without leave was unforgivable.

He stopped when he realized she was already dead.

He could see now that her chest was crushed, so much so that he could almost see though to her spine. Her throat was torn, and he saw that she was trying to soak rags in the water so that she could plug the wounds. Her eyes were like withered fields, and when she saw him she lifted one hand, with fingernails full of clotted blood, toward him in a forlorn, supplicant gesture.

Sesshoumaru closed his eyes.

“Go away.”

She was gone when he opened them.

He came back to the Hyouden even more infrequently after that.

***

In the bright midday sun, Inuyasha, Nazuna, Nobunaga, and Jinenji, moved around the wreckage of the Plateau with a kind of silent reverence.

Nazuna was particularly reticent. During the course of that morning, her head grew heavy and her face seemed to swell until it was difficult to keep her eyes open. The incredible memorial of destruction that surrounded her now had succeeded in reaching her through her haze. She looked around, taking in the magnitude of the destroyed trees and ravaged landscape with a kind of numbed awe. Inuyasha, the half-demon who stood so near to her now, had stood here once before, when it was a patch of meadow in the high mountains, like any other. He had seen it before it was marked with so much death. He had seen its scorching and had lived through it.

He was a half-demon, she reminded herself, and Nazuna had only a vague notion of what that meant. She believed, standing here, that his friends really were dead, that they had to be, no matter what he said he believed.

Something amidst the ruin flashed and twinkled in the sun, and made a sudden glint in her eyes.

“What is that?” she pointed.

Myouga, seated on his master’s shoulder, shielded his eyes and peered in that direction.

“Something metal, something gold, it seems.”

They all walked in that direction. Inuyasha, or course, was the first to realize what it was. With a sharp intake of breath, he ran forward and cleared the space between him and the object in two bounds.

When she caught up, Nazuna saw that he was holding a tall staff, with a brass circle at the top adorned with many round rings that clinked against each other like sparkling bells.

“Ah,” Myouga said. “I see.”

“What is it?” Nazuna asked.

“It looks like a monk’s staff,” Nobunaga said.

“That's 'cause it is,” Inuyasha said. “This belonged...belongs, to Miroku. I’m glad I found it. He’ll want it back.”

“Here, use this,” Nobunaga said. He reached into his satchel and produced a wide, woven strap that was dyed blue.

Inuyasha secured the staff across his back.

“I want all of you to wait right here,” Inuyasha said to them. “Don’t wander off. I’m going to look around and see if I can find anything else.”

“Stay here,” he repeated, and was off.

He was gone no more than fifteen, twenty minutes at the most, but to Nazuna it felt like forever.  She wanted to go somewhere else and go to sleep. Her nose was running constantly now and her head throbbed.

“Nobunaga-san,” she said. “Did you ever meet these other friends of Inuyasha's?”

He was still staring in the direction Inuyasha had gone. When she spoke, he turned to her, appearing startled. For only a moment, his widened eyes and open face made him look innocent and boyish.

“Only Kagome-sama,” he answered. “What about you?”

“Only Kagome-chan and Shippou-san.”

She would not have remembered Shippou's name on her own, but Inuyasha often spoke of his friends, and she felt she knew them better now than she could have back then.

When I was young.

“Really?” he sounded confused. “Then you met them after I did, for I've never seen Shippou-san. As for Sango-san and Miroku-san, I guess he hadn't met them yet.”

He laughed. “I guess that means you've known Inuyasha-sama longer than I have.”

“That was so long ago,” she murmured.

The sides of her head begin to feel as though they were caving in, or trying to cave in. A line of pain announced its presence by tickling her throat all morning, and now finally gave in and dove down the whole length of it.

“It couldn't have been all that long,” he said, still smiling. “I believe he was still pinned to that tree five years ago.”

“Yes, but still. Much has gone by since then,” she said.

“Wait,” she looked at him. “What tree?”

He looked surprised again, and she found it hard not to reach out and pinch his cheek. She might have done so, if she wasn't feeling like a throbbing toothache from head to toe.

“You mean you don't know?”

“Know what?”

“Well, it's a long story, but I can give you the highlights, I guess. Inuyasha spent fifty years or so imprisoned on a tree by a miko's sacred arrow.”

“How awful!”

“Yes, though he slept through it. The awful part was that it was his lover who did it.”

“His lover was a human?”

Nazuna was shocked to her core. She had never heard anything so scandalous. She liked Inuyasha well enough, but...he was still a half-demon.

“Right,” Nobunaga did not seem to notice her dismay. “Their enemy, Naraku, tricked them into betraying each other. At least, that's what I've been told. Inuyasha would never talk about it.”

“I imagine not,” she said. “I always though he and Kagome-chan were...”

“I did too. His old lover is dead after all, so I think that's still true.”

“Unless, she is also dead. Kagome-chan, I mean.”

Nobunaga turned to her in surprise. “Kagome-chan is not dead.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just am,” he said.

“But...”

“Kagome-chan is not dead,” he repeated stubbornly.

“Amari-san is right,” Jinenji said.

The giant's sudden, rumbling voice startled her. He had not spoken all that morning.

“What we are doing, it is not meaningless. We are moving toward something, something big.”

Nazuna was about to question this rather grand statement, when Inuyasha reappeared.

“Did you find anything?” Nobunaga asked him.

“Not really,” the half-demon answered.

Nazuna saw that he was, however, carrying a weathered and rusted arrow.

“Inuyasha-sama,” Myouga said, still sitting on his master's shoulder. “There are things I have heard. I do not know if they are significant, or even true.”

“Yeah?” Inuyasha answered, adjusting the staff across his back. “What is it?”

“Well, I have heard that the lands to the north of the Hyouden are overrun by the Tsuchigumo.”

“I see. That sounds ominous,” Inuyasha said. “What is the ‘Hyouden’?”

Myouga shook his head, but explained.

“The Hyouden is where Sesshoumaru lives. It is the home built by your father and … well, by your father.

“So it’s still there?”

“Of course it is still there. The Hyouden will stand forever.”

“Nothing's forever, Myouga.”

“Anyway, I have heard that the monsters are not actually on his land, yet. I have also heard there are two mikos living there.”

“What? Human mikos?” Inuyasha exclaimed.

“That is what I have heard. In truth, I do not believe it.”

Inuyasha was silent for a moment. “Anything else?”

“The most promising rumor I have heard is that, immediately following the explosion that proceeded the Rains, two humans were found not far from here. The only reason I heard about it is because they were presumed dead and suddenly came back to life. It was thought to be a miracle at first, and people came from miles around to look at them…until the Rains made travel so difficult.”

“Just two humans? What does that mean to us?”

“Some people say it was a miracle, most came to believe they were cursed,” Myouga went on. “But one thing everyone has agreed on: it was a man and a woman, a monk and a demon slayer.”

A silence fell over them. Nazuna held her breath, waiting for Inuyasha's reaction.

“Which way?” was all he said.

They made an abrupt turn to the south, but had not gone far before Nazuna came to a stop.

“I know you’re eager, Inuyasha,” she said, “but night is coming on. We must stop.”

“Inuyasha-sama can run all through the night,” Myouga declared.

“He would have to abandon us though,” Nazuna pointed out.

“No,” Inuyasha said. “We’ll stop.”

By the time they had a fire going, the silver twilight had come down to hang over their heads like a shroud. Behind the bare trees, the lilac color faded into gray.

Nazuna unrolled her fur hides and unpacked those belonging to Nobunaga, who inventoried their dwindling food supply and rationed out some for himself and the others. Jinenji, who sat by the fire, refused the food. Inuyasha waved it away.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said to them. “I want to make sure the area is safe.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Jinenji offered.

“No,” Inuyasha answered. “Everyone, just go on to sleep.”

They did not see him again that night. Jinenji was the last one to fall into slumber, under the moonless sky.

***

“Shouldn’t we think about leaving?”

Kikyou looked up. She had been rummaging through a box she discovered in the kitchen, which contained various plants and strange liquids in tiny glass bottles and powders in paper packets.

“Leaving?” she asked.

“Yes, leaving,” Kagome said. “We need to find the others and, well, whatever else Midoriko wants us to do. We’re not accomplishing anything here.”

“I am not so sure about that.”

“Huh?”

“In the first place,” Kikyou explained, “Midoriko, or Ichiro, or whoever, told you that Sesshoumaru is supposed to be one of our allies. That is probably why we are here.”

She eased a small cork stopper from the top of a bottle and sniffed at the contents, her brows knitted in puzzled concentration.

“Supposed to be,” Kagome muttered.

“In the second,” Kikyou went on, “you are not strong enough to travel very far.”

“I’m walking well enough now, aren’t I?”

“Kagome,” Kikyou said, as if explaining something to a child, “there is a vast difference between strolling the grounds of the Hyouden and trekking across miles of open, freezing wilderness. Not to mention the general turmoil surrounding this area. You would not last a day.”

“Turmoil?”

“Yes, turmoil,” Kikyou sighed. “If you have kept your head stuffed in feathers all this time, kindly remove it now.”

“You don’t have to be insulting.”

Kikyou did not answer but continued her inventory of the mysterious, lacquered box.

“What are you doing anyway?” Kagome peered over her shoulder.

“I found this in the kitchen,” the miko answered, “and I think it contains many useful medicines, though some are strange to me, and others I would not dare use on a human.”

“Demon medicines?” Kagome gasped.

“Some of them.”

Kagome could not think of anything else to say, so she wandered over to the window and started to open it.

“Come away from there,” Kikyou ordered without looking up. “It is too cold. The last thing I need is for you to catch pneumonia.”

Kagome sighed and returned to the fire. She sat before it cross-legged and dropped her chin in one hand, wearing a disconsolate expression.

“Do you have nothing better to do than to mope about?”

“No,” Kagome groaned. “I’m so bored.”

“‘Bored’, she says. Perhaps you miss your old friend, Naraku.”

“Now that really is too insulting.”

Kikyou retrieved a bow and arrow from the corner and shoved them into Kagome’s lap.

“Go out to the gardens and practice your aim.”

“But you just said it was too cold!” Kagome protested.

“Bundle up,” Kikyou shrugged, returning to her preoccupation.

“But…”

“The gardens, Kagome. Now.”

Kagome rose, in a huff, and went to the door.

“You’re such a bossy brat.”

“Takes one to know one,” Kikyou said without looking up.

With a little exclamation of surprise and indignation, Kagome stomped out of the room.

“Finally,” Kikyou murmured to herself, “some peace and quiet.”

***

Some kind of sound lifted him from the trance. He used a foot to kick a Tsuchigumo off his blade. It was the same feeling he would sometimes get when walking a well-known path, one so familiar that he didn't have to look at it. Sometimes he would stop and realize he had taken all the turns, stepped over all the roots and around the reaching branches, all without noticing or remembering.

It was like that now. How many had he killed this morning? How had he done it? He was not sure. Usually, Sesshoumaru tried to be neat about such things, but now his clothes and hair were matted with blood, some of it drying. He did not remember any of it.

It was not a sound that had brought him out of this fog after all. It was an unusual shape. He was standing in a patch of sparse forest, meadow that was gradually surrendering to fir trees. By the look of the sun, it would soon be dark. The eastern sky was already gray. Ahead of him on the path stood a figure that was not a spider monster.

It was her again.

She was less bloody this time. Her face and eyes were clear, and he could not help but be startled by the notion that the dead could heal. Her chest and throat still bleed constantly.

The idea of calling out to her occurred to him, but he would not do so. He stood obstinately silent. She regarded him with an unwavering gaze, her green eyes never leaving his face.

He was speaking, after all. In fact, he was somewhat shocked to hear himself shouting.

“You go to hell!”

She lowered her head; her entire upper body hunched over. She stood drooping, with her red hair falling over her face. He was uncomfortably reminded of a cruelly beaten animal. Then she was gone. And so was he.

Or, so was everything else. The forest, the bodies, the blood, the stench of rust and decay that had covered everything for months—all gone.

He stood in a smaller space. The first sensation that hit him was a deep sense of being trapped, of being trammeled in thick and impenetrable walls. He looked around.

The ground immediately around his feet was bare and clear. To the right was a strange structure he did not recognize. There were similar but smaller structures to the left and behind him. Ahead of him, where the specter of the wolf demoness had stood, was a giant tree that shaded most of what he could see.

His eyes were not being all that helpful. Nothing he saw could be connected to anything in his memory and to little in his experience. His nose was worse. There was the smell of dirt and grass, different kinds of food, and the dusty, oily smell of a few animals, mostly birds. Everything else was beyond all contemplation. Stone-like, but not stone. Glass-like, but not glass. Fire-like, but not fire.

“Disconcerting, huh?”

Sesshoumaru thought he recognized the lazy, informal voice, and he turned to deliver a biting retort to Tamotsu.

Sitting on a bench that was pushed against the outside wall of the house, was his father instead.

A number of responses came into his mind, ranging from “What the hell are you doing here?” to “It would be only proper if you were standing when I ran you through.” His grip on his sword tightened, but he said nothing.

“Well,” his father said after a few moments. “Are you going to just stand there? You won't get back home that way.”

Sesshoumaru still said nothing, but he was not ignoring his father, not deliberately. He was lost in the cacophony of a foreign song, a hum and drone of sounds he could not place. None of them were too near, and yet they were all around him. A sudden and angry blare made him turn. From the same direction, there was a screeching protest that sounded almost like a sword being forced into another piece of metal, followed by more blasts of unmatched notes. The commotion melted away into the general hum that surrounded him. His nose caught the sharp and acrid scent of something burning again.

“It's no use thinking about that. You don't have time, and it doesn't concern you anyway.”

“I won't get back home?” Sesshoumaru repeated. “Therefore, I am not home?”

“No.”

After some silence, Ichiro stood and motioned to his son.

“Come this way. We'll do what needs to be done and then you can go back.”

“How?”
“Don't worry about it. Come.”

Sesshoumaru stood still for a moment. He had never been in the habit of obeying his father, and saw no reason to start now, now that...

...now that he's dead.

“I'm not really dead,” his father said. “But I guess that depends on how you define 'dead'.”

Sesshoumaru stared at him.

“You're surprised,” it was not a question. “She was too. I'll tell you the same thing I told her. There are no secrets in the dreaming world. And before you ask, I'm not in the dreaming world, you are.”

To Sesshoumaru's ears this was all perfect nonsense. He looked around, and finally surrendered to the undeniable evidence that he knew nothing here. He reasoned that following his crazy ghost of a father would not likely make him any more crazy than he already was. Without intending to, he recalled the possession of Rin, the house full of willful objects, the visions of the dead wolf demoness, the fear of sleep that had taken firm hold of him, and he admitted, in the secret cell in his mind, that he was in a good deal of trouble anyway.

He was about to turn, when a muffled sound snared his attention again. It was a low groan, and it came from something lying in the cold dust about twelve feet away. He had seen it before, of course, but had not registered it, since it was inanimate. Now he could see that it was a young man, perhaps close in age to Kohaku, with a large gash across his forehead and left temple. Blood covered the left side of his face. The boy groaned again, and twitched, but did not appear conscious.

“Pay no attention to him. It isn't your concern.”

“Who is he?” Sesshoumaru asked.

Ichiro looked at him for a moment, his amber eyes puzzling something out.

“He is Kagome-chan's younger brother.”

This information was so startling that Sesshoumaru did not dwell on the fact that his father referred to Kagome as “Kagome-chan”, as if he had known her forever.

He moved toward the boy.

“Sesshoumaru,” his father said. “I told you to leave him. You can't help him anyway.”

But Sesshoumaru was transfixed. He felt pulled toward the boy. He found himself standing over him, peering down into his face, looking for similarities between it and...

He reached out to touch the young man's shoulder. His hand passed right through it and he heard his father sigh.

“I told you. You're the ghost here. Just like me.”

Sesshoumaru tried again, with the same result. He straightened, but he he did not turn away. The sight of this wounded boy filled him with anger, and frustration.

Then his father was standing next to him.

“I know how you see this,” he said to him. “It's hard for you, because your destiny is pushing you, trying to fulfill itself even now. I guess I should have foreseen it.”

“Does death drive us mad?” Sesshoumaru asked him.

“Why are you asking me?” his father returned.

After some silence, he spoke again. “I know it goes against your nature at the moment to leave him here, but you must. Someone else is coming to help him. We have other things to attend to.”

He turned and went into the house.

“Come on, come on. Don't dawdle.”

Sesshoumaru tried to recall if had ever heard his father say “dawdle” before, even as he turned and followed him into the house.

The first room was a kitchen. Even Sesshoumaru could discern that much, because of the smell of heat and food that still lingered here, even though now it was cold. Despite it being a kitchen, it was clear that someone was also using it for something else, because dozens of books, all of them dusty and crackling with age, were stacked everywhere. His father paid no attention to this scene, however, and kept walking.

This was someone's home. A home for humans. But that was all that Sesshoumaru could tell about it. Everything in it was foreign to him. The smells were artificial and unpleasant. The furnishings seemed drowned in melted wax. Everything was covered in fur, not animal hides, but the twisted fibers of something more plant-like. They came to wooden stairs, and Sesshoumaru followed his father to the top.

The next room they entered looked as strange as any of the others had, but it did not smell as strange. After having lived with her for so long, Sesshoumaru knew this scent well. There were other smells present and more recent, and Kagome's scent was fading from this place, but it still clung to everything like a smoldering ghost.

The largest item in the room was a rose-colored rectangle, pushed into the corner. It was raised half a span off the floor, but when his father sat down on it, its surface gave way to him somewhat and the structure of it creaked, a rusty, metallic sound. Sesshoumaru understood that this was a bedroom. His father motioned for him to sit down, but Sesshoumaru remained standing, only looking at him. His father shrugged.

“We're running out of time,” he said. “I brought you here so you could see the truth.”

Sesshoumaru, naturally, centered on the information that was the most important.

“You brought me here?”

“Well, not exactly,” Ichiro admitted. “It's complicated.”

“What is this 'truth'? Be done with it, so I can return to my business.”

“Your business?” his father looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “And what is that?”

Sesshoumaru was silent. After a moment, his father shrugged and then indicated their surroundings with a wave of his hand.

“Look around, Sesshoumaru, this is it.”

“This is what?”

“The truth,” he answered. “Look around.”

Annoyed, Sesshoumaru looked around. His eyes scanned the room perfunctorily, then returned to his father,  who sat looking at him with an expression of smug amusement.
“So did you see it?” he almost laughed.

“Enough with your games,” Sesshoumaru retorted. “You were a fool in life and you remain a fool in death.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” his father laughed outright now. “Very well, since you're my son, I'll just tell you.”

He waited for his son to say something, but Sesshoumaru was...well he was still Sesshoumaru, and he said nothing. Ichiro opened his mouth to speak, but before words could come out, Kagome walked into the room.

Sesshoumaru whirled to face her, amazed in spite of himself, and ready to demand how she had left the Hyouden.

Not just how, but why. Why did you leave? Why would you?

But she did not see him. The air around him glimmered, like oil under the sun in summer, and brightened, and when it cleared he saw that she had walked through him. She could not see him, but he could see, hear, and smell her. When she passed through him, he had felt anger, anguish, and a strange but tormenting shame.

He looked at his father, who appeared as startled and confused as he felt, but made a conspiratory gesture for him to watch and listen.

A moment after Kagome, Inuyasha followed. Sesshoumaru could not remember the last time he had been this close to his brother, and it struck him that Inuyasha was angry, seething even.

He's always angry when I'm around.

But Inuyasha's emotions were not directed at his half-brother. Like Kagome, he did not even see him.

“Kagome,” he called out, and reached for the young woman's arm. “We have to talk, we have to get this over with.”

Sesshoumaru was surprised again when he realized that Kagome was younger. Not by much, but it was noticeable, at least to him.

“Since when do you want to talk about anything? About us?” Kagome glared at him and jerked her arm away. “There's nothing to talk about anyway.”

“So that's it then,” he growled. “You want me to just leave you here?”

“Don't be stupid,” she snapped at him. “I know what I have to do.”

“You'll come back? Even though...even though you hate me?”

Inuyasha was grating the words out like they were rocks cracking on his iron teeth, but his eyes were dark and haunted. It was obvious that he could barely bring himself to look at her. Sesshoumaru had not seen a look like that since...since...

You're none of mine.

“Hey, newsflash,” the girl said in an acidic tone. “The world does not revolve around YOU.”

“Kagome, I...” he reached for her again.

“Stay away from me!”

“I can keep going,” Kagome's shoulders hunched, and she hung her head. “I can keep going, because I have to. And I will, no matter...

“No matter how many times you screw me and leave!”

She spit these words out like they hurt her, like it would be worse to keep them in her mouth longer than she had to.

Inuyasha flinched, reddened, and clenched his fists.

“It happened once!” he shouted. “And I said I was sorry!”

For the first time, he raised his head and looked at her, and both Sesshoumaru and Ichiro could see that he was weeping. Sesshoumaru experienced something then that he could not place. A weight settled somewhere between his throat and stomach and made it hard to breathe. He wanted to leave. As they all stood in the silence, Sesshoumaru turned this feeling over and over, studying it, feeling the weight of it, until at last he could identify it. He was mortified.

I should not be here. It's unseemly.

Kagome wiped her sleeves across each glistening cheek. When she spoke, her voice was a hoarse rustle.

“If you don't love me now, you will never love me again.”

Silence feel again and Sesshoumaru had just decided to leap through the window, when it was all gone. Kagome and Inuyasha vanished as if they had been mere drawings on paper that was now snapped away. The light and air of the room changed in a flicker, and Sesshoumaru understood without thinking about it. What he and his father had witnessed was not a shade, a memory stored by this strange house, but instead they had been moved back to witness the event itself, in real time.

Ichiro let out a slow breath. “That was...odd.”

“Was that the 'truth' you spoke of?”

“I...don't know what that was, but I guess someone wanted us to see it.”

They were silent for some time. Sesshoumaru stood wondering what his father was thinking. He imagined that seeing Inuyasha and Kagome together would bring back unpleasant memories for him.

He hoped it did.

“The truth is, Sesshoumaru-kun,” Ichiro broke the silence, “there is life, here. You need to see that.”

Sesshoumaru looked around, but saw nothing but the misshapen furniture and odd colors and fabrics.

“Look there,” Ichiro pointed.

Sesshoumaru saw a square that contained an image, some kind of painting. He picked it up.
It did not look like any painting he had ever seen. The images were perfect representations of people. There were four young women, only one of which he knew. A younger Kagome, even younger than the one he had just seen, smiled at him from behind a plate of crystal.

“She existed here,” his father went on. “She had a life here, a good one, as that sort of thing goes. And yet, she is now with you.”

Sesshoumaru carefully replaced the artifact.

“Despite the difference in time and space, she is with you. This is not for nothing. That is the truth.”

Sesshoumaru was silent. Outside in the courtyard, where he had begun this ridiculous journey, a movement caught his attention. He peered through the window and saw two figures standing over the boy. One of them said something to the other, then turned back and bent to pick him up from the ground. They wore hoods, and he could not see their faces. Still, there was a feeling, familiar but not.

“Now our time really is run out,” his father said. “Time to go back.”

“How?”

His father stood up and planted his feet firmly in front of Sesshoumaru's, crossing his arms.

He's still taller than me.

“Easiest thing in the world,” he grinned. He face scrunched together in a strange smirk and he stuck out one arm.

“Poke,” he said.

He rammed his finger into Sesshoumaru's chest.

Sesshoumaru was taken somewhat aback. When his father moved his hand again, he moved to block it but was not quick enough.

“Poke.”

“Stop it, old man,” Sesshoumaru snarled.

“Poke!”

This time, the finger landed like a miniature hammer and Sesshoumaru reeled backwards. The air glimmered again, as if he was underwater. Even as he stood there, realizing that he was holding his sword again, that he was smelling the dead Tsuchigumo, that he was inhaling the dirt and pine of his own land again, he heard his father's voice drifting through the air, ghosting across the space between.

“One day you will ache like I ache.”

***

Inuyasha woke them all at sunrise. They huddled around the fire, choking down rice that was turning hard and venison that was tough and stringy. The worst was the water. They had collected it from a stream that flowed from the mountains and it was an icy slush. Nazuna gulped it down quickly and prayed for hot tea steeped with honey.

The last few weeks had been a mix of relief and dread for her. Traveling with the others, especially Nobunaga, relieved her of her loneliness, but she felt as though they were wandering aimlessly and that she would never be warm again. Talk of this place, the Hyouden, had cheered her somewhat, because it sounded like the sort of place with beds and fireplaces.
And tea, of course.

Only now they were heading in another direction and Nazuna was not sure how she felt about it. She even gave some thought to calling the whole thing off and saying goodbye to her new friends, but she concluded that she was rather trapped in the situation, since to leave would mean solitude and likely death.

She did not want to be the weak one, but that she was the weakest member of this little “family” was all too evident. Her feet began to crack and bleed; her mouth had been doing so for about two weeks. By noon, she started to stumble, falling further behind the others.

I’m not going to make it, she began to think, I don’t care…I just want to sleep…

The notion had its appeal. She could stop for a nap, someplace with soft moss and sheltered from the wind, and catch up to the others later. The more she thought on it, the more reasonable it seemed.

She was examining an evergreen shrub on a gentle slope for just this purpose when she heard Nobunaga’s voice.

“Inuyasha-sama!” he called. “Slow down. Something’s wrong with Nazuna.”

She turned to say that there was nothing wrong with her, but she found that her voice would not come out. She realized for the first time that her throat hurt; it was painful to swallow, though there was little to go down from her sandpaper tongue. Later, she would not remember whether or not she had been able to take a single step.

Nazuna opened her eyes. Low voices murmured in the background, and an orange and red light glimmered and danced above her on a strange, sloping ceiling. Her eyes were tender and burning, and the light hurt them. Nobunaga was leaning over her.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“You’re sick. You passed out,” he said to her.

“Where am I?”

“Inuyasha found this shed. It’s dilapidated, the roof is caved in, but it was best we could do.”

He continued to talk, but Nazuna’s eyes could not stay open.

She got the impression that no time had passed when she opened her eyes again, but now she heard Nobunaga talking some distance away. Her head was too heavy to lift.

“I know you’re impatient to be gone, Inuyasha-sama,” he was saying.

“No, no,” she heard Inuyasha’s rough voice. “We can’t leave until she’s OK. I shouldn’t have pushed her in the first place. Why didn’t she say she was sick?”

“I don’t know.”

Nazuna floated in and out of a world of black and red haze. She caught snatches of conversation and was dimly aware that she had been given medicine that Jinenji had made for her.

Inuyasha wanted to find his friends, she thought. I need to get up.

But then the world was wiped away again.

She awoke again, shivering. Her head had cleared and she found herself sitting up with little effort before she realized it. She noted that there was no one around and the fire had gone out. By the light and the few bird calls she could hear, she discerned that it was morning.

“Is anyone there?” she called, pleased that her voice came out.

In less than three seconds, Nobunaga darkened the doorway.

“So you’re awake at last!” he exclaimed. “Feeling better?”

She nodded, pulling the fur blankets up to her neck. He looked around.

“Oh no, I see your fire went out. I apologize. Wait one minute.”

He ducked out again.

When she heard someone coming through the doorway again, she said “Nobunaga, I’m near starving to death.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” replied a brusque voice.

She looked up to see Inuyasha standing at the foot of her bed, with his arms crossed.

“Oh, Inuyasha!”

“Glad you’re doing better,” he said, turning his back. “I’ll try to find you food.”

Nazuna had a hand out to try to stop him, but he was already gone. She settled back into her blankets, pulling them over her head in an effort to warm herself with her own air. When she heard someone else come in, she only revealed one dark eye to the air.

“Is Inuyasha mad at me?” she asked Nobunaga, who was trying to get the fire going again. “He is, isn't he?”

“No, of course not. Why would he be?”

“Because I'm delaying him.”

“Inuyasha-sama is not quite so unreasonable as all that.”

Between the three of them, they fed her, kept her warm, and in general well treated. It still took three days before they were able to resume their journey. During that time, they all slept on the floor of what they had come to call “Nazuna's hut”. Inuyasha, in his usual fashion, had wanted to sleep outside, but Nazuna wouldn't hear of it, and when she pleaded with him he acquiesced readily. He wouldn't look at her, but he  acquiesced.

On the third and last night, they lay in the orange darkness. Their breathing told Nazuna that no one was asleep.

“Does anyone know any songs?”

Inuyasha snorted. Nobunaga was silent. After some few moments, Jinenji produced from his travel pack a little reed flute.

“I can't sing, of course,” he rumbled in his rolling thunder voice.

At first it was only a jumbles of sounds but, little by little, a melody of windy notes emerged, changing over from random noise to harmonious music the way the grayness of morning changes over to the brightness of day. Nazuna startled them all by added her own instrument to it. Her voice was small, and strained by her illness and by privation, but she blended it so well with the instrument that it was almost hard to tell where it was coming from.

“For to see our sun is shining
A thousand miles we’d travel
We’ve had our share of the weeping air
Why has the sky unraveled?

Still we sing happy youkai, blessed yami
The oni are lucky
For they all go bare and they swim in the air
And they need no home nor plenty

We went down to Yomi’s table
For to beg of the Queen our dinner
There we saw the sword across her knee
You can bet we left much thinner!

Still we sing happy youkai, blessed yami
The oni are lucky
For they all go bare and they swim in the air
And they need no home nor plenty

When maidens feed the demon cake
from our blood and bone powder
The curse will break and the stars will shake
And there’ll howl no demon louder!

Still we sing happy youkai, blessed yami
The oni are lucky
For they all go bare and they swim in the air
And they need no home nor plenty

For to see our sun is shining
A thousand miles we’d travel
We’ve had our share of the weeping air
Why has the sky unraveled?

Still we sing happy youkai, blessed yami
The oni are lucky
For they all go bare and they swim in the air
And they need no home nor plenty
Worry not my daughters
Worry not my sons
We will all go bare and swim in the air
When all is said and done”

“Where did you hear that?” Inuyasha asked.

“Well, actually...” Nazuna mumbled.

“She just made it up of course,” Nobunaga laughed. “We are learning a lot about our Nazuna.”

“I don't know,” was all she'd say. “It just came to me.”

That was not the end of the evening. Nazuna remembered a few other songs, tunes from her childhood that were more lighthearted. Nobunaga clapped along and Jinenji tried to keep up. Inuyasha just tried not to think about his usual, impatient aversion to levity.

How about just enjoying the moment for once?

***
If there had been any lingering doubt in her mind that she truly lived, it was gone now. There could be no doubt that she felt as all flesh feels because, damn, it was so cold.

Even removed by fifty years, none of Kikyou’s catalogs of memory contained a worse winter. It was not that there was a lot of snow; the air was as dry as the summer and autumn had been wet. This seemed to make it worse, as the frozen air blew across the land like rending claws, with nothing to break it but bare, abraded trees and barren rock.

This is not the land of my youth.

The Hyouden, perched on the northern face of the hills with its front to the sea and its back to the fields where the wide river flowed to the ocean, stood exposed to the winter winds like a single tooth protruding from the gum of the land. The brutal gusts assaulted the doors and windows and invaded every seam and crack. As the year was drawing to a close, the women and even Jaken were forced to close off most of the house, and they lived in just two rooms, one where they slept and the other the kitchen, where Jaken and Kohaku slept.

Her numbed fingers and aching toes reminded Kikyou that she was a normal woman now. Even her right shoulder ached in the cold, as if it remembered an old wound.

Gradually, she stopped thinking of her time spent as an artificial clay figurine, animated by stolen souls. More often, when her hands were busy with some task or other, she thought of the days before her first death, or of what she had learned of Midoriko and Kagome since the Rains. Sometimes she would only hum to herself one of the silly songs she was now accustomed to hearing from Kagome, who sang to herself whenever she was not sleeping, eating, or talking.

“All you need is love, love, love is all you need.”

“Hey, I know that tune.”

The unexpected voice made Kikyou jump and drop her tea, the little earthenware cup clattering on the floor and spilling its contents.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

It was Tamotsu. He entered the kitchen, which was where they all spent most of their time, since it had two fire pits.

“Anyway, I only meant that it was one of the first little songs I heard from Kagome-chan.”

He went to one of the fire pits and sat in front of it.

“It is a silly song,” Kikyou said, picking up the broken crockery.

“Perhaps,” he smiled. “Speaking of which, where is she?”

“She is in the baths.”

“She does that a lot,” he remarked.

“Yes,” Kikyou agreed. “It is quite important to her.”

When Kikyou poured some more tea for herself, she prepared a second cup for the dog demon, out of an ingrained politeness. He took it without comment and sat gazing into the fire, humming the silly tune to himself. After some time passed in silence, he looked up as if he had just thought of something important.

“You have everything you need, right?” he asked and, seeing her perplexed expression, explained, “Food, firewood?”

“Well, we can always start burning the furniture for firewood, if we need to.”

He looked up startled, and Kikyou could not keep herself from laughing at the expression. When did she become this way? She could not remember.

“I was only joking. Kohaku-san takes care of all those things for us.”

“Ah yes, the boy,” Tamotsu mused. “Haven’t seen much of him.”

Kikyou continued with her chores, but Tamotsu thought he saw her expression darken and her eyes become troubled. He did not spend much time wondering what she was thinking, however. He had his own troubles and the weight of them was exhausting. Instead, he sipped his tea and wondered if she would let him bed her, if he tried.

That night, as he tried to sleep in one of the cold, empty rooms upstairs, it occurred to him to try. But then it occurred to him that she did not sleep alone and that this might make things awkward.

Or it might makes things pleasant. Very, very pleasant. Knowing full well that this was pure wishful thinking, he pursued that line of thought anyway, and it diverted him so well that he was already listening to the words before he was conscious of the song someone in the night was singing.

“The proud do not endure, the simple ones are happy
La-da-da la-da-da

At last the mighty fall and the Spring is so happy
La-da-da la-da-da”

A cold knot formed in his chest when he realized that the voice was female, but not Kagome, Kikyou, or Rin.

And it was close.

“Who's there?” he whispered.

There was no answer. No further sounds came from the room, and outside nothing could be heard at all, except for the occasional, hollow cry of an owl. On bare, silent feet he padded to the door and looked up and down the upstairs hall. There was no sign of movement, not a rustle.

He went back to his bed, determined to rest. Let the house do what it wanted.

“I'm going to sleep,” he announced, his breath fogging in front of his mouth. “Do your worst.”

Nothing else happened that night, however, and the next morning he left before the sun was up.

Slaughtering the Tsuchigumo took little or no thought. It had become second nature to him. Tamotsu stampeded through them, all the while thinking about the Rains, wondering where these demons had come from, where it had all come from. He thought of the possession of Rin and the enigmatic message of Shinme. He wondered if Inuyasha would come to the Hyouden to claim the priestess.

Which one? He was not sure. He had noticed that they did not speak of him.

He thought about Kagome’s tales from the future, of all she had said about the well, the sacred jewel, and the struggle against Naraku.

He drove a herd of the monsters into a river and cut them to ribbons. He wondered how long it would take Naraku to find her.

He wondered how long this would go on. Weeks? Months? Years? Would he spend the rest of his life endlessly hunting and killing the same demons? He recalled what Kagome had once said to him about events being stuck in a repeating loop until they fixed it, presumably with Naraku’s destruction. Maybe they had failed to heed the warning, or they had lost their chance, and it would be just like this forever.

Tamotsu’s thoughts were broken when he saw Rin struggling at the bottom of a pile of dead Tsuchigumo. She was trapped in the shallow water underneath them, her hair billowing around her face like dark seaweed. With a startled exclamation, he began tearing the corpses away, trying to dig her out.

It only took him a second or two to realize that his eyes were playing tricks on him. There was nothing there. His heart was pounding like a steel hammer, ringing again and again in his ears, and his hands were shaking. He raised his eyes and gazed toward the south, trying maybe to see the Hyouden, miles away.

He almost shrugged it off, almost decided he was imagining things, that he needed a vacation. He turned to take up the pursuit of his quarry again.

His hands flew up to cover his eyes before he even realized what was happening. A blinding light had blazed in front of him and then receded again just as quickly. He saw a woman standing in his path. She was not very tall, with dark hair and a face that was beautiful in a clean, simple way. She looked like an ordinary woman.

“Make haste!” she cried. “The Beloved is in danger! Fly, fly now!”

She was gone.

Tamotsu considered for only a second that he was losing his mind, then he decided that there was no good reason to take the chance. He looked around, concentrating his thought on detecting his cousin’s presence, and pinned it down in the foothills to the north, only a stone throw away. He flew in that direction without a moment’s hesitation. It did not take him long to realize that Sesshoumaru was on the move, and soon he could see him, streaking his way through the sky like a comet, closing in on the Hyouden at great speed. Tamotsu quickened his pace to catch up to him and wondered who had come to warn his cousin.

***

“This is the warmest part of the day,” she said. “Will you take a turn with me in the gardens?”

Mutely, Kohaku nodded and followed her out.

Once outside, the two walked close together. Kikyou recalled their journey to the Hyouden during the Rains and she realized how much she had missed him and wondered why she had allowed him to stray for so long.  

“I am so very sorry that I let you go for so long. I became absorbed with other things and let you go your own way. But, Kohaku, it must end now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice and eyes frightened.

“I mean that you can no longer wander alone day and night, avoiding the rest of us. It is just no good, dear one.”

That was the first time she had called him that, and the way his eyes avoided hers, the way they filled with tears, she did not overlook it.

“Oh, that,” he laughed weakly. “You don’t need to worry, Kikyou-sama. I’m fine. I promise.”

Kikyou shook her head. “My mind is quite settled on the matter. I know you have to obtain our food, and we are forever grateful for that. But I expect you to spend some time with us every day and to sleep in the house at night.”

To Kikyou’s surprise, the young man turned pale and was seized with violent trembling.

“I can’t!” he cried out, almost choking. “I can’t do that!”
“Kohaku-san!” Kikyou was amazed. “What is the matter? What is so upsetting to you? Is it Jaken, or Sesshoumaru? You don’t have to worry, they—

He shook his head and took a deep breath.

“It isn’t that,” he said. “It’s her. I can’t be around her.”

“Who?”

Before he could answer, they heard feet crushing the dead leaves and twigs and both thought that it was Rin, but when they turned they saw a gang of more than half a dozen men. They were, as far as Kikyou could tell, ordinary humans, but they did not look friendly.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

They did not answer. One man, of average build with a scarred face and graying hair, wearing a short sword strapped to his belt, spoke to his companions.

“She is a priestess,” he said shortly. “Kill her.”

Kikyou flinched and drew herself back.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, her voice a little shrill. “You have no right to be here!”

“This is the home of a great demon lord,” Kohaku shouted at them. “You are in serious danger!”

The leader still did not speak to them. He motioned his head toward the house.

“Check inside and kill anyone you find. Then burn it.”

Kikyou cast about frantic eyes, searching for a way out, but the men were already upon her. Two of them grabbed her wrists and shoulders and pulled her arms back until her knees buckled and she screamed. Kneeling in the dirt, she raised her head and saw through her hair a man with a long blade standing over her.

“Why are you doing this?”

“All monks, priests, and priestesses are enemies of the peace,” he answered in a kind of fevered intonation. “They must be destroyed.”

“Stop this!” she heard Kohaku shout. “Don’t make me kill you!”

Kikyou struggled to free herself even as the man raised the sword high above his head. Nearby she heard someone say: “Don’t let him get away! Grab him!”

Then there were screams, the sounds of breaking and shearing bone, and of blood spraying on the ground. She could smell dust, and winter, and urine and excrement. Before she understood what was happening, her arms were released and her white haori was stained on both sides with splashes of blood.

“Run, Kikyou-sama!”

She looked up and saw Kohaku standing with his chained sickle, dyed red-black. The bodies of the men lay around them in clumps of limbs and heads and piles of intestines. She choked back a wretch.

“Are you okay?” he cried. “Can you walk? Can you run? You must get away from here!”

“No!” Kikyou shouted.

She stood up, and took no more than a moment to center her balance and reign in her senses. She looked around for the leader.

He lay on his back, with a great gash across his chest from armpit to armpit. Everyone else was dead, most sincerely dead, but this man lay gasping out his last breaths, sending up small spray fountains of blood from his mouth. She stood over him.

“I imagine you wish you had the comforts of a priest now,” she said bitterly.

He could not speak, but his eyes were still shining with virulent hatred. He moved his right hand slightly toward her, and she saw he was grasping a piece of parchment. As she bent and removed it from his grasp and unrolled it, a popping and cracking sound came from his chest and he ceased breathing.

The parchment was crumpled and smeared with blood, but she could still read most of it.

“Kohaku!” she grabbed his arm and pulled him. “The house! Kagome!”

***

Tamotsu landed on the northern parapet so hard that he cracked the flagstones. With Sesshoumaru behind him, he tore into the house. They had been hit with the stench of blood almost as soon as they were in sight of the place.

They almost collided with Kikyou and Kohaku in the lower hall. The two humans were wild eyed and panting, and covered with blood. By the smell, Tamotsu knew right away that it was not theirs.

“What’s going on? Where is Rin?” Tamotsu demanded.

Kikyou only stared at him and shook her head, her eyes almost blank like dark pools. He sensed that she did not really hear him. The boy motioned for them to follow as they ran toward the steps that led down into the cellar.

“Men attacked us,” he panted, “in the garden. I killed them. But I think some went into the house.”

The distance to the baths was not great. They all burst in at once.

Water seemed to be everywhere, and the world was suspended in it. Everything played out before him in slow, thick movements. Kagome lay in a pool of blood, naked and on her side, on the cold, wet tiles. The hilt of a dagger protruded from between her shoulder blades. A movement drew Tamotsu’s eyes, and he saw someone standing in the pool, holding something under the water. He could see a great fan of black hair above a struggling figure.

Ringing out at once together he heard Kikyou’s agonized scream and Sesshoumaru’s sword sliding out of its sheath. The assailant took one terrified look at the demon lord bearing down upon him and turned to flee. He made it out of the water before he even noticed his own blood, flaring out like a red flower that bloomed on the walls and floors. Then he collapsed.

The sight of Rin’s pitiful form bobbing face down in the water jerked Tamotsu out of his numbed daze. With a cry of anguish, he jumped into the pool, clearing half of it and landing in the middle. Water recoiled from him and edged the tiny girl away. He waded toward her but she seemed to float ever beyond his reach. When he finally had her he pulled her to the floor and held her limp body in his arms. How the world had managed to ruin itself since last he saw her here in this very room!

He lifted her head. Her face was the color of ashes and her lips were deep blue. Her skin felt cold and hard.

“Come on, kiddo,” he pleaded. “Breathe.”

Sesshoumaru, his sword dripping with blood and his face grim, stood over him.

“Tamotsu.”

“Oh, Sesshoumaru!” his cousin cried. “She’s been drowned!”

The horror of that undeniable, permanent word, crushed him like a giant fist, and he began to weep, his shoulders shaking over her ashen face.

“Stop that, you fool!” Sesshoumaru snapped. “Turn her over.”

Tamotsu, blinded by tears and nearly incoherent, obeyed without question.

“Press down on her ribs and push up. You must push the water out.”

Tamotsu did as he was told.

“Nothing’s happening!” he lamented. “It’s not working!”

“Keep trying.”

At last, he heard Rin gasp and cough. She vomited a large amount of water, then began to cry, a small, weak sound.

Tamotsu hung his head and thanked the gods in relief.

“Kagome-chan,” he heard Rin whisper. “Kagome-chan!”

He remembered, and he looked around. He saw that Kikyou was sitting on the floor and holding Kagome’s body, just as he had held Rin’s, and Kohaku was standing behind her with a grieved expression.

“Kagome-chan!” Rin struggled to rise, but Tamotsu gathered her to him again. He grabbed a nearby robe and draped it over her.

“No, no, stay still here, little bird.”

Another movement drew his eye and he saw that Jaken had come into the room. The little demon staggered in, his mouth agape and his eyes bulging, looking around at the scene. A gash on his arm and a slight limp were mute evidence that he had encountered intruders himself. He went toward his lord, who was now standing over Kikyou and Kagome.

Kikyou raised her head. Her face was ravaged with weeping, and at first she could not speak. Her lips were pressed together and drawn back in a grimace of pain. She lowered her head and continued to sob and clasp the girl to her.

At last, she raised her face again. Her disheveled hair hung about her like a veil and her black eyes glittered.

“They killed her, Sesshoumaru. They think we’re the monsters now.”

***

[End of Chapter Twenty-three]

[Next chapter: Iris]