InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Snare ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter 2

Inuyasha awoke with the birds during their pre-dawn clamor. The time of day when the sun’s approach, no matter what the time of year, warms the earth’s atmosphere and causes a breath of wind that makes the old trees creak and the grasses wave. There is no light from the sun at that time and it seems that the night still rules and dawn is still far off. But the wild things know otherwise and often wake at that time only to resettle themselves into whatever warm nest they have made and return to sleep half alert and waiting for the birds to have fed.

He’d had his fill of sleep, however, in the weeks he had spent in modern times and crept away from Kagome’s side to go out to scatter the birds from the lightening fields of the village in a swooping rush. He was thorough. He tore about from dike to ridge to rill and rocky stream and finally into the forest that was named for him to settle himself in his own tree on the verge of an outlying spinney of woods. Not even the cheep of a bird was to be heard any longer near the new hewn stalks of rice grain. He tucked an arm beneath his head and rested, cradled within the limbs of the tree and let the wind rock him back into a half doze in comfort.

No other crook in any other tree had ever held quite the same angle that suited his back so well as the one in this lightning-blasted oak at the edge of the village. He had searched for this tree in Kagome’s time briefly but had found no trace of it in the gardens and city streets about the shrine. He rather thought it stood where the local police box would be in the future on a street corner near the modern shrine but then he had only had the Goshinboku to orient himself by. He couldn’t be sure, so much was gone and replaced by other things there, but he still rested upon the roof of the police box upon occasion when he wanted to keep watch on things.

A pity, but what was to be expected after five centuries? It was amazing the Goshinboku still existed, let alone the well, or the shrine. He grunted and shifted slightly, slitting his eyes to follow the progress of some bedraggled traveler leading a footsore horse along the top of one of the dikes in the rice fields. He continued to mull about the difference between Kagome’s time and this with a mild curiosity, folk usually didn’t arrive so early.

In Kagome’s time that traveler would be arriving by means of a metal cart and would not be nearly so tired. The horse, he supposed, would be well out of it, eating its head off in some stable somewhere, and the traveler would have better luck getting breakfast than he was likely to have in the village this morning. Yesterday had been Inuyasha’s wedding at the shrine in Kagome’s time but it had also been the Inari thanksgiving rice festival in his. The village was very unlikely to be stirring this early considering that the vast majority of its inhabitants had staggered into bed just a few short hours ago.

Inuyasha smirked reminiscently; part of that had been his own doing. Slipping back through the well to the shrine after delivering Kagome to the village and seeing that there was a bonfire had been the work of a few minutes. He had stolen through the darkness to the rear of the music pavilion where the traditional yoked casks of wedding saké were being kept and shouldered a full pair.

He had paused only briefly to peer into the darkness of the empty music pavilion. It had been crowded with his own wedding guests only a few hours earlier. All was dark and still within. It smelled of food mixed with saké and excitement and far too much youki. He wondered what had gone on in his absence, but it all seemed peaceful now. The walls were intact at any rate, which seemed a good sign. The banquet furniture had been folded and placed by the walls ready to be returned to storage in the morning. The temple drums and gong once more occupied the central space by the southern side of the building and the floor had been swept. So, whatever the upshot of the wedding had been, it can’t have been too disastrous.

Rather than attending to much of his wedding feast he had been otherwise occupied with his new bride, making sure the marriage was fully consummated. Sesshoumaru and Rin had stepped in to cover their absence from their places at the head table. It occurred to him that some might have seen this as a breach of courtesy, if they had noticed, but he really didn‘t care. It had been the right thing to do at the time. Too many interfering modern youkai hanging about trying to prevent the wedding from being complete.

“Nosey old gits.” he’d muttered as he turned away. He was only mildly surprised to see his black wedding Haori with its silver mon of three running dogs and the two top layers of Kagome’s wedding kimono folded ostentatiously over the back of a chair in plain sight. So they had expected him back after all. With a shrug, he pulled the haori on and bundled the kimono layers into the front of his kosode making a large bulge. It took a bit of creasing to get it jammed in but he finally crushed the precious silk fairly flat. He’d padded through the darkness of the shrine grounds to the small gate that led to Kagome’s house and carefully eased the yoke down. There was a half-formed plan in his mind to go to the lit kitchen window and let Higurashi-San know where he and Kagome had gone. It only seemed fair.

A silver car was pulling up the drive and Inuyasha stopped at the gate to watch. The outside light flicked on and he could see the silhouette of Kagome’s mother holding the screen door to the kitchen open. Obviously, the visitor was expected. The car pulled to a smooth stop and the driver’s door opened. The air was positively reeking of Sesshoumaru’s youki as he stepped out.

Inuyasha had drawn back with a frown at that. What business Sesshoumaru could have at the shrine at that hour of the night he neither knew nor cared but he had no interest in seeing him again that day and he had re-shouldered his spoils and left. His return to the past had driven the incident out of his mind until now. Kagome, resplendent in the in the shimmering folds of most of her wedding kimono, was in the center of the village in a squealing group of girls. She was hugging Sango and trying to shove one of her remaining layers on over Sango’s clothes.

Sango, for her part, had blushed and protested but didn’t really resist as the robe settled around her. She ran a wondering hand up the silken sleeves and held her arms out to look at their extravagant dimensions. Miroku stood off in the flickering shadows cast by the village bonfire next to Kaede with a round-eyed Shippou perched on his shoulder. The great kodo drum at the center of the village was just warming up, throbbing out its own heartbeat accompanied by shrill whistles to call all the people of the area in to join in the harvest celebration.

Only Shippou had turned his head and noticed Inuyasha making his way through the trees with his burden. He jettisoned himself unnoticed off of the monk’s shoulder and scampered through the leaves to hop cheekily up on one end of the yoke in the one spot best calculated to overbalance it and looked Inuyasha over.

Inuyasha had expected some such trick and had been ready to shift his grip so very little was sloshed. Nothing was going to upset him that night however, and he spoke fairly pleasantly, “If you make me spill my wedding saké I’ll tell Kagome just how old you really are.”

Shippou grew still and glared at Inuyasha, “I’m only a young child,” he said in his husky voice. “Look how small I am.“

Inuyasha drew to a halt, balancing both the yoke and the kitsune’s weight easily with one hand, “Yeah, you really are one short little fuck, ain’t you. But I can also see a fox spirit who has grown old enough to transform into any shape he chooses.“

Shippou’s eyes grew wider and greener, glittering in the starlight under the trees. A tear seemed to collect in one corner and his expression was tragic, “Kagome knows I’m an orphan.“ The tear seemed on the verge of running down.

“So am I. Tell someone who cares.” Inuyasha resumed walking, “One thing Kagome‘s time has is a lot of books. Kagome believes what is in those books and I have been reading up. So, it won’t just be my unsupported word from now on. I know how to take you down now, you little crap.“

“You’ll regret it if you do.” Shippou hissed.

“You will. She accepted me.”

“I’m older than you! So, nah!”

“Oh, so you admit it?”

But Shippou had hopped away and was already transforming. A ‘poof’ and Inuyasha had been faced for a splintered instant with a mirror image of himself, wedding clothes and all. An image which spun and ran down the path to the village, gaining momentum on the slope of the hill, fox tail waving behind and voice lifted in a whoop.

Inuyasha cursed and started loping down the hill trying to keep the saké level. He really couldn’t go all that fast and by the time he arrived Shippou/Inuyasha had been well into a farcical chase of a small goat around the village center much to the delight of the youngsters and the scandal of the respectable elders.

Inuyasha drew up in a puff of dust next to a startled Miroku and snarled, “Here,” as he rapidly unloaded the yoke onto the surprised monk’s shoulders. Miroku staggered under the unexpected weight but bore up gamely in consideration of his friend’s reason for hurry.

Shippou was just in the midst of a bellowing dive at a bunch of giggling and shrieking children when Inuyasha’s hand had closed firmly around his tail and his career as a hanyou was brought to an abrupt and painful halt. Inuyasha’s other hand had taken hold of the tail of the goat and the two miscreants had been held miserably still as Kaede stalked over.

“Shippou, I knew it wasn’t Inuyasha.” She looked at the feebly struggling kitsune with an eye like a gimlet, “What were you thinking? You could have overset the food tables and the women have been gathering things for days for this.“ The goat bleated at that moment and she signed Inuyasha to release it.

Shippou now dangled morosely from the hanyou’s grip, only his head up. The crowd was heading back to the bonfire and Miroku, who was calling for heating containers for the saké . That was now garnering a good deal more interest than a misbehaving kitsune chasing a goat. People were starting to clap in time to the Kodo drum and soon there would be dancing. Shippou dropped his head. “It was just a joke, he muttered to the beaten ground some distance beneath him. Being upside-down that long was starting to make his eyeballs itch, “How did you know? Was it my tail?”

“No, not the tail. Remember I don’t see too well.” Kaede had been calm and unimpressed by the kitsune’s apparent helplessness. “Inuyasha never did chase animals for amusement even at his worst. He always just caught the animals on the sly and ate them,” she paused as if for emphasis, “raw.”

Shippou had drooped and just let himself dangle from Inuyasha’s fist, feet and hands reaching towards an unreachable earth, ears buzzing with too much blood to the head. A few more minutes of this and a blackout would be possible. Shippou held his breath in an attempt to bring it on.

Kaede continued remorselessly, “Now, until you are prepared to catch and eat the animals you chase while pretending to be Inuyasha, I would hold off, if I were you.” Kaede gave one more look at the miserable kitsune and tapped Inuyasha’s wrist. Inuyasha knew what she wanted and ground his teeth together. ‘What the hell was the good of finally having the rosary off when he couldn’t act to please himself? And who said he ate goats raw?‘ His hand tightened for an instant and then relaxed.

Shippou dropped and rolled to cling to Kagome’s skirts as she made her way to Inuyasha’s side. She stooped and picked him up, not objecting as the diminutive kitsune snuggled tightly to her side for a moment. He didn’t stay there for long however, one good sniff was enough for him and he pulled back to stare at Inuyasha and sneeze ostentatiously before hopping off.

He played with the village children much of the night, Inuyasha could see him occasionally, chasing in and out of the scattered dwellings from where they were sitting with Kaede. Sango and Miroku sat with them for a long time drinking in the breathless account Kagome had given of the events leading up to her wedding.

They had their own news, that they now lived in the field shack and that Kohaku split his time between there and doing odd jobs for Kaede. He was a quiet boy around adults and had only scattered memories of the past years but things seemed better that way. He had stopped by them briefly to greet them but had been called by a companion and quickly gone off again.

So the evening had rolled off well and Kagome had voted for staying in Kaede’s hut for old times sake. Inuyasha hadn’t minded beyond insisting on getting rid of the wedding finery. He now dozed in the tree in his accustomed clothes and dangled a foot lazily off of the branch.

He refused to stir as he heard the soft clanging of brass rings and gave himself up to the rocking of the branch as Miroku drew to a halt beneath him. A moment later a golden pear shot up through the branches to be caught midair in Inuyasha’s clawed hand.

“Good morning, Inuyasha. I trust you rested well.”

Inuyasha took a couple of bites of pear before answering, “What’s up, Bouzu? You‘re bringing me breakfast?”

“Might as well, I was awake at dawn in time to see you clearing the rice fields of birds. That’s something I’ve been doing. But it was good I was home, for our house is the one closest to the fields and we had a visitor.”

“That horseman?”

“The same. It seems he is a merchant who had some bad luck a few days back.”

With a swing of his legs, Inuyasha dropped out of the tree to land in front of Miroku with the pear in his mouth. He bit through and dropped the pear into his hand before speaking with a full mouth, “So? Why come out and get me? I take it he’s still at your house.”

Miroku shrugged and looked away, “Well, the party he ran into was a military band, heading for a small temple in Kamakura. They were just collecting some goods along the way but they held my visitor overnight and he overheard some of their plans.”

Inuyasha finished the pear down to the core and chucked it, “OK, so, a military band roughed up a traveling merchant on their way to visit a temple a good two days travel away. And this is news?”

Miroku pursed his lips and sighed, staring out across the rice fields, “No, I wouldn’t call that news. The news is that their target was a temple in Kamakura along the road to Kyoto which has only one priest in attendance.”

Inuyasha widened his golden eyes and looked quite beautiful and quite blank. Miroku stared back, waiting for some indication that Inuyasha had caught on to his meaning. After a couple of moments, he felt forced to prompt Inuyasha, “There is only one temple in that region that has a lone priest living at it.” He waited again.

Inuyasha blinked.

Finally, Miroku became fed up and smacked the butt of his staff upon the ground sending the rings jangling on their circular path, “Mushin! Inuyasha! They were heading for Mushin, my old teacher!” He rapped the hanyou over the head.

Inuyasha looked disgusted and rubbed his head, “I knew that, you asshole! I was waiting for you to tell me why it should matter if some troop commander decides to visit with that old monk!”

“They weren’t going to visit him; they were going to arrest him.”

“Oh, well that’s different. Why the hell can’t you just come out and say, ‘Inuyasha, I need your help, my fat old drunkard of a teacher is being arrested for his evil life.’ It would save a lot of stupid conversation.” He set off towards Miroku’s house at a brisk pace. “Come on, I need to get that guy’s scent so we can back-track to where he was assaulted.”

Miroku started to protest, “Mushin really isn’t so…” then he paused and bit his lip. In a moment, he was moving off, following Inuyasha. “Welcome back,“ he murmured.