InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Snare ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6

Once they decided to keep moving, the group traveled swiftly through the early part of the night. There was a brief camp made to eat some warm food and rest, only to be up again at the frosty crack of dawn the following day to head into the Kamakura district where Hotiji temple was tucked away on the slopes of a mountain.

Kagome generally recognized the hills, she had been to Miroku’s temple before, but she now wondered about something that she had seen recently on TV in her own time. Looking about the woody outlines of the hills didn’t help her though and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask Miroku about the giant Buddha statue that was supposed to be in the area when she caught the tense, unhappy look on his face and held her peace. He was trotting along on foot, veering away from the earthen road as it became cobbled stone with an air of fixed determination.

A blaze of heat heralded Sango as she whooshed above them on Kirara’s back with her two passengers. She looked down at her man concernedly but swung away again to resume her position overhead and slightly behind. Kagome turned her face to rest it more firmly in Inuyasha’s flowing ocean of hair. His heartbeat was steady as he traveled along beside Miroku, saying nothing, only equaling the other’s pace in a steady, ground eating lope.

Miroku was making for the hills but was now cutting across fields and moving in a bee’s line towards some point in the slowly approaching mass of autumnal foliage. There was a smudge of smoke on the horizon that made Miroku curse and Inuyasha hold up to call Sango back with his powerful voice. She had seen it and swiftly dropped down to deposit the kitsune and her brother onto Inuyasha’s back as she called to the monk to wait, that she would take him up. He gave a vague wave with his shakujou in acknowledgement but didn’t pause and she grunted with irritation as she hurried to drop off her passengers and followed to pick him up on the run.

Kagome shifted to make room on Inuyasha’s back and Kohaku climbed on a bit nervously. Shippou jumped up, managing to pull both Inuyasha’s and Kagome’s hair. Kagome winced and looked in surprise through watering eyes at the kitsune as he settled himself on Kohaku‘s shoulder. Inuyasha tensed, surely on the verge of some retribution when Shippou spoke in his most childlike voice, “Sorry, I slipped.”

Kohaku swung his eyes over the flood of Inuyasha’s hair to lock glances with the girl. He seemed to be pleading for something that Kagome didn’t quite understand An instant later, Inuyasha relaxed his tense stance to resume their journey after those so quickly vanishing into the green, red and gold hills of Kamakura. Such things as an annoying kitsune were going to have to wait.

Kirara flew ahead with the familiar double weight of the Houshi and her taijiya on her back toward the rising hills where there was a rumor of lingering smoke slowly being released by the morning mists to rise and be lost in the stratosphere. She dropped lower without being commanded and crossed a paved road to circle up the side of the mountain. An ancient stone stairway was visible in glimpses through the trees and suddenly they were at the spot where the venerable building had stood and quietly rotted in peace for time out of mind.

No longer. All that remained of Hotiji temple was a smoking shell. Miroku gasped and his hands on his staff tensed, nearly cutting off Sango’s air in turn with its pressure against her sternum. She didn’t object however as they circled more closely in and finally landed by the side of the dip that marked the place where Miroku’s father had succumbed to the cursed vortex in his hand.

Miroku swung a leg over Kirara’s tails and was dismounted before she even settled on the ground. He started at a run to the ruin soon dropping to an exhausted walk. Sango watched him silently as he went up to the remainder of the porch of the building. Timbers creaked under his weight as he stepped cautiously under the more solid-seeming lintel. Here he leaned over, picking up what seemed to be a strong thread with short red silken rags strung across it. He dropped what he was looking at and ventured into the still smoking interior.

Seeing that it showed the light of day through the gaping doorways, Sango urged Kirara up to hover over the burned-out shell and watched attentively through the gaps in the roof as Miroku picked his way across the supporting beams of what was once the floor below. It was on the tip of her tongue to call down for him to wait; that together they could search the place more effectively, but she held her peace. There was no stopping him and after all, he seemed to be heading for a clear destination. She hoped he would get to it soon.

She whipped her head around as Inuyasha suddenly bounded into the clearing in an explosion of autumn leaves and paused to look up at her. He didn’t shade his eyes even though he was looking straight into the sun and turned his head only briefly to order every one off of his back. Inuyasha gathered himself and leaped up to the bough of a tree overhanging the eaves of the temple. Pacing along the bough he stared hard at the ends of the roofs across from him before he took a sudden light bounce and leaped to touch down on an eave and run up the slopes of the remaining roofs to follow Miroku‘s path from the exposed rafters.

Miroku heard him and paused in his trip across the great floor beams. “I don’t need you Inuyasha,” he called up to his friend. “I can take care of myself.”

Inuyasha dropped his hands down to grip the cross beam he was standing upon. “I am here on Sango’s behalf, Asshole,” he hissed from above. “I’m just here to do the right thing and keep your sorry ass alive while you make a fool of yourself. Go straight ahead with what you were doing.”

Miroku stared sharply at the insolent red-clothed figure on the beam above him. He drew his breath in, “What the fuck do you know about what is the right thing to do? I have to do this.” The beam he was standing on gave an ominous creak.

“Then get on with it. I have spent too much time and effort on you to waste it in this way. Mushin’s body is neither burned nor is it here if that is what you need to know.”

“What?” That got the monk’s attention.

“Are you deaf as well as stupid? I can smell, damn you! No meat was roasted here.”

Miroku nodded his head and took another light jump across a hole to a section of flooring. “That’s good. Does it mean he’s still alive, Inuyasha? Is he safe? Can you tell me that? Besides, I am also looking for some items that were surely left here.”

“Fucker,” muttered Inuyasha and he took another depth-spanning leap to another sound-looking beam set down low from the roof this time. “I grow sick of following you.” There was another ominous creak and waft of heat from the wreckage far below in the basements. He leaned over and stared down into the depths, feeling the steady glow as one would from a bed of ash-blanketed coals. He spoke again, more urgently this time, “Miroku, hurry up, this is stupid. This place is about ready to collapse.”

“Patience, patience, Inuyasha,” Miroku said, his confidence growing, “we’ll have it in a moment.” With a final jump, the Houshi made it to a side wall, which had some flooring remaining in a narrow strip on a set of bare stubs. His sandaled feet searched for purchase as he straddled his legs for balance. Standing at a ridiculously sprawled angle he opened a small shrine set in the wall, having to duck underneath the outwards swinging door, and felt around within for some item without looking. Bottles and caskets began to drop past his shoulder to disappear into depths of the sub basements revealed by the destroyed floor of the temple. The scrap of flooring beneath his feet began to sag and come off in charred chunks. As the items impacted below the disturbed ash began to billow up and smoke in response to each fallen object. The fire wasn’t out yet. Not by a long shot. Within moments, Inuyasha could see tiny flames crawling up the wreckage and licking along the wood of a supporting beam near Miroku.

“Bouzu, cut it out. The building is back on fire.”

“Can’t cut it out. It‘ll grow right back!”

“Miroku…”

Feeling around a bit more in the recesses of the shrine, Miroku found an unevenness in the wall at the back of the shelf. It was a catch to a shallow hidey hole built into the temple wall. His tongue thrust itself out slightly between his lips as the Houshi felt around blindly to tease the catch open. It was stiff. With a grunt he reached further in and tore at it, breaking several nails off to the quick in the process. With a last twist he had it open and his hand on the first of the three items of the hidden cupboard. Dragging his arm slowly and carefully out of the wall, he had to turn a bit to keep a grip on his prize as he did it. He quickly shoved it in the front of his robes and reached back in after the other two.

As he felt around in the back of the cubby, his knuckles knocked against an unexpected unevenness. There seemed to be one more thing at the far back of the recess and he could not force himself to leave it behind. Reaching farther in than ever, he tried to search for new footing to give him better purchase but there was none available.

“Miroku!”

“Busy.”

One more shift and Miroku was just saying, “Ah,“ in triumph when things gave way completely and Inuyasha followed in a flying rush down only to be greeted by an un-edifying view of the monk’s rump as he scrabbled for purchase on a slanting section of collapsed beam that was already re-lit and burning down below.

“Stupid git! Hang on!”

Even as Inuyasha shouted the beam behind him collapsed. Within an instant the hanyou called up his youkai blood and transformed even as he leaped across the intervening space to sweep Miroku’s body one-armed against his chest. Another leap carried them both to the far wall of the temple above the now flaming pit and straight through it in a shower of splintered wood to the relative safety of the rear court. The pavement there was hot and Inuyasha did not hesitate in his headlong dash cross the court and out through the broken rear doors.

Miroku sagged in his arms, possibly knocked unconscious by either the smoke or the repeated blows of their trip out. With a shrug, the transformed hanyou dragged the unresisting body of the monk off of the porch to get away from the building and stopped under the trees there. He could hear the others crying out from where they were at the front of the temple and knew he had to reassure them soon but he paused a moment and turned his red glowing eyes towards his friend.

Miroku was sitting up, rubbing his face and staring back at him, dismayed by the appearance of the daemon standing before him, “Inuyasha? What’s happened to you? You’ve become a full youkai?”

“Sort of, I…Look, I’ll explain it later. Kagome’s scared and you are such a prick. I hope whatever you got was worth it.“ He bounded off and Miroku dropped his aching head to his hands. In a moment he rolled over onto his stomach and coughed, feeling the lumps of the things he had gotten in the front of his robes. He grinned, something at least was finally going to go right. But lying in the singed stubble of ruined grass, even as wet as it was, was none too pleasant and Miroku didn’t stay there long. He was standing up when Sango arrived around the corner of the burning building out of breath and with Kirara clinging to her shoulder. The others followed her at some distance.

“Houshi-Sama! What did you just do?”

Miroku winced, she hadn‘t called him that in a couple of months.

“Sango, I…”

“You endangered yourself and worried the rest of the party! You heard Inuyasha say to back off! I heard him clearly and I was further away than you.”

Miroku licked his lips and looked beyond his love’s stiff shoulder to view the rest of the group. Inuyasha was back in hanyou form again and had stalked across the unkempt grass of the field to gaze at the woods beyond with his arms firmly folded in his sleeves. Kohaku was casting about in the long grass looking for something and Kagome was standing behind Inuyasha’s shoulder, staring at him. Shippou had disappeared into the unkempt grass.

“Well?” Sango ranted on, “What about the inhabitants of this area? Did you fail to think that flame,” here she waved her arm a bit wildly at the newly burning shell of the temple building, “would attract someone’s attention?”

“Sango, I very much doubt...”

“Oi,” Inuyasha said.

They turned around. From out of the eves of the forest stepped a party of seven sturdy men and one boy. They were all monks to judge by their shaven heads and well-woven hats and sandals. They looked in dismay at the newly-burning building and cried out. They had hoes and pruning hooks with them, obviously intending to salvage out of the ruin what they could. The renewed fire put an end to any hope of that.

Miroku stepped over and looked through the hole Inuyasha had left in the wall to see down into the remains of the temple where he had been born and raised. He felt a sort of intermixed joy and grief as if the destruction of the place were some sort of completion. The building’s loss was indeed a shame; gone were the priceless carvings on the lintels, gone were the statues and sacred texts. Gone, all gone to where everything goes in the end.

He turned his back and walked to towards the monks, “Could you gentlemen tell me if the Abbot Motouji is still in residence at Raikoji temple?” Behind him, the Hotiji temple collapsed in on itself with a roar.

>>0.0<<

The Abbot received them in the room he reserved for study. It was cool there and very quiet, the garden just visible through partially opened shutters. A pair of braziers flickered with clear flames just barely offsetting the breeze. He sat wrapped in his robes on a small raised dais. A low table was set before him upon which was all the equipment for writing, including some dozen sheets of fine plum bark paper and his own personal seal standing upright in a dish. He appeared to be attending to some correspondence judging from the moderate size of the sheets. There was a simple meal of rice and clear soup standing untasted by his elbow as he slowly traced down characters in flowing brush strokes in a rather closely-written document.

The group filed in and knelt silently on the mats by the door waiting for him to lift his head and acknowledge them. This took some minutes however, as the venerable abbot appeared to be both writing with the one hand and counting in mid air with the other as he softly muttered syllables to himself. Finally, with a sigh he rested his brush down and looked up at them.

“A very good morning to you all,“ he said with a kind of seated bow.

The others promptly responded in kind with the exception of the hanyou, who had a strict policy of bowing to no one and kept his arms tucked firmly into the sleeves of his robe. The abbot took stock of the golden eyes staring so straightly back towards him and gave a faint further nod of his head. This gesture caused those eyes to widen slightly and the ears to droop as Inuyasha dropped his challenging gaze and looked away into neutral space.

“Young Miroku, is it not? It’s been a good three years since I last saw you. You still haven’t shaven your head. And I still have yet to receive those regular letters which you promised me. No doubt they have been lost in the post.” The abbot’s voice had a tone of gentle reproof.

Miroku shifted uncomfortably as he started to sweat. The eyes of his companions were boring holes into his back, “I have been traveling much, Holiness, and the post is indeed disrupted. Even paper and ink are frequently hard to come by in these troubled times.”

The abbot pursed his lips and looked down at his own paper spread in front of him and frowned a bit as something on it caught his eye. He muttered to himself, counted on his fingers again and added a careful stroke to the end of one line.

Miroku steeled himself to patience as this operation took place, holding back on the flood of questions pushed at him. They had entered the temple grounds through the rustic back fence and Inuyasha had already verified that Mushin had both been here and gone.

The abbot spoke this time without looking up, “I seem to recall having given you plenty of paper and ink at the outset of your journey.”

“It is all used up, Sama.”

“In writing letters to me? Odd. I believe that is what I gave you a fine supply of paper and ink for. Kindly show me what you have done with it.”

An imperious hand was held out and Miroku hunched up his shoulders against the astonished stares of the others as he reached into his scrip and drew out a thick wad of his ever present ofuda. With a bit of a sigh, he shuffled forward on his knees, laid the strips of paper across the waiting hand and retreated.

There was a pained silence in the rest of the room as the strips were paged through and the abbot’s soft voice read off what was written upon them, “Let’s see here; guaranteed easy child birth, double harvest, be gone daemon, hold daemon, open locks, protection from daemons, super double love charm…” he paused slightly there as Sango gave an affronted gasp and then continued as she clapped a hand over her mouth, “exorcise ghosts and silent retreat. Well, that’s quite a shopping list. And how much were you charging your fellow man for these goodies?”

“I didn’t!”

Kagome cleared her throat.

“I won’t deny that grateful villagers were oftentimes very generous with offers of food and hospitality. Indeed, sometimes even with cash, but it was all voluntary and the charms are oftentimes sorely needed by the unfortunate.” Miroku licked the sweat off of his upper lip and wondered how they had gotten so far away from his desired subject.

“Abbot Motouji, I am sorry that I have proven to be such a disappointment, but I am very worried about the fate of my master Mushin. I received word that he was in danger and returned to find Hotiji temple a burned-out shell and Mushin nowhere in evidence. I believe he sought refuge here,” Inuyasha snorted at that, “and I need to get into contact with him. I have something that he left behind that will help him.”

The abbot grunted and put the stack of ofuda on the table in front of him, “I hear you burnt the rest of the temple down in the process of retrieving what you were looking for. Not to worry, Hotiji temple will be re-built although it will take many years to replace its images and sacred texts. Thankfully, Mushin was alerted to his danger in time and came here. He is as well as can be expected and has since left.”

“But left for where, Sama?” Miroku was leaning forward and the others were shifting expectantly. Inuyasha was digging the claws of one hand into the mat he was sitting on and Kagome tapped his hand lightly to get him to stop.

“To the four winds, I understand. He’s left on pilgrimage.”

“Oh, well then we can catch him up.”

“No, I doubt it. I was not speaking metaphorically just now. He left by air.”

“Hachi.“ Miroku muttered to himself.

“Hrmm, yes. A very unsanitary youkai of that appellation presented himself and offered his services. Mushin took him up on it. It seemed best all ’round. Even I could not prevent the troops of that fool, Oda Nobunaga from attempting to arrest him. They were annoyingly persistent. I was just writing a letter of complaint regarding him to my young cousin, the emperor. I would have had it off sooner but it all has to be in verse with the proper poetic and spiritual references. A bald report without a proper cover letter would never do.”

“Of course, Sama,“ Miroku answered quietly and as one the group came to an instant decision, they would not be waiting for the emperor; they would act on their own.

Abbot Motouji looked up under his brows as they left the room and secretly smiled as he finished his unadorned and baldly factual report. With a soft thump he affixed his red inked seal upon it.

….o…

We shall continue.