There was a time before he had been the Dragon Boy. Aware of this, the implication of it, even as he was aware of his shifting nature, more than the changes of the river's currents now, he still could do nothing to change that which was. Because he could not change it, he remained.
A homeless god becomes a homeless spirit. A homeless spirit disintegrates, out of thought, out of time…out of memory. Vanishes, finally – and since he would not succumb, he had been forced to make the devil's choice. The devil's bargain. And in time…
He would become the devil himself.
Until then, he would have to keep to the terms of the deal he'd made. A home for himself – spirit of waters once more, even if he, he who had been…something other than the Dragon Boy – if he now was bound only to a mere bathhouse.
"Haku. Haku! Where are you, stupid boy!"
He bared his teeth.
Bound only to a mere witch.
#
Time passes, and does not pass – goes onward, but without measure. There is no such thing, not here, not in this between-place where neither spirit-time nor mortal-time is kept. There are an endless progression of customers, nights one after another, the noise, the laughter, rich expressions of things from which he grows more distant day by day.
He gains a reputation for coldness, which he deserves. He gains a reputation for darkness, which he does not – not yet. He is only the devil's servant, still bound to the witch – he learns from her, but she does not teach him her greatest secrets, does not show him the sources of her power, gives him only the merest tidbits in order to sustain her portion of the contract that runs between them.
From this, he learns most of all. He keeps only to the basest terms, puts forth not the merest effort – and in secret, he practices what she has taught him, and watches with dragon eyes for the secrets she keeps.
Time passes, and does not pass. He begins to forget the little things – he begins to forget the past, and finally, he begins to forget his own true nature.
#
When he sees her – brown-eyed, black haired, face round as the moon - he knows she is his. The dragon is a roar within him, fully awakened – no power, he knows, will be enough to keep him from her. Why is immaterial. Some truths are undeniable, and this – he knows this is one, and another thing.
Chihiro.
Her name is Chihiro.
He knows it, without knowing why, or how – but it is her name, the name of she who is his. He stares at her from a distance, and knows one thing and one thing only. She has to escape. She cannot leave this place.
Chihiro, you who are mine must leave this place.
It is the last ember of the who that came before the Dragon Boy. It is fighting against the darkness, here, in her presence – but it is a fading light, and he can think of only one thing to do.
He comes close to her, and when she turns and sees him, gasps at the sight of him – is it memory, nascent in her and unfulfilled, as it is in him? For an instant, he intensifies his presence.
Then he says the last thing he hopes she will ever hear from him.
"Go – get out of here! You don't belong here – you must get across the river before nightfall. Go – go!"
#
The news comes to him first as the witch's shouting, the shrill of Yubaba's voice more piercing than he's ever heard it.
"A human! Here! No, no no no, get it out, get it out! It'll stink up the whole place, and who knows what the customers will say. I want it out, now! And get those pigs to the pens – yes, yes – now hurry!"
In the immediate clatter that follows those shrieks come his own name, a half dozen cries. He schools the glare from his eyes, shifts dragon-to-boy shape, and goes to the witch's door.
"You called for me?"
"Haku! There's a human near the bathhouse – it escaped from its parents."
Human. A human child. The girl. He feels the quickening of his heartbeat in his breast and does all he can to keep his expression placid, shiftless.
"A human child? Here? Turn it into a pig."
The words feel thick on his tongue, but he says them careless and even because they must be said.
"I fully intend to do so, if I can find it! Go, and bring it here – the foreman is incompetent."
She glared at the talking skull that served her as a telephone, and Haku bent at the waist, then turned and left.
His heart was still pounding in his chest. Why? Why?
A human child. The girl. Why?
I told her to get out!
Within him, the final ember of the old fire goes out.
#
He pads over the grass, swift as a breath of wind – his thoughts are run, run, running, faster than he is moving, faster than he could go if he wants to. She is here now. She is here now, in the night, failed to obey…there is no escape for her now, no way out, no way back.
To the world from which she came, there is no returning…at least not in time. Time. She does not have much of it now. She must make this place her own, must bind herself to it, and he knows the way, even though he's sure she will not like it. What must she have seen already, to have come so far?
Only a child – he reminds himself, but it is certain to do no good.
He plucks a single berry from a bush as he passes, and makes his way over the hills and the rustling grass to the side of his girl.
She is already disintegrating, already vanishing into the mist. He feeds her the fruit, a single taste – that's enough, and more than. In an instant she is solid again, no longer fading, and her grip on his hands is tight and sure and pleasing.
What do I tell you, girl?
"Shh – be quiet. Yubaba will hear you. She's the witch that rules the bathhouse, and if you aren't careful, she'll turn you into a pig."
"Like…like my parents? Oh no…"
He cannot bear to mention, in the midst of her tearful phrases, that he is the servant of the witch who seeks her.
"Quiet, and do exactly as I say – and it will save you."
He sets before her the path and her instructions…a trial, maybe, to prove her worth or fail.
Either way, you are mine
"Go now, Chihiro."
#
While she runs the long way, down the back stairs, through the boiler-room, he goes up through the main gate and the elevator, then sends each lift down in careful sequence. Lin will help Chihiro – just like Kumaji, she won't be able to help herself – and he will give her the easiest path he can.
He goes himself to Yubaba, and finds the witch waiting, admiring the rings that glitter bright on the thick fingers of her large hands.
"So, Haku, you've returned – and the human?"
"I've come to tell you that she's coming here. To see you."
"What!"
She starts up from her chair, eyes blazing, but Haku is not to be intimidated this time.
"I want you to give her a contract. I want you to give her a contract that turns her over to me. She's not yours. You are not to touch her. She's been mine since before I came to you – since before I was Haku."
"Oh?"
The witch's voice grows calculating.
"And what will you give me for her when I already own you, Haku?"
"No one owns a Dragon."
The witch's power lashes out, and the devil is born.
#
This must be quick.
He is Dragon-shape, Dragon-fire, Dragon ire. He launches himself at the witch with all that is power, magic in the moment, magic in his scales. She throws fire at him, but it bursts harmless, thunder, no lightning. She seeks to entangle him with the thousand threads of her hair, made into whips and steel-strong lashes, but they batter without effect against his flesh.
He knows many of her secrets, if not all, but many is enough, if just for this. With two snaps of his jaws, he severs four of her fingers, and the flashing rings that he has seen spark many times in the presence of her power fly into the air, accompanied by her shrieking.
There is blood on his fangs as he lifts his lips at her and growls, backs her into her chair and batters her down with power.
In half a moment he is the Dragon Boy again. He spits out her fingers, but swallows the rings.
That seems to pain her more than the wounds, and he smiles at her snarling.
"Not really impressive, Yubaba."
He shows her his bloody teeth.
#
Chihiro comes knocking moments after he has hidden himself out of sight, Dragon-coils wound tight around the body of Yubaba's obscene lump of an infant. It is insurance, to be sure that she keeps her word – fear for herself might not be enough to overcome her arrogance, but a mother's fear will.
The witch plays her part well – scare the girl, threaten her parents, offer to free them…offer the contract. Easy as that, the girl offers her name…but Yubaba is as good as word. The characters rise off the page – Chihiro. The taste of the words is not ink but something deeper, blood and better.
There is will and intention, a purpose doomed to lose itself and die. Something mortal – some fragrant essence. The girl herself, opened to the bone, exposed to the finest grain.
He swallows again and again. He wants…more.
Within himself he begins to suspect the reason she belongs to him, the reason it is to him that she has returned.
#
No more commands from the witch – no more ownership, no more betrayal of his innermost being. The Dragon preens, and the dark fire burns brighter, hotter.
He has spent too long under the weight of his terrible bargain.
He has forgotten too many things.
In their place he has learned the taste of blood and glory, and his desires are now purely focused and to be fulfilled in only one way. He has the taste of the girl on his tongue, a deep imprint of that flavor overriding all food and drink.
He brings her to the pigpen in order to be close to her – closer, ever closer, until the final closeness is no trouble, no worry at all.
You will come willing in the end.
She cries, and shouts at the pigs, and runs from them. He follows, laughing. Why does it matter? Is she so naïve she cannot guess?
Her parents are already dead.
#
He feeds her the food of the spirits – he even tells her that it is enchanted, and still she trusts him, motionless in the sacred space where there are no doubts. He can hear the questions as the fall from her mind, discarded, never to return. She need not worry over him, over his motives -
After all, is he not her friend?
She returns to work under the auspices of the witch, continues to believe herself under contract, held hostage for the sake of her parent's hope for life.
The dead do not return, and he holds all the thread that control her, but he has no reason to disillusion her - not yet.
She bastes in silences and secrets that follow her from dawn-dusk to twilight. A little at a time, she is shaping the edges of her soul into ever-sharper corners. Given time, he thinks she will come to shine brilliant and pure and many-faceted as the brightest gem…
But I do not think that I will wait that long, Chihiro.
#
When he grows tired of the game – of the witch – of the play at submission to a power no longer greater – when he is through, he returns to her for the final match of their game.
She is waiting – has been waiting, storing strength and power, growing greater…but he can break her. Fire is her weapon – darkness is his. He is buffeted by the light, but it only breaks against him, washes away from him like water. The darkness envelopes the witch in silence, blots out her light and her powers, her words and her actions.
"You should have, expected it, Yubaba. From the first time you called for me, and I was forced to answer."
It is the result of the seed she planted in him long ago. Corruption fed on corruption – rot at the core, now spreading outward. She had shown him miseries and grief, had stolen name and memory from him, the past that had sustained him even through that terrible time of drifting, aimless existence.
Now she is nothing, within the borders of a darkness that is native to him now as nothing else is – except the girl.
He licks his lips and flies from the top of the tower.
Time is up, Chihiro. Come now and be mine.
#
He finds her in the pigpen, should have guessed that she would be there, but there has been no reason since the beginning except a lie. It is time to undo the lies now, time to make everything clear, to come clean – he laughs inside at just the thought, and comes out of the shadows and up to her side.
"Chihiro, what are you doing here? Didn't I say not to come without me?"
She turns to look at him, and though he knows his features must show something strange, something different, can feel the tangled web of his feelings shifting on his face, the girl says nothing.
"I need to remember what my parents look like. I'm sorry, I didn't mean not to do what you said –"
He comes closer still, so that he knows she can feel his breath on the back of her neck.
"But you did. You broke the rules."
The smell of her skin has all the promise of the taste of her name.
"Chi-hi-ro…"
He says it soft and lilting, wrong. Finally, she looks at him with something other than wide innocence in her eyes.
"Are you afraid? Do you remember yet? Remember for me, Chihiro. The why of how I know your name. Your name that belongs to me."
#
She becomes wide pupils and a breathless heartbeat that pants with the speed of a rabbit as he educates her in the truths that have been hidden behind his charming smile.
Dead parents…because he ate them. Bones and all, seeking just another hint of the essence that had made her.
The contract she had made, and to whom she owed it.
The magic that bound her, and the way she would pay for it.
The name she would never regain – the memories that would fade from her – and so it was now, now, before the light of recollection went out, that he would have it from her.
Yet he sensed in the blankness of her eyes that it was already too late.
"You do not remember? You have nothing? But you are mine, Chihiro. Your life belongs to me and I will have it even if I don't know why."
"But – but Haku! Haku "
"I am not that name. I have no name. I am just….the Dragon."
He changes shape before her, a flicker fast as the wind, and watches her eyes widen.
"Kami."
For the first time in a very long time, he smiles.
"No. Yokai."
#
He has known all along what it would come to – what his desires were for. It is only now, as he sates them, that he understands.
Chihiro, you are mine.
The taste of her flesh mimics the taste of her name as he devours her. He will grow to be one with her in the most complete and primitive way.
You are mine for all time.
He consumes her until she is gone, rich flesh with all the tender promise of youth. He savors every mouthful, sucks at the marrow, licks the hollows of the bones.
I am the Dragon.
Alone in the heartless darkness, he gnaws her ribs and feels the union that he wanted, the purpose of the life he will eternally own.
I am the Dragon.
She is my soul.