DISCLAIMER: I don't own Spirited Away (a.k.a. Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi).
Some Notes: I'm pretty sure my description of the place where Yubaba's bathhouse is supposed to be (when it is invisible to human eyes) is NOT accurate; I've tried looking for pictures but couldn't find one, and the CD that I own where there –are- pictures isn't with me right now. So. Please just pretend that the place is as I described it here (although it's not in sync with canon), for the story's sake. Oh, and this is also unbeta-ed, a.k.a. I beta myself. xD Thanks!
Gateways
She lay on her bed, drowsy and more comfortable than she ever remembered. Her mind knew this was a lie – she had been far more comfortable in the midst of the gaggle of futons squished together for the bathworkers to sleep in than on the hard, thin-mattressed bed she is laid out on right now. However she dismissed the thought as too troublesome to think about and continued to drift half in a dream.
There was a period of nothingness, all sleepy circumspection and thoughts that slip playfully through her fingers before she could completely grasp them, like water.
The shrine she had chosen to stay in was being taken care of a family who had kindly allowed to let her live in the shrine.
She had read in a book somewhere that in order for one to cross the gates that divide the mortal from the spirit, one had to do certain preparations.
What began as a half-hearted attempt to relieve her constant ache for a different reality first turned into an obsession, and then molded into a way of life.
Her parents had been a bit surprised, but proud at her new religiousness, which turned into shocked dismay and heavy disappointment at her decision to take vows of celibacy (she had to be completely clean after all). This turned into resignation, but not before a brief period of anger, during which her father asked her, rather bitterly, which god had she promised what now, to have even the audacity to deprive her parents of a grandchild.
She had wisely kept her mouth shut.
It had been a rather long life, full of doing chores and good deeds and purification rites and daily disciplined meditations, usually sitting cross-legged under waterfalls. She had never gone to university, but she did graduate from high school.
She's still rather clumsy and still not so athletic, but she made up for it with a kind heart and warm disposition, and some wisdom. She did grow up. She is ninety years old now.
But a small part of her stayed a child and it was this that she guarded jealously from the world, making sure it would never be taken away.
The wind fluttered the curtains; she stirred and uttered a soft moan. A miko of the shrine shuffled in quietly to check on her. Satisfied she is still breathing, the miko replaced the incense on the burner with fresh new ones, then left.
The breeze blew a little more forcefully than the last, and the wind chimes at the window tinkled.
She was fully awake now, but still with eyes closed. She opened them and wondered why she was on a bed, and why there were lace curtains on the window – wasn't she in a shrine? Oh, that's right – they moved her here to the house by the shrine, thinking she would be more comfortable on a bed than a futon.
They didn't understand that she felt more comfortable in the shrine than anywhere else, more comfortable in the place where she felt she is closest to the world that had given her strength.
The old, smiling guardian statue with the cave-like gateway, the abandoned town with the dilapidated god-statues, that peaceful field overgrown with grass, the river stream that flowed quite happily through there into the ocean – she had found solace in that place, hoping against hope that she would be able to go back and visit them one more time.
Even when she had accepted (as much as she could) that maybe she can't go back (at least not yet) she had still found refuge just sitting there, and talking to the winds and the grass and the stone statues. And she had never been more at peace talking to the water.
But the town council voted to close off the entrance when a little girl wandered aimlessly in and nearly drowned in the small river. It didn't help that more gossip had started several days before– rumors resurfacing about a family who was spirited away at the place and was found several weeks later, normal but without recollection of what had happened to them (she already knew this story, of course – it had been them.)
She had begged her parents to talk to the council to have the decision rethought. She thought it was ridiculous – how could anyone be harmed by the water when a water guardian resided in that place? Or at least near that place?
Her mistake was to try to explain this – the girl nearly drowned, but she didn't, and why? Because a guardian water god saved her, that's why. Her reasoning had startled her parents, who remembered what the neighborhood had been whispering about – something about what the little girl who nearly drowned told her mother after she had been rescued:
"Mommy, a dragon saved me!"
She saw them exchange glances and shiver -- something about déjà vu -- and she thought that she'd won.
"But honey, that's even more reason to seal it off, isn't it?" her father, with an uncomfortable, sheepish smile on his face. "I'm sure the water god would not want to be anymore disturbed."
The next day they sealed the place off and shattered her heart.
She exhaled at the memory, the pain and the screams she had wanted to yell out still fresh in her mind. Yet in that moment when she'd thought she had really, finally lost them, she had imagined him, unbidden, saying to her
"We'll find another way."
That was the gate you left through. We'll find another way. There are other gates out there.
That was when she had vowed to find as many gates as possible – and where are there usually gateways? In shrines. And how could you be worthy enough to stay in shrines, to enter those gateways?
Her wrinkled, old mouth smiled at the memory. She'd chosen no other path since.
In one of the shrines she had visited, they had called her Sen of the Thousand Arches, after having heard her story of pilgrimage. And though the name never spread to other shrines and had only stuck at that particular shrine, it amused her to no end and she let them call her that.
Light streamed in from the window now, the burst of brightness before the dusk comes and eats the light up for an elaborate dinner, scattering golden, twinkling stars as reward for the day that had prepared its meal.
A whole day had come and go, and night was settling in, lighting lamps and stoves, rousing tantalizing smells of food from the kitchens, and bath smoke from the bath houses. She thought there had never been a more perfect time to die.
A breeze blew, a stronger wind that flapped the curtains, lifted them up, and when she opened her bright eyes –
He was there.
Feet planted on the windowsill, head ducked and in, crouching, with both hands supporting his light weight on either side of the window frame. White robes and dark hair and fair skin and the kind, river-green of his eyes that had calmed her so long ago, and that calm her still.
Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi.
He solemnly looked at her.
She looked back at him. Then smiled, with her gap-tooth, wrinkly old mouth, and a silly thought of why didn't she wear her dentures passed through her mind –
But he smiled back. And slowly reached out a hand, offering her what she had been trying to find and acquire all through her years.
"I promised," was all he uttered, and her smile grew even brighter.
She slowly outstretched her hand, and put it on his own.
"I know."
His smile widened, and he gave her hand a brief tug---
Come, Chihiro. Come home.
---and she allowed herself to slip away. And somehow she felt light, younger, and somehow she was, and somehow his other hand found her other hand, and he gathered her in his arms and pressed his forehead against hers and they were flying.
And back on the earth, in the room where she had laid, the old woman with her wrinkled face and her gray hair and her peaceful smile passed away in her sleep.
--owari--