IMPORTANT NOTE: I have revised the first chapter of this story. I reread my original first chapter and didn't like it. I thought Fujitaka was too mean and underdeveloped, and Sakura was too wild and uncharacteristically selfish, especially for a daughter who loved her father. So I rewrote this chapter. Everyone that has read the original of this chapter before needs to read this chapter again for it's drastically changed (I hope for the better). Enjoy!
No Freedom in Riches
Chapter One: Kidnapped
by: Mel Barry
e-mail: LightofFaeries at yahoo dot com (I had to write it this way as the document manager refuses to accept it in the normal way).
Disclaimer: Don't own CCS. CCS in owned by CLAMP. I'm tired of writing disclaimers for every one of my stories so this disclaimer applies to all chapters of this story.
Little Author's Note: This story in set in ancient China and ancient Japan (though I don't think there was an ancient Japan when China was ancient). I don't know that much about Chinese and Japanese history so everything in this story is fictional.
Fujitaka of Kinomoto held a cold, expressionless mask over his face, hiding well the anguish that roiled beneath the surface as his daughter's fates was torn from him.
"You have been greatly honored, Duke Fukjitaka of Kinomoto. Your daughter is to be wed to the Emperor of Japan himself, may he live forever. I have been sent to ascertain this arrangement between his excellency and you."
"I am...greatly overwhelmed," Fuijtaka said, sounding more grave than anything else. "May I ask how it is that the highly esteemed Emperor, may he live forever, noticed the daughter of this humble nobleman? She has never been presented at Court."
"It is true that she has never been presented at Court." Here, the negotiator shot an accusing glare at the Duke even as his voice remained perfectly calm and smooth. "But her beauty, intelligence, talent, and voice is famed all over Japan. There are few of notable worth who have not heard her name. There is not a nobleman who has been privileged to hear her that has remained unmoved by her speech and song. Her beauty and talents are...matchless." The negotiator paused, not sure whether or not to continue.
Fujitaka said nothing, his love of his daughter fighting to break lose, fighting to shout a dangerous refusal at the top of his lungs. This negotiator portrayed a suitor Fujitaka could not easily refuse without the portent of death.
The negotiator finally broke the silence. "Consider prudently," he said, as if Fujitaka had a choice but both of them knowing there was none. The negotiator bowed and departed.
No choice, no choice. Refusal was simply not an option.
Yet the days passed and the offer waited for an answer that was already assumed but not yet given.
Yet Fujitaka stalled, coming up with every conceivable excuse without being too blatantly obvious. He whittled away time, refusal ever present upon his tongue, barely repressed.
It was the comment of a close friend that caved him.
"Would she not have wanted this? Her daughter married where safety lies?" She, being Nadeshiko, Fujitaka's long deceased and longer loved wife. After her death, he had taken no other. When Fujitaka began to wonder himself if Nadeshiko would have desired this union, he knew it was no use.
He gave his consent.
In exchange for very costly gifts from the Emperor to plaster all across Japan, just how precious his daughter was.
Sakura was utterly still for an instant, her brush perfectly poised. Then she moved again as if nothing had gone wrong, to leave a brilliant stroke of color across the silk sheet before her. Her father's softly spoken words echoed in her ears but she gave no outward appearance of unease.
When she gave him so answer but for the graceful, sure, movement of her brush, her father spoke again, hesitation in no where but the edges of his voice. "Sakura? If such an arrangement...displeases you, I may yet refuse it."
She knew, from the shadows in his face, his voice, that he had already tried.
She gathered her voice and forced it to be steady. "Marriage to the Emperor is...a great honor. I would not refuse such an honor." She left much unsaid.
They stood silently as Sakura worked her brush gracefully and quietly. Fujitaka watched his beloved daughter, wondering why their time together had come to a close so quickly. She was barely fourteen and he could not think of her as a woman yet. Just his daughter, his only daughter and he hoarded their time together more jealously than a dragon with cavern of gold.
Finally, the tiny sounds of brushwork stopped. "I am much tired, Father," Sakura said, laying down her brush. "I would retire now."
Fujitaka nodded. When Sakura had left the room, he walked slowly over to the silk she had been painting on.
He looked solemnly down at bird, caught within the confines of a brightly jeweled, beautiful, golden, cage.
Sakura couldn't sleep. She felt too warm and suffocated. There was a sudden longing for an escape into the woods that had always comforted her. She rose silently, as not to wake servants, with practiced ease. She padded soundlessly to a half-covered chest that had been an object of consternation for many a house servant that came to inspect her room. The worn, common wood had no place in the finery that was her room and there had been attempts to get rid of and replace it with one that better suited her station. Sakura had stubbornly refused all such offers and allowed no one but her father, brother, and herself to touch it. Now she knelt beside the ancient chest and placed her fingers in certain places and pressed gently. The chest lid sprang open without a sound. There was only filtered moonlight through her curtains to see by, but she knew the contents of the chest by heart.
Reaching in, she pulled out something long and very thin, brought it over her head, and placed it about her neck. Then she reached in once more and pulled from the chest a lump that had the shape of folded clothing. She replaced silk nightgown and silk stockings with a tattered, coarse and homespun dress. Folding her nightgown neatly, she placed it into the chest, the stockings on top.
She closed the chest lid carefully and before long, was out beneath the silver moon, running barefooted and bareheaded into the woods. Though it was the middle of night, she half-expected to hear the screeching voices of her various caretakers saying "Lady Sakura! This is unseemly!"
As a child, she had been allowed to run free ever since she could remember. But highborn relatives had looked down with distaste at her errant behaviors that bespoke of ill training. They had admonished Fujitaka for his lack of care toward his daughter. Fujitaka was forced to make Sakura behave as a proper lady. And behaving as a proper lady robbed Sakura the only freedom she had ever sought. Sakura had long decided that if a lady could not roam through the wild woods surrounding her home, she did not want to be a lady at all. But for her father's sake, she put up with the lessons and the fussing. Her father seemed to understand her sacrifice for he turned a blind-eyes whenever she needed to flee to her woods.
As she entered the clam coolness of the woods, she breathed a sigh she had not been aware of holding. The silvery moon cast a glow to the wood that changed it into something softer and more dream-like for which Sakura was grateful. She wandered among the trees at the outskirts of the wood for, though she knew the woods enough to be able to find her way through even the densest foliage, if she got too caught up in the magic and beauty of the wood, she would never make it back home before dawn.
The moon and night made her carefree and perhaps she should not have been for it also made her careless.
The serenity of the wood was abruptly shattered.
Something was stuffed into her mouth and there was a rough feel of cloth as it slid past her. Then she was hoisted side ways up onto something. Sakura tried to struggle but found her movements confined to squirming because of the sack that surrounded her. More angered then frightened—how dare someone interrupt her within her woods—Sakura struggled until she was exhausted, slightly satisfied by the cursing from whomever had her.
Author's Notes: Did you guys like this revised chapter one? I must say I like it much better than the original. Sakura seemed a bit too wimpy in the original. I like her much better in this one (and this chapter is longer than the original ) and I think Fujitaka was better explained. Well, what do you think?
BTW, I have my own webpage now that is currently only for my fanfics (but I hope to expand the website slowly to include other things like character bios and stuff). I know I said that I would have mailing list, but I was gone for so long that I lost track of all the people on the list (gomen minna!). If you want to be put (or re-put) on the mailing list, you can sign my guestbook on my website and tell me (which is the best way 'cause then I won't lose track) or you can tell me in your review on My stories may be updated sooner on my website then my account on
I've got the second chapter all finished, but now that I re-read it, I don't like it so I'm going to be doing some editing.
Until then,
Mel
September 18, 2004