Cendrillonesque Part 1
Disclaimer: Why do they even make us put these in? Anyone who thinks that fan fiction writers are trying to claim ownership of Rurouni Kenshin (when they are not Watsuki-sensei or Sony or any of the other corporations that have a legal right to do anything with RuroKen that they want and get paid for it) has got to be crazy. I am not one of those legally-entitled people. I have no interest in revenue from this project. It is a literary exercise to provide amusement. The only thing I expect or will accept as recompense is a review from as many readers as deign to submit one. And those don't cost anything. The queen is six cows.
Part 1
The witch was away. Born Komagata Yumi, a beautiful and educated woman, she was my mother and step-mother to my half-sisters, the three daughters of my father, Kamiya Koshijirou, a great samurai in his time. I was always puzzled why he had married her. She was enough like a witch to her family and in her hobbies to be called one, which I later learned was quite apt. She was a cruel, angry, loveless woman besides, in all the stories and warnings from my closest sister and servants, who protected me from her. I think she had been hoping for a son, an heir to my father's estate, but bearing a child just once seems to have been more than enough for her. I hardly knew him, for reasons which I will explain in time.
My half-sisters Megumi, Shura and Kaoru were as different as peaches and melons. Being so much younger than they, my knowledge of them consists of vague memories.
Megumi. I always thought she was the most beautiful, with the rich black hair that gleamed like sunlight on water. I remember she always liked fine things, which she seems to have had in common with my mother. She was in her teens when I was born and took my father's disappearance and the resulting hard times as a kind of personal insult, for we could no longer afford the fine things, the fine dishes, furnishings, clothing and servants to which she had been accustomed. She was the most ladylike by far. She got along with my mother quite well; I remember them closeted or going into town together. Our cook tells me that this was common even before my father's death. When I got older I was always scared by her, she was so elegant. It was my relief that she barely had anything to do with me.
Shura. My sister with hair so dark (she insisted that it was brown, not black) that it trapped the light and never gleamed, was of like mind, but her resentment was silent, confined to a private perpetual groom, scowling glances, heavy sighs. I remember she used to make ruckus about everything, from things she didn't like to the things she did. It always hurt my ears.
But my mother got them both married off to very rich men completely charmed by their beauty and elegance, for they were gracious and sparkling in company, though neither of them got the man every girl wanted, Kenshin Himura, the son of the richest and most powerful man in twelve provinces, Hiko Seijurou. And I'm glad. They didn't deserve him; it was Kaoru who did.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Kaoru was devastated by the death of our father, whom she had loved whole-heartedly. She had hung on his every word, always begging him for stories of his battles, even cajoling him into teaching her how to wield a sword, though she never went past a bokken, after my father let her hold his katana; she had decided it was much too heavy Even before the funeral she found me confused by the commotion.
"I'll be mother and father to us both, now," she told me. For my mother I did not exist, though I now think she might have paid more attention had I been a son. Kaoru, when I was very unhappy, told me how my father used to dote on me, how I would always race to meet him when he came home, how he would laugh at the consternation of my mother and sisters at my lack of propriety, refusing to excuse a child's innocent enthusiasm. Kaoru took it upon herself to raise me. We could not keep my nurse, nor many of the servants. "We can't afford it," my mother said. Because my older sisters were so refined, they were to be furthered in their finishing and launched promptly into society in order to improve the family's situation by marriage to wealth.
After the funeral, my mother Yumi decided that Kaoru was too young to marry and too kind, I think, to have a place in that world, so she set her to work as our finest and most public servant. I would follow her everywhere as she did her chores and her errands, helping as a five-year-old can. Even with her work, she would find time to sit with me, to play with me, to feed, wash, dress me, teach me the names of birds and plants, spin a top, or catch a ball.
Meanwhile, mother closed off the non-essential rooms and sold everything. She bought just enough finery to maintain the illusion of great wealth for her guests and guarded the rest carefully. It was a large house, after all. Servants' quarters were even more sparsely furnished than before, but I much preferred sleeping with them than with my eldest sisters and mother. Often I would sneak into the closed part of the house to play. Mother never came there. Kaoru snuck with me on occasion to practice using her bokken.
I was invisible to my mother. Kaoru wasn't the only servant. The cook and the laundress stayed on, partly because they cared for the family, were settled as part of the household and besides had no other place to go at their advanced age, rather than any positive quality of my mother's. Besides, they had children of their own who could be put to work and the odd young nephew who was too small and young to be put to work and so with whom I could play. Yahiko was my dearest friend, especially after Kaoru married.
She sometimes had to go into town or take charms and potions to the witch's customers. On one occasion she had to personally deliver something to the Seijurou household. He had been a friend of our father's and the long line of Seijurou Hiko's had been friendly to our family for thirteen generations (and looked to be 14 the way Kenshin and Kaoru got on), so my mother was convinced she could get one of her step-daughters securely wedded into his family. When Kaoru came back, cheeks beaming, eyes sparkling, that Seijurou-sama – we didn't know his real name, just that Seijurou Hiko was the title given to the head of the family – had recognized her and asked after her health and the family and had introduced his son, Kenshin, to her. After that, Kaoru and he would meet, sending messages back and forth.
Yahiko and I made a great game out of it, for we were often the messengers. Kenshin, as he insisted we call him, would always send us off with a kind word or a gift of some sort: once a whistle, once a boat that we sailed in the laundry tubs, other times candy, once a ride on his horse, once a kitten when his mother's cat gave birth. In this way he let us know long in advance about his father's plan to host a great party in his honor of his proving himself a man and becoming the designated, official heir to the present Seijurou Hiko. Kenshin and Kaoru made plans accordingly.
His father, a bit eccentric and a bit slow to respond to requests made by members of his family, planned to invite all the fine people of the district. My mother, Megumi and Shura were ecstatic upon the receipt of an invitation, the realization of their hopes and plans. Kenshin did not see the point of the events, but nevertheless determined to please his father. He confessed to us that he didn't like being in the public eye and plotted to make sure that he could bear it. Knowing about our troubles he arranged to ensure the attendance of Kaoru, who we knew would never be allowed to come by mother.
Yahiko and I thought it very exciting when he arranged secretly for a dressmaker, a jeweler, and one of his mother's maids to adorn Kaoru, then send a carriage with our crest upon it and matching horses, drive and footmen to convey her late to the party after she had dressed and decorated her mother and elder sisters. The staff was quite pleased about the whole affair, for they remembered Kaoru's mother's kindness and Kaoru's beautiful nature and wished for her to obtain some reward for her goodness. Yahiko and I were so pleased, but quite tired from the preparations.
Kaoru was humming the next day, for she was to be wed to the man she loved best and who loved her. I quite approved, for he was always very good to us even though we were only children. My mother wasn't too disappointed, for other rich men had been enchanted by my other sisters and had been given leave to call on them.
Finally Kaoru and her beloved Kenshin were wed; soon Megumi and Shura too had made fine matches. At last the family prospered again, but they were not her daughters and seems not to have taken an interest in her step-daughters' affairs beyond that point. Instead, she confined herself to the house and devoted her efforts more strictly to her art.
After that, the most entertaining diversion Yahiko and I had was to enter her chambers and spy on her labors. We would take the opportunity when she was away, usually only a few minutes or perhaps an hour or two. It was on one occasion several years later when we had grown so brazen and confident that we entered the workroom built into the side of the hill, at the very bottom of the garden, which one reached by a flight of stairs, stone ones, leading down, down, down to a room long and low with a broad window at the far end, out of which one could climb. The stairs were only accessible through her chambers, which room held her deepest secret.