The boar falls with a great crash, and dies staring at Ashitaka with hate-filled red eyes. He clutches at his arm and realizes suddenly that he's screaming. The mark hurts, burning darkness that has crept underneath his skin and will spread.
The wise woman gives him the blunt truth and he works hard not to flinch away from her words. The council cuts him away like the knife that severs his hair, and the knowledge that he can never return hurts almost worse than the curse mark. Ashitaka leaves, footsteps heavy as he lead Yakul out of the barn and into the night.
Kaya stops him, but he can barely look his little sister in the eye. Her crystal dagger cuts into his palm as he clenches it in his hand, and he touches his heels to Yakul's flanks to make the elk go faster.
As much as he tries to deny it, it still feels like he's running away.
—
The forest is quiet, except for the silent cries of the dying plants and animals. Rage grows and equals with fear, and the forest begins to act. The apes try to plant trees, and they are shot full of bullets. San and her brothers try to resist, and they are chased down.
Even the birds have stopped singing.
The humans are weak, but their guns are strong. The cowards let bullets fight for them, burrowing into skin and transforming and corrupting. San wants to kill them more than she wants anything, but that doesn't stop her from being reminded of what she is.
Not wolf, not human, not anything, really. Her sharp teeth and fighter spirit contrast sharply with her soft, furless skin. She doesn't even know who she is anymore.
The forest is dying, and the animals begin to form alliances in angry desperation.
And San has never felt so alone in her entire life.
—
Ashitaka watches the girl through the branches—fur cloak and blond-brown hair and shining earrings. She is small and fragile, and more than anything his first instinct is to protect her. Maybe it's because she is so much like him—torn and broken up inside but so, so strong on the surface.
All the while the demon curse tears through his body, burning its way to his core where it will consume him. He barely sleeps at night through the screaming fire in his veins, and Ashitaka knows he will not last much longer.
The girl glares at him with fierce wild eyes, and spits her mother's blood out of her mouth. It spatters against the riverbank's stones, leaving a permanent stain. She climbs onto the smaller wolf's back, and rides away.
He wonders what her name is.
—
The boy is tall with an honest face, but she distrusts him immediately. Then again, there are very few San can actually say she trusts. Still, something about him is different—his dark blue eyes or the sleepless circles underneath them, his clear voice, the stiff movement that shows he's in pain.
He's just…different. From the other humans. But not so different from her. He yells across the river and asks her if he's found what he seeks.
She stares at him for a long time, the sharp metallic blood still in her mouth, and tries to guess his motive. It doesn't work, because he stares right back at her as if trying to see through her.
San tells him to go away.
—
His arm wants him to kill Lady Eboshi, but he fights back with all the strength he has. Iron Town's leader just stands there, a confident grin on her face and a wicked spark in her eyes. She asks him to stay and kill the forest with her.
Disgust must show on Ashitaka's face, but the lady doesn't react. Instead she fires a bullet into the distance and makes the apes scatter. He leaves as soon as he can.
And then suddenly, piercing through the night, he can feel her. Rushing through the forest and spearing through the air, like pure speed itself. Princess Mononoke. It's a warm feeling, and he welcomes it because it feels almost familiar.
It feels like home.
The wolf-girl charges through the town like an army all by herself, and he finds himself following her.
—
San wakes up to a warm, sticky presence behind her and a rocking motion. It takes her several seconds to orient herself and realize that she is riding on a moving creature that isn't one of her wolves, and the warm stickiness is actually a person.
But then the boy falls and the warmth disappears, and his elk starts bucking wildly. She slides off his back and stands over the boy—covered in blood and breathing shallowly—while her brother shoves his head against her sides and asks if he can eat the boy.
"Why didn't you let me kill her?" she asks angrily, and he responds in a weak voice that he didn't want her to die.
San doesn't know why, but the statement fills her with bright fury and she yanks the sword from the scabbard on his hip and shoves it down—only to pull back at the last moment. The boy sucks in a thick breath and opens his eyes, then tells her she's beautiful.
—
The first thing Ashitaka sees is sunlight, then trees, then a butterfly flitting across his eyesight. His body feels like lead, heavy and wrong, and with a shaking hand he brings his fingers to the bullet wound. Only there isn't a bullet wound anymore, just a rough scar that will never let him forget.
Yakul leans his head down and nibbles at Ashitaka's hair, and he smiles and pats the elk's cheek, but something on his hand makes him stop.
The curse mark, purple and blossoming all over his skin, throbbing along with his heart beat. The Forest Spirit healed the bullet wound, but not the curse.
Anger fills up to the brim and spills over, giving way to emptiness. He watches the girl as she leaps across the stones to him, lithe and graceful, reminding him with a pang of his little sister. And suddenly homesickness creeps in like fog, but Ashitaka pushes it away.
"Chew," San says with a jerk of her head, making her earrings catch the morning sunlight. But it feels like he doesn't even have a jaw anymore. He can see in her face that she thinks him weak, as she rips the meat with her own teeth and watches him with thoughtful eyes.
He wonders why San even saved him.
—
Ashitaka cries out in his dreams, and Moro wants to bite his head off. San says nothing and watches him, something the humans would consider odd, but she is not a human. She ignores the voice that whispers yes you are in the back of her head, and keeps vigil over his prone body for reasons even she can't understand.
Maybe because of all the humans on her mountain, she has never met one like him. And because she can see the pain flickering across his face, and even in sleep his muscles are held tight and rigid as if expecting a blow. Ashitaka has a vulnerability in sleep that she has never seen in waking, and for some reason it makes San want to guard him from the night.
—
Yakul's clip-clopping hooves are the only sounds as Ashitaka rides through the forest, following one of Moro's sons down the rocky path. He pulls Kaya's obsidian dagger from its place around his neck, and throws it to the wolf. The light catches on the crystal and flashes bright as it flies through the air.
The battlefield is littered with bodies, equal amounts boar and human, and it's as gruesome as expected. Ashitaka's cursed skin throbs in a sick rhythm, and as much as he tries to suppress the constant ache it doesn't stop. All he can think of, as he walks through the gruesome field, is San stabbing her spear and lashing out with her knife.
He isn't sure when she started to matter so much. All he knows is that he needs to stop Eboshi, he needs to stop Moro, he needs to stop Jiko, he needs to stop it all. Because he is so, so tired of death.
—
San walks beside Lord Okkoto, lumbering and bleeding and dying, her breath fast and nervous. Her brother pads beside her, his coat soaked in blood—just looking at him fills her with sharp guilt, because she dragged him into this, she dragged everyone into this.
She wonders where her mother is. She wonders where Ashitaka is.
Mice and moles start scurrying around her feet, squeaking and terrified, fleeing from—what? And then she sees it, an animal, a human, both, neither. Okkoto screams with blood gushing everywhere, and charges forward, half mad with grief and anger.
San yells and protests, but he will not listen. He is gone, transformed, not a boar but a demon. He will not fight, so she fights for him, trying to get the wriggling black worms off of him.
But then something strikes the back of her head, and everything goes black.
—
Ashitaka reaches for her, through a darkness that feels as familiar as his own name. The once-great boar god's demon power matches his own, corrupt and wrong and unfair and unstoppable. Shouting her name over and over, he sees a spark of light—his sister's most prized possession, the only thing to remember her by, San—
But he is thrown off, hurtling through the air and hitting the water so hard it feels like solid ground. As he drifts down to the bottom, too hurt and too exhausted and too sick to fight, he finds himself thinking of home. Of fields covered in white daisies, of the sound of laughter—which he feels like he has forgotten—of straw-covered roofs and cottages, of happiness that feels so impossibly far away.
Then Moro's voice reaches him all the way down at the bottom of the pond, cold and wise, but honest and exhausted.
"Ashitaka," she says, his name sounding like a growl. "Can you save the girl you love?"
—
She opens her eyes just in time to see what she had been fighting to prevent—the bullet ripping through the Forest Spirit's neck, the combination of a gasp and a groan that comes from Ashitaka's throat. The black ooze starts to cover the trees, killing everything, and there is no hope left.
The realization crashes into San in a wave of despair and hatred, and she shoves away from him—the human, one of those who caused this, and now it feels like the world is ending. And maybe it is.
Ashitaka looks at her, pained eyes and sad features and empty voice, and asks her to help. In response her fist comes crashing down on his chest with the crystal dagger that he gave her.
He doesn't even flinch.
San opens her eyes and looks at the skin under her hand—purple and sick and corrupted, and remembers how much hurt he's suffered. His arms wrap around her, and she shakes with wide-open eyes as his chest rumbles while he talks. "I'm sorry," he says in an honest, clear voice, like any of this was actually his fault.
—
They hold up the forest spirit's head together, curse marks spreading across their skin. Ashitaka grits his teeth against it—not because of the burning dark pain he's already used to, but because it covers San now, too. His arm comes around her waist, and she does not push him away. She's the only reason he can even stay standing.
He screams up at the Forest Spirit, his voice hoarse and cracking. And slowly, the body bends down and accepts its head. Ashitaka and San cling together as the blinding light and the strong wind overcome them on their tiny rock. Through all the glowing sky, Ashitaka can see one thing: the Forest Spirit falling, falling, covering Iron Town and the lake.
All he can think is that it's finally over.
—
San takes a breath, and digs her fingers into the ground, feeling the grass spring under her touch.
Grass.
She leaps up, pulling Ashitaka with her, tears rolling down her cheeks. The wind stirs the hair around her face, and for once it does not feel like burning iron.
She turns to him, and looks down at his arm. All that's left is a tiny scar on his palm—it will mark him forever, but it will not corrupt him, and he is safe. San looks into his eyes, dark blue that struck her from the start, and realizes that they look clear. Unclouded by darkness and fear and pain, they just look happy.
And for the first time in what feels like centuries, San smiles.
Princess Mononoke belongs to Studio Ghibli.
Wanna leave a review? That'd be super cool :D