A/N: Finally! The ball is up and rolling! YES! New semester now. New English classes. Writing, writing, writing. Cold weather. Writing my novel and this story….wooot. Notes about marriages—as far as I know the Japanese were probably okay with marrying a cousin. Amagumori and Shimofuri are far enough apart that their children won't have webbed feet and shouldn't be mentally deficient in some way. At least I don't think so. In Lian Hearn's Harsh Cry of the Heron one leader plans to marry one of his daughters to the son of his wife's younger sister. So in that case he thought it perfectly right and normal to marry off his daughter to his nephew. Also, ironically like Sasugainu, his daughter and his nephew were related through their fathers as well as their mothers, though it was more distantly there. Anyway, so Sasugainu's suggestion isn't that strange, but Shimofuri doesn't like to do anything he disagrees with and so soon after their aunt's death…anyway…onward ho!
Disclaimer: I do not own Sesshomaru.
Last chapter: the prologue, Rin dreamed of the goddess Koeru, a goddess worshipped by humans in the north. She asked Sesshomaru to bring his wife Ginrei and her daughter Hanone from the Isei province and the Naishougoto palace. Shimofuri, ruler of the Middle Lands, went to console his uncle Sasugainu who has just lost his wife Hokinsha. Sasugainu (in madness? In grief?) suggested that Shimofuri be married to his oldest daughter Amagumori. Amagumori and Shimofuri are cousins, albeit once or twice removed; no one likes the idea except Sasugainu.
Sisters
Naked, Saya raced through the hallways at Jouka, squealing. Her bright hair looked like fresh snow even when it was dripping and wet. The purple crescent moon in her forehead stood out starkly in her pale flesh. Rin and a maid followed the screaming child, hurrying after her. The maid held a large swathe of fabric that she would use as a towel and Rin carried Saya's robes.
The girl reached Jouka's small audience room. The door had been left partially ajar. A servant was knelt in the doorway, his head ducked low. A tray of tea sat outside the audience room as well, waiting to be served when the time came. As the screaming Saya reached the audience room the kneeling servant's face blanched and his mouth fell open.
Saya collided with him clumsily, trying to climb over him. The man ducked and tried to get out of her way. He made no attempt to stop her, in fact he lifted his hands high in the air, as if she was toxic and touching her would bring certain death. Considering whose daughter she was it was probably a smart move. Saya slipped into the empty audience room and stopped, gazing around it with her amber eyes wide.
"Father?" she asked the empty room, the golden screens and paintings of birds, flowers, and bamboo.
Rin entered the room with the maid trailing close behind. "Saya!" she shouted, breathing fast from their romp all over the Jouka palace. The little girl twisted around to peer back at her mother. She smiled, revealing a full set of human teeth. The elongated canines of the inuyoukai hadn't come in her baby teeth. Like Saya's ears, which were perfect, rounded and utterly human, it was possible she would never have the canines. Her fingertips were clawed, however, of that there was no doubt. To escape from her bath Saya had clawed the maid's arm just enough for it to hurt and then she'd bolted.
"Mama?" Saya quirked her head to one side, innocently.
"Get over here." Rin strode forward and wrapped Saya in a blue robe. When Saya stood still to be dressed, Rin knelt and tied a white sash around her daughter's stomach.
"You said Father was home." Saya pouted. Like her father Saya wasn't frowning or sticking out her lower lip. The girl's face was straight and calm, only her eyes revealed the pout that Rin could hear in her little daughter's voice. "Father and my sister. You said my sister would be coming, Mama."
"She's coming—that's why you need to be dressed! What would your father think if you came in here naked? And if Jaken-sama had seen you without even a stitch of clothing it would probably kill him. You have to be a lady, Saya. You're Lord Sesshomaru's daughter." Rin had thrown this speech at her daughter many times before. It was one of her worst fears that Saya would prove that hanyou were wild creatures. She worried that Saya would act more like Inuyasha as she grew and that similarity would make Sesshomaru despise his hanyou daughter.
The maid stepped forward stiffly and offered Rin the rest of Saya's robes. A child's kimono, yellow with purple flowers on the long, flowing sleeves. Rin wrapped it around Saya's shoulders and tied the obi at her waist in an elaborate, childish bow. She shepherded Saya toward the maid, "Go with her and sit like a good girl while she combs your hair, Saya."
Sighing almost theatrically, Saya left with the maid obediently and disappeared from the audience room. The servant that had scrambled to get out of Saya's way now laughed tensely. "There are days that I am happy I have no children, my lady."
Rin frowned at him briefly and then asked, "Is Lord Sesshomaru here?"
The man nodded. "I believe he's in his dressing room."
"And where is Lady Ginrei?" Rin demanded, her voice growing slightly shriller.
The man opened his mouth to respond but cut himself short when the aforementioned woman stepped through the doorway. Ginrei was an elegant inuyoukai. Uncannily, though she wasn't related to Sesshomaru at all, she was fair haired as he was, except that while Sesshomaru's hair tended to be white like fallen snow, Ginrei's was silvered. Her eyes were an icy silver. The markings on her cheeks were bright white, one under each eye. Although she had just made a long journey from Naishougoto in the Middle Lands to Jouka in the mountains of the Western Lands, Ginrei was still beautiful with every hair on her head in perfect place. She wore her hair long down her back.
The two women, one human and the other inuyoukai, stared at each other for a long moment before Rin bowed slightly, acknowledging Ginrei's status as a wife. She didn't speak. It had been some time since she'd seen Ginrei. She'd forgotten how hard it was to regard the other woman and imagine Sesshomaru lying with her or pressing his body against hers. Had Ginrei cried out with joy? Had she been afraid?
Blinking fiercely for a moment, Rin banished those thoughts as Ginrei returned her bow deeply. "Lady Rin." She greeted her, smilingly. For the first time Rin saw that Ginrei was carrying her daughter Hanone with her. Hanone clung to her mother's waist, her eyes, which were silver-blue like Ginrei's, were wide with awe.
Unlike Saya, who was running around like a five year old on confident, strong and nimble legs, Hanone was slow to grow and mature. Her face as well as what Rin could see of Hanone's legs peeking out through her robes, told her that she had the proportions of a baby still. It was unlikely that she could walk very well.
Burying her interest in the baby, her daughter's younger half-sister, Rin smiled at Ginrei, trying to force warmth into the expression. "How was your journey? You must be tired."
Ginrei moved across the little audience room and sat on the floor. She lowered Hanone into her lap and smoothed her daughter's white hair. The same color as Saya and Sesshomaru. "Actually I found the travel a refreshing change." Ginrei replied cheerfully, without looking up at Rin as she spoke. Her fingers were busy worming their way through Hanone's white mane.
Rin, still standing awkwardly, stared at the other mother and daughter unabashedly and without trying to hide it. Ginrei wasn't as arrestingly beautiful as Rin, but the two women were almost the same tiny height. Rin was tall for a mortal woman, Ginrei short for an inuyoukai. Sesshomaru dwarfed both of them.
At last, decisively, Rin crossed to where Ginrei was seated and dropped into a sitting position, smoothing her robes around her delicately, as if she were posing for a photo. In reality it was a stall tactic to avoid further staring at Ginrei. "How has the weather been? Did you run into snow coming through the passes?"
"No," Ginrei shook her head, "Spring has come for the most part. It's very warm in the Isei."
Rin's fingers halted over a persistent wrinkle in her kimono. Her face twisted briefly with a frown, a mix of feelings that Ginrei, a few scant feet away, was unable to interpret. The expression vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and just as mysteriously. "That's good to hear. I was waiting for the snow to melt. I wanted to start teaching Saya how to ride."
Ginrei's silvered eyes shot open wide. "Ride? What do you mean ride?"
"Horseback riding." Rin answered curtly, almost impatiently.
"She is hanyou, my lady." Ginrei's gaze searched over Rin's face, as if looking for a declaration of insanity or perhaps the return of coherent thought. "The horse will spook at her scent."
Rin smiled tightly. "I have seen hanyou ride horses before. We have a horse that was raised here at Jouka and she does not spook when I take Saya out to the stables."
Ginrei's stiffness and the way she gripped Hanone with both hands, as if afraid that Rin would reach out and take the child away, revealed her continuing uncertainty. Nevertheless she nodded and offered Rin a small bow. "I wish you luck, Lady Rin."
"And how is young Lady Hanone?" Rin asked, at last allowing the conversation to slide into something they were both relatively comfortable with.
Hearing her name, Hanone's head whipped around and she peered at Rin with wide, round and unblinking eyes. She was a sponge, absorbing every new sight, sound, taste, scent, and touch of the new world around her. She'd never been outside of Naishougoto before; to her everything was fresh and new.
Ginrei ran her clawed fingers through Hanone's hair. "Hanone," she called in a cooing voice, "This is Lady Rin, can you greet her properly the way I taught you?"
On cue, performing much like a dog, Hanone squirmed in her mother's lap and settled on the floor directly in front of Rin. The tiny girl folded over in a bow. Her white hair spilled luxuriously over her shoulders, fluffy and as fine as silk. If Saya had performed the same movement her hair, coarser than Hanone's, would've found a way to frizz or tangle more as a human child's might.
Rin found herself fighting the tense, tight smile on her face, caught between her conflicting emotions, her expression quivered.
"Lady Rin," the inuyoukai girl chanted her words with her lips almost pressed against the hardwood floor. "Hanone pledges to serve and obey loyally."
"Rin accepts your offer." Rin answered in monotone, reciting the ritualistic response without thought.
Before Hanone could launch into a flowery, formal speech proclaiming her joy at Rin's acceptance, the servant knelt in the doorway called out, announcing Sesshomaru's arrival. Immediately after that proclamation the servant also shouted Saya's name. Hanone peeked up from her spot on the floor as Rin and Ginrei bowed to acknowledge Sesshomaru's arrival. He was husband to one, mate to the other, and father to two.
Sesshomaru settled in a more distant position, aloofly. Saya followed close at his heels and, as she was accustomed to doing so at informal gatherings, she sat on Sesshomaru's right, as close as a shadow. Although Sesshomaru hadn't ever encouraged this behavior that Rin had seen, he didn't push Saya away or order her to sit elsewhere. Like Rin, Saya was fast learning how to interpret his moods from the few, tiny hints he gave in body stance, expression, and voice. It was likely that if Sesshomaru didn't want her to sit next to him, she would sense it in advance without the need for the spoken word.
Uncertain of her place, Hanone was caught crouched in a half-bow, her silvered eyes wide and frightened now. Unlike Saya who saw Sesshomaru on a nearly daily basis, Hanone considered her mysterious father as a sort of legend. There could be no doubt that he was her father, even as a small child her sense of smell was formidable and she could detect the familiarity and shared scents between herself and Sesshomaru. But that foreknowledge couldn't change the stony face she saw, the high proud cheeks, the stern, cold eyes.
Ginrei helped her at last, making a small noise and gesturing at her daughter. Hanone crawled across the floor to huddle, protected and sheltered, on Ginrei's lap. She would've happily stayed there, observing the new world around her from the safety and protection of her mother's lap, if Sesshomaru hadn't suddenly turned his attention to her after the initial pleasantries in the odd family were exchanged. The lord of the Western Lands stared at Ginrei and then called, "Hanone."
The inuyoukai girl peeked out between Ginrei's arms and blinked. She was like a frightened fawn, newborn and weak. Although she could speak—she was three and a half years old—and Ginrei had begun to train her in the proper etiquette that would guide her through her long years living among rich, royal inuyoukai, Hanone had no words for Sesshomaru. The sight of him left her silent with her awe.
Ginrei answered for her silent daughter. "What does my lord wish of her?"
Sesshomaru lifted his gaze to Ginrei's and his golden eyes narrowed. His mouth quirked downward. "You are not to shelter her, Ginrei. She is not an infant."
Blinkingly, Ginrei bowed, it was an awkward motion with Hanone still perched in her lap.
"Hanone," Sesshomaru called once more, addressing her directly in a stiff, strong voice. "Sit beside Saya."
There was a long, agonizing moment when it seemed that Hanone wouldn't do as she was told. Then, finally, Hanone crawled out of her mother's lap and rose to her full height. She was a full head shorter than Saya, though she was only a few months younger. Her body was round with baby fat, her legs not completely straight yet. When she walked it was slowly and without grace. Slowly Hanone moved past her father and sat a foot from Saya's side. She began to sniffle fiercely as she settled and this sound made both Saya and Sesshomaru glance at her.
Sesshomaru's face flickered with annoyance. "Do not cry." He ordered her.
"Lord Sesshomaru…" Ginrei cried out, her voice high with an almost pleading tone. When Sesshomaru leveled his hawk-like gaze at her, Ginrei felt prostrate in a deep bow, as much to offer an apology and respect as much as it was an attempt to avoid his penetrating eyes. "Hanone is still very young…"
"She is old enough." Sesshomaru replied swiftly. "You have coddled her." his lips thinned and his cheeks pinked slightly as he added, "Your scent is filled with milk."
Rin felt a wave of heat and cold pass through her body. Ginre was still nursing Hanone—she could not be fertile! But Sesshomaru was forcing Ginrei to stop her overprotective, over-nurturing behavior. Without a suckling child Ginrei's milk would dry up, as Rin's own had long since done so, and her body would become fertile again. The endless cycles of fertility and menstruation would start all over again.
The voice from her eerie dream returned, whispering in her ears: I am Life; I am the seeds planted in the field, the sunlight on the water. I am the earth. You may call me Koeru.
Rin scowled and wrung her hands tightly in her lap, restless.
"My lord." Ginrei relented, swallowing thickly and bowing. When she rose out of the bow, Rin caught the shine of tears in her silvered eyes.
If she'd stayed in Naishougoto, Rin thought bitterly, she would nurse Hanone as long as she wanted to. Bringing her here was a mistake.
At dinner that night, a few days after Hokinsha's body had been cremated, but before the ashes were scattered or buried, Sasugainu ordered the chef to mix a sleeping concoction and sprinkle it into his daughters' tea. He paid the chef a hefty amount to buy his loyalty as well as the deed. He was not in the room when his daughters drank the laced, impure tea. He didn't see the way they frowned and complained at the taste. He had only the money to assure himself that the chef had done his job correctly…
Until he wandered into the women's quarters late at night and slid open the door to his daughters' massive chambers. There were two futons, each three times the size of what one girl would need. Once the room had held three futons each three sizes too large for its occupant. Now it held only Amagumori and Soeki's futons.
Now that Hokinsha was finally, at long last, dead.
The maids had swept through and blown out the candles, removed the lamps earlier. They had no doubt thought that the sight of the two girls slumped over their nightly snacks and tea was a strange thing indeed, but dutifully they'd put their mistresses to bed after making sure each girl was merely sleeping. Perhaps they thought that the girls had drunk sake in mourning over their mother's death. Perhaps they knew that something odd was going on. Whatever the servants thought, Sasugainu didn't care.
Moving slowly, quietly, like a thief, Sasugainu moved to where the girls had erected a small alter in the farthest corner of their chambers. The ceramic pot where Hokinsha's ashes were kept stood in the alter, gleaming faintly in the light from the hallway. Sasugainu paused a moment to squint at the characters that his daughters had inscribed around the alter and had written on little notes of rice paper as prayers to their mother's spirit. Curiosity made Sasugainu snatch one of the notes up and pocket it before he turned his attention back to Hokinsha's ashes.
Sasugainu took the pot with both clawed hands and lifted it away from the alter. It wasn't a massive pot thankfully, though it was rather heavy. Sasugainu moved the pot to the closest futon and set it down beside the bed. Leaning over his sleeping daughter, the oldest Amagumori, Sasugainu scowled.
Amagumori was not as pretty as Soeki, but she would make a fine, obedient wife to Shimofuri, if only Sasugainu could convince his nephew to accept the marriage. In many ways Sasugainu would've liked to have given Shimofuri Soeki, simply because she was the smarter of his daughters and the most troublesome and meddling. Amagumori was the firstborn however; it made sense for him to offer her rather than Soeki. Besides, Soeki would indeed have her turn soon enough.
Sasugainu reached into his daughter's covers and pulled her limp, drugged body closer. The girl moaned weakly, her eyes came partially open. Sasugainu ignored the shine of her eyeballs. In the morning she would think this had been a bizarre dream, nothing more. Sasugainu pulled on one strand of his daughter's white hair, identical to his own, and whipped his clawed fingers against the strand, cutting it free of his daughter's head. She had so much hair she wouldn't notice or miss the strand he'd relieved her of. Sasugainu pulled the lid free of Hokinsha's ceramic urn and pushed Amagumori's hair into the jar.
A moment later he brought the urn to Soeki's bedside and did the same. Soeki's hair was blue-black, a rich luxuriant color that Shimofuri and Hokinsha had shared. Once upon a time, when Sasugainu had been a young, hot blooded creature, rather than the conniving, cowardly clown he was now, the blue-black of Hokinsha's hair had intoxicated him, filling him with desire. Now he detested the color, imagining that it was Hokinsha's influence on Soeki that made her pesky and clever and ever-resistant to his plans. It was Hokinsha's fault, of course, that he had no sons. She had given him daughters, useless girls instead. She had fouled his nest.
It didn't matter; soon he would have a new wife, a wife as young as his own daughters.
A wife that was currently in the possession of another inuyoukai.
Sasugainu pushed Soeki's strand of hair into the urn and then slipped out of the room, sliding the door closed behind him. He traveled through the dark castle until he slipped out into the gardens and, between the rows of decorative cherry and maple trees, he set down the urn and began to dig with his bare hands. When the hole was large enough to accommodate the contents of the urn, Sasugainu poured the ashes of his longtime wife inside the hole, along with the strands of hair he'd collected from his daughter. Then he smashed the ceramic urn itself and placed the pieces inside, arranging the shards into a few characters, spelling out the name he needed…
He buried the contents and packed the earth in deep. Tomorrow, when his girls awoke and screamed that their mother's ashes had been stolen, there would be no evidence of the urn or of the ashes. A garden worker could dig up the spot where the dirt in the garden was disturbed, but he would find nothing. No trace of the shattered urn arranged in the shape of a name, no ashes, and no strands of blue-black and white hair.
As Sasugainu walked back toward his castle he remembered the note he'd pillaged from his daughters' room, the note-prayers the girls had left around their mother's ashes. Curiously, Sasugainu picked out the letter from where he'd hidden it inside his robes and, as he passed near a lamp lighting the garden path, strained his eyes trying to read it.
Stop our father, the note read, he has lost his mind.
Hokinsha would not be answering any of their daughters' prayers, Sasugainu thought, crumpling the note and tossing it aside. He stomped his foot on it, pushing it into the dirt. He wasn't insane. That much he knew for sure. By the time his daughters' realized what was happening, it would be too late.
After her daily lessons in reading and writing, Saya was usually rewarded with a trip outside. Sometimes Rin escorted her with Sesshomaru, but on most days Jaken accompanied her while Rin watched from Jouka's terraced entryway. On the day when Sesshomaru returned with Ginrei and Hanone, Saya was able to skip her lesson and join Jaken to play in the crusted snow.
With one exception: now Jaken had two wards. Saya was accompanied by the sister she couldn't remember having seen before. Yet she knew by scent that Hanone was her sister, just as she knew Sesshomaru was her father and that spring would come steadily with the passage of each day.
While the adults waited on the steps of Jouka, Saya rushed out into the world. She screeched with every ounce that her lungs could muster, roaring like the powerful beast she imagined herself to be. She crested a hill of heaped snow and perched atop it on all fours. Her short, child's kimono pulled wide around her spread thighs. Children were never known for being cautious about flashing underwear or genitalia.
She grinned down at Jaken as he toddled forward, already huffing. Saya was fleet-footed even as a toddler. Her smile was human; there were no elongated canines to hint at her inuyoukai heritage.
Jaken paused to look up at her and his huge eyes bugged out more at her exposed underpants. Indignantly he huffed and shouted at her. "Saya! You foolish girl! Get down from there! Lord Sesshomaru will be most displeased!" he covered his eyes when he spoke. His cheeks flamed red as he stammered, trying to find a way to politely insist that she close her little legs. She was too innocent, too young to understand nakedness taboos.
Saya ignored Jaken, as was normal, and looked around the base of her ice mountains, searching for Hanone. She'd seen Hanone leave Jouka and enter the field just as she had, following Sesshomaru's orders. She'd expected a sort of telepathic bond with her sister, thinking that Hanone should know that Saya planned to scale the ice mountain, claiming it as her territory, and then "defend" it from Jaken.
Hanone was absolutely not following that well-established plan. Instead she was still near Jouka, squatted awkwardly on the ground, trying not to sit in the cold, wet mud and grass, refusing to get her backsides dirty.
"You foolish girl!" Jaken shouted, rushing forward gruntingly, ready to scale the ice mountain after her. The alternative, that Saya might fall and hurt herself, was unthinkable on multiple levels. Firstly, Saya was Sesshomaru's offspring, more precious than Rin in Jaken's eyes because she was a part of Sesshomaru, a broken off piece, a budding or a fallen leaf. Secondly, if she were to hurt herself Jaken would be the one that was punished as the babysitter.
Saya ignored him and half-hopped, half-rolled down the mound of crusted snow. She plopped in the mud at Jaken's side, splattering him with slush, old leaves, and gray-brown grass. The toad blinked and cried out his alarm, swatting at his face viciously to clear away the mess. By the time he'd wiped his eyes clean Saya was across the long stretch of field, knelt at Hanone's side. Unlike her younger, pureblooded sister, Saya sat unashamedly on the ground and dirtied her kimono.
"Aren't you going to climb with me?" Saya demanded, poking her sister in ribs gently with one clawed finger.
Hanone whimpered and batted at Saya's hand. Her silvered eyes clouded at once with tears that spilled out onto her cheeks and coursed down them as if in a race. She didn't try to hide these tears; she was too young to understand the stigmas of weakness and emotion.
Saya wrinkled her nose and drew back slightly, as if Hanone had struck her. The stink of her sister's salty tears repelled her, filling her with a strange tightness in her chest. "Stop it!"
Hanone whimpered loudly and turned away from Saya, searching behind them for any sign of Ginrei. Sesshomaru, Rin, and Ginrei were on the steps, watching their girls and Jaken, taking in the earliest tastes of the spring air. Rin was closest, gazing avidly at the exchange between the two girls. Sesshomaru and Ginrei were removed from it, standing close to one another behind Rin. This closeness was not a friendly one, merely a strategic move on Sesshomaru's part to keep Ginrei away from Hanone, to force the mother to let go of her coddled daughter.
Whether anyone admitted or not, they were all eager to see how Hanone and Saya would react to one another. Was it natural for the siblings to hate one another, as Sesshomaru and Inuyasha did, or was the normal state of things more along what Shimofuri and his hanyou sister Tsukiyume shared? Was hatred the proper response? Would Hanone accept Saya? Would Saya accept Hanone? What would the days, months, seasons, and years bring for the sisters?
"Come on." Saya ordered, making her face into a fierce, forceful frown. "Climb with me." when Hanone didn't respond to this show immediately, Saya changed her approach by reaching out and touching her sister's silken, white hair. "You have pretty hair."
Saya's touch made Hanone stifle her sniffling crying for a moment to regard her older sister. Her wide, teary eyes stared, flickering with a mixture of interest and fear. Slowly her lips moved, curling over her mouthful of tiny, white teeth. "Who are you?"
"I'm Saya." She pulled on Hanone's sleeve, tugging the other girl off balance until she fell into the muddied grass. "You're Hanone. Mama told me so."
"Mama?" Hanone asked, her face wrinkling slowly with distaste as she lifted her hands and peered at the palms, seeing the cold, sticky mud there. She made a small noise of distress in her throat and twisted back to look at the steps where Ginrei was standing trapped by Sesshomaru. When mother and daughter's eyes met Ginrei took a step forward, as if to hurry out to Hanone to help her clean her palms and usher inside out of the chilly spring air. Sesshomaru pinned her with one quick gaze and Ginrei froze again, stuck where she was. The husband and wife glared at one another, Sesshomaru with the benign air of the irritated ruler, Ginrei with the embittered, beaten stare of the oppressed.
"Yeah, Mama." Saya answered, tugging on Hanone's sleeve yet again. Part of Hanone's kimono peeled away from her shoulder, showing the pallid, perfect flesh of her bare shoulder. "Come climb. Jaken-sama will yell."
Unsteadily Hanone let herself be pulled to her feet and then dragged as if she was blind toward the crusted heap of snow. The girls were odd sisters, oddly matching already. Unlike Shimofuri and Tsukiyume, they looked very much alike and they were the same gender. Yet, unlike Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, they were roughly the same age. Now, as they walked toward the grumbling toad Jaken, both girls had muddied the undersides of their thighs and their bottoms. The soles of their feet were black with slush.
What would fate have lying in store for them?
A/N: Yay! Another chapter down!
