THE WANDERER'S KEEPER

Chapter 04

Kagome was sitting at the drawbridge, watching the sea and sky move against each other asymptotically. But instead of slipping back into a peaceful stasis, she was trying to decide what to do about the barrier. The woman on the other side only mouthed Inuyasha over and over again with no other instructions. That was worrying as well as frustrating to Kagome. She couldn't figure out why her mirror self was so adamantly encouraging Inuyasha's name; did it indicate that, subconsciously, she knew that Inuyasha was in some sort of trouble?

Perhaps Inuyasha had a dream here, too; perhaps she needed to find him to break down the wall. Kagome's brow furrowed. She stood and moved back across the courtyard, where the other woman waited.

"Help me!" Kagome demanded.

Inuyasha, the woman said.

"How?" Kagome begged, banging her hands against the divider. "Tell me how to help him!" She reached up as far as she could, but the wall remained there, an invisible and sturdy divider. It began to curve, she could feel, when she stood on tip-toe; like a giant dome that covered the castle and her twin. Suddenly something connected in her brain; suddenly this dome meant something to her. An overwhelming fear darkened her thoughts as she realized what it was she must do.

Kagome's eyes widened and she looked at the woman, her heart sinking. "I can't do it!" The woman only nodded ferociously. "I can't!"

* * *

Inuyasha, Sango, and Miroku were standing in a small breezeway between the temple proper and the vicarage. Among the decaying summer plants was a large oak tree with strips of parchment, inked with praises and prayers, hanging from the limbs. The trio stood beneath its shade with a small pan of water, mixed with several holy plants that Miroku had purchased from the herbwife as soon as they had convinced her to sell her stock immediately. Miroku stood over the pan and with closed eyes hummed a prayer.

Inuyasha, in his half-demon form in the wan morning light, waited with almost unconcealed impatience until finally Miroku spoke. "Hold out the sword that would do the moon's work."

Without fanfare, Inuyasha thrust his sword evenly into the air, with its tip pointing at Miroku's stomach. With a chant spoken in a different tongue, Miroku lowered his body without bending his back or moving his head. With the sword tip now at his forehead, he dunked his hand into lukewarm mixture in the pan and began sprinkling water on the sword. He moved down the sword from its base to tip; when he reached the end, he said three words and then repeated the process once more, and then a final time.

The sword seemed to make Inuyasha's hand tingle with an excited energy he could not name. At a command from Miroku, the entire blade emitted a powerful, silvery light in a sudden blast; this faded momentarily into a pale, steady glow.

Miroku looked up with weariness in his eyes. "Before you go," he said, "let's try a premonition."

Inuyasha grunted but Sango approved of the suggestion. Miroku kneeled down and spoke enticingly in the foreign tongue. In a voice not his own, he said, "One with many hearts; the left, O bold one, is for reaching, and the right is for unrighting. Speak with fervor. Dreams are poison in the woods."

"That doesn't make any sense!" Inuyasha yelled. "I thought you were going to tell us the future!"

Miroku smiled tiredly. "I can't do that. I can only be given small bits of information."

"I've wondered," Sango said, "how come holy people so seldom offer premonitions. Is there some oath you have to take?"

"No," Miroku said evenly. "But a premonition is an exchange. Every time one of us offers one, we sacrifice some of our life in return."

"Some of your life?! We shouldn't have--"

"Please," said Miroku. "It's the least I can do." He smiled dazzlingly at Sango, who was clearly distressed by the news. "But it pleases me that you care so much. You can always bear my first born ch--" Sango cut him off with a slap.

"Quit it, we're wasting time!" Inuyasha barked. "Get us out of this place!"

"One moment," Sango said, recovering from her blush. "We don't know where in the forest Kagome is."

"Maybe your friend Shippou can help," Miroku suggested. Sango shook her head, explaining that Shippou didn't know exactly where the King of the Wood was. Finally, the priest hesitantly said, "Allow me to assist you. I can divine directions to help make our path more accurate." At this, the three moved out of the town from behind the temple, well away from the other humans who might react harshly to Inuyasha's presence.

* * *

Kagura was surprised at how difficult it had been to find Inuyasha. He had moved quickly, with some clear goal in mind; that would not have pleased the King of the Wood but to her it was of no real importance. She had finally found Inuyasha, just outside of Seafront, along with his strange companions. She narrowed her eyes, wondering why he was accompanied by a demon-slayer from the islands, a fox demon child, and a priest.

Shrugging, she dropped gracefully from the trees in front of them and smiled as all four readied for action. Inuyasha had pulled out his sword without flourish, which Kagura noted had a semi-transparent glow about it, while the fox hid behind his legs and the demon-slayer and priest readied their assorted human weapons.

"Hello again, Inuyasha," she drawled sumptuously.

"Where's Kagome, you bitch?" Inuyasha growled in a low voice. He felt that Kagura was especially bold to attack him in the daylight, but, unknown to him, Kagura always had to follow her orders strictly. She had been told to kill Inuyasha immediately, not to wait for a more opportune time. Even if it meant her power was not at its fullest while Inuyasha's was.

Kagura chuckled wickedly. "She is with the King Naraku in his 'court'. But enough talk!" With that, Kagura flung her right arm up into the air, clutching a paper fan, and pulled down a large sweep of wind over the party gathered before her. They braced themselves and when the wind cleared Kagura prepared her first attack. As she flung up debris with the wind that she so languidly controlled, Inuyasha rushed forward and met her short hunting knife, held in her other hand, with his sword. The metallic clang rang out in a flat note over the otherwise idyllic calm of the tree grove.

"You're mine! You'll pay for what you did!" Inuyasha snarled. Kagura only laughed lightly, throwing him back with a powerful thrust of her blade while she continued to twirl the fan in the air around them. While they parried, Miroku kneeled to the ground and chanted; from his staff erupted a bubble of holy energy that kept the wind from Sango, Shippou, and himself. Sango desperately watched the fight for a way to cut in, but the demons before her fought with lightning-fast ferocity. Inuyasha was not one to coordinate battle efforts, but Sango knew that he could not defeat this powerful demon singly-handed.

Inuyasha nicked Kagura's wrist as they moved between the trees. Kagura was furious, hurling gusts of winds in chaotic twists and sudden gusts to help give her the advantage, but Inuyasha remained solidly on his feet. His balance was enviable. The wind blasted against the holy field Miroku supported, but it remained in tact even despite the noise it caused.

"Miroku," Sango spoke above the gale, voice almost lost, "I thought demons couldn't stand the daylight? It doesn't bother Shippou at all and this demon doesn't seem to be impaired by it."

"I'm not sure what's afoot, Lady Sango." A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and Shippou made no move to answer Sango's worries. To keep them protected from the gulfs of wind was a trying task for Miroku, especially with Shippou shivering and clinging in fright to his arm. Sango carefully observed the surroundings; the copse of trees wasn't especially thick, and murky, rainy gray light lit it very clearly. She could sense no other demons or any special enchantments about the place that would allow the female demon any special advantages.

With nothing from that angle to try, Sango looked for any place where she herself could gain a fighting position. She did not wish to use her boomerang for fear of hurting Inuyasha, and she hesitated to move in for hand-to-hand combat in the acceptance that she might only get in Inuyasha's way.

Suddenly, she spotted an opening. The demon had flung Inuyasha's sword out of his hand and had backed him against a tree. With the wind howling sorrowfully in great teeming gales and peels, the red-eyed wind witch was delivering a solemn soliloquy, facing away from the small group as if she had forgotten all about them. Without a moment's hesitation, Sango dove from the protective bubble and drove a long dagger first through the demon's back between the shoulder blades, and then across the woman's neck so that the head was partially severed.

The demon slumped down to the ground, dead. Sango hacked off the remainder of the head at the neck in case the demon could reattach it, and ordered someone to start a fire in order to burn the body to prevent it from possible regeneration, reassembly, or multiplication. But before anyone could move to start a fire, the body sizzled away to ash and left only a still-beating heart with a puncture wound on the scorched ground. Tense and ready for another battle, the group watched it. Inuyasha sliced his sword through the center of the heart and hit something hard; the bloody tissue peeled away like layers of shed onion skin and revealed a wooden peg. He cleaved this in half and it, too, whispered away to dust.

After a moment, Inuyasha sheathed his sword at his left hip and grumpily continued onward, as if nothing at all had happened despite the bloody marks on his body and the sweat that damped his hair. Meanwhile, Sango and Miroku calmed a worried Shippou and followed belatedly.

"That was no ordinary demon," Miroku said. "What was the wooden core?"

"That means it's a golem," Sango replied with a distracted look on her face. Inuyasha perked one white canine ear in her direction and listened. "We might not be dealing with a demon at all as the King of the Wood."

"What do you mean? This Naraku that the witch spoke of?" Miroku pressed.

"This Naraku, this King of the Wood, may be a demon, but he may also be a human wizard who has sold his soul for power. For Kagome's sake and ours, I hope it's the former."

* * *

"What do you mean, Kagura failed?" the King growled out to Kanna, who remained unperturbed.

"I felt it. Kagura has died." The King placed a hand on his forehead and thought for a moment. It was true that Kagura had been his first creation and thus the weakest, but she was no ordinary golem. If she had been an average golem, he would have expected her to die long ago. But each of his golems carried something special. There had never been creatures like them before. They were not just puppets; they were pieces of himself--they were pure malicious energy wrapped in a demon's skin. And even Kagura, the lesser of all his most elite warriors, should have been almost impervious to attack. Things were not going according to plan.

"Kanna, prepare to move out tonight for the human village Marling." Kanna bowed out of his presence and went adroitly to her appointed task.

The King of the Wood turned westward and walked in the comfortable, dark gloom of his realm. He stopped when he reached the edge of the light cast off by the candle in Kagome's hands. His eyes narrowed in suspicion and concern as he noticed the flame suddenly shrink and grow, shrink and grow, in a seemingly endless cycle, despite the utter stillness of the air around them.

* * *

Miroku and Sango were distressed to learn that three separate villages had fallen under the control of Naraku, those being Timple, Rintown, and Spindle's. Shippou was fairly indifferent himself, but Inuyasha said that this gave them a good indicator of where the King of the Wood was located. Miroku admitted that after a brief chant and throwing down his staff, which pointed toward the woods, that it indeed looked as if their enemy was in that direction.

"I can't believe Naraku was so close to where you and Kagome lived," Shippou burbled nervously. Inuyasha grunted in answer as he stepped into the first line of trees. Pulling his sword out of its sheath, he was momentarily dazzled by its now brilliant, moony glow. The group moved together, almost as one body, deeper and deeper into the forest. After hours of walking, the canopy thickened. Eventually they could see only by the light cast off from the sword, which seemed to grow only brighter as they moved further through the trees.

"I think we're lost," Sango said eventually. "All these trees look the same. I can't tell if we're going to the heart of the woods anymore." Miroku murmured and threw down his staff again. They moved slowly in this way, occasionally persuading Shippou to scout around in the trees above them. Each time he reported that they were walking away from the human settlements, but he could see no end to the other side of the trees.

"It's like it goes on forever," he said as he scratched his neck nervously.

"I think we're close now," Miroku said quietly. Sango looked at him with a question in her eyes, but he only thinned his lips and listened.

Suddenly they stepped into a pale ring of light. Moving forward, they saw Kagome lying in a wooden coffin, with a candle held in her hands. The flame shrank to a tiny ember on the end of its unburned wick.

Before Inuyasha could rush to her, a male demon with long, black hair stepped between the group and Kagome. He purred delightedly as Inuyasha began to growl, baring his fangs at the demon before him.

Naraku chuckled. "Here I was, preparing to send out another demon to meet you, Inuyasha. Much to my delight, you've come to me instead."

"What have you done to Kagome?" Inuyasha growled dangerously. "Let her go!"

Naraku offered a long-suffering sigh. "I'm afraid it's too late for that, Inuyasha. Your own carelessness delivered her to me; I wouldn't deign return her to so foolish a champion if I had at all any desire to release her." Inuyasha's eyes narrowed. Without waiting for any further talk, immediately concerned with the lengthening day unseen above the treetops, he rushed forward. Sango screamed from somewhere behind him as something pierced her back.

* * *

Kagome knew what she had to do. She had to leave her dream behind; whether death or life lay beyond the door behind the barrier, she did not know. She only knew that she could not remain in a dream, where she was hurting the same people she, as a priestess, lived to help. So with all the force of her power, with every ounce of faith, love, and kindness she held in her small body, she shoved her hands against the invisible wall and began filling the dome with the twinkling light of her moon magic.

It was an immense drain; she felt her whole being pour into the bowl covering the castle. The face of the woman on the other side was filled with hopeful sadness, engulfed in that brightness that dimmed the entire world around it. Everything was soft and silent, moving surreally as if in a dream. Kagome became connected to everything around her in basic, primal way--she seemed a part of everything, in no way her own being. She could feel her power entering this dome and seeping into everything, leaving her behind.

Kagome reached a point of suspension; the whole world seemed too bright to bear, she felt isolated in one second of time; abruptly she felt a sudden disconnection from everything, as if she had been severed from what she most needed. A woman came to her then, with dark, curly hair, and she held Kagome's hand to rouse her attention. Kagome looked at her barrenly, barely knowing herself.

The woman smiled. "My name is Midoriko, Kagome. I was the first priestess of the moon." Kagome nodded, voiceless, feeling ethereal and distant, waiting for further explanation with no rush and no worry. "This is the Place of Going. When a priestess dies, she comes here to make her final act of magic. Usually I act as her guide, so that she knows right away to pass her power into the dome; in this way, the power may go on and be transferred to another woman. In your case, you were sent here artificially." Her voice wavered with echoes and distortions, as if speaking through some ever-changing tunnel. It drew Kagome's concentration into a more solid path; now she felt on the edge of a dream.

"I'm dead?" Kagome asked as something seemed to move in her heart. Her voice had an unintended tremor in it, and in the eternal light it seemed to echo and deflect in the same way as Midoriko's.

"Not yet. You have not yet emptied your power. You have been holding the magic here with you, so the moon has not risen on earth. You have been alive here." Midoriko looked in another direction, as if watching something far away. "But you have made a bold sacrifice, as all priestesses have. You have one more choice yet before you." Midoriko gave Kagome her full attention once more. Kagome nodded in acceptance, knowing what she must do for the sake of all other humans on earth, for the sake of Inuyasha. In her she felt an almost unbearable conflicting. She felt both weak and strong.

"I only regret I didn't know when I was on earth," Kagome told Midoriko quietly, voice almost dying out, like an ember. "I regret I did not realize and tell him."

"That is the regret of most people," Midoriko said before being gone suddenly; simply there and then not. Kagome moved through the light of her power to one dark spot that seemed infinitely far away from her. The door of the castle. A feeling of loss swept over her; this magic that had painfully become such a demanding part of her own spirit and soul, so much a part of her that it was no longer an independent thing about her but her defining characteristic, was leaving her as easily as it had come. Without it she felt empty and wasted, a heartless desert in which there was no life. As her bare toe touched the darkness at the edge of the threshold, she felt like paper: thin, folding up inside itself, becoming as nothing.

"Wait."

Kagome turned to the new voice, stepping away from the bleak blackness; it was the woman who had seemed to her a twin, the one who had urged her at the barrier. "My name is Kikyou. I was the priestess before you."

"Thank you for your help."

Kikyou brushed this remark away. "I'm not meant to confront you here, but I want to tell you. This power we have all shared is called the Shikon, the Four Souls. We have all died to protect it, to protect the people of earth from those who would do them harm."

"I understand," said Kagome, knowing that no matter how empty she felt, she could not hang on to something so precious. Kikyou smiled gently. She knew the exact feelings of Kagome's hurting heart. It was something that each priestess felt in her final moments. A weaker person would turn away greedily with this power. A priestess could not resist sacrificing it to save the lives of thousands of others.

"Then let me tell you something important, something I have learned since I came here, something that I alone know. I think you are pure-hearted enough." Kagome listened to what Kikyou had to say with earnest attention, feeling her emotions wobble within her like an unsure foal. Kikyou was holding her hand, trying to press the importance of what she had to say into several breathless sentences. Kagome felt both frail and emboldened at the same time. Then she gratefully thanked Kikyou and moved for the dark door. She stepped over the threshold, into a world she had never before been.

Outside, in her cool hands, among the wilderness of the trees, the candle's flame went out.