Chapter 6 – Fight or Flight
No one said anything. No one could. They all stared, frozen in terror, at the corpse, which a few moments ago had been a loud, blustering, noodle-guzzling, living person.
CHING!
A ring of scales around them toppled over simultaneously.
"Quick!" the medicine seller told them tersely, his sword raised high. "Get back away from the table!"
They all scrambled madly to obey, just in time; almost as soon as he spoke, the table itself shook, then its entire surface suddenly exploded outwards, forming countless long, vine-like limbs, each tipped with a disturbingly human-looking hand made entirely of wood. The hands flailed in every direction, grasping, searching – looking for more food.
Daisuke tried to reach for his nagimachi, which was leaning against the wall, but when he lunged for it, he staggered – a wooden hand was clutching his sleeve, and struggle as he might, he couldn't break away. Daitaro tried to wrestle him free, but the vines merely clung to him as well. Kayo squealed as a hand gripped painfully at her hair. Somehow, the medicine seller darted across the room before the hands could latch onto him. He leapt towards the corner, then turned and flung some sort of powder – not salt this time, something grey instead. It settled all over the table; the wooden hands instantly loosed their grip and shrank away. Suddenly freed, Daitaro and Daisuke were finely able to take up their weapons. Rubbing her pain-filled scalp, Kayo looked at the medicine seller.
"W-wasn't that hot?" she asked him. His outstretched hand looked as pale and flawless as ever, despite the fact he had just plunged it into the brazier and thrown still-burning ash everywhere.
"W-was there something wrong out there?" Gohei asked uncertainly, rounding the partition. His eyes scanned the room, and he dropped the kettle he carried with a clang. His gaze leapt from Tatsuya's inert form, to Daitaro and Daisuke standing clutching their long nagimachi, to the medicine seller holding his sword before him.
"What did-? Who did-? How did-? M-my table – what did you do to my table?!" The wooden table hadn't returned to normal; hands still protruded all over its surface, though they now seemed to be carved out of dead wood, no longer able to move.
"Gohei-san, I need to borrow some salt from you. Please hurry and get it." When Gohei remained unmoving, overcome by shock, the medicine seller instead turned to Kisa, who was peering wonderingly over the cook's shoulder. "Kisa-san, get me all the salt you can find! Quickly!"
Kisa just stared at him for a moment; then, perhaps seeing the new ferocity in his expression, she murmured "Y-yes, sir!" and hurried away.
"Stay back in the kitchen, Gohei-san," Daitaro told the cook, not looking up from the floor. "There's something in here. Will these, erm, scales warn us if it comes again?"
"Yes." The medicine seller was watching the floor too.
"W-what? These things actually do something?!" Daisuke was poised with his nagamachi held over his head, ready to strike.
With an encroaching sense of dread, Kayo held her breath, waiting. It didn't seem to be a matter of if… it was more a matter of when…
CHING!CHING!CHING!CHING!CHING!CHING!CHING!
"W-wh-?"
Without warning, all the scales started to rock back and forth at once, making a tremendous din; the next moment, they were all knocked over as countless wooden roots lanced upwards out of the floorboards.
"YAAAAHHHHH!!!"
Daisuke madly started slashing at the vines that sprung up all around him. Daitaro did the same, more quietly. The medicine seller cut through the vines that had sprung up nearest him, several paper charms in his hand. Three new roots hurtled upwards out of the floor; they were each met by paper charms. Though each root stabbed straight through the charm in mid-air, both charm and root disintegrated and dripped back into the floor, disappearing into the wood grain.
They had been slashing for only a few minutes, but Daisuke was already breathing hard. "They just – keep – eh – coming!" he grunted, slicing in a wide circle around him. It seemed that as soon as he cut down one root, another sprung up to replace it.
Kayo snatched up a bowl of noodles and tipped it over the floor; it cut a swathe in the roots around her as they retreated, fleeing the salty broth. Snatching up more bowls, she made a path to the kitchen door, where Kisa stood agog, the bowl of salt in her hands forgotten as soon as she saw the writhing mass of roots the floor had become.
"Quick, give that here!"
At the sound of Kayo's voice, Kisa seemed to snap out of a trance; her eyes focused on the other woman, and she swiftly obeyed. Kayo started flinging salt about her. Roots all around her feet withered and died. She gradually made her progress across the room, scattering as she went.
Hurled by the medicine seller, a new row of charms hit the floor; however, instead of curbing the vines, the charms themselves gradually discoloured, turning the sickly yellow of old paper. Then they darken to a brown, splitting down their centre and curling, turning into new vines that grew out of the charm itself.
"I thought this would happen," the medicine seller muttered to himself. "It reclaimed the paper as wood." He instead blocked a swiping vine with his sword's sheath, dodging skillfully.
Kayo had gone through half the salt, and was worrying that she didn't have enough; there were still a lot of vines. Suddenly, a jangling noise came from her feet. Startled, she stopped stock still and looked down. A lone scale was at her feet; it skittered on its point, then tipped over, indicating towards the wall-
"Aiiieee!!!"
There was a rustling sound at her back, then she felt something seize her wrist. She tried to turn, but she couldn't; more vines fastened on her arms and round her waist, their grip hard and tight. The vine on her wrist struck out, knocking the bowl from her hand and dumping its contents on the floor. She felt herself lifted, then pulled swiftly backwards.
"Kayo-kun!"
Kayo was actually glad to hear Daisuke's voice close by; she more felt than heard a keen swish pass just behind her, then the vines abruptly dropped her. She fell with a thump to the floor, looking up in time to see the severed vines disappearing back into the wooden shutter that had been behind her.
"Are you alright?" Daisuke stood over her, clutching his nagimachi and looking about warily for more vines. He darted her a glance that, quick though it was, actually seemed to hold some genuine concern for her…
"Y-yes, thank you…"
She realized to her embarrassment that she sounded like the bashful Kisa, but she was moved despite herself. Daisuke, that jerk, had actually saved her…
Thwip!
She started as something moved behind her, but it wasn't a vine; her hair, somehow freed from its ties, fluffed around her shoulders, the combs and pins she had been wearing falling to the floor. She frantically felt the back of her head; usually when she combed it out, it fell nearly to her waist, but now her severed locks ended just above her shoulders.
"My hair! You bastard, you cut my hair!"
Daisuke grimaced, seeming to revert to his usual boorish self. "Get over it, you cry-baby. It beats being strangled by a vine. In any case, y-"
Swish! Thump!
Daisuke started back as a metal blade came down right in front of him without warning; his weapon was wrenched out of his hands by the impact. Daitaro's nagimachi had severed the handle off Daisuke's; it now writhed on the floor, a living length of wriggling wood. Daitaro's blade came down again; split in half, it lay still.
"Don't get distracted, you two," Daitaro warned them sternly. "Daisuke, the handle of your own weapon almost took out the back of your head when you weren't looking. It seems the jubokko can possess any type of wood and use it as an extension of itself. It could do the same to my weapon, too."
"Can't this exorcist friend of yours kill it?" Daisuke asked, holding the nagimachi blade before him, though now it was deprived of its handle, it didn't have much force behind it. "If you reckon he's done it before, why doesn't he just-"
"I told you," Kayo replied, trying to salvage some of the salt from the floor, "he has to know the Makoto and Kotowari before he can draw the sword!"
"Fat lot of good that does us!"
"I have to agree," Daitaro murmured, swinging at a vine that snaked its way towards them.
Kayo bit off her protests; she had to admit, they were right. The jubokko's attack was almost overwhelming; at this rate, it could-
"KYAAAAA!!!"
"Oh no, it's got Kisa-chan!"
The vines had fastened around Kisa's waist and lifted her up near the ceiling; she screwed up her eyes, whimpering, as it waved her about like a blade of grass, apparently not sure what to do with her now it had her. Gohei vainly hovered beneath her, but a vine shot past him, knocking him off his feet.
"Damn," the medicine seller uttered through clenched teeth. "I was hoping to save it for later, but now we'll have to try that." He turned to Kayo and the two men by the wall. "All of you, duck down and stay low!"
They hastily crouched down, fighting their instincts to stay as far away from the root-sprouting floor as possible. The medicine seller extended a hand, and just like before, the paper strap from his pack flew into it. Working his arm, he twirled it like a long whip; it swept the room, severing every root in its path. Kayo, Daisuke and Daitaro heard it whistle over their heads, and they hastily covered their faces as splinters rained down on them. Kisa shrieked as the roots holding her buckled, and she fell from six sun up in the air. Sturdy arms caught her, breaking her fall. Timidly, she opened her eyes, and looked up into the red-adorned face of the medicine seller.
"Are you alright?" he asked her in a tone of voice that sounded far too calm after what had just happened.
"Y-yes," she managed to stammer somewhat tearfully, her eyes not leaving his face.
Kayo warily raised her head. "Has it… stopped?"
"It would appear so, but I can't say for how long." The medicine seller let go of the paper strap; it returned to its normal shape and length. "It took a severe blow, damaging so many of its roots in one go, but with the extra blood it's now consumed-" the medicine seller spared Tatsuya's corpse a glance "-it's becoming stronger, so it is regenerating more quickly, and its reach is growing. It'll search for us again soon, so we can't waste any more time; we need to move to somewhere that's easier to defend."
"Y-yes, I want you all out of my store this instant!"
Kayo and the others looked at the source of this outburst with some surprise; they had forgotten about Gohei in all the chaos that had just passed. "Just look at the damage you've done!" he continued, wringing his hands fretfully and looking about him with an aghast expression on his oily features. "I'm just a humble store-owner, I can't afford to replace all this! My furniture, my floor, it's all ruined! What a calamity!" The stall was indeed a mess. Hands were still seemingly carved into the tabletop; roots as tall as Daisuke's waist were still poking out of the floor in places; blood, salt, ash and splinters were scattered everywhere; not to mention the lifeless body that was slumped over a stool.
"I want you all out of here before you destroy more of my property!" Gohei declared, suddenly displaying an obstinate nature that his previous subservience had hidden.
"B-but, where can we go?" Kayo asked nervously. "If we go outside, it'll find us for sure…"
"The inn up the road?" Daisuke didn't care that he was agreeing with Kayo's earlier suggestion, or the medicine seller's for that matter; regardless of whose idea it was, he wanted to get away from here, fast.
"That place is made of wood, though, isn't it?" the medicine seller inquired. "If we go somewhere that's mostly made of wood, this will just happen again."
"But all the buildings around here are made of wood! There's nowhere-"
"Wait. I have an idea." Everyone turned to Daitaro expectantly. "There is a temple over behind the fields. It is old and untended now, but it has high stone walls around it, which might make it easier …"
"Let's go there, then." So saying, the medicine seller turned abruptly for the door.
"Wait! What about your pack?" asked Kayo; he had gone to leave without it.
"It's made of wood. I can't risk taking it; the jubokko might possess it and use it against us. I'll just take a few first-aid items in case we need them. I suggest, Kayo-san, you get all the salt you can carry; Daitaro-san and Daisuke-san, leave your wooden-handled nagimachi and take metal knives from the kitchen instead. If it's alright with Gohei-san?"
"Take whatever you want, I don't care, as long as you go. Such troublesome customers – why, I never in all my years-!"
"Um, if you'll follow me, we have more salt in the back storeroom, and there is a selection of knives…"
Kayo and the two men, taking up the medicine seller's suggestions, followed Kisa into the kitchen. A short time later, they were ready to leave. Daitaro and Daisuke each carried a stout metal cleaver in their belts, wrapped in straw sheeting in place of sheaths, and they also each had a sack of wood-ash upon their person. Kayo had refilled her drawstring bag, plus had a small bag with additional salt tied to each wrist, concealed inside her sleeves. The medicine seller carried only his demon-slaying sword and a few packages from his medicine drawers, which he tucked into his sleeves.
"If it is alright with Gohei-san, we will leave our belongings here."
"Do whatever you want, so long as you leave – and hurry up about it!"
"Can you take care of my hair ornaments for me, Kisa-chan?" Kayo asked. "I'll want them for when my hair grows long again." She darted Daisuke a murderous look.
"S-sure," Kisa replied, carefully gathering up the wooden combs and pins in her apron. "Take care, Miss." She tried to smile bravely, but try as she might, it didn't look very reassuring. Kayo tried to smile back. For all that she was shy, Kisa seemed like a nice girl – almost too nice, in fact.
"Gohei-san, a small payment, for keeping our things for us." The medicine seller handed Gohei a small package; he snatched it from him wrathfully, still grieving the state of his dining room. The medicine seller didn't seem to notice; he simply bowed to Gohei and Kisa, and followed the others out through the fabric flaps, out into a dark, chill night that seemed even darker for the jagged black shadows of the surrounding trees. Gradually, the footsteps of the three men and one woman faded into the night. Kisa hovered nervously at the door of the noodle stall, looking after them until they disappeared into the gloom. In particular, her eyes watched the swaying tips of the medicine seller's bandanna disappear into the night, like the flapping wings of some night-bird.
"I hope they'll be alright," she murmured softly to herself.
"Eeeeehhhhh?!"
Kisa turned at the noise. "I-Is something wrong, Gohei-san?"
"Other than the fact they left my stall almost in ruins, my table and floors deformed, and a dead body sitting against the wall?! Just look at this!" He waved the paper packet the medicine seller had given him in his clenched fist; try though she might, it was moving too quickly for Kisa to get a proper look.
"Shiso leaves!" he declared in fury, tossing the packet on the floor. "Shiso leaves! They make all this mess, and he pays me in shiso leaves! Any fool can walk into the forest and pick basket-loads of shiso leaves! That damn crook! I have half a mind to clear out his medicine cabinet as payment for the damage he did! It would serve him right! I mean, shiso leaves, damn shiso leaves!"
The rice paddies were silent except for a low swishing sound, as a light breeze ruffled the nodding heads of green rice shoots. In the darkness, one might be mistaken in thinking that one stood on the banks of a rushing stream. This assumption wouldn't exactly be false; thin banks of packed dirt contained large marshy plots filled with water. The sprightly green stalks rose triumphantly up out of the thick black mud, as though in defiance of such an unattractive birthplace. The sky above looked just as murky, a few weak moonbeams breaking through the clouds overhead, barely illuminating their way. At last, in the near distance, ancient-looking grey walls that seemed to be made from the mud itself appeared before them; just beyond them, they could see the dark silhouette of the temple roof rising before them, asymmetrical in shape and sloping sharply away on one side where some of the tiles had been worn away by bad weather.
"Finally there! Geez, what a night – I wish morning would hurry up and come!"
"If you hadn't gotten lost in the fields, Daisuke-kun, we would've gotten here a lot faster! The whole idea was not to spend too much time out in the open!"
"Hmph, gimme a break. I'd like to see you find your way out there, Miss Priss – until a few days ago, you barely remembered what a field looked like!"
"Did not! Only a bean-brain like you could forget something so simple!"
"Foul-mouthed wench!"
"That's enough, both of you! Let's just get inside. It should be a bit warmer inside the temple walls, and Daisuke needs to dry off." Daisuke's sandals squelched with each step; he had insisted on leading the way and had unwittingly walked straight off an embankment, ending up knee-deep in a water-logged rice paddy. Luckily, the medicine seller had somehow seen what lay ahead in the dark, and had stopped Kayo and Daitaro from following him into it.
"It's a relief to have made it here," Kayo said with a small grateful sigh. Daisuke and Daitaro had walked most of the way with their hands hovering over the knives in their belts, but they had made it across the fields unmolested. Kayo rather hoped that the paddies were too vast and muddy for the jubboko's roots to travel through, but she knew that wasn't a certainty.
"Are you sure you were alright, walking all that way like this?" she asked the medicine seller. To the amazement of everyone, whilst they had re-donned their straw sandals at the door, he had left his geta outside the noodle stall, citing the fact that they too were made of wood, and hence were best left behind so the jubokko couldn't possess them. This seemed to Kayo to be too extreme; however, it hadn't seemed to worry the medicine seller at all. He had simply removed his tabi as well – "to stop them from getting muddied," he had said, although how that mattered when the tabi were black, and his bare feet where treading in the dirt anyway, she wasn't sure.
"It was fine," he replied to her query as they walked under the torii outside the temple, Kayo wincing slightly as they passed through the wooden portal. "The ground was soft the whole way, and my feet didn't mind it the slightest."
"It's a wonder; even your feet are pale and slender," Kayo said with some envy. "You could've been a noblewoman in a past life, with features like that."
"If Kayo-san can think something like that at a time like this, you can't be too scared."
Kayo grinned ruefully. "I wish that were true."
Daitaro and Daisuke had wandered ahead of them. Kayo and the medicine seller went after them, through the dark opening of the temple's doors.
Author's Note: On it goes! Thanks for reading, hope you're enjoying it! If you are, please send in your reviews; I'm enjoying writing this story, but I have others that need up-dating, so if this one isn't getting enough traffic, I'll switching to writing another one. I am liking this story though. Things are about to get very interesting. Stay tuned!
Also, if you do send a review, please sign it so I can write back to you!
Thanks! ~ W.J.
