Chapter 9 – The Makoto

Ching!

Kayo just about jumped out of her skin – it had almost become an instinctive reaction to flinch. She looked down, and once again saw a lone set of scales at her feet. It had tipped over towards the inside wall of the shrine. The medicine seller's eyes widened; his head snapped around in the same direction, as though he could see through the wall itself to the very source of the disturbance…

"Something is out there. Let's go."

Before Kayo had time to ask, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along after him. She was out the door to the inner shrine before she realized what was happening. She had just thought that she had regained her equilibrium when he suddenly swerved around a sharp bend, almost making her overbalance; his hand swiftly pulled her upright again, and he continued to haul her along behind him. She felt like just one of his sleeves, billowing in his wake, somehow carried along with him in his headlong dash. The draughty halls were too dim for her to properly see where they were going; she simply had to follow him blindly, marvelling at how he navigated through the gloom with ease, never putting a foot wrong and never so much as slowing down when he came to a corner. His feet pounded the floor furiously; without his geta, his bare feet made a muted thud with each step.

tm-tm…tm-tm…tm-t-

They hit a point where two corridors intersected. He paused for a moment, the sword held before him; then, as though responding to something Kayo couldn't hear, he turned confidently down a narrow passage, dragging her after him again.

"What… is…it?" she managed to pant between steps.

"Something is wrong. There is a presence within the barrier."

That was all he would say as they hurtled through a warren of hallways, off which Kayo snatched momentary glimpses of narrow rooms which had once served as the simple abodes of priests. She didn't bother questioning him further. She simply kept up as best she could, wondering vaguely whether it would be smarter to run in the opposite direction. As they turned another corner, a light came into view ahead of them; it had to be one of the others-

He came to such an abrupt halt, she just about cannoned into him; managing to find her footing, she peered over his shoulder, then instantly wished she hadn't. Another pair of feet came thudding up behind them.

"I heard a cry. Did someone-"

The medicine seller thrust out his arm to prevent Daitaro from approaching the scene before them, but there wasn't really any need; he seemed frozen in place. Kayo heard the usually reserved man sharply take in a shuddery breath; then something almost like a sob escaped his lips.

"Daisuke…"

Even in the scarlet glow of his discarded torch, Daisuke's face was almost tinged blue in its pallor; in contrast, a shockingly red rivulet ran down from his throat, soaking into his clothes until it dripped off onto the floor beneath him. The source of the flow was not visible, as it was pinioned beneath the jaws of a strange-looking creature. For a moment, Kayo thought it was a person, a waifish girl with a short bob of hair; then her eyes better adjusted to the gloom, and she realized that what she had mistaken for a person was in fact more like a twisted, poorly-crafted imitation of what a person should look like. This monstrous thing was almost human in shape, but somehow wrong, like a wooden statue that had been left out in the rain and become warped from the damp. It wore a tattered robe over its gnarled, nut-brown limbs, on which a wood-grain pattern was plainly visible, and its hair was a shaggy mass of twigs. Sensing their presence, it raised its head; two empty knothole eye-sockets glared back at them, and its wide mouthful of tiny teeth – no, splinters – was stained red. With a snarl like two rough branches scraping together, it took a step towards them.

Uttering a sudden hoarse yell, Daitaro darted around the medicine seller's outstretched arm and hurled himself at the creature.

"Murderous beast!" he shrieked in a voice that seemed to belong to another person; Kayo had seldom heard him speak louder than his customary calm, casual tone of voice. It seemed his utter despair had driven him to uncharacteristically rash behaviour. "How dare you! My son-!" He held his knife high, determined to strike at the plant-thing's head-

He came to an abrupt halt and keeled over backwards as though he had hit an invisible wall, the knife flying from his hands. Dazed and confused, he felt something clamped around his wrist; he looked, and saw what appeared to be just a long strip of paper. Yet it had been strong enough to pull him backwards and completely off his feet in the midst of his headlong charge.

"Don't rush it. You'll only end up sharing your son's fate."

A blue wind flew past Daitaro's left ear; the end of the paper strip uncoiled itself from his wrist and whistled through the air as keenly as any blade, aimed squarely at the tree-monster's torso.

Thwack!

"Wh-?!"

The medicine seller skidded to a stop. The paper's strike had made the monster mutter in pain; Daisuke's body fell free of its jaws and rolled onto the floor, his torn throat a gory mess, steadily streaming blood. However, the strike that had been meant to bisect the plant-thing in half wasn't having any real effect. The medicine seller wound his hand firmly in the paper strip, pulling hard; it would not budge. The strip itself had undergone a strange transformation – its end seemed to have melded to the monster's body, and it gradually changed from white to brown right down its length, sprouting twigs and leaves as it did so. The medicine seller hastily dropped what had once been the strip of paper; it jerked itself away from him of its own accord. The new vine moved at first languidly, but then with a growing confidence. It suddenly flung its coils at the spot where the medicine seller had been standing. He wasn't there any more; Daitaro looked up and found him standing over him. He helped the other man to his feet.

"Get back, both of you," the medicine seller instructed them tersely as he himself stood his ground, the sword raised before him. "It may be a mononoke made of plants, but it is getting much stronger, and now it is also moving faster."

Kayo obediently began to back away, her heart thudding hard. She carefully placed each step she took, fearing that if she should stumble and fall, she would become easy prey for the thing before them. Suddenly it was no longer there in front of them; it was gone, leaving only a few dead leaves and a bloody corpse in its wake. Kayo and Daitaro uttered cries, glancing every which way, looking for signs of where it had gone. It seemed to have simply vanished into the very stone of the floor or walls…

The medicine seller's gaze shot upwards.

Kayo felt something brush against her shoulder. She screamed and twisted away to one side; a hanging vine was writhing in the space she had just occupied, still searching for her. She looked up. The mononoke looked back at her, making a soft hissing sound, like leaves rustling in a sharp wind. It clung to the ceiling above like a creeper. More vines dropped down around her, groping madly about for their prey. Kayo dodged frantically, trying to avoid the snatching wooden tentacles. She was completely unprepared when a hand shoved her roughly to one side, knocking her off her feet with such a force that she hit the ground and slid several shaku further. Daitaro landed not far from her, seeming to have been similarly deposited on the floor. They had both ended up far from where they had just been standing.

"Run toward the inner shrine!" the medicine seller called to them. He had just stopped moving after having launched them down the hall; Kayo now saw that they were just beyond the reach of the monster's vines. However, they wouldn't be for long if they stayed where they now were; vines were rapidly swarming over the ceiling, finding new holds to cling to, growing upwards through the joins in the stone. The medicine seller was standing directly beneath the creature's main body; its red-stained, splintery maw grinned menacingly down at him.

"But you can't-!" Kayo began to protested, taking a step towards him; after all he had done, she wasn't about to just leave him-

"Go! Hurry! My charms can't contain it any longer, and you need to be well out of its range before I can attack it!" The medicine seller shouted over the nauseating sound of slithering vines; his pale lips were pulled back in a feral snarl that might have suited a battle-hardened warrior. Or a growling woodland beast.

Seeing he had some concealed intention, Kayo instead turned to the man beside her. Daitaro was staring fixedly down the hall, and hadn't seemed to have heard their exchange at all. "Come on, Daitaro-san, we have to go!" She grabbed a fistful of his sleeve and tried vainly to drag him down the corridor. "Hurry!" she beseeched him, tugging harder when he showed no signs of following her. "We have to get away from it!"

Daitaro hesitated, looking back fretfully at the still figure lying on the floor beyond the medicine seller. "B-but… my son…" he protested weakly.

"There's nothing more you can do here! You need to keep your own life!"

Daitaro just looked blankly back at her, as though this was a foreign concept. Kayo's heart wrenched painfully as she saw the new, haggard lines upon the man's face; he seemed to have lost all regard for his own safety in the midst of his grief. She renewed her efforts; gradually, Daitaro stopped resisting her and followed her down the corridor in a half-hearted jog.

Tens of swaying wooden tentacles were now undulating from the point on the ceiling where the mononoke was perched. They were centred around the lone figure standing beneath them. The medicine seller was dwarfed by the thing's far-reaching radius of vines. He looked like a miniscule fish about to be devoured by a large sea anemone. However, even when directly face-to-face with the demon that had already brutually truncated three lives in one night, his face was impassive as ever; he held his sword up defiantly, his free hand also raised above his head. He darted a swift glance towards Kayo and Daitaro's retreating backs; seeing that they had almost reached the point where the corridor turned a sharp corner, he turned his gaze back to the creature that leered down at him, and he snapped the fingers of his empty hand.

Chink!

There was a metallic sound, and a tongue of scarlet flame flared in his palm. He thrust his hand – and the flame – upwards. A ball of fire hurtled towards the ceiling. It struck the creature square on, right in the hollow of its rotted-out chest. There was a dull roar; it was hard to tell whether the sound came from the fire itself, or the monster it had struck. The wood was dry, and within moments, fire spread all along its length. Ash and burning chunks of wood rained down from above; flailing about in spasms of pain as the flames steadily devoured it, the monster lost its hold on the ceiling and came crashing to the floor in a shower of sparks.

Having pulled Daitaro to safety, Kayo peered carefully around the corner, feeling the intense heat of the flames on her face even from a distance. She had briefly turned to look back when she had heard the creature groan in its death throes; she had seen the medicine seller still standing in the same spot as the monster had hurtled down towards him, shrieking and flaming. She was scared that he hadn't been able to make it away in time…

Red-rim eyes peered back at her from round the corner, making her squawk in surprise and stumble backward; luckily she merely bumped gently into Daitaro, and so didn't fall over a fourth time. The medicine seller emerged fully out of the smoke-filled corridor. The tips of his sleeves and bandanna were singed, and there was a smudge of soot upon his pale cheek, like an additional streak of war-paint; otherwise he appeared to be no worse for wear.

"Keep going!" he told her, raising his voice over the crackle of flames behind him. "Soon this whole area will be burning; we need to get to the furthest reaches of the building before then."

They hastily set off at a run. After fleeing for a while in silence, listening only to the gradually-receding murmur of the flames behind them and the panting of their own breaths, Daitaro suddenly uttered a stricken-sounding cry. Fearing he had tripped and fallen, Kayo half-turned; Daitaro was still on his feet, but he was stumbling like a drunken man. She reached out to help him, grasping his wrist and pulling him onwards, much like the medicine seller had done for her before. Noticing that Daitaro seemed to be staring fixedly in the other man's direction, Kayo looked as well, and instantly realized what had made him falter.

The medicine seller carried something large upon his back, but it wasn't his medicine pack, which he had left back at the noodle stall. The inert body of Daisuke was slung across his shoulders.

They retreated back to the inner shrine; they had to get as far away from the fire as possible. Kayo could see a distant plume of smoke through the hole in the ceiling, drifting up towards the sky and reflecting an orange glow from the flames. However the inner shrine was quiet, separated from the priest's quarters by a labyrinth of stone-walled corridors. Though Kayo was slightly alarmed by the proximity of the flames, the medicine seller assured her that the fire would most likely be contained to the east side of the complex. The inner shrine had since been added to the main temple and was a self-contained chamber, though it shared the main vestibule's eastern wall. It was doubtful that the fire would spread here unless there were gale-force winds to drive it; luckily the night air was still and damp, preventing there from being too many sparks. Once the medicine seller had thoroughly pasted the walls with charms, set up a ring of scales as sentinels, and drawn a circle around that with the salt they had taken from the noodle stall, Kayo began to feel relatively safe again. Well, as safe as she could feel in these circumstances, at any rate.

Daisuke was placed at the foot of Inari's altar and covered with a scrap of straw matting that had been lying in a corner. There was very little else that could be done for him. His throat had been nearly completely torn out, and what was left of it was still pieced by several splinters as long as a child's finger. His soul had long since departed for the next world. Kayo stood awkwardly beside the body. She hadn't been able to look at it for too long; his eyes, once full of leering egotism, now only stared back blankly, and the sight of all that blood made her feel incredibly nauseous. It wasn't the first corpse she had seen by any means, but for some reason it did fill her with a great deal more regret than she had ever felt in her life; it felt almost like guilt. She couldn't help but think that if she hadn't run away from him before, Daisuke might still be alive…

She hoped the gods wouldn't judge him too harshly in the next realm. All was forgiven in death. The statue of Inari seemed to peer down at the body from the altar, showing nothing more than eternal serenity upon its features. Kayo hoped that this was a good sign.

It soon became apparent that Daisuke's death had had a similar cause to that of Tetsuya. As soon as he had laid him down, the medicine seller had produced a scarlet leaf which had been tucked into Daisuke's sash; he had let it flutter slowly to the ground, where it had instantly crumbled into ash, much like what had become of the rest of the tree-monster. The medicine seller had tended to the body, respectfully closing its eyes and covering its face with an unburned piece of oilskin. He probably does this sort of thing quite often, what with the line of work he's in, Kayo thought sadly. Even though he's quite powerful and always manages to slay the mononoke, he can't always prevent the deaths from happening… She remembered the fate of the entire Sakai household, from which there had also been only three survivors; another ominous shiver jolted along her spine.

Daitaro seemed incapable of performing his son's last rites himself. He stood by with a slackened jaw and eyes which looked almost as lifeless as the corpse's own; it was as though a part of him had also died. He looked somewhat limp, his back bent at a despondent angle and his hands hanging weakly by his sides. Without warning, one of those hands formed itself into a pointing finger which jabbed accusatorily at Kayo and the medicine seller in turn.

"You-!"

He almost growled out the word; Kayo took a startled step back. "This is your doing!" he continued, launching into a grief-stricken tirade. "It's because you were here that this happened! Things were fine here until you pair showed up! It's only since you came here that the trouble started! If you hadn't come… then perhaps he would be…" He broke off, spluttering slightly, trying vainly to veil his emotion as tears ran freely down his cheeks. "It's because of you!" he shouted again vehemently, his voice still cracking, but now containing gathering conviction; his eyes bore into Kayo with blind fury, making her take another involuntary step back. "You villains! You did this to us! You might as well have murdered my son with your own hands!" He drew breath and looked like he was about to say more, but at that moment his hands flew to his mouth and he whirled around, struggling with something close to his face. He turned back towards her, and Kayo saw that a paper charm was firmly sealed over his lips. Though he clawed and tugged at it with all his might, it would not budge.

"You've said enough." The medicine seller crossed his arms and casually watched Daitaro's futile attempts to peel the paper away. He seemed more bemused than insulted by the man's words. "You had best stay silent until you regain control of yourself, least you say something quite regrettable." Daitaro gradually stopped struggling, settling instead for glaring at the medicine seller with the utmost animosity. In return, the medicine seller regarded him with a slight, sardonic smile. "In fact, your words just now have been quite helpful. Though what you said may not be true in the sense that you intended, it is true that one who is still among us is the cause of this mononoke's attacks."

"What?!" Kayo yelped, turning to him incredulously. "You mean it's still after one of us?! I thought that one of those who is already… d-dead… must be the one to blame… I thought Harada and Tatsuya seemed the most likely, since they actually organized the cutting-down of the tree; or perhaps-…" She trailed off, not even daring to suggest Daisuke or Daitaro in the latter's presence; though the words were left unsaid, the man nevertheless scowled resentfully at her, as though he would have offered her some choice words if it weren't for the paper seal over his mouth.

"No, what Daitaro-san says is the truth," the medicine seller reiterated thoughtfully. "It still seems to be searching for the true object of its rampage. It is most unlike a mononoke of this type to attack a random group of passersby for no reason." The medicine seller's pale blue eyes shone eerily in the flickering light from the brazier; they looked like phantom ghost-flames against the density of the shadows that half-shrouded his face. "There must be reasons why we have all become objects of the jubokko's animosity; we have all either provoked it individually, or simply been in its way. Harada-san threatened its life. Tatsuya-san sanctioned its destruction; he also acted as a host for one of its leaves, allowing it to pursue us to the noodle stand. As for Daisuke-san…" He stopped for a moment, seemingly considering his words carefully. "Daisuke-san was similarly used so that the jubokko could follow us here to the temple. He was also unfortunate enough to be momentarily in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whilst Daitaro-san and I were outside in the temple grounds, where we might have been easily ambushed by surrounding branches, the jubokko instead infiltrated the temple building itself. As opposed to us who ventured out, unprotected and alone, Daisuke-san should have been much safer inside. However, he was also the one who was left behind to watch over Kayo-san."

Those twin blue flames alighted on her. Though his gaze was not hostile, coupled with the implication of his words, it seemed to chill her right to the core, until her mind was numb with cold.

"The mononoke's Makoto – is Kayo-san."

Clack!

The teeth of the sword's hilt snapped shut with an unsettling finality. The mononoke's Makoto had been identified.