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Sonzai (Existence)
Eleven: Yui

Through the haze of awakening, she thought she half-heard voices and scrambled to her feet, rushing to the cave entrance to peer through the rapidly brightening morning mist. "Kaika!" she called. "Soi! Kaika!"

But no one answered and nothing moved. She stood there shivering, deciding that the voices had been a product of her half-awake imagination, glancing around with a sigh and a little surprised to see that the cave opened out to a wide, flat valley surrounded by mountains. The fog was still too thick to make out much, but she could hear the sound of rushing water, a river most likely, engorged by last night's flooding.

Kaika and Soi could be minutes away, or hours. The thought sank her spirits, and she shuffled back inside, staring at her possessions laid out in a neat crescent around where she had slept. Her back ached, as if she had fallen asleep in an odd, twisted position, and she raised one hand to her head, feeling the beginnings of a bump there. Had she hit her head?

She knelt to fold the blouse and skirt that lay crumpled at the outer edge of the half-circle, and the clam shell winked at her in the morning light.

Clam shell.

The shirt fell from her hands and the events of last night's vivid dream flooded into her mind. But no, it had not been a dream. The ghost child had left her there in the dark to willingly embrace what had lain inside that shell, and that had been nothing but her own memories, memories that she had forgotten. There had been the room where she had lain unconscious, the chair in which Nakago had sat and watched over her as she cried for Miaka, the hallways of the Kutou palace, the blue dragon.

Tomo.

She sat down hard on the rock floor, head in her hands, and stared at the small white shell, so deceptively innocent and harmless. She was tempted to touch it again, to tempt fate and see if Tomo would still answer the summons, but something told her not to, a small voice whispering to her that she had seen through all the illusions Tomo had to offer, and in doing so had defeated him at his ultimate game.

Seiryuu no Miko, he had called her.

She shook her head hard and finished folding the shirt, then folded the skirt and stuffed both into her pack, laid the cloak neatly on the ground beside it. The water canteen was still nearly full, so she did not need to worry about that. As she began to pack the remainder of the fruit, her stomach growled and told her that she had not eaten in almost an entire day, so she plucked the ripest of the apples from the pile and devoured it.

Then she slung the pack over her shoulders and stood up.

The mist had mostly burned away, and she saw there was indeed a river running through the center of the valley, its banks wide and steep and gently sloping, lined with small trees. She glanced around the cave again, silently thanking it for sheltering her during the night, and then stared hard at the white shell at her feet. It was with reluctant fingers that she bent down and picked it up to place it back into her pocket, but even as she left the cave and headed out into the moist, muddy patches of ground leading down to the riverbank, she knew she could not have left the place without taking it with her.

She did not intend to go far. Soi would eventually find her, she told herself, and so all that was necessary was that she be patient and wait. She could have waited in the cave, but the events of last night seemed a little too vivid within its walls, like some sort of waking nightmare. Here in the sunlight and the foaming river rapids, the world seemed somewhat brighter.

Finding a broad, flat rock overlooking the sandy banks, she sat down with a sigh and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and staring down into the water. The image of Tomo falling toward her, all black hair and red blood, still lingered before her eyes and no matter how hard she stared into the glittering sunlit river water, she could not rid herself of it. Why had he stood there and let her come towards him? she wondered. Surely someone with power of his caliber could have simply disappeared.

But yet Tomo had stood there and waited.

She jumped to her feet and made a long, slow circle around the rock, hands in her pockets but not letting her fingers brush the clam shell there. A flock of birds came into view, wheeling lazily through the sky that was now almost blindingly blue. Like the light from the character on Kaika's arm, she thought, and then jerked her hands out of her pockets as if she had just broken some kind of taboo by simply thinking of it.

She would not think of Kaika. She could not. Even if fate was kind and there would be some kind of future for the two of them, it was not fair to him, because she didn't belong here. In the end, she would return to Tokyo or she would be killed here, and either way, he would be left behind.

She suddenly wondered if Suboshi had understood that.

The mud around the stone was still very wet, and her shoes made squashing noises as they sank into the thick, loamy earth. She lost track of how many times she had already gone around the rock, only that there were many tracks of footprints in the mud now, and the sun rose higher in the sky, and Soi did not come.

The Kutou palace most likely lay somewhere east of the river, she decided, calling to mind her rudimentary tracking skills that she had learned at some point and time, most likely from Nakago, though she could not remember him teaching her anything about direction-finding. She wondered what he was doing now, if he was striding through the corridors of the palace as she remembered him, emperor's robes flying behind him instead of the blue cape of the shogun. Perhaps he was already drawing up maps for a new campaign. She thought of his face and tried to hate him, but instead she just felt very sad.

Nakago-sama, you lied to me.

She stopped in her tracks and retreated back to her rock, crossing her legs under her as she stared out at the river again, but thinking of the shell in her pocket. The least Tomo deserved was an apology, if not an explanation. She had invaded his domain without asking, had defied him in his requests, and then had forced herself into his memories. Feeling faintly ashamed of herself, she rubbed one hand along the top of her forehead at the sweat beginning to bead there, and then abruptly reached for the shell.

It did not glow this time. Maybe she just didn't see it in the brighter light of the sun, or maybe its power had been spent in the encounter last night. She held it for a long time, willing it to open, to speak, to do something, but it simply sat there in her hand and continued to be just a plain, common clam shell. It would, she thought as she muttered to herself under her breath and glared at it.

"Answer me, Tomo," she said through gritted teeth, and then the shell shuddered in her hand and fell open.

Startled, she jumped and almost dropped it. But nothing appeared from the shell's depths, no images or mirages or anything of the sort to suggest it was anything other than an ordinary shell washed up on the shore. She waited a moment more, then was about to lay it carefully on the rock face and go back to watching the river when she felt someone behind her.

When she turned around, he was standing there where she thought he would be, the resplendence of his costume almost hidden by the shadows of the trees clustered in thick groves along the ridge. He did not move as she slipped off the rock and took a step in his direction. She was half-fearful that she would feel the invisible wall of air again, but nothing stopped her, and he simply watched her walk towards him, expressionless beneath the mask of paint.

She stopped close enough to touch him, but did not do so. It would be a useless effort, and even if she had not already known that, the long black hair and tail feathers of his headdress that did not stir in the brisk morning breeze would have alerted her. They stood in silence for an instant, before he said, "What do you want?"

"Why didn't you pull me into the shell like you did before?" she asked, and his mouth quirked, whether in amusement or annoyance she couldn't tell.

"And what would that have accomplished?"

"I don't want to be treated any differently," she said quietly, "than I was before. I don't want you to see me any differently. I told you that I'm simply a wanderer trying to find my own way home."

He seemed to study her, and then he said abruptly, "Why did you save me?"

She blinked. "What?"

Tomo didn't respond, the amber eyes boring into her face with brilliant intensity, as if willing her to remember something she had forgotten, and all of a sudden she recalled him again, falling from heaven into her outstretched arms, as she had laid her cheek against the mortal wound in his chest and forbid him to die. At the time, it had seemed absurd for her to do anything else. "I suppose," she said after a moment, "I couldn't have lived with myself if I had let go."

The peacock feathers swirled as he turned abruptly away from her. She let him stare off into the distance, wondering if he was formulating a response or if he simply decided that their conversation was over. Shadows passed lightly overhead, a flock of birds calling to each other in strong voices as they fluttered away toward the east.

"That wasn't your decision," he said finally.

His voice was so flat and expressionless that it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. She knew better than to try and second-guess Tomo, who had been an actor all his life and could trick her into believing what he wanted her to believe. There was no wall of air here after all, but his wall of words was just as strong. "I'm not here to judge you," she began, and he shook his head roughly.

"Don't attempt to put words into my mouth, Seiryuu no Miko. You breached my guards once, but don't think you'll be able to do so again. I owe you nothing."

"Then why," she said, "did you come back?"

His hands clenched at his sides, the long painted fingernails digging into his palms. She winced, wondering if it was painful, and waited for him to answer, but he did not.

"I'm going back to see Nakago," she said, and saw him stiffen, knew she was close to the mark. "I'm going back to find some answers that he never gave me. That's the only way I can get home, you see. That's all I want to do, in the end."

"You should never have come here in the first place," he ground out, and she knew he was trying to make her angry, but it simply made her feel very sad. This Tomo in front of her was only a bare framework, a shade of the man he had been, reduced to nothing but an empty shell.

"I wish I hadn't come. But wishes can't change the past."

He whirled toward her then, and she almost took a step back in alarm as the feathers whipped toward her, and then stopped herself as they passed through her and appeared on the other side, intact. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on her, glittering with a clarity that frightened her, and she shivered.

"There is one person in this world whose wishes can change the past," he said softly, "and that is you."

She shuddered at his words, and it was as if she could feel his hot breath on her face like a dragon's, all blue and gold and white like the heart of a fire. Her heart pounded so loud that she could barely hear herself breathe. There had been something about wishes that had been important. Something about prayers being granted, a light from heaven, thunder splitting the sky. Her forehead burned and she brought up her arms wildly, warding herself off from something that was not there.

Kaijin.

"Stop," she gasped. "Stop...Tomo...don't..."

The world righted itself and she became aware that she had fallen to her hands and knees in the muddy ground, and that Tomo had stepped back, his face once again blank of all emotion. Slowly, painfully, she picked herself up, brushing the mud off her skirt as best as she could. As she scrubbed the worst of it from the palms of her hands, feeling horribly disoriented and confused, he said, "I am sorry."

She stared at him.

But there was no elaboration forthcoming, obviously, because he turned away from her again, and she went back to picking the mud out of her fingernails with a sigh. They could be at this all day, she thought desperately, and wracked her brain for some way to make the man before her at least respond to her in a reasonable fashion. As she feared, nothing came to mind.

And then he said, "I couldn't leave without finding out if I had died for nothing."

The odd sentence threw her for a moment before she realized he was finally responding to her earlier question of why he had come back. She turned her attention away from her fingernails to glance at his red-robed back, the ornate gold headdress, and when he again met her eyes, she wondered what the face behind the paint had looked like.

"I pledged my life to Nakago and his cause," he continued, a little awkwardly. "That cause included you. Once you called Seiryuu, Nakago promised me, then life as we had known it would change. We would be masters of all we touched. I offered him my loyalty in exchange for the world."

"And what did you get in return?" she said.

Tomo's lip twisted. "In return, I received neither his loyalty nor the world. If I had not died, perhaps I would be laughing now at how foolish I was. I don't want revenge, Seiryuu no Miko. I don't even want an equal share. All I am looking for is proof that I did not die for one man's empty dream."

"I know," she said. "I saw." Her eyes went to his chest, covered now by the red opera robe, though she guessed that if she asked him to remove it, she would see the same bloody wound that had bubbled against her mouth inside his illusion. Perhaps he knew what she was thinking, because his eyes slid away from hers and one of his hands curled slightly.

"We do not all choose to be wanderers, Yui-sama."

"Just Yui is fine," she told him quietly.

He had opened his mouth to say something else, but as she spoke, he closed it and stared thoughtfully upward at the tree canopy. The sun was almost to its zenith point now and she wondered if Soi had been delayed, or maybe something had happened to her and Kaika. They could not have been that far separated by the storm, and Soi had never found it difficult to locate her before this.

"They're late," he observed.

"Who?" she asked pointedly, and he shot her a sardonic glance.

"Don't try to test me, Seiryuu no Miko. I've already told you far more than you need to know."

The invisible wall was going up again, and she said, "I'm sorry. I've asked you to trust me. I should do the same for you."

To her surprise, he began to pace, clasping his hands behind his back and making long strides back and forth from tree trunk to tree trunk. She watched him, taking in the elaborate costume again, the radiance of the colors that dazzled forth from the fabric, the gleam of the golden crown that did not seem to come from the sun, and then realized that just as with Soi, Tomo's edges were faintly ragged, like torn fabric against the solid forest framework that was his backdrop on center stage.

"How many wishes did you make?" he asked abruptly, and she frowned.

"Excuse me?"

"Wishes," he said, impatiently, stopping his pacing and crossing his arms. "Three wishes, Nakago said you would receive. Did you use all of them?"

Her mind muddled its way through his question. Wishes, she thought again, something important about them and Miaka. Wishes. Miaka. Seiryuu. She swallowed and fought the words that threatened to run round and round in a circle until she was dizzy. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I don't remember."

His eyes were hard and flat as he took in her words, and then something seemed to clear in his face. "I see," he said.

She squinted up at the sun so he would not see the tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. "That's partly why I'm going back to Nakago. It's like a book, in my head, but half of the pages are still blank, and the other half..." she tried to laugh. "Well, the other half is mostly there, but it doesn't make sense without the rest."

Tomo was staring at her strangely, and she returned his gaze a little defiantly. "What?" she demanded, and he gave a sort of snort at the back of his throat that was gentler than the almost-ghostly cackle she seemed to remember from a long time ago. "If you're waiting for Nakago to fill in the blanks," he told her, "you're badly mistaken."

She shook her head. "No, that's not it. I think..." Stopping, trying to choose the right words. "I think that maybe if I just go back and see him, hear his voice...something will jog itself loose." She laughed again. "I know that sounds a little farfetched, but it's true."

"Sometimes," he said, not looking at her, "I think the same thing. That seeing his face and hearing his voice will be enough."

She took a step toward him, and then she said, "Come with me."

For the first time she could remember, Tomo looked faintly shocked, and then he stared pointedly at the shell lying behind her on the rock. "Do I have a choice?" he said. The condescending edge was back in his voice.

"Yes," she said. "You do. I can simply just leave the shell here on this rock, and you won't be bothered by me again."

"And then what will I do?" he demanded, and she told him, "That's what you wanted at the beginning, wasn't it? To be left alone?"

He glared at her.

"I won't force you to come with me," she said. "I'm not Nakago."

He folded his arms tighter and continued to glare, but the glare was missing something now, and she could tell he was thinking while trying to give the impression that he was not thinking after all. Was he such a poor actor, she wondered, that he was not able to disguise that? Or maybe he meant her to see. She was still pondering this, waiting for his answer, when he stiffened and then said, "There is someone coming."

"Is it Soi?" she said, already scrambling over to the rock to pull her pack on so that she would be ready, but he shook his head, and a chill of dread ran through her.

In the distance, she could hear the hoof beats of horses.

"Who is it?" she asked him, but as they both turned their heads in the direction of the approaching company, she knew the answer before he said it.

"The Kutou army."

If he expected her to panic or to run, he was mistaken. She simply shrugged her pack on and tightened the straps, and as he gave her an unreadable look, she said, "I'm not about to pass up a direct trip to the Kutou palace. This will save time."

"Soi will be angry," he responded flatly.

"If you do not go with me," she said, "you 'll be free to stay behind and warn her if you like."

She did not wait for a response from him but leaned down to pick up her water skin, and as she did so, the clam shell jittered slightly where it lay on the rock and then swung shut. "Tomo?" she called behind her, but there was no answer. She stared at the shell for a moment more, and then tucked it securely into her pocket. When her hands touched it, it was feverishly warm.

There was nothing else to be done, so she moved out from behind the cover of trees as the first of the mounted patrol appeared at the top of the hill, thundering down the slope into the valley, dust and bits of grass and wildflower flying from under the horses' hooves in a whirlwind of color. The leader gave a shout, wheeled his horse around at the sight of her, and she cringed back a bit as the animal strained at the bit and barely missed her as it turned sharply, slowing to a trot and then a walk. The sword pointed at her throat was very sharp.

"Don't move!" the leader barked, and she bowed her head slightly and kept very still. There were more horses now, coming in toward her in a tight circle. For a moment she felt the old fears rise up and she almost panicked, but that was past, she reminded herself firmly. She would return to the palace, and she would face Nakago, and somehow she would finish the story.

Someone dismounted and came toward her with a coil of rope, and she stood obediently as they bound her hands behind her back and then jerked her towards one of the horses. "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep quiet," her captor said. "The emperor would very much like to have you back alive."