Chapter Twenty-Four
Safety
"In one such dark place, I felt conscious of a singular accession of fright, as if some subtle and bodiless emanation from the abyss were engulfing my spirit; but the blackness was too great for me to percieve the source of my alarm."
~ H.P. Lovecraft ~
Jungney's story began with an odd, cryptic statement. "I can find anything you've lost," he said, in a context that he would never remember. And though he knew that the man was a con artist, who had left out the most crucial details of his job from their conversation (something he could hardly fault him for, for he had not spoken of his own past and who he was, truly, above and beyond bein Houjun), he found himself oddly intrigued by these words.
"Anything at all?" he asked, trying to sound more critical than hopeful. "You can find anything?"
"Anything at all, my fellow inmate. I have ... a gift."
A gift. Houjun almost smiled, because it sounded familiar and at the same time was perhaps a wonderful con this man played out with gullible strangers. "And how did you come by this gift?"
"Well, my friend, I shall tell you," said Jungney, though he wouldn't, not eventually. "Even though it is a long story, it's not like we're going anywhere."
There was an anticipatory silence; he found himself waiting with bated breath. The truth was that it did not matter what Jungney said to him, as long as he kept speaking. He could not speak to him of the things he had seen or the things he suspected, for the man was still a voice without a body and Houjun, no matter how distraught, knew what was sensible and what wasn't. But to hear another human being speak, tangibly speak, made him feel oddly more concrete himself.
"Oy," said the storyteller, presently. "Are you listening?"
"Yes," said Houjun, "yes I am."
They made quite a sight, Hikari was sure; a thirteen-year-old and a hovering child following a rock. In this crazy universe, it made perhaps a little more sense than it would have in Tokyo; but even then this rock was stretching the limits of belieavability. Of course, even a skeptic of Hikari's order couldn't discount that which was happening directly before her, and so they followed a rock.
The rock led them through an almost invisible path. Sometimes, forgetting that one of the people following it was neither six inches high nor able to simply teleport through rough patches, it led them through a path that did not exist at all and Hikari found herself stuck in a thorny bush. She had never been more glad for her school shoes, which were made of the uncouth, stubborn material that allowed no aesthetic pleasure, but also seemed to dispell pokage. But other than these brief interludes, at the end of which she always found Nyan Nyan and the rock waiting for her patiently. This did not really serve to improve her mood at all.
But for the most of it, they walked through an easier path, and Hikari had to admit that the rock was doing a lot better than she would have, when left in a jungle. It wasn't an unkind rock, because when there was a path easier to take, he would take it, only for her benefit, clearly.
They walked for quite a while, though there was no way of measuring time in a jungle where sunlight had a perfunctory sort of presence. The day remained, in the very least, in that period of its cycle, where the sun was not low on either side, but high enough to fall into the broad generalisation of "afternoon". It felt like an hour or so to Hikari, but could have been much less or much more, when finally, the rock stopped, and Nyan Nyan hovered gently to the ground.
"Safe now," said Nyan Nyan, and smiled so happily that Hikari, to her great horror, found herself somewhat cheered. She quickly amended this with a fierce scowl.
"I don't get it," she said, scowling, but the voices reached her ears in the next instant, a garble of voices, a man and a woman, evidently arguing about something. Hikari looked around, blinking. "Where is that coming from?" she asked, blinking.
The rock rose as a Nyan Nyan pointed before her. Together, girl, crazy-floating-demi-goddess and rock moved to thicket of bushes lined up before them. The rock toddled under the bushes, presumably to appear on the other side, Nyan Nyan hovered just a little so she was just a little higher than Hikari's head, and Hikari, with some scratches, carefully separated the branches of the bushes a little so that she could look.
It was a small clearing, lit by clearer sunlight. And at the center of this clearing, around a small fire, were two people - a woman and a tall human being whose face was masked with bright paint, leaving some doubt unto his gender.
This, of course, wasn't surprising. Hikari had not been in the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho long enough to be accustomed to not finding a noisy human being at every corner. It had ccured to her that smething was amiss with the landscape in the book, but she had always attributed that to the fact that, well, it was a book she was walking through. But more than that, really, it was the fact that everything was incredibly quiet. Finding three people in a clearing in an otherwise human-less forest was, therefore, not particularly surprising to her.
The people in themselves were a whole other matter. Hikari couldn't have any way of knowing what constituted 'decked up' at this end of the parallel universe, but she was very sure the woman was, attired in bright red, probably bridal, clothing. Her companion, standing in the middle of the clearing shaking his fist at the woman, seemed to be shaped in a manner that was essentially male, but carried himself with an exaggerated grace that seemed distinctively female. The paint on his face coloured the question ambiguous, though Hikari was far less interested in that as she was in his long drawn out movements. He was pacing, only it didn't look like pacing, so much as it looked like a dramatic dance of some kind, with elaborate hand movements and the most impressive huff Hikari had seen for a long time.
The woman in the bridal attire, however, seemed singularly unimpressed.
"Do stop behaving like a hassled duck, Tomo," she said, blandly. "I don't care if you feel the need to keep uttering Nakago's name to yourself all the time. Even if it isn't his true name."
"I DO NOT NEED TO KEEP UTTERING HIS NAME TO PROFESS MY LOVE FOR HIM!" he hollered.
"I don't care if you do."
"BUT I DON'T!"
"Anyway," she said, firmly, "maybe we should think about what we want to do with him tonight." She jerked her head towards the other edge of the clearing, and Hikari noticed, for the first time, the third person in the clearing.
There was something remarkably different about him, even though Hikari couldn't tell - not yet anyway - what this was. In comparison to the brightly painted man-type person and the bride in the center of the clearing, he was quite plain, and somehow brown. His clothing was plain, though Hikari recognised the colours of that the royal guards in Eiyou had worn under their armour, his appearance... well, he wasn't a bad looking man, but next to the man called Tomo, it was hard to draw a conclusion; and perhaps the only interesting thing about him was the fact that sticking out of a very plain scabbard was a distinctively ornate and unplain hilt of a sword. In the light of the fire, this hilt appeared to glow, just as Tomo and the bride seemed to glow, and on the whole this made the man look even more unappealing.
Yet, there was that absurd flash of recognition; a sense that she knew him. She knew him as she had known Chichiri, and as she knew Reishun - instinctively and with total recognition. But she knew him also because she had seen him, or aspects of him that had somehow reverberated in a manner that was genetically illogical, but so real that even Hikari didn't doubt it.
"...Shu Eian," she breathed, and was aware of Nyan Nyan next to her, nodding in silent confirmation. A great sense of relief spread over Hikari. She forgot, for the moment, that she had personally believed that Shu Eian was a bit of a git (anyone, she had reasoned, fuelled by logic and loyalty, who kept someone like Reishun hanging by a thread was a bit of a git) and probably more than a little poncy; instead, she found herself claimed by the entirely illogical belief that she was now safe. Eian knew Reishun, but perhaps more importantly, Reishun vouched for Eian.
She started to speak, opening her mouth. And then, blinking, she closed it, and stood there with a dawning sense of awkwardness.
Having figured this out did not, of course, suddenly equip her with the social skills required to pop out of the bushes and introduce herself as the Shinzaho of Suzaku. There had to be some kind of protocol for leaping out of the bushes and announcing one's presence. What would she say? 'Oy, ye noble Eian, I am the fourth Shinzaho!' seemed reasonably informative and succinct, but lacked finesse. As a result, she stood there long enough for two things to happen.
First, she became excessively aware of her need to make use of the bushes, a fact that did not help her come to any kind of conclusion other than the fact that the idiots who wrote adventure novels were a bunch of unrealistic, unfair fools who hadn't a clue how to prepare one realistically for a foray into the supernatural world. Just because one was confronted with a floating demi-goddess and a moving rock did not mean that one's bladder went on holiday. Quite, as it happened, the contrary. (This would later lead to a great deal of irritation with an unwitting Eian, who, never having been a thirteen-year-old girl stuck in a strange world, would never quite grasp the horrors of having to a) use the outdoors for what was, in her own world, a firmly indoor activity, and b) deal with having to expressing the need to do this to a boy.)
Second, dawdling in the bushes with a tiny girl poking her very hard in the hips and a rock that, while lacking eyes, gave her the distinct impression that it was studying her expectantly, she realised something that Shu Eian had not.
"Oooh, you do make a good point Soi," said Tomo, rubbing his hands together in unabashed relish.
He followed Eian, who was carrying dry twigs and leaves to the center of the clearing to add to the fire. He followed him incredibly closely, at that, but Eian somehow seemed even less impressed with him than Soi. In fact, for all intents and purposes, he ignored the painted man entirely.
"I vote for an illusion," announced the latter, undeterred in his enthusiasm by this lack of interest. He pulled out a feather from his head and ran it through his fingers, grinning. "It's been a while since we did a good illusion."
"Yes, but that's because your illusions always take a very sordid turn, Tomo," stated the woman whose name was Soi, rolling her eyes.
"Can't blame me, can you? He's quite a dish and I've always wondered what it would be like to-"
"No illusions," said Soi, firmly.
"Oh you're such a bore," drawled the man, pretending to pout.
He bent over to look extremely closely at Eian and then, to Hikari's great incredulity, proceeded to poke him in the ear with the feather. Eian shivered dismally, as though cold, but other than this, he did not react.
"And you're just bored without Nakago to focus your energies on," said Soi, sounding quite bored herself, as Hikari tried not to think what she was thinking. Sentences that began with 'could it be' and 'is it possible' usually ended with something completely absurd. In this universe, these absurd things had an annoying tendency to be true.
"I didn't say his name, for god's sake!" yelled Tomo, tossing the feather at Soi. "I can't believe I'm stuck here with YOU of all people!" Throwing both hands into the air, he turned and stalked dramatically towards the fire.
Then, as Hikari watched, he walked right through the fire, entirely unaffected by the flames.
And this led almost directly to a number of entirely unprecedented events.
Once upon a time, Jungney began, he had been a part of a small wandering tribe. All they ever did was wander. Had he, Houjun, ever heard of such a useless preoccupation? Anyway - they wandered. They prayed to the gods of rain and hunting and roads, most of whom it transpired they had invented in the course of their numerous journeys.
You had to do something to pass the time.
But one day, their tribe encountered a caravan of traders.
At this conjuncture, Jungney spoke of a woman - or that which later Chichiri would remember as a woman, even though he would have the impression that she was several women at once and only be giving Jungney the benefit of the doubt.
Mostly, though, the consequence of this encounter was that he decided trading was a far more lucrative trade.
His people were offended, first because he'd lain with a woman of another clan, when their own people were dying out, but more because he had betrayed the tribe's ethical code. You see, as all tribes do, they had their own legends; they were not just wanderers, but pathfinders, people who sought out the furthest reaches of the world and documented it.
"Mapmakers," muttered Chichiri with some surprise.
Sure, said Jungney, though he was quick to add that he had never seen a map made in his life. He did possess a unique ability to locate things, but that was probably more because he was a very perceptive person. Mostly, his people just wandered, walking around like a bunch of homeless idiots. It was, he emphasized, annoying. And quite besides the point, really, because this was, after all, a story about a thousand beautiful maidens he had rescued - and who had, of course, then turned into varying versions of women who Chichiri, being a monk and a gentleman, could only call 'worldly' - and gold in hoards and trunks of treasure.
Chichiri did not point out that really, that wasn't the premise he had started with.
The fog that had descended on his mind did not lift, but he was reminded that no fog that descended on anyone's mind could deprive one of one's reason and imagination. And as Jungney talked, Chichiri found that he felt better, as though the gust of imagination had given him the space to breathe again.
He found himself thinking, rather inexplicably, of three old friends (one perhaps a lot older than the others), walking down a road towards something. For a few moments, reminded by his friends, he thought of Kounan, his home, the riover and the flood. And he thought that once Jungney had shared his story, perhaps he could share his own - not all of it, perhaps, but the parts that didn't reveal his identity as a Suzaku seishi. Something like good sense reminded him that he was speaking not to a friend, but to a voice whose body he could not see.
As he considered this, he realised the silence around him had the air of having been around for an inappropriately long time. Chichiri blinked. Had Jungney finished his story and he, Chichiri, said nothing? The next second, a snore resounded through the walls.
Sighing nearly with relief, he sat back, looking at the single window through which he could see a single star, listening to the steady rhythm of the conman's snoring.
That there was something wrong here was altogether an understatement. It had never so happened that Chichiri had found himself without a memory. Even if he sometimes briefly forgot, he always managed to locate the memory in the recesses of his mind, hiding behind a rock, washed away by the undercurrent of a flood - but still always within reach. Without being able to find his own memories, he felt oddly bereft, lost in a particularly blinded sort of way.
There were only shadows of things that had happened, and he was sure they were important. Why had he thought of Taka, Tasuki and Tokaki walking down a road? He had a strong feeling that was relevant, yet he couldn't remember where he'd seen this, or why he thought of it now.
And thinking of all this, he slept.
And a few hours later, later, they came for him, and though he didn't know them, he knew that their laughter terrified him. Something inside him twisted, and an instinct guided him to the small corner of his mind before they could put the chains to his wrists.
The first of these unprecedented events was that Hikari let out a squeak that could only be described as girly. There was, of course, a second unprecedented event - and indeed, a third and fourth; but none of these are relevant just yet, and none of the actors at the present moment were aware of them at all. The squeak however settled the social conundrum Hikari had stumbled into.
"WHO GOES THERE!" boomed Eian, and before Hikari could drive herself into another conundrum about how to respond to this, he had breached the bushes to drag her out by the arm none too gently. It was hardly the welcome she had been expecting; oddly, in all the socially awkward consequences of approaching the man that she had thought of in the last few minutes, she had not thought that he might be suspicious of her.
"Ow!" she protested, as he tossed her down to the ground. He had a sword to her throat before she could propose a backing claim to her objection.
"WHO ARE YOU?" he bellowed, looking altogether more threatening than a man who had been tickled in the ear could really have been expected to.
He wasm Hikari realised, a tall man, and looked very much as though it would be no trouble for him to pick her up and toss her into a tree. It was a more unsettling sight than she could have anticipated, simply because she hadn't imagined there was anything worth being afraid of in this world other than the man with the black eyes - and certainly not Eian. But he stood there looking most threatening, and this led to another rather girly squeak. She opened her mouth to consider what to say, and failed to conjure the words for it.
"ANSWER ME!" he yelled.
"I'M TRYING!" burst out Hikari, frustrated. His expression seemed to soften just a little, but he held the tip of his sword to her throat quite steadily. But it was beginning to register to him that he wasn't dealing with a spy or a recalcitrant soldier, but a thirteen-year-old girl who had, though he didn't know it, had a very trying day. He raised both eyebrows imperiously and expectantly, the menacing look not leaving his eyes.
More unsettlingly, both the painted Tomo and the only mildly less ornamentally attired Soi were hovering on either side of him, peering at her with great interest.
"Um," began Hikari, eyeing the two of them nervously. They did not speak; they only peered, with very narrow looks in their bright, sparkly eyes, which seemed not merely to reflect the light of the fire as Eian's did, but which were glowing with the light itself. As though they were somehow capable of absorbing it and becoming partly luminiscent.
Ghosts? thought Hikari, somehow less alarmed by this than the man she believed to be her of course, the moment the thought occured to her, she could see it; they glowed, not as the rock glowed - terribly bright, to the point of being opaque - but in a manner that was a lot less tangible.
And the rock, she realised, blinking and suddenly looking around the ground, was nowhere to be seen at all.
Eian's sword tapped the side of her head. "Try harder," he suggested, distrust pronounced in his gaze.
"Um," said Hikari again, "I mean don't- I'm not an enemy, I'm kind of on your side and-" Now, she thought dismally, he thinks I'm mentally challenged. "Um, Reishun?"
Eian's expression shifted, almost dramatically. A hint of hardness remained, of course, but he looked stunned; there could have been no doubt about what he was feeling, for his features expressed it vividly. Even through her alarm, Hikari found the expressiveness of his features interesting. "What?" he asked, in a more civil, but still suspicious tone.
"I mean, I know Reishun," said Hikari slightly more evenly, staring at the sword that remained steadily pointed at her. It occured to her that if he didn't believe her, then all her troubles would come to a swift end. He did not trust her. Had she been in any position to evaluate this, she would have realised that this probably more to do with the fact that he had spent probably a fair amount of time with the two ghosts, who seemed quite inclined to haunt him to insanity. But this didn't occur to her. She was reminded very strongly of her first impression of the man, from Reishun's description. To her surprise, she found that she was feeling something she quite rarely felt so strongly: disappointed. "You are Shu Eian, aren't you?" she asked, presently.
"How do you know Reishun?" he demanded, his eyes hardening slightly.
"And who is Reishun?" asked the painted-faced ghost, looking at her with exaggerated interest. "A girl, perhaps?"
"It's all he needs," commented Soi. "He's the picture of misery, this one."
Eian's sword tapped her on the head again. "Well, girl, answer me! Don't just sit there staring into space!"
"I-"
The painted-faced ghost gasped. "You see us?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Tomo," said Soi, loftily, peering at Hikari even more closely, much to Hikari's discomfort, "no one could look at you and not comment on it."
It takes a person of a specific kind of disposition to be able to deal with all of these things at the same time. Hikari did not possess this disposition. Eian was now looking at her as though he suspected her mental health. Ugh, she thought. Ugh ugh ugh! SAY something Hikari. "I... well, I m-met her? I mean I'm not really from here and there's this- I kind of-"
"Hotohori-sama?" said a sing-song voice from behind Eian.
Eian looked as though he had been stung. Though his eyes didn't leave Hikari, his entire stance changed, from one of great suspicion and a total lack of friendliness, to one of realisation (friendliness did not follow). He didn't turn to look at Nyan Nyan, but there could be no doubt that he was extremely aware of her, and the look on his face, as though he'd been slapped (Hikari was sorely tempted to slap him too), proved he knew this voice. He had been waiting for this voice. He stared at Hikari so hard that she felt as though she was about to explode from the pressure of his gaze.
"Hotohori-sama?" said Nyan Nyan again, this time floating around to look at him.
Eian straightened, drawing back his sword. Yet he looked only at Hikari. "You," he said, flatly, with a touch of incredulity. "You're ...it."
This did it. She hadn't particularly hoped for confetti and dancing, but civility and interest and some amount of faith would have been nice. After a couple of hours of bumping her head in various places, having a screaming match with a tiny, floating and annoyingly literal-minded girl, meeting a rock, and then traipsing through the forest to what was evidently meant to be "safety", she couldn't bring herself to care about his haunting, or what she might look like to him. The tragic hero facade only served now to remind her of how Reishun had spoken of him, and how everytime he was mentioned, Hikari had been claimed by the definitive sense that this man was, in fact, a ponce. And thus, Hikari found her tongue.
She took the opportunity to lift herself from the ground, drawing herself to her full height. It did not really help that Eian continued to tower over her. All of them did, possessing the kind of altitude that was, to a short and slightly plump teenager overly conscious about her stomach and the generally atrocious appearance of her belt, rather intimidating. Eian seemed, as far as Hikari could tell, even less impressed. He looked as though he believed he had fought bravely for the fate of the world and the universe itself had screwed up, an expression that was not out of place on his tragic hero facade.
"Yes. Sure. I'm it," she said, scowling at him. "I take it you know Nyan Nyan."
His nostrils flared, and his eyebrow inched towards his hairline. "We're acquainted," he agreed. Hikari experienced a strange burst of protectiveness for Nyan Nyan too. "Do you know that you are being haunted by two ghosts? Yes, I see you," she added, taking great pleasure in watching Eian's grow completely flummoxed. "And that paint is just weird."
"Just like your father," drawled Tomo, sneering at her. "You have no taste."
"What the hell are you talking about?" demanded Eian, seemingly unaware of them, before Hikari had the time to feel surprised. Tomo's sneer turned into a smirk; Soi, standing by him, seemed less inclined to gloat, though she watched Hikari studiously, as though deeply interested. Neither was inclined to oblige her by popping out and scaring the wits out of Eian.
"You don't see them," said Hikari, genuinely surprised by this.
"He won't," said Soi, quietly. So quietly that Hikari couldn't be sure if she was pleased about this or not. "He can barely sense us."
"See?" said Tomo, taking the feather out of his hear gear again to poke Eian's ear with it. Eian shivered again, the hollow misery in his eyes returning. Hikari, who wasn't feeling terribly friendly towards Eian, hesitated for a moment to tell Tomo off for what he was doing, and in that moment, Nyan Nyan - in orb form now - whizzed past her head to ram into the ghost. Of course, she went right through him, but this seemed to be punishment enough for him, for he yelped and jumped back. "Alright, alright! Spoilsport."
"Though I am of course tremendously impressed that his face didn't scare you," said Soi, her face so blank that Hikari hadn't a clue if she was joking or not.
It didn't matter, she reminded herself. Foxed, and determinedly ignoring the ghosts now, she turned to look at Eian again. He of course looked more suspicious than ever. "You- you have the other Shinzaho too, don't you?" she asked, and as his eyes widened even more, she sighed. "Look, I don't think we have the time for this. We need to go help Reishun and the No Name woman. Nyan Nyan here," - Nyan Nyan of course did oblige her by popping out of the orb and going, "HAI!" - "thinks they're in great danger and we should- we should, well, um." She stopped. Though he had lowered his sword he still held it tightly. And he watched her altogether too intensely for her liking.
The fact that he didn't trust her was somehow more terrible than his yelling and tossing her about and standing around being tall. Hikari did not like to think of herself as a hopeful person; she certainly had hope, but she didn't place faith in other people and expect them to fish her out of a difficult situation. Of course, she had never needed to ask for help. Having the kind of parents she did, she had never been in a situation that was categorically hopeless. And through her journey through the book, someone had been around to help her out. That Eian, who was supposed to be a Suzaku warrior and apparently Reishun was going to marry him, didn't trust her, didn't seem too trustable himself, was more shocking than she would have liked to admit to herself.
She drew a breath and glared right back. "Are you going to help me or aren't you, Eian?"
Eian looked at her, as though he didn't quite believe she was here, and then at Nyan Nyan. This seemed to convince him a bit more. "Yes," he said, though Hikari was decidedly unconvinced. "Of course I'll help you."
When as an old man he looked back on his life, Donghai would come to the conclusion that falling over in the heat of the battle and getting stuck in a relatively large pot (which was of course not really designed for a relatively large man's behind) was the best thing that ever happened to him. At the moment, he had no such notion. Not only had he fallen into a pot and become terribly stuck, he had been rescued by the woman who had smacked him into the pot in the first place. And after removing him from the pot (she said this was because the pot could be useful), she had tied him to a tree.
But had he not fallen into a pot, he would have been dead, as most of his companions were, and there was something to be said for not being dead.
He also did believe that he was the only man in the world to have ever fallen into a pot in order to wake up from what felt like a long dark magical enchantment of some kind. He told her as much, and though this didn't deter her from tying him to a tree and demanding all kinds of information, she did seem to believe him.
It was clear to him that this was no ordinary woman. For one thing, she carried him (with pot), her fallen comrade and their various possessions to the where the stream flowed in exactly one trip. But, in a display of foresightedness he had scarcely ever seen, she had also thought to pick up all the food and supplies the little band of marauders had traveled with, extra weapons and his set of extra clothes. She'd washed her fallen friend's wounds and bandaged them up, and then dressed her in his clothes (for this process, she had of course tied him to the other side of the tree). She had then demanded he tell her where to find the right kinds of herbs and fruits to make some kind of concoction for them all to eat, and while this brewed in the (thoroughly rinsed) pot, she washed her friend's old, blood-stained clothes.
Donghai was officially terrified of her.
It didn't take much on her part to get him to talk. As it happened, he had never quite been too fond of his comrades and could not quite remember why he had followed the 'leader' - not to mention, of course, that she had proved she could snap his arm like a twig if she so wished. That she was incredibly beautiful didn't really hurt.
So he told her all that he could (and as it happened, this was quite a lot). He had only been an honest thief until a few months back (and he was quite a good thief too, he told her, to her total lack of approval), when he'd met the now departed leader of the gang. The leader called himself Xiang, but Donghai suspected this wasn't really his name at all, because they had met other gangs in their ventures and discovered their leaders too introduced themselves at Xiang. If he had thought this was strange before, he certainly hadn't said anything about it; in fact, now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember thinking much of anything in the last few months.
"What did he make you do?" Reishun asked him. Evidently, she didn't think any of this was odd, even though even to him it sounded like a really flimsy excuse for his actions.
He hesitated, clearly embarrassed. "We kept plundering villages, pillaging towns. He kept saying he was being given orders by someone higher up, and we always assumed it was one of the chiefs. There's so many that it really doesn't matter anymore."
The woman gave him a severe kind of look. He cleared his throat and pressed on. "We did this until a month or so back, when ... I don't know what happened, but everything changed. We came to this forest, along with some others. But we ran into real trouble here. Most of the others fled-"
It appeared he'd said something of interest, for she looked at him with some more urgency than before. "You were looking for something," she said, tentatively, almost hopefully.
"Someone," said Donghai, nodding, noting the hope that sprang into her face. "We're looking for a man from Kounan. That's not special, though, we've got so many people coming in from Kounan lately. It's funny, but the fact that we don't have a political leader, not really anyway, means that there's more money here. People in your country are starving."
"But this man?" asked the young woman, eyeing him seriously.
This was clearly important to her, and so, of course, Donghai attempted to bargain a tad at this conjuncture. He asked for freedom in exchange for information. She said she'd let him keep his limbs and maybe give him some soup if he kept talking.
This seemed, he decided, like a reasonable bargain.
He went on. "He's some kind spy or sorceror or something. He must be, because we ran into terrible things everytime we came close to where he was."
She frowned. "Terrible things?"
"Ghosts," he told her. "Demons."
"Ghosts and demons," she repeated, blinking.
"And terrible illusions you couldn't break out of until the Xiang - or whatever his name was decided to help you."
The woman looked at him with some confusion, as though this didn't entirely add up. Donghai studied her as she considered his words. She was quite a beautiful woman, possessing a kind of innate feminine grace that was charming without being ostentatious. And though she could indeed snap his limbs into bits, there was something about her that was incredibly fair, and he knew that she wouldn't hurt him, unless he tried to hurt her or her friend, the No Name woman (which was what her comapanion called her).
He had watched her tend to her wounds, until she'd pointed him another way at any rate, during which time she talked to him, asking him where they were and how far it was to the nearest town. He had responded but he wasn't quite sure she listened to him. Donghai was not good at too many things, but he was an observant man. You had to be, if you chose to make your living out of thievery. There was a lot of overt physical prowess required in the field, but the best thieves were those who could read people, through their words and through their silences. And the greater care with which she treated her friend afterwards, after her wounds had been washed and she had been dressed, only added to the suspicions that had dawned through her silence before. He didn't know what it was, but something changed - something had shifted, almost dramatically from the awkward and distinctly unpleasant equation they had seemed to share before, in the forest when they had attacked them.
And as the No Name woman shifted in and out of consciousness (until the nagging sensation in her shoulder turned into pain that was too tangible to really ignore), he saw the young woman grow more conscious too; more aware of her friend who was waking.
The subtlety of this was lost on them both, of course. Grunting, the No Name woman sat up and proceeded to poke at her shoulder.
"If you make that bleed again," said Reishun, edgily, "I'll tie you up to that tree with Donghai and leave you here."
Slowly, the woman turned and glared at Reishun, and just like that, that shift and awareness were replaced by irritation. This, he thought, suited her features a lot better somehow. Perhaps it was the preliminary frown lines on her face outlining a frown, or the seriousness in her greyish eyes, but she was not someone who was used to smiling, clearly. But then again, she was probably in a lot of pain.
But as she became aware of a person already tied to the tree in question, she ceased to scowl and instead raised her eyebrows in the universal, timeless expression for 'what the eff'.
"Ah!" said Reishun, significantly, reading her clearly."Donghai here has been telling me a story, haven't you Donghai?"
Donghai only nodded, almost amicably for a man tied to a tree. "Now you can let me go?" he asked, sweetly, with precisely no hopes of this coming true.
Reishun, equally politely, shook her head. "Not quite yet, Donghai. Wu Ming," she enunciated, so it was clear what she thought of her chosen name, "meet Donghai. Donghai, this is Wu Ming."
"Pleased to meet you," said Donghai, quite politely, aware that he was not really improving matters.
'Wu Ming' seemed utterly displeased and cranky. She turned around a bit more, slowly, but looking keenly around to gauge the situation. Donghai could almost read her thoughts as her perception caught up with her. Not the same clearing, but still a clearing. Is that a stream rushing by? Why, yes, it is. And that's where she must have washed my clothes- but if she washed my clothes then-
She looked down at herself in a hurry, looking at Donghai's clothes on her frame. They hung off her much smaller and much more lean frame, and she looked rather young, sitting around in overlarge clothes and looking confused. She peeked at her wounds, observing Reishun's handiwork. And then, in sudden awareness, she looked at the other woman, as though it had taken her mind a little while to register what this meant. There was clear alarm in her eyes, just a brief flash but vivid enough for Donghai to note it from his position. Alarmed realisation and, for some reason, not a small measure of fear. Reishun only cast her a glance, but said nothing, heading to the pot to stir the soup instead.
The No Name Woman took a breath, seeming to steady herself. As she shifted, her and struck the sword by her side, and, looking down, she ran a finger along its blade - cleaned of the blood that had been spilt by it, and gleaming. She sat there for a moment, her now loosened hair shielding her expression from Donghai's (admittedly rather nosy) stare. For a moment it looked to him as though she would say something, but she thought better of it. Instead, she drew up her shoulders, raised her chin, and spoke evenly, almost slightly defiantly. "Where are we?" she asked, sparing Donghai an annoyed sort of glance to make sure he knew she didn't appreciate his general existence. He tried not to squirm and failed. Slowly, she got to her feet, presumably to look around a little bit, but Reishun turned swiftly.
Reishun turned and looked at her. "Are you planning to take a walk or something?" she demanded.
The No Name woman raised an eyebrow to regard her with some annoyance. "No, I-"
"Then sit down. Can't have you fainting all over the place like that."
"I don't faint all over the place," said the woman, almost patiently.
"Right, just like you don't bleed all over the place," said Reishun, rolling her eyes infuriatingly.
This made the girl go pale, and she sat down, as though somehow Reishun had touched a nerve. Touchy thing, Donghai thought.
"Where are we?" she repeated. Reishun, who had asked him this before, didn't seem to remember.
"We're a few miles off from Longchi," Donghai answered, almost conversationally. "The western side of the town, that is."
"Donghai was just telling me the history of the town," added Reishun, getting up to head to the pot in the middle of the clearing. She produced a bowl, much to Donghai's everlasting surprise and awe, and poured the soup into the bowl. Then, she handed it to Wu Ming, who stared at it with infinite disdain.*
"Yes," said Donghai, eagerly, "when the Black Dragon fell from the heavens after his father struck him down, that is where his tooth fell and made-"
"I know the legend," snapped Wu Ming, irritated. "What are we doing here? Where are the horses?"
"Grazing," said Reishun, heading back. "Recuperating. No one's going to be fainting all over the place now."
"I don't faint all over the place," she repeated, through gritted teeth, and glared at Reishun.
"Eat," declared Reishun, shoving the bowl of soup under her nose.
She eyed the soup as though expecting it to leap out and punch her nose. "I don't think we have the time for this," she said, and then looked up to find Reishun taking some soup to where Donghai sat and handing it to him. Her nostrils flared in disapproval.
"You look like an angry horse," pointed out Reishun, only adding to this. "And we're taking the time. Look," she said, before Wu Ming could say anything further, "you were right."
Eyebrows were raised. "I was?"
"About the snake... thing," said Reishun, a little inexplicably from Donghai's perspective. But this seemed to make sense to Wu Ming, for she shrugged and drank more soup. From where Donghai sat though, this only masked the very slight pleasure at being told that she was right. "There's more going on here, and I think Donghai here can lead us to Eian."
This made the man in question spill some soup onto his already terribly dirty shirt. "Oy?"
"What do you mean there's more going on?" demanded Wu Ming, eyeing him. She was suspicious, but that was sort of obligatory, Donghai felt. More than that, she seemed to be annoyed. There was something deeply wrong about Reishun being friendly with their prisoner. You weren't supposed to make friends with people you were compelled tied to a tree. Or perhaps you didn't tie your friends to a tree at all. Either way, there was something severely antithetical about it all.
"Yeah, and what is this Eian I'm leading you to?" asked Donghai, alarmed.
"And why are we trusting the word of a petty bandit?" added Wu Ming, her lip curling slightly.
"Eat," emphasized Reishun, again, with a steely edge in her voice. "And I'll tell you."
Through the shadows of the things that had happened, he wandered until he found her, sitting by the river with his fishing rod and waiting for him. As he walked up to her, she handed him the rod and smiled, but he couldn't help but notice that she looked ill.
"Are you alright?" he asked, and she shrugged.
"I might be dying," she said, "but I don't think it's time yet."
He nodded, reassured by this somehow. He sat down and told her, instead, that he had made a new friend. "He told me a story today."
"The old ones love you still," she reminded him.
"I know," he said. Then, because he could, he asked her, "Where are we, Miaka-chan?"
"You should know," she said, smiling. "You're the wanderer - haven't you wandered here before?"
"I don't remember," he said, looking at her sadly. So sadly, that she touched her hand to his cheek. Though it was a dream, and he knew it was dream, her touch was tangible to him. "Something bad will happen, won't it?"
She nodded. "Things must get worse before they get better, mustn't they?" He didn't want to agree with her. A monk of course takes things as they come, but he had not always been a monk, and once he had been driven by the belief that everything could be fixed, be made just right. Why should everyone not be happy in the world? Why should one person's happiness be the root of another's sorrow? "But you will listen to me, won't you?" she asked, again.
Helpless, he nodded, and satisfied, she took her hand away.
They sat together in silence, with the fish lapping playfully at the harmless bait at the end of his line. A while later, he lay down and closed his eyes, and while she watched, he slept - slept as though he never had before, dreamless, safe and comforted by her presence, in this place where nothing could touch him.
And he didn't wake up as the strong hands grip his arms as the chains around his wrists were undone, or as he fell to the floor, the clanging sounds of the chains being dragged along the floor and dumped in the corner. He did not see the cold black eyes that remained on him steadily, or even know of the unholy conglomeration of blood and other substances that he presented.
The cold black eyes gleamed, and the commanded nodded. "Not long now, Jian," he said, a cold smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Jian, who stood in the corner watching the commander nervously, swallowed. "Not long at all."
Author's Notes: I made the deadline! For the first time in months! Now I'm very happy - also a little nervous because lots and lots of things happened over the last couple of chapters. I hope things are becoming a little clearer now. I think whatever's happening with Chichiri should become clearer in the next few chapters, if it's not evident now anyway. And what's happening with Soi and Tomo and the earring and Nakago and whatnot will... hopefully also become clear soon, though I think it's pretty clear now. And Eian- well, if he seems kind of too harsh and out of character at the moment, do remember he's under a lot of stress, and... well, also I'm not the world's biggest Hotohori fan. All in all, I don't know! If it's weird and nonsensical, please tell me!
Ummm, I'm noticed that there's been a lot more readers lately? So thanks to everyone who's reading! [insert obligatory begging for reviews here] Next chapter soon! (I hope!)
*This chapter has witnessed a small edit around where the asterisk is. Thanks to MercuryMoon for pointing out the inconsistency!
O.D.A.O.S. (Obligatory Disclaimer And Other Shiznit)
This story is based primarily on Yuu Watase's Fushigi Yuugi, but also uses elements from Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden and some of the Fushigi Yuugi Gaiden books. (Only some elements, though, because of, er, a sort of blatant selective amnesia. So, for instance, Hikari is a girl, which she isn't according to the Sanbou Gaiden.) I will try to stick to manga/anime canon as much as I can. Elements of Chinese and Japanese mythology will probably be employed, also with a blatant disregard for authenticity and mythological autonomy. I apologise in advance - but mostly this fic is supposed to be fun and ... I wouldn't take it seriously. Apologies for stupidity about the Japanese language, but feel free to correct me please - if and when I use stuff like that. Oh, er, and obviously I'm not making any money out of this - I'm just a graduate student with too much time.