Chapter 36 - The Pain of Healing
InuYasha returned to find that his wife had collapsed into herself. He felt like he was confronting a walled fortress surrounded by a great yawning chasm each time he approached her. She went through the motions of living, went to the doctors with Mama for her exams, tended the children, helped with the housework, but there was always that impenetrable wall separating her from the rest of the household, that chasm no one could leap. Outside of the children, who sensed something was wrong but were not sure what, everyone pussyfooted around Kagome's barriers, waiting to see if time would drop them.
The hardest part for InuYasha to bear was the crying. He hadn't known anyone could cry so much. He desperately wanted to hold her, let her cry herself out on his shoulder, but the only male presence she could tolerate for any length of time was Tsuchiya. Even Sota, who was not even remotely threatening in InuYasha's opinion, was too much. But Tsuchiya's vivid, sunny energy required engagement. It wasn't that he was particularly gentle; he usually charged into the room and latched onto Kagome with a heedless body slam that knocked her off balance if she was standing or pummeled her sore ribs if she was sitting. He dumped all of his little problems in her lap, he insisted that she play simple games with him, he showered her with pictures, each of which came equipped with a long fanciful tale that she had to listen to. InuYasha finally concluded that it was because Tsuchiya was so clueless that he was able to bridge the gap.
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A week had passed, and the bathroom door was closed again. Puffs of steam wafted around the cracks in the doorway that separated the bath from the toilet. Mama stood at the door, looking anxiously at the steam. Kagome had been in there for well over two hours without any sign of movement.
"Kagome-chan?" Mama called softly. "Are you all right?"
The water splooshed softly as Kagome shifted in the tub to look at the door. "Yes," she answered. I'm still alive. I guess that's all right.
The tiles, the floor, everything around her was slick with condensed steam. She looked critically at her hands, which were bright pink with the heat and shriveled from being so long in the water. She'd scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, then stewed so long she should have dissolved, but still she couldn't lift the feeling of contamination.
Every place he had touched her seemed alive with the taint of his malice. She could almost feel the tiny legs scurrying about and spreading. She shuddered and sank lower into the water, up to her chin. She still wasn't allowed to immerse her head, though she desperately wanted to. Her hair seemed to be crawling with 'them'.
Aunt Sakura came down the stairs and poked her head into the bathroom, frowning at the steamy, still-closed door.
"She's still in there?"
Mama nodded.
"This has gone on long enough," the old woman declared. "Brooding in there will only make it worse." She turned on her heel and marched off.
Moments later, the bathroom door popped open and a naked Tsuchiya darted in, bounded onto the bath mat and launched himself into a cannonball into the tub.
"Eeeeeep!" Ker-SPLOOSH!
As Kagome coughed the water out of her nose and mouth, Tsuchiya surfaced and shook vigorously to get the water out of his ears.
"Hi, Mama!"
"Tsu-chan, who let you...?"
"Mama, will you help me do my hiragana?"
"Oh ... um ..."
"Pleeeeze?" Tsuchiya had recently discovered the effect "puppy-dog eyes" had on people and he was absolutely shameless about using them.
Kagome had no defenses; InuYasha had never done the "puppy-dog eyes" thing on her. She wasn't sure if it was beneath him or if it had just been too long since he had had anyone to use them on and had lost the habit. In any case, she collapsed quickly under the onslaught of a pair of big, melting amber eyes fixed with eager intensity on her.
"OK, OK, just let me get dried off." Kagome climbed out of the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. Tsuchiya jumped out after her, shook again, spraying her liberally, then wriggled through being draped with a towel himself. When he was marginally dry, he bounced out of the room to go get his hiragana tiles from Mama.
By the time Kagome was dressed and back down the stairs, Tsuchiya had pulled on some clothes and now sat fidgeting at the low table in the living room, opposite Sota, who was trying to do some homework. InuYasha looked up and studied her briefly from where he lay on his belly on the mats beside Toushi, who had bullied him into "helping" her color in a coloring book. She was currently shoving crayons in his hands and telling him what to do as she scribbled wide swaths over her own side of the book.
Kagome sat down and sorted through the tiles. Everything seemed to be there. She held one up.
"Sho," Tsuchiya said.
Toushi's eyes flicked up quickly, then she resumed coloring.
"Good," Kagome said encouragingly, holding up another.
"Yah."
Toushi's eyes flicked again. Kagome slipped that one down and held up the next.
"Ki."
"Good," Kagome said, then held up yet another.
"Not that blue!" Toushi squealed, yanking one crayon out of InuYasha's hand and cramming in another. "Draw there!" she directed.
InuYasha rolled his eyes and obeyed. Kagome stifled a giggle. Was there anything that girl couldn't get him to do? She held up another tile.
Tsuchiya hesitated. This was a hard one; there were three characters that looked a great deal alike. "Wah...," he hazarded.
Toushi glanced up. "Neh," she said matter-of-factly, then resumed coloring.
Tsuchiya shot her a sour look, then peered anxiously at Kagome. Kagome checked the tile.
"It's 'neh'," she said. "See the little loop here?"
Tsuchiya's face fell and Toushi looked quietly smug.
"Aren't you the smart one?" said an impressed InuYasha.
Tsuchiya's ears flattened as his lip stuck out in an offended pout. "This is dumb," he declared, knocking over the tiles.
"No, no, you're doing fine," Kagome assured him. "That last one was a hard one. Try another."
Tsuchiya still looked rebellious.
"Can you find the ones that spell your name?" suggested Sota, looking up briefly from his homework.
That challenge appealed to Tsuchiya. He leaned over and started digging through the tiles with a will.
Kagome sighed as she watched him sorting through the pile. She caught InuYasha watching her as he went through the motions of Toushi's coloring assignment. Melancholy washed over her. Was it ever going to be right again?
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Kagome descended the stairs after another restless night. InuYasha had already disappeared for a morning meeting with the villages' councils, taking the children along with him to visit Shippo for a while. Sota was just leaving the table to go to school. Mama, Grampa and Aunt Sakura all met her with searching glances as she entered the room, trying to gauge her mood and condition. She was getting sick of being inspected and returned an impassive face.
She sat down and accepted a cup of tea from Aunt Sakura as Mama turned to dish up her breakfast. Mama talked over her shoulder as she spooned porridge and arranged some fruit and fishcake on a plate.
"You have an appointment with Dr. Yamata this morning at ten, then I managed to get you an appointment with Fumiko-san this afternoon to do something with your hair," she said, turning back with a laden tray.
Kagome nodded, sipping her tea.
"It's much easier to have a positive outlook, to build up your confidence, when you are looking pretty," Mama continued.
Kagome nodded again, suppressing a shudder. The last thing she wanted was 'pretty'.
"I'm sure Fumiko-san can do something to make your hair look nice."
Kagome swallowed, trying to hold in the tears. Mama was trying too hard, she was starting to babble. She wanted to bolt back to her room and hide rather than endure a day of Mama rattling on and rubbing her raw spots unwittingly.
She took in a shaky breath. "Mama, let's just hold that thought until we get to the salon, shall we?"
"Oh. Oh, certainly, dear. I'm sorry." Mama fell silent, chagrined, which was even worse.
The table was very quiet for a while as the room throbbed with the effort not to cause pain.
Finally, Grampa said, "Makiko, could you see if my order has arrived at Murakami Mysticals while you're out?"
Aunt Sakura looked at him keenly, and asked, "Hikaru, what on earth are you getting from that old fraud?"
"He's not a fraud!" Grampa objected. "He's a large established merchant with branches all over the country."
"Really," Aunt Sakura remarked. "There's a branch in Kyoto. I went in once. The dragon scales bore a remarkable resemblance to capiz shells. Haven't you ever wondered how he manages to keep a healthy stock of tengu claws when you can never find someone who has actually encountered one?"
"I'll have you know, I, myself, was carried away by tengu in my younger years," Grampa harrumphed. "I was missing for four days, then my family found me up a pine tree in a trance. They got me back down with great difficulty and I didn't remember any of it when I awoke from the trance." He looked at Aunt Sakura triumphantly.
"Oh, is that what happened?" Aunt Sakura snorted. "I've always wondered. If I were you, Hikaru, I'd have InuYasha collect whatever you're looking for. You'd probably get the real thing and it might even be fresh!"
"Aunt Sakura!" Kagome gasped as an unwelcome image of a fresh paw dripping blood on a tray appeared vividly in her mind.
"It's an absolute waste of good money, Kagome," Aunt Sakura insisted.
"The dried ones are bad, er, good enough" Kagome said faintly. "Really."
Aunt Sakura scowled, disappointed, then reluctantly withdrew from her latest round of Grampa-taunting.
"Well, I'm glad to see you're finally developing an appreciation for these things," Grampa sniffed, shooting an offended look at Aunt Sakura.
"Um, yeah." As far a Kagome knew, only Buyo, the cat, truly appreciated them.
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Kagome made it through the doctor's appointment in good order, but suffered a crisis at the hairdresser's salon. Fumiko-san brushed her hair this way and that, changing her part and holding her hands at different levels to visualize what different lengths would do. It brought up memories of Sumio stroking her hair, Sumio controlling her with a handful of hair, Sumio pawing her...
"Cut it off!" Kagome exploded, "Cut it all off! Every bit of it!"
"But Kagome..." Mama cried, thoroughly alarmed as Kagome started crying again.
"No, I want to start over," Kagome sobbed, "With new hair. Hair he never touched."
Neither Mama nor Fumiko-san was prepared to deal with this. By the time Kagome left the salon, all of her hair had been shorn so short she might as well have been bald. She looked at her new image in the mirror with a fierce, bright, brittle smile. "It's perfect." Absolutely, perfectly awful. Perfectly in keeping with her heart.
It still didn't cut off the defilement. Once back home, she disappeared for another prolonged soak in the bath.
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InuYasha was late returning that evening. He had returned briefly about noon to bring the children back from their excursion and left them with the old folks since Kagome and Mama were still out. His little conferences with the village heads had developed legs when he was told Saito was having problems with something that was raiding the fish ponds. The culprit turned out to be an otter youkai that was motivated at least as much by boredom as it was by hunger. It was fast, slippery, agile, and had way too much fun playing tag with him. He never did catch it and had to be satisfied with chasing it a couple of miles downstream.
On his way back to the well, he was intercepted by Sango and thoroughly pumped for every snippet of information he could produce on Kagome's condition.
"It's a wonder her luck held this long, really," Sango said grimly after he was done. "I'm going to have to teach her a few things when she gets back."
"Like what?" InuYasha asked warily.
"Like where to hide a knife and how to use it."
InuYasha had his doubts. Even if she were equipped with a knife, the Kagome he knew was unlikely to use it on another human being.
So, he was in a pensive mood when he emerged in the modern era and walked into the gloom of the shrine grounds toward the bright lights of the house. He pulled up short beside the sacred tree, halted by a forlorn figure huddled among the roots. Kagome was sitting at the base of the tree, alone in the dark, crying. She was only wearing a light sweater and a scarf wrapped around her head to counter the evening chill, so he took off his kimono wrapped it around her shoulders as he sat down next to her and asked, "Why are you out here?"
She snuggled into the kimono, pulling its protection tight around her. "I can't seem to stop crying," she said, rueful and annoyed with herself.
It didn't answer his question. He said nothing as he absorbed the complex of scents swirling around her. He caught wafts of incense and sake, then the melange of scents from her emotional state. She was a minefield of emotions, conflicting and destructive. She wanted comfort, but expected none. The sharp scents of resentment and bitterness were strongest.
"Anything I do is going to be wrong, isn't it?" he asked.
"Probably," she grumbled, "It would just cap the day."
She wasn't even going to give him a chance. InuYasha felt his temper rise in reaction and he sulked for a few moments over the injustice of it. He hadn't even been here to day. How could she decide he was guilty? Maybe it was because he wasn't here that he was guilty? Geez, it was just getting to be too much. Neither of them said anything for a while, then Inuyasha asked, "So, are you going to tell me about it or just sit there and be mad?"
She whipped off the headscarf and glared at him, daring him to say something.
He gazed at the nearly bald apparition of his wife with dismay, but managed to only say, "Ah," before slamming his mouth shut.
Thank the gods it was dark. It gave him a chance to get his mouth under control without her really seeing his staring eyes. "It's ... um ... rather shorter than I expected," was the best he could manage.
"I'm ugly, horrible, defiled!" she railed, sobbing miserably.
"Uh..."
"I want to cut off everything he touched, cut off the violation. I feel so dirty! I could at least cut off my hair."
InuYasha continued to stare at her, speechless. He was way out of his depth. Half-formed thoughts pinged frantically about in his skull and he grabbed after them, trying to come up with something useful to say.
Kagome switched gears, leaving behind the hysteria. "Grampa said he would purify me. God! I don't know where he found that incense, but it absolutely reeked. He must have dumped a gallon of sacred white sake over me and I have no idea how much salt he threw around. We burned the incense and prayed and offered branches to the kami, but..."
"But nothing Grampa does ever really works," InuYasha completed. Normally, this was a source of family amusement, but right now, a potent purification charm would be welcome.
"Yeah."
She desperately needed a hug. InuYasha reached an arm around her, intending to pull her in close to his shoulder, but, once again, she turned away, burrowing herself deep into his kimono.
He sat dead silent for a moment, frustrated and hurt, then asked, "Don't I even get to be your friend?"
She stared out into the darkness. "I don't know," she said, sounding lost.
"If you don't, who does?" he asked bitterly, getting up to go check on the children.
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Sango, of course, told Miroku and Shippo what InuYasha had told her. They had all been in Sumio's castle at one time or another and they worried Kagome's welfare. InuYasha's report did little to assuage their fears. They tried to keep their discussions quiet, just between the three of them, but little snippets got overheard and made the rounds of the village.
The rest of the village was just as interested in Kagome's condition as her friends were; Kagome was generally liked and most people wished her well. However, solid news was hard to come by. InuYasha was seldom seen, and when he was, he was invariably bad-tempered and snarling. Sango and Minori, the only women in the village who had ever been in Sumio's castle, were frustratingly tightlipped about their experiences and refused to render any opinion about Kagome's ordeal until they had talked to her themselves.
This left an intolerable vacuum around the little snippets reaching public discussion that got gradually filled in by speculations and fancy until the story of what had actually happened had grown positively lurid.
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Kagome sat on the couch in the living room after returning from getting her cast removed. Had it really been six weeks? She was still muddled in her head about the passage of time.
"Mama?" she asked, turning toward the kitchen, "How long was I in the hospital again?"
Mama appeared in the doorway with a strainer in her hand. "It was about a week, Kagome-chan."
"And I've really been here for five weeks?" Kagome persisted.
Mama checked the calendar hanging on the wall, working her way through its array of appointments.
"Yes," she replied.
Kagome tried stretching her mind back again, back to before this had all started. Just when she had her last monthly? She'd had nothing in the entire time she had been here recovering. If Mama was right, it had been over four weeks. Oh God. She shuddered convulsively. InuYasha had gone through his transformation last week, and she generally followed a few days later, but she... Oh, no. Oh, please, no. Another wave of shaking wracked her as she considered the implications.
It would be hard, but she decided to ask InuYasha what he knew. She could get the answer to the first question herself, but that wouldn't answer the more important of the two questions disturbing her.
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They were sitting outside under the sacred tree again, back-to-back in the dark. It was about the only way they talked anymore, just two disembodied voices floating in the night air.
"You've been distracted today," InuYasha said, looking up through the branches of the tree to see the three or four stars that could be seen through the city lights.
"Yeah. I've had the most awful thoughts. I, uh, I ..." She paused for a moment then pushed it out. She had to know. "Am I pregnant?"
InuYasha blew out a long, hard breath. "Yeah."
A surge of panic ran through her. She clamped down on her racing heart, then asked, "Who?"
"Hm?"
"Whose is it?"
InuYasha growled softly under his throat, then said drily, "I thought we pretty well proved last time that I can't tell that."
Oh. Yeah. She'd been so wrapped up in the current problem, she had forgotten that aspect of her last pregnancy.
"It's a girl," he said softly a moment later.
Kagome hadn't wanted to know that. 'It' was so much easier to stay detached from, to make hard decisions about. A girl. InuYasha adored his little girl.
"She could be ours," InuYasha added softly. "You were, um, ready."
"You can tell that?" Kagome wasn't sure she liked that he could read that much of her.
"Um, yeah. You smell so good then." He sounded a bit embarrassed by the admission, like he'd been caught at something, which, upon reflection, maybe he had.
"Were you trying to...?"
"No, not really, but I ... I wouldn't mind more."
"But what if it isn't yours?" Kagome insisted. Personally, the last thing on earth she wanted to do was foster that monster's spawn. "There's ... there's ways. We can start over and make sure it's yours."
She could feel his shudder of revulsion.
"No, there's too much death around us already. I, uh, I had a lot of time to think about that last time, when I was being such an idiot. Even when I thought you had found someone you wanted more than me, I decided I would always take care of your babies. Maybe I'm being a complete idiot again, but I don't care where your babies come from. I know I'm being stupid, but at least it's a stupid I can live with."
Yeah, Kagome thought, you're not the one with the monster's child in your belly.
"I'm not sure I can do that," Kagome said. "I don't want anything of his near me."
"We still don't know she's his," InuYasha reminded her. "Let's assume she's ours, for now."
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The River Woman looked across the playing field at her anchor, noting the crumbles of the miko with dismay. Nearly all the water was now cooked out and the pressure was building. It looked far worse to her now than it had when Emma-O had started his operation. Did he really think he was going to salvage anything from that mess?
Shuddering, she turned away and focussed her attention on the fortunes of a little imp of a sandal-bearer. It paid to have contingencies.
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Soon after Kagome's cast came off, InuYasha broached the subject of returning to their home in the Sengoku Jidai. The children really needed more room to expend their abundant energy and he, himself, was not really comfortable walled up in the modern era.
Kagome was by now ready for a change of scenery. She had had enough of her family's constant, if sympathetic, scrutiny and wanted to go someplace that was not part of her feedback loop of misery.
She spent the first three days of her return at her house, laying low while she put the house back to rights after Shippo's extended stint of bachelor housekeeping. The house was clean, just excessively cluttered, as Shippo did not tend to put away the articles he was using on a regular basis.
Sango arrived for a visit on the second day and was shocked by Kagome's fragility. She chased the children outside, then she and Kagome had a long heart to heart over tea, where she heard the whole story from Kagome herself.
"He did that? And now you're pregnant?" Sango exclaimed indignantly.
Kagome nodded miserably. "Yeah, but the baby might still be InuYasha's. We just can't tell."
"Oh, girl, this is going to be tough. You should hear the stories that are circulating around right now."
"Like what?" Kagome asked apprehensively.
"I'm sorry, but you have to know. You can't go out there unprepared. To hear them talk, you had seduced several of Sumio's retainers and were busy playing one man against the other, had gone so far as to incite them into a duel for your own amusement. One samurai committed seppuku before his lord and family in a paroxysm of shame over his actions when he came to his senses while you sat there beside your prize Sumio, gloating over his demise. Then Sumio beat you for causing the death of his valued retainer and cast you into the dungeon. InuYasha rescued you and is now sorry he did after learning what you had done to an honorable man, which is why he's been so irritable lately. When it gets out that you might be carrying Sumio's child, there's going to be no end of the gossip."
"Oh sweet Buddha. It wasn't like that at all. But no one is ever going to believe me." Kagome looked at Sango beseechingly. "How can things get so twisted?"
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Eventually, there was no getting around it; Kagome had to go to the village to restock. She cut a frail and uncertain figure as she approached the square and met the scrutiny of the village women as they fetched water from the town well. Many of them stared wordlessly, speculatively, as they saw her walk into view, baskets over one arm and holding Toushi's hand while Tsuchiya ran in front of her.
A short plump woman in her middle years raked Kagome with a gimlet eye, then said scathingly, "Well, if it isn't the so-called miko. The demon wasn't enough for you, eh? Just how many good men have you ruined with your favors by now?"
Kaou was the self appointed chairman of the "What's Right and Decent Committee". Easily the most feared woman in the village, she made and broke reputations with her tongue, serving as prosecutor, judge and executioner of all who did not meet her standards. There were only a select few who were immune from her charges. She grudgingly deferred to Kaede, the village priestess. InuYasha did not "give a flaming fart" what she thought and had told her so on several occasions. Miroku escaped by outmaneuvering her in the rumor wars. And, until now, she had not been able to get anything to stick on Kagome.
It wasn't for lack of trying. There were several aspects of Kagome's life choices that were neither "Right" nor "Decent". True mikos did not marry or consort with demonkind, but Kagome had gone so far as to marry a demon, bear demon children, and still use her miko powers. There was something very fishy about that; the kami should have turned away from her early on in her career. Kaou suspected that the power Kagome was wielding was no longer pure, if it ever had been, and had said so several times. Now she had the ammunition she needed to drive Kagome out.
Kagome flinched and tried to rally. "What are you talking about? I have no interest in any man outside of my husband."
"So you deny that a samurai committed seppuku over you?"
"No, but..."
"You deny that several samurai fought over who got to have you?"
"It wasn't like that. They..."
"You deny that you incited Sumio's lust with your depraved flirtation?"
"Sumio takes what he damned well wants regardless of what anyone else..."
"I suppose that's why InuYasha refuses to talk about you. It takes an awful lot to shame a demon, but you've managed it. I don't suppose..."
Kagome broke and fled, weeping, back to her family in the modern era, where InuYasha found her several hours later, huddled in bed with the covers over her head.
Grampa intercepted InuYasha at the door to her room and pulled him off to another room to talk.
"That was easily the stupidest thing you've ever done, dragging her off to that feudal hellhole in her current condition," he said reproachfully. "Don't you think it's time to admit she has no place there and release her back to us?"
"I can't do that," InuYasha replied. "The children will never fit in here and they need their mother."
"Well she sure in Hell doesn't need what she's getting back there. What do you have to say about that?"
"I'll take care of it."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. I need to talk to her, find out what happened."
"You leave her alone."
"I'm just going to talk. She will decide when she's ready to go back."
"No. She's not going back. Ever. You get out of her life. You're just destroying her."
"Listen, you old geezer, she's my wife, and I'm going to talk to her."
InuYasha pushed past Grampa, went into Kagome's room and sat beside her on the bed.
"Kagome?"
Kagome shifted on the bed, pulling the covers tighter over herself with a sob.
"Kagome, what happened?"
It took a while, but he eventually wheedled the story out of her. Temper flaming, he went to pay a personal call on Kaou and rattled her teeth thoroughly as he ordered her to stay well clear of his wife. The resentful Kaou took her campaign underground to the realm of whispers and innuendo.
Kagome's strong sense of duty brought her back through the well. She was Kaede's assistant and the old woman had been ailing. She spent a long morning with Kaede trying to work out what Sumio had done to her spiritual powers. It proved to be a very frustrating morning. Kagome's powers appeared to have ebbed significantly, but she could still surpass Kaede, if just barely, in most capacities. There were several flashes of uncontrolled power that surged in at unexpected moments, suggesting there was more to the story. Kaede had no answers, only the opinion that some transformation was in progress with who knew what ultimate result.
Kagome had returned to her house for the afternoon, chased the children outside with Shippo for a while and was preparing herself a pot of tea when she heard a soft knock at the door. She took a steadying breath then went to see who was there.
To her great surprise, she found Minori on the porch holding a basket full of fresh vegetables with a single perfect iris laid on top.
Minori bowed respectfully and said, "I hope I am not disturbing you."
Filled with wonder, Kagome bowed back and replied, "No, no, please come in."
Minori was a fascinating character and a prime target of the "What's Right and Decent Committee". Although she lived a quiet, reclusive life assisting old Minoru and had never been seen to do anything outside the limits of propriety, an air of scandal hung around her, fueled by rumors about what she had seen and done in Sumio's castle, sordid rumors she had never denied. For all of her quiet ways, she retained a haughtiness that discouraged familiarity.
Most of the other women in the village snubbed her, partly because the haughtiness made her seem condescending and partly because she was arguably the most beautiful woman in the village. Men would stop whatever they were doing to watch her glide by on her infrequent outings, much to the chagrin of their wives and sweethearts. Several of the bolder single men in town had approached her at various times to court her, but she had always politely turned them away.
Kagome, on the other hand, had always treated her with the same cheerful friendliness she offered to everyone. Minori had, to this point, returned appreciative smiles, but had continued to maintain her distance. Kagome wondered what drove the sudden change of heart.
She took the basket and placed it on her workbench in the kitchen, exclaiming over the perfection of the vegetables. Then she swooped the remains of lunch's noodles from the low table by the hearth and asked, "Would you like to share tea with me?"
Minori smiled that quiet smile again and said, "Yes, thank you. I would enjoy that very much indeed."
Kagome ushered her to a cushion at the table and put on the kettle, then turned to load a tray with a teapot, a pair of cups, and a plate of crisp almond cookies. She carefully nestled the iris in a small vase beside the teapot, then brought the tray to the table.
Kagome really was not proficient with serving the powdered matcha that was in vogue in this era. She had selected a jasmine-infused tea from China to go with the cookies, liking the way the light astringency of the jasmine complimented the sweetness of the cookies and feeling it made a refined, understated offering for her guest.
Tea, in these circumstances, was not a light affair. It was an art form where a subtle, silent dance of hospitality passed between the host and the guest. All attention must be paid to the elegance of the serving, the economy of the gestures. The scents and flavors, the sights and sounds of the burbling of the kettle, the pouring of the tea and the nibbling of the cookies must be savored, lingered over, allowed to infuse the senses to the exclusion of all else. Only then, when the mind has been emptied of all else, may one comment.
The tensions of the morning, the day, even the week, slipped away as Kagome concentrated on serving the tea, meditated on the cleansing astringency, then nibbled a cookie, enjoying the crispness against her teeth that melted on her tongue.
Minori closed her eyes, sipping the unusual tea and letting it wash through her mouth before swallowing. She opened her eyes and turned the cup contemplatively in her hands, then held it up to breathe the scent again.
"The sweet scent of jasmine little belies the bitterness of its tea, yet even in its bitterness, it proves a tonic to the drinker."
Such a world of things got said in that little nothing.
She took a cookie and met Kagome's eyes as she took a small bite. "It would grieve me to see the sweetness here get eaten up. I don't often encounter such things."
It was a very oblique statement of support, given in the context of the tea ceremony. That and the vegetables, which spared Kagome another trip to the village square.
"I ... Oh, I ..." The tears welled up again, this time tears of relief and gratitude that choked her into incoherence.
Minori looked down at her tea cup again. "Only someone who has been in Sumio's castle could ever understand."
"You were in there for months? How did you ever survive?"
Minori's eyes looked darkly into a distant place. "I cut myself off completely from my body. He never really touched me. I played the wanton, played the madman, took my vengeance when opportunities arose among the worst of them. Whatever it took, I did."
"I've heard such awful stories about what you supposedly did. I never believed them. Around here, you've always been so gentle."
Minori's eyebrows twitched, rising slightly. "No one knows even the beginning of what I did." She sighed softly, putting the tea cup on the table.
"I won't ask," Kagome assured her. "It's what you do while you are here that matters."
"I'm grateful. There are only a few of us who have ever escaped Sumio's castle intact. We need to stick together."
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Finally, when InuYasha thought if Kagome cried another drop she would blow away on the wind, the tears stopped. They left behind a dry, awful emptiness that was charged with flashes of memories, that echoed with feelings of loss and vulnerability. Everything in her had crumbled to dust.
InuYasha had not been sleeping with her since the rescue, but he wouldn't let her sleep alone. They fell back on a very old pattern, where Kagome slept on the bed while InuYasha dozed sitting against the wall, ready for anything she might need. She still wouldn't let him close enough to give her support.
She woke one morning to find him studying her from his seat against the wall. It felt like he was judging her, and perhaps finding her lacking. She watched him silently, waiting for him to declare his decision.
Finally he stirred, cocking his head with a slight frown.
"This is the first time it's ever gotten really tough for you, isn't it?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" She could think of any number of tight places she had been in.
"You know, that point where you wonder, 'Why am I still alive? Do I even want to keep on living?'."
He knew. He'd been there before. She looked at him warily, considering. Was he sympathizing with her or about to reject her for her weakness? He looked at her gravely, from across the room, across the chasm, and said, "You can't let the bastards win."
It was a challenge, spoken from one who had walked this path. OK, it happened. Now you need to decide who you are: a victim or someone who just had a really bad day. That decision comes from inside; that was something she could choose.
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As Kagome's pregnancy became visible, the pressures of the village gossip had once more become intolerable. No one seemed to truly believe the child was InuYasha's. The shopkeeper Rokuro, in particular, was treating Kagome with a judgmental contempt, putting out that he felt a true miko with any sense of honor would have suicided after her defilement. Most of the other villagers were more sympathetic, but, due to Kaou's whispers, were uneasy about just how the kami would view her now. Would they still send her their blessings or was she now defiled in their eyes? Could she still invoke them and be heard?
Kaede, thus far, had not been able to answer those anxieties. Kagome's chaotic spirit was still reflected in her charms. The old woman was forced to concede she had no idea what was going on in Kagome's soul.
Miroku offered Kagome some Buddhist remedies for settling an uneasy spirit. He prescribed the chanting of a trio of carefully selected invocations of the Buddha-spirit while meditating to dispel turmoil and provide focus. InuYasha was receptive to this, but when Miroku proposed a laying-on of hands to coax a soothing of her ki, InuYasha grabbed him by the collar and hustled him out of the house.
"I cannot believe that guy!" he snapped as he came back into the house. "Does he ever give it a break?" He shot a nasty look out the door, making sure Miroku was still on his way.
Shippo looked out the door too. "I don't think he was going for a grope this time. He's not completely insensitive."
Kagome, however, still looked rattled, and the strain of the last few weeks was showing. She was thinner than she should have been and dark circles shadowed her eyes. InuYasha decided to take her out of the village stew-pot and let her decompress in the modern era for a few days.
Even he was growing frustrated, though. No matter how cautious he was of her feelings, no matter how gingerly he approached her, it was never enough. The chasm remained, bridged by only the most tenuous of ropes, and Kagome continued to turn away from any of his advances.
His patience snapped early one morning as she were dressing for the day. He had slipped an arm around Kagome for a brief hug and, again, she had turned away. Overcome by a mad surge of frustration, InuYasha grabbed her by both shoulders and planted a firm kiss on her mouth. Kagome's eyes flashed angrily and she shoved him off, shouted "SIT!" then stomped out of the room.
InuYasha crashed to the floor, shaking the whole house. As soon as he was able, he lifted his head and pounded the mat with his fist. "Damn it!"
He got up and stalked downstairs.
"Good morning," Mama said as he passed by the breakfast table, doing her best to be polite and ignore whatever had been going on upstairs.
He snarled something incomprehensible and disappeared out the kitchen door, stiff-backed and bristling.
"Or maybe not...," Sota said, watching the door slam behind him.
"Actually, it's an excellent morning," Aunt Sakura said, beaming with satisfaction.
"It is?" Grampa asked. He hadn't thought Sakura also found InuYasha a problem.
"It is," she asserted. "Kagome is getting some fight back. Now we can finally resolve this mess."
Everyone watched closely as Kagome entered the kitchen for breakfast. For the first time in months, she didn't cringe as she came in, but rather, stared back defiantly. "What?"
"Bit of a tiff this morning?" Aunt Sakura asked archly.
"Yeah, maybe. Since when does he have the right to...?"
"Since you married him," Aunt Sakura replied. "We need to talk about that."
"Do we?" Kagome asked icily, still bristling.
"We do." Aunt Sakura declared, completely unfazed by Kagome's pointed suggestion that she was out-of-bounds. Nothing that trivial had ever stopped her before. "What do you think that warlord really did to you?"
"Excuse me?" Kagome stared at her in disbelief. "He raped me, for crying out loud. I might be carrying his baby! Isn't that enough?"
"No," Aunt Sakura said. "He did a lot more than that. He put himself between you and InuYasha, fixed it so that any time InuYasha touched you, you felt his touch instead. He now controls what you think about yourself and everyone around you. Every time you turn InuYasha away, Sumio just gets stronger. You're playing right into his hands. So, what are you going to do about it?"
Kagome gaped at her, outraged. The old woman was absolutely impossible. She got up from the table and stalked back upstairs to seethe.
The worst part about it was that the old woman was generally right. "You can't let the bastards win." "So, what are you going to do about it?"InuYasha's words resonated with Aunt Sakura's pointed question, the two statements twined around each other symbiotically, forming a clarion call to action.
"You can't let the bastards win." How was he winning? He was stealing her life. "So, what are you going to do about it?"Seize it back.
Kagome descended the stairs, marched up to Mama and asked, "Where's InuYasha?"
"I don't know," Mama said anxiously. "He left just after your fight."
He had to have gone through the well for a sulk. Kagome set off after him. He wasn't in his tree when she looked. So, where else would he go if he was hurt and upset? An intuition came to her, and she climbed the hill that overlooked the house, taking the long trail around it to the summit. The meadow on top, where they had consummated their marriage, was vivid with wildflowers, alive with butterflies. She walked through the grass in a cloud of yellow wings, then sat down beside him to look out over the valley.
It was the first time she had actively sought him in a while. InuYasha could sense her skittish uncertainty, but underneath it the ferocious strength of her resolve was back.
"Hey."
"Hey, yourself."
"I'm taking back my life," she announced.
A thrill ran through him; taking it back how?
"Are you?" he asked impassively, keeping a leash on his throbbing nerves.
"I am," she declared, "And I was wondering, do ... do you want to be a part of it? I've been ... awfully rough on you lately."
So. It was like that. Relaxing, he looked over at her, still noting the skittishness.
"You've put up with me often enough," he remarked. "It evens up the score for when Toushi was coming."
"I guess."
He ventured a light kiss. She held herself tight against the flinch. He felt the slight start anyway, but observed she did not draw back. So, not so easy, but she was ready to fight back, wanted to rejoin the world.
He leaned back, held out a hand, and asked, "Can you trust me?"
She was even more nervous than she had been on their wedding night. She knew what she had to do; she had to open her soul, lay it bare, let the flames of InuYasha's passion burn her clean of Sumio's touch. But no, it wasn't easy.
InuYasha felt her trembling as he stroked her back and kept a tight leash on himself, letting the heat build gradually. He understood and honored the courage it took to bring her here. He would not abuse her trust.
In the end, it was not the searing flames of passion but the long lasting embers of a steady, comfortable love that gently warmed and healed her aching soul. They remained snuggled in each others' arms until the shadows grew long and the afternoon cooled.
"We'd better go back," InuYasha said at last. "People will start worrying."
"You just want your dinner," she laughed as his stomach growled.
"Care for a ride down?" he asked, helping her to her feet.
"No, let's walk," she replied. "I don't want to hurry." She took his hand, twined her fingers around his and they walked back down the trail, reaching the well as the sun touched the horizon.
Mama smiled, greatly relieved, when she saw them come out of the wellhouse, still holding hands.
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The months had slipped by as the River Woman had coaxed the threads of fate surrounding many lords and peasants, priests and warriors. She had steadfastly refused to look at her anchor while Emma-O remained huddled over it, carefully adjusting his mix of heat and pressure. It was just too hard to watch, but it continued to dwell in her mind, the fates of these people she had chosen and meddled with. Even the kami had hopes and regrets. The regret still stung painfully, and her hope remained meager.
A shifting, perhaps a relaxing, of Emma-O's stance caught her attention. He seemed to be breathing easier just now. She stole another anxious glance at her anchor. The miko's section of the piece was now glowing a vivid vermillion, a color reflected in, or perchance reflecting, the color of Emma-O's eyes. How odd the colors should match so; was he putting too much of himself into the miko's character? The temptation was always high to remake oneself when meddling with souls.
As she watched, the miko's color started to dull, to cool, ebbing away to a sullen red, then clearing to reveal a monolithic quartz crystal, pure and clear.
"Ahhh, very nice," she admitted, admiring the purity of the flawless crystal.
"Yes, even better than I expected," Emma-O rumbled, deeply pleased. "Only one thing remains."
The River Woman frowned, puzzled. It looked perfect. What more could he possibly want? She looked at him questioningly.
"It remains static. She still has not truly engaged her darkness."
The River Woman leaned over and looked closer. Embedded in the heart of the crystal was a pool of darkness, the youki gift from the hanyou at the consummation of their joining. It was still untouched, carefully walled off from the rest of her.
The hanyou's side, on the other hand, was now a dynamic, living thing, with powerful energies surging smoothly around it that dove into a pool of light at its heart to emerge, cleansed, for the next circuit.
The difference was unmistakable; still, it galled her to despoil that beautiful crystal with darkness.
"Oh, must you?" she asked.
"My dear lady, the parade of souls I have seen pass by me are as to the drops of water in your river. There are a certain number of souls who live far longer than is their due, who survive evils no one by rights should, who are 'just too mean to die'. Our little miko here needs to tap into some of that nasty pettiness. It can provide a strange sort of backbone when simple goodness fails."
The River Woman sighed unhappily. Kagome was the rock on which all around her stood. She simply could not fail. But it still pained her to see the miko handled thus.
"What are you going to put her through now?" she asked with weary resignation.
"No more than I must," was all Emma-O would say.
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Finally, the end of Kagome's pregnancy arrived. She began counting the days until her expected delivery. The discomfort of a full term pregnancy was this time trumped by the anguish of not knowing what she bore. Although she refused to acknowledge her qualms, they had been eating at her and she had about exhausted the limits of her faith. She maintained a brave face for InuYasha, whose nerves still jangled every time she so much as sighed without reason, but the truth was this baby could not come soon enough for her.
Nature taunted her. She had three episodes of false labor before finally settling into the real thing. Since she was so keyed up, the necessary relaxation was slow in coming and the labor dragged on. It was early in a midwinter night, about two hours after sundown, when she was finally delivered of a little girl, tiny, perfect, and completely human. She was much smaller than either Tsuchiya or Toushi had been.
Horrified rejection and maternal instinct fought it out inside Kagome as she looked, shaking, at the tiny bundle laying in her arms.
Kaede lifted the barriers around the house and allowed InuYasha back in. It was much too cold to take the baby outside, and she was unsure of his reaction in any case.
He settled himself beside Kagome on the bed and took the baby for his own inspection in the lamplight.
"She has my mother's eyes," he remarked after a time.
Kagome glanced over briefly then looked away again. That was as great a stretch of wishful thinking as she had ever heard. "Does she?" she asked dully.
"She really does," he assured her. "My old lady had the most striking black eyes and her eyebrows were just that shape."
Kagome looked over again with a bit more interest. She had seen a demon in the form of InuYasha's mother once many years ago. The woman had been extraordinarily beautiful, but Kagome found she could not remember the fine details, like the shape of her eyebrows. Still, she, herself, could not see anything particularly striking about this baby's eyes.
But the shape of her eyebrows was really of minor importance. What was important was that it looked like InuYasha was prepared to accept the child. He was setting her up to be one of his family, regardless of the facts.
"Kaou is going to have a field day with this," Kagome said glumly. Didn't he see how she was going to twist this to ridicule InuYasha as a blind cuckolded fool? She could turn any act of generosity into a scandal.
InuYasha snorted. "That old fishwife wouldn't know real decency if it smacked her in the face."
"Are you absolutely sure about this?" Kagome asked. "It's really going to make Sumio's day when he hears about it."
"Let it," InuYasha said fiercely. He actually gave her a savage, satisfied grin. "It'll come to him in time that I won this round."
"What?!"
"Think about it. His child has been stolen and is being raised by his mortal enemies. We control her destiny now."
Kagome's eyebrows shot up. She hadn't ever considered it that way. Put like that, InuYasha's decision made complete sense. It appealed very strongly to that part of her that wanted revenge, that wanted to strike hard and deep into Sumio's heart. Every kindness she showed this child would serve to turn Sumio's own child against him. Whether or not she ever learned to love this girl, she could accept her under these terms. Vengeance, perhaps years in the building, but sweet vengeance all the same.
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The dark energy encased in the quartz crystal surged to life, its quickening currents marked by deep purple swirls that roiled and fought against the wall encasing it. Vivid flashes of lightning attacked the wall, battering it with highly charged forces until the wall collapsed and the energy burst free to flood the crystal. The crystal began to glow with a smoky light as the darkness cycled out to the perimeter, brightened to a translucent, shimmering veil, then circled back to dive once more into the pool to recharge.
The River Woman looked over Emma-O's shoulder at the now fully activated anchor. The power pulsing off it was substantial; the jostling currents of the game field were affected in a wide radius, slowing and diffusing their energy as they ran up against it and passed by.
"Muchitsujo-rei is not going to miss that," she observed.
"No," Emma-O replied, "and he can't afford to ignore it. I expect we'll be seeing a great deal of him in this vicinity from now on. Are you prepared to take advantage of it?"
The River Woman paused to recollect the threads of her strategy and reconcile it to the new configuration.
"I have several hidden markers, including three potential anchors, in play in other parts of the field for the purpose of capturing territory and weakening his base. So far, they are moving as I had hoped. But I'm going to need something to entice him to keep working here, something vulnerable that he thinks he can capture."
"There are the children."
"Hm. It makes for difficult play. They are still so young."
"They'll grow quickly."
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The news of the human baby in InuYasha's household ran through the village like a shock wave. All day long, it was the talk of the town. The horse trader who was passing through carried the news out into the broader world, where it soon arrived in Sumio's castle.
The news of what happened later, at sunset, when the new baby acquired her family's characteristic ears, claws and eyes, failed to raise much comment. The village, after all, already had two part-youkai children. What was one more?
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A few weeks later, as her household returned to its normal rhythms, Kagome came back from the midnight feeding, darted under the covers and crammed herself tightly against InuYasha, shivering in the midwinter night chill.
"Man, it's cold!" she groused, shifting around to snuggle even closer.
InuYasha threw an arm around her and she grabbed it and held it close. Slowly, the circulation seeped away from the arm she was laying on, leaving it numb and tingling. He tried to shift to relieve it, but she would have none of that, muttering complaints as she resettled herself in his embrace, employing some of the small casual abuses two completely comfortable people foist on one another. He didn't mind; he'd been waiting for this moment for months. He casually nibbled along her ear, making sure his whiskers tickled abominably.
"Hey!" she protested.
"Hmm?" he murmured archly.
She rolled up to give him a grumpy look. He gazed back tranquilly.
"Oh, never mind."
He shifted, then pulled her in against his shoulder and stroked her hair, utterly content. He decided he would make a point of picking on her tomorrow, try to get her really ruffled up, just to celebrate.
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Authors Note:
Well, kids, it's time to report on the naming contest!
First off, now I know what it takes to get reviews. Maybe I'll run a few more contests, if I can think of interesting topics.
It's been a very interesting look into what aspects of the story have most registered with people. Most of you proposed a title referring to the gods and/or the game. That extra world layer seems to be playing well with everyone. A couple of you locked in on Kagome and InuYasha's marriage as a key feature.
I got four votes to leave it alone (including the person who started this all off in the first place) and that's what I'm going to do. It seems to have been picking up traction lately, with the title passing around and landing on nomination lists for quality writing and so forth, so derailing it at this point with a name change seems counterproductive.
That said, never let it be said I reneged on the deal. I am going to pick a winner and award the prize. Three of you gave me what I consider the same name, reworded slightly, so you may each claim either the answer to one question or a random spoiler from my stores of prewritten snippets.
Initial A:"The Gods' Game"
manga:"A game of the Gods"
EtherealSiren:"The Game of the Gods"
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