Disclaimer: Inuyasha is property of Takahashi Rumiko.
Priestess
2 - Apprenticeship
It took Kagome a week to gather up the courage to go through the well again.
Two breaths in her own time, and Kagome was determined she would not, under any circumstance, be staying. No, thank you.
Her lungs felt like they shrivelled up the more she took in the gross air of the late twentieth century. Her ears continuously searched for the sounds of birds and trees, but all she heard were motors and sirens. Worst of all, Kagome's reiki had turned cold, like a chunk of ice in over her heart. The almost familiar sense of warm protection was gone, replaced by cool uncertainty and even fear. Her reiki felt unsettled, in this world where magic was long gone, and Kagome had none of the experience or strength to reassure it, to keep it under wraps.
So as she steadily climbed out of the old well, marvelling how odd it was that only minutes ago it had been new, Kagome begged her living power to trust her. To remain calm. To please, please, listen to her.
The house was empty when Kagome entered.
It made sense. The clock on the kitchen wall said it was early noon now, so Souta should be in school and Kagome's grandfather was undoubtedly manning the shrine. Her mother must've gone out to shop. Certain that all was well, Kagome headed towards her room, determined to sleep peacefully in her own bed once more, before everything inevitably went sideways once her family returned.
She didn't expect to find her mother curled up on Kagome's bed, hugging Kagome's pyjama shirt and bawling her eyes out.
"Mama?" Kagome blinked, "oh my god, mama! What happened? Why are you like this?!"
"K-Kagome?" Mrs. Higurashi scrambled off the bed and threw her arms around Kagome, "oh, my baby! My darling! I was so worried!"
"Eh?"
It never dawned on Kagome that time goes on, regardless of her presence in it. That is, she never realised that the week she'd spent in the Sengoku Jidai, staring at flowers like a besotted child, passed in the twentieth century too. It never occurred to Kagome that her family would worry. That her mother wouldn't sleep for a week, would spend most her time crying, and fretting and printing out missing posters. That Souta would camp out in the well house, determined to find out just how his sister disappeared – to bring her back. That Kagome's elderly grandfather, already frail due to advanced age, would spend a sleepless week locked up in the shrine, praying with a vigour he'd never possessed in his life, for the return of his eldest grandchild.
While Kagome spent a week feeling more at home than ever before, her true home shattered to pieces.
'I'm so selfish!' Kagome thought bitterly.
She was sitting in the living room, with Mrs. Higurashi asleep in her lap. Her mother collapsed in exhaustion after Kagome reassured her she was indeed back, that she wasn't hurt, that she will never do this again.
'I'm a liar, too.' Kagome could admit this, if only in her own mind. After all, she may have said she wouldn't disappear on her family again, but she still intended to go back. Just the thought of not doing it, of staying here always, of going back to her old life – without reiki, without demons, without endless clear blue skies – made Kagome feel like she was choking. Like the tiny polluted world around her was caving in, determined to bury her alive in its ruins.
She was willing to wait, however.
'A week.' Kagome decided, as she ran a hand through her mother's short hair. "A week to make up for a week. Now I just need to figure out how to breach the subject.'
Kagome sighed heavily and leaned her head on the back of the soft sofa. Modern furniture really did have its perks. Maybe she'll be able to teach the villagers how to make simplified versions of some things… within reasonable limits. Thicker futons and blankets, padded seating and perhaps a chair or two wouldn't be over the line, would they?
'Selfish.' Kagome repeated, as her mother tightened her arms around Kagome's waist and hummed in her sleep.
Maybe… maybe she'll stay for longer than a week, after all.
Jii-chan noticed it first.
That Kagome wasn't quite the same.
She didn't even realise she was doing something strange, not until she'd bumped into Jii-chan one morning in the prayer hall and he'd incredulously asked Kagome if she'd gotten lost.
"I'm offering the morning incense." Kagome said slowly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Kaede-obaachan taught her how it's done on her first morning in the Sengoku Jidai, and then delegated the duty to Kagome. She only did it for a short while, but it wasn't a hardship or an annoyance, so Kagome picked it up at home, too. She rather thought Jii-chan would be glad for the help, not look at her as if she'd finally lost it.
"Since when were you doing it?" Jii-chan asked suspiciously.
"Since I came back?" it came out as a question, much to Kagome's horror.
Jii-chan eyed her up, huffed and told Kagome to make herself useful and sweep the temple grounds daily. Kagome blinked, took the bamboo broom from Jii-chan's extended arm and wordlessly set to work.
She'd been back home for two weeks.
The one shikon shard in her possession was strung around her neck and Kagome never separated from it.
She kept the miko garb Kaede-obaasan gave her cleaned and folded neatly in her closet, waiting to be used.
As she swept the temple grounds, breathed in the smell of incense and watched the sun rise, Kagome noticed that her reiki began to thaw out a bit. As if here, on the shrine grounds, it was beginning to feel safe again. As if it was willing to trust that Kagome would take care of it, even in this strange new place.
The next day Kagome seamlessly took over all the temple work she could preform without Jii-chan's supervision.
Jii-chan and Kagome's reiki both appreciated it.
Souta noticed it next, Kagome's changes.
They unexpectedly ran out of eggs, and their mother asked both to go get some. Usually, they'd bicker and fight until only one of them had to go. Now Kagome put aside the charms she'd been writing for Jii-chan, straightened out her temple garb, grabbed her purse and walked out.
Souta followed, completely bewildered.
"Nee-chan, are you okay?"
"Hmm?" Kagome blinked and turned to look at her brother's worried expression. "Yeah, I'm okay. Why? I something wrong?"
"Well." Souta stopped walking and stared at her, as if he couldn't quite find the words to tell Kagome exactly what he thought.
Kagome gently tugged him aside, so they wouldn't block traffic, and patiently waited for Souta to spit it out. She'd always done this when he was troubled before, the only form of mature care she'd ever offered her little brother. This piece of familiarity seemed to give Souta the courage he needed.
"You're in the temple just as much as Jii-chan," Souta began counting on his fingers, much to Kagome's amusement. "You don't argue with okaa-chan much about chores anymore, you let me watch what I want on T.V. and… nee-chan, you're wearing temple clothes out of the house."
Kagome blinked and looked down at herself.
'Huh.' She eyed the simple fabric thoughtfully, flipped her braided hair back over her shoulder and shrugged.
"It's comfortable." She said finally.
"Is it?" Souta asked, his tone unusually dry for a ten year old. Kagome really did teach him everything, didn't she?
"Souta," Kagome patted his hair and smiled, touched that he was worried. "I'm really fine. I just think that… well, I think I might've grown up a bit. Don't tell anyone, 'kay?"
Souta snorted and then raced her back home.
Kagome's mother was the last to notice something was odd, or she'd been able to ignore it until she really couldn't anymore.
Kind of hard to ignore it when your daughter wrestled a wiggling mass of distorted bodies to the ground, causes said mass to burn to nothing, then proceeds to clean up the mess, as if it was nothing out of the norm.
The whole thing went down like this:
There was a series of strange murders. Strange, because nothing was left behind other than ripped up clothing and some stains of blood. Also, the single witness swore to high heavens the perpetrator was a slim woman, with a face like a Noh mask. No one bought it, but since the murders were randomly popping up all over the area, and most of the victims were middle-schoolers, all schools shut down early and would remain closed – at least until the police could give the public some sort of statement.
Kagome's family were having dinner.
It was the end of Kagome's third week back home, and it also seemed to be the end of her mother's patience, because Mrs. Higurashi had been piercing her daughter with a stern look from the moment everyone sat down to eat.
"Kagome."
'Maybe she's worried about my grades?' Kagome thought hopefully, as she chewed on a piece of pickled radish.
"I want to know what happened when you were gone."
'Well, shit.'
Kagome put down her chopsticks and considered her options. She could lie and say she didn't remember, but no one would buy it. She could make something up, but she sucked at it. She could tell the truth.
'And risk being hospitalised for brain damage? Pfft. No.'
"I don't think that's important." Jii-chan said suddenly.
Souta choked on his food. Kagome gaped. Mrs. Higurashi narrowed her eyes.
"I think knowing where my daughter was for a week is very important, thank you."
"She's back in one piece, isn't she?" Jii-chan slurped his soup loudly, purposefully ignoring Kagome's gobsmacked expression. "Whatever happened, it did Kagome well. Pass the salt, Souta."
"Don't pass anything, Souta." Mrs. Higurashi said firmly. "Jii-chan, Kagome was gone for an entire week. She didn't tell us a thing about what happened, and didn't go to a hospital to make sure she's well. You might be comfortable pretending nothing happened, but I can't."
"Nee-chan, you gonna say something?" Souta whispered worriedly.
"I – I should, shouldn't I?" Kagome muttered, but didn't intervene.
"Kagome isn't a child." Jii-chan deadpanned. "As far as I can tell, she finally started acting like it. It's a good thing. Whatever happened, we should be grateful."
'Oh, Jii-chan, if only you knew.' Kagome thought, a little bitterly, and that's when she noticed something was wrong.
Outside, she couldn't hear the few birds and critters living on the shrine grounds. Everything was unusually silent. And there was a feeling – a feeling she'd not felt for three weeks, and even then wasn't very good at grasping, and another type of sensation. Kagome could almost smell it, could probably accurately guess its taste. She was very familiar with it, after all. One hung around her neck.
'A shikon shard!' Kagome abruptly turned her head towards the window, properly alarmed. 'And it's heading this way!'
"Jii-chan!" Mrs. Higurashi smacked a hand over the table.
"I said, leave it!"
"Aw, don't fight!" Souta complained.
"Duck." Kagome said.
"What?" Mr. Higurashi blinked, "Kagome, there's a duck outside?"
"No, you duck!" Kagome demanded loudly, "Everybody under the table, now!"
Nobody moved, so Kagome grabbed Souta and bodily pushed him down, covering him with her larger form. And not a moment too soon – something burst through the kitchen window, shattering the glass and sliding over their dining table until it crashed into the wall.
Kagome immediately straightened up, somehow found the strength to bodily pick Souta up into her arms and sprinted out of the room. Jii-chan, in a surprising display of agility, grabbed Mrs. Higurashi's hand and dragged her out.
"Kagome!" Jii-chan growled, "you sensed it?"
"I sensed it." Kagome agreed and kicked the entrance door wide open. "Everybody out! Under the Goshinboku!"
"The temple would be better!" Jii-chan argued.
"The Goshinboku has holly talismans!" Kagome snapped and Jii-chan could only follow in her steps.
They made it to the tree and huddled under it, as close to the bark as Kagome could push them. She put Souta directly behind her and spread her arms wide, covering Mrs. Higurashi and Jii-chan, too. Her reiki was a boiling mass of anger in her rib-cage and the shikon shard against her neck vibrated forcefully, almost echoing Kagome's own anxiety and utter fury that this thing, whatever it was, dared barge into her home and attack her family. Dared to ruin her dinner.
Dared to posses a shikon shard of its own.
'Over my dead body!' Kagome's reiki seemed to hiss.
Her own shikon shard pulsed in agreement.
Kagome would've puzzled over the strange connection between the two, but the thing that invaded her home finally caught up to them.
It really was a thing. A mass of human bodies, awkwardly merged together into a shapeless blob of limbs, faces and torsos. At the very top was poised a nude female torso and it's face – it was an expressionless Noh mask, two cuts crossed over its left cheek and in its forehead embedded a shikon shard.
"What are you?" Kagome demanded, over Souta's frightened cry and her mother's scream of horror.
"The shikon shard," the thing groaned, "give it to me! Give it to me, so I can have a body!"
"Not an option." Kagome narrowed her eyes and the thing lunged angrily.
The many talismans wrapped around the Goshinboku reacted and flung the thing away. Kagome exhaled in relief.
'Good, it works. Means they'll be safe here.'
"Mama, Souta, Jii-chan," Kagome said slowly, "stay here and don't move."
"Nee-chan!"
"Kagome!" Mrs. Higurashi grabbed onto Kagome's arm. "What's going on? Don't you go near it!"
Jii-chan eyed Kagome up, similar to the way he did in the temple only a week ago, and then pulled Mrs. Higurashi's hands away.
"Thank you, Jii-chan!" Kagome smiled and immediately sprinted to the side.
The weird chimera-like creature crashed against the Goshinboku's barrier once more before it realised Kagome had ran to stand behind it, and turned to face her.
"What are you?" Kagome repeated.
"They carved me from a Judas tree," the thing rasped and wiggled awkwardly closer to Kagome. "They made me into a Noh mask and never gave me a body of my own. The shikon shard – it helped me find hosts. It gave me the strength to take humans over!"
The Noh mask suddenly opened up to reveal a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth and lunged, extending the main torso's neck unnaturally until it could snap it's teeth at Kagome's head. She somehow managed to smack it aside.
"How did you get here?" Kagome asked and carefully took a step back, putting more distance between them. She ignored the pain pulsing in her hand – she may have damaged it more than the strange Noh mask, but now wasn't the time to worry about it.
"I was always here." The mask admitted easily. "They sealed me in a box long ago, I no longer remember who did it and when. Then, a woman brought me to this shrine three days ago. I felt another shikon shard here. It was like a gift from the heavens! To think the Shikon no Tama could survive to this time! If I can collect all the shards – I'll definitely have a real body!"
"It didn't." Kagome said."
"Didn't?"
"The jewel isn't here." Kagome elaborated. Her reiki's burning anger flowed into a calm determination when she'd heard the thing didn't come from the Bone Eater's Well. That it survived to this time all on its own, and woke up because it sensed another shard. A shard Kagome had stupidly brought over.
Kagome did this.
"You lie!" the mask shrieked. "There's a shard of it on you! I feel it!"
"Yes, there's a shard." Kagome agreed and prepared herself. "Only one shard. I brought it over."
"You… brought it over?" the mask twisted it's fake body, as if expressing confusion.
"Yes." Kagome glanced briefly at her frightened family and hardened her heart. This had to be done, this… and her previous decision. She couldn't put it off any longer, not if this was the price of her indecisiveness. "The shikon came from me. I shattered it and I will collect all the shards. It's my responsibility. So, in a way, you can say that the shikon belongs to me. And I'm never, ever, giving it to the likes of you!"
And then Kagome threw herself over, hands outstretched, and clasped tightly onto the Noh mask, right over the pulsing shard.
'Please!' she begged, 'like with mistress Centipede, like with that three eyed crow! Please, reiki, help me protect them! Help me!'
Her reiki did.
It exploded out of Kagome's palms in a familiar glow of pink light and the Noh mask shrieked. It tried to throw Kagome off, many of its deformed limbs grabbed and groped at her in desperation, but Kagome latched on stubbornly and refused to budge. It was loud and messy. The purification took an entire minute, leaving nothing behind but the sharp stench of ozone and Kagome, kneeling on the ground, cradling a brightly glowing shard in her hands like some fragile bauble.
Then Kagome got up, put the shard around her neck and staggered home, where she promptly began to clean up the kitchen.
That's how her family found her, some ten minutes later, after their shock wore off.
"Do you have everything?" Mrs. Higurashi asked shakily and smoothed her hands over Kagome's head once more.
"Yes, mama."
"Are you sure?" her mother sniffled, much like a hurt little thing. "You have the rice, and the barley, and the cotton, and the silk –"
"Yes, mama!" Kagome chuckled and hugged her mother tightly. "I've got everything down in the well. I didn't forget anything, I promise!"
Two days ago the Noh mask attacked their home. Two days ago, Kagome finally told her family what truly happened to her: about Mistress Centipede, about how the Shikon no Tama came from her body, how she shattered it. How she was the reason that monster awoke in the first place.
About how Kagome wanted to apprentice under Kaede-obaachan, how she desperately wanted to fix her mistakes, to ow up to them.
About how wonderful the Sengoku Jidai seemed to her, despite everything.
Mrs. Higurashi and Souta cried, a lot.
Kagome cried, too.
Jii-chan teared up a little, but denied it adamantly.
Then yesterday Jii-chan went to Kagome's school and withdrew her registration, siting severe medical issues. As far as the school management was aware, Kagome was moving to stay with relatives in the countryside because of a sudden eruption of a terrible genetic disorder, which prevented her from continuing her schooling.
'The doctors recommended peace and rest,' Jii-chan bluffed, completely shamelessly.
'We wish Higurashi a safe trip!' the management said.
Kagome's friends even came over to have an impromptu sending-away party. Kagome, sporting a bandaged hand, pretended to be ill and wrapped the whole thing as quickly as she could. Otherwise the guilt of lying would inevitably shatter her.
At this time Mrs. Higurashi took Kagome's savings and the money meant for her schooling, and gone out. When she returned, she'd brought a large collection of the strangest things with her.
"I won't have you being a burden!" Mrs. Higurashi said, "we've such plenty here, there's no reason for you to go empty handed! Not when you're entering an apprenticeship!"
This is how Kagome found herself jumping into the Bone-Eater's Well, at the bottom of which lay enough rice, barley and unprocessed wheat to feed a family of seven for over a year. There were five bales of cotton, three bales of silk, an obscene amount of wool and several bags of expensive tea.
Kagome certainly wasn't entering her apprenticeship empty handed, no.
"Goodbye, mama!" Kagome shouted, as the darkness around her erupted into colour. "I promise I'll be back. I promise!"
'Thank you!'