Warnings: None

Daughters of Destiny

Chapter 03:

"Sense of Adventure"

A river flowed swift to the south of Kaede's village; to the north lay acres of rice paddies and vegetable gardens brimming with plants and food. The wooden huts of the village surrounded Kaede's temple in a tight knot, guarded by tall watchtowers and high walls. The temple lay at the heart of the village, taller and cleaner than the other structures, wooden roof painted a cheerful green. The village looked like something from a storybook—especially when we saw the colorful flags and glimmering wares being sold from myriad stalls in the village square. Kagome darted into the square and spun in a circle, shading her eyes from the sun as she peered at the temple and the stalls in turn. The square lay at the foot of stairs leading to the temple, offerings left at the feet of an ancient god.

"Wow!" she said, spinning like a dreidel atop her wooden sandals. "Wow, Keiko! This is so cool!"

Villagers—and there were many in this crowded space, haggling and trading and searching for goods in the bustling market—stared at her. I walked to her side, grabbed her arm, and led her gently into the shadow of the temple's steps.

"Careful," I muttered. I kept my head demurely bowed as a group of men walked past; one of them looked me up and down, but I refused to meet him eyes. "Best not draw attention."

She pouted. "Aw, phooey. You never let me have fun!"

"Well, your idea of 'fun' could get us killed, so I'm chill with being a killjoy." I looked over my shoulder at the market and frowned. Streamers of white cloth fluttering with long tags hung from poles above the square, tags inscribed with letters in dark ink between colorful lanterns. "Also. Does this seem normal to you?"

Kagome frowned.

I said, "I remember the village being less…well-trafficked?"

Indeed, I remembered the anime depicting this town as a quiet little hamlet populated by farmers, with little commerce or industry whatsoever. This market felt larger than expected. People walked from booth to booth and even up the temple steps, presumably to pray or make offerings.

"Yeah, you're right," Kagome said. She peered around my waist at the square. "Though the people are still what I expected, even if there's more to their economy than we thought."

She had a point. Most of the people in the festival wore the short, thin outfits of the common folk. Only the merchants wore nicer clothes. So maybe they'd travelled here, then, for some reason? Despite knowing that we should be careful to lie low, getting a firsthand look at the Feudal Era was just too cool an opportunity to pass up. My curious mind needed to know what the occasion was, and why a typically sleepy town played host to such a shiny gathering.

"I have an idea," I said. "Follow me."

Some booths sold beads, jewelry, and bolts of cloth. Others sold foods, libations, and medicines of dubious nature. The items were pretty, useful, unique, or interesting—which meant no one paid much attention to the two young women wandering through the throng. Made eavesdropping easy. Only took a few minutes to hear a young boy exclaim how excited he was for moon cakes, and another few moments after that to hear someone mention the evening's Bon festival.

Kagome tugged on my sleeve when we heard those words. "But Bon isn't for another two weeks in our time!" she whispered—in English. Oh, clever. That would certainly befuddle any prying ears.

"Calendars shift and adjust over time," I whispered back. "Think that might explain things?"

She screwed up her face in thought, then nodded. "Yeah, probably. Good thinking. But what—"

Kagome never got a chance to complete that thought. Someone near us shouted, and then another shout rang up. People pointed and stared in the same direction, up at the temple, and when I turned I saw why. A woman in red and white robes—dark hair streaked with grey, wearing a tsuba for an eyepatch—had come to stand at the top of the temple steps with her hands raised, calling for quiet amongst the onlookers. I couldn't help but smile when I saw her.

We'd just gotten our first glimpse of Kaede. A younger Kaede than in the anime, judging by her hair and upright posture…but Kaede nonetheless.

Beside me, Kagome gasped. Her hand snaked into mine.

"Oh no," she said. "I've gotta get out of here!"

"What? Why?" No way would Kagome get spotted in this crowd.

"I don't want to risk her seeing me!" Kagome said.

"Ah. So now you're exercising caution," I deadpanned.

"You bet your sweet ass I am," Kagome said. She squeezed my fingers before pulling her hand away and darting into the crowd—opposite Kaede's direction. "Stay put!"

I snatched after her but she moved too quickly. Desperately I snarled, "Kagome, wait—we can't get separated!" Cell phones barely existed in our modern timeline, let alone in this one!

"We won't if you stay put!" she called over her shoulder—and then she was gone, lost amid the press of the crowd. Slippery like an eel, that one. I just hoped she didn't get herself into too much trouble.

Resigned to waiting until she deemed it fit to return, I settled into my spot in the shadow of a booth selling earthenware jars and turned my eyes up toward Kaede. The crowd eventually quieted, and when it did, the miko began to speak.

"Welcome, honored friends, to our Bon celebration," she intoned with solemn—yet cheerful—reverence. "We begin the Bon Odori at sundown."

I smiled on reflex. Getting to witness a Bon Odori, or Bon dance, unique to the Feudal Era was a chance of a lifetime. Too bad I wasn't more of a history buff…

Kaede gestured behind her at the temple. "Afterward we perform the sacred duty of tōrō nagashi. We are blessed with crops abundant, and this year we have secured paper so that each family may light a lantern in honor of their dead."

There followed a moment, of silence—and the crowd went wild, screaming and cheering at this news. A woman near me burst into tears, which struck me as odd…oh. Paper would be scarce and expensive in this era, wouldn't it? Perhaps the village had only lit communal lanterns in years previous. A family receiving its own lantern was a momentous occasion indeed.

"We meet on the northern bank of the river after the Bon Odori has ended." Kaede bowed low and deep to the villagers when they cheered. "May the dead find their way to the afterworld in peace. Should you need assistance performing the prayer of rest while folding your lantern, I shall come to your aid. Please collect your lantern from the temple, and—"

"Kaede!"

Kaede stood up with a frown as a young man darted up behind her. The crowd murmured as he whispered something in Kaede's ear, but they fell silent when Kaede's eyes widened. She raised her fist into the air and turned to the villagers, face thunderous with sudden anger.

"The paper for our lanterns has been stolen!" she cried. "Men, arm yourselves. We shall find the culprit who did this and bring them to swift justice!"

It's amazing, how quickly the crowd dispersed. One moment they watched Kaede in stunned silence, and the next a furious shout rang out and they scattered. Men ran home to gather rakes, torches, sickles, and anything else they could improvise on short notice (this wasn't a warring village, after all). Many women went with them, too, leaving behind mostly children and the elderly. One of them, a white-haired Auntie if there ever was one, grabbed a stray child by the hand and hoisted him onto her him.

"This is terrible!" she warbled to another nearby Auntie. "To think we finally had the chance to honor our dead properly, and then this happened!"

"Who could have done this?" the other Auntie replied. They began gathering up the children, grouping them in a bundle in the middle of the square. "To think our dead might not be sent to the afterlife at all this Obon…"

"Hey!"

Kagome's voice cut through the chattering Aunties' like a knife. She pelted toward me from across the square—with a gigantic green handkerchief tied under her chin, covering her dark hair and obscuring parts of her cheeks. She looked absolutely ridiculous, but now wasn't the time for jokes.

"Hey!" I said as she skidded to a stop in front of me. "Do not going running off like that again! And where the heck did you get that scarf?"

"Do you like it? It's my disguise." She twirled in place, then grabbed my hand and peered up at me with urgent eyes. The fact that she'd avoided answering my question was not lost on me. "Sorry I ran—but come and see what I found."

I followed her to the edge of the square and through gaps in villagers' huts, moving north back and around the temple grounds. Although the temple was the largest building in the village, it only took us a minute or two to reach the back of it. A tall wall separated the temple from the forest, protecting the holy site from the wilds beyond. The flagstones of the temple foundation continued for a few meters past the wall, however, for which I felt grateful. These wooden sandals were starting to pinch.

Kagome skipped over to the wall and pointed at the top. "See that?"

I squinted against the sun above and spotted what she meant almost at once. A chip, maybe two feet wide, had been knocked off the top. Splinters littered the ground at Kagome's feet. Clearly the damage had come from inside the wall since debris had fallen on this side of it.

"And then, look there," she said. Her wooden shoes clacked against the stones as she walked across them, to the place where stone became dirt. "See?"

It was hard to miss, truth be told: drag marks, like a sled being pushed or pulled over the soft earth. Smaller squiggling marks marred the dirt on either side of the main tracks. I had no idea what caused those; they didn't look like footprints, that was for sure, and the fact I couldn't identify them didn't sit right inside my guy.

"I heard someone say the paper was on a sled," Kagome said (bingo, baby). She gestured at the woods with an excited, apprehensive smile. "Someone took the paper into the forest. It didn't show up on the flagstones, but I saw it when I was trying to find a place to hide."

I nodded and said: "We should go tell Kaede—"

At the exact same time Kagome said: "We should go get the paper back!"

For a second we just blinked at each other. Then I dropped my face into a hand.

"No," I said. "No. Nuh-uh. Nope."

Kagome pouted, hands tucked innocently behind her back. "But Kei-ko…"

"No. No. Hell no! Absolutely not!" Kagome was curious, eager, sweet, wonderful—and far too enthusiastic for her own good. "This is not our mystery to solve."

"C'mon, Keiko," she said. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I left it in the modern era."

"Oh, don't be like that!" she said. She took a few skipping steps toward the forest with a clatter of wooden sandal. "Let's at least go see where the tracks lead. We'll turn back if anything bad happens, I promise!"

Because she had a propensity for diving in without regard to the consequences, I paused and ran this scenario through a quick evaluation. Dark forest, thieves of uncertain nature, two teen girls with no powers to speak of? Recipe for disaster, for sure. My eyes darted to Kagome's hand. She was just beyond my reach, but if I jumped I could probably grab hold and—

Kagome followed the line of my gaze. Her eyes widened. She took a step backward, away from me. I took one toward her. That made her take another one back, until we basically two-stepped our way to the edge of the woods. She stayed out of my reach the entire time, even when I stopped walking and put my hands wearily on my hips.

"…if I say no," I deadpanned, "you're just going to run off again and expect me to follow, aren't you?"

It was barely a question, despite the interrogative phrasing. Kagome smirked and tossed her hair.

"It's worked so far!" she chirped.

I put my fingers to my temples with a sigh. Short of hog-tying Kagome to a tree, it was unlikely I could keep her from doing what she wanted—so my next best bet was to tag along and keep her out of trouble, much though I hated to admit it. We were basically a ragtag Hansel and Gretel at this point. Kagome's willpower was nothing short of unstoppable, and I was too invested in her wellbeing to leave well enough alone. Curse my protective sheepdog streak!

"Fine," I eventually relented. "We'll go look." I held up a finger, quelling her burgeoning grin with a glower of my own. "But we're not engaging the thieves if we find them. Capiche?"

She popped a jaunty salute. "Roger that, captain."

"Captain," I repeated, tone dry. "I like that. Makes me feel like I might actually have some say here."

She giggled. "Then that shall be your nickname for today's festivities," she said—and with that, she leapt into the woods. "Now let's go find that paper!"

For the second time that day, I had little choice but to follow her—this time into the deep dark woods, where my paranoia insisted the Big Bad Wolf might dwell.

I had no way of knowing how right my paranoia would turn out to be.

NOTES:

A mystery emerges! Very excited for the next chapter, for reasons.

Bon is a very important festival in Japanese culture, and it pays homage to one's ancestors. Tōrō nagashi is a ritual in which you send paper lanterns afloat on water, to guide spirits to the afterlife.

Many many thanks to last chapter's reviewers! Still stunned this is being read at all: xenocanaan, Yunrii, Counting Sinful Stars, JollyLoser, ahyeon, Nameless Angel 00, Emmie Sauce, wennifer-lynn, Mein Benutzername, rya-fire1, sousie, Lady Hummingbird, Kaiya Azure, Sesshomarus'Luver, CrystalVixen93, giant salamander!