Dying to Live

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Kohaku knelt by the rippling, shallow little pool in the moonlight. He guessed that it was around midnight or a little past, and the rain clouds that had masked the sky for more than half of the day were nearly cleared away so that small drops fell in only interspersed clusters. Ignoring the rain, which seemed unusually warm against his face for this late in the season, the young demon slayer wandered on and off of obscure forest cart trails, and occasionally sliced through overgrown patches of brush. He was traveling, but to where he did not know.

Tonight, he allowed himself to stop and rest. As he loosened the various leather straps on his armor and let his undergarments drop to the ground, the boy's soft hazel eyes hesitated over the sight of the worn, little leather bag. The jewel: he was going to have to tell Naraku that he had lost it. He knew that this thought should have haunted him, but somehow he realized that his soul entertained no intention of dwelling on any such nightmare; for instead, it seemed to endlessly flutter over a thousand and one dreams as brightly colored as a sea of ribbons.

Contentedly, Kohaku's hands worked the water in the pool until the day's dust vanished completely from his body. Once more, his roughened palms smoothed water over his right and then left shoulders. Tonight, he felt calm and unworried, and the muscles around his lower neck felt loose and soft. With three fingers, he massaged around his shoulder blades. And all at once, he realized what was amiss. As the boy's brow furrowed at the thought for one moment, he found his breath caught in his throat for the next.

Could it be?

Unblinkingly, he turned his back slowly to the water's reflection to find the skin pale and smooth. All of the cramping and scarring that generally brought that particular spot to his attention were absent. The jewel shard was gone! His thoughts raced and he realized how freely his mind was working. He was somehow freed from Naraku.

As if his discovery had somehow set an unseen clock ticking against him, Kohaku scrambled to dry and dress. Like an escapee seizing his chance, he hurried off into the forest brush. Blinded with adrenaline, he whacked with the villager's sickle into a nearby grove of bamboo, cutting a fast path past the decapitated stalks. This was Kohaku's state when he charged onto the wooded path on the other side of the bamboo. Perhaps, in that fraction of a second before he saw it, something within Kohaku sensed what was coming, so that he emerged facing the right spot in the woods.

The horse's screams pierced the air as it flew over a large peak in the trail barely 50 feet away. Its rider was driving the mare so hard that Kohaku had not even heard their approach. And now they were nearly upon him, so that Kohaku could see no way to avoid being trampled. He turned to shield himself from the blow, but instead clods of dirt and stones rained down upon him.

The mare had reared suddenly, stamping downward barely inches away from shattering his skull. The girl's voice came in broken shouts over the horse's hysterical straining, "Hurry, if you want to live!" Rin extended her arm imploringly, "Please!"

The sound of splintering wood saturated the area, and they both snapped around to face it. The horse gave another shrill cry.

The monster, a black dog-demon of immense size, crashed over the rise in the trail like a wave. With the indifference of a tsunami charging through the woods, the demon was flattening every tree within its huge, steam-boat sized path. Breathlessly, Kohaku seized Rin's arm, just as the horse had decided to bolt.

Moon-washed forest scenery swept past them in a blur now, and the girl's ragged hair flagged in and out of Kohaku's view as it lashed his face. He could barely tell the horse's pounding hooves apart from the beating of his own heart, while the air rushing past his ears added chaotically to the demon's crashing. His eyes stung from the speed, yet Kohaku could tell that they were climbing higher into the wooded foothills; the blurred trunks grew more slender and closer together with each second. While the demon seem to gain speed plowing down these more insubstantial trees, the horse was slowed by their shallow, knobby, mountain roots. Kohaku realized that even if the mare could have been driven faster, at this point, she had worked herself into such frenzy that the reigns had lost their purpose.

Snatching another glance back at the snarling beast, which was noticeably gaining on them, Rin turned her face so that Kohaku got a better look at her. "Hey," he shouted into her ear, "aren't you the girl who travels with the dog demon Sesshomaru?"

"Yes! I was!"

"Then why is he chasing you?" Kohaku asked.

"That's not him," Rin corrected. "Lord Sesshomaru's fur is white, not black!"

"Oh, then how did this one find you?"

She answered him in chopped sentences, "It didn't. I ran across it as it was feeding. It caught our scent. Oh, damn! This horse won't go much farther!"

Leaning out to get a better look at the horse, Kohaku noticed the white foam seeping from between its gritted teeth. However, worse yet was the change that had suddenly seized the landscape. To the right of the trail, a steep wall of flat rock was rising taller and taller above them. To the left, the ground had fallen away sickeningly into a steep and rocky slope. Rin had also noticed the steep drop, and a cold sweat painted her whole face.

Staring down into the valley again, Kohaku could not even see past the first ten feet. Still, he made his suggestion: "What if we jump from the horse and try roll down to the bottom?"

"What?" Rin said, sounding strangled. "What if there are rocks are at the bottom?"

"What if there aren't?"

Together they turned to look back at the massive dog demon. Now barely 20 feet away, it was mad with hunger. They could even see strings of saliva dangling from its snarling mouth.

Still turned so as to look back, Rin and Kohaku were jolted forward without notice, and thrown uncomfortably against the back of the horse's neck. Here, the scrubby trees grew so close together, that the ground had become a web of gnarled roots. Again, the horse tripped. Any moment they would be snapped in half by the monster's fangs.

"Let's jump!" Kohaku yelled. White with fear, Rin stared down the slope and nodded minutely.

"Alright! On 'three!' One! Two! Three!"

The dog demon issued one last tremendous howl before the final strike. Yet, even before it could surge upon its pathetic prey, Kohaku and Rin had already fallen into the darkness below.

::

Three days after Kagome's abrupt departure, two boys and a young girl arrived at the travelers' hut at the outskirts of town with a message for Inuyasha. The half-dog demon had remained in the village wandering the streets aimlessly by day and returning to the empty traveler's hut by night. Admitting it to no one, and barely to even himself, he was waiting impatiently for Kagome's return, which appeared less likely with each passing day. So when these three children arrived at the hut, they seemed to break a desolate silence. Inuyasha found his voice raspy with disuse: he had hardly spoken to anyone since leaving Kaede's hut in the rain.

The children all wore shrine uniforms, the smallest of whom was the girl, who wore the customary red and white. Judging by their appearance, Inuyasha figured at once that they had been sent by Kaede. After bowing respectfully, the little girl recited her message: in three days' time the village would hold the ceremony for the Shikon-no-Tama. Kaede and the village headman could see waiting no longer for Lady Kagome. If she did not return in three days, the village called upon Inuyasha to act in her stead during the ceremony and return the Jewel to the shrine.

When the child concluded finally with a shy "Sore dake desu," Inuyasha stood stunned into silence. Hadn't Kaede considered, at the very least, how deeply perverse and ironic his participation would be? Almost 65 years ago, he had been the one to set fire to the shrine, steal the Jewel, and cause the death of its guardian, Kikyou. Inuyasha saw absolutely no way that Kaede could seriously want to put the Shikon-no-Tama back in his clutches for even a second. Really! Just what the hell was going on around here anyway?

Now he really wished that Kagome would hurry and come back.