...it seemed as though he was looking into their inmost nature,
making observations in regard to their creative essence,
and discovering why one leaf grew in this shape and another in that,
and wherefore such and such flowers differed among themselves in
hue and perfume....
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini's Daughter
Chapter 8- Arrival of the Morning Wind
Precariously balancing an armload of freshly picked plums, Shippou heard Miroku's approach before he was able to turn around and see him, the fruits filling up his short arms and forcing him to carry the unwieldy load under his chin. "Ah! Miroku! Help me, won't you?" the slightly overwhelmed little kitsune asked as the houshi approached, bending down and plucking some out of Shippou's wobbly grip, scooping them into his free hand.
"Part of breakfast?" Miroku asked, guessing that Shippou was heading back to the open shoji door, leading to their commandeered room. He saw the two girls moving around inside, blocking the view of whatever it was they had found.
"Yeah, we checked along the outside of the turret, and there's some fruit trees there too. We got some oranges and stuff too, and Kagome says she has other things in her bag...they just walk too fast...." he complained, short legs scrambling to catch up again, as Miroku made it to the steps.
Kirara was already munching on a scrap of meat, while Kagome handed out now-familiar looking jars, containing iced tea or green tea, identifiable by the colorful labels. Dumping the remainder of the plums on the swept area of the floor, Shippou sighed, picking up one of the oranges and smacking his lips as he began to tear off the peel, releasing the sharp citrus scent into the air, mingling with the richer fragrance of the plums, Sango snapping the last of the twigs and leaves from the fruit.
"Miroku-sama?" Kagome offered up one of the iced teas, and as Miroku settled down in the uneven circle, he accepted it, untwisting the top.
"Arigatou."
Swallowing a bite of her plum, Sango wiped some of the juice from her chin and asked, "So, houshi-sama, did you find anything out from Kigiku-sama?"
"Did you tell them what we found?"
When she shook her head, he set aside his drink, Miroku withdrawing the picture again, unrolling it and holding it up for Kagome and Shippou to see. "This was one of the pictures Shippou found yesterday, in the upstairs with the daimyo and the artists."
"The one with the girl in the flower?" Shippou queried, blinking upward and trying to get a good look of the demure little picture.
"Note that it is not Kigiku-sama."
"Not?" Kagome asked, leaning forward to see better, then taking the picture away from Miroku to study it. "Why wouldn't it be, though? She was the only youkai in the garden. If it's not her, then who is it?"
Frowning into the iced tea, Miroku replied, "Kigiku-sama didn't give a name, but she referred to her as a sister. A sister also hidden behind some of the shrubbery that Kigiku-sama has control over in her garden."
Sango arched an eyebrow skeptically as Kagome passed the sketch back to Miroku. "And she's asleep too? That sounds a little strange."
"I think so too, though she said it was because this sister is the one who told the daimyo that Naraku was a youkai." He hesitated, sipping the drink thoughtfully then quickly downing it. "That would explain how he knew, and it fits with the rest of Kigiku-sama's story."
"Something about it all just doesn't feel right," Kagome murmured, absently fingering the shards of the Shikon no Tama on their chain. "There really isn't a bad aura around this place, but all the people make me nervous, and Inuyasha picked up on Naraku's scent, even if it was old...I doubt he'd just put a place to sleep because they kicked him out."
With a loud swallow, Shippou polished off his
orange, and reached for a plum, looking at Sango and adding, "You know,
if Kigiku got mad at her sister person, if they even are related because
they're different kinds of chrysanthemum, it'd be kind of like Kohaku,
wouldn't it?"
Sango turned white, fingers clenching around
the plastic bottle she held.
Thinking he'd made some kind of mistake, Shippou began to stutter an apology, but was interrupted by Kagome gently telling him, "Yes, but Naraku didn't have the Shikon no Tama to try to corrupt then. Turning them against each other wouldn't do him much good."
"Even so," Miroku bit out, "Naraku doesn't like it when people 'bother' him. I wouldn't put it past him just for spite." The kazaana was upheld slightly, for emphasis on his point. "My grandfather tried to fight Naraku, and this was the result. We know he's been around for the last fifty years...who knows what he plotted during that time, before the Shikon no Tama returned? This could just be a failed plan of his."
"He's just messing with more people's lives, the bastard." Sango slammed her green tea onto the floor with a jarring crack. Liquid began to dribble out of the break, pooling around the glass. "There has to be a way to wake everyone up. Did she say anything about how he did all this?"
"That it's like a poisonous youki in the air," he sighed heavily, beginning to lose his appetite over the conversation. "And that not much can be done about it. I'd assume that if Naraku were to die, the curse would be lifted...of course, that's just assuming it works the same way as the kazaana."
"Youki can be purified," Kagome offered, still unsure of how youki could cause people to fall asleep. Wasn't it supposed to be a part of the youkai it belonged to? That concept nagged at the back of her mind as she yawned, jaw cracking. Was she missing something obvious? Ugh, too early in the morning. How did one purify youki? Her arrows did that, though she couldn't just keep shooting arrows everywhere. Inuyasha's Kaze no Kizu cut youki, but it didn't exactly dispel it...besides, she didn't want to accidentally have him slice apart the whole donjon, people inside and all. "Can you establish some kind of barrier, Miroku-sama?"
"Large enough for the entire castle complex and the village outside of it?" Miroku shook his head. "I'd need help, and a lot more ofuda than I have with me."
"I could help, and we could try to get Kaede-baa-chan," Kagome continued, trying to think her way through it, to see if it would work. It still seemed like a very large task, even for three people. There was always a way to break a spell...it was just a matter of finding it. She almost regretted that there was no princess sleeping in the donjon tower- it would make life a lot easier at this point.
"I think we're talking in circles," Sango sighed, mopping up the little mess she'd made with her tea, patting the wooden floorboards with one of the napkins Kagome had bundled into her bag, heavily crinkled from being stuffed somewhere in the bottom. "At least we know who is in the picture...and if it is some kind of poisonous youki, then there has to be some way to purify it. It doesn't sound very elegant, but maybe we should withdraw for awhile and talk to Kaede-sama. She may know another way. I really don't want to leave these people like this."
A few nods signaled agreement with her, and Sango stood up, balling up the soaked napkin and stuffing it inside the now empty jar of green tea. "Inuyasha's still roaming around the castle, isn't he? I'll try and find him. Kirara?"
The twin tailed firecat looked up from where
she had been quietly listening to the humans talk, having finished her
own breakfast several minutes ago. The taiji-ya was reaching quickly for
hiraikotsu, a precautionary measure, allowing her to take comfort in the
fact she was armed in a place that seemed safe, though was still creepy
enough to warrant caution. At Sango's command, she leapt up, quickly following
her out into the hall connecting their turret to the main tower.
Picking her way through the concentric rings of the sleeping castle, Sango lightly stepped over or around the explosion of creeping botanical life, avoiding the chance of disturbing the people who lay sleeping on the soft beds of moss and long grass. They remained unchanged from how she remembered them, not even shifting or tossing in their sleep, but rather still and statuelike, as though cast in stone painted in brilliant colors, living and vibrant, about to come alive. Even in its eeriness, there was a kind of impossible beauty to it, something wild and magical, though inherently wrong, not unlike looking at a beautifully rendered painting of angry youkai attacking. The swirls and expressions, the bright colors...all could be the work of a master, and yet to look at such a work could bring chills if it were in the evening, under firelight, allowing the demons to dance in the flames.
It seemed that way through the entire complex, beautiful and yet deeply wrong. This little world was too still, without life, despite all the curling, sleeping, creeping roses. Sango rested her hand against one of the wooden rails of the bridge she stood on, watching the tiny form of Kirara weave in and out of the prickly vines more easily than she could. She had decided to follow the firecat most of the way, hoping Kirara would be able to pick out the direction Inuyasha had taken, though if Inuyasha himself was complaining of difficulty trailing scents in the air, Kirara was unlikely to have better luck than he. Still, Sango wanted to move, to get out of the room they had decided to spend the night in. Falling asleep with a draping chandelier of vines overhead reminded her of where they were, and gave her dreams in which snakes tried to wrap themselves around her arms and neck. She shuddered, then moved on, eventually finding her way back to the plaza they had emerged into the day before, after Inuyasha used the Kaze no Kizu to break their way through the towering veil of thorns.
"Inuyasha!" Sango called, lifting a hand to her mouth and shifting hiraikotsu for comfort. Maybe it had been redundant to bring the bulky weapon with, but if something did go wrong, she felt safer with it. On the grasses and moss laying across the courtyard, the same bodies lay spread, still and silent, from the old woman sitting beneath the overhang of her verandah, to the boys playing ball by the pond.
She sighed, looking around and hoping the hanyou's ears weren't having as many problems as his nose had been. "Inuyasha, are you here? Inuyasha!"
Kirara suddenly pricked her ears up, and Sango followed her gaze to see Inuyasha moving along the rooftops of the homes across the plaza from them, an annoyed look on his face as he came closer, eventually turning his head and leaping down and across the plaza to meet her.
"I take it you didn't find whatever it was you went out for this morning?" she asked him, the disgruntled expression growing more irritable as she spoke.
He folded his arms and grunted. "Feh. The stench is still here, but all these damned flowers are stinking up the place! I swear I smelled something this morning, but I keep ending up against the stupid roses," he snorted, as though to clear his sense of smell from the overwhelming fragrance. After a moment, he looked at Sango, realizing she probably came looking for him for a reason. "Did one of you find something?"
"Houshi-sama went back and talked to Kigiku-sama this morning," she began, interrupted for a moment by an aggravated, 'feh!' "Apparently there is another youkai chrysanthemum somewhere in the garden, who was the one to tip off the daimyo that Naraku was a youkai. She also told him that apparently the sleeping spell is some way of manipulating poisonous youki."
"Sounds like one of Naraku's miasmas."
Sango nodded in agreement. "And miasma can be purified, but I don't think either houshi-sama or Kagome-chan are up to trying to purify an area this large. I think we more or less decided to go talk to Kaede-sama, to see if there's anything we can do on a larger scale."
His frown just deepened, and Inuyasha flattened his ears back against his head in annoyance. "The day's up. If you all want to go just go and then come back, then fine."
Sango arched an eyebrow at him, wondering what that was all about. Before she could question it, Kirara's hiss began to sound not far away, and she looked to the cat to see her standing not far from the alleyway they originally entered through, her hackles raised as she backed away from the darkness between the buildings. "Kirara, what is...?"
The half formed question was answered a moment later when the rose wall suddenly burst to life, the tightly closed blood red roses opening as the black thorns began to thicken, sharpening and raising as the grassy plaza beneath their feet began to rustle sharply in a rising wind, darkening under the new growth of the sharp vines, growing taller and pulling in on themselves, narrowing the space of clear blue sky beyond them.
Small patches of flowers lining the pathways, the pond, the bridge...all began to rustle and thicken, spreading out rapidly and growing, shooting up broad, flat leaves, woven tightly with thin, sharp ones.
The land beneath Inuyasha and Sango's feet bucked as they tried to keep steady footing, Kirara transforming in a ball of flames to keep herself from being swallowed up in the sudden growth. Sango began to struggle her way over to the cat, swinging hiraikotsu to cut through the rising grasses.
Swiping his claws through the nearest clump of foliage, Inuyasha sliced apart the flora growing closest to him, now up past his waist. "What the hell is going on?!"
"I don't know! Let's get back to the-"
"Fuujin no Mai."
From where a thick bush of roses was swirling upward, black thorns stretching longer and sharper, a sudden rush of sharp winds sliced through the air, sending Inuyasha dodging for cover and forcing Sango to heft hiraikotsu before her and Kirara as a shield against the blades.
A lithe form was slowly moving forward from the corner of one of the houses, a red and white fan half hiding a thin smile, as scarlet eyes watched them bemusedly.
"It's been awhile, Inuyasha," Kagura greeted them, closing her fan a bit more to reveal her face. Flowers still continued to grow, around them, thickening, though the wild shifting of the ground had leveled, stabilizing. Now, though, it was impossible to see the places where the people fell, sleeping soundly through the uproar of Kagura's arrival. "You look awfully surprised to see me."
A growl escaped Inuyasha's throat as he cracked his knuckles, the sound muted by the rustling of the plants. "Heh, I thought Naraku hadn't been around this place in awhile. Too bad, I guess I get to beat the shit out of you instead."
Kagura's eyebrows arched as she spread her fan open again. "Oh? You'll spend time fighting with me, when you should be worried about your friends up in the castle? I'm honored."
Inuyasha blanched, quickly looking back towards the now hidden direction of the path to the donjon, and to the turret where Kagome likely waited. And if Kagura was trying to bait him, then she probably was in danger. "What the hell are you doing to Kagome?"
"Me? I'm not doing anything. I'm here for you
to try to beat the shit out of, remember?" she shot back, raising her fan
again. "Now, about that...Fuujin no Mai!"
~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~o~O~o~
Believe it or not, some ends are going to start
tying themselves together very soon. ^_^
And it's quite important that Sango walked
out that door instead of Miroku...originally I was going to have him go,
but...::cackles:: Have another chapter or two and you'll see.
Also, there is a Lady White in the story of
Lady Yellow and Lady White, which half of this fic is based on. I'll give you a more detailed backstory to it at the end of the fic,
since I'm assuming you, my dear readers, are not as familiar with that
one as The Sleeping Beauty. ^.~v
Til next time.
~Queen