Disclaimer: See Chapter One
Legend:
'……' thoughts
"……" speech
Enter the Wolf's Den
By: wolf demoness
Chapter Four: The Little Girl in the Forest
One day as Inuyasha was walking back from a bath in the river outside the village boundary, after having helped the village men clear the clogged irrigation ditches leading to the rice patties, he heard a small girl talking to herself in the forest. Drawing closer he realized that she was reading to herself from one of the tablets that Lady Kaede gave the children to practice their letters. Curious as to what the girl was reading and why she had come so far into the forest he quietly approached her. She jumped when he deliberately stepped into her line of sight, "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," he said gently and sat down a few feet away from the girl. She had long straight black hair and was wearing a light pink kimono. As he sat down she regarded him with serious deep chocolate brown eyes. "What are you doing so far out in the forest? It's not safe out here."
"Reading," she said.
Inuyasha smiled and said, "You shouldn't read so far away from the village. There are demons in this forest you know." The little girl looked down at her hands folded in her lap. The silver haired demon sighed and tried a different tactic with the young girl. "What are you reading?" She held out her tablet for him to take which he dutifully studied before giving it back to the girl. "What does it say?"
"You can't read?" she asked timidly.
"No. Can you?"
"A little," she blushed.
"What does it say?" he asked again.
She smiled up at him. "It's a story about a mama and a papa rabbit and their babies. Do you want me to read it to you?" she asked excitedly.
Inuyasha smiled, "Would you, please?"
"Okay," she straightened her back settling herself importantly on the tree root she was using as a stool and laboriously began to relate the story to the amused hanyou. After a few minutes she began to stumble over her words and eventually stopped in mid sentence.
Inuyasha moved closer and peered over her shoulder to where her little finger was hovering on the page. "Don't you know what that word is?" Inuyasha inquired gently. The little girl hung her head and her eyes started to mist. "Hey, don't cry. It's okay," the hanyou tried to console the sobbing little girl. He really hated to see girls cry. He never knew what to do to make them stop. "I know," Inuyasha tried, coming up with a spur of the moment idea that he hoped would work, "why don't you ask Kaede? She's really smart, she'll know."
"No."
Inuyasha cocked his head to the side curiously, "Why not?"
"She's scary."
"Scarier than me?" Inuyasha said settling down on all fours in front of the little girl.
"Mmmhhh," the little girl sniffled.
"How about if we both go ask her what the word is? Would that be okay?"
The little girl thought about it for a moment then nodded her head, "Okay." Inuyasha smiled and stood up offering his hand for the little girl to take. "You'll go with me?" she asked timidly taking his hand.
"I'll even ask if you want me to." The small child gave a happy smile and nodded her head. The two started walking away from the forest toward Kaede's hut. "What's your name?" Inuyasha asked her once they were safely in the village proper.
"Yuki," the small child replied.
"Yuki, that's a pretty name." The child blushed and looked at the ground.
The silver haired demon and the child walked down the dirt road for a few moments before Inuyasha felt a small tug on the leg of his pants. He looked down at the child who smiled up at him and said, "My mommy says you're a hero."
Inuyasha looked at the small girl puzzled. One of his ears perked up and swiveled forward on his head while the other flattened against the side of his head, making the child laugh. "Why does your mommy say that, Yuki?"
"'Cause!" she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and she couldn't believe that he didn't know already. "You dug that big ditch that lets all the water in and daddy says that it saved the harvest, and mommy says that you protected us from the monster that came out of the forest, and you helped build up the houses when the storm came and knocked them down!" Inuyasha looked at the young girl dumbfounded. She sighed at him and stopped in her tracks, throwing her arms around his legs, "You're my hero."
Inuyasha knelt down next to the little girl and returned the embrace feeling his cheeks heat up in embarrassment as several of the villagers stopped to "awwww" at the sight of the little girl and the hanyou. When she pulled back Inuyasha asked her, "That's silly, Yuki. You don't really think I'm a hero, do you?" The small child nodded her head so vigorously that strands of her long black hair went flying up all about her face. Inuyasha laughed at her antics and stood to continue the trip, her small hand firmly ensconced in his larger, clawed hand.
******
"Lady Kaede!" Inuyasha called as the two stepped into the doorway of the priestess' home. "Lady?"
"Here, Inuyasha," the old woman called from the inner room. Inuyasha motioned for the child to go before him into the room as he held up the door screen, but she shook her head and hid behind his legs. Smiling gently Inuyasha went into the room before her. Kaede was sitting in front of the stove tending the fire. As they approached she turned the logs with a long metal pole ensuring that the fire burned hot in the stove's center to evenly cook the stew that she'd begun for the evening meal. "What have ye come to see me about, Inuyasha?"
Inuyasha smiled at the little girl hiding behind him and gestured for her to give him the parchment she'd been reading from. She detached herself from his legs long enough to hand the paper over then retreated to her safe haven behind the demon. "Well, Lady, Yuki and I were reading this story, but we weren't sure what this word meant. Could you tell us please?" Kaede knew that Inuyasha couldn't read or write a word in Japanese, but she rightly guessed that Inuyasha was trying to help the shy child ask for help and went along with the ploy. Kaede held out her hand to receive the paper from the demon. "It's this one right here," Inuyasha pointed out helpfully.
"Hmmm, I see. Well I'm not surprised that you had difficulty here. This is a very hard symbol to decipher." The priestess glanced up in time to see the child perk up a little, glad that she wasn't asking an obvious question and that the Lady wasn't angry with her.
"But what does it mean, Kaede?" Inuyasha prompted.
"This," the priestess held the parchment out for the demon and the child to see, "is the symbol for 'tree.'"
"Oh, so that's what it means!" Inuyasha exclaimed. "You were right, Yuki," he said winking at the child. "Yuki said that that meant 'tree,' but I thought it was something different." Inuyasha said turning to the priestess who smiled at the demon's kindness to spare the human child's feelings by telling such an obvious falsehood. "Thank you for your help, Lady." Inuyasha rose and began to lead Yuki out of the hut.
"Inuyasha, might I speak with ye?"
The hanyou turned, surprised at the request, "Of course, Lady." He knelt down beside the small girl, "You better get home Yuki, it's going to start getting dark soon. Thank you for reading me that story, maybe we can finish it another day?"
"Okay," the small child nodded her head and sped off home to tell her parents of her wonderful adventure with the village's resident hanyou. News travels fast in such a small village and by this time tomorrow the unmarried women of the village would have yet another reason to sigh as he walked by, other than his youthful good looks and kind heart. The next day as he passed young women would lift their hands to their mouths and whisper in their friend's ears how gentle and caring he was with children. They would say to each other; "Did you hear how kindly he treated Yuki…Oh, I wish I could find a man to marry who is so good with children…Isn't he handsome…Do you think that he's courting anyone?" Kaede could conceive of what would be said so well amongst the available women that she imagined she could almost hear the besotted chatter as the half demon walked over to stand before her.
"Inuyasha," the priestess began. "I see ye have taken to the village children."
"She was crying in the woods. She was too scared to ask by herself, so I told her I'd ask for her."
"That was very kind of you. Ye have a good heart lad," the priestess truly was proud of the hanyou; he'd come such a long way in the last few months. He was almost like a different person, so gentle and kind. He was considerate of others, brave, and giving of himself. His good nature had made him the darling of the village, but either he was unaware of his instant stardom or he refused to acknowledge it. Either way Kaede's opinion of the hanyou was constantly rising.
"Lady Kaede?" the hanyou asked.
"Yes, Inuyasha?"
The half demon looked down to the ground and scuffed his heel on the polished boards of Keade's floor abashedly; "Do you still teach the children how to read in the mornings between the morning and midday meals?"
"Yes."
"Do you think…" he started feeling extremely awkward to even ask, "I mean, would it be alright if I came to the lessons tomorrow?"
"Ye wish to learn to read?" This really surprised the old woman. To her knowledge Inuyasha had about as much use for writing and reading as he had for a bed to sleep in, preferring to take his rest in the limbs of the trees surrounding the village.
"Yes, and to write if it wouldn't be a bother to you."
"Hmm," Kaede went back to turning the logs in her stove with the metal poker. "Tell me Inuyasha, do ye still go hunting with the village men in the mornings?"
"Yes Lady. But we're not going tomorrow!" he tried to reassure her. "I brought down enough today to sustain the village for today and tomorrow so I thought…"
"I cannot teach ye to read if ye can only attend a handful of lessons in weeks Inuyasha." Kaede interrupted.
"Oh," Inuyasha said disappointed, his ears drooping slightly. "I understand. Thank you, Lady. I'm sorry to bother you." The hanyou stood and began to draw aside the door hanging to depart when the priestess called out to him.
"Inuyasha, I did not say that I couldn't teach ye to read. Merely, I said that I could not teach ye to read in the mornings if ye can not regularly attend the lessons. I find myself with little to do in the hour after the day's final meal. Are thee likewise unoccupied, Inuyasha?"
"Yes, Lady." He let the door-hanging fall back and went to crouch in front of the white haired woman.
"You usually take the evening meal with me anyway. Why not stay awhile after that and we can begin your instruction."
The hanyou smiled wide and embraced the old woman in a fierce hug. "Thank you, Lady. I won't be late. I promise." With that the half demon raced out of the hut to go help the village men finish the days labor.
******
That very night Kaede began to instruct Inuyasha in the alphabet. It was very slow going and for the life of her Kaede couldn't figure out why. Inuyasha was by no means stupid, he had a swift mind, but for some reason he just could not decipher the symbols of the alphabet when they were combined into any sort of simple sentence. It was the most puzzling thing. Inuyasha had learned to recognize the symbols of the alphabet, written on the first page Kaede had given him, in a single night. But, after three weeks of trying to identify the letters of the simple story on the second page with no progress, both the student and the teacher were becoming frustrated.
It was a simple exercise he was supposed to do. The children picked it up in no time at all. All that was required was for him to identify the letters on the page, not try to string them into any sort of sentence or read the passage. "Inuyasha, here try this," the priestess said one night. She brought out a page with the alphabet written on it and pointed to a single symbol. "Find on this page," she pointed to the story he was working on, "this symbol." Inuyasha looked at the symbol and then at the page in front of him. He studied the page for several minutes then sighed loudly and put the page down.
"Here, Inuyasha. See. These two are the same," the old woman pointed out to him. The half demon looked at the two symbols and crinkled his brow.
"Kaede, I think you're wrong."
The old priestess gave a dry chuckle and set about explaining to him why the two were one in the same. "See they both curve up this way and see the line that runs up then down through the center of each."
"But what about this line? And this symbol slants toward the right while this one stands straight up, and look at all the dots around this one. How can they be the same symbol?" the confused hanyou asked.
At that moment the priestess started to laugh. Inuyasha looked up surprised than turned his head back down to the floor and began to blush. "I think we now know what causes ye so much difficulty in this, Inuyasha."
"I don't understand, Lady," the hanyou said in exasperation.
"Ye see much better than a normal human, do ye not?" Inuyasha nodded his agreement. "And to ye all the symbols on this page appear greatly different to one another?"
"Yes."
"Inuyasha. A human hand wrote each of these words and therefore each will appear slightly different. The dots and lines that you pointed out on this symbol were in fact unintentionally made by the artist that rendered this page. Do ye see? The problem ye have with reading this page is that as a demon ye see every detail that to human eyes are invisible."
"You're saying I see too well to read the page?" the hanyou queried his ears flattening against the sides of his head in frustration.
"Not at all. Ye can read the page, just look for vague similarities between the characters and not the exact matches ye have been searching out thus far."
Inuyasha sighed, "If you say so, Lady."
It took time, but once Inuyasha learned to identify which marks were not part of the symbol he was looking for and which were Inuyasha began to excel in his studies. Very soon Kaede was running out of texts to give the hanyou. He read everything she could offer and quite often Keade would see one of the village children run up to the demon and ask his help with a lesson in which they were struggling. It was all very sweet and it did the priestess good to see the villagers accept the hanyou into their hearts.
There was however one problem with teaching the attractive young demon to read. The women of the village began to ask him to write letters for them to their family members in other parts of the country. Harmless enough, in and of itself, Kaede had no reason to be concerned until one of the village's more promiscuous girls tried to drag the hanyou into her hut under the pretense of wanting a letter written. Inuyasha, of course, was totally unaware of the girl's motives and the priestess was glad that she'd seen what was happening before the girl could get the youth into her clutches alone. After that Kaede used her influence in the village to impose the rule that if one wanted Inuyasha to write a letter for them they must come to her hut. Her position as the village high priestess would keep the girls in line even if she were not herself present, though she always tried to be.
There were many things that puzzled Kaede about the half demon one of which was that no matter how hard the girls in the village tried to get his attention he utterly ignored them. That's not to say that he snubbed them. He was in fact very polite; he simply did not encourage or acknowledge their advances. At first the priestess thought he acted this way out of his love and devotion to Kagome. However, as time passed, she began to see that a change had taken place in their relationship. Inuyasha treated Kagome with the same polite attitude of rebuff that he displayed toward the village girls.
One day in the village square Kaede witnessed a scene between the hanyou and Miroku. The two were rebuilding a home in the village center that an autumn storm had destroyed when she was passing. This early into the fall the sun was still strong and beat down on the heads of the workers. Inuyasha and Miroku had taken their shirts off to combat the sun's raging heat as they worked. Across the way a group of girls were quietly talking and pointing out their admiration for the hanyou's physique. When Inuyasha turned towards them they averted their eyes and began to giggle before scattering. Inuyasha turned to his companion, "Miroku what are they giggling about?"
The monk gave a wicked smile and replied, "I believe the young ladies were admiring the view, Inuyasha."
"The view?" Inuyasha looked around. "But there's nothing here, but blown over houses."
"Ah yes, so there are!" Miroku said sounding as if he had just realized that same extraordinary thing. "But I don't believe that those exquisite creatures were here to sightsee, Inuyasha. I believe they were 'dog-watching,' so to speak." the monk quirked his eyebrow in a teasing manner that the hanyou completely missed.
Inuyasha's ears flattened against his head in irritation, "Miroku, I asked you a serious question!"
"And I gave you a serious answer!" the monk defended himself.
"Fine. Don't tell me." With that Inuyasha leapt to the rooftop to finish attaching the roofing on the house they were reconstructing. Miroku watched his companion go then caught the eye of the Lady priestess. Giving her a bewildered look he turned back to the task at hand.
It seemed as if Inuyasha was completely unable to fathom that another person might have a romantic interest in him. His recent actions made Kaede wonder what had happened between Kagome and Inuyasha at the well side those months ago, for that's when all this strange behavior began. At first it was so wonderful to see the hanyou acting politely and helping the villagers, but now Kaede began to wonder what had caused the change in the silver haired demon and if she wouldn't rather have the old Inuyasha back. It almost seemed as if, surrounded by people though he was, the half demon had never been more alone in all the time Kaede had known him.
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A/N:
1) Wow! I'm really flattered by the response I've gotten this last week. Thanks everyone!
2) On to serious business, a certain reviewer, I'm looking at you DragonsDesire (I like your new penname by the way), has asked when Koga is going to show up and I wanted to address that. I'm sad to say that my favorite wolf boy doesn't come into the picture for awhile yet, I have a little more puppy torture to do first. But don't worry I'll get there. If I love Inuyasha so much why is it that I love to torture him? Ah, the mysteries of the universe. But don't worry, Koga is gonna come and make him really happy. ;-)
3) I apologize to anyone who likes Kagome. I've made her into something of a bitch for the story, but hey how else am I going to get Inuyasha away from her? The poor boy's a glutton for punishment, first Kikyo then Kagome. I fell so sorry for my poor puppy, they abuse him so.
4) If you're still reading this I congratulate you. Usually my eyes glaze over this far into the author's notes, but I've got one last thing to ask: I'm thinking of having Sesshomaru do a cameo. Good idea? Bad?