If You Need Her

By Scribe of Figaro

MIROKU'S JOURNEY: PART III

"I've just seen a face
I can't forget the time or place
When we just met
She's just the girl for me
And I want all the world to see we've met"
- The Beatles, "I've Just Seen a Face"

He didn't get very far. In fact, the first person he saw in the village shouted for him.

"Houshi-sama!"

He glanced at her, for a moment thinking he had found Sango already, but he quickly realized he was mistaken. She appeared only a few years older than him, and was very pretty indeed, but the spark of recognition didn't come. He couldn't quite picture Sango in his mind, but he was sure he would know her when he saw her.

Besides, Sango wouldn't call him "Houshi-sama." She would call him his name.

Wait. What is my name?

He smiled as the woman ran toward him, greeting her kindly as a houshi should.

"Houshi-sama, what happened to you?"

He heard the question, and yet he didn't. At very least, he could not answer it.

"Where is my wife?" he asked. "Where is Sango?"

She seemed startled. "The woman you were traveling with? Houshi-sama, I don't know."

"Traveling with me? Where?"

"Houshi-sama, I wouldn't know. You and your friends came through the village. I saw you go back toward the forest to fight the youkai, but after that I never saw any of you. We were afraid you were all killed, but the youkai never returned. So we thought you had simply fled the village before we could reward you for saving us."

"Youkai!" the houshi shouted. "We fight youkai?"

He had only vaguely noticed the woman's confusion and growing alarm as the two of them stood in the street just outside her home. Suddenly she gasped.

"Houshi-sama! You lost your memory!"

She sounded happy with being able to realize the lone houshi's predicament, but quickly turned sorrowful.

"Forgive me, Houshi-sama. I didn't mean to sound happy in your misfortune."

"My memory," he whispered. That should have been obvious to him, but only by hearing the words could he fit a few more pieces of this puzzle into place.

"Yes!" he said. "I was fighting the youkai, and I was hurt very badly. I must have lost my memory then, and been knocked unconscious. They thought I was dead, so they buried me. But I was alive, and when I came to they were gone."

The woman clasped her hands to her mouth. "But . . . then you've been crawling around for four days!"

Her hands were around his waist now, guiding him to her home.

"Forgive me for keeping you on the street so long, Houshi-sama," she said, nearly crying. "Forgive a stupid woman for letting the man who saved her village stand dying just outside her door."

His inarticulate protests went unheeded, though they did draw a few neighbors to stare. When he turned to them to apologize for the scene and his unrespectable attire he felt his head swim, and when he next opened his eyes he found himself lying down in a hut, the same woman leaning above him and dabbing his forehead with a moist cloth.

"Forgive a poor widow for her lack of hospitality," she whispered to him, "but I'll give you what I can, and I won't let you leave this place without dinner, a bath, and a decent kimono. Anything you ask of me is yours."

He smiled. "This simple servant of Buddha thanks you."

"Rest now, Houshi-sama. I'll have rice and fish ready for you soon."

He closed his eyes and felt sleep wash over him. A nap on this side of the ground was pleasant indeed.

Author's Note:

I'm a bit dissatisfied with some of these chapters, but I feel if I delay on them forever I might never get to the Sango parts I'm so interested in writing. Oh well.

- Scribe

Chapter posted 3 March 2003