Please, don't close and fade away
I coming! I am!
It gets harder with every step I take
But I can still move, I can still stand…

6
Rei-baba

Goal one: find a way to make enough money for Shino to stay at the Kamiya dojo for one solid year.

Goal two: find a way home.

I had begun to wonder if I should have added "collect moon from the sky" and "have a diamond fall from my mouth every time I swear" to that list. The way I was going, those as goals weren't any less far-fetched.

One week had come and gone, and the one ounce of good sense that I had was to stay away from the gambling houses.

It wasn't so much that I had actually grown any of that good sense of my own. No, when I stuck my hands into my pocket shortly after I left the dojo, I found that a little red-headed someone had sneaked three coins to me when I wasn't paying attention. Evidentially "Dai-sama" wasn't the only one who was good with sleight-of-hand… The mere thought that Shino had given me her own money because she knew I'd given all of my own to Kaoru, that was enough to keep me away from gambling houses.

In fact, I didn't spend the coins on anything at all, just kept them in my pocket where the weight of them helped to remind me what I was doing and why I was doing it.

The burns, still as fierce and as painful as the day I got them, managed to add to the surreal twist life had taken. Shino and Kaoru had been right. They weren't healing. The fever I began to expect every third day. I kept track of it enough to find a safe place to ride out the moments when I was helpless to deep dreams and icy chills.

So…something was wrong, very wrong with me. Pain I could deal with. As long as I used Shino's poultice and let my skin breathe once in a while, I was usually fine. But the clockwork fever was a dangerous nuisance and unsettling besides.

It was that reason more than anything else I was trudging through the forsaken little patch of forest. The land was hilly, and the trees grew haphazardly out of the rises, making me think that any moment the weight of them might be too much for the soil supporting the roots and trees would come crashing down on top of me. It was downcast the entire time I searched the place, the sky seeming on the verge of rain and moisture heavy in the air, but not a drop fell.

It really did look like the perfect place for a witch to live.

I had waded in old side-streets by eating houses for days, talking to oldsters who sat around on splintered benches and tables playing go. When one wanted to know about ancient tales and legends, it was best to go to the oldest people you could find with your questions. I can't remember anymore where I picked up that little bit of wisdom.

But it saved me.

It turns out there are endless stories connected to mysterious stones. People vanish and sometimes reappear, sometimes not. Embellishments of incredible journeys, cities in clouds or under the oceans, secret continents made their way into the stories so fantastically, one could have listened to some of the same ones forever and never heard it the same way twice.

Eventually the elders who got used to seeing me sent me in the direction of the woods, where a very old herbalist lived alone and kept her secrets.

They said she had made such a journey once. Some I talked to said that she had traveled to a mystical land herself and came back one day. Others said she was from another place and remained trapped in this world.

Either way, it was too close of an opportunity to find answers to pass up. My first priority was still to help Shino, but this was my best lead on getting home. I still had three weeks left to get my hands on some money. No sweat.

Or maybe a lot of sweat, just not about money or outer-worldly magic stones.

I sat down by a nice, stable-looking tree and scrubbed at my face with my hands. I wasn't feverish…yet. But I was plenty tired.

I hated being sick. Whatever the old hag could tell me about that Byakudan stone, I hoped she could at least do something about whatever the hell was wrong with me, being an herbalist and all.

Sleep was thick and gauzy on me, and I was still tangled in it even when I was woken by the feel of a stick smacking me upside the head.

"Get up!"

I blinked dazedly up at an old woman. Old, but not wizened. She was very tall, still had a few streaks of black in otherwise silver hair. Her wrinkles were deep, but restricted to the areas around her eyes and mouth. She had large, deep green eyes.

"Get up, I said!" she snapped with impatience. "I can smell a sick boy a mile away, but it doesn't look so bad that I should treat you here. Since you can still walk, you'll walk. Get up and come on."

She turned and marched away, leaning lightly on the stick she'd used to hit me.

I stared at her back a few minutes before she snarled, "Hurry up!" over her shoulder. I got to my feet and followed her.

The old lady could swear fluently.

Somehow, the torrent of words that only sailors should even know managed to bring down the fairy-tale feeling some, especially when it nearly overwhelmed me when she brought me to a little hut almost completely consumed by moss and vines and sheltered by huge, ancient trees.

"It looks painful," she said as she examined my damaged flesh. It was the most polite thing she had said yet.

Idly I wondered what Shino would think of the old lady. An image of her blushing and shocked into silence by the strong language made me smile.

"What's your name, Son?"

"Sagara Sanosuke…Grandma," I said, grinning a little at her. Her rudeness was refreshing…and catching.

She smirked. "You may call me Rei-baba," she said before turning away to look over her shelves.

Her hut was close and full of all sorts of bottles, cups, bowls, all filled with things I'd probably rather not know about. Any available space had plants hanging from strings to be dried. Only shoved in a small corner was anything that made the place look like it wasn't an apothecary's shop: a small western-style bed with a lot of pillows piled on it.

Rei-baba, for the fun of understatement, was extremely eccentric.

"It's been a long time," she murmured as worked at the bench, mixing things into a bowl. "Didn't think I'd live long enough to meet one more."

"One more what?"

"One more traveler," she said, turning around and handing me a bowl with an ugly green glob not as pleasant-looking the stuff Shino had been rubbing on me. "Put that on the burned places," she instructed absently, moving on to another shelf. "I'll get something to give you your strength back while you're doing that."

"Thanks," I grunted. Grimacing, I stuck two fingers into the mush and spread it onto my arm first, noting with surprise that where Shino's medicine soothed the pain, this stuff made it vanish completely. I was grateful, I guess, but I wondered grimly how I was going to pay her for this.

Funny how we came in a full circle back to money. Shino's coins were warm in my pocket. It was dumb to feel any pain about parting with them just because they were hers, but…

I didn't want to spend them. Damn it, who cares why, it was as simple as that!

Maybe I could help the lady out with some chores or something.

I was almost finished when she thrust some tea under my nose. Gingerly taking the hot cup in my left hand, I realized it didn't smell as horrid as most medicinal teas did.

"Don't worry about the taste, Kid. By now I'm an expert at making it easier to choke down." She looked over my arm, which I held slightly away from me so I wouldn't smear medicine everywhere. "Inconvenient to be burned like that all over your hand," she observed. "I was far luckier."

I lowered the tea, gasping a little at how quickly my head cleared. "What are you talking about, Baba?"

"The lightning burn that doesn't heal. I only have it over my right shoulder and ribs. Your entire right hand and arm, as well as part of your chest is burned."

I looked at he a moment, hope growing. "Then you really are--"

"From another world? The same as you, correct?"

"How did you…?"

She shrugged. "I can smell a sick boy a mile away," she repeated her earlier words. "And I recognized the signs. The burned skin, the heated sickness. You probably have a fever that comes and goes. You probably faint a lot--"

"I don't faint," I growled.

She ignored me. "Only the deathly ill or the very desperate venture out here. There's a witch living in these woods you know."

Her eyes twinkled.

"I'm desperate," I admitted quickly. "I can't believe those stories are true. I was hoping you could tell me how I might go back."

Her mouth dropped open. "Go back? Why the hell would you want to go back? What's waiting for you back at that place?"

My own mouth opened, but… I didn't have a anything to tell her, I realized, suddenly feeling very stupid.

"You idiot boy!" Rei-baba confirmed for me. "I know better than anyone it was a shock coming here, but the reason you are here is because you didn't want to be where you were. You desperately wanted to be somewhere else, right?"

"W-well--"

"Right. Now that you're here, why would you want to go back? Drink your tea!"

I automatically brought the cup back to my mouth, feeling steadier as I breathed in the steam.

"Look, there are…certain things we have to put up with. The pain of the burn, for example. The feverish nights. They can be eased with plants, herbs, and balms, but the fact is they'll always be a problem."

I looked down at my chest, where the burned flesh to the one side of my abdomen was swollen slightly and the most painful. "You mean…it'll never heal? Ever?"

She snorted. "Fifty years, and mine have yet to heal. They did lessen, though, a little, the two times I went back."

"Then there is a way back!" I exclaimed.

She glowered at me. "I believe I was talking, young man!"

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"As I was saying, there are pains you'll have to deal with for as long as you remain here. But here, there is a clear chance for happiness that was so elusive in the place you were before. You should have seen it upon first waking."

I blinked. "I didn't see any 'happiness', Baba. All I saw was Shi…"

Wait I minute.

Shino.

Shino?

Shino?

"But that can't be!" I burst out. "She can't make me happy. No, I mean, she does make me happy, but… She can't!"

"Why?"

"Because she looks exactly like my best friend! She even has his damned surname! That's just--"

Rei-baba snorted laughter. "You poor kid. Don't worry about it. She was placed in your path because she was the element that had the most power to make you happy. It'll be fine."

"But--"

"Never mind, I said. Now, what was your anchoring word?"

"My what…?"

"Anchoring word, Son. What was the word written on the stone?"

The imagine of the simple, flattish tombstone appeared clearly in my mind. "Byakudan."

"Really?" She took a deep, slow breath through her nose, as if trying to catch a faint scent. "Mmmn. Been a long time since I had a good whiff of sandalwood." She breathed in again. "Beautiful scent. Soothing and calming. Breathing it makes even the most wound-tight hothead go boneless wouldn't you say?"

Sandalwood…Shino's scent. Just being near her enough to breath the same air where she stood… I remembered again waking up from nightmares that came with that damnable fever, and she was always right there to help me wake. Her touch and words, but most of all her scent, made it possible to relax and sleep again. Like everything was going to be all right.

"Are you saying the word on that stone had something to do with bringing me to her?"

Rei-baba shrugged. "Those stones…although I and the few other travelers I've met have only met up with one kind, there are many. My stone and yours took us to world that was very, very similar to the one we knew. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, the stars are in the right places, and the moon waxes and wanes as well as we always remembered it. Not everyone is so lucky."

"I don't even want to know."

She shrugged. "For you it won't matter. Now about your girl. You kept up with her, right? She's safe?"

"She's not my-- I mean, yes she's safe! I made certain of that!"

"Good then. Now all you have to do is go back to her and let yourself be happy," the old woman explained as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

"How the hell is just going to someone supposed to make me happy?"

"You really are a stupid kid. Humans are such social creatures. Even me, to a more sedate level. I came here and found people who needed me, and lived happily with just them until I finally outlived them. I never had much a need for anyone else's company, but I do miss theirs…" Her eyes had begun to look through me rather than at me, seeing things only she could see. "They were what I needed the most, my children, and my love. Desperate I was for real love, true love, the kind of love only those who know you're truly their mother, even if not by blood, and the love of a man who knows you are his wife in every sense, taste, texture, and inflection of the connection made with that word.

"It is pain almost beyond endurance to have live on without them all, but I would not have given up their love to avoid the pain. Ever."

"I…I had people who cared for me at home."

"But you can't be with them. That's why your loneliness was so great that it brought you here. I've been there myself, Son."

She leaned forward with a roll of clean bandages and began wrapping my poulticed arm, starting with my fingers. Just like Shino…

"But…but you don't understand. She looks like my friend. A man I knew…know. A man I respect more than any other man alive, or dead even, next to my captain…"

"Does that really bother you?" she asked quietly, not looking up from what she was doing.

"What? Of course it does." I didn't look at her, but at the door she'd left open, looking out into the trees, turning slowly from green to vibrant reds and yellows. "Hell, how could it not? It's not just that she looks exactly like him, but she moves like him, talks almost exactly like him, smiles like him, even sneezes like him."

She snorted, working the strips down to my shoulder. "Does that really bother you?" she repeated.

"Sh…shouldn't it?"

"She's not exactly like him, is she? Nor is your friend exactly like her. There are differences, I'm sure. For example, the difference in you. Do you feel the same way for your friend as you do for this woman?"

"No!"

"Why? What's so different about them that they hold different places in your heart?"

I shook my head. I had no words…

"Then keep this in mind, Sagara Sanosuke: those stones that wait on the paths for aching hearts worth saving, they send you to the one you need the most. But also, they send you to the one who needs you the most. It's never one-sided, Kid. This girl, however she resembles your friend, or if she is actually him in this world where familiar things take slightly different shapes, she is not the person you left behind. She'll have had different experiences, different upbringing. Things seem to follow suit here as there, but even the most subtle difference can make a whole new pattern, right? Don't be afraid to love."

"I'm not afraid, I…"

I began to laugh just as she finished wrapping my chest and sat back. "Oh, hell. It doesn't even matter now."

"Why do you say that?"

"I left her with the same person my friend back at home had fallen in love with…she's the opposite sex here too… If things follow suit here like you said, then she should fall in love with him instead."

She leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest, disbelief on her face. "You are a moron," she stated.

Just this once, I didn't bother to take offense. She was probably right.

I scowled at the amusement on the old hag's face. "So you're trying to find a way to make money for the girl to learn swords?"

"Yeah," I said, defense creeping into my tone, but I kept my eyes on the soup she had prepared for dinner. "Well…Kenshin's a master at it. I thought Shino might do pretty well too."

Rei-baba got up to clear away the dishes. "I'm sure she'll learn. She might even have innate talent for it if he does. But don't be shocked or anything if she doesn't exactly become as great at it. Some things can only be mastered if studied from youth. Like music or crocheting."

"Doesn't matter," I muttered. "Just as long as she can protect herself better than I saw in Kyoto."

"Fine, fine. Since that's what you need, why don't you work for me?"

"Work for you?"

"Yes. Since you're already here, you can do something for me my sons used to. I could never do it alone. Strenuous work, that. The rainy season's here, so this is the best time to uproot some of those old trees so I can collect the oil from the roots. I'll can even pay you pretty well, in addiction to teaching you how to deal with your burn and fever. You'll be able to help out your girl in no time. What do you think?"

I gaped a moment at the old lady's generosity. "That sounds great, Rei-baba. But…what trees am I uprooting?"

She grinned roguishly at me as she swept the dishes into a basin. "Sandalwoods."