All right, some more characters from the original FB make cameos here! Here's the list of changed names: HukiYuki, LhoruTohru, ShehureShigure (he's one of my fave characters, by the way)
Disclaimer: I have it memorized now! FB belongs to Natsuki Takaya, dum de dum dum, and anything else you recognize isn't mine.
Chapter 7
No one in the class noticed that Haku and Hatsuharu had bloodshot eyes the next day. The night before, they'd stayed up until the early morning hours dealing with aftermath of the ghost wolf's unintentional murder of yet another servant, right in front of their own eyes. The servant had had no chance; the wolf crushed her windpipe on his very first bite.
"Wolf, get back inside me NOW!" Haku whispered desperately as he heard the sound of running footsteps towards the kitchen. The wolf vanished within that moment, and Haku felt the cold draft as the wolf rejoined his body. The door swished open and Rhena entered, followed by three or four others.
'What hap—OH MY GOD! Not again!" exclaimed Rhena in horror as she took in the girl lying in a pool of blood and the boys' terrified expressions.
"A curse lies upon this house," murmured an older woman, trying to revive a younger servant who'd fainted.
"You're more right than you'll ever know," Haku said. Rhena and the servants didn't hear.
The house was still in chaos, and the two boys had been glad to go to school to escape from the servants' terror and Asheno's questions. Luckily, the servants believed that Haku and Hatsuharu had just been unsuspecting witnesses, and Haku had managed to dodge Asheno's questions about the wolf's appearance by citing extreme exhaustion. At that point, it wasn't even a lie.
"I don't want Asheno knowing the truth about the ghost until I find out more about it," Haku told Hatsuharu.
So they now sat at their desks, eyes barely open. Khosure flew into the room.
"Haku! Hara!" he cried, grabbing Hatsuharu's shoulder, "Tori's got one of those attacks again."
"Already?" Haku said. Khosure nodded, unsmiling and worried for once.
"It's like the old Hothan saying," sighed Hatsuharu. He was referring to a pessimistic old proverb from the Hareth area: "When a heavy rain has drowned flowers, expect mudslides that shall topple trees, then avalanches that shall crush the very rocks."
Haku
The ceiling remained refreshingly unchanging as I stared at it from my bed minute after minute. Of course, it could demonically cave in upon me. I laughed at the macabre thought. For now, I just needed to gather the remnants of my sanity. The ghost wolf, Asheno, poor Tori…
My body is harboring a ghost wolf, with frighteningly real teeth and claws, that has killed two people already. Maybe the death toll is higher—it could've been wandering around Lhasa since I was born. No...gory deaths are publicized to no end, and we would've seen it on TV or in the newspaper. Still, those girls didn't deserve to die. Hatsuharu's already done a number on me about how I'm not responsible, I had no awareness of the ghost, and I shouldn't feel guilty. But they shouldn't have died. Hatsuharu shouldn't have to comfort the girl's family. Thank heaven Asheno was sick tonight. At least one thing had gone right today.
"If anyone deserves to die, Asheno is the one," I said to myself. No, even so, I'd rather not kill. Put aside the fact that I don't even know if the wolf would obey anything I say, letting Asheno wallow in his own pathetic misery is by far a superior revenge. Yes…let him die a despised man. A slow, painful death…a smile crept over my face as I imagined the possibilities. Then I remembered the girls. Hmm, I owed it to them to see whether I could gain better control of the ghost.
"Ghost wolf." Sitting up on my bed, I spoke softly, so anybody passing by my room wouldn't hear. The servants already wonder if I'm being driven to insanity by Asheno—hearing me hold a conversation with a ghost would convince them. "Can you hear me?" What was I thinking? Was it even capable of understanding Hothan?
"Please, come out. I want to see you for a little bit." In response, the cold draft passed through me. This time, instead of passing directly out of my body, the wolf walked out of the wall next to me, and jumped to the floor from the bed. It looked at me, then began chewing on a foreleg. Numerous bald patches revealed scarred skin underneath the fur. Matted fur and dried blood completed the shambles.
I just felt sad looking at the creature in front of me. This was part of myself, and it was a mess. Perhaps a reflection of my own mental state.
"Faran-Zhuku…" I began, "it is all right if I keep calling you Faran-Zhuku, isn't it, until I figure out your real name?" Faran-Zhuku let go of his foreleg. The fiery eyes met mine. Before, when shock and fear gripped me, I saw only the eyes of a demon. Now I saw the eyes of a soul driven to insanity by suffering. From being locked up for so long, because of the old curse…
"Well, that gives us something in common," I wryly remarked. "I don't respond well to being leashed either. But I'd rather not end up chewing on my own leg."
Faran-Zhuku settled into a sitting position, one ear cocked. Except for the excessive salivating and glimpses of jagged fangs, he could've almost looked friendly.
So far, so good. Maybe I'd be able to learn something.
"Faran-Zhuku, could you tell me anything about the family curse? If you know anything about it. If you can't talk, maybe you could show me a vision—one that's more complete than the ones I've seen?" Assuming that Faran-Zhuku had instigated the visions and voices was going out on a limb, but it felt natural that he and my visions were related.
My head jerked as the jarring, deep broken voice echoed through my skull.
"Listen…Look…"
The grass was soft and thick under my feet. I stood in a small clearing in the midst of a forest. In front of me was a cheap-looking tent, and a footpath beyond it. The sun had risen an hour or so ago, and its warmth brightened the scene.
"This looks familiar to me," I said, out aloud. The clearing…I'd seen it before, but the visions had never been so perfectly clear as it now was. Perhaps I'd experienced a sort of "awakening" of my senses when I finally knew Faran-Zhuku lived inside me.
"Quiet…Look…" So that was the voice of Faran-Zhuku. It would take some getting used to. I'd twitched violently. Didn't seem as though Faran-Zhuku could talk too well…I wished he sounded a little more pleasant.
Something flapped, and I saw a high-school girl, perhaps a freshman, wearing the green uniform of Karori High School. She had long brownish-black hair, wide, endearing brown eyes, and a short, thin body. She tripped.
"Whoops! Oh, a beautiful day! I love warm days in Lhasa!" she exclaimed, brushing off her tousled knee-length skirt. "Usually the weather is so terrible."
She hadn't tried to live in that tent during storms, had she? passed through my mind disbelievingly. Then again, she didn't strike me as the brightest person, either. Although she exuded an aura of kindness, the sort that one rarely sees.
It dawned on me. "I remember her!" I suddenly became quiet, thinking she'd heard me. She hadn't, so I assumed that I was invisible and unheard. "That's that girl, what was her name…Lhoru." A member of the Shoma family, I'd conjectured. But what was she doing in a tent in the middle of a forest?
"I have a little time before school, a walk would be lovely," Lhoru decided. She turned right on the footpath.
"Idiot…follow girl!"
"OK, I will. But you make me sound like a stalker!" I protested, following Lhoru. She walked down the path for about five minutes, then the path opened onto a larger clearing. A well-sized house with two stories and a large outdoor deck appeared before us. The familiar barren flame tree stood by its entrance. Definitely a Shoma residence—all the affluent Shoma houses had flame trees in their yards. Whose house this was, I couldn't recall.
Lhoru, overtaken by curiosity, walked onto the front deck, where two rows of rocks had been set out. Peering over her shoulder, I saw twelve shiny stones, varying in color from iridescent black to an earthy red, engraved with the animals of the Dzuni. No stone for the cat, which would make it the full thirteen. When did Faran-Zhuku plan to give me a real explanation about the curse and everything else?
"Not talk…good…want you…see…" rumbled through my brain.
"What have we here? A visitor, and a lovely young lady no less!" came a man's voice from around the corner of the front deck. Lhoru leapt as the man, maybe twenty-five or so, stepped towards her. I recognized him—the adult version of the little boy I'd seen in my very first vision. The one who was determined to find happiness and break the curse. He looked just like me now. I noticed he was wearing a light blue hekasho, just as I preferred to do when lounging at home. The Hothan hekashos were so much more comfortable to me than pants and shirts. Hekashos didn't strangle me.
The girl jerked when she saw the man approaching her.
"Oh! Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to trespass—I was just taking a walk and I saw these lovely stones…" she blubbered in a panic, waving her arms.
"Relax, relax, it's all right," said the man, with a big smile and a gleam of playfulness and interest in his puppy-dog eyes. "Yes, these Dzuni stones are lovely, aren't they?"
"Oh, yes! But I see the cat isn't among them."
"The cat?" His eyebrows went up. "Ah, so you know about the cat…"
"Yes!" Lhoru nodded vigorously. "My mother used to tell me the story of the Dzuni all the time." She then proceeded to tell the story, although what for, since the man clearly knew it. But he let her. I didn't really care; I'd heard the story only three hundred times in my life and I was only interested in finding out more about the boy from my first vision.
"A long time ago, in the Realm of the Wind," Lhoru began in earnest, her eyes looking to a faraway place, "the Sky God had just finished creating Hoth. She had molded each mountain, set the course of each river, and planted each flame tree. When the flame trees bloomed for the very first time, She created humans and animals. The humans were weak and fragile creatures; they could not fly, run swiftly, or sense danger coming before it was too late. The Sky God decided to appoint thirteen animals as protectors of the humans: the horse, the bird, the cow, the boar, the rat, the cat, the monkey, the sheep, the dragon, the snake, the rabbit, the tiger, and the dog.
"All of these animals were invited to a great council on the top of Thika Mountain, to be appointed protectors. The rat volunteered to take the cat's invitation to him, and the rat deceived the cat by telling him that the council was in two days, not one day. So the cat missed the council, spending the day playing. The rat, riding on the back of the cow, was the first to enter the council. All the animals, except the cat, became the protectors of Hoth. When the cat found out he'd been tricked, he was sorely aggrieved and swore eternal vengeance on the rat."
Lhoru's lips tightened. "I was very little the first time my mother told me that story, and I was so upset that the cat had been left out. I told my mother that from now on I would become Month of the Cat rather than Month of the Dog."
The Hothan calendar is split up into twelve months, with 25 days each, named after the Rat, Cow, Dragon, Bird, Rabbit, Horse, Boar, Tiger, Snake, Sheep, and Dog. Hothans are not known for their knowledge of astronomy; due to clouds continually covering the skies, our calendar is faulty. Every year, the lengths of the months vary considerably. However, we cling stubbornly to the old calendar, convinced it is part of our heritage from before the Dark Age.
"Really?" asked the man. "Ha ha ha…I wish I could see his reaction," he murmured. An odd expression crossed his eyes and vanished. I sensed beneath his happy exterior a person weighed down with secrets, like me. The dark shadow hanging over him…it felt all too familiar to me, even though I hardly knew him. Depressed, I realized how frustrated Hatsuharu, Tori and Kho must feel, not being able to tell where my dark aura came from. But I didn't want to burden them with the kinds of things I saw, heard, and felt.
"Excuse me?" chirped Lhoru brightly. She hadn't heard his little side comment.
"Oh, ha ha ha, it's nothing," he laughed, smiling charmingly. "I thought you were a Dog—I'm one, too. Couldn't you feel the connection?"
Inwardly I groaned. A lecher! He must've been the former Dog of the curse Asheno'd talked about. The one that Asheno was always trying to force me to emulate. Well, I'd never go after a girl like he went after Lhoru.
THWACK! "Ow!" yelped the man as a book landed squarely on his head.
"Don't act so disgracefully towards visitors," said the owner of the book, a teenage boy about Lhoru's age, also dressed in a Karori uniform. He was only a little taller than Lhoru, and his body was slender. His feminine face (bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Asheno's features, I noticed) was framed by dark gray hair, and round purple eyes glared at the older man.
"Huki," the older man whined, rubbing his throbbing head, "can't you tell when people are just playing?"
Huki's glare only hardened, then he softened as he turned to Lhoru, who stood gaping at him. "Miss," Huki said, "I'm very sorry for my cousin's behavior."
"I-I-It's all right! He was being very gracious! Really!" Lhoru's arms had resumed their frantic gesticulation.
"Please, just call me Huki, Mr. Shoma is too formal," Huki reassured her.
"We haven't formally introduced ourselves," cut in the elder Shoma, bowing slightly. "My name is Shoma Shehure, I am the owner of this house and Huki's guardian."
"I am Shoma Huki, I believe we are in the same class," Huki said with a deeper bow.
"Y-yes, I remember you—my name is Mileshi Lhoru," Lhoru blushed, her face perfectly maroon, as she returned Huki's and Shehure's bows. Surely, I dryly commented to myself, she must be overwhelmed by the beauty of these men.
"Faran-Zhuku, can't you speed things up a little?" I begged, "So I can find out more about the curse?" And about Shehure. Finally, I could attach a name to the person who appeared most in my visions.
An angry growl silenced me. "Patience…must see…all of story…" Faran-Zhuku's language skills were returning slowly, at least. "Take back…to your time…"
A strong hand shook me by the shoulder. My eyes popped open to see Hatsuharu, dark rings lining his eyes, looking annoyed.
"Haku, I know things have been impossible lately," he said, "but we still need to go to school. Get up or we'll be later than we already are." He left, closing the door behind him.
I looked around the room. Faran-Zhuku was inside me for now, it seemed. So much more to learn…