Alright, we all know I have updating issues. Get over it.

Caged Beasts, Chapter Two

Cages and Walls


Kagome walked with some hesitation to the beach and took off her shoes. They were far too small for her, and there were red marks where they had cut into her pale feet.

She sat down on a rock, placing her shoes beside her, and she dipped her feet into the cool water. She sighed in relief. The coldness felt so good on her skin, and so she pulled up her dress a little and let her calves into the ocean.

She was so glad to be back on the beach. She shouldn't stay long, she knew, as savage wolves were everywhere, ready to attack and kill. She shuddered as she thought of those horrible beasts. They had killed a man in town a few years ago, a man with two small children and a wife. He had set out to explore the island, and had never come back. Months later they had found his bleached bones, with teeth-marks on them, evidence of the wolves' savagery. Ever since then, the women and children could not go near the forest and only go out on the beach in daylight, when there were men armed with guns to watch them from the towers that stood at the corners of the town's wall.

The town did not have a name. As they were the only humans in hundreds of miles, they did not need to have a special name for it. All the traders who stopped there just called it Island Town. There were quite a few traders who stopped off at Island Town, asking for repairs for their boats, supplies for their kitchens, and to see if any other ships had brought any letters for their sailors. Usually they stayed for a week, talking to the pretty girls, and occasionally going on a wolf hunt, if they were brave enough.

Kagome reluctantly took her feet out the water, and let them stay on the rock for a while to dry. She looked around, enjoying the sweet smell of the ocean and the sand and the fishes, glad to be out of the drudgery of house life, the oppression of church every day, and the irritating clamor of her step-children.

Kagome had married Hojo a few months ago. He was handsome, kind, and dull. She liked him more than all the other men on the island, and her father Naraku had approved. He had married them himself, Kagome wearing a new dress ordered from the mainland and Hojo grinning in his special made top hat. So she had found herself with three children, a husband fifteen years older than her, a house to clean, chores to do, God to serve, all at the age of sixteen.

Her father was the mayor of the Town, and he liked to see his daughter in church, a step behind Hojo, with her kids in a line behind her. She was an attribute.

The church bell sang out three long, mournful notes, then two quick ones.

Kagome jumped. That meant she had to go to the town square, as something had happened. She hoped no one else had died.

She ran to the small door in the wall and closed it behind her. Back in the safety of the Town, she hurried through the cobblestone streets, hitching up her dress and making her way quickly to the square.

Quite a crowd had gathered, but she managed to push her way to the front, where she saw the red hair of her husband's children. She felt a pang of guilt, as she was supposed to be watching them, but as they had all been screaming for things, she had left the two little girls in the charge of her oldest stepson, who was eleven.

She ran up to him now, panting a little, "What's going on, Souta?" she asked the boy.

"You were supposed to be back in a moment," he said sourly, glaring at her.

"I know, and I'm sorry," she lied, "I got distracted. Why did they do the assembly ring?"

"I don't know. They're bringing something."

Her stepdaughter, Rin, pulled on Kagome's dress, "I'm hungwy, Mama. I want a bwead."

"She isn't your Mama, stupid," growled her other stepdaughter, Sakura, "She's just Kagome. Mama's dead."

The child began to wail in horror, and Kagome rolled her eyes at Sakura and picked up the toddler, "I don't have any bread, Rin. I'll get you something when this commotion is all over."

Rin's cries remained piercing and sharp, and Kagome situated her on her hip, running her free hand through her hair. Drat, she thought, I forgot my shoes on the beach.

Hojo and another man, Miroku, appeared from behind the church, carrying a heavy box between them, covered in a wolf skin. Kagome's father walked with them, his long black hair tied in a ponytail.

The noise of the crowd lulled, and then stopped altogether. Even Rin stopped crying, to look at the box, her tear streaked cheeks red and dirty.

Kagome, rapt, watched the box, as her father began to speak.

"Today, I have something to show you, my children." He said as the crowd gazed curiously at the spectacle in front of them, "God has sent us a trial. He has sent us test, to see if our teachings can penetrate the darkness of sin." He opened his arms and gazed up at the sky, his face a picture of bliss, "Today, in the mango grove, we have discovered a freak of nature, a cruel, sinful beast. Today we have our new purpose." He grinned at his followers, and told Hojo and Miroku, "Show them."

The two men obliged, pulling away the skin to show something truly strange inside the box.

A boy lay curled up there, his face tear streaked, and as light suddenly filled his eyes, he made a screeching noise that made Kagome flinch. He was strange looking. He had long, matted hair, white as the moon, which extended down his back. He was filthy, covered in scars, and utterly naked. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he snapped and growled at the crowd, screaming and wailing in what seemed to be anger and hate and frustration and pain. His teeth were not like normal humans', instead his incisors extended, sharp and deadly. His hands did not seem to have fingernails, they were more like claws, and his eyes were a strange, savage yellow. The crowd drew back in horror. Rin began to wail again.

Naraku gestured to the men, and they put the cover back on the cage. Instead of shutting up, the creature's yells grew more desperate, a few sobs creeping into the noises he was making.

"Horrible, yes." He said, conceding to the fact that the town was terrified of this beast. "But he is a man. We believe that he has been brought up by the wolves."

A murmur rippled through the crowd as if the information their mayor had given them was a pebble in the lake of their morbid curiosity.

"Our duty is clear, my people," he said, "We must teach this feral beast to be a docile Lamb of God. Tomorrow in church, I expect you all to have prayed for its soul, and also to have tried to think of ways to tame it." A grin spread across his holy face, "I apologize for having interrupted your days. You all may go back to what you were doing."

The crowd took a while to disperse, and the energy that filled the town was so palpable you could run a sword through it.

Kagome waited, hypnotized by the beast-boy's screams, ignoring the whine of Rin's crying and the scorn of her two other stepchildren. He seemed so utterly angry and betrayed that she felt like crying.

Hojo ran up to them, snapping her out of her reverie. "What do you think of that!" he asked Souta and Sakura and Rin, "Pretty interesting, right? I found him in our monkey trap. He was screaming and screaming, almost as bad as he is now. He bit Miroku in the hand."

The children brightened up. They all loved their father so much, and were transfixed by his energy.

"Come on, you lot, let's go home now." He said, grabbing Kagome's hand.

"Want bwead," said Rin petulantly, wriggling down from Kagome's hip.

"Alright, we'll get you bread," said Hojo, smiling. "Kagome, are you coming?" he asked, tugging at her hand.

Kagome blinked, and nodded, "Of course," she replied, and walked home with her family. But the creature's cries reverberated in her head until long after they stopped.