The Trap of Innocence

Part IV


He stepped forward, past the gate, silently fearing some powerful wards would shock and paralyze him, but no such thing happened.

The pathway was set in grayish stone and led up to a modest building. There was a woman there. Elderly, wearing the red and white attire of a priestess, her thin lips were pressed into a thin line. She watched him cautiously but made no moves. He would bet she held no weapon. Staring back at her from behind the thick plate of his ivory mask, he decided to approach. She waited patiently, greeting him when he came to face her. "Good afternoon, traveler."

"This is the Four Hills Shrine, is it not?" he asked, turning his eyes from her to the area once more before looking back to her.

"It is."

Her voice was soft but held a strong undertone to it. This was not the same group of priestesses that Misao obtained her beads from. This could not be that place, the feeling was all wrong. What was this place and more importantly, he wondered, what importance did it hold for Misao?

Before, when the priestess had come with him to replace Misao's seals it had been the priestess that found and approached him, and not the other way around. How that had come about, he hadn't quite known and hadn't quite cared, but now he was curious.

"Do you happen to know of a Makimachi Misao?"

The woman blinked; her astonishment apparent upon her rounded face for several seconds. "I… Yes. I've heard of her, of course. She's … somewhat of a legend around here. But it's been ages, it seems, since the girl herself was last seen."

"I see," he replied sedately. This young woman had never known Misao, he realized regretfully. He did not know how long it had been since Misao had left this shrine. "But this is the place she lived?"

"Oh, yes, this is it. Kisa one of our most powerful adopted her years and years ago. But Kisa has been dead 75 years this year. The tale of Kisa and the baby Misao is the most recited story about these grounds."

"75 years…" he murmured softly, in awe. Had it been so long since she'd been on her own? She had not been working for Shikijou even half that time and she appeared so young. Where, he wondered, had she been all this time?

He allowed her bright, wide eyes and small face to deceive him. He willfully forgot Misao was a woman masquerading as a young teenager.

Had it really been so long?

It certainly explained why he couldn't remember much of Misao's conception or the woman herself for that matter, or even what had happened. He knew Misao was his child, but little else other than that.

75 years was a long time for his memory.

"And she left?"

"Misao?" The woman questioned and then paused. "No one really knows. Kisa fell ill and collapsed gathering herbs. She was brought back here, delirious with fever. It is said Misao stayed with her the whole time, but Kisa wasn't herself and cast Misao off… Calling her hurtful names. But to the very end, Misao stayed. When morning came, Kisa was found peacefully in her bed, a bouquet of flowers between her clasped fingers, and Misao herself, was gone."

"Then this Kisa was Misao's guardian?" A woman 75 years dead would yield no answers.

"Yes, she would have been in charge of Misao."

"Did she leave anything?"

The woman shook her head. "If anything remains of Misao it has long been forgotten and picked up by another. Here among the shrine there is little personal property, anything she left behind would have been picked up by one of the priestesses and used and then eventually passed around with no thought of who owned it. If you are referring to writings or anything of that sort, no; there is nothing."

He nodded; he had expected such an answer. Misao did not seem the type to keep diaries and journals, and if she had, she would not keep them at a shrine. Her own natural enemies had adopted her. The very thought of it still amazed him.

"Are you familiar with the story?" she asked.

"Something of it. It was vague," he replied. "She speaks little to me about such things."

The woman blinked in surprise, clearly wondering if he meant "she" to be Misao herself.

"Oh?"

He turned away. "With regard is this story met? What is Misao? The demon child? The outcast? The half-breed?"

"No, of course not," she shook her head, a motion lost on the man who wasn't looking at her. If she was surprised by Hannya asking about what had made Misao unusual, different, she didn't so much as blink. Obviously the woman knew Misao was not normal with her lack of reaction to the question.

"All accounts seem to indicate that Misao was family here. Kisa said that it was no fault of Misao's where she had come from – but even so, she had much difficulty reconciling the girl's questionable parentage and our beliefs here. But she loved her as a daughter and could never order any harm come to her."

"So that is how she survived…" he murmured to himself.

"A shrine?"

Hannya and the priestess both looked up to see a tall, darkly clothed man rise from the steps as though appearing from the dust coming closer. Aoshi moved slowly, smoothly, body gliding. With the definite grace of a hunter he approached them and the priestess's hands trembled faintly in response.

"Is this from where Misao comes? How inappropriate," Aoshi murmured, stepping over the smooth stone tiles on the ground. "You gave Misao to a shrine?"

"It was no action of my own – Misao's mother left her here," Hannya replied, glancing about. "I cannot imagine her running about a shrine yard in youth, myself."

"She is not made for such things."

Hannya and Aoshi shared a stare. "Such things, Aoshi-sama? Misao was safe because she spent her childhood here and not among the others where she could be hunted and maimed…"

"Do you think this group of women with their reviling, inaccurate views of us would do her any great good? She has sentenced herself to a half life, she won't hunt, she barely lives."

The priestess remained quiet in her silent awe, just watching.

"I do not wish to argue with you over it, Aoshi-sama, what is done, is done," Hannya concluded, turning back to face the priestess.

"You speak of her as though you know her..." The woman spoke, her voice laced with something akin to astonishment.

"Know her?" Hannya repeated his voice a low timbre, almost hauntingly melodic. "This person you speak of is my child." From behind the plated white mask he wore, the eye slits glowed like fiery embers and he vanished, fading slowly out of sight.

Aoshi remained staring at the woman whose mouth had dropped open as though a ghost had appeared and slipped a soft kiss across her lips leaving trails of ice down her spine.

"You speak of 'bad things' between Kisa and Misao and parentage. Tell me, priestess, what do you think Misao is?"

She turned her eyes toward him, and he watched her swallow nervously as though suddenly aware she was in grave danger.

"The stories say she was half a demon - an otherworldly creature left at our doorstep by a desperate mother."

"Half a demon?" he murmured. "A twisted creature of evil?"

He half turned away, intent upon leaving when something else occurred to him.

"She hasn't returned to this shrine in all these years?"

"No one even knew she still lived... It's been so long, no one really thought the girl still lived."

He turned the rest of the way about and made his way to the torii entrance. He glanced at the holy grounds with impersonal interest. Clean air was about all the good he'd ever found at such places.

"Excuse me for being so bold..." She started and paused when he stopped walking to listen, but didn't glance back at her. "Would you be kind enough to ask her to visit us?"

He turned his head, his impassive stare tinted with shades of annoyance. "You, who calls me and those who answer to me 'demons', would be so bold as to speak requests?"

Before the woman could retort he had vanished. The priestess frowned and walked slowly back to the shrine. Inside, she diverted off the man hall and stepped into a small office. There, she uncapped an ink bottle and scrolled a quick message. Allowing it to dry, she replaced her materials and then grabbed the slip of paper on her way out heading further down the hall toward the fire room.

Inside, she kneeled before the fire pit and folded the paper daintily between her fingers. Lowering her head in prayer, she chanted, holding out the paper. It sprang to life, dancing in her fingers, leaping from her open palm into the flames where it vanished in a spidery trail of smoke.


A girl could be a lot of things, she supposed, staring out over the river. She was a girl, and by definition, she could be a lot of things too. But limiting factors well... limited her.

She was a girl, but she was half a monster, too.

Half of something that led to humans cowering in fear at the sight of her or in anger. Sometimes she'd fancied being "at home" and hearing the shouts of a crowd coming to lay siege upon her with sticks and pitchforks and torches...

She really read too many books.

She didn't have much else to do sometimes. Before she'd been as a Guardian she'd been a wanderer, after she left the shrine, of course. She loved that shrine, she would love to go back, to wake at dawn and help the priestesses with their work, to practice her archery...

She couldn't.

A creature such as herself didn't belong in a place like that. She would never belong there. She was half a demon - half evil, by definition.

Wasn't everything defined by something?

She sighed despairingly. She was through with this. With this job, with this life... She would wander again, and maybe she'd find somewhere she could belong.

At least, that's what she'd been planning, as she stepped away from the river's edge and turned south she met calm eyes and a simple smile.

Soujiro.

"Are you going somewhere?" he asked.

She had no bag, no packages, nothing on her that would indicate that she'd been planning any such thing and yet...

'Who was this guy?' she wondered.

"No," she lied.

So easy to lie...

"I'm glad. I went out for a couple of days, I'm sorry I didn't leave you a note. I couldn't find anything to write with and I thought it would be rude of me to hunt around your residence."

She nodded numbly.

As she stared at him she found herself unable to care whom he was. Not really. This person knew who she was, understood her, to an extent.

"And you're back now?" she asked.

He paused, his smile faltering. "I... did not mean to impose upon you."

She shook her head. "You're not bothering me," she absently replied.

"Ah, if that's the case, if you would..." He bowed politely. "Would you be so kind as to allow me to stay with you a few more weeks?"

She blinked. "Weeks?" she spoke, before she could snap her mouth closed.

"I'm sorry. It was wrong of me to ask-"

"Nah," she waved her hand at him dismissively. "You can stay as long as you want to."

She wondered if she fully realized what she was getting herself into. She probably didn't.

With a sigh she turned on her heel and headed back. Always things to be done.

She had made an arrangement in the past with a shrine, always being drawn to the dangerous holy grounds after reading a book about vampires. Although it appeared that nearly everything she'd read about them in books had been false, she'd been intrigued by the idea of "seals".

The first priestess she'd encountered had been frightened and tried to warn her away. Misao had escaped without fighting or injuring the woman and had gone on to another shrine.

She was luckier the next time, refining her approach and not simple outright asking. She had to field her questions first, gently leading the priestess without trying to give too much away. It had been harder than it sounded.

The priestess, however, once realizing it was a request and not an inquiry had looked startled. Thankfully, the woman hadn't recoiled, but nodded in understanding.

After all, Misao thought, she'd been asking to restrain her desires not increase them.

The priestess had agreed and at the end of that fateful day she'd left the shrine grounds with five wards, two around her wrists, two around her ankles and one around her neck.

Sometimes, when she bathed, she felt like a prisoner, trapped because she couldn't ever take them off. They crackled when she tried to touch them.

Despite the slight discomfort they afforded her, she was glad of it.

Blood urges were strong, they pulsed along the length of her veins and made her temples throb. At times like those her thinking became erratic and she did dangerous things.

She sighed.

She headed along the woodland path she knew so well. Soujiro followed along behind her, his footsteps quiet. Perhaps she should worry about that guy?

Maybe he would turn on her as well?


Aoshi watched Okina passively, the man's words floating by his ears. The girl on the other end of the flirtations giggled cutely and tried to swat the old man away.

He had been completely overlooked. They continued to carry on like juveniles for several minutes before Aoshi got truly annoyed at the sight.

Reaching over his desk, he flicked the small tray of ink brushes to the floor. It clattered loudly, brushes rolling this way and that way and the two flirting idiots in front of him straightened, suddenly realizing they weren't alone in the room.

Okina looked far less sheepish than he should have, but the nameless servant girl had gone pale. Already she was on her knees apologizing and picking up the brushes. Once the task was done she nearly begged to be released from the room and he waved her away.

"You," he pointed at Okina. "Get out."

Okina paused, not moving toward the doorway. "Is there something bothering you Aoshi-sama?"

"Remove yourself."

The man hesitated and then quietly left the room leaving Aoshi with the peace he'd desired.

He didn't want to be loitering about here thinking about -her-.

Irritating woman...

He knew what the problem was.

He didn't have enough work to do.


She had an eerie feeling. Like something was watching her, something that didn't necessarily have evil intentions… just… intentions. Unknown intentions were always bad. Being without knowledge always equaled fear.

"Do you want me to prepare you some tea?" Soujiro asked.

She half turned. "No. I'm tired of tea for right now, maybe some cocoa. No… nothing."

She walked past him and sat herself down at the table.

"Would you bring me over a match? I want to smell this candle you brought."

He'd gotten it that very day earlier in his shopping trip; the label called it "citrus blossom."

He brought over a pack of matches and headed back to the kitchen without comment. She'd gotten used to his occasional silences. She struck the match and lit the candle watching the flame flicker and dance.

The eerie feeling returned abruptly. Her eyes widened as the flame grew taller, over the edge of the glass and then turned red.

A tiny slip of paper emerged and fell onto the tabletop, the edges singed. A … paper crane?

Misao reached for it, but the paper mysteriously shifted, unfolding itself. A message, short and stark in the black ink made her heart pound in her chest.

Come visit us.

It crumbled to ash the second her fingers touched the edge and a woman appeared before Misao's eyes and then vanished. A flash of memory?

Priestess!

The shrine!

Misao stood abruptly almost knocking the candle on the floor. Soujiro appeared in the doorway looking toward her curiously. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off.

"I'm going to visit a friend. I'll be back in a couple of days. You'll be okay, won't you?"

"Of course, do not trouble yourself on my account. You've been very generous to me."

She nodded absently. "Consider the house yours until I return. I won't ask you to take over my job, but if you see anyone getting out of control - could you take care of it? Things shouldn't get bad while I'm gone though."

"Certainly."

Turning suddenly, she began to walk toward the door. It was undeniable; the shrine grounds were calling.


Misao stood by the gateway, her hand upon the huge torii gate, eyes wide in wonder. When had this gotten here?

It was huge and red reaching up far into the sky.

"It's- it's a fairly new addition to our humble temple here."

Misao turned toward the voice seeing an elderly woman dressed in priestess robes.

"Our temple was taken over briefly by a priest and his monks who came and served here, but they have gone again now. They were the ones who hoisted up that new gate. Lovely, isn't it?"

The woman smiled fondly at the memory, but Misao could only stare at the woman herself.

Did she...?

"We've had a couple of visitors already today, please, come, feel welcome."

Misao bowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't dress properly for this visit. It was kind of spur-of-the-moment."

It had been a quick decision. One moment she was staring out her kitchen window lamenting her life and then next she wanted to see the shrine yards of her youth. Maybe she was too impulsive. She had rushed out of her house wearing a simple shirt and skirt.

Yes, she definitely was too impulsive.

She stepped into the sandy path and walked toward the priestess. She was old and Misao didn't recognize her…

No, of course not. She hadn't been to this Temple in ages, no one who had actually known her would still be alive; they were all dead now. All of them.

"What brings you to our grounds today?"

Misao glanced toward her seeing past the sagging face and folded hands. This woman was a warrior priestess, one of those who hunted.

"Just reminiscing, although now that I'm here I'm not sure why I came. Maybe I forgot."

"Forgot what? Your purpose or yourself?"

Misao smiled sadly. "Both I guess."

"May I ask your name?"

Misao looked away, turning her eyes up to the sky. "Misao," she murmured weakly as though hating the sound of her own name.

"M-Misao? How unusual, we've had two visitors today discussing a girl named Misao. Perhaps that is good luck…"

"Two? Perhaps its bad luck… Misao murmured. "Hannya and Aoshi-sama… Was it you who called me to the Shrine today?"

The woman stayed still for a long moment and then nodded. "If you would permit me, Makimachi-san, there is something here that I would like to turn over to you. It has been in our care too long."

Curious, Misao allowed the woman to led her away into the building.


AN: Oh! Discovery! I'm trying to finish this, I actually deviated a great deal from the original storyline mapping out a whole new one. I like the new one better.