Chapter Two:
Prison of Duty
Kasumi stood in the center of her garden, admiring the multi colored koi fish that swam in the clear ponds. She watched in fascination as they swam in fluid, graceful movements, their seemingly flimsy looking fins providing a ripple at the waters surface as they turned to and fro. She was standing at the small bridge, leaning against the red wood, elbow propped up on the smooth material, chin resting in her open palm. She stared quietly at the fish, hearing the small crunch of dirt against sandaled feet, a cane scraping the ground until Kyah appeared in the reflection of the water.
"My lady, you mustn't hide." Kyah chastised slowly.
"I'm not hiding." She said simply. "I am admiring the koi fish father got me for my seventeenth birthday." She could see in the reflection Kyahs unamused expression, but it didn't change the placid look on the princess's face. She had become quite well trained in hiding all her inner emotions behind a placid mask, giving the eighteen year old a look of regality as she walked the halls of her home, as well as still maintaining the meek, humbleness to be seen of a lady.
"If you are not hiding, then explain to me why you are in the garden, where a certain young lord is not allowed to be inside, when you have spent your afternoons enjoying the courtyard." Kyah said."I told you, I'm admiring the koi father got me." She said again.
"Girl, I am no fool. I have known you since you were a newborn, and you cannot hide behind that noble woman's mask of yours. I know the kind of woman you are, my lady. You are hiding from this lord because you do not wish to marry him."
Kasumi side glanced the older woman, before sighing a bit heavily and dropping her arm, letting it lazily lay over the bridge fencing. She truly could hide nothing from her old lady in waiting.
"Alright fine, I am hiding from the boy lord Takami." She admitted, and received a firm smack on her rump from the wooden cane in Kyahs' grip. "Ouch, Kyah!" She exclaimed rubbing her back side and pouting at her like a child.
Kyahs unwavering stern gaze held as she leaned her weight onto the cane as she set the end down.
"He may be young, but he is still older than you, my lady, and you will show him the proper respect." She said, getting only a sigh from Kasumi. "Your father searched high and low to find a male that would suit your taste. First they are too old, now they are not old enough. What will it take to please you, girl?" She said exasperatedly.
Kasumi held onto the bridge wall and leaned back, as if trying to pull the fence like structure towards her. She wouldn't admit to anyone, not Kyah, not her father, that in the men he had selected for her to choose from, not a one of them smelled right to her. Try as she might to ignore it, they all smelled quite foul to her sensitive nose. At first, she had assumed it was because of their age, maybe the sunken in reek of a battlefield, of blood and death, though she was not familiar with the stenches, she only assumed. So she had asked for a younger lord. One her father had called a green horn. He was the third born son of a neighboring land, and was handsome to look at, spoke politely to her, to her father and played an utter gentleman. He too reeked of the same stench as the old lords. She had yet to place the reek, and wondered if she would ever be able to know what it meant.
"I know, Kyah." She said quietly, not hinting at her inner thoughts, and knowing Kyah would never pry her about them. "I just... I don't feel anything towards these men he has picked for me. Father said he married mother out of love, not obligation. He married a lower class woman because he adored her charm, her strength. I want a man to marry out of need like he had done with her. A man who will marry me because of love, not my title." Though it wasn't what was eating away at her, it did contribute to her decision to not even express interest in the men. "These men demand my hand in marriage. I want a man to ask for it. To beg for it. A man who will kneel before me, and plead with me to be his wife." She looked at Kyah, expecting to see understanding in the old crone's eyes, only to see complete shame. Shame at her, and her whimsical thoughts.
"Those words must never reach your fathers ears, Kasumi." She said. "Or you will surely elicit his rage once again. He has since spoiled you on allowing you to choose who to marry based off of his choice in suitors, but if he hears you want such whimsical nonsense, he will take that luxury from you and force you to marry whoever he picks."
Kasumi felt her heart sting with the ache of her words, not expecting her to say that, was hoping she would say words of encouragement, for her to be strong. What Kyah would normally do for her. She wasn't expecting such cynical behavior.
Her lower lip trembled a bit, and her eyes stung with the burning need to release her tears.
"Don't you give me that look," Kyah said and still the stern look never wavered. "I am getting old, I have tried hard to hold on for you, I wish to see you married, at the very least. I may not live long to hold your first born child, but I will fight to live to see you married to a good lord that will provide for your fathers land, as he has always done." Kasumi sniffled, wiping her bottom eyelid with the corners of her red robe. Kyah had shrunk more over the past four years. The once plump woman now looked withered, and frail, like a dried out plum, she looked as if a strong wind would knock her back. Kasumi had been unaware until recently, that Kyah, a woman she wished she could call mother, had contracted a severe disease. The doctor had told her Kyahs' body was fighting against her, eating away at her very muscles and bones. She could barely walk or stand for long before she would need to sit, and she could no longer rise on her own, or sit on her own. Her father had graced the old woman her very own sitting arrangements, something at a higher level she could ease herself into on her own. It was imported from a country called Korea, one Kasumi was unaware of, and in addition to the new seat her father called a chair, Kyah had also been granted a strange wooden frame with a solid bottom. It held the plushest of futons, and held it up from the ground. It had a roof like structure above it, and her own sheer fabric Kyah could draw around the frame. Korea was a most strange country to her, but she was happy her father had gone to great lengths to grant her comforts to ease her life.
"You wish me to marry a man I do not like?" She asked quietly.
"My dear, you are a princess. You can't always get the luxuries your heart desires. You must marry a man who will be good for the lands, and think of your whimsical thoughts as second. You will learn to at least like the man you will marry. Your mother did." Kyah said slowly, not yet realizing what she said till it was too late.
"My mother?" Kasumi latched onto the information, and Kyah sighed, unable to keep it secret now.
"Yes, your mother. She was as whimsical as you are. She wanted to marry a man she loved and who loved her. She wasn't granted that, not fully, at least. Your mother was a beautiful woman, and though she was a higher class than a commoner, she was nowhere near the qualifications for a lords wife. Your father, traveled through the country side, looking for a bride that would suit him. That was when he met your mother. She was about your age when they met, maybe a little younger. She and I had been friends long before she met him. I was the daughter of your grandmother's midwife. I helped deliver your mother, watched her grow and grew with her. Much like you." Kyah patted her arm, and looked down at the colorful fish Kasumi was so fond of. "Your father desperately tried to win her heart. He was such an earnest lad. He had big dreams and a kind heart. Alas, your mother did not see him in such a way. She loved him, yes, but no more than a friend. But he proposed to her, under her favorite peach tree, and he claimed such love and devotion for her, Yuri found herself telling him yes. But she... never loved him. Not in the way he has expressed for her in the years. No... your mother fell in love with another." Kyah stopped herself, closing her lips as she was about to say more. When she looked at the girl who looked like Yuriko, eagerly awaiting for her to continue, she shook her head with a small sigh. "You mustn't tell your father what I am about to tell you, dear one. He would surely have my head." She couldn't believe she was going to reveal to her Kasumi's true father, though in a way she would be happy to die, knowing that the girl she raised knew who her father was.
"Out of the way, old woman." A gruff voice said. A forearm pressed against the old woman's frail bicep, putting in more effort than needed as he shoved her away, shattering the paper like bone of the arm that held her cane, and sending the woman tumbling down onto the hard stone paved bridge. With a disgusting crack, she landed on her hip, either breaking it or dislocating it, Kyah and Kasumi weren't sure. All Kasumi knew was that she was crying on the floor in pain, holding her broke arm and writhing on the floor from the pain in her hip.
The princess went to move to help Kyah, knowing well if she remained on the floor much longer she would die.
A broad chest moved into her view. Elegant robes over a haori, sturdy armor beneath the robes. She looked up at the face of the young lord called Takami, who was playing at being warrior. He was only a few years older than her, 23 from what she could recall, but she didn't care enough to remember once she met him. He was chiseled, and muscled, clearly spending more time trying to broaden those muscles instead of learning how to rule over a land. Perhaps because he was only the third son. She gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had assumed he would never hold the responsibility of being a feudal lord. At the same time though, with his handsome features, he was likely incredibly popular with the ladies, and he didn't seem the type to withhold them from his affections.
Kasumi quickly backed away from him, putting space between them. She gave him a hard glare, hating the smug look on his face. "These gardens are for the royal family strictly." She stated, venom in her voice though her worry for Kyah outweighed her niceties as a princess.
"Well since I will be marrying the princess, I came in." Takami said, closing the space between them, pinning her against the fence wall of the bridge. He was leaning over her as she tried desperately to lean as far from him as she could manage. He definitely knew the touch of a woman.
"I have not agreed to wed you, Lord Takami." She practically growled at him.
"Oh, but you will, my lady. No woman can resist me. A humble virgin maiden such as yourself will melt with my touch." He said cockily, pressing his lowest reach against her belly, and with disgust she could feel a stiff straight object rub against her abdomen. She knew what it was and she pushed at his shoulders with her hands. Unfortunately, she had to suppress her demon strength to preserve her appearance as a human.
"You despicable man! Placing yourself so disrespectfully against a lady of higher stature than you! My father shall have your head for such behavior!" She shoved, and pushed but his hands were gripping her hips tightly enough she could feel the aggressive touch through her many layers.
"Trust me, my maiden. You won't be resisting me for much longer once I have you. And the old woman will die before she could witness anything." Takami sneered.
Kasumi shifted her head enough to see Kyah whose loud crises shifted to quiet, almost inaudible sobbing. Boiling rage filled her veins, so hot, the tips of her fingers burned, practically itched with the urge and sensation to put this creep in his place. She heard Takami's shout of pain before she smelled the burning clothes and flesh. She turned her attention back to him to see blue flames had envelopes her fingertips, and then her palms, the fire spreading out over Takami's chest, singeing his clothes. In her panic at the sight, she used her full strength and shoved him away. He stumbled backwards, over the edge of the bridge and right into the pond of koi. Kasumi wasted no time and hurried over to Kyah. She lifted the frail woman in her arms with ease, though she restrained her strength. Kyah was weightless. She was so skinny, so sickly she held no real body mass. She hid it well with the thick clothes, but it unnerved Kasumi to see just how bad a shape she was in.
Kasumi sat on her knees, her head lowered to the floor, forehead pressed to the tatami mat, hands held in a triangle formation above her head. She stayed like that, listening to her father prattle on and on and on, yelling here and there, accusing her of things. Doing and saying everything he could to her to keep her head lowered.
"All this happened because you burnt the third son. We have lost over half our lands, and now there are no suitors who will marry a witch." She could hear her father fling his arms into the air and smack down against his thighs.
"Please, forgive me for my brash actions, my lord. I moved on instinct when I saw Kyah in her state... I could not leave her to die in such an awful way." She tried hard to keep her voice leveled, and her tears held back.
Kyah. She whispered the name in the deepest part of her brain, sorrow filling the word.
"I don't care about Kyah, Kasumi. You burned and seriously wounded a lords son. It doesn't matter your title when you go so far as to burn them." He stated, his tone stern, completely uncaring about her caretaker.
Her head shot up immediately to glare daggers at him. "You will not speak so lightly of my mother!" She yelled at him.
"Your mother? I said nothing about your mother." He scoffed, waving off her outburst.
"Yes! You have! Kyah has raised me from birth! She has taught me, loved me, cared for me as if I were her own child. She went beyond the duties of a midwife, gave up her own personal life to ensure that I would have the best care. She fought off her illness just to see me wed! She is my mother by heart, and I will not hear you speak so ill of the dead!" By now, she was no longer in control over the hot tears streaming down her cheeks, the heart wrenched sob that escaped her rosy lips. Three months. It had been only three months since Kyah passed. Not from illness, but from the shattered bones of her body.
She had broken more than Kasumi had previously assumed, and there was no way to save her. Kyah had died the very night she was pushed down. She had been unconscious from the medicine she was given, to help ease her pain for her passing, yet Kasumi remained glued to her bedside for days. The stench of the dead was nothing to the sweet smell of Kyah in her bedroom. She wept for six days, sitting on the floor right against her raised bed, her head resting on the soft cushions of the futon.
No one could get her to leave, and it took her father dragging her out by her hair for her to move. She was cremated, and Kasumi insisted to place a pagoda for her in the garden she loved, beneath the peach tree that not only did Yuriko love, but the one Kasumi and Kyah spent most of their time around.
Since then, Kasumi has fallen silent. She hasn't spoken, and has followed her tasks dutifully. She did not interact with the members of the house unless she needed to, and when her father screamed at her for harming the young lord, she did not draw up any excuse, and did not say anything to him about what transpired. She knew he wouldn't hear anything she wanted to say regardless.
It took the young princess only three months to completely shut out her emotions. She locked them away with the part of her she had to hide from the world since she was a baby. Her curious nature, the rambunctious wild side, the occasionally vicious side, and the child likeness that all came from her fox genes. She locked it all up tight. She was unfeeling for the most part.
But the minute she witnessed her father belittling the woman she loved, the rage fueled the fire in her belly all over again, and her speech found its way out.
"Well because of your damn stubbornness, you will likely never marry! No man wants to marry a girl that will set a man on fire!" He yelled back at her.
"He was attempting to lay his hands on me in an explicit manner! How else was I to defend myself when he was so easily able to enter my garden?!" She asked. "My garden that I tended to with my mother, that I have spent countless hours playing in as a child, because you refused to allow me to have any friends! Kyah was my only! She was my life, my love, my sweet happiness. She was my everything! She was my everything and that bastard took her from me! He is lucky to have gotten away with burn marks alone!"
Lord Ishikawa struck her, the back of his hand connecting to her jaw and cheek so hard, she saw black spots in her vision, and her head spun. She held the quickly swelling cheek with both her hands, bewildered by the sight of the angry look on her fathers face.
"It is not your garden! It is within my castle walls, therefore it is my garden that I have allowed the old woman to enter, despite that she should never have been able to! I even allowed you to put an offering and small pagoda for her! And don't you dare use that word again, young lady! A princess never speaks such vulgar words! And if that lord wanted to lay with you, then you should have let him! Princess or not, you are no one to deny a man what he desires!"
"So I am to be like lady mother was, attached to a man she did not love? To be with someone when she loved another?" She questioned. His eyes went dark, and she remembered that bleakness in them from four years prior, when they had shared a sweet father and daughter moment for the first time.
"That wretched old woman!" He yelled, and moved to walk to the doors of the main hall. Kasumi grabbed his arm to try and keep him from leaving, unsure of what he would do, but he shoved her off him quickly and roughly, sending her stumbling into the floor on her back. She caught herself with her hands, ignoring the mild pain she felt in her wrist and the heel of her palm. "To believe I let a shrine be made in her honor." He said before slamming the sliding door behind him, breaking the thin wood that held it together, the sharp ends cutting into the white paper. At his words, she suddenly knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. She scampered up, and hurriedly ran off after him, uncaring how she must look. Teary eyes, red swollen cheek, scrapped palms, rumpled kimonos and disheveled hair. She had looked far worse when she was forced to leave Kyahs death bed, but it was still unbecoming of her.
Her concerns were pushed aside and she made her way into the garden. She ran to her father who had walked over the bridge to the peach tree where Khays small grave site was, and grabbed his arm, holding on as tightly as she could without breaking the limb. He yelled incoherently at her, and she held onto him for dear life.
"Please, father! Do not do this! Do not destroy my memorial of her! Please father, I beg of you! This is all I have left of my Kyah! Please don't take it from me!" She sobbed into his sleeve, letting herself be dragged as he tried to wiggle his arm free. Eventually he grew frustrated and tired of the struggle and smacked her again with the same force if not more than before. Stunned into a blackness at the blow to the head, her grip on his haori loosened enough that when he flung her away she went flying, her head slamming into the post of the fence bridge wall, her forehead meeting with the corner of the post and she came tumbling down onto the stone, warm liquid slowly oozing from the new long gash that seeped into her hair line. She laid there, head throbbing, disoriented enough she didn't yet realize what was happening as she watched her father stomp and break the trinkets and toys around the memorial for Kyah, the toys she had played with her once upon a time. He stomped out the incense, the oil lamp. He destroyed everything, smashing the pagoda into the wall behind the peach tree. The last thing he grabbed was the wooden cane that smelled so heavily of the deceased woman, Kasumi couldn't bare part with it. He snapped the cane in two and tossed it across the gardens where she faintly heard it slam into the one of the stone walls that surrounded them, and another shatter could be heard as it broke further.
Dazed, she looked up as her father reached down, and for a brief hopeful moment, she thought he was going to check on her well-being, see if she was okay, still not realizing what happened.
It came back to her suddenly, as she felt a searing pain as if her skin was being ripped or pulled or yanked right out of her scalp. Her hands went up to wrap around Ishikawa's wrist, as she screamed from the pain of him holding her up by one of her fox ears, not even noticing that in her delirious state her illusion fell. She stared at him, his face blurred by tears but she knew there was an angry dissatisfied expression on it.
"I should have known keeping a filthy half breed in my walls would cause me nothing but trouble." He said, and out of spite, perhaps pure anger, he grabbed the other fox ear and together pulled them both hard, yanking them and her scalp and getting another scream of pain from the fox.
"P-papa... pl-please..." she cried softly, both hands holding each of his wrists now. "Papa..." she whimpered, that child within her that wondered why her papa hated her slipped out, and she whimpered and whined and pleaded him. "Papa, I love you. Why does papa hate me? What have I done to papa? I love papa. I try to do my very best just for papa, and he hates me. Why...? Papa..." she blinked, her tears spilling down her cheeks swiftly and under her chin.
Lord Ishikawa blinked, the rage that had been inside of him previously gone from his system the instant he heard the childlike phrase she had called him when she first learned to speak. Her questioning why he hated her stopped him from yanking on her ears, and he let go. She fell to her knees, crumbling into a heap of loud sobbing and weeping. He got on his knees before her, and pulled her in for a hug, laying one hand on the back of her gold and black locks, and the other against her shoulders, rubbing the shaking girl as she cried.
He didn't answer her questions, knowing she wouldn't understand them, not in this state. He told himself he loved her, even if she wasn't biologically his baby, he did love her like she was. "My sweet girl..." he whispered into her hair, letting her sob into his shoulder.