I'll tend to the Flame, you can worship the Ashes
Chapter One: Watch that old fire as it flickers and dies
I'm back on my bullshit train and no-one is surprised. Sorry fam!
Title comes from a sea shanty called "Ashes, from Cures What Ails Ya" by The Longest Johns, and the chapter titles will come from the lyrics
When Kamado Hanako is five, a priestess comes to their house to speak with her parents. This is unusual; what would a miko want with charcoal-burners? Nii-chan, Nee-chan, Take-nii, Shicchan and her were all gathered around the door and trying to listen in, but it's like there is no sound coming out of the house at all!
"Alright, alright!" The door slammed open, and the five of them shrieked and fell over. The old miko gave a big belly laugh as she tucked an ofuda up her sleeve, and reached down and ruffled all of their hair. She paused a moment at both Nii-chan and Hanako, looking at the birthmark on Nii-chan's head and pushing Hanako's fringe up to study hers, too. "Hanako-chan, would you like to come train with me?"
Hanako stares up at her, this strange miko, and then turns to her parents. Kaa-chan is round and full with their newest sibling (Hanako hopes it's another girl – she has three brothers and only one sister, it isn't fair!) and stays quiet, looking down at her clasped hands. Otou-san watches her, and then says very quietly, "It is your choice, Hanako."
Hanako stares at the miko, chews on her lip and asks, "Who are you? What sort of training? Why me and not Nee-chan?"
When the miko smiles, Hanako can see that she has more pronounced canines than most people. "I am the high priestess of the Higurashi-jinja, near Tokyo. I would like to train you to become a priestess of my family's shrine, one who will be strong enough to protect everyone who needs it. Your sister has a different destiny, Hanako-chan. This doesn't have to be yours, but I would like it if you were my last disciple."
"Last? Because you're so old?"
That big belly laugh again. "I'm over one hundred years old!"
"You look older than that." Hanako tells her plainly, because one should always tell the truth.
The miko hums and rubs at her head again. "You have good eyes. You have strong blood. I was told of you by a seer many years ago, and have been waiting ever since to meet you. Would you like to come with me?"
"How long would we be gone for?"
"That depends on how quickly you learn. It could be nearly ten years before we finish your training, if you're slow."
"But what about Kaa-chan and everyone? The new baby isn't here yet, I don't want them to grow up without me!"
"You can visit for your family's holidays," the old woman says, "and you can send letters with one of my friends, if you like."
"Ten years is a really long time!"
"It is, and it isn't. That is the longest it might take to train you. It could be as quick as three or four years."
"But!" Hanako gasps. "I'm five! And five took so long to get to!"
"That's because you are young, and everything is still new to you. Because you have idle moments, and can feel the time passing. Your training will be long, and you will not often be idle enough to feel the time passing. So? What do you think?"
Otou-san and Kaa-chan won't say anything, she realises, so she turns to each of her siblings. Shigeru, only a year younger than her, looks up at her with big, wet eyes.
"Hana-nee, stay here! I don't want to be lonely!" She gives Shigeru a biiig hug, and looks at Take-nii over his shoulder.
"It would be quiet here, without you under my feet all the time," he pouts, looking away. "You'd probably be pretty cool when you came back."
Nee-chan gives a wobbly smile. "It would be an adventure for you, Hanako!"
"You'll have to write to us all about your adventures!" Nii-chan adds, patting her head.
She looks back at her parents, just in case; Kaa-chan has closed her eyes and bowed her head, so it's a bit hard to see what her face looks like.
Otou-san gives her another long look, before he nods. "When will you leave, Miko-sama?"
"Tomorrow, if that's alright with you. I'll give Hanako-chan a chance for a proper goodbye."
"That is kind of you," Otou-san says.
"I know what it is to not have the chance to say goodbye," the miko shrugs. "I'd spare your daughter that pain, while I can." She clapped her hands. "What's for dinner?"
They leave the house with the cold dawn air. They've barely left the mountain and Hanako is already tired; Shigeru cried all night, and he cried so much that he set the rest of them off, even Otou-san. Plus, she's five, and even if the miko is hundreds of years old, she sets a very fast pace down the mountainside. Hanako doesn't want her to think that she's a baby like Shigeru, so she doesn't complain even when she's gasping for breath. The miko keeps side-eying her, but doesn't slow their pace or stop until they have been off of the mountain for more than an hour.
"This'll do," She says, stretching and easing herself to the ground. Hanako collapses next to her, and accepts the bamboo water container the miko hands her.
"Th-thank you, Miko-sama!" Hanako gasps out.
"Don't call me that."
"Shishou?"
"Well, I suppose that will do for now. We'll rest for a bit, then keep going."
"How long will it take us to get to your village?"
"Hmm, I think we can get there late tomorrow if we keep to this pace!"
Hanako wilts. She can barely keep to this pace after three hours, how will she keep it up for two days?!
"Your father had a technique that allowed him to dance all night and day, didn't he?" Shishou mused, looking up at the sky as if she didn't care about the answer.
She blinks, because how did Shishou know that? Did the seer who told her about Hanako tell her about the kagura dance too?
"Do you know your father's technique?"
"A-ah, I think so?"
"If you are having trouble keeping up with me, try practicing that and see if it helps."
"Yes, Shishou!"
Otou-san had told Nii-chan once that it was a particular way of breathing. Hanako had been little, but she had heard and remembered, and she loved to dance anyway and always paid attention on New Year's Eve when Otou-san danced for Hinokami-sama. She could do this. She could!
…
She could not. They had walked another hour and no matter how Hanako breathed she was still struggling to keep up with Shishou. Shishou had said that if Hanako tried her best to try and replicate Otou-san's technique for another hour, Shishou would carry her, but – but Shishou was old! Hanako couldn't let her do that, so she had to figure out Otou-san's technique, but she didn't know how! She had watched Otou-san her whole life, had watched his dance every year, had listened to him tell Nii-chan how to do the kagura, but she still couldn't do it!
Hanako wanted to cry, but she was too tired even for that.
Shishou loved to talk, and had been telling Hanako stories about the greatest Hanyou, Inuyasha, who supposedly helped the great miko Higurashi Kagome to create the shrine from which she came. But Shishou hadn't spoken for about five minutes before she finally said in a very serious tone, "What you are trying to do, Hanako-chan, is called Zen Shūchū no Kokyū. Total Concentration Breathing raises the physical and mental abilities of the user so long as it is in use. It is normally only used by swordsmen in the Kisatsutai, though I have known a few taijiya who have learnt to replicate it in their own business."
"Demon Slaying Corps? Exterminators? What do you mean, Shishou?"
"Oh? You thought I was telling spirit tales, about Inuyasha and Kagome? No, my little apprentice, there's so much more to this world than humans."
"Is that why you're so old? Magic?"
"My blood is why I am so old. I'll tell you more about it when you're older. Now… hmm, there are man-eating demons that walk this earth, and the Kisatsutai are the ones who hunt them, at great personal risk. Yōkai taijiya are those who remove or exterminate yōkai who hurt or inconvenience humans. In my youth, I was a bounty hunter who slayed troublesome yōkai. I have a library at the shrine full of everything I learnt from that time that you're going to read as soon as we get there."
"But then, what do you know about Total Concentration Breathing?"
"Well, not much. I never really had the patience to learn the technique, you know? But, ahh, it's a particular way of breathing and thinking, I think."
"I tried!" Hanako sniffled, trying not to wail or cry.
"You came close a few times – but you stopped before you could fully follow through. You're still young, Hanako-chan. Try again, and I'll tell you when you've started on the right technique, ok? What did your father do?"
Hanako stops walking, takes in deep breaths, and feels how she breathes, how the air fills her lungs, how her blood rushes through her body. She pictures Otou-san's kagura dance, how he moved and how he breathed. She ignores her aching muscles and her fatigue, and steps forward on her next inhale. Another step on the exhale. Inhale again.
Shishou doesn't say anything about whether it's right or not; she takes Hanako's sleeve and leads her steadily along the path, throughout the rest of the day, and most of the night. When Hanako finally rouses herself out of her breathing exercise, she stumbles to the ground on suddenly-wobbly legs.
"You've done very well," Shishou says softly. She hands Hanako an onigiri, helps her eat that and drink from the container again, before bundling Hanako into a bedroll. "Sleep, Hanako-chan."
When Shishou wakes her at dawn, she nearly cries. If she had thought that her legs were sore the day before, it is nothing to how they feel this morning.
Shishou takes one look at her, and seems to understand. "You have two paths now, Kamado Hanako. You can stay here and cry, or you can get up and keep going."
"I'm five!" She chokes out.
"I was raised by wolves," Shishou says, unforgiving. "And I was sold to become a bounty hunter when I was not much older than you are now. You got two legs and a heartbeat, Hanako-chan. It's up to you what you do with them."
The last thing that she wants to do is get up, but it is what she does. She sips water from the container, nibbles on the proffered onigiri, makes water behind a tree, and starts to breathe.
It is harder to concentrate today than yesterday because of the pain, so it takes her longer to finally slip into the kagura's mindset. Absently, she is aware of Shishou taking her sleeve once she has fallen into her pseudo-trance, and lead her onwards again. Absently, she feels how the sun moves across the sky, feels how Shishou dribbles on her lips for her to unconsciously lick without breaking her concentration, how Shishou doesn't stop them to eat until the sun has set and there is the sound of something just over the next hill. When she comes to, she collapses again with a cry.
"Shishou, I can't, I can't!"
"You have done so well!" Shishou tells her, cuddling Hanako to her and helping her to drink from the bamboo container. "You have done so well, Hanako, ok? Don't worry, I'll carry you the last bit to the shrine. We'll rest a little first."
They split the last onigiri between them, and then Shishou hoisted Hanako onto her shoulders in a piggyback, and moved towards the glow on the horizon.
"What's that light?" Hanako mumbled. "That's not the west."
"That's Tokyo. There are so many buildings and lights that they light up the whole sky. My cousin grew up there, she calls it light pollution. Apparently it's bad for the environment, or something."
"Then why do people still have that many lights?"
"Comfort, a kind of necessity. Apparently there are ways to reduce the light that makes it into the open air, but I've forgotten what they were. That's a problem for the Heisei and Reiwa eras."
"Eh? When's the Heisei and Reiwa? Aren't we in the Taisho?"
"The Heisei era is in the future!" Shishou tells her gaily. "That's when the priest Kagome is from. My cousin was raised in the Reiwa, before she came back."
"Shishou, now you are lying to me!"
"No, no, I'm serious! You can ask anyone at the shrine, they'll back me up!"
They argue over how likely Shishou's stories are until they get to the edge of Tokyo, before Hanako loses her breath. She has only travelled to the village at the bottom of their mountain a few times, and it is nothing like Tokyo. No wonder the lights light up the sky like that! It's huge!
She tells Shishou as much, who chuckles and tells her that they are still on the outskirts of town! Amazing!
"Would you like a bath when we get to the shrine, Hanako-chan?"
"Could I?" Hanako gasps. She had been prepared to go to bed with sweat and traveldust on her, but if she could have a bath–!
"Of course! Someone should have noticed that we're back, so we can bathe before bed. You can meet everyone in the morning, I think."
"Noticed?"
"My people are all over the city, those who can be hidden in plain sight. We have gone past seven different yokai households already, Hanako-chan, and there's another three before we make it to the shrine grounds. Any who saw that I was back will be letting the others know I'm here, if not going straight for the shrine."
"Wah, they all missed you that much, Shishou?"
"I think it's more they're worried about the amount of damage I've caused," Shishou says wryly, with an awkward chuckle at the end.
"But Shishou is so old!"
"Your Shishou has had a very long time to create a reputation," Someone else said, causing Hanako to scream a little bit. Shishou laughed, and Hanako looked at the new person from behind Shishou's ponytail.
"So mean," Shishou mourns, smiling up at another woman who looked only a little bit older than Hanako's own mother, despite her white hair. "You're older than me, Tōwa, don't forget!"
"Shishou, you're lying!" Hanako gasps.
Shishou barks a laugh, shifts a little so that she can look up at Hanako, and calls, "Your fiend, you've turned my final apprentice against me, Higurashi!"
"You're a Higurashi too, idiot," Tōwa-san snaps back automatically.
"Are you sisters?" Hanako askes then, their interaction so similar to Nii-chan and Nee-chan, to Hanako and Shigeru, that she has to ask.
"Cousins," Tōwa-san corrects, pinching between her brows.
"Our fathers were half-brothers," Shishou says. "Tōwa and her sister are hanyō, and I'm a shihanyō. Since I have less yōkai blood than them, that's why I look so much older."
"That's amazing, Shishou!"
"Ah, you think? Thank you, Hanako-chan! Ne, Tōwa, let's get my little apprentice home, ok? I think she needs a bath and then a big nap before her training really starts!"
Tōwa-san splutters before exclaiming, "Kid, how old are you?"
"I'm five!"
"You can't seriously be about to train a five-year-old!"
"It's fine, it's fine!" Shishou says cheerfully. "Hanako-chan can take it, right, little charcoal-burner?"
"Leave it to me, Shishou! I'll be the best apprentice you've ever had!"
Shishou turns so that Hanako can't see her face anymore, and starts walking again. "Yeah, Hanako-chan. You will be."
Thank you for reading! Come chat with me on tumblr (Fairy of the Friz) or Instagram (WaltzingTheFaePaths). Reviews are life!
