THERE WAS A SHIP
Scribe Figaro

Chapter Seven
Mist and Snow
And some in dreams assuréd were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

I.

Survival became the order of the day. As her first fear was that she would be mistaken for a prostitute rather than a miner, Sango made some alterations to her appearance prior to being transported north. First, of course, she shaved her head. Second, she acquired men's clothes prior to her departure. (She was able to secure rough but serviceable garments and brief possession of a razor from the Captain, in exchange for telling him a little about how she fought with Hiraikotsu.) Third, she tried very hard to stink worse than a miner. This was a challenge, especially as she wanted to do this without actually contracting the diseases which caused this stink. Through trial and error, she found that periodically smearing shit on the outside of her thighs was the way to go, and after only a few weeks in the Takeda mines a group of laborers confronted her and informed her that their penises shriveled up at the very thought of her and asked she please, for the love of God, stop trying to smell worse than they do.

The work itself was no worse than her childhood – while carrying rocks up a steep incline she would often smile, as it reminded her so much of her taijiya training. She would practice gymnastic routines while the rest of the laborers slept. Even those that did not know her past were sure she was insane. The overseer was impressed, and attempted to deputize her as he did to the few slaves with leadership capability, but she refused. He beat her until he tired, and she screamed as if she was dying, but in fact she felt nothing, and had felt nothing since the day she had killed all her friends. She wondered if, in a reversal of circumstance, Kohaku would try to rescue her.

Living was hard. To wake up and know that day, and every day until she died, would be the same as the day before, and every day before, was difficult.

So when Takeda Kuranosuke found her, during an annual inspection, she did not object when Takeda claimed her as a concubine that had been kidnapped. She did not want to be a concubine, but she liked the idea of doing something different. That she was a concubine was a ruse, but she did not know if Takeda would feel the need to ease suspicion by having sex with her. She was not particularly averse to the idea, and if she changed her mind about that, she could always smear herself with shit. Whatever her intention, it didn't really matter, as she was an insane person and it was generally expected that she would refuse to be a concubine. This was because every single person in the mine – and keep in mind all but one of them were men – would kill to be the concubine of Takeda Kuranosuke. It followed that, if by some chance she persuaded Takeda to leave her here, those men would be reduced to stupefying rage and likely kill her. So with all that considered, the choice was really quite clear.

After Takeda left, and a day before her palanquin was ready to bring her down the mountains to Takeda Castle, she smeared herself with shit and screamed obscenities at the moon, just to keep up appearances.

II.

Takeda bedded her almost daily. After a few months she stopped menstruating and began to have very disturbing dreams.

In these dreams, Shippou burned Kagome on a funeral pyre.

In these dreams, Inuyasha succumbed to infection.

In these dreams, Houshi-sama, half-delirious, made love to Koharu.

In these dreams, Kohaku told her that he would always love her.

In these dreams, the boneless leech-child of Takeda raged at her, furious at the inhospitable womb in which he resided, as conducive to growth as a rocky hillside. She bled throughout her short pregnancy. She secretly ate plants which purported to abort pregnancy, but the leech-child made his pain her own.

At six months, her vagina opened and fistfuls of blood and meat came out, and very calmly, on weak and bloody legs, Sango entered Takeda's bedchamber. With a tanto in one hand, she straddled him, and demanded he look at what his penis had done to her. There was, perhaps, some reply he could have made which would have stopped her from killing him, but she did not know what that reply was, and neither did Takeda.

III.

She stumbled through the halls, over the wooden platforms, through the mud, and her legs were sore and sticky, and her footing was uncertain, and she knew the moment she was found missing that even a blind man could follow the trail of blood.

The rattle of the swords of Takeda's Inner Guard sounded from every direction at once.

She knew there was no fight in her, that half her body had been spilled out some hours ago, that the child she birthed and killed had been killing her as well, clawing her womb, kicking her bladder, grasping her intestines and strangling them, and biting whatever flesh its mouth could find. Now her belly hung in flaps, her pelvis nearly split in two, and there was the overwhelming sensation that, if she leaned the wrong way, every bit of her viscera would fall through the gaping hole between her legs.

She held the tanto in her hands, slick with Kuranosuke's bood. She could tell them they needn't bother, that capturing her would not put his head back on his neck, but her throat was so sore with screaming she was certain she would not be heard over their commands to surrender, and even as she stood still her head floated this way and that, and her tongue was still, and even if she had been of sound and sharp mind at that moment, it was unlikely she would be able to come up with the proper curse for this particular situation.

Her breasts were heavy.

The first guard came, and as he raised the naginata his head flew five meters into the air.

The soft sound of steel on flesh, chopping bone, the rattle of chain.

The others disintegrated before her, and none of them screamed.

She had not seen him in over a year, and he was still the same. Amber eyes, unruly hair, the same serious expression, not wanting his older sister to see him cry, frustrated, or weak. But he had grown under his new tutelage, a stronger and harder young man than the boy that she and Father taught. Outside his sister's protection, Kohaku had become strong.

"Ane-ue," he said. His eyes flicked above and to the right, and in the moonlight she could barely see the swift movement of his hands as he sent the kusari-gama aloft, intercepting an arrow from its path toward her back, splitting it with a soft crack and casting its pieces back into the night.

"Kohaku."

In a life of tragedies, he had found her at her most tragic, for she was a whore and mother and child-killer, had fucked for her life and knew she would do it again, and she bled before him, bled from the dirty places, and she could not bear her own smell, and Kohaku stood before her.

"Rescue me," she said, and she was not asking him to save her life, for she had been dead for quite some time. "I have done terrible things."

"You cannot go back, Ane-ue," Kohaku said. "If you come with me, you can never go back."

She fell to her knees before him, for he was the last thing in this world that was hers, and she touched her face to the ground, and kissed the youkai-hide of his boots, made them wet with saliva.

"I am yours, yours, yours, Kohaku. Yours forever. Yours forever if you take me away. Even if it's to him. Even if I must serve our father's murderer. Even if he enslaves me."

"Naraku does not enslave," Kohaku said. There was no anger. No defense of his master. His was the soft, patronizing tone of a teacher whose student has just said a silly thing. "I serve him because it is better than not serving him."

"Then I will do so as well."

He took her shoulders, lifted her gently, and her legs were weak, and she leaned against him, hands on his chest, and he was the seven-year-old who peed his pants when he laughed too hard, and the eleven-year-old who masturbated beside her when he thought she was asleep, and he smiled.

"You will be happier," he said.

He took her in his arms, and she hugged him, and she was amazed at how strong he was, how a boy who was still a whole head shorter than her could carry her so effortlessly, and as exhaustion claimed her she could sense the miasma pooling about her, confounding the efforts of her trackers, the hunters who sought the fallen huntress, and they choked and died, and she did not care.

Kohaku was sure on his feet, leaping from tree to tree, rock to rock, long strides, soft landings, weaving back and forth, his sister on his back, held tight to him with the kusari-gama chain lest she lose her grip and fall, her chin on his left shoulder, her breath in his ear, her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands clasped behind his back and supporting her bottom, making sure not to touch the places that hurt so very much, and he moved with such grace that Sango would have been almost certain he was standing perfectly still if she had not felt the cool air that brushed away the tears from her cheeks.