XI
Ashitaka and San: Interrogation
As San, known as the fearsome Princess Mononoke, wakes up on the back of a moving red elk, she feels the person sitting behind her slipping off, and thudding to the ground. Is he dead?
The elk bucks wildly beneath her. He does not take any rider but the boy in the red hood, she realizes. One of her wolf brothers has taken Ashitaka's head between his jaws and is shaking him. "Wait! He is mine!" San shouts at her brother. Then she leaps off of the elk, rubbing her stomach where she had been hit earlier.
Ashitaka groans on the ground. His abdomen. He spent every last bit of energy given by the curse to leave the Tatara Ba with Princess Mononoke. But if it was not for the demon power, he would've been long dead. The wolf girl is awake now, he figures. He feels her approaching him.
San stares at the human on the ground. "You were shot, weren't you," she murmurs as her brother comes up next to her and rubs her side. San does not understand. Why had they done it? A clan is supposed to care for one other, and save the bullets for the enemies. But then again they are humans, disgusting humans. What would they know about caring and loving?
She kneels down by the body, saying to the boy, "Why did you interfere with me? Answer me before you die!" At least she thinks he isn't dead yet.
He isn't. Ashitaka moans between labored breaths, "I didn't want to let you die." The pain is killing him. Now even the curse will not keep him alive.
San scowls. "I'm not afraid to die! If I could drive away the humans, I don't mind losing my life!" She put emphasis on the word human, just so he can hear how much she despises him and his kind.
"I've known, since the time we first met," he said softly.
The first time. San searches her head for when she has seen the red hood before her raid. The river! He is the boy from the river! His name is…Ashitaka! That is why he had seemed so familiar to her.
But that does not make a difference to her. She scowls even more. "For your uncalled-for interference, you're the one who's going to die a useless death!"
Ashitaka feels the girl roll him over and draw his sword. She points it a hair away from his throat. The blade prickles his skin. He decides that if the bullet wound doesn't take him soon, he will die by a slit throat cut by his own sword. He gasps in pain. Princess Mononoke isn't done yet, though.
"I'll cut that throat apart for you, and you'll never babble again!" she growls, now ready to plunge the blade into the boy's neck.
"Live..." Ashitaka whispers. He is sure that if this conversation goes any further he will die from extreme blood loss.
San screams, "You still say such things? I don't accept a human's orders!"
The boy opens his eyes and stares into San's. She loses her concentration for a second and is mesmerized by his eyes.
Ashitaka wants to tell her one last thing, a truth that he wants her to know before his life ends. "You're beautiful."
She stifles a gasp and stumbles back towards her brothers, her eyes wide and unbelieving. His voice echoes in her mind. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. San remembers that one time when she was little, she had asked her mother, the wolf god Moro, if she was beautiful.
Moro had snarled at her. "'Beautiful' is a human thing, San. A wolf does not care about looks and vanity. We are beautiful and pure at heart. That is all that matters." And so San has since then disregarded her looks completely. Her mother says she has a beautiful heart, and that is all she needs to hear.
But has this human here told her this as a lie? No, he speaks genuinely.
"What is the matter, San? Shall I crunch him for you?" her brother growls beside her. She gasps, eyes still on the dying human, who now has lost consciousness entirely. No! she wants to shout. But instead sticks and stones landing near them interrupts her.
The ape clan is here.