They kept Kaoru under guard while they packed up the camp, abandoning the town they had come to claim. The villagers who had helped them begged to come with them, fearing vengeance from the rival clans. The Kiyosato and Koshimizu captains refused. They would have to conserve their resources over the coming months. They could not afford – or did not care to assume – responsibility for any more mouths to feed.
Kaoru was exhausted. One officer - she remembered that his name was Jin-eh - had wanted to torture her. The shaman objected. Fearing her powers, he insisted that they gag her but also treat her with respect. Kaoru wanted to shout in frustration, but she was afraid of her anger. She was afraid of what might happen. She felt lost and weak and uncontrollable.
The captain compromised. The girl would be kept as an honored prisoner. Before restraining her they fed her and bandaged the burn on her throat. They even found dry clothing for her to wear.
Now they were traveling away from the bloodied town, the bloodied fields. Kaoru was carried in a palanquin - to her it was a cage, chilled by the damp wind but dry enough. She moved in the same slow march with the litters bearing wounded soldiers.
Kaoru curled up on her side, as comfortably as she could bound and gagged within her swaying bamboo walls, and slept.
Kaoru dreamed.
.
.
Cold
Cold
White
Dark
Whispering lights
Warm bright moths
Flutter toward her
They are
Extinguished
One by one
.
One is
Brighter
Warmer
He comes nearer
She reaches out to touch him
Her fingers
Linger
Just around his
Warmth
He tells her she is lonely
He tells her she is cold
He looks at her with warmth and
He tells her that he
Her fingers
Touch
He is gone
.
He is gone
.
He had told her she was lonely
.
She is lonely
She is so lonely
She is alone
.
She sees another
Another there – there was another
Red moth
Watching
Red moth
Saw
She spared him then
She can claim him
She can take his
Warmth
.
But
Loss
Lonely
.
She will be lonely
All the same
.
.
Kaoru woke shivering, remembering cold and white and aching, starving emptiness.
She turned in the palanquin and saw the red-haired samurai riding next to her and for a moment her heart stopped - she believed she was still dreaming. Something - she couldn't remember - she must have seen him in her dream.
She must have seen him in her nightmare.
Then she remembered his name. Kenshin. She sat up and would have called to him, but the gag, now damp and cold from her saliva, kept her silent.
He did not turn his head to look at her. Riding to keep pace with her silk-lined cage, he might have been just another guard, but-
"You confessed," he told her.
Kaoru sat up straighter and shook her head.
"You told me that it was you," he continued, slowly, still facing straight ahead, as though speaking to himself. "You insisted it was you alone."
She shook her head again, despairing. Not me, she would have told him. I don't know what it was that I confessed.
She didn't know what she had done. If she had done anything. If someone - something - if something had been done through her. Because of her.
If that destruction had come from her.
She didn't know.
Kenshin turned to stare at her. His eyes - she hadn't noticed before - were such a pale color, some shade of hazel between grey and gold. He bore what looked like a fresh slash down the left side of his face. Dampened by the rain, his hair was the color of rust, the color of slow, dark blood.
He spoke again, quietly. "I don't know why you lied," he told her, "but I believe that you have done no harm." His eyes were asking her something... something else.
Kaoru had no answer.
She wanted to break free.
She wanted the sun to shine again.
.