"It isn't beautiful," Kenshin had said. "It's ugly."
Fed, washed, ritually clothed, nearly choked with purifying smoke by silent priestesses - silent women with silent voices, silent faces - Kaoru thought that perhaps Kenshin was right. Perhaps it was all ugliness and would end in death.
But Kaoru felt a growing certainty that everything would be all right.
Even waiting, and waiting, in this house in this valley - quiet spaces shadowed and still and familiar, as Kenshin had been familiar. Familiar as her nightmares.
Perhaps she was simply going mad.
Then so be it.
A courtier shuffled in. He seemed solemn, hesitant, almost afraid. He glanced at her face for a moment and then looked meekly to the floor. "It's time."
.
The great hall seemed to be vibrating as they entered. Shamans were shaking prayer sticks along the sides of the room. Rows of court attendants sat with their heads bowed. In the front, near the dais, an elegantly robed priestess took up the corner. She sat with her eyes closed, serene and still, her low voice murmuring powerful prayers.
She opened her eyes when Kaoru was brought before them. She did not alter the tone or rhythm of her low, slow chanting, but her eyebrows lifted slightly, as though she might grimace, or laugh.
Kaoru raised her head higher.
Behind the priestess, the old daimyo sat still as a stone, still as a spider, on his dais. Kaoru had not even seen him at first. He wore dark-stained ceremonial robes embroidered with the seal of his clan. His shape was obscured by trails of incense smoke and the grey shadows of the wan, overcast, quietly dying afternoon.
His voice came as a rasp over the hum of rattles and chanting. "My head shaman will examine you. She will not harm you. Do not resist."
The woman rose and stepped gracefully before Kaoru. She was singing low words of a language Kaoru did not understand. Like the shaman in the camp, she carried a smoldering bundle of herbs, but these she merely waved gently, creating a wreath between them and then a series of characters or signs. Kaoru held herself still and stared at the woman, but she might as well have been a statue for all the personal notice the head shaman took of her.
Finally the priestess gripped something in the sleeve of her robe and then smeared her fingers across Kaoru's forehead. When she pulled back her hand, it was stained thinly with blood.
The priestess had stopped chanting. She stood over Kaoru in silence, peering into her, distracted, as though she were a monk contemplating an ancient script, or as though she were listening for a faraway sound.
Kaoru listened. She couldn't hear anything. She felt numb and dizzy, but that could have been the incense, her bravery or her fear.
After a long silence, the priestess abruptly spun around to face the dais. "My Lord," she stridently declared, "don't be fooled by costume and theatricals. Your warriors only wish to distract you from their failure. This is no sorceress. This is nothing but a sun-burnt, half-starved peasant."
"Discretion, Megumi," the old man warned.
"This girl is not the cause of the monsoon, nor of the Mibu wolves."
"Silence! Of course this girl has nothing to do with the Mibu." The old man slowly pulled himself to his feet. This seemed to cause a reverberation, a dull shudder throughout the room.
"Leave us. All of you. Leave." The shamans waving their sticks, the attendants, even the captain who had brought Kaoru in as his prisoner obediently bowed and began to file out.
"And you, Megumi. You leave, too. I know you speak the truth."
The priestess stiffened a moment, as though she would argue, but then she dropped into an elegant bow. She straightened and, without glancing further at Kaoru, disappeared into the corridor.
The old man stepped forward slowly, listening to the floorboards of the corridor creak distantly as the last of the attendants and the priestess made their exit. Then he turned to Kaoru. He approached so close she could have counted his wrinkles. For the first time, she noticed the cataracts that clouded his eyes.
"I've seen you," he said, his voice gentle. "I've seen you here before."
"Sir," Kaoru half gasped. How could you know me? How could you see me? It hurt - a small, sharp stab - so close to what she no longer even hoped to hear."I don't remember anything before a few months ago. Monks on the mountainside found me-"
"No. You may not remember, but you know." The old man smiled then, his wrinkles creasing. "You miss him, young woman. That is why you returned." He turned to walk away from her. "Come. I'll take you to his grave."
Before she could protest, he took her hand and led her out into the corridor, old, dark wood that whispered under their feet. They moved through the shadows of the mansion until they came to a porch that opened onto a courtyard. Dusk had fallen so that it was difficult for her to distinguish shapes amongst the storm-stripped bushes and trees of the garden, but the old man pointed, unerring.
"There. The stone marker. There he is."
Standing next to the daimyo, Kaoru wrapped her arms around herself, and the branches of the courtyard seemed to rustle and sigh in the sudden, chill breeze.
.
Kaoru listened as the daimyo told her about his son.
At first she had been afraid that the old man was as mad as she was, but as he spoke it became obvious that what mattered to him was simply that someone share his love, his pain. Perhaps he was a bit mad, but because of his position, he probably could not talk like this with anyone else in the household.
His son sounded like he had been a kind man, a loving man. Too good-natured to feel an insult, too warm-hearted to deliver one.
Kaoru gathered that he had died young.
But it was cold in this place. Cold among these shadows, this dying light, cold in this garden with the breeze that seemed to be whispering spell words to the dying leaves. Cold surrounding that stone in the far corner of the courtyard.
Kaoru thought of Kenshin and the daimyo and wondered if this entire household was haunted, or cursed. The old man was still speaking of his dead son, and Kaoru felt her heart suddenly throbbing out of rhythm and she wished that this entire mansion could be torn down.
That sunlight could find every shadow.
"Young woman, you are a guest here," the old man was saying. Mad, he must be mad. He had forgotten that she was a prisoner. "I will have a servant show you to your room."
The old man was mad, but he was their leader. Perhaps there was hope that Kaoru could escape.
.
A young girl carrying a lantern stepped forward at the old man's command. Like nearly everyone else in this place, she seemed timid, withdrawn.
Kaoru followed the girl to a room alongside the courtyard. She felt nervous even as the girl bowed to her goodnight and left her with the lamp. More uncertainty. This was yet another unknown. At least there was nothing to fear here but an empty room. Kaoru chided herself for her foolishness.
She entered the room and immediately stiffened, even before she understood what she was seeing. A shape. A person. The person stepped forward, into the lamp light.
It was the priestess.
Kaoru opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but the priestess spoke first.
"What did the daimyo say to you?"
So, someone had been watching. Someone had control. Someone who might decide to kill her after all. "...He spoke about his son."
"I see..." The priestess frowned and took a step forward - peering at Kaoru, again, as though she were searching for something. Suddenly she lifted her head, stood taller.
"Lady." She seemed to be addressing Kaoru, but her eyes were focused... just behind her, or... inside... her. To Kaoru's horror, the priestess then dipped into a low bow. "I pray that you will remember the slight service I have tried to render you."
Kaoru wanted to move, wanted to shake the woman speaking so strangely, wanted to shake herself out of this dream that kept slipping into a nightmare, but the feeling was so strange - dizzy again, numb, like before.
"And you," the woman said, resuming her upright, even imperious, posture. The bizarre moment had ended. The priestess was looking directly at her now, an arch to her brow that seemed to suggest humor and disdain. "I don't know why you're here, but you would do well to make the most of the time you have."
"What do you mean?" Kaoru found her voice. It was shaking. "What the spirits is going on? Who were you talking to? Was it me? Something inside me? What is it? What am I?"
The priestess smiled a bit and shook her head. "...No. It's better for you that you don't know... No, just accept that you are protected and forget about it."
"Protected by what? What are you talking about? Who am I? Why am I protected?"
"Have some wit, girl, and listen to good advice!" the woman snapped. "Don't bother about mysteries. It doesn't matter, anyway. Soon all of this will end. Everything in this place will be destroyed."
"What? How?" Kaoru could imagine sunlight and shadows and blood and... Kenshin... Fighting. Dying. Because of her? Was it her fault?
"Our allies the Koshimizu have been betrayed," Megumi was saying. "The Mibu and Makimachi are coming in force, and they are strong enough now to defeat us. Some will flee and some will stay and fight. Either way, we are finished."
"...And what about me?"
Megumi smiled wickedly, graciously. "You are our honored guest. And you're protected. I doubt even the Mibu could touch you. You are the safest of us all."
.