By Cat Who

Written for the Fractured Fairy Tale Challenge.

This takes place at time point before Kagome lost all her shards to Naraku. The September/October 2002 calender picture, which is now next to my shiny new computer desk, inspired the beginning of the story.

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Takahashi-sensei does. One Eyes, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes is a German folk-tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century, and I don't own it either. The version I'm using is the one my late father told me when I was a child, with a lot of modifications to turn it from medieval Germany to medieval Japan, Inuyasha-verse style.

* * *

On and on, the endless days dredged wearily. The five travelers kept on, however, because quitting meant giving up and dooming Miroku to an early death and Kikyou to a prolonged afterlife. They could not stop looking. There were still more shards.

"Kagome, you sense anything?" Inuyasha asked for the hundredth time that day, reminding Kagome of all the times Souta had gone on the "are we there yet?" litany on the trains when he was little. They were both on Kirara, while Miroku, Sango, and Shippou sat on a floating Hatchi below. Around them a flock of geese soared and flew with them. For a while, they had whooped joyfully along with the birds, but soon Kirara had grown tired of the play, and they had returned to a sedate traveling pace. Inuyasha was probably getting bored.

"For the last time, no, I don't sense ANYTHING." Kagome sighed and leaned forward, stroking Kirara's soft fur. "We've been traveling all day in this direction. We're going to hit Hokkaido if we don't turn back soon."

"It is getting a bit chilly," Sango called hopefully from Hatchi's back. Miroku took the opportunity to casually drape one arm around her shoulder, saying nothing. Sango sank into the embrace willingly, indicating that she was indeed feeling the cooler temperature of the northern clime. She was too practical to turn down a warm hug when it was needed. Shippou also jumped into the cuddle, burrowing between them.

"We're not stopping!" Inuyasha snarled angrily, and then turned once more to Kagome. "Sense anything yet?"

"I just told you, I don --" Kagome cut off in mid-protest to glance down at a meadow below them. "Wait a minute." A large, dead tree loomed from the middle of the field. It gave off strange vibrations, ones that seemed like Shikon shards, yet were somehow darker.

"You DO sense something?"

"Is it a shard, Kagome-sama?" Miroku called.

"I think so," she replied, and shivered at a sudden wave of goose bumps. "Let's go down."

* * *

Niiko hummed to herself as she petted the family goat Baa-san, who munched contentedly in the field around her. She had managed to pilfer a whole carrot, which she had hidden in her apron while she prepared her sisters lunch. Her second oldest sister, Ichiko, snored on the grass next to her. Behind their scene of apparent domestic tranquility, the Old Tree looked stark and out of place.

She took the carrot out of her apron, and slipped her loose outer yukata over her head, to muffle the sound of munching. Ichiko was a light sleeper, and anything could wake her up.

"Itadakimasu," Niiko said fervently, and was about to bite into the carrot when a giant fire-footed cat and a yellow flying sausage came out of the sky. Niiko peered at them curiously through a hole in the worn yukata. Surely they weren't here to steal her one moment of happiness. It wasn't every day Niiko got a whole carrot to herself, after all.

She clutched the carrot possessively when the riders of the two creatures dismounted. Almost immediately, the yellow sausage turned into a tanuki with a large "pop!" which caused Niiko to glance fearfully back in case her sister had woken up from the noise.

"Who are you?" Niiko asked. Then, glancing at their unusual garments and the obvious magical animals, she guessed, "You're youkai, aren't you?"

The younger boy immediately dropped to all fours and started sniffing around while the younger girl introduced herself.

"My name is Higurashi Kagome. I'm not a youkai, I'm a human. So are they," she gestured to Miroku and Sango.

"Oh." Niiko took that opportunity to slip out of her yukata, causing the visitors to gasp in surprise. She knew she was filthy and too skinny; she also knew that her loose dark green hair paled in comparison to the rich grass green of her sister beside her on the ground. "If you're not youkai, then you might want to run away. My mother hates humans."

The white-haired boy stopped sniffing long enough to glare at her. "You're a hanyou, aren't you? And this one here's a full youkai."

Niiko nodded and glanced at her sister, who chose that moment to snort and roll over in her sleep, revealing lidless skin where normal eyes should be, with a real eye in the middle of her forehead, closed. Their mother, also a hanyou, had always favored Niiko's two sisters, who bore a much stronger youkai power than she herself did.

"We're actually both three quarters youkai," Niiko explained, brushing herself off as she stood up. She pocketed the carrot, mentally promising to enjoy it thoroughly later. "My sisters, Ichiko and Sanko, inherited a lot more of the youkai than I did, so my mother likes them more." Niiko shrugged, then looked blankly at the strangers. "Why are you here, if I may ask?"

"We're looking for a fragment of something called the Shikon no Tama." The younger girl gestured to a few slivers of a pinkish crystal that hung around her neck. "Do you know if there is one around here?"

Niiko shook her head no. "I've heard of the Shikon no Tama, but no one around here has one of those things. They feel . . . nice."

Kagome sighed. "Well . . . thank you anyway."

The dog hanyou ceased his sniffing around the dead tree, and stood up. "Well, let's go then, Kagome. She doesn't sense one, you don't sense on, Miroku doesn't sense one . . . there isn't one here."

Kagome stomped over to him, arms straight at her side in protest. "I know I sensed something before. There has to be something around here. We can't leave yet."

At that moment the older man, a priest, came over to her and slipped his arm casually around her shoulders. "My beautiful girl," he smarmed, "would you bear my child?"

Niiko's eyes widened in fear, and she skittered away just as the older woman hefted her enormous boomerang to smack the priest upside the head. In the course of action her carrot slipped from its pocket and landed on the ground, causing Niiko to cry softly in dismay. She grabbed at it, but missed, and it fell on the ground, instantly blackening from the evil energy of the Old Tree. Niiko promptly burst into tears.

"Miroku, you bastard, you made her cry!"

"Miroku-sama, what did you DO?"

"Stupid houshi-sama!"

"Miroku says he likes girls and yet he's always so rude to them . . ."

"W-what happened to the carrot?"

Miroku cringed under the onslaught of imprecations, and Niiko, still sobbing a little, sought to correct the mistaken strangers. "It isn't the houshi-sama's fault. It's that the carrot was the only thing besides rice I was going to have to eat today." She pointed dejectedly at the burnt little crust on the ground in front of her, and dropped her voice down to a whisper in case Ichiko woke up. "Mother, Ichiko, and Sanko are very careful to count all the foodstuffs to make sure I don't get enough to eat. I had managed to make their dinner in such a way as to make it look as if I used four carrots instead of three." She sighed and wiped the last of her tears away. "Oh well. I can always munch on some flies, I guess."

The travelers started strangely at her until she clarified her last statement. "We're spider youkai," she explained.

"Well, I've never eaten . . . flies before, but they don't sound appetizing. Since we made you lose your lunch, would you like to eat with us?" Kagome offered sweetly. Niiko's eyes widened in joy, and she lost all sense of propriety and jumped upon the young girl. "Really? Oh thank you!"

"Hey, I think we're bugging your sister," Inuyasha warned, and nodded his head toward the snoring girl. Ichiko mumbled something about apples in her sleep, and turned over to face the ground again. Niiko silently wished that the tree's curse would burn her face off, but the curse only affected plant matter that hadn't grown on the soil around the Old Tree for some reason.

"Let's go on the other side of the hillock, and quickly," the older girl suggested.

Niiko nodded in agreement, and grabbed Baa-chan's rope. "What sort of food do you have, anyway?" she asked curiously, her stomach rumbling in anticipation.

* * *