-17-

Arashi speaks:

His hand was dry in mine. It was reassuring.

The city, my home, was being torn apart and ripped to shreds as demons and humans alike poured through the narrow dirt streets, tearing down doors, breaking into huts. I could hear people screaming in pain. I could hear them wailing as they mourned for their fallen family members.

And I, I did not go in for the sole reason that I knew I would die if I did. My presence, and the presence of Houshi-sama, would not sway the tides of battle. Perhaps if I were up to strength I would have been able to walk into the heart of my home, but I was not.

Some might call it cold, that I stood listening to those men and things tear through my home. Some might even think, given the way that they had teased me as a child, shied away from me because of my powers, that I secretly enjoyed it. I tell you now that what I heard, watching my home fall apart hut by hut, blow by blow, will haunt me until the end of my days. It is a horror I would not wish on anybody.

You may call it whatever term you wish, but I call my actions practical. Rushing headlong into battle will not help anyone. Kissaki-chan, my cousin, she will rush into battle, but not me.

I feel, afterwards, that I remained for a reason. As Houshi-sama and I stood there, small dark forms came scurrying out from the underbrush.

Some hand that had been squeezing my heart released a little when I recognized the shape. I dropped the hand that I had been holding. The shape in the lead, walking on all fours, rushed forward and threw itself at me. I clutched the small child to me, filled with such relief that uncontrolled tears rolled over my cheeks but as cherished as the boy I held.

“Shippo!”

He sobbed against me, older than I, but still so much younger. His words were barely understandable. “Kissaki wouldn’t let me fight. She said that I was too small. Kaede-chan told me to get the children out, so I did.”

I looked passed him to the small band of children he had lead out of the village, using his superior sense of smell to find me at my mother’s grave site. All of them were scared, frightened awake at the early hour, but when I opened my arms to them, they rushed me. The village children forgot their fear of me. They forgot the way their mothers had made them fear and respect me with stories like: ‘Eat your vegetables or the village priestess will curse you’, or ‘Do your chores or the village priestess won’t say any prayers for you’. They rushed me and hugged tightly to me, crying for their parents.

Houshi-sama looked on, his cheeks red at the way I was suddenly swarming with children. I began hushing their fears, counting them. They were all very young children. The oldest of them had not yet seen seven summers, and the youngest of them was still not quite at the age to talk. That one I scooped up and placed in the houshi’s arms to give him something to do.

“We must find safety and shelter. The demons will begin searching the area for survivors when they’re done in the village.”

“How do you know that?” Houshi-sama asked. It wasn’t a rude question, but curious, with the hope of someone who wanted to stay near shelter than risk the road. He had his staff, and I my mother’s sword, and beyond that we had no provisions with which to travel.

“Because,” I told him a low voice the children would hopefully not hear, “demons eat flesh. It might take them a day or two, or it might take them an hour, but eventually they’ll begin hunting for food. It would be wise to vacate the area before that happens.”

“Where will we go?” asked Shippo. His tail shook with excitement.

I looked at the children, counting heads again. There were twelve children in all, thirteen when one counted Shippo. I tried to think of how many children were in the village still. The number was frightening and I pushed it away. I had twelve children to save now, and I would either mourn for the rest or save them later. I had to protect what I had now. I slowly looked at Houshi-sama.

“We will go to Tetsuya-sama’s village. From there, we will send word to Sesshoumaru-sama that the Englishmen have attacked us. He should send us aid to help retake the village.”

No one spoke it, but they had all heard it in my voice. Sesshoumaru-sama should send aid. He had promised to protect us, and as such we had left him alone and given his castle part of what the farmers made, and weapons the slayers made. That was the cost of his protection. But Sesshoumaru-sama had long since hated humans, and this was a human village. Just because he should give us aid did not mean that he would.

Picking up the next youngest child, leaving the others to walk on their own, I motioned for Houshi-sama to lead us to his home village. He would know the safest way. I watched the grip on his staff tighten and he changed the hold he had on the young boy in his arms so that he could protect himself with his staff if we were ambushed. Swallowing deeply, he began cutting a path through the underbrush with his body, leading us to the road.

Kaede speaks:

God, I’m tired. How does Dad use the kaze no kizu without getting so tired? Mom says he could pound them out all day, like they were nothing, but even one from me leaves my knees wobbly.

I try my best to get through the forest, but I can’t see. I’m crying too much. I try to stop, but they won’t go away. I yell at myself the way my dad would yell at me: You’re a demon! Demons don’t cry! Now suck it up, stand up, and fight! That makes it a bit better, but when I think of fighting, I think of Kissaki. And then I think of the way she fell, covered in blood.

I think I’m a coward.

I know that she told me to run, and I do need to protect the sword. I mean, it’s my inheritance! And since Dad isn’t dead, it really belongs to him. But it’s not like the demons could have destroyed it. I’ve never met anything that could destroy my grandfather’s sword. And it’s not like they could have taken it from me and used it, right? If a man was willing to destroy his own men and demons just to get a single little village, then I really doubt that he’s going to want to use a sword to protect humans.

I should have stayed and fought.

I might have made it! I might have…

Aw, who’m I kidding? I wouldn’t have made it. Even Kissaki didn’t make it. Lord knows what happened to Arashi. I hope that Shippo got out in time, and saved some of the children. If I were lucky, I would have died like Kissaki. If I wasn’t lucky…

I think of what the demons are doing to people and I lean against a tree, throwing up what remained from my supper last night, and I keep throwing up until I’m in dry heaves. I start to walk away and then recall my training and kick some dirt over the pile of vomit to try and hide it. Trust me, I don’t think it would work, because it stinks even to me, and I’m only a quarter demon.

And they knew it, too. As soon as I stepped out into the battlefield, I was a fucking homing beacon to the other demons. They knew I was different. They knew I was special. And they came after me for it.

I should have spent more time learning how to use a sword and less time in schoolwork.

Mom would kill me for that thought, but it’s the truth. I don’t need trigonometry or homework in the Sengoku Jidai. I need to know how to fight. I need to know how to defend myself.

Where can I go? If I’m that special, if I’m that different, will the next village even take me? Or will they look at me and see that when I turn my head a little this way, there’s a gold sheen to my eyes, and will they see I’m not quite like them?

I have to go somewhere. I have to tell someone that the village is gone.

And then I realize who I need to tell. I’m so scared that I need to lean against a tree, head between my knees.

Uncle Sesshoumaru.

Uncle Sesshoumaru needs to know about it. He’s the one in charge of protecting the village.

And I think about the last time I saw him.

Dad told me so many stories about my uncle, I couldn’t quite believe all of them. I know he tried to kill my mom a few times, but who didn’t when she was my age back then? My dad tried to kill her, Kikyou tried to kill her, pretty sure Aunt Sango would have tried to kill her when she was possessed with that frog demon, Uncle Sesshoumaru, I seem to recall a story about Kouga trying to kill her before he fell in love with her. Uncle Miroku tried to sleep with her, which I suppose is almost the same thing. And, of course, there was Naraku and all his bad guys.

So I never thought that my Dad was serious about how Uncle hated humans. How could I when there were stories about Rin, too? It didn’t make any sense at all. I just assumed that he was cranky, or that he was having a bad decade, trying to kill Mom.

But then he had appeared, as beautiful as Mom told me he was, and tried to kill me. And I couldn’t even fight him. I was too tired, and too damn scared. God, he had such power! He was flattening the grass around him with that energy! And I can only release on pathetic little kaze. If Rin hadn’t been there…

Now I was supposed to go and march up to his castle door? What was I suppose to say: “Hi, Uncle, I know you hate me because of who my father is and what my mother is, but the demon slayer village was taken over by Englishmen, and it would really mean a lot to us all if you’d do your job and go save it before everyone they’ve captured is killed for food or for entertainment? Kthx, XO, bye.”

No fucking way.

I hear something coming from me from the trees. A lot of little some things. I grip my sword to protect myself, but instead children emerge from the underbrush, with them…

“Arashi! Shippo! Houshi-sama!”

I rush at Shippo, who gives me a squeeze and then climbs my shoulder where he can keep hugging my neck, perched there out of safety. I hug Arashi next, and I even give a hug to the monk, who turns such a deep shade of red that I think he’s about to get a nose bleed. I turn back to Arashi.

“Kissaki… she didn’t make it, Cousin.”

The news hits her like a hammer blow. Shippo grips to me tightly, and I feel him bury his face in my hair to hide his tears. Tetsuya-sama reaches out and steadies Arashi. She leans on him a moment, and then flinches, like she’s doing something wrong by relying on him. She stands on her own two feet, even though she has to put down the little girl she’s carrying to keep from losing her balance. When she blushingly glances at the monk, I know something’s happened between them, but I don’t pry. It’s not my place to pry.

“How?”

“A cannon. You know, one of the large blows that causes the dirt around it to explode from the impact when it lands.” I can’t remember if they had cannons in Nippon back then. I feel bad explaining it and recant. “She was knocked away by the blast, and covered with blood. It’s possible she might have lived, but there was so much blood…”

“And you ran?”

It’s an accusation. I sheathe my sword and hold it up. “Kissaki told me to! She told me… told me I had to get this back to Daddy. I didn’t want to go, but I made a promise to her that if the village looked like it was going to fall, I would escape.”

“We held them off before once!”

I stare at her, pale blue eyes looking ghostly. I know it unnerves people when I look at them like that, and even Arashi finds it disquieting to see my mother’s eyes staring at her. “We did, when we had you and the monk in the village, as well as an inutaisho and Rin. We lost forces then, and this time we were less two fighters, a monk, and a demon. And last time they didn’t have cannons to blow up our family!”

She steps back. Another physical blow. “Kissaki… Gods above, I swear I will have that man’s head mounted on my altar.”

The monk grabs her arm. “Arashi-sama. Don’t say such things!”

Arashi ignors his comment to look at me. “What about Kirara? Have you seen Kirara? She slept at Kissaki’s last night.”

I wonder why. I wonder if Kirara left the shrine because she knew that Tetsuya-sama was staying the night. Are they… sleeping together? Mom remained a priestess even after sleeping with Dad. I wonder why she didn’t tell us about Tetsuya. We’re family, after all. I might not be related to Arashi by blood like she is to Kissaki, but we’re cousins all the same. We’re the three musketeers of the Sengoku Jidai!

I shake my head no. “We were separated in battle. She was fighting on her own, in the air where Kissaki and I couldn’t reach the demons. I think that means she was safe from the cannons, but… but I didn’t see what happened to her.”

Tetsuya interrupts, trying to make amends.

“Ladies, we must press on. We need to put as much distance as we can before night falls. The village is a day and a half away. I’m sure Kirara is fine, Arashi-sama. She’s learned to take care of herself. At least Kaede-chan has found us. Between a monk, a priestess, a warrior and a kitsune, no one will harass us on the road.”

Arashi-scoops up the child she had been holding a moment before. The little girl nuzzles into Arashi’s clothes and shut her eyes. I think all of us want to do the same. We all need a hug. She looks at me.

“Rest, and then take a child yourself. If we carry the youngest, we can move faster.”

“Right. So, where are we, ah, you know, going?” Please don’t tell me we’re going to see Uncle Sesshoumaru, I think.

“To Tetsuya’s village. From there, we can send word to Sesshoumaru-sama. Hopefully, he will send aid.”

I pick up a little four year old kid and hoist them on my back, piggy back style. I’m tired, but I can keep going knowing I won’t have to march to my uncle’s castle and knock on the door myself. I feel like a wall has come down since telling Arashi about Kissaki. We can be strong together. We can mourn together later. That’s the three musketeers for you.

If Sesshoumaru doesn’t send us help, I’ll damn well swallow my fear and march up to the door and pack his sword for him myself. He has a right to uphold. If anything, Dad stressed that my uncle was all about upholding honour. I guess that’s why the village agreed to follow him in the first place: he’s cary as hell, beautiful as an angel, strong beyond belief, but tempered with ideas of honor and right and wrong. Not fair, you know, because life is never fair, but Uncle knows the difference between right and wrong, even if his idea of what’s right and what’s wrong are a little bit different than, say, my Mom’s.

“Let’s go then. We need to come back and make sure Kirara is okay.”

I don’t mention Kissaki. I don’t think she made it.

Kissaki speaks:

I was knocked out by the blow. I don’t gain consciousness until some time has passed. Almost a whole day, in fact. In that time, the Captain has taken the village, recruited the men with the promise that their women won’t be killed, killed a few women to make his point, and then set himself up in the temple like it was a throne room. The statues of Buddha, ancient relics, the sacred places where Arashi would sleep and eat her meals, are thrown out into the crowd to be melted down into war prizes, and her bed used for a celebratory party for Cook and a village girl.

Surprise guess if you knew who it was.

Yeah, bully for you. It’s me.

I fought back. He hit me, thinking that a few blows to the temple will stop me. Instead they made me nauseous and I threw up all over his shirt. That put an end to that attempt to rape me. So instead he has the demons find the prettiest girl they could and drag her up to his room. I get tossed, shackled, hungry, and still covered in blood, into a corner of the room to watch while he starts tearing off clothes off the poor girl.

I know her. She hasn’t even gotten her flows yet. Her cries excite her, and he takes her. I tried to stop him, I did, but he would just slap me down like an annoying animal. If I had stayed there and been good, he wouldn’t have had to hurt her. She’d still be a virgin.

Me? Who cares about me? I still would have been protecting Aunt Sango’s village, the way I was supposed to. I never planned on getting married, not like the girl. She would always talk to me about how she wanted to have lots of babies when she got married. She would chatter on about how she hoped she loved her husband, so that she wouldn’t mind going through the pain of childbirth to make him happy.

That was the first night there. After he finished with her, he kicked the girl out and dragged me into the main room, chaining me to the altar in the sacred space, so that I wouldn’t get too far away. I don’t know why he singled me out.

I found out the next morning. He was sitting on the altar. It had been converted into a makeshift throne for him. I was still chained to it, and depending on his mood, he’d either stroke my hair like I was a pet, or take my hair and bash my cheek into the altar until I lost consciousness.

“You look a lot like that priestess.”

“Arashi.” I spoke with a lisp. One of my teeth had been knocked out and I didn’t know how to speak around the hole yet. I could smell the rice he was eating, the wine he was drinking. I licked my lips, hungry. I hadn’t had breakfast the day of the attack.

“Yes, the priestess. My men haven’t found her yet, so you will have to entertain me until I do. When I do, the things I will do to her!”

My heart soared. My cousin had made it out of the village. They would never find her. She was too smart for them.

I was left in the shrine. They began counting up our food stocks, the food we had put away for the winter months and the monsoons, planning the next town they were going to take, taking stock of our weapons, of their gunpowder, and trying to figure out where they could get more.

The captain also had a particular vice which I didn’t understand. He went through the shrine repeatedly, looking for information on the Goshinboku. He would fly into rages when he couldn’t find any. But I’m getting carried away. Those are things he did when he was working. When he wasn’t working…

First, there was Kirara. She had been shot down, and when she returned to normal size, they placed her in a cage and had her hung up by the ceiling. She didn’t even have enough room to stand, and they were going to starve her until she decided to side with them. Kirara would rather die than side with them, but we were in the same room, so at least I had someone to talk to when Cook was gone.

Second, there was Nadia and Asuka. The two serving girls brought Cook his meals, and when Cook was off scouting the village—inspecting food and weapons—they brought me fresh water.

Asuka translated for the black girl. “Cook likes it when people resist him. He wants to hear you beg and scream. He’s trying to starve you into sleeping with him. You must not let him break you, but we will understand it if you do.”

Nadia turned around and exposed her back and her legs. She dropped them quickly, apparently ashamed and proud of them at the same time. Asuka placed a hand on the girl’s arm, and her voice was filled with pride alone.

“If you still say no after he has denied food to you, he will hurt you as he has hurt Nadia in order to make himself… aroused. If he does this, so long as you do not cry out, he will not be able to take you. It is only when you cry out that he will be physically ready to take you. Do you understand?”

I nodded. “I do.”

Both girls smiled and gave me more water.

“We cannot risk bringing you rice, but water we can manage. He will not starve you. We will not let him.”

I licked my dry lips. They had cracked and bled a little. “Why are you both doing this?”

The girls looked confused. “Doing what?”

“Helping me like this. Aren’t you both putting yourselves in danger helping me?”

Asuka smiled. She didn’t translate for Nadia. “We must make ourselves strong if we are to stand against him. Being united, helping one another regardless of cost, is what keeps us strong. One day, he will realize that he cannot break you, and you will no longer be chained to this altar. We would rather die than be under his heel. We will not let him take Nippon.”

“Please…” I sighed and leaned my head against the altar. “Please, if you have some to spare, give some water to Kirara, too. She needs some more than I do.”

Nadia stood up and spotted the little demon in the cage. She poured some water into her hand and then lifted her hand to the cage. It was the only way she could reach it. Most of the water trickled out between her fingers and landed on the floor, but Kirara licked and reached as far as she could. When she gave up, Nadia refilled her palm. She said something in a strange language that made Asuka giggle.

They were prisoners of war, and yet she giggled. In this room, without Cook in it, she could regain her centre of being. She was no longer a prisoner, but herself.

“Silly,” she chided Nadia. “That’s a demon, not a god.”

Nadia said something else and Asuka shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“What? What did she say?”

“She said the she knows the cat is a demon, but that she has heard stories from the village about how the cat protects the women who rule this village. She said that any demon who works alongside humans, does not eat their flesh or drink their blood, and is as old as Kirara deserves to be called a god, and not demeaned into some evil spirit that preys upon man. She said that is the difference between being a god and a demon—how they use the powers granted to them.”

“Did she really say that?” Asuka nodded. “Please tell her that it means a lot to both my friend and I to hear that.”

Asuka smiled. “You have told her yourself. She can understand a little of our language, and more of it each day. I need to translate for her less and less.” Nadia came over and placed a hand on her shoulder. The Japanese girl turned to kiss the dark fingers laying against her dress. “I only need to translate simple things for her because her pronunciation is so bad, but she understands what you say without me doing it for her. We must go now. Rest while you can. I doubt we will come back today, but we will return tomorrow with more water.”

“Thank you, Asuka, Nadia.”

Both girls smiled at me and left.

I smiled a little myself and looked up at the cage that held Kirara. “You must be pretty pleased with yourself, having that girl call you a god.” Kirara meowed, and I nodded. “Yeah, I’m getting to sleep. It’s hard to sleep chained like this. Is your shoulder better, Kirara? Good. I can’t wait until Arashi returns and we can kick their ass.”

Cook returned that night. He tried to have his way with me again. He struck me and beat me in an effort to make me cry out until I lost consciousness. Then he gave up for the second night in a row. I was glad that I was the one who had been captured, and not my cousin Arashi. I was strong enough to survive anything he could throw at me, and if I did lose, losing my virginity would not destroy as much as me as it would have destroyed Arashi-chan.

That was what I thought in the beginning.

It did not take Cook long to change my mind.

While my Lord and I were escaping from Cook, the Musashi’s domain fell. The farmers were evicted from their homes. Families were torn apart. Women died at the hands of the demons to break the men into changing sides. People disappeared at night to satiate the demons. Houses were burned, crops turn up, and people lost everything.

But Arashi-sama and the others made it to the village. They sent word to my lord, and he indeed began mobilizing to come to their aid. It took another two days for the men to mobilize everything—to gather the men, the weapons, the armour, and the food we would need. I stayed out of the way, and the night before we were supposed to leave, my husband came to me again and took me into his arms.

I have not yet told you what it was like, being with him that night. My husband was gentle, and loving. When I looked down at the tanned hands around my waist and thought of how they could crush me with an ounce of the power they contained, it warmed my heart to have them resting on me so gently. He was a demon, but there was no doubt in my mind he loved me in the way a normal man might love a normal woman.

“If you need to be a little rough, I can bear it,” I admitted to him.

Hatsuhana stopped undressing my robes to look at my face, and those beautiful hazel eyes of his were wounded. “Rough?” He sounded confused.

I blushed. “Women in the bath houses talk. Demons sometimes need it rough, I was told. They need to take something simply because they know it’s theirs, but they need their bodies to know it too. I was taken from you. Should you need to exert yourself in order to assure yourself that I am still yours, I will understand and I can physically bear whatever power you need to release despite my age.”

He slowly smiled, and we fell on our marriage bed, slipping together easily. My body shuddered with delight, and he reclined under me, pleased at the way I rocked back and forth against him in an effort to find a more comfortable position. “I am taking you the way I want you. If I went fast, I would not have the time to make certain that every inch of you remains unharmed and whole.”

Hatsuhana did indeed take his time. His fingers, lips, and tongue explored every inch of me, until at last I wanted him so badly every time his skin touched mine I felt myself shiver with anticipation. His dark hair clung to his forehead as he leaned over me.

“I do not want you going into battle with us.”

“What?”

“Promise me you will not go into battle with us. Remain here at the castle where it’s safe. Stay here with Hikari. Stay where it’s safe.”

“Never. My place is at my lord’s side.”

Hurt and pain turned his face lonely and hard for a moment. He sighed, leaning his head so that his cheek rested on the curve of my breast. His breath burned my skin, and froze it when he inhaled. Slowly the eyes closed, his other hand still stroking my other breast fondly. “Why do I think that ‘my lord’ refers to my cousin and not me, despite being your husband?”

“Because it does, Hatsuhana.”

“I have asked politely.” There was a faint pout to his lips. “What would you do if I made it a command from man to wife?”

I thought about it a moment. “I would disobey it. My place has always been and will always be at my lord’s side.”

“Is there any way that I can keep you from marching with the army?”

“Yes. You can break my legs, so that I can not walk. Then, you can break my arms, so that I cannot use crutches. Then you would have to silence me by cutting out my tongue or sewing shut my lips so that I could no longer speak and act as liaison between human and demons. Unable to speak and unable to fight, I would be useless to Sesshoumaru-sama then, and I would remain here.”

My husband sighed. I knew he would not hurt me. “And if I tried bribery, telling you that I would not finish what we have started tonight if you did not promise me that you would remain here with Hikari?”

“Then I would leave. There is nothing we have started here that I could not finish on my own, and I would not sleep with any man who used sex as a way to manipulate people into doing what he wants them to do.”

Another sigh, but there was also the tiniest smile hiding in the corners of his mouth, and the smallest hint of respect in his eyes when he looked up at me. “If there is nothing I can do to deter you, perhaps we should finish?”

“Perhaps we should.”

As we lay, naked and wrapped in and around each other, I asked, “Why are you so adamant I remain here? Are you simply trying to protect me?”

“I don’t want to see you hurt,” came the muffled response, from the face buried in my short, mauled hair. His arms tightened around me and he breathed in my scent, memorizing it. “I’m frightened some stray arrow will find your heart, some demon might be a little too quick for Sesshy’s training, and I’m frightened of the image a woman in the front lines will say to the men on our side. There’s only one type of women that follow men into battle, Rin.”

“A warrior.”

“No, a prostitute. They know the men in the camp will need… tending, and so they follow around the army, providing their services for protection and food. To lose you to death would be a terrible thing, Rin, but I knew when I married you that one day I would be placing you in a grave while I was still young—but to lose you to a man in our tents, drunk and thinking you were someone else, to know another man had touched you and violated you… no blow would be worse than the knowledge that I failed to protect you from something you had kept safe on your own for so long. To think that another man may have… have violated my wife… no pain would be greater than that.”

When I was still in his arms, my husband thought I had fallen asleep, and slept himself. He did not know I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Even if I loved the man… even if the feelings had been reciprocated and it would not be rape, would Hatsuhana still feel so hurt?

No pain would be greater than that… I was a fool. If he knew that his deepest fears had already happened, that it had been reciprocated, and it had been with his cousin of all people…

‘Foolish Hatsuhana… the pain would be greater.’

I had betrayed my husband, and if he ever found out about it, that knowledge would drive into his heart like a dagger, and pierce the fabric of his soul, tearing apart all the humanity, compassion, and sensitivity that made me love him.

I had to ensure he never found out.

To be continued...