Kagome reeled, scarcely managing to reach the river’s edge before a torrent of scalding bile ripped up through her throat. Her nose seared. Her eyes streamed as she retched out the dregs of her empty stomach into the muddy current below. Frigid brown water soaked through the knees of her hakama, her quaking arms straining to support herself against the deathly chill that seized her.

She could sense the villagers hovering behind her like a host of watchful specters. Dashing the back of her wan, shaking hand against the acid lingering on her lips, Kagome turned her hollow gaze to the ashen-faced girl who knelt beside her.

“…Miko-sama?” the girl hesitantly asked.

“A cart,” Kagome rasped out, gritting her teeth as her eyes strayed back to Mayuri’s festering corpse. “Do you have a cart?”

As two of the fishermen went to fetch one, Kagome scoured her hands raw with the harsh slimy soap the girl had given her. Trying to distract herself from the sight of them loading Mayuri’s body into the ox cart, the miko asked the girl her name. When she learned that it was Kanako, Kagome wished she hadn’t.

As the cart hatch locked shut with grim finality, the miko returned numbly to her mount. Mayuri’s corpse in tow, Kanako, her brother and grandfather followed after. Apart from the occasional “Tch-tch,” to keep the aged ox moving, not a word passed between the group of solemn travelers. In this funeral-like procession, Kagome led the small party back to Tatsumi castle.

The fiery sun beat down on the miko’s bowed head and sunken shoulders. Before her vacant eyes, the handful of intervening miles seemed to stretch endlessly on. From one hell to the next, the living and the dead journeyed together, cold dismay rising now from the pit of Kagome’s stomach as they crossed at last onto the paved palace road. A company of crows eyed them from the grass near the gates, their shiny black gazes sharpening at the sickly sweet stench of decay, their little clawed feet hopping about in macabre delight.

The miko’s sudden return was causing a stir in general. Already a crowd of curious townsfolk had gathered, the guards ordering them to keep back as they ushered Kagome and her gloomy entourage into the courtyard. One glance at the burden they were carrying, and Tatsumi’s samurai captain led them around to a side building of the palace, where two soldiers helped Kanako’s brother and grandfather to unload it.

As a shroud was laid over Mayuri’s remains, the lord of the castle arrived there himself. His jaundiced features descended, dragging down like melted tallow as the village elder launched into his grisly account, the sound of his voice fading in and out of Kagome’s hearing.

“…Found her this morn in the river, milord…must’ve washed there in the night…Miko-sama was passing by…said we should bring her here…poor young lass…’tis a demon most like that felled her, though Miko-sama did not say…”

Lord Tatsumi’s piercing gaze shifted to her. “…Well, Kagome-sama?” he prompted, as if from far away. “Is this the work of a demon?”

Put once more to that dreadful question, Kagome fixed him with a bleak and haunted stare—as the outer door of the room banged open, and Mayuri’s family rushed in.

“Kaa-san!” Yahiko cried out at the sight, fighting against a man with silver-streaked hair who attempted to shield him from it. Breaking free of his father’s bloodless hold, the boy raced over to his dead mother’s side, planting his small white hands on the frozen ruin of her face. “Kaa-san…Kaa-san, wake up…Kaa-san…Kaa-san, please…”

His shoulders shook with grief and confusion, tears streaming down from eyes so much like Mayuri’s as he continued to entreat her. In his desperation, in his disbelief, Kagome saw an image of herself—stranded once more on that loathsome shore, her fingers digging into Inuyasha’s cooling flesh, as if by force of love alone she could bleed the warmth of life back into him…

“…She said not to expect her, that she would be late returning home,” Mayuri’s husband recounted aloud, shock and horror robbing his voice of its inflection, wresting Kagome back to the present. “…When I awoke and she was not there, I assumed she had stayed overnight here—at the palace. I assumed she…I assumed…I…I…”

As the man broke down altogether, Kagome found herself moving to the door. Walking past the desolate husband, the flinty-eyed lord, the somber fisherman and his grandchildren, the grave samurai, she stepped through the opening in the shouji screen, the sound of Yahiko’s hopeless sobs trailing close behind her.

Outside in the blazing light, Kagome’s eyes blinked and burned. Shades of orange overlaid the world around her. A shiver of heat laced the dusty ground, rippled shimmering from the roof peaks and tree tops. Half-blind, Kagome stumbled through the hellish haze, a woman’s scathing voice cutting through it.

“…If you ask me, Mayuri brought this on herself. She was always spoiling for trouble, flaunting her looks the way she did, running her mouth like she was better than everyone else—the vain little hussy…”

Slowly Kagome turned toward the group of servant women clustered near the castle kitchens. Pale faces blurred in her vision—waxy and distorted, the dark piggish eyes of their ringleader glinting peevishly in the glare.

“…Consorting with demons, some are beginning to say,” the head cook Koharu barreled on, emboldened by the disgusted head shakes of her companions. “Well—I certainly wouldn’t put it past her. There was something unnatural about that girl. Something devious, something wicked—”

Kagome didn’t remember crossing the courtyard. She didn’t remember shoving the much larger woman to the ground beneath her. She didn’t remember the first time her reiki-wreathed fist connected with her face. Nor the second.

“Shut up!” she heard herself snarl as she struck Koharu again and again, her knuckles splitting open against crooked yellow teeth. “Shut your mouth, you liar! You murderer!”

Her vision had gone red, her body was no longer her own. Something else had possessed her—something else was in control. All she could feel was her fury, all she knew was the violence in her heart. She was drunk on it, drowning in it.

“Please!…please, stop…”

Had Mayuri pleaded? Had the others? Had they begged and cried as he tore them apart from the inside out? Had he heard it—had he even cared?

Koharu wasn’t pleading anymore. Feeble whimpers rose and died in her throat. As Kagome’s fists fell away, the servant’s doughy hands lifted to cradle her broken nose, her bloodied lips and cheeks. As the red fog of the miko’s wrath began to fade, she lurched unsteadily to her feet.

Her ears were ringing, her breath sounding terribly loud in the crisp quiet of the courtyard. With sobering, startling clarity she looked around her—at the fearful faces of the other servants, at the wariness of the daimyo’s guards. Staggering the short distance over to the post where Jiro was tied, she freed him quickly and threw herself up into the saddle, galloping hard through the castle gates.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi