Outside, a small crowd had gathered at all the commotion. Soldiers leaned warily on their spears. Concerned faces peeped out from the neighboring tents. Voices whispered, muddled and low. Torchlight seared into Kagome’s eyes as she hurled Kanako out into the mud.

“Get out,” Kagome said, raising her voice for all to hear. “You’re banished from this place. Go, and don’t ever come back.”

“Kagome-sama, please!” Kanako wailed, scrambling through the muck toward the miko’s feet.

A soldier’s spear haft blocked her advance. Blearily, Kanako gazed up from her pitiful crawl. But Kagome turned her face away.

“An unsavory look,” she heard one of the onlookers mutter. “I have said as much before…”

“Always skulking and creeping…”

“Those wide, witchy eyes. Did she bring this curse down upon us?”

“An suspicious manner, to be sure…”

“Out with you,” the soldier said above this muttering, shoving Kanako with the butt of his spear.

The waif fell back onto her hands. “Kagome-sama, you cannot—”

A stone sailed through the air. Followed by another, and another still. Kanako cried out, flinching. It was the children who were throwing them, as the adults stared on in silent condemnation. Wincing, Kanako endured it.

“Witch!” the children cried, pelting her in vicious glee. “I hit the witch—didja see? Didja see it?”

Hardening her heart, Kagome let them. The rain of rocks grimed Kanako’s face, cut jagged lines of red down her pallid cheeks. Wretched, the girl gathered herself up. Half-stumbling down the road out of town, she went away cringing and sobbing, as the children harried her at every step.

So Kanako was driven out of Edo. Watching after, Kagome felt curiously numb, despite the turmoil churning her soul.

She crossed from the courtyard into the castle. Inside, there were soldiers sitting at a table, drinking and throwing dice. Carving off shanks of roasted boar with a dagger. At the sight of her, they sobered and paled. Bowing, they started to withdraw.

“Leave the sake,” Kagome said, and they did as she bid them. “The knife, too.”

When the soldiers were gone, she strode forward, into the crumbling main hall. Some makeshift crossbeams had been raised to support it. Letting her fingers slide past the new-cut pine, Kagome snatched up a bottle of sake in one hand and the knife in the other.

In her current state of exhaustion, she was good and well drunk by the time her feet dragged her to the busted tatami platform, where the throne was raised and silvered with soot. Sweeping off the dust, Kagome sat down and tipped the rest of the sake down her throat.

Her legs splayed before her in a careless sprawl. Her unbound hair flowed wild and unkempt down her back and shoulders. Squeezing her eyes shut, Kagome laughed, bitter and short. Her fingers seized in the neck of her kimono shirt, ripping it open wide.

The carving knife was in her hand. Sucking down a breath, she pressed the tip to her bared chest. Blood beaded just above her heart, rich and dark and thick. Kagome whimpered at the sight. Tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she drew the knife back, as she held it level before her in both trembling hands—

Kagome, a voice spoke to her out of the past, deep and even against the roar of her despair. I am here.

“Sesshoumaru,” she whispered, as the knife slipped in her hold, and all the world went black.

…

“…Kagome-sama? Kagome-sama!”

Groaning, the miko dragged herself up. Her seized back screamed in pain. She must have slept slumped-over for hours. Blinking groggily, she focused on the armored men hurrying toward her. Nervously, they eyed her naked, bloodied breast, and the knife in her lap.

“What?” she grit out, the knife clattering to the floor as she righted her kimono.

“Kagome-sama, please—come quickly…”

Kagome’s head pounded. Clapping a hand to it, she pushed herself up from the ruined throne, and wandered forward. Still half-drunk, she stepped outside, into the muggy spring air.

In the courtyard there was a ominous stir. As Kagome trudged toward the source of it, her blood chilled in dread.

Huddled before her, Uetsugi crouched, a wet bundled figure swallowed up in his arms. At Kagome’s approach, his face rose, its blunt angles contorted in misery. Desperately, he put forth the bundle, which even from that distance Kagome’s fuzzy sight could perceive. Still, she staggered forward, grasping at cloth and clammy flesh.

Turning the bundle over. Turning it over as her stomach turned. Wide and silvery and flat, Kanako’s eyes stared up at her, from the sunken pits of that drowned, bloated corpse.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi