Scowling, Kagome hefted herself up and trudged to the door. If this was old Hatsumi again, worrying over that rash on his elbow she’d told him repeatedly was nothing…

Steam was practically pouring out of her ears as she seized the reed curtain and ripped it aside. The words, For the last time, it’s not a ‘ghost blister’ from your late wife pinching you in your sleep, and if you’d stop picking at it, it would clear up in a few days, were poised like a nocked arrow on her lips—but at the sight that met her eyes an “Oh!” of surprise escaped her instead.

It wasn’t a hunched little old man peering up at her from the ice-crusted doorstep, but a young boy, shrinking back. Kagome didn’t know him. He looked maybe eleven years old, pale and shivering from the cold in his roughspun clothes. Though he might also be trembling in sheer apprehension of her. He’d seemed to be mustering the wherewithal to hail her when she’d stormed to the door.

“Hi there,” she said gently, trying to set him at ease, “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Kagome, a miko of this village. What’s your name?”

“Y-Yoichiro,” he replied. “My family lives on the other side of the pass.”

Kagome nodded, knowing the hamlet he meant. “Nice to meet you, Yoichiro-kun.” Warmly, she smiled. “Was there something you needed?”

Fiddling with the shoulder-loops of the basket roped to his back, the boy flushed, then sobered, screwing up his features in an expression of grave determination. “Miko-sama,” he said, bowing, “I need your help.” 

Kagome’s lips twitched. “With what?”

Taking down the straw basket, he set it on the porch and removed the lid. Kagome stepped closer. Inside was an orange-and-black head, large and insectoid and crowned with sharp, segmented antennae, one of which was poking through the straw.

“A corpse wasp,” Kagome said, looking from the severed head to Yoichiro. “Did you kill it yourself?”

The boy shook his head. “My father did. Our old she-ox, Ashi, she must’ve died in the night. When we woke up this morning, we saw these demon wasps swarming on her. Eating her,” he added with a grimace. “Chichi-ue killed two of them, but one stung him. My elder brother—he got stung, too.” 

Kagome was surprised once again. Despite how big and scary they looked, corpse wasps were pretty harmless creatures. She’d never heard of one attacking a human before. This type of youkai preyed only on the dead, and was very skittish of the living. She remembered seeing them many times in her travels, always at a distance, feeding on the remains of those left to rot on the battlefield. If you came within a hundred yards of them, they’d pick up and buzz off. 

Maybe the recent cold snap had made pickings slim, and they’d become more food-aggressive because of it. Or maybe corpse wasps were really partial to dead ox.

Yoichiro gazed up at her, his eyes fiercely sheening. “Please, Miko-sama, you have to help them. They’re all swollen up now and can’t move.”

Kagome frowned. Most likely, Yoichiro’s father and brother would be fine once the wasp venom left their system. It was for dissolving dead flesh, after all. But without anything concrete to go on, she couldn’t say for certain what the fallout would be.

The only thing she did know was that they’d be in for a miserable ride in the meantime. Biting her lip, Kagome glanced across the village square, toward Kaede’s hut. The old miko had thrown her back out the other day. There was no way she could trek miles through the wilderness to the remote hamlet where Yoichiro’s family lived. Even if she could, she might not be able to purify the venom completely.

Kagome doubted whether she was up to the task, either. But there was nothing for it. Exhaling through her nose, she nodded to Yoichiro before turning back toward the door. 

“Let me get my things.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi