– 1 –

Castle

Tugging up her scarf, Kagome stepped out of the cab. Shivering, she waited for the friendly old driver to fetch her bags from the trunk. In his Irish cap and woolen browns and greens, he looked straight like a cutout from a travel brochure. Even his round nose and cheeks were flushed tavern-red.

So were Kagome’s, from the early spring chill. Hobbling back over, he bid her farewell in a voice so heavily-accented she was grateful she’d been mostly able to communicate with him in smiles and nods. Her gesture of goodbye was no different. Bobbing his aged head back, he tossed her a few more garbled English words whose sentiment she had no trouble deciphering—

Enjoy your stay, miss.

Kagome mustered a smile behind her scarf. Here’s to hoping, she thought.

…

Kagome sagged with a sigh as the cab pulled away. Crunching up the winding gravel road, the car wove its way back between slopes of gently rolling green.

Alone, she gazed out at the white-washed cottage she’d rented. Nestled in the grassy foothills, it was pretty and quaint with its blue door and blue window frames. Trestles of green vines wove up along the sides. A steep, square-shingled roof replaced the ancient thatching it once would’ve sported. Tangles of budding rosebushes lined the pebbled path up to the stoop.

Kagome was glad she’d forgone staying at the traditional bed and breakfast and opted for this place instead. The few social interactions she’d had that day had left her good and well drained.

It wasn’t the locals, of course—it was her.

With her bags shouldered and in hand, she fumbled for the skeleton key in her coat pocket. Earlier that day, after she’d gotten off the plane in Dublin, she’d had the taxi driver make a pit stop in town for her to pick up the keys and some groceries. The cottage was owned by a British couple, who’d immigrated to Ireland shortly before The Troubles began. But despite all they must have seen of their emerald isle paradise turned on its head, they were cheery and cordial folk. They’d been easy for her to talk to, in their clear and proper English, and had invited Kagome to come dine at their café sometime.

Whether she’d take them up on the offer or not, she didn’t know. The truth was, she’d come here for more than the typical escape. Her heart was weary. She didn’t feel like she had all that much cheer to offer them back.

Into the black iron lock she slipped the heavy matching key. The blue door swung open with an almost crotchety creak. Kagome smiled a little at just how fitting it sounded. Stepping across the threshold with her burdens, she set her grocery bags down on the scrubbed wooden table, and took a look around at the cozy, inviting living space.

The main room served as both a den and a kitchen. The table where she stood was tucked away in a dining nook to the left. Beneath it lay a pretty woven rug, with several more strewn across the hardwood floors to her right. A couch of sumptuous, crushed blue velvet and a few plump armchairs stood atop the largest of the rugs. Darkly varnished side-tables provided plenty of resting places for pillar candles, vases of fresh field flowers and other homey décor. A solid beam of oak served as the mantle to the fireplace at the back, which was framed in tiles patterned with bluebells and accents of faded gold leaf.

Topped with weathered oak, an island of pale rustic blue separated the den from the kitchen. The cabinets had been distressed to match. Across the countertops and backsplashes an assortment of cooking books, glass jars of ingredients, copper cookware and other utensils were displayed. Overall, the space had a warm blurring of Celtic-Meets-French-Country feel, which for all of its odd but pretty anachronisms, made Kagome feel right at home in this foreign place.

It was a nice, familiar sense of landing after free-fall. Almost nostalgic to her, in the strangest way.

Sloping above the stout-legged dining table was a white, open-railed staircase with oak steps. Kagome took the stairs up to the loft of the cottage, where the bedroom and bathroom lay—the latter in a little side room with a carved white door. Through it, Kagome glimpsed a blue-painted vanity and a curtained, claw-foot tub.

The bedroom was simply yet tastefully furnished. In one corner was a full-length, standing mirror with pretty scrollwork carved along the dark wooden frame. A heavy-looking wardrobe stood opposite it, taking up most of the wall space. Delicate gauzy curtains framed the windows above an antique writing desk. Kagome could count on the sun burning straight through those sheers at the crack of dawn to wake her up. But they were a lovely touch all the same.

A circular carpet bordered in interlocking Celtic knots tied the room together. Off to one side of it, between two more windows, was a double-bed raised upon a curious white platform. Must be some traditional Irish design, Kagome figured. Dropping her duffels and shoulder bags onto the rug, she used a step stool to climb up and sit on the edge of the bed.

Her eyes widened as she peered across. An oval window she couldn’t have noticed before lay opposite her, above the stairwell.

Through this small portal, she could see straight through to the sea.

…

Kagome spent the rest of the afternoon settling in. By the time her clothes and sundries were put away, the sun was setting. Unwrapping a steak from its sheaf of butcher paper, she tenderized it a little. With a sprinkle of salt and pepper, she fried it up in a cast-iron skillet that was certainly older than she was. Probably older than her mother, even.

But it gave the meat a fantastic sear. Caramelizing a few shallots, mushrooms and string beans, she had herself a fine Western-style dinner. With plate in hand, she sat down at the table. Leaning back in her white wooden chair, she looked out over the rolling hills, bronzed with the last light of day. She could see a few sheep grazing contentedly in their paddocks, fenced off by walls of low, grey stacked stone. The same walls lined the curving roadways and the perimeters of both her cottage and the other distant homes.

It was a lovely, pastoral image. Though a world away from her own, it somehow filled her with wistful longing. The eeriest sense of déjà vu. Looking out over the squares of distant fields, she couldn’t help but remember another patchwork of yellows and greens. High supple stalks laden with rice, and the mirror-gleam of water beneath them.

Chewing down the last of her steak without tasting it, Kagome washed the dishes, got a fire going, and uncorked a bottle of wine. The wine was a deep blood-red. She savored the bitter tang of it as she curled up in a chair beside the fire and watched the dancing flames.

…

Kagome slept soundly that first night.  Beneath the soft heirloom quilts of the cottage bed, her dreams were dark and formless. Forgotten by the morning light.

…

Kagome had just finished scrambling some eggs when the sky began to cloud out of nowhere. By the time she was done with her breakfast, it was raining cats and dogs.

Thunder crashed from on high. Lightning shot across the sky. A full-blown thunderstorm had set in, turning to a hailstorm before Kagome’s despairing eyes. So much for sightseeing!

Listening to the hail thud against the shingles, she hoped vainly for the storm to pass. But as the morning wore on, though the hail subsided, the rain and thunder showed no sign of slowing. Turning on the old rabbit-eared television, Kagome flipped through the channels. The local weather report confirmed her grim suspicions that the day was lost. Her plans were done-for.

Kagome sighed. It was just past noon when she traded her tea in early for a glass of sherry. With her head buzzing and her melancholy in full swing, she perused the bookshelves in the den and made her selection. Picked her poison, rather.

The rain pelted. The wind howled and raged. With the bottle of wine sitting close at hand on the table beside her, Kagome brooded, leafing glumly through the pale, tissuey pages of Wuthering Heights.

…

Hazily, she drifted off. That night she dreamed of ghostly voices, crying to her on the wind.

…

Kagome’s head was pounding the next day when she woke. Her skull felt like it was stuffed full of hot wool. Her tongue was heavy and dry, as if her mouth had been scrubbed out with the same scratchy stuff that was fuzzing up her head.

Despite all this, she dragged herself up. Her bare feet trudged across the mosaic tiles of the bathroom floor. Hauling herself into the shower, she let the blast of cool water shock her back to her senses. She felt a bit more like a human being by the time she emerged. Combing out her long damp locks, she fixed breakfast, then sipped coffee while she waited for her hair to dry.

Outside, the sun was shining brightly. Still wet from the rain yesterday, the green hills gleamed. The grass blades tossed up light like many-faceted jewels. Half-dead as Kagome still felt, there was no way she was going to miss getting out today and exploring these sparkling verdant vistas—especially after being so miserably cooped-up the day before.

The cottage she’d rented had a convenient location for sightseeing. It was situated right in the heart of the main local points of interest, about halfway between the town and the coast. Many of the sights were within a manageable walking distance.

But to Kagome’s surprise and delight, while poking around for more firewood in the shed out back, she found an old vintage bicycle propped against the wall. It was a little rusty and deflated. Pumping some air into the tires and applying a bit of oil here and there, she got it back in decent working shape.

Swinging herself up into the seat, she pedaled off down the road with a smile, her hair flying loose in the wind.

…

At a crossroads, she stopped to rest and consult her map. Leaning her bike against the fencing, she sat down on a weathered bench and dug through her backpack. After a minute of rifling, she withdrew a map of the local area. Unfolding this crude atlas, she checked her location against it.

Sure enough, she was about where she thought she was in relation to her chosen destination. After years of traveling with only the sun and stars to guide her, Kagome had developed a deeply-ingrained sense of direction. Knowing she hadn’t lost it made her strangely proud.

Stuffing the folded map back down into the recesses of her backpack, she took a swig of water from her thermos and rose to continue on her way.

…

There wasn’t much of a road leading up to this landmark. The dirt path just faded to grass. But with her bike this made little difference. At a decent clip, Kagome sailed on toward the steely gray glint of the sea.

She wondered if the lack of a paved road was intentional. According to her driver, the locals held this spot to be haunted by a white ghost. Even on the map of the area, it seemed to be palely marked, compared to the rest.

But more than likely, it just wasn’t all that popular with tourists. From a distance, Kagome could see why this might be. As the rolling green slopes gave way to plunging sea cliffs, she saw the ruined dark towers that stood like crumbling sentinels at the steep mouth of an inlet. It looked as though at any moment, this old ancient fastness might decide to tumble straight down into the churning waters below.

Leading up to the towers were structures still more eldritch and eerie—pillars of standing stone, erected in the grass in some inscrutable array. Dismounting, Kagome approached them. It seemed irreverent to her, to lean her bike against these structures. Since the bike didn’t have a kickstand, she laid it down carefully in the grass and then crossed over to the stones. Smoothing her palm across the pitted, lichen-crusted granite, she closed her eyes. Like the soundless tolling of a bell, she felt a curious resonance in her soul.

It was a while before she opened her eyes again. Before her, the dark rock faintly glowed. Kagome drew her hand away in surprise. She glanced around furtively on impulse—though of course there was no one else on this forgotten peninsula but herself.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she wandered on ahead. About a quarter mile farther, the ruined towers lay, black and dilapidated as if they’d weathered a fiery hailstorm or two. The scent of the sea filled her nose—briny and crisp, and softly stinging. Pausing, Kagome bound back her hair against the relentless, bitter lashing of the wind.

The closer she drew to the blasted old castle, the sadder and bleaker it looked. Really it was little more than a pile of rocks, still stacked up together in a vague semblance of pattern. The insides were hollow as old bones, full of moss and dry dirt. If it weren’t for the warped pits of the window-holes, it wouldn’t look like much of anything at all.

It was strange, Kagome reflected, how this castle must be so much younger than those standing stones. Yet somehow they were stouter, better preserved through the decay of time. Could it be that human hands hadn’t shaped them? That curious, ethereal reaction to her touch made her question…

Lost in thought, Kagome meandered around the outskirts of the towers. Circling toward the sea, she froze. At the very knifepoint of the peninsula she saw it—

Not the ‘white ghost’ of legend, but a phantom of another sort.

…

“Sesshoumaru?” she said, almost a whisper.

The wind and waves swallowed up the slip of sound. But the distant figure turned toward her all the same.

To see him so suddenly after all this time left her stunned mind briefly blank. Then, as the moment of blank shock passed, she was left reeling in a jumble of inner chaos. His face was the same, and it wasn’t. Kagome struggled to process the change. Without his markings visible, he looked startlingly like a man.

Startlingly like his younger brother.

Yet his hair was still long and silver—though only about shoulder-length now, and bound at the nape—and his eyes were still light, like burnt amber. And the cool, keen look he fixed her with—well that was the most familiar of all. Whether it was the lingering hangover, or the terrible excitement of this discovery, she felt her head go perilously light.

“Kagome,” he said back to her, and she fainted on the spot.

…

Kagome’s leaden eyes dragged open to the sight of blue, wispy skies. White gulls wheeled past the skeins of clouds above her. In pale, flying crescents they flickered and reappeared. Their sharp cries were too high and thin for her to hear.

But not for him, she knew.

The memory of Sesshoumaru slammed back into her with sudden force. Kagome pushed herself up onto the heels of her hands. The motion was enough make her head spin all over again. She squeezed her eyes shut as she heavily breathed. Just as she was beginning to think she’d hallucinated the whole encounter, she felt something cool and hard nudging into her arm.

Kagome slid her eyes open toward the offending object. It was her own thermos of water pressing into her through her coat sleeve. She blinked down at it before following the lines of the long, clawless white fingers that held it. Her gaze ran up the lithely-muscled, modern-clad arm to the broad figure of the man—demon, she corrected—who knelt next to her in the seabreeze-blown grass. The thermos urged into her arm again.

“Drink this,” he said to her, his voice as deep and imperious as she remembered.

There was no crescent mark on that stony, aristocratic face, which was regarding her in perfect dispassion. As Kagome now debated whether he was actually there or whether she was going insane, she struggled to imagine that she would imagine him without his stripes and claws. It was too bizarre, seeing him like this. His face and hands seemed strangely naked to her. It made her as blushing and uncomfortable as if she were looking at any other ordinary man in the nude.

Either way, even if she was in fact going crazy, she figured she’d better follow his advice.

“…Thanks,” she murmured as she took the thermos from him.

A frisson of electric shock hummed through her as the bare skin of her fingers brushed incidentally against his. Taking a few cold sips, Kagome peered at him over the top of the thermos. Mostly, she was still in a state of stunned disbelief. Sesshoumaru, however, seemed disarmingly unperturbed. Maybe running into five-hundred-year-old acquaintances wasn’t so uncommon for him. He was an immortal demon, after all.

Sipping water still—now more to buy her whirring mind time than anything—she took in the fair, sharp lines of his face, the dark gold cast of his eyes. There was more familiarity to be found in those features of his at least. This reassured Kagome as her mind struggled desperately for purchase. Though his hair was mostly bound, a few slanting strands of silver listed free to brush the line of his jaw. She wouldn’t say that he had bangs anymore though, exactly—just as she wouldn’t say that his ears were pointed, though they didn’t look exactly round, either.

All in all, there was as much that was different about him as there was the same. Kagome wondered if he’d altered his appearance permanently, or if it was a temporary glamour of some sort.

It would have been a productive question to ask. There were a lot of good and relevant questions she could ask him, or remarks she could make. But what she blurted instead was—

“It’s strange to see you in a sweater and slacks.”

Sesshoumaru’s parrying look was cool and dry. “It’s strange to see you alive.”

Kagome crooked a smile at this. It felt a little like the pieces of her fractured mind—her fractured life, her fractured self—started to settle back into place.

“Fair enough,” she said, and took another swig from the spout.

…

“So, um, do you live around here?” she asked him after a while.

“No,” he replied.

“Oh.” Kagome fidgeted a little with twisting the top of the thermos. “So you’re just passing through?”

“I suppose,” he answered, sounding weary of her company already.

Gods, Kagome thought with an inward groan. He was every bit as difficult and prickly as she remembered. But her burning curiosity toward him was irrepressible all the same.

“Where do you live, then?” she tried again.

“Everywhere,” he said briskly. His gaze flicked to the horizon beyond them. “Nowhere. Take your pick, human. I live where I am, and I go where I please. All else is as nothing to me, nor me to it.”

Kagome’s brow twitched. “You haven’t changed much.”

Sesshoumaru’s glance was piercing. “Neither have you.”

…

But that wasn’t entirely true. They both had changed. They both could sense it too, she was sure. In different ways, their pasts had aged them.

In some ways, perhaps the same. Kagome realized this when she set down the thermos, when she stood up from the grass with a stretch and wandered toward the edge of the cliffs—and felt his eyes following her all the while.

Maybe his curiosity toward her was as burning as her own.

“What brought you here?” he asked her. His voice carried over the roar of the wind, which was whipping back her hair and stinging at her face. “To this place?”

Kagome stared down at the steep, sheer drop just before her booted toes. She should feel vertigo at the prospect of such a fatal fall into the dark jagged rocks and churning tide below—any normal person would. But then, her breakneck adventures in Sengoku Jidai had beaten this perfectly healthy and rational fear out of her long ago. Her jaded gaze lifted. Her eyes skimmed along the bordering cliffs that jutted forth, cutting like broad, dark axe heads out into the raging surf.

Blue-gray and flecked with glints of white, it was the expanse of the sea that really left her in awe. How coldly and relentlessly it stretched before her eyes, like an infinite plane of steel. Even from this lofty vantage, she could feel that she was insignificant. Nothing. A mere speck of dust.

“I saw this place on television once,” she answered him at last, “and thought it looked like the end of the world.” Though she had the feeling that wasn’t all he was asking with the question, she turned back to him anyway. “What about you? How did you arrive here?”

Sesshoumaru’s golden gaze seemed to flicker. “By following the sun.”

…

Kagome wasn’t all that surprised when he walked back with her, to where her bike lay in the grass by the standing stones.

“What happened to your swords?” she asked him along the way.

True, they wouldn’t exactly fit with his contemporary wardrobe, but then he’d cared so much about swords in the past she couldn’t fully process seeing him without them. He must have lost them in some battle or another, she figured.

“Bakusaiga,” Sesshoumaru said, as if resurrecting the name from deep memory. “I set it aside long ago.”

“Set it aside?” Kagome blinked. “Does that mean you left it in safekeeping somewhere, or…?”

A rare youkai blade born from the restoration of one’s severed forearm didn’t seem like the sort of possession one would casually discard. But Sesshoumaru’s glance was utterly indifferent.

“One day,” he said, “as I was resting in a wood, I laid it against the trunk of a tree. When I rose to leave, I felt no desire to carry it with me any longer. I suppose it is laying there still.”

Kagome gaped. “You…you really did just throw it away…” After a moment she recovered enough to ask, “And Tenseiga?”

“It fell into the sea.”

She stared at Sesshoumaru, whose expression was the picture of aloof disinterest. Who was this person? It seemed the ensuing centuries had wrought more changes in him than she’d first believed.

…

Before the standing stones, Kagome paused. Remembering how they’d glowed with her touch, she turned and asked him, “Are these pillars of youkai origin? They seem to react to my reiki.”

Sesshoumaru’s golden gaze trailed over the stones. “Such things are before my time.”

Kagome gave him a wry look. “That’s a fancy way of saying, ‘I don’t know.'”

Sesshoumaru’s intent, assessing stare fixed upon her. “It’s a way of saying, ‘I wonder.'”

…

Picking up her bike from the grass, Kagome set it upright on its wheels and flashed him a tired smile. “Listen,” she said, “I hate to cut things short, but I didn’t sleep well last night, and it’s a long ride back to the place where I’m staying. So I’d better call it a day.” More quietly, she added, “It’s meant a lot to me, seeing you again. Surprise of the century, really.”

Striped by the shadows of the standing stones, Sesshoumaru regarded her, silent and unblinking. It was uncanny, unnerving. It made her feel even more awkward than she already did. Uncertainly, Kagome cut her eyes away from that eerily reflective stare.

“Um, I don’t know how long you’ll be sticking around here,” she mumbled, “but if you’d like to, let’s meet up again tomorrow, okay…?”

When he didn’t say anything to this either, Kagome hazarded a backward glance. But the shadows of the stones slanted straight down across the tall, unbroken grass.

Sesshoumaru was nowhere to be seen.

…

The whole bike ride back to the cottage, Kagome scarcely noticed the beautiful pastoral scenery that flitted by. Sesshoumaru’s wordless departure had left her feeling troubled, dejected.

For all the world, she felt like she was back in Tokyo again. She felt like she’d never left. She felt as though all the burdens that she’d thought she’d left behind her during this holiday had come back to bear down on her with twice as much vehemence. Her weary mind felt crowded-up.

That evening, an unexpected call from home didn’t do much to raise her spirits. Slamming her phone against the tabletop so hard she cracked the screen, Kagome downed another bottle of wine and passed out slumped over the table with her head in her arms.

…

That night she tossed and turned.

She dreamed of an ancient forest, shrouded in mist, and of the magic sword that lay forgotten there, lost amid the gnarled roots and twisted vines.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Now that the PMO launch period is over, I’m working on cross-posting this mini-series here with some minor edits 🙂 This is part 1 of 4.

💕

Series Navigation

SessKag Series: At the End of the World, Part 2 >>