Outside the ramen shop, a silvery, misting rain was falling, casting a shimmering veil over the dark city-scape beyond. Stepping over to her parked motorbike, Reiko straddled the seat as Kirara sprang from her shoulder, landing lightly in the delivery basket behind her. 

“Ready to go?” Reiko asked, glancing back at her feline companion as the bike rumbled to life.

Kirara chirped in the affirmative. The falling mist steamed around her like a ghostly halo, her fiery aura kept her kittenish form perfectly dry.

Reiko hit the gas. Together, they took off toward the freeway, leaving the gloomy streets of urban Tokyo far behind them.

Their destination lay well outside the city proper. That much Reiko knew. That much she remembered. But as the metropolis gave way to suburbs, and as the suburbs gave way to a more rural sprawl—and, finally, to a torii-arched dirt road in the wooded mountainside—Reiko began to lose her bearings.

This unmooring sensation startled her. Not only because a trained taijiya never lost her bearings, even in unfamiliar terrain—but because she had been to this very place before, years ago, and yet she had no conscious memory of it. Only an eerie prickle of recognition in her spine, which even in itself was difficult to decipher.

Her hands tightened on the grips of her bike. As though sensing her instincts were on edge, Kirara leapt from the basket and lighted between the handlebars with uncanny ease. The sure, radiant warmth of her presence was a comfort in itself. But as the path through this uncharted wilderness continued to twist and branch inscrutably, Kirara proved an invaluable guide as well. With a pointed flick of her twinned tails, she instructed Reiko which way to go—even if it looked at first glance like an absolute dead-end.

Blinking at the path that seemed to have materialized before them out of nowhere, Reiko wondered darkly if some powerful illusion was in place here. Either that, or the roads themselves were changing before her eyes. Reiko shook her head to dismiss that disturbing notion. One thing was for certain, however: this mountain forest was an enchanted one, no mistake.

Apart from the various otherworldly presences she’d sensed along the way—spritely giggles that echoed in the open air, glittering fogs that took transient shape, and gem-colored trees that rustled with no apparent breeze to stir them—Reiko saw, as the road broadened suddenly before her into a stone avenue, a flanking of petrified golem ‘gatekeepers’ which seemed too awful and terrible to have been sculpted into being. In addition to these eldritch horrors, there were blasted icons of sinister, inhuman geometry—some toppled-over and some, unsettlingly, not. There were also moss-covered arbors that looked blood-chillingly like monstrous ribcages, veined through with twisted red creepers glowing balefully in the scant, filtered light of the sun.

Even the stone paving beneath Reiko’s wheels felt surreally seamless. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath from all these strange sights and sensations, until the seamless road gave way to a grand red gatehouse of traditional Japanese architecture. Beyond this was a perfectly normal-looking white gravel drive, bordered on both sides by a perfectly normal-looking bamboo forest.

Beyond this, Reiko could just glimpse the sweeping outlines of a palatial manor house, its foundations welded as if by magic to the sheer rock of the mountainside above.

Crunching to a halt before one of the many snarling dog statues lining the drive, Reiko hopped off her bike with Kirara in tow. A series of red torii arches straddled the path to the house, which seemed to lengthen with each step that she took. But at last the path ended, and Reiko found herself standing in a traditional Japanese courtyard garden, almost too magnificent and lovely for words.

So, too, was the lady who ventured forth to meet her at the arch of an ornamental bridge. 

“K-sama,” Reiko greeted, bowing low at the waist as Kirira mewled.

Lady K smiled, inclining her lovely head in turn. “Reiko-chan, Kirara-chan—it’s been some time.”

Straightening, Reiko eyed her over, assessing this woman as she would any other worthy being who stood before her, human or otherwise. Despite her slightness of stature, to Reiko’s trained eyes, Lady K was a formidable woman indeed. She wore a simple, yet elegant kimono. A sprig of shining hairpins held back half her long, straight dark hair. Crescents of silver and pearl dangled from these hairpins, as well as from her dainty ears, offsetting beautifully the deep dark violet of her eyes. 

Hers was an ageless beauty, an uncommon grace. Reiko had no doubt that these jewels and hairpins of hers doubled as magical weapons. She had no doubt, either, that Lady K had at least a half-dozen other weapons concealed about her person, as any taijiya worth her salt would.

Even more remarkable was the aura which shimmered around her like a soft-burning flame—for Lady K was not only a taijiya, but a reiki-wielder as well.

A rare combination, to say the least.

“How is your father?” Lady K asked, as Kirara leapt purring onto her shoulder as if she’d done so a thousand times before, and Lady K stroked her cheek just as familiarly in turn.

“Well, thank you. He sends his regards.”

As far as Reiko understood it, Lady K was a vague relation of theirs—a distant cousin, or some such thing. It wasn’t surprising, since taijiya traits were staunchly inherited, while reiki-wielding…well, not so much. Of course, being closely related to a reiki-wielder increased the odds, but it was still quite random. In the ancient past, taijiya had often intermarried with monks and mikos, hoping to produce powerful miko-taijiya offspring. But the results of this venture had been largely hit or miss, and the frustrating practice of arranged inter-marriages, ultimately abandoned.

As a general rule, taijiya preferred to stick to their own kind. And they were generally averse to quirkiness—which tended to be a exasperating hallmark of reiki-wielders.

“We received your father’s message just ahead of you,” Lady K went on, her smooth brow wrinkling slightly, “or else I’d have prepared a waypoint for you in advance. It’s been a while since we’ve had—well, guests like yourself. I hope you didn’t find the path here too difficult.”

“Oh, no,” Reiko responded politely, then admitted, somewhat dryly, “although without Kirara-chan, I’d have certainly been lost.”

“Gomen,” Lady K said, bowing slightly. Her lips pursed as she glared off toward the woods. “Those pesky sprites just love to switch things around when I’m not looking.”

Not for the first time, Reiko wondered why Lady K and The Prince chose to reside in a wilderness teeming with ghosts and demons. But then, if Reiko had learned anything over the years—and over the past few days, in particular, contending with Higurashi—reiki-wielders tended to be odd ducks.

“Your father’s message smacked of urgency.”

“Yes, K-sama,” Reiko said, nodding. “We have an A-class youkai running amok in Tokyo, it seems. I’ve come here to discuss the particulars with you and Ouji-sama, in the event reinforcements are necessary.”

A deadly serious look sharpened the lady’s eyes. “Understood. As it so happens, an old friend dropped in just before you arrived. The Prince is with him now, but I expect they’ll be wrapping up shortly. Please, follow me.”

Reiko fell into step behind Lady K and Kirara, grateful for the guidance—since once again, it seemed that her surroundings had changed, as though the sprawling manor house had reassembled itself in a surreptitious shuffling of towers, gates, gardens and outbuildings while Reiko wasn’t looking. Blinking, she shook her head to clear it, as she followed the others along the winding courtyard path.

They passed by several courts whose white pine verandas were linked together with intricately carved breezeways. Another bridge appeared before the great silvery-white pagoda looming before them. As they crossed the planks, Reiko heard a series of splashes—and was sure she glimpsed a few kappa lounging on the oversized lily pads before they slipped out of sight. More demons, Reiko observed to herself, though the shock of this was beginning to wear off.

Mounting the sweeping stair, the three of them entered the pagoda’s grand, gleaming hall. In the tatami room, Reiko spied countless treasures of antiquity—vases and tapestries and sculptures of incalculable worth.

A few caught her eye in particular, mostly for the demonic strangeness of them. There was a great wall hanging depicting a beautiful Shinto priestess, sleeping curled against a massive white canine beast. Their cloudlike fur and dark waving hair seemed to ripple before Reiko’s befuddled eyes. There was also a white jade statue of a beautiful elfin-eared girl with claw-tipped fingers and toes, playing a spindly sort of harp instrument which seemed too delicate for human hands to have rendered, let alone to play.

With effort, Reiko tore her eyes away from these oddities. At the far end of the hall, the sliding doors whisked aside, and an even odder character emerged.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

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