– 27 –
.across the sea.
Idly she touches the pendant at her breast.
Her fingers trace the smooth outer curve, worry at the sharp angles that decorate the half-sphere’s jagged face. It is a broken thing, yet it warms beneath her attentions.
There is, she supposes, a small comfort in that.
Leaning back against the couch, she raises the jade pipe to her lips again.
And again.
And again.
“Pace yourself, dear,” the lady reclining across from her chuckles, the pearl strands of her hair ornaments clattering at the motion.
Another acquaintance laughs as well, taking up her own pipe from the lacquered table between them. In the low light of the lanterns, her long pointed nail guards take on a sinister gleam.
“Too much, and you will lose your senses,” the woman warns with a smile.
Returning the gesture, she takes a slow deliberate pull from the mouthpiece, all her troubled thoughts vanishing in a swirl of smoke. Lost in the haze, she closes her eyes, listening.
Outside there is the clash of cymbals, the thunder of fireworks, the cheers of a jubilant crowd.
Celebration in the streets of Shanghai.
Her head lolls back, the pipe stem slipping through her listless fingers.
At the dawn of another century, she welcomes the darkness of oblivion.
…
He does not approve of her diversions.
From across the room, she can sense his displeasure–ripples in the darkness that forever surrounds him.
A malevolent aura, uniquely his own.
The jade pipe snaps beneath his fingers. Blue-green dust falls glittering to the floor.
He turns toward her, eyes molten.
“No more.”
She smiles, her leg dropping from the couch. Her hand is outstretched toward him, shadowing the curve of her inner thigh.
“No more,” she promises.
They both know it is a lie.
Yet he takes her hand all the same. He parts her dress the rest of the way, smoothes his palm over her heated flesh, and she sighs.
Under the spell of the smoke, she can almost endure him.
Even with open eyes, she can almost pretend.
…
Reclining against the silk cushions, she takes another long draw from her pipe, only half listening to the chattering of her companions.
Through a shimmer of smoke she eyes the object of their fascination. A portly man, clad in red and ornamented with gold.
Huan claims he is a mystic. Yet she sees nothing mystical about him.
Catching her gaze, he smiles broadly, eyes glittering beneath the tassled fringe of his hat.
“Noble Mistress,” he begins, “how may I entertain you? Lady Huan tells me you do not believe in soothsayers or prophecy.”
The truth, in part–
She doesn’t believe in anything.
“Perhaps a story then?” he says, and she nods with indifference, breathing in from the pipe again.
He leans forward, like a cat on the verge of a pounce.
“Long ago, the earth was a dark place, inhabited by fearsome demons. Great and terrible beasts they were, though some did hide their monstrousness behind a handsome guise.”
Her eyes stray toward him, the pipe lowering from her lips.
“The demons warred with one another and preyed upon mankind, who was defenseless against them.”
In the courtyard of her memories, a scattered heap of corpses lies, singed and broken. Faintly smoking still.
“Yet the gods favored man,” he continues with finger upraised, “and bestowed their holy powers upon him. With the gods’ blessing, man fought against the demons of old. And over time, the demons perished from this world, and the gods reclaimed their powers from the descendants of man.”
A voice from the past, Yashamaru’s voice, rises unbidden–
Well, you’re a miko, aren’t you?
Aren’t I?
A chill runs through her.
“For in all things, there must be balance,” the mystic concludes, dark eyes flicking from her face to the fingers curled at her chest, gripping the blasted chunk of Jewel.
“Now the demons are no more, and man wars only with himself.”
She regards him in measured silence, her expression belying the youthfulness of her face.
“Such a somber tale!” Huan laughs at last. “Where did you ever–”
“You are wrong.”
In painful clarity, she rises from her seat.
“There are demons, still.”
…
It is more than she has ever taken. Far more than she ever should.
The half-Jewel burns against her breast, a living thing. It whispers to her of times forgotten. It speaks to her in formless words, in shifting shapes of thought.
Beneath the deepening fog of the opium, something glimmers in response to its suggestions.
A halo of light in the roiling darkness.
She stumbles to the door.
A carriage, at once.
Her coinpurse pressed to his chest, the young driver’s wariness abates. He half-carries her aboard, and they are off.
Through the fog and the darkness–within and without–she travels.
Two half-moons loom before her. One above.
The other below.
At the docks, she dismounts, collapsing. Nervous hands attempt to lift her. She shoves them off and struggles to her feet alone.
Dreamlike, she wanders through the haze, wooden planks moaning beneath each step she takes, as though in protest.
She can taste the salt on the air, feel the crash of the waves in her bones.
Standing once more upon the precipice of that dark and icy sea, she stares down, down into the churning depths below.
Do you see?
The Jewel blazes.
DO YOU SEE
“Yes,” she answers, reaching. “Yes, I see.”
Brighter than any sun, the light beckons her beneath the surface. And she is falling, falling slowly toward that missing piece.
Her eyes burn, her lungs strain. One agonized breath, and the flood rushes in.
She claws at the water, her screams smothered, her tears diffused.
The chain about her neck has snapped. Helpless, she watches the pendant sink, a new brand of darkness eclipsing her view.
In her ears is the sound of laughter, but it is not her own.
Her sight fades as the sound roars ever higher, the two halves of the Shikon no Tama meeting together at last, at the bottom of the deep.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi