“Ah, that must be it,” Kagome muttered, as the stream and its makeshift bridge came into sight with the next bend in the road.

The planks of lashed wood creaked as she stepped across them above the babbling current. Just ahead of her on the right was the tree that ‘resembled a pitchfork’. From the gnarled black base of its trunk, its four main limbs jabbed stiffly and straightly upward. Glancing for a moment at the crude, devilish face some village kids must have carved into it, she circled around it and veered off into the woods beyond.

Here now, in the burnished light of late afternoon, the forest was perfectly serene. Picturesque, even. Birds sang in the leafy branches overhead. Patches of wildflowers bloomed where gaps in the dense tree canopy allowed it. It hardly seemed like the setting for anything sketchy to take place, but Kagome pressed on all the same.

About a tenth of a mile inward, the wooded landscape grew rockier and began to split. Following the downward slope of it, she she saw at last the infamous ‘cave’ that lusty Obasan must have been referring to—which, as it turned out, was nothing more that a faint depression in the hillside.

Pushing aside the curtain of flowering vines that concealed it, the miko entered warily. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she peered around at the lush, velvety carpet of moss, the glittering granite walls. It was a pretty place, really—and though she poked around with her spiritual senses, she could detect nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Crossing her arms at the chest, Kagome huffed aloud, an errant lock of hair lifting and re-settling at the pinched corner of her lips.

With nothing else to do but calculus homework, she’d spent the better part of the day canvassing the locals about this so-called ‘legend’. Of all the ones she’d put to the question, the majority had either blankly stared at her or fallen into fits of blushing and stammering. One woman had gone more misty-eyed at the mere reminiscence of it than she’d been at the baby nursing in her arms.

Kagome’s mouth twisted. Naturally, she’d suspected that some sort of demonic mischief was behind all this—but now she couldn’t discern the slightest trace. So where did that leave her? Standing around in a mythical love den, entertaining the wild idea that this being who frequented it was not in fact a demon at all, but some patron deity of slighted women—

Like herself.

Turning upon her heel, she left the cave behind in a fluster. Yet her feelings of curiosity—and personal injury—dogged her still. Long after the others had gone to sleep—worn out from a full day of ‘exorcisms’, magic tricks, and weapons repairing—Kagome remained wide awake, grinding her teeth.

In place of skepticism and mild concern, she now felt actively annoyed by the thought of this womanizing entity. Propping herself up on her elbows, she glared about for her backpack, and after slipping it onto her shoulders as quietly as possible, went to leave the room. Despite her best efforts, her friends stirred briefly awake at her departure. With a small smile, Kagome waved them back to sleep soon enough and continued on her way.

In an empty room down the hall, she changed out of her pajamas and, after digging out her bow and arrows, stowed her bulky backpack away in a trunk. At the main entrance to the lodge, she found her shoes, stacked neatly together with all the rest. Breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of the innkeeper dozing on a straw mat near the hearth, she tugged them on and ventured out into the moonlit night at last.

It was a good thing she’d picked out the path earlier that day. Even with the light of the full moon to guide her, she still got turned around in the woods a few times before a pale, weirdly-shaped rock clued her in as to the right trail to take. In hindsight, it was pretty reckless of her to have struck out alone like this. But by now, her irritation at this otherworldly gigolo had sharpened into outright anger, and fueled by it, she stomped heedlessly and, somewhat blindly, ahead.

The cave was as unoccupied and seemingly innocuous in the nighttime as it had been during the day. Casting one last suspicious glance around, Kagome stepped inside and knelt down in the moss with her back to the entrance. For a while she sat patiently and still, gazing at the shafts of moonlight that filtered in through the swaying vines and dappled the stony walls in shifting patterns of radiance. But as the long minutes ticked by without so much as the whisper of another presence—beyond the occasional, distant hooting of an owl—Kagome’s doubts started to grow.

Drumming her fingers on her knees, she shook her head with a sigh. “What am I doing, what am I doing…”

She was starting to feel more than a little silly for ever coming out here in the first place. What if the village women had just been pulling her leg? Sure, there were a lot of them who seemed to corroborate this crazy tale—but maybe it was just some elaborate prank they played on visitors passing through?

Brow furrowed, Kagome considered this possibility. She was considering preserving what little dignity she had left between this foolish misadventure and Inuyasha’s abandonment, and leaving altogether—when something made her freeze in sudden and total awareness.

It wasn’t youki. It wasn’t the presence of a man or any normal forest creature. It wasn’t anything—and that was what was so arresting about it. Directly behind her, the faint wind that had been whistling past the cave had abruptly ceased, as though a stone had been rolled against the entrance. But there had been no sound of any sort.

Straining her senses, all Kagome could tell without turning was that something supernatural had appeared. Something that meant her neither good nor ill. Something merely contemplative.

The miko’s spine tingled, her nerves distinctly on edge despite the apparent lack of threat. Resisting the urge to whirl around and confront this strange entity was almost impossible. Her fingers clenched in the hem of her skirt as she wrestled against the impulse, remembering what the washerwoman had said. If she was going to get to the bottom of this, she needed to play it cool.

Inhaling slowly through her nose, she was working on unhinging her jaw to address him, when she felt his inscrutable presence turn aside. The night breeze resumed its eerie tune across the threshold, as he started to move away.

A vein pulsed in Kagome’s temple. Her fists shook as she shot to her feet. Was she seriously getting rejected by a guy who’d messed around with almost every woman in the village?!

Unable to bear this latest and greatest insult to her feminine pride, she stamped her foot and yelled out behind her, “Hey you, there—Mr. Benevolent Spirit! Do I not meet your ‘standards’ or something?”

The mysterious visitor paused in his retreat. Too infuriated to really notice this, or to consider what in the gods’ names she was getting herself into, Kagome barreled on.

“Maybe I’m just not pathetic enough for you—is that what it is? Should I come back after he’s left me a few more times? Then I’ll be ripe for the taking, I’m sure.”

Red in the face from more than just indignation, Kagome snapped her jaw shut. Embarrassed and resentful—and even more embarrassed at being so resentful—she silently fumed, her heart pounding in her ears. Hating that she’d ever said anything to this creep, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt an unmistakable warmth against her back.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi