The House of Mizuno was ever chill and dark.

An island unto itself, even in this rocky, water-locked waste. Blasted relentlessly by the sea in storm, the great house clung to the crags forever creaking and straining, whether the weather was ill or not. Like an old man on gnarled legs, it shivered and groaned and perched crablike upon the crusted black beams that bore it up, just above the roar and crash of the tide.

His mother was the only bright thing in this gloomy, forgotten place. And even she was sad and lonesome. Outcast. As if being stranded here weren’t exile enough, the gods had cursed her with a banishment all her own—and he was the living proof of her shame.

Him and his damn dirty blood.

“Rennosuke,” she would call back to him gently, as she paused from her interminable prayers, “won’t you come in and join me?”

She looked like a goddess herself, his beautiful mother. Lit by the glow of the shrine, her fine dark eyes gleamed rich as onyx, each silky tress of her hair an artist’s brushstroke where it curved past her graceful neck, trailed down her slim shoulders, dipped toward the delicate bow of her back.

So fragile and pure—so different from him.

She was a saint and a fool, this princess who’d born him. And he never could decide if he loved her or hated her for it.

But as always, he left off glowering from the threshold and answered her soft-spoken summons. Her smile was wistful as he knelt at her side. The touch of her hand was feather-light against his cheek.

“My handsome boy…” she murmured. “The gods have blessed me, indeed.”

And when he bowed his head to pray, there was only cold, bitter anger in his heart.

…

He was handsome enough, it was true. But like every gift the gods had granted him, this one was tainted too.

The noble lines of his face were sharper than they should be. A keen glint of tooth showed whenever he smiled, and the curve of his lips always seemed to curl upward in a sneer. This gave him a decidedly savage look, which the shaggy brown mane of his hair only exacerbated.

As a young boy he’d stood before mirrors for hours upon end, training his face to soften from its feral sharpness. He’d hoarded bottles of black dye and, mixing them with wax, had applied the concoction to his hair to darken and smoothe it. But for the lightness of his eyes, there was nothing he could do.

From the mirror’s surface they gleamed back at him, tawny and wolfish, and the end result of all his efforts left him looking like an ink-smudged vagabond who’d smuggled his way into a prince’s closet. Incensed, he would swipe it all off him and slam his fist into the glass with a snarl.

…

Rennosuke…

Only his mother ever called him that. She’d given him a worthy name, but in the eyes of all the rest he was the furthest thing from it.

‘Ren’ they called him, as if he were a peasant. It was a low-bred scoundrel they saw him as. His grandfather paid him not even this small courtesy: he called him only ‘Tsuhime’s bastard.’ Or some times, more rarely, to his mother with seething contempt: ‘that mongrel whelp of yours.’

How they saw him was to him the truth. Like a mirror, they reflected back at him in all their stark, untarnished cruelty the reality of his existence. And so Ren—the scoundrel, the bastard, the mongrel—this he was.

Curling his hand into a fist, he would absorb it all with a show of calm indifference, and think to himself, For now.

…

When his mother fell ill, it didn’t surprise him. Like the paper lanterns they put out to sea, she had always seemed too frail for this world. It was merely another way he differed from her, as Ren saw it. Hardy as an urchin, he’d never been sick more than a day in his life.

Where she was weak, Ren was unaccountably strong. But this gift of his was poisoned too.

“…You filthy cur,” his elder cousin spat bloodily, glaring up at him.

Ren smiled nastily back. He hadn’t meant to smash in Reichiro’s perfect nose, but he was glad now that he had. His cousin’s practice sword lay beside him in the dirt, only slightly more useless than it had been in those soft, pretty hands of his. As his fingers twitched toward the pommel again, Ren ground them down beneath his heel, and Reichiro shrieked like a girl still in braids.

“Enough!”

Clustered at the edge of the training ground, the rest of their peers snickered and muttered ‘freak,’ even as the master of arms shouldered past them with a scowl.

“You’re quite the scrapper, aren’t you,” Ren’s sensei said to him, though this was no compliment. As he hauled Ren’s whimpering cousin to his feet, the old soldier bit out, “I am training swordsmen here, not street brawlers. If you’re just going to swing that katana around like a cleaver, begone with you.”

At this, Ren threw down his ‘katana’ in the blood-flecked dust. Its blunted edges clanged dully against the ground. His own knuckles were keener, he thought with contempt. His face had been red with fury as he’d stalked away, with the sound of their murmurings still burning in his ears. He’d bested his pompous ass of a cousin, and that was the gods’ honest truth.

But there was no winning for the likes of him, in these games constructed by his betters.

…

In the dripping sea caves along the coast, in the salt-rimed alleyways and moldering old hulls of ships run aground, Ren devised his own games, set his own rules. His dirty blood was only an advantage to him here, amongst the local hoodlums. The cuts and bruises he dealt them brought them into line. But his quick wit and courtly bearing dazzled them to religious devotion.

Lording over them from a throne made of scraps, Ren brooded to himself as he peered out toward the dark, spidery outline of the House of Mizuno, and disdained them one and all.

…

His mother was dying, at last.

Clothed in white, and surrounded by more candles and idols than Ren could count, she seemed to him to be in heaven already. Her skin was as translucent as rice paper. Her dainty hands folded to her chest in an expression of prayer. The smile on her face was as soft and distant as ever.

Peaceful and remote.

Staring hard at her from the side of the futon where he knelt, Ren realized she had never truly cared for him at all—only for this sad little sanctuary of hers, and for her gods of wood and stone.

“Who was my father?” he asked her at length.

Tsuhime frowned. Her skin flushed, darkened. It seemed his words had plunged her back down to earth once again. And he took vindictive satisfaction in the sight of it.

“Who was he?” Ren pressed her, without remorse.

His mother shuddered, turned her face away from him. “…Please, Rennosuke…do not ask such things of me now.”

…

Over the years, Ren had pieced the story together, from whispered rumors and the disparaging remarks of his kin.

It had been on a return trip from the mainland of Japan. The first and last time his mother had left the island, on a pilgrimage to some shrine or another.

The gods loved their petty ironies, Ren supposed.

Somewhere in the midst of the sea, pirates had boarded the ship. His mother had been taken, along with a hoard of treasure. What became of the hoard, Ren did not know. But Tsuhime had been recovered, eventually. Though this had been no miracle.

It was clear she had been badly used. ‘Spoiled goods,’ an old guard had chuckled gruffly, to the young boy’s consternation at the time.

Of course, she had been given a short blade, to restore what she could of her honor. But to the undying indignation of her father, she had refused, and holed herself up in her shrine room instead.

They might have been able to hush up the whole sordid affair, but then Ren had been born and his mother’s disgrace had been complete. Beauty though she was, no lord would have such a despoiled woman to bride.

He was too obvious and stubborn a stain upon her.

…

All his life, Ren had misconstrued his mother’s shunning and seclusion as a long-suffering sentence imposed upon her. But here now, at the end, he saw it for what it was: a self-imposed nunnery of sorts.

And she had bought it with the birth of him.

At her behest, he dropped his interrogations with a nod, and the distress bled from her like waves upon the sand. Calmly, she sighed. A soft smile of repose graced her features once more.

What was the point of forcing such a question, Ren reflected. More than likely, she didn’t know the answer herself.

And what did it matter, anyway, to hear her confirm what he already knew of his own savage nature? He could feel it even now, thrumming dark and wild through his veins.

This dirty blood of his inheritance—a blessing and a curse.

In the bright glassy surface of his mother’s gaze, he saw himself for the sneering devil-spawn he was. His own gaze burned back into hers as he bore down upon her. A look of panicked fury twisted her features, and he savored it, for he knew he was showing her who she was as well. She thrashed and she bucked and she clawed at him like the whore she was, as he smothered her to death with her funeral shroud.

…

Ren departed the great house shortly thereafter. No one pursued him. No one cared to.

He was scarcely out of boyhood, but he stole aboard a ship with the coin that he had, and left that wretched island far behind him.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Hey guys! I know this is my only post for this week, but just wanted to share that so far the whole waking up early to write thing has been a big success 🙂 I wrote >5k words this week! Feels good to be getting back in the swing of things~ Also, don’t worry – this mini-series is already 100% written. It’s 3 parts total, and I’ll be posting the rest of it next week <3

Take care and have a great weekend!

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