Chapter Twelve — Better (2/2)
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Chapter Twelve

Better

(Part 2 of 2)

 

His heart jolted in his chest. Reflexes took over, and he lurched, springing backward.

Everything shook and everything beat with pumping blood in his body. He hardly understood what he was doing -- stumbling, staggering, tripping into the dead leaves, and rolling up to run more.

He didn't need to panic about the ghouls reaching him. They weren't fast even compared to a weak child. But they were relentless. Steady, and imminent. Worse, he was getting more hysterical by the seconds, running into trees, slipping on the mossy roots. Failing to even decide where he ran -- back to the Shrine or away from it.

In the blackout darkness, he couldn't tell. Only the pale blurs of the ghoulish bodies were clear to his eyes. Everything else barely registered.

And because of this, he didn't see when he slammed face-first into a figure who wore pure black. Tears had stained his face and fogged his vision, so he didn't even understand that before him was a person, not another tree.

But then an icy-cold hand shot out and grabbed him.

"Aaahh!" he whelped, hot with dread. The figure shackled both his wrist with her hands then snapped them wide to have him splayed before her. Weak. And vulnerable. And shaken with horror. "Let me go! Let me GOOO!"

The figure didn't reply. With a matter-of-fact snap, she swung him around to face the pale smears of ghoul flesh shuffling closer and closer to him. Then she held him like this, waiting.

Savoring, perhaps.

"Do you recognize?" the woman asked so close to his ear. He squirmed even more from the disturbing sensation. "These men. Do you?"

...what?

How could he recognize... His eyes were blinded with tears and darkness, and those ugly, mutilated ghouls were too terrible to even glimpse in passing, let alone look at intently.

And he'd never known any malevolent Spirits, or demons, or ghouls in the first place... He was just a child. Not even a Binder. Just an innocent, weak child.

"Please let me go, please I beg you--" He trembled, raked with shuddering sobs.

"Look. at them," the woman demanded. "And tell me. Do you know these men or no--"

A cold, hard silence drowned them for a few brief seconds.

A strong gust of wind had swept through the woods like a phantom blade. Nekohiko didn't see it or hear it -- he only felt it. A sudden calm. And a sudden relief crushing upon him like a blanket.

He swayed free, released from the woman's grasp in a flash.

As he blinked wildly around, shielding his face and chest from another cruel attack -- nothing. Nothing was near him. Not a soul. And not a ghoul or a demon or a corpse.

He was alone.

As if he'd always been alone here. 

Only his heart was still thrashing in his ribcage like a bird aching to flee, and this uncanny wind kept rustling the bushes and branches around in a natural, yet somehow insidious silence of a leafy wood at night.

But other than that, he could have dreamed all of those horrors just now, so normal and even mundane the forest looked.

"Kitten! Kitten?"

Nekohiko started, heaving in burning rushes.

But it was only a familiar sound. A familiar person, calling him.

Bats scattered off into the air, spooked, and it was as though a spell had been lifted off Nekohiko. Kotone's voice broke up the haggard hush of the impenetrable wall of trees behind him. In an instant, he knew that was the direction in which Izumo Shrine lay. 

He dashed back toward the girl, but his eyes never strayed away from the deep black of the treetops.

"There you are!" Kotone caught him in a tight embrace. His tears suffocating him, Nekohiko didn't even notice at first that someone took hold of him.

He was just that relieved to be away from those trees. From those impossible ghouls. From that nightmarish woman.

"Where were you! Do you think I never check on you bunnies sleeping tight in your beds? Do you think I never count you all? Where--" Kotone held him away from herself to get a good look at him. Her eyes were gleaming with worry a second ago but now opened wider in fright. "What happened? Why are you crying!"

Nekohiko stilled, unsure.

"I..." He couldn't take his gaze off the trees as he pointed, still trembling harshly. "There were... corpses... they attacked me and--"

Kotone straightened up, scanning the trees in the distance with squinted eyes. To Nekohiko's dismay, she didn't seem scared, and neither was she worried. At best, she was mildly amused.

"Corpses?"

"...ghouls..."

"Kitten," Kotone said, motherly. "That's not a thing in Izumo. It's impossible. You probably had a nightmare or imagined that some gnarly tree looked like a human in the darkness. Shhh, shh, don't cry." She bent low, biting her lips in distress, gently pushing him in his back to follow her back to the Shrine. "It's all right, I'm here. We're going back home, see? Nothing to be scared of."

Nekohiko was wiping his face, frustrated.

Impossible? Did she say "impossible", really? If anything, this made him want to cry even harder.

He didn't even entertain the idea that he had made those ghouls up from fright about the dark woods. The only thing he wanted to know was where those ghouls went, and why.

But he knew for sure it wasn't Kotone's actions that caused those ghouls and that terrible woman to flee, though. He'd half-thought Kotone had conjured some incredible Binding magic just now... and that powerful gust of supernatural wind he'd felt a moment ago was what had chased the ghoul woman away. But it clearly wasn't Kotone's doing.

At best, Kotone had scared the ghoul-raising woman by being a witness to the crime. Nothing more. Just a lucky coincidence, was this? Nekohiko kept looking at the ground now that Kotone's words dismissed all of his worries and fears as nighttime visions, and now that her bright lantern completely ruined any chance of him being able to see anything beyond its circle of light. But he felt it. The strangeness, the unnerving silence breeding in the woods.

Hesitant, Nekohiko whispered, "It's nothing. I only fell and scraped my hands. It hurt, so I cried."

"Yes, but why were you there in the first place, you silly girl!"

Only now Kotone took note of the clothes he wore and of the small bundle of bare necessities he carried in his hands.

Her eyes slowly raised at him. "Kitten, why would you even think you could run? The Izumo Shrine grounds are walled by the Head Priest's spells. He knows immediately if someone leaves the premises. How do you think I found out? His Bound guards woke me up and led me here, to find you."

Indeed. Nekohiko trembled, peering forward to the outlines of several Bound dummies waiting by the edge of the tree line for Kotone and him to return from the woods. But however much he hated those damned dummies, he didn't care about them now.

There was only one thing he desperately needed to know. "Would Head Priest know if someone came through that wall from the outside, too?"

Kotone let out a relieved sigh.

"That would never happen. Like with those corpses you made up. Such dangerous things would never have the chance to come even close to Izumo because of the Head Priest's Pearlescent Barrier." As if excited to even mention it, she prattled on. "The way it works is that nothing on one side of it can pass through it no matter how much they try. Only if someone from within invites them, can they enter. Did you invite any ghouls inside, by chance?" she chortled, gleeful.

"No..." At least I don't think so.

Gulping with strain, Nekohiko trudged on.

"Anyway, the Head Priest would have stopped them. He cares about all of us too much to let any of us be endangered like that."

Nekohiko nodded to Kotone's words, even though he didn't believe them. The Head Priest? Caring about anyone? What a lie. Kotone was patting his clothes and hair off leaves and dirt busily but stopped when she reached the scratches on Nekohiko's palms. Still shaken, Nekohiko tried to rub them clean on his trousers.

"This needs proper cleanup and a salve," Kotone told him. She didn't make an attempt to hold him by the hands as she stood up, as though she had learned and respected his dislike of being touched. Instead, she waited for him to come closer to her on his own. "Come on, Kitten. Or we won't get any sleep tonight. And tomorrow is another big, big day."

His head down and his spine rigid, he followed her toward the novice girls' dormitory.

"He doesn't," Nekohiko mumbled under his nose after a while.

"Mm?"

"What you said. About the Head Priest. He doesn't care. About anyone."

Kotone tilted her head, saddened. "You don't know him, Kitten."

"My name is not Kitten. It's Nekohiko. And I've been in the Head Priest's office five times in three weeks," Nekohiko said much louder than he wanted. "He's the person I know best around here."

Not even a glance from the man, not even a slight frown or an acknowledgment that Nekohiko had been with him in the same room all those times. No. The Head Priest had continued his bureaucratic work as steadily and as unimaginatively as always, only pausing to release Nekohiko from the Bound guards' hold after the prescribed hour of punishment was over.

Even tonight, when Nekohiko had surely been at the death's door -- all that the Head Priest could do for him was send wooden dolls to wander around lamely. They didn't even find him, those dummies. Kotone had to do it instead.

"What are you talking about, silly?" Kotone sighed. "The Head Priest was right here when his dummies brought me to find you. He disappeared into the woods before ordering me to go look for you. You haven't seen him? He must have walked right by you."

...

Nekohiko froze. He even stopped breathing. "He was... here? But... no, I didn't see him."

He turned wildly, scanning the swaying sea of trees in the murky distance, but caught no glimpse of the Head Priest's distinct white-on-black robes, or his tall silhouette among the branches and wild grass.

"Well. He must have gone to check that the spell-wall around the Shrine is intact, I suppose," Kotone said, thoughtful. "In any case, he often phases through the Spiritside to go about his business. Most people wouldn't be able to see him when he does that."

"...Spiritside?"

"Mn. You'll learn to go into it on the fifth year at School," Kotone chatted away, already in a good mood again. "All the pupils have so much fun with it, learning to open the doorways themselves! So exciting. Though most will never be able to. It's quite a rare skill, to open Spiritside anywhere you want. But very, very useful when we need to fight or suppress some truly nasty Demonic Spirits in the presence of the innocent bystanders -- since all the fighting becomes too restrictive. Just force the Demons into the Spiritside, and they are gone from this world. You can fight them there without endangering anyone else. It's indispensable in all Spirit Wayfarer activities. Amazing, isn't it?"

Nekohiko walked on, unsure of even what he was hearing. This was all too confusing and staggering.

Did it mean that unnatural wind in the woods earlier...?

Had that been the Head Priest? Had he forced the ghouls and the vile woman who commanded them -- into this... Spiritside, to fight them there without having to bother about Nekohiko's safety?

The Head Priest had been there.

Right next to him. Fighting. And Nekohiko had never known...

"Speaking of which," Kotone said pointedly. She and he had already come to the novice girls' dormitory and stopped in front of the entrance. Kotone nodded Nekohiko towards the smaller door that led to her personal room on the side. "Wait for me there. I'll be a moment."

The forest leaves murmured disturbingly all the way behind the thin walls of Kotone's room. The wind rocked even the branches of the closest trees in the garden so that they scratched the roof and the window sill from the outside. Nekohiko could hardly stop twitching and fidgeting as he waited for Kotone to come back with the medicine and the small cup of calming tea she promised would help him sleep better.

The bound stone lantern by his feet threw the room into flickering shadows, and in it, Nekohiko sharply felt the flimsiness of this building and the proximity of the unknown just beyond the corner. Whether the unknown of those people who wanted him dead or those who were supposedly his allies, it didn't matter. Both were equally alien and equally sinister to him.

"Look what I brought."

Kotone placed the basket with medicine and the tea in front of Nekohiko but held up a small wooden shrine she carried with both her hands. Her face, strained with lack of sleep, looked especially frail above the ornate miniature Spirit shrine. "Do you know that our land has Spirit shrines almost everywhere you go and everywhere you look? Not the big ones, like Izumo -- but small ones, too? Because Spirits live everywhere in our land, so shrines -- the houses of the Spirits, are also everywhere."

Nekohiko watched her, guarded. Kotone was nice to him, sure, but he couldn't yet understand why. Because of that, he was too afraid to guess wrong and make an idiot out of himself.

She was a complete stranger to him, after all.

But what she was saying, he already knew. Everyone did. Spirit shrines were like mushrooms or grass. It was hard to wander and not stumble upon one, however small or however big, somewhere along the way.

"Do you know why that is?" Kotone put the shrine in between herself and him, then reached out for the basket. The teacup with steaming green liquid, she gave to him, while the clean bandage cloth and the jar of salve she kept for herself. "So that we humans can communicate with Spirits at any time. So that we can ask their help if we are in dire need of it. So that we can offer them our help if we can. It's a relationship. One built on trust and mutual respect. An undying bond."

Nekohiko listened, too worn out to figure out what this had to do with anything. Kotone kept cleaning up his shallow wounds, never stopping in her quiet, whispery speech.

"It's like that between people, too, Kitten. You and myself, you and the Head Priest. You and the other children. If you can afford to give someone kindness, then do. If you're in dire need of someone's kindness -- ask." She tried her best not to touch his hands even as she was working on them, but sometimes her skin still grazed over his, giving him an unpleasant shiver. "But don't run away, and don't turn your back on others. And above all -- don't ever think that others have turned their back on you. All right?"

She motioned to the teacup and to the jar of salve, still open. Then, after a brief thought, to the small wooden shrine between them.

"I heard you're having trouble in plant-Binding classes? That you can't Bind leaves, or pine needles, or pine cones together no matter how you try?" She folded her hands in front of her, then gave him an inviting smile. "Come on. Copy this gesture. And pray. Pray to the Spirit of the wooden twigs, to the spirit of the laurel leaves. To the pine-needle Spirit. Like this."

The gestures she showed, and the words she mumbled made so little sense to him, he even abandoned his detached attitude and began watching her, disturbed.

What was she doing? Actually praying? To a... pine-needle Spirit?

"How is asking a Spirit to help you with Binding different from asking a person to help you when you need something?" She straightened out of her deep bow to the small shrine, smiling. "Sometimes they can help without being asked if they feel like it. Other times, you have to ask them. By praying. By worshiping, admiring, pacifying, or simply entertaining them. Wouldn't you do that to a person, too, if you needed something from them?"

"Do... what?"

"Befriend them. Spirits. And people, too. Isn't that obvious, Kit--" she bit her tongue, then corrected herself. "Nekohiko?"

Nekohiko was afraid to misunderstand. "Binding is done by... befriending and then asking Spirits to help you?"

"Mn."

But it didn't feel right to him. "I never saw other children pray to Spirits to help them Bind leaves or straw together. Spirits simply... bind themselves, without being asked. Why..." It stung to even ponder this. "Why am I the only one who has to ask?"

It was clear that Kotone didn't know, but was too shy to say so. "Some people just do. It's rare but not abnormal. Mainly when the certain Spirit is angry at a certain person. It happens."

Angry? Angry -- at him?

His teeth clacked together as he grit his jaws. "I don't understand. Why would Spirits be angry at me?"

And why so many of them? Leaves, grass, twigs, branches, bark, flowers -- any plant teacher Kumikata had given them these past two weeks refused to bind and fuse in Nekohiko's hands while working perfectly for every other child in the class.

So it meant that all these Spirits were mad at him for... some reason? Why? 

"I never said they are! Just that Spirit reluctance is one of the most obvious explanations," she hurried to add. "I don't know the actual one. I simply know that praying and befriending Spirits and kindly asking them helps some people with Binding."

Nekohiko and she sat a moment in sheepish silence, only staring at each other. Then Kotone nudged him on to drink his tea and almost seemed to forget, for a moment, not to touch him as her hand flinched to pat his hair.

But she didn't. For whatever reason, she remembered. And stayed her hand away from him.

"Better?" she asked after he took a timid sip.

Strangely comforted, by the question or by the taste of the tea or by the inadvertent lesson on Binding he'd received from her -- Nekohiko only nodded back.

 

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