Inuyasha: Girl Lost In Time

Chapter 2: Not The Only One

Chapter 2: Not the Only One

"She appears human."

"Aye, in the queerest rags, she is."

"She's one'em 'Kitsune' foxes using magic to look a girl, I say."

Demon or not, more of them crowd around me. The men had set me down in the dead center of a tiny village and not even a second later I am surrounded by the townspeople dressed in medieval Japanese clothing that reminds me of the Sengoku period... They have been whispering, demons and war, the entire time.

The men wear their hair in top knots; the women have long hair tied near the ends, none wear pants and their clothes are all bland in color. This place has not seen or been touched by modern society from the looks of it.

Either I am still in a coma or somehow I magically got lost in the forest. I remember hearing about civilizations never touched by modern men, who's saying there isn't one here in Japan? But how did I get mixed up in all this?

I must be dreaming. But something counteracting that belief. The strange pain that had worsened the further I was carried away from the forest and now that I am stuck in the center of the village the pain feels like a cigarette bud on my soul. The strange pulling from before is still tugging at my shoulders, but I can't reach the itch.

My survival instinct must have never existed because I didn't even scream as I was taken away.

Their voices drone out while I am caught in my thoughts, and soon their conversations sound all the same. It's on repeat. 'Where am I from? Am I a demon? What kind of clothes are those?' I should be asking the same thing of them. They look just as out of place to me as I am to them, but I don't have them tied up.

"Make way! Make way! Lady Kaede, the priestess is here!" Yells a man from behind the crowd. The villagers look over their shoulders, and shift to one side of the other, making an opening for an elderly woman. She's wearing the garb of a Shinto priestess and an eye patch over her right eye. She comes towards me with a small pot in her left hand and a long bow in her right. I eye her bow and quiver, more than the mysterious pot she carries.

She marches up to me, showing no fear or curiosity, unlike the surrounding others - just certainty. She pauses a foot away, shifts her bow off her shoulder, and hands it to a younger gentleman who had been trailing behind her. The elderly woman, known as Kaede from where others are whispering, reaches into the pot and pulls out a handful of fine salt and before I have a chance to respond, she whisks it at my face. The specks burn my eyes and I groan in response to the tiny physical pains.

"Demon be gone!" She chants in a firm voice, quickly throwing another handful before I can recover from the last.

I move my head just in time for the second handful to miss me. "I'm not a demon." My eyes meet hers, now red and irritated, I'm sure, and she pauses. Her lone eye scans over me, taking in my attire and my apathetic state, probably wondering the same thing my foster parents had - why the lack of....well, this? I can just see the mental image of me: the lack of fear, concern, surprise, pain, and anger.

At least she stopped throwing salt at me.

"I sensed a demonic presence on ye."

Really, do you really? "Do I look like a demon?" That could be the wrong question to ask given my expressionlessness, but she seems to mull over my appearance. Slowly, her hands lower.

"Then why were ye in the Forest of Inuyasha?'

"The Forest of what?" I ask. I look over my shoulder towards the forest I was carried from, but the villagers surrounding us block my view. I glance up at the sky where I had floated down from. So, maybe this might not be a dream, I'd sound crazy if I said I'd come from the sky.

"Forest of Inuyasha," she repeats. "But ye is right." She grabs my attention and I look back at her. "Ye does not look like a demon but they would be a half-wit if thy ignore the presence surrounding ye." Maybe she means my clothes? It feels like a long few minutes before anyone makes a sound. They all just watch us - while we watch each other. I'm waiting for her while she waits for me. But for what? Finally, she closes her eye, separating our line of sight. "Untie her; she is not here to harm us."

The surrounding crowd gasps in surprise, something I know I should do as well.

***

All the children of the village follow us, their smiling faces glowing as they travel at Kaede's side, but when their glowing faces turn to me a sense of unknowing overtakes what was happy and leaves them curious instead. They keep up with us as we go through the entire village until we reach the other side where a hill raises the land with a torii gate right in front.

The scenery reminds me exactly of Kagome's house - a stack of stairs leads up to a burial shrine on top of the hill and next to the torii gate is a tiny one-room hut. When we approach it, I eye the torii gate, still rubbing at my raw wrists.

Kaede leads me through the reed door and into the one-room hut. We settle around a fire pit whose fire still burns in the middle of the room; she must have left in a hurry since the fire is still heating a kettle full of stew and rice.

For a few minutes, we remain silent. Kaede stirs the stew and I glance around at everything, recognizing most of the tools, outfits, and wooden furniture from books, television shows, and even one time from a museum. When I was at the museum most of the items were in protective cases or up in beautiful displays.

"I am curious as to why ye has such hollow eyes. Ye almost appear as a demon. Did ye get cursed by one before the villagers found ye?" She breaks the silence.

Demons, demons, demons.

"No. Not even my therapist knows what's wrong with me. No meds seem to have fixed it either. They think I have some kind of psychiatric mental condition but don't want to put a stamp on my records yet. I have always been this way though."

We stare at each other for another long moment, trying to figure each other out. She breaks the ice again with. "Is this therapist ye's shrine priestess?"

Okay, now this is going a little too far. "No, a doctor." I take a deep breath. "Where exactly am I?"

She smiles. I guess I asked the right question. But before she answers there is yelling erupting from outside and she responds immediately the same way, I am sure, she did before me. She grabs the bow she brought back with her and the quiver and rushes outside leaving me alone with a brewing stew and time.

***

I am sure by now the stew is burning. I've been stirring but the smell is getting stronger. It has been about twenty minutes since Kaede left and if I hadn't been here, her hut would have burned down by now. There is so much to think about, I don't know where to start. What I know for sure is that the torii gate is definitely to blame and the only reason I can think of why goes back to an old myth.

The myth goes like this, torii gates are entrances or transitions from the profane to the sacred. I am not entirely sure what that means or why it involves me, but from what I can tell it has taken me from the present to the past. It sounds totally insane, but the longer I think about it, the more real it is for me.

But why me?

I'm sure there have been many people, visitors, friends, tourists, and family that have been through the same torii gate at Kagome's house, but why did I transition? No one can give me a better answer than the person who comes walking through the door with Kaede.

"Kagome?"

She looks utterly surprised to see me, eyes wide and full of brown wonder.