Illume: Lose Me Like an Arrow
Oct. 14th, 2004 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aithne[geekery]
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zondrrrah is evil. Wow. There haven't been a whole lot of times that he's come up with something that made me go, "um, EW", but this is one of them.
Reiko sat near her mother, biting her lip, nervous. Edi-lo had availed herself of what few bathing facilities there were on Shrike, and combed out her ankle-length hair, which she was letting dry in the cooling evening hair.
Looking at her mother was disconcerting, like looking in a mirror--but at the same time, not. Did she really sit that perfectly still? Were her own eyes really that startling shade of gold? Even closed and quiet, her mother had an indefinable presence, wild and compelling at once, and unthinkingly Reiko obeyed it, moving to sit next to the kitsune.
Those gold eyes turned on her, and she licked lips gone dry. "Ah. We--have not been introduced. I am--"
"Han Reiko Mei. Or Iyotushi Reiko. Or Han Mei. Or Bayushi Mei. Or Takumi Reiko. My daughter. I know."
Reiko flushed and looked away. "Mother. I have wanted to meet you for so long, and now...I find myself at a loss for words. So many questions, and none of them come to mind."
Her eyes were amused, softening. "Not even one, Reiko? Surely, you must have at least one."
The younger kitsune fidgeted with the hem of her kimono sleeve. "Well, it might be too personal, but...what happened? Between you and my father, I mean. I have the story, but I no longer trust the source of that story. From what I know, he found out what you were, and then abandoned you."
"That is almost correct. I loved him and didn't want to kill him, but I needed more energy to keep me alive. He found my extra-curricular activities and my nature. He left me." The kitsune was utterly still as she said this, the picture of grace and restraint while saying an ugly truth.
Reiko smelled a story, and kept probing. "And then--what? I don't remember you raising me, but my memory is...unreliable, due to something my granddaughter did to me."
Edi-lo shook her head slightly. "The life we lead isn't the best when you are a poor single mother. A great many men want the illusion of being with a woman and that she is giving her virginity to them. It can't be done with a child. I gave you up to your father. You were raised with Setto, his son by his second wife, who later became your first husband."
Reiko blinked, taken aback. "My father. We're talking about the man who later became the Demonbane, right?"
A small smile hovered on her lips. "One and the same. He adored you from the moment he saw you. He gave you everything you ever wanted, and he loved it when you displayed affection for Setto, and encouraged you two to play with one another."
The shaman bit her lip. Flickers and shards of memories were beginning softly gather in her mind--a prayer gate, polished wood floors, being lifted high into the air by strong arms, feeling as if nothing bad could ever touch her.
Edi-lo continued. "He found you and Setto...together, one day. But you were doing more than just having sex with him. You were draining him, and Setto was dying. In that instant, you were no longer his daughter. You were kitsune. And a kitsune had done him wrong--years ago, at that point, but the wounds still bled. He vowed to destroy the kitsune in return for destroying his life."
Reiko closed her eyes, confused images and feelings welling up as she was reminded of them. Her brother, her fiercely adored younger brother, playing at being samurai together, he shedding tears as her own broken arm was bound. He father laughing, "Cut one of them, they both bleed." Memories of being older but still running together like wild things, traveling through rough country with him, laughing together as they planned a fanciful future. He was going to be Emperor and she was going to be his regent.
She had not known what she was. Nobody ever told her.
Then the day that new feelings had snaked through her body, the searing hunger of her first season coming upon her, though she had no idea what has happening. Her beloved younger brother caught up in her hunger (and truly, did they fight it so very hard?), and Reiko knowing only the hunger, and what fed her hunger.
And then, pain. Her heart shattering as her father bodily threw her across the room, her body crashing into the wall and lying crumpled on the floor. The one world, snarled, "Kitsune."
She'd understood that they had done something wrong but not why she had been the one left sobbing on the floor while her brother was carried away. She did not understand until later, when the house was silent, when her father had wrapped a rope around her wrists that burned as if it were on fire, when he told her that she had almost killed Setto. He had told her then what she was. Fox. Demon. Kitsune. He said, "I have no daughter."
In the present, Reiko could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She shook her head, wordless.
Edi-lo's voice broke over her, sweet and golden as honey. "It only got worse when Yamashita and Setto had a huge blowout about him marrying you. I don't think those two ever spoke again, after your wedding."
"And so he vowed to kill us all." Reiko's voice shook. "Me last, so I could live to see the end of what I'd wrought."
Her mother shook her head. "No, not what you'd wrought. What I had. Why do you think we both still live? You were just the target. It was my heart he was bent on hurting."
"I knew why I lived--at least, he's told me that he's tied his life to my immortality. but I did wonder about you. So much pain, from one broken heart."
Still perfectly motionless, Edi-lo was a study in light and shadow in the darkening evening. "I hurt his honor by being with other men."
Reiko ran her fingers along the inside of her arm, feeling the scars that roughened the skin. "He'll never give it up, will he?"
"There is a small part of him that is good yet. He still to this day keeps the drawings that you made as a child." Edi-lo looked off into the distance, out over the ocean. "He was a good man, Reiko."
The shaman felt another presence, and looked up. Setto stood near her, the look on his face unreadable.
Reiko asked, "Setto, I thought we only met after we were adults."
He shook his head. "You believe what you want to sometimes, love. I always knew I was going to marry you when I grew up."
"And you didn't tell me."
"No." The spirit shrugged. "I saw no reason to. You knew that I loved you, and you loved me, and that was all you needed to know."
"I--" Words failed the kitsune, and she stared up into Setto's eyes. She shuddered. "Somehow, the knowledge of my father's hatred is worse for the fact that he once loved me--and I him." Returning with the fragmented memories was the certainty that she had, yes, loved her father once. She had known. Somewhere, she had always known, had always desperately wanted his approval, was convinced that she would never receive it.
She rose and bowed, a little awkwardly, to her mother. "I, ah, have evening meditations I have been neglecting. I am sure we will speak again. I...may have a favor to ask of you." Her mother inclined her head, and Reiko turned and walked away, towards the stairway that led into the hold, Setto drifting in her wake.
Her stride lengthened, her head down, and a voice that was growing familiar these days called, "Reiko, are you all right?"
Shreds of memory assaulted her. Her little brother's inability to say her full name, both him and their father calling her Rei. The first realization, watching Setto draw a bow, that he was growing into a handsome young man, the first twinge of jealousy when she realized that he would some day leave home with a wife of his own. Everything was out of order, confusing, a deep well of emotion and image suddenly tapped.
She stopped, still looking at the floor of the corridor. She felt Jeron's arm around her, and she jerked straight, pulled away, and then relaxed as she realized that the touch was in the now. She leaned into him, shivering.
"What's wrong, Reiko?" His sky-blue eyes were worried, looking down at her.
She looked up, blue meeting gold. "I remember. My father. He raised me. He raised me, he loved me, and now he hates me. I remember. But it's too much, it's all out of order, I can't make any sense of it." Another shred of the past wrapped itself around her, and she moaned, "The village--no--"
Her father stood over her, looking at her prone, naked form, scowling down. The new bindings burned in her skin, and he turned to the crowed and said, "You can do anything you want with her. Anything at all."
Then, pain. That part was still the same.
Afterwards, the fire of the village warm on her back, a figure spoke out of the darkness. "Rei?"
She whirled, one hand on the ties of her borrowed--stolen--kimono. The figure stepped forward, and a wild hope sprang to life within her. "Setto?"
The light fell on his familiar but still changed features; it had been five years since she had seen him, and he had grown into a man. "It's me. I slipped Father's leash and came looking for you."
"It was you and the Demonbane who were the visitors, wasn't it? Who I was to be displayed to."
He nodded. "He told me a few hours ago that you were the kitsune we were checking up on. He wanted me to see you defeated and starving, to show me what you had become. He had hoped that seeing you like that would kill my love for you, and I'd consent to marry the woman he's picked out for me."
He was close now, and as he reached out to touch her hair she backed away. "Don't touch me! I kill men, Setto. I am a murderer. I've probably killed at least fifty people tonight, starting with an innocent girl. Go, brother. Marry. Forget me."
"I tried, Rei. I tried to forget you, after you almost killed me. But I couldn't, and I can't. And," his mouth twisted, "I did some research on kitsune. If you had known what you were, you wouldn't have drunk so deeply." He drew closer again, and this time she let him. Reiko's heart twisted viciously as she felt his presence, so familiar even after their years of separation. She had run so far after her father had thrown her out, trying to outrun her memories, but her past had chased her down and was standing before her, with hand outstretched.
She whispered, her voice nearly drowned by the hiss and pop of the burning village behind her, "I never forgot you either. I never stopped loving you." Tentatively, she reached out her hand.
He took her hand. "Come with me, Rei. What you are is what you are. I loved you before I knew, and knowing what you are doesn't change that. We can make arrangements to feed you."
And, slowly, he drew her to him, pulling her into his embrace. She shivered, her feet bare on the cooling ground. "I am a demon. A monster. I drink the lives of men, Setto. I almost killed you five years ago, and if I stay with you I'll probably kill you for real one day. I love you, but no. Let me go, brother. Let me run, let me keep running. I'll go west, find a ship over the sea, keep going. You'll never see me again. You'll marry and have children, you'll build a life for yourself, and you'll forget me."
"I can't, Rei. Whatever the future holds, it's not that. I am leaving tonight, with or without you. Our father is completely mad, and being around him is making me doubt my own sanity. At least come with me for a little while, travel with me. Please?"
She had never been able to deny him something he wanted, and this time was no exception. She said, softly, "All right. For a little while. On the condition that we travel as brother and sister. I don't want to chance hurting you."
He nodded and said, "We need to go. Father will come looking for me soon, an we need to be gone by the time he does."
"He's going to kill us, you realize that?"
"No. He won't. He'll be angry, but he'll get over it. He loves us too much." He paused, holding her just a bit more tightly. "Both of us, Rei."
She somehow doubted that, but allowed him to lead her to the saddled horses, and then followed him away over the hills.
She shook herself out of her reverie, shuddering. To Jeron, she said, "I didn't remember. Not because the memories were taken. Because I didn't want to remember. I closed my eyes to what I am, what I've done, because living with it was too hard. Lin only helped the process along."
"It's one of the problems of being immortal. When we do terrible things...they stay with us forever."
She looked up at him. "You, too?"
He nodded. "You cannot imagine, Reiko. Fourteen millennia is a very long time."
"I just want to make it all go away. But I tried that, and it came back." She drew a breath inward. "Time to face the music, I think."
Jeron tightened his arm around her. "You're not alone. You have friends to hold your hands as you walk the path through hell. And you have me, you know."
She glanced up at him, a small smile on her lips. "Do I, then?"
He chuckled, wryly. "You do, kitsune. Kami help me, but you do."
A small glow of pleasure lit her at his words. Maybe I'll get through this after all.
The kitsune could only hope, as shreds of her past continued to stir in her mind, that her hope was well-founded.
You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
--Kate Bush, The Kick Inside
zondrrrah is evil. Wow. There haven't been a whole lot of times that he's come up with something that made me go, "um, EW", but this is one of them.Reiko sat near her mother, biting her lip, nervous. Edi-lo had availed herself of what few bathing facilities there were on Shrike, and combed out her ankle-length hair, which she was letting dry in the cooling evening hair.
Looking at her mother was disconcerting, like looking in a mirror--but at the same time, not. Did she really sit that perfectly still? Were her own eyes really that startling shade of gold? Even closed and quiet, her mother had an indefinable presence, wild and compelling at once, and unthinkingly Reiko obeyed it, moving to sit next to the kitsune.
Those gold eyes turned on her, and she licked lips gone dry. "Ah. We--have not been introduced. I am--"
"Han Reiko Mei. Or Iyotushi Reiko. Or Han Mei. Or Bayushi Mei. Or Takumi Reiko. My daughter. I know."
Reiko flushed and looked away. "Mother. I have wanted to meet you for so long, and now...I find myself at a loss for words. So many questions, and none of them come to mind."
Her eyes were amused, softening. "Not even one, Reiko? Surely, you must have at least one."
The younger kitsune fidgeted with the hem of her kimono sleeve. "Well, it might be too personal, but...what happened? Between you and my father, I mean. I have the story, but I no longer trust the source of that story. From what I know, he found out what you were, and then abandoned you."
"That is almost correct. I loved him and didn't want to kill him, but I needed more energy to keep me alive. He found my extra-curricular activities and my nature. He left me." The kitsune was utterly still as she said this, the picture of grace and restraint while saying an ugly truth.
Reiko smelled a story, and kept probing. "And then--what? I don't remember you raising me, but my memory is...unreliable, due to something my granddaughter did to me."
Edi-lo shook her head slightly. "The life we lead isn't the best when you are a poor single mother. A great many men want the illusion of being with a woman and that she is giving her virginity to them. It can't be done with a child. I gave you up to your father. You were raised with Setto, his son by his second wife, who later became your first husband."
Reiko blinked, taken aback. "My father. We're talking about the man who later became the Demonbane, right?"
A small smile hovered on her lips. "One and the same. He adored you from the moment he saw you. He gave you everything you ever wanted, and he loved it when you displayed affection for Setto, and encouraged you two to play with one another."
The shaman bit her lip. Flickers and shards of memories were beginning softly gather in her mind--a prayer gate, polished wood floors, being lifted high into the air by strong arms, feeling as if nothing bad could ever touch her.
Edi-lo continued. "He found you and Setto...together, one day. But you were doing more than just having sex with him. You were draining him, and Setto was dying. In that instant, you were no longer his daughter. You were kitsune. And a kitsune had done him wrong--years ago, at that point, but the wounds still bled. He vowed to destroy the kitsune in return for destroying his life."
Reiko closed her eyes, confused images and feelings welling up as she was reminded of them. Her brother, her fiercely adored younger brother, playing at being samurai together, he shedding tears as her own broken arm was bound. He father laughing, "Cut one of them, they both bleed." Memories of being older but still running together like wild things, traveling through rough country with him, laughing together as they planned a fanciful future. He was going to be Emperor and she was going to be his regent.
She had not known what she was. Nobody ever told her.
Then the day that new feelings had snaked through her body, the searing hunger of her first season coming upon her, though she had no idea what has happening. Her beloved younger brother caught up in her hunger (and truly, did they fight it so very hard?), and Reiko knowing only the hunger, and what fed her hunger.
And then, pain. Her heart shattering as her father bodily threw her across the room, her body crashing into the wall and lying crumpled on the floor. The one world, snarled, "Kitsune."
She'd understood that they had done something wrong but not why she had been the one left sobbing on the floor while her brother was carried away. She did not understand until later, when the house was silent, when her father had wrapped a rope around her wrists that burned as if it were on fire, when he told her that she had almost killed Setto. He had told her then what she was. Fox. Demon. Kitsune. He said, "I have no daughter."
In the present, Reiko could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She shook her head, wordless.
Edi-lo's voice broke over her, sweet and golden as honey. "It only got worse when Yamashita and Setto had a huge blowout about him marrying you. I don't think those two ever spoke again, after your wedding."
"And so he vowed to kill us all." Reiko's voice shook. "Me last, so I could live to see the end of what I'd wrought."
Her mother shook her head. "No, not what you'd wrought. What I had. Why do you think we both still live? You were just the target. It was my heart he was bent on hurting."
"I knew why I lived--at least, he's told me that he's tied his life to my immortality. but I did wonder about you. So much pain, from one broken heart."
Still perfectly motionless, Edi-lo was a study in light and shadow in the darkening evening. "I hurt his honor by being with other men."
Reiko ran her fingers along the inside of her arm, feeling the scars that roughened the skin. "He'll never give it up, will he?"
"There is a small part of him that is good yet. He still to this day keeps the drawings that you made as a child." Edi-lo looked off into the distance, out over the ocean. "He was a good man, Reiko."
The shaman felt another presence, and looked up. Setto stood near her, the look on his face unreadable.
Reiko asked, "Setto, I thought we only met after we were adults."
He shook his head. "You believe what you want to sometimes, love. I always knew I was going to marry you when I grew up."
"And you didn't tell me."
"No." The spirit shrugged. "I saw no reason to. You knew that I loved you, and you loved me, and that was all you needed to know."
"I--" Words failed the kitsune, and she stared up into Setto's eyes. She shuddered. "Somehow, the knowledge of my father's hatred is worse for the fact that he once loved me--and I him." Returning with the fragmented memories was the certainty that she had, yes, loved her father once. She had known. Somewhere, she had always known, had always desperately wanted his approval, was convinced that she would never receive it.
She rose and bowed, a little awkwardly, to her mother. "I, ah, have evening meditations I have been neglecting. I am sure we will speak again. I...may have a favor to ask of you." Her mother inclined her head, and Reiko turned and walked away, towards the stairway that led into the hold, Setto drifting in her wake.
Her stride lengthened, her head down, and a voice that was growing familiar these days called, "Reiko, are you all right?"
Shreds of memory assaulted her. Her little brother's inability to say her full name, both him and their father calling her Rei. The first realization, watching Setto draw a bow, that he was growing into a handsome young man, the first twinge of jealousy when she realized that he would some day leave home with a wife of his own. Everything was out of order, confusing, a deep well of emotion and image suddenly tapped.
She stopped, still looking at the floor of the corridor. She felt Jeron's arm around her, and she jerked straight, pulled away, and then relaxed as she realized that the touch was in the now. She leaned into him, shivering.
"What's wrong, Reiko?" His sky-blue eyes were worried, looking down at her.
She looked up, blue meeting gold. "I remember. My father. He raised me. He raised me, he loved me, and now he hates me. I remember. But it's too much, it's all out of order, I can't make any sense of it." Another shred of the past wrapped itself around her, and she moaned, "The village--no--"
Her father stood over her, looking at her prone, naked form, scowling down. The new bindings burned in her skin, and he turned to the crowed and said, "You can do anything you want with her. Anything at all."
Then, pain. That part was still the same.
Afterwards, the fire of the village warm on her back, a figure spoke out of the darkness. "Rei?"
She whirled, one hand on the ties of her borrowed--stolen--kimono. The figure stepped forward, and a wild hope sprang to life within her. "Setto?"
The light fell on his familiar but still changed features; it had been five years since she had seen him, and he had grown into a man. "It's me. I slipped Father's leash and came looking for you."
"It was you and the Demonbane who were the visitors, wasn't it? Who I was to be displayed to."
He nodded. "He told me a few hours ago that you were the kitsune we were checking up on. He wanted me to see you defeated and starving, to show me what you had become. He had hoped that seeing you like that would kill my love for you, and I'd consent to marry the woman he's picked out for me."
He was close now, and as he reached out to touch her hair she backed away. "Don't touch me! I kill men, Setto. I am a murderer. I've probably killed at least fifty people tonight, starting with an innocent girl. Go, brother. Marry. Forget me."
"I tried, Rei. I tried to forget you, after you almost killed me. But I couldn't, and I can't. And," his mouth twisted, "I did some research on kitsune. If you had known what you were, you wouldn't have drunk so deeply." He drew closer again, and this time she let him. Reiko's heart twisted viciously as she felt his presence, so familiar even after their years of separation. She had run so far after her father had thrown her out, trying to outrun her memories, but her past had chased her down and was standing before her, with hand outstretched.
She whispered, her voice nearly drowned by the hiss and pop of the burning village behind her, "I never forgot you either. I never stopped loving you." Tentatively, she reached out her hand.
He took her hand. "Come with me, Rei. What you are is what you are. I loved you before I knew, and knowing what you are doesn't change that. We can make arrangements to feed you."
And, slowly, he drew her to him, pulling her into his embrace. She shivered, her feet bare on the cooling ground. "I am a demon. A monster. I drink the lives of men, Setto. I almost killed you five years ago, and if I stay with you I'll probably kill you for real one day. I love you, but no. Let me go, brother. Let me run, let me keep running. I'll go west, find a ship over the sea, keep going. You'll never see me again. You'll marry and have children, you'll build a life for yourself, and you'll forget me."
"I can't, Rei. Whatever the future holds, it's not that. I am leaving tonight, with or without you. Our father is completely mad, and being around him is making me doubt my own sanity. At least come with me for a little while, travel with me. Please?"
She had never been able to deny him something he wanted, and this time was no exception. She said, softly, "All right. For a little while. On the condition that we travel as brother and sister. I don't want to chance hurting you."
He nodded and said, "We need to go. Father will come looking for me soon, an we need to be gone by the time he does."
"He's going to kill us, you realize that?"
"No. He won't. He'll be angry, but he'll get over it. He loves us too much." He paused, holding her just a bit more tightly. "Both of us, Rei."
She somehow doubted that, but allowed him to lead her to the saddled horses, and then followed him away over the hills.
She shook herself out of her reverie, shuddering. To Jeron, she said, "I didn't remember. Not because the memories were taken. Because I didn't want to remember. I closed my eyes to what I am, what I've done, because living with it was too hard. Lin only helped the process along."
"It's one of the problems of being immortal. When we do terrible things...they stay with us forever."
She looked up at him. "You, too?"
He nodded. "You cannot imagine, Reiko. Fourteen millennia is a very long time."
"I just want to make it all go away. But I tried that, and it came back." She drew a breath inward. "Time to face the music, I think."
Jeron tightened his arm around her. "You're not alone. You have friends to hold your hands as you walk the path through hell. And you have me, you know."
She glanced up at him, a small smile on her lips. "Do I, then?"
He chuckled, wryly. "You do, kitsune. Kami help me, but you do."
A small glow of pleasure lit her at his words. Maybe I'll get through this after all.
The kitsune could only hope, as shreds of her past continued to stir in her mind, that her hope was well-founded.
You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
--Kate Bush, The Kick Inside
