Chihiro was waiting for Shoko at the school gates, as had become her habit the past couple of weeks. She hopped down off the waist high wall she was sitting on, and was about to tackle-hug Shoko when she noticed that the little kitsune looked far from her normal cheerful self, trudging along at a slow pace. Falling into step alongside Shoko she nudged her with her shoulder.
“Hi… you’re late, what’s wrong? How can I help?”
Shoko sighed..
“You really do live up to your name, thousand questions!”
Chihiro grinned broadly.
“So my mamma tells me nearly every day!”
Chihiro’s grin faded as she looked in concern at Shoko who, for once, wasn’t smiling back at her.
“Seriously Shoko, it’s not like you to be this down. What’s wrong?”
Shoko sighed.
“Inari’s gone on a trip with Paul-sama.”
“Oh… and you’re missing them already?”
Shoko glanced at Chihiro then back down at her feet before nodding fractionally.
“Yes, but that’s not all of it. Inari almost never leaves the temple, she’s almost a hikikomori, although she’s getting better.”
Chihiro frowned, puzzled.
“But… her going out then is a good thing. Isn’t it?”
Shoko shook her head.
“Nuh-uh… it means something has happened somewhere. Something very bad that she has to deal with. That’s the only thing that would get her to leave the temple.”
“Oh!”
They walked together in silence as they entered the school. Shoko was just putting her outdoor shoes away in her locker when Chihiro paused in putting on her school slippers, remarking.
“Hey, Shoko… it’ll be alright, won’t it? I mean, I know you’re worried, but Inari will keep Paul-sama safe won’t she?”
Shoko frowned at her friend and then shrugged.
“Yes, but… I’m worried about Inari too.”
“Why? She’s a Goddess, what can hurt her?”
Shoko shook her head,
“She’s kind of mortal too...and I don’t know. But she’s still weak after everything that’s happened. I… I just wish they taken me along too. I..I don’t want to lose Inari like I lost my mother.”
Chihiro blinked.
“They be fine, I’m sure… But I thought Inari was your mother?”
Shoko shook her head.
“No, technically she’s my grandmother, but she raised me after her daughter, my mother, sent me to be safe with her in the country during the war.”
“During the.. oh, of course! Sorry! It’s easy to forget how old you are, you know.”
Shoko smiled slightly.
“Yeah, I know, I forget too sometimes. Sometimes I remember something, then realise how long ago it was. I don’t remember much about the war, or my mother. I was just a very small fox cub back then. So Inari’s the only mother I’ve ever really known. She and Rin are all the family I have, so if anything happened... Well, Rin says they’re not fit to be a parent of any sort and I...I kind of agree with them. So I don’t know what I’d do…”
“Well, I know what I’d do. I’d ask my mother to set another place at the dinner table and ask you which side of the room you want your futon on.”
Shoko stood, shocked into stillness for a moment.
“You’d do that? For me?””
“Yes, of course. Us fox girls have to stick together after all. Besides, Momma has so many of us, one or two more won’t make much difference, right?”
Shoko grinned broadly and flung herself at Chihiro, hugging her tightly.
“I love you Chihiro! Thank you! ...only…. would that mean we couldn’t get married?”
Chihiro’s eyes went wide, as in shocked tones she exclaimed.
“Shoko! No! We couldn’t, we’re both girls and too young… and you’re teasing me again!”
Shoko flashed a broad grin at Chihiro, before she ran, laughing, strawberry blonde hair flying behind her like a pennant in a high wind, only to pause half turning at the bottom of the stairs and call out over her shoulder…
“C’mon, race you!”
“Shoko, wait! You were teasing, right? Really?”
“You’ll be late for cla-aa-ass!”
“Shoko!”
Chihiro only just made it in time to class, red faced and panting she collapsed down into her seat one row behind Shoko. Out of breath, she had no time to talk before lessons started. She’d hoped Shoko’s dark mood had dispelled, but she noticed throughout the morning that Shoko kept staring out the window, a worried look on her face. Jiao, who sat next to Shoko, had to keep nudging her to turn her friends attention back to their lessons.
It was during the second period of the morning, during History, that things went really wrong. The history teacher noticed Shoko’s abstraction, and called on her specifically.
“Miss Shoko...if we could have your attention please. What can you tell the class about the Pacific war?”
“Hm.. sorry sensei. Not much since I was only little at the time.”
“Miss Shoko, we’re talking about the Pacific war, that ended in 1945…not whatever you were day dreaming about!”
Shoko glared at the teacher, needled by her tone of voice.
“I know.. I was five and living with Inari after my mother sent me to safety.”
The teacher stared at Shoko in disbelief as the class laughed.
“Do you seriously expect us to believe you are eighty years old young lady!”
Red faced, Shoko jumped to her feet and yelled at the teacher and everyone else.
“I don’t care what you believe, I am eighty years old. I’m a kitsune, we age differently...and what I remember of it was boys putting on uniforms and preparing to die defending their homes, and girls the same age as you all, serving as nurses in converted schools and being drenched in blood up to their elbows… and I can tell you one more thing about your stupid human war. My mother died because of it. She died trying to protect her city and all the stupid ungrateful humans in it instead of being safe, with me! Because we’re not human, we’re kitsune and even if you hate us, we’re bound by our oaths and my mother was a temple guardian, sworn to protect her home. So she died when they dropped an atomic bomb on it! She burned, and I heard her scream all the way from here! ”
With a broken sounding sob, Shoko ran. The slam of the doors ring in the shocked silence behind her exit. Chihiro jumped to her feet, bobbed a bow at the frozen, white faced teacher, and with a muttered “sorry!” ran after Shoko, closely followed by Jiao.
Jiao caught up with Chihiro in the schools atrium, just inside the main doors, finding her standing still with her eyes closed, and no sign of Shoko anywhere.
“Chihiro, where’s..”
“Shh!”
“What are you doing?”
Chihiro sighed.
“Listening. I can’t see her… I mean, I saw her vanish into thin air just as she ran down the stairs. I guess Kisune can turn invisible, or something… so I was listening to see if I could hear her crying.”
Jiao nodded, and closed her own eyes the better to listen. After a moment, they both exclaimed; “That way!” and opened their eyes to see they were pointing in more or less opposite directions, one outside, one in.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Chihiro blinked, and Jiao muttered something that would have earned her stern words of disapproval from her brother if he’d heard it.
“How?”
Jiao shrugged.
“Kitsune magic or echoes.. one or the other. I’ll go this way, you go that. Try not to make things worse, human.”
Chihiro didn’t have a chance to ask Jiao what she meant by that before the small Oni headed off at a run. She sighed, and started to head in the direction the sound had come from, at least to her ears, it had sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside, near the bushes at the back of the quad.
Chihiro frowned as she stood in front of the dense bushes. Now that she could hear it more clearly, the crying sounded more like a dog whimpering… a dog, or a fox cub! She thought, her eyes going wide.
She had no idea what Shoko would look like as a fox, but it stood to reason, if she had reverted to her most basic form she’d be a cub and not a full grown fox. Therefore she’d be quite small, and well able to wiggle though the dense bushes…
Chihiro got down on her hands and knees, looking for a way into the densely interwoven bush that something as small as fox cub could get though, and after a moment she spotted a shadowy tunnel-like gap among the wrist thick stems, almost entirely hidden behind the small portable shrine that lived at the far end of the quad. It made sense to Chihiro that that was where Shoko had chosen to go to ground. It would have a sense of familiarity, and appeal to her instincts.
Without hesitation she pressed forward, having to get down on her belly and slither like a snake to squeeze into the narrow gap. The branches snatched and scratched at her, tugging at her hair and clothes. She could hardly breath for the dank leaf mould and dirt she was forced to scrabble through.
It grew dark under the bushes, thick leaves above her creating a green twilight dim enough she could barely see the tiny passage twisting and turning in front of her, forcing her to navigate it’s serpentine path by feel alone.
Chihiro pressed on, partly out of concern for Shoko, partly because she was certain that she couldn’t turn around or reverse her course without becoming hopelessly ensnared. Some small, quietly panicking part of her at the back of her mind wondered if she got stuck here, would she even be rescued, or would she die here, lost and forgotten? If she was fated to die like a rabbit in a snare, would her ghost wander the schools grounds forever?
Suddenly, Chihiro’s hands met not soft black earth but air, and she found herself sliding down a slope, ever faster, until she was tumbling freely forward in the darkness.
With a crash she burst out of the bushes, and rolled a short distance across soft springy grass. For a moment, she laid still, her thoughts still swirling like the glitter in a snow-globe. She took several deep breaths, staring up at the wide open blue sky above her.
Chihiro blinked, behind the school was a road and some houses, not a grassy meadow. Sitting up, she looked around. In three directions was open grassland, wide and undulating, with no sign of houses, roads or even the sea… the fourth direction, the way she’d tumbled, was a dark forest looming upwards. Behind which she could see the misty purple tips of mountains. On top of that, the air was warm, with summers breath upon it, and not the moist chillness of spring.
For a moment Chihiro drank in the sight. Ever since a certain animated movie had come out, with her namesake protagonist, she’d harboured a secret dream, tucked away in a corner of her heart, of finding a way into another world or realm. Now it looked like her dream had come true, because this was not anywhere near the school, and she doubted it was even the same world!
Still, she thought, no point her being foolish about it! Digging into her skirt pocket she removed the spool of scarlet ribbon she’d been intending to trim her sewing project with. Snipping off a length, she backtracked along the trail of flattened grass she left in her wake, until she found the opening in the brush with freshly disturbed earth. Tying the length of ribbon to a branch at the entrance, she felt confident she could find her way back.
Turning her back to the forest, she scanned the seemingly endless meadow, the only movement was the rippling grass, undulating like the ocean in the breeze, and the nodding heads of wild flowers dotted here and there.
Chihiro held her breath, listening with all her might, but there was no sound except the rushing rustle of wind against leaf.
“Shoko! Where are you little fox?”
She listened again but all she heard was faint echoes of her own shout… and then after a moment, a faint far-off whimper.
“Keep calling! I’m coming!”
Chihiro waded though the verdant grassy green sea of vegetation, stumbling as she found that the grass hid many small hollows and dips. On cresting a small rise, she spotted a flattened patch of the tall grass, with a dark blob in the centre.
Heedless of the pitfalls she ran, until she flung herself forward into the nest of crushed grass stems, landing on her knees next to a small whimpering bundle of fur and misery.
Chihiro scooped up the unhappy fox cub into the hollow of her lap, and started petting her, babbling soothing nonsense as her deft fingers wandered over the small shivering form, looking for signs of injury.
Her hands stilled as she found the cubs left hind leg, and the matted area sticky with freshly dried blood.
“Oh Shoko, what have you done to yourself? Never mind, we’ll get the school nurse to treat it as soon as we get back. Now… how am I to carry you?”
Taking her jumper off, she used several safety pins from her pocket to improvise a sling, and tucked the shivering unprotesting fox cub into it. Slowly she stood up, one hand on Shoko’s scruff in case she panicked and tried to flee again.
But the little fox cub just settled deeper into the sling until only the tip of her nose showed. Carefully Chihiro sent off, grateful that the waist high grass made retracing her steps easier. As she walked she thought.
It felt like summer here, possibly even late summer. Underneath her fur, Shoko was skin and bones, her rusty pelt was grey, almost black in places, with dirt. Chihiro strongly suspected that time was passing differently here. For her it had only been minutes since Shoko ran off, but this little fox cub showed signs of months of neglect and sickness. Possibly because she’d been here, wherever here was, for ages longer.
She picked up the pace, although days here could be minutes back home, it could also work the other way around, and minutes here could be days back home. She really didn’t want to worry everyone by vanishing for days!
Finding the bit of scarlet ribbon tied to the branch that marked her entrance into this world, Chihiro stopped to consider. She couldn’t scrabble through the thick undergrowth carrying Shoko the way she was. There’d barely been enough room for her, much less a bundle slung around her waist or on her back.
Chihiro decided, she would have to make a stretcher and pull it behind her. Mind made up, she searched for fallen branches to make it. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for, and using more lengths of red ribbon from the spool she lashed together a sort of A frame, no wider than she was.
Unbundling the worryingly still fox cub, she slid her jumper over the frame, then with a few rough stitches from the sewing kit she always had with her, she closed the bottom end of her jumper turning it into a bag. She slid the little fox cub inside though the neck hole, and tied her in place using the arms so she wouldn’t fall out, or the sweater slide off the frame. That done she spent a few minutes braiding the remaining ribbon into a sort of rope, and lashed that to the point of the A frame before tying the other end around her waist.
Taking a deep breath, and grateful now for the first aid lessons where she’d been taught how to make a stretcher, Chihiro set off along the rough path. As she dragged the stretcher behind her, using her finger tips to guide her along the trail of disturbed dirt and leaf litter, she clambered on all fours up the steep slope.
By the time she reached the top, her lungs were burning from the effort. She just lay in the dirt there a moment, catching her breath and all too aware that the next part was the hardest. Now that she was moving slower, her eyes had time to adjust to the darkness and she found that there was a faint shimmer of sickly green light coming from the leaf litter, some sort of bioluminescent fungus growing in the rich humus.
Navigating by this uncertain light was easier, she could see where she’d been by the faintly brighter patches of dirt she’d scuffed up, and there was just enough illumination to discern the twists and turns of the tunnel-like passage. Chihiro had to force herself not to hurry, getting snagged here would be a disaster. Less haste and more speed was very much the way forward.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours of torturous inching through malevolent undergrowth, Chihiro burst out into the sunlight with a sob of relief. The quad looked no different. With rising hope, Chihiro untied the stretcher and picking up the fox cub out of it, she abandoned it half in and half out of the bushes, in favour of running for the school nurses office with the little fox cub in her arms.
Chihiro slammed open the doors with her shoulder calling out.
“Please, help.. Shoko’s sick and injured!”
The school nurse started up from where she had been sitting at her desk, and peered at Chihiro over her glasses.
“That’s not Shoko.”
“It is! She’s a kitsune, this her in fox form!”
The nurse opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the swish of the curtains drawn around the bed being opened.
“That’s not me Chihiro!”
Chirhiro stared, open mouthed, at Shoko peering through the gap in the curtains. She shook her head.
“Well… if you’re here, then who’s this?!”
Shoko shrugged.
“Don’t know... but you’re right about her being a kitsune! Where’d you find her?”
Chihiro opened her mouth to try and explain, but she found herself slumping to sit on the floor as the world spun around her and went black.
When she came round, Chihiro found herself lying in the other of the two beds in the nurses office. She sat up abruptly and looked around, panicking for moment. There was a soft ‘yip’ from the bottom of the bed, and the kitsune cub from before lifted her head from where she was nestled in hollow in blankets at the bottom of the bed, between Chihiro’s ankles.
Chihiro leaned forward and petted the small cub between the ears, noticing the bandage around it’s bad leg.
“Hey little one, feeling better?”
The little fox cub didn’t answer, but the way it lay grooming itself seemed to indicate yes.
Chihiro leaned over and tugged the curtains open a few inches. There was no sign of the nurse, but Shoko was sitting in the next bed over.
“Hey Shoko?”
“Hiya Chihiro! You ok now? You had us worried falling down like that!”
“Yeah, I’m ok… bit sore due to the scratches, but ok. Can you talk to this little one?”
Shoko shrugged.
“Yes and no… if she could talk I could, but she’s only a baby and not talking yet. Where did you find her?”
Chihiro sighed, and explained about the gap in the bushes and how it led to another world. Shoko listened raptly, her eyes growing wider and wider until she exclaimed at the end.
“Oh I wish I’d been there with you! Mother Inari’s told me stories about openings to other worlds like that. They used to be.. well not common, but not unknown. Back when magic was stronger, they’d sometimes open at random for no good reason. There were even some that could be predicted, like the tides. But she said there hasn’t been any in ages … I guess thanks to Paul-sama, that’s changing and they’re coming back.”
Chihiro blinked, stilling for a second, then smiled slowly.
“So… that’s where the stories come from is it? I got lucky and found the first one…”
“Yeah… small shrines usually got placed in front of where regular ones would open, marking the spot, warding off evil spirits, or just for good luck. You got lucky, ‘cause it didn’t close before you came back.”
A shiver went down Chihiro’s spine at the idea of being trapped in that realm for who knows how long. Thinking back, she didn’t recall seeing any other living thing apart from the fox cub… not even insects now that thought about it.
“Do places like that always open to the same realm, or can they swap? Like… I don’t remember seeing anything else living there, aside from the cub, and I wonder if she might not have wandered in from somewhere else?”
Shoko nodded.
“Mother Inari told me that some realms can act like shortcuts, they have multiple openings to different places. Some of the openings stay fixed on one side, and switch from place to place at the other. Like the doorway in that anime, you know, the one with the moving castle.”
Chihiro nodded, she’d seen that film.
“So, she could be from anywhere really, or even any when! She got lost and ended up there with nothing to eat.”
Shoko nodded slowly.
“Yeahh… not that a cub that age could hunt anyway. I’m not sure she’s even old enough to change forms yet, and that’s the first thing you learn!”
“Huh… well. I guess I’d better ask my momma if she can stay, since she’ll need someone to look after her!”
“Inari could do that!”
“You said Inari is busy.. besides, maybe I was supposed to find her! But either way, you can come round and play with your new baby sister anytime.”
Shoko slowly smiled..
“Baby sister… yeah I’d like that. Although she’s kinda more like your daughter, since you found her!”
Chihiro’s eyes went wide.
“I’m too young to be a mother! Besides, she’s a kitsune, if she’s to be anyone’s daughter, she’d be yours!”
“Hoi! I’m not old enough either! In kitsune years I’m the same age as you! Besides, that’d make her our daughter anyway!”
Chihiro grinned mischievously.
“Ah, so you’ll take responsibility then? I can’t wait to explain to Inari when she gets back, that you have a daughter with me now!”
Chihiro had to laugh at the look of horrified dismay on Shoko’s face. Revenge for all her teasing, was indeed sweet.