Family Ties
Haku smiled to himself. This had been a good idea; Rin was brimming with confidence, and her brown eyes shone with enjoyment. She was smiling. Not a rueful or sarcastic smile but a genuine smile of pleasure. It lit up her face and erased the lines worry had etched around her brow and mouth. For these few moments, Rin was free from her past. Haku had to admit that his human had a gift for these brilliant flashes of insight. His eyes flitted briefly to where she stood. His heart stilled in his breast. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but a steel-tipped staff smacked into his gut, he doubled over, and the opposite end of Rin's staff struck him across the side of his face. His vision blurred and he staggered. He desperately tried to focus his mind so he could numb the pain and stop Chihiro. He had not been concentrating when Rin hit him, and he battled with his body in an effort regain control of his reflexes. Rin danced backwards with a happy shout.
"I WIN, I WIN!"
Finally, Haku managed to access his magic, and the pain subsided. He straightened up only to see Chihiro's body convulse. A blue glow surrounded her. She gave a weak cry of pain and then collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap. Rin gasped, and her staff clattered to the floor. Haku was already running; by the time he reached Chihiro, the glow had faded. He fell to his knees beside her and gently turned her over; she was not breathing. Rin sank to her knees beside him. Haku's mind raced. He knew he did not have much time. He held his hands over Chihiro's chest, diverting his magic away from relieving his throbbing face and stomach and into the foreign anatomy of the human. He shuddered with the strain but had mastered the pain and was managing to maintain his focus. Pain was something he very rarely allowed himself to feel, but he had no time to heal himself; he needed all his magic to help Chihiro. First, he thought he should identify what was wrong and then attempt to correct it.
"I thought that thing only stunned people?" whispered Rin weakly.
"It stuns spirits, she is human," he muttered. Information started to creep into his mind; her heart had stopped beating but seemed to be twitching rapidly, her lungs were still... It was a frustratingly slow process, and as the seconds ticked away, he decided he would not have enough time to do this magically. He bit his lip and forcefully invaded Linca's mind, knowing that her knowledge of humans far exceeded his own.
"Help!" he practically shouted at her. Linca's mind calmly accepted what he told her.
"Her heart is fibrillating; she needs help to get it restarted; humans usually use an electric shock."
"That will kill her surely!" Haku protested.
Images from Linca's mind showed him people in bright uniforms using a machine to shock a human back to life and others practising something called "heart massage." Haku got the message and severed the connection knowing he would need all his concentration. He placed a palm over her heart and hesitated; he did not even know how strong a shock he should use. Linca was on her way, but even flying she would take over ten minutes. He growled at his indecision and then electricity jumped from his hand and dissipated into Chihiro's chest making her jerk. Rin gasped and put her hands to her mouth. Haku tilted back Chihiro's head, pinched her nose, touched his lips to hers and breathed down her throat. He was gratified to see her chest expand and her eyelids fluttered against his cheek. But when he turned his face away, the air rushed from her lungs, and she made no attempt to breathe for herself. Two more breaths yielded the same result, and she still had no pulse. He repeated the process, trying not to panic. This was his fault; he had told her never to touch his sword on a number of occasions. The sword protected itself from being stolen and used by anyone other than him, but he had had no idea that it would try to kill her if she touched it. Then again the thing had so many spells on it was almost semi-sentient. It had a mind of its own.
"Come on, little one," he whispered as he repeated the process for the third time while Rin wept softly.
"Not like this," she whimpered. "Please, not like this. It's far too soon."
"Shhh," Haku murmured in what he hoped was a reassuring way. The shocks were not working. He tore open her tunic and clasped his hands together and started to press down rhythmically on her chest, just as he had seen the humans do in Linca's mind; three breaths to fifteen compressions. He stamped on his fear mercilessly; he could not afford to go to pieces. Chihiro's lips were blue, and her face was deathly pale.
"Please Haku!" Rin wailed. "Don't let her die. Everyone I love gets taken from me!"
Haku said nothing. Rin saw the steely determination in his eyes and knew he was not going to give up on her sister. Haku breathed for Chihiro again and resumed the compressions. He felt a sickening crack beneath his hands and knew he had broken ribs. Dread rose to choke him, and his hands shook.
"Come on," he hissed, "fight for me; you're too stubborn to die this way!" Rin was in a terrible state, hugging herself and trembling all over. When she spoke, she could hardly squeeze her words out between sobs.
"Don't let her go..." she snivelled. "Don't let her be taken from us like they took my child!" Haku was not listening. He felt the barest movement beneath his hands, like a small bird fluttering its wings. He stopped compressions and breathed for Chihiro again.
She swallowed, and her lungs spasmed into life. He sat back and watched her struggle for breath. Her face flushed with colour; he pressed a finger to her neck. Her pulse was strident and belligerent in its strength as if making up for its absence. Chihiro inhaled deeply at last and whimpered. Her lovely face winced, and she opened her expressive hazel eyes. Tears of relief started to run down Haku's face.
"Why does my chest hurt?" she asked weakly. Haku took her hand and clasped it to his chest possessively.
"We thought we had lost you for a moment," he whispered, his voice breaking. She frowned, trying to remember how she had ended up on the floor. Her eyes widened.
"Oh, I was so stupid!" she croaked. "You told me not to touch that thing." She turned her head slightly. "You look terrible," she observed. Haku laughed through his tears.
He pulled her ruined tunic back together while promising himself he was going to buy her something fantastically expensive to replace it. Magically repaired clothes never washed well. Her modesty covered, he put a tentative hand to his face. His right eye was swollen and puffy, and his eyebrow was split open. Blood was dripping slowly down his cheek.
"A combination of Rin's handiwork and you frightening me half to death I think." He smiled and turned to Rin. The spirit woman was staring at the wall; face vacant.
"Rin?" whispered Chihiro. There was no response. Haku put his hand out and shook the spirit woman's shoulder.
"Rin!" he called. "What's wrong?" Rin blinked and looked at him, confused.
"Tori," she said.
"What?" asked Haku.
"Tori," she repeated. Chihiro understood what had happened.
"Who is that Rin?" she asked.
"My daughter."
Haku had carried Chihiro to her bedroom and used magic to stabilise her broken ribs and ease her pain. With two weeks' rest and with a little more magic she would be fine. Chihiro fell asleep under Meeka's protective care. The wood spirit assured Haku she would tell him the moment she had awakened. Now, however, her mistress needed rest, and he needed to clean himself up.
Rin was in Chihiro's sitting room, and she fussed over the dragon, apologising profusely for injuring him.
"It's okay; I was distracted. You won."
"I hardly think being distracted by the near death of your mate-to-be counts as a fair advantage," said Rin. She disappeared into Chihiro's bathroom and emerged with a cloth and a wooden bowl of hot water. She asked Haku to sit, and she started to clean his bruised and bleeding face.
"I can do this myself, Rin, in fact, after some rest I can heal it." He gasped as the hot water made his face sting.
"I made the mess, so I am cleaning it up. Besides I need you fighting fit for a rematch." Haku laughed and winced at the same time.
The living room door slammed open and there stood Linca. The ex-land spirit's normally pale blue skin was purple with rage. Her eyes were pure black; white feathers billowed around her in a cloud; she had just transformed from her owl form.
"I fly all the way from the basement to the practice hall, straining my wing in the process, only to find you have left. I had to find the foreman and ask him where you had gone." She stepped into the room. "You carried her through the bathhouse, Haku, in front of everyone. Half the bathhouse thinks you have murdered her. I could not contradict them because I DID NOT KNOW!" she screamed. "Would it have been too much trouble to let me know how she was?"
"Go easy on him, Linca, he was worried about Chihiro," said Rin calmly.
"He bloody should be worried!" Linca cried and stalked across the room towards the dragon, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake. "Of all the ill-conceived, brainless and stupid things to do! That weapon should be safely locked away in the armoury. What possessed you to put it within her grasp?" Haku looked at the floor.
"Chihiro asked me to bring it; she likes it I think. I have warned her about it, but she must have forgotten." Linca put her hands on her hips.
"When was the last time you warned her about it?" Haku swallowed and looked up into the sprite's unpitying black eyes.
"Two months ago." Linca gagged on her rage.
"You can't expect a human to remember a small detail like that for two months. They forget things; their minds don't work like ours do, information can quickly get lost."
"We forget things too!" Rin said, feeling the need to defend humankind. She was ignored.
"You are perfectly right, Linca," Haku whispered. "It was foolish, but I had no idea that the sword would be that dangerous to her. I would never..."
"Ignorance is no excuse!" Linca snapped.
"I know," Haku replied, now looking truly miserable. Rin tried to rescue the dragon from Linca's verbal onslaught.
"Linca, leave him be, he blames himself much more than you blame him. He had to break three of her ribs to bring her back, and I don't think that..."
"WHAT?" the sprite shrieked and the room seemed to grow a few degrees cooler.
"Enough!" said a weak voice. Chihiro stood in her bedroom doorway. She was breathing shallowly to avoid aggravating her chest, and she looked pale and fragile. Meeka bustled after her.
"Please, mistress, return to bed. You must rest." Chihiro patted the cat-like spirit's shoulder.
"How can I rest with these banshees screaming at each other in the next room?" She shuffled painfully forward. Haku was at her side in a moment.
"Please go back to bed," he said softly.
"No," she replied as she leant on him for support. He helped her to a sofa. Linca just watched as Meeka, Rin and the dragon tried to make her as comfortable as possible. The land spirit still burned with anger, but when her sister's calm gaze fixed on her, she felt it start to evaporate.
"It was two ribs he broke, not three, Linca, and I'm grateful that he did. So I would appreciate it if you did not shout at him. The only idiot in this room is me." Linca opened her mouth to protest, but Chihiro turned from her. She took Haku's hand and gently touched the bruised side of his face. "You are going to have a black eye," she murmured, "but I guess you heal fast." He nodded, and she kissed his brow, careful to avoid the damaged skin. "Stop blaming yourself; this was not your fault."
"I nearly lost you," he whispered his voice catching.
"But you didn't," she said firmly. "It was an accident. You should be pleased; you and Linca saved my life." She turned to Rin. "And there was another advantage to my almost dying. How much do you remember, Rin?"
"Just a name," replied the spirit woman. "And a face; the face of an infant. If she is alive she will be almost full grown now, I think." Chihiro nodded and smiled.
"It's a good start," she sighed.
She then turned back to Linca who was feeling a little left out and ashamed of herself. Her eyes were back to their normal white, and her skin was more white than blue. Chihiro held out a hand to her and Linca took it. Chihiro then took Rin's hand and placed it in Linca's. She then took Haku's hand and placed it on top of her sisters' clasped hands. The three spirits looked at each other, clearly puzzled.
"When I become Haku's mate we shall all be family and you three will need to learn to get along a bit better," she said quietly. "I understand it will be difficult for you all. As a bonded spirit and a former bonded spirit, I know both my mate-to-be and my short, white-eyed sister have little experience of family. I also know that you can't remember any family you may have had, Rin." Chihiro slipped her own hands on top and beneath the spirits' hands and squeezed them gently. "In a human family people are supposed to love and respect each other even when we drive each other crazy. You are all very different, and your personalities will clash, but as family, you must learn to be tolerant of each other." She slipped her hands from theirs and sat back on the sofa looking at each of them in turn. "I will not be here forever; I would hope that the bonds you form now will endure when I have gone."
"Don't say such things," Haku whispered.
"But it is true. I will die one day, and you all must accept that. It would be a great comfort to me to know that I was leaving a mate and siblings behind who will look after each other." She struggled to stand and Meeka, who had been standing by the window watching all this, rushed to her aid. "I'm going to rest now; please keep your voices down." Meeka helped her to the bedroom, and the door closed softly behind her.
The three spirits looked at each other almost shyly. Rin was the first to pull her hand away, and the others followed.
"Do we have to start calling you 'brother'?" Linca asked.
"I don't think so," Haku smiled self-consciously. Linca sighed and hugged him briefly.
"I'm sorry I yelled," she whispered.
"I deserved it," he muttered.
"No you didn't, it was an accident." There was silence again. Rin shuddered and then chuckled.
"I feel like I've been told off by some great and powerful being."
"We have," replied Linca. "A human being; she's just made me feel like a childish imbecile."
"You get used to it," mumbled Haku. "She is quite skilled at making even the powerful, humble. She has even had Zeniba on the ropes from time to time." He looked at the two slightly shell-shocked sisters.
"I need a drink; you're both welcome to join me if you wish." Rin nodded enthusiastically, and Linca grinned.
"I thought you would never ask," sighed the sprite.
Chihiro heard the door to the hallway open and the three spirits leave. She smiled to herself. Meeka smoothed the blankets out around her.
"That was a beautiful thing you did for them, mistress," said the cat-like spirit.
"They will need each other; if there is some sort of mysterious quest I have to go on it will be better if we can all work together."
Meeka nodded, her pink ears pricked forward. She smoothed the ginger fur down on her face and tweaked her whiskers. "It shows maturity of mind on your part I think." The wood spirit's ears flattened, and her golden eyes looked anxious. She wrung her paws and finally said, "I may have done something a little misguided, mistress. Over the last few weeks you seemed so irresponsible and giddy, I thought you might be lacking parental influence in your life."
"What did you do Meeka?" asked Chihiro with a frown. The wood spirit clasped her paw like hands before her, and she confessed all to her mistress. When she was finished Chihiro started to laugh, despite the pain it caused her; she could not help it. In the end, she tried to stifle her giggles by clasping a hand over her mouth, but even then her shoulders still shook.
"Mistress?" asked the spirit, very concerned by Chihiro's behaviour.
"It's alright, Meeka," she gasped. "Your motives were pure. I just wish I could be there when he sees it."
Yuuko Ogino sighed and unzipped the blue sports bag. The bag that she had taken to the spirit world had remained packed for over two weeks. She was usually fastidiously organised and tidy, but she had avoided unpacking this bag. Somehow the act of doing so would resign her to the fact that she had to let her daughter go. She belonged to someone else now, a very attractive young man/thing with beautiful emerald eyes. Yuuko sighed again and unzipped the bag. As the man/dragon had told her, all the cuttings she had taken from the bathhouse gardens had withered and died despite her expert care. All save one. On the bedroom windowsill, in an electric propagator two fleshy leaves poked from the surface of the black compost. The leaves were bright red. She remembered taking that cutting from the base of an orchid that had blooms that changed colour with temperature. However, crossing back to the human world seemed to have altered the plant, and the once green foliage had turned strawberry red. Yuuko could not wait to see what its flowers would look like. She started to unfold stale clothes and sort them into piles for washing.
She had tried to use the orchid as proof of her trip to the spirit world. Akio had remained sceptical. He said that the pressure she was under with having a daughter who was wanted by the authorities was getting too much. The shame was getting to her, and that was understandable. She was starting to imagine what their poor sick daughter had told them was true.
"And some cruel individual keeps sending those letters, probably one of the neighbours' children playing a prank. If I find out who it is, I'm going to drag them straight down the police station." He had taken Yuuko's hands in his. "Listen to me, I don't mean to hurt you, but the police have found no trace of her. She is very probably dead." Yuuko had just smiled.
"She is not dead, Akio, I've seen her. She is healthy, happy and probably very soon to be engaged to a young man who I will be proud to call a son-in-law, as inhuman as he is. You must accept what I say as truth; she was right all along, and we punished her for confiding in us."
"That's your guilt talking; you are allowing yourself to be deluded," he had said quietly.
"No, I'm not, I will be seeing my daughter again in a few months, and if you don't open your mind, you will be barred from her life. You won't see your grandchildren, and you won't see..."
"STOP!" he had yelled in her face. "Just stop! Our daughter was mad, and now she is dead. The sooner you accept that, the better. No more of this; it stops now. The next letter that comes I'm burning. You will not read another one, and that's final!" He had left the house and had only returned the following morning. Yuuko thought that he had probably slept in the car. It was the first time in 26 years of marriage she had seriously contemplated divorce. Where had the carefree young man she had fallen in love with gone?
Yuuko was nearly at the bottom of the bag when her fingers caught on a sharp point. Her hand closed around something square and flat. She lifted it out of the bag and looked at it. It looked like a picture frame. She was looking at the back of it and written in the top left-hand corner in close spidery writing was:
"Show this to your husband."
With a shaking hand, she turned the frame around. An image jumped out at her, literally. Yuuko squeaked and nearly dropped the picture altogether. A perfect illustration of her daughter was standing on the canvas. The picture was in three dimensions, and Yuuko could pass her hand through it but still feel the lumps and bumps of paint under her fingers. It was like a hologram; a sculpture made of light. The detail was awe inspiring. Yuuko could see the individual strands of her daughter's chocolate brown hair that spilled down her back. She could see individual eyelashes and minute pores in her skin. Her daughter was not alone in the picture. The dragon man had his arms wrapped around Chihiro's waist, and Chihiro had her palms pressed flat to his chest. Yuuko's daughter was gazing lovingly into Haku's eyes, and the dragon was smiling back down at her tenderly, jade eyes sparkling and his greenish hair shimmering. Whoever had created the image had captured the moment flawlessly. Yuuko's eyes filled with tears to see her daughter so happy and her heart ached with sadness. She remembered a time when she had looked at her husband like that. These days she rarely even smiled at him; things had to change.
It dawned on her that this was the perfect thing to convince Akio. He could not say this was a trick. The picture was quite obviously made of canvas, paint and wood; yet two incredibly detailed figures jumped out of it. There was nowhere to hide a power source or other mechanics; how could he deny this? Yuuko smiled. She had no idea how her husband would react to seeing his little girl in the arms of a man he did not know. Whoever had sent this was banking on a father's natural protectiveness eclipsing his deep scepticism. Yuuko's smile broadened into a grin. She strolled purposefully down the stairs. Akio was watching baseball and drinking American beer. Yuuko could not stand the weak yeasty tasting concoction and did not like the amount of it Akio drank; it was bad for his health and making him fat. She placed the picture on the kitchen table where he could not fail to see it when he went to the fridge to get another bottle. She went outside humming to herself and waited.
In the garden an hour later Yuuko heard her husband find the picture.
"AHHHH!"
He came rushing into the garden, visibly trembling, his dark eyes wide and staring. He was holding the picture in his hand, and it looked as if Haku and Chihiro were standing on his fingers.
"She... She... Chihiro is..."
"Yes she is alive," said Yuuko and continued to prune back her azalea.
"But where is she?" he gasped.
"In the spirit world, like I told you," said Yuuko sweetly.
"Who?" he asked through gritted teeth, jabbing a finger at Haku.
"That's our soon to be son-in-law, I think," said Yuuko lightly.
"Over my dead body!" he hissed. "She is not marrying some inhuman thing!"
"I think you have very little say in the matter, Akio. After all, you are not her favourite person at the moment," sighed Yuuko. She put her clippers in her pocket and put the cut wood on the compost pile.
"Come," she said to her husband taking his hand. "I will make you a nice cup of tea, and then I will tell you everything about my visit. Then we are going to have a little chat about us."
Akio followed his rather smug wife into the house. After hearing everything, he resolved to visit the spirit world at midwinter with his wife. He would have a long talk with his daughter and a very long talk to this 'Haku,' as he called himself though he thought it unfair that Yuuko was insisting that he joined a gym and had to take her out this weekend. Yes, he had been stubborn, but there was no need for her to be nasty about it, was there?
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