The night had been unusually peaceful.
After spending most of the day traveling in search of another rumored Shikon Jewel shard that had turned out to be nothing more than a strangely colored stone in the possession of an elderly farmer, the group had decided to make camp earlier than usual. Inuyasha had complained about wasting daylight, of course, but even he had eventually settled into his usual place against a nearby tree while everyone else prepared for the night.
Kagome had fallen asleep sometime after Shippō curled himself against her side. She didn’t know how long she had been sleeping when something changed. There was no sound to wake her. No scream from one of her friends, no approaching demon, and no familiar shout from Inuyasha telling everyone to get up. Instead, Kagome simply became aware that she was no longer asleep.
At least, she didn’t think she was.
Opening her eyes, Kagome stared upward and immediately knew something was wrong. There were stars above her. Thousands of them stretched farther than she could see, scattered across an endless expanse of deep blue that looked like the night sky and yet somehow wasn’t. There was no moon that Kagome could find, but pale silver light still washed gently across everything around her.
Slowly sitting up, Kagome looked around. “What the…”
She wasn’t in the forest anymore. That much was obvious. Instead, she sat upon the smooth floor of what appeared to be an enormous open chamber. Tall pale columns surrounded the space, disappearing upward until they seemed to blend into the stars themselves. Beyond them was nothing but darkness and distant points of light, giving Kagome the strange impression that the entire chamber existed somewhere suspended between earth and sky.
Despite having no idea where she was, Kagome wasn’t afraid, and that frightened her more than the chamber itself. She should have been terrified. She had gone to sleep in the Feudal Era surrounded by her friends and awakened somewhere completely unfamiliar. Inuyasha was nowhere in sight. Neither were Sango, Miroku, Shippō, or Kilala.
Yet something about this place felt familiar.
Safe.
Kagome slowly pushed herself to her feet and looked around again. “Inuyasha?”
Nothing answered.
“Sango? Miroku?”
Silence.
“Shippō?”
Still nothing.
Kagome frowned and reached instinctively for her bow, only to discover that it wasn’t there. That was when she noticed her clothes.
Her breath caught.
The familiar green and white of her school uniform was gone. Pure white fabric flowed down her body instead, soft and impossibly light against her skin. The gown hugged her comfortably before falling gracefully toward the floor, while a sheer shawl of the palest blue rested around her back and hooked delicately around her arms.
“What am I wearing?”
Her fingers caught the edge of the shawl, and the instant she touched it, something inside her shifted. Kagome froze as something that almost felt like a memory flashed through her mind. Moonlight. A woman laughing. Small hands smoothing white fabric. Blue light reflecting from something she couldn’t see. The feeling of standing beneath an enormous night sky without being afraid of anything beneath it.
Then it was gone.
Kagome sucked in a breath and looked down at the shawl still caught between her fingers. “What was that?”
No answer came.
She lifted the fabric again and studied it more closely, expecting it to feel strange now that the moment had passed. It didn’t. That was the problem. The gown didn’t feel like something someone had put her in while she slept. It didn’t feel ceremonial or foreign, and it certainly didn’t feel like a costume created by whatever bizarre dream she had somehow found herself trapped inside.
It felt familiar.
Kagome slowly ran her hand over the white fabric covering her waist, and a single thought entered her mind with such certainty that she didn’t question it until after it had already formed.
Mine.
Her hand stopped. “No.”
She didn’t own anything like this. She had never owned anything like this. Her mother certainly would have remembered a gown that looked as though it belonged to some moon princess from one of the fairy tales Grandpa used to tell her when she was little.
And yet Kagome knew the way the shawl was supposed to sit against her arms. She knew that if she turned too quickly, the fabric would catch behind her before settling again.
She knew the gown was hers.
She just didn’t know how she knew.
Kagome lifted one hand to her head as an uncomfortable pressure began building behind her eyes. “Okay. Definitely dreaming.”
That explanation made sense. Or at least more sense than anything else currently happening. Kagome pinched the inside of her arm and immediately yelped.
“Ow!”
She released herself and rubbed the reddening skin. “Well, that was useless.”
Her voice echoed softly through the chamber. Kagome sighed before turning slowly in place again.
“All right. If this is a dream, then apparently my subconscious has developed expensive taste.”
She took a cautious step forward and then another. The chamber remained silent around her as she moved toward one of the pale columns and placed her hand against it. The surface was cool beneath her palm. Solid. Real enough that she could feel tiny imperfections beneath her fingertips.
Dreams weren’t supposed to have this much detail. At least hers usually didn’t. Most of Kagome’s dreams involved falling, being chased by demons, arriving at school completely unprepared for an exam, or some horrible combination of all three.
None of them had ever felt like this.
She continued farther into the chamber, studying everything she could as she walked. There were no doors that she could see and no obvious path leading out. The strange stars overhead provided more than enough light to see by, but whenever Kagome tried to focus on what existed beyond the columns, the darkness seemed to stretch farther away.
The strangest part remained the feeling in her chest.
She knew this place.
Not consciously. She couldn’t name it or remember ever being here before, but something deep inside her recognized it with the same certainty with which she had recognized the gown.
Kagome stopped walking and slowly looked across the chamber. “Have I been here before?”
The question disappeared into the silence.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Kagome felt it.
Someone else was there.
Her body tensed immediately. She spun around, one hand instinctively reaching for the bow that still wasn’t there as she searched the chamber for whoever had entered. At first she saw nothing. Then a figure stepped from behind one of the pale columns.
A woman.
Long black hair fell around her shoulders and down her back, moving slightly despite the complete absence of wind. Her clothing belonged unmistakably to another age, and there was something strange about the way the silver light passed across her body.
Kagome took a cautious step backward, and the woman stopped.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
Then the stranger’s eyes moved slowly over Kagome. They lingered on her gown, her hair, her face, and then, strangely, her ears. Something changed in the woman’s expression. Shock. Recognition. And something Kagome couldn’t identify.
The woman whispered her name.
“Kagome.”
A chill traveled down Kagome’s spine. She had never met this woman. She was certain of that. Yet there was something familiar about her too.
Kagome stared at the stranger, searching through every face she could remember until recognition finally struck.
There was only one reason Kagome knew that face.
The Shikon Jewel.
The stories Kaede had told them.
The ancient battle that had created the sacred jewel she now carried inside her body.
Kagome’s eyes widened. “You’re…”
The woman watched her silently.
“Midoriko?”
The legendary miko gave a small nod.
Kagome stared at her, then looked around the impossible chamber, down at the mysterious white gown, and finally back at the very dead woman standing several feet away from her.
A long moment passed before Kagome closed her eyes and sighed.
“Oh, come on.”
Midoriko blinked.
Of all the reactions she had apparently expected from Kagome, that had not been one of them.
Kagome opened her eyes again and found the ancient miko still standing exactly where she had been. “Sorry. It’s just that usually when someone who has been dead for hundreds of years suddenly appears in front of me, something terrible happens shortly afterward.”
One of Midoriko’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
Kagome thought about what she had just said. “Actually, now that I think about it, I have an uncomfortable amount of experience with dead mikos suddenly appearing in my life.”
Something almost resembling amusement passed through Midoriko’s expression before disappearing.
Kagome sighed and lowered her hand. “Please tell me this is just a dream.”
“It is not.”
Kagome stared at her.
Midoriko stared back.
“Oh.”
That answer was significantly worse.
Another possibility immediately entered Kagome’s mind. She looked down at herself, then quickly began patting her arms, stomach, and chest as though she might somehow discover the answer written somewhere on her body.
“Wait. If I’m not dreaming, am I dead?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I believe I would recognize death.”
Kagome paused. Considering who she was speaking to, that was probably a fair point.
“Okay.” She released a slow breath and tried to organize her thoughts. “Not dreaming. Not dead. Then where am I?”
Midoriko’s gaze moved around the chamber. “That is more difficult to answer.”
“That’s comforting.”
“I believe we are somewhere within you.”
Kagome stared at her.
“Within me.”
“Yes.”
Kagome looked down at her stomach.
Midoriko’s eyebrow rose again.
“I know you probably don’t mean physically,” Kagome said defensively. “I’m processing.”
This time there was no mistaking the faint amusement in Midoriko’s eyes.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Only slightly.”
For some reason, that answer helped.
Just a little.
Kagome looked around the chamber again. If Midoriko was right, then somehow all of this existed inside her. The pale columns, the endless stars, the strange silver light, and the feeling of familiarity she couldn’t explain were all parts of something within her own mind or soul.
The thought should have made the chamber feel less intimidating.
It didn’t.
“How did you get here?”
Midoriko’s amusement faded. “I am not entirely certain.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
That was not the answer Kagome had expected from the legendary priestess responsible for the creation of the Shikon no Tama.
Midoriko stepped farther into the chamber and slowly studied their surroundings. “I have been aware of you for some time, Kagome. The Jewel has connected us in ways neither of us completely understands. Until tonight, however, I had never been able to reach you like this.”
“Why tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
Kagome frowned.
“Something changed,” Midoriko continued.
Those two words sent an uncomfortable chill through Kagome. “What?”
“I cannot tell you yet.”
“Because you don’t want to?”
“Because I do not know.”
Kagome’s frown deepened.
She had expected Midoriko to have answers. The woman was practically a legend. Her soul had battled inside the Shikon Jewel for centuries, and everything Kagome had ever heard about her made her seem impossibly powerful and wise.
Apparently, even legendary mikos could be confused.
That was both reassuring and deeply inconvenient.
“So you suddenly found yourself here too?”
“Not quite.” Midoriko moved closer to one of the pale columns and rested her fingertips against its surface. “I felt something.”
Kagome waited.
“Something familiar.”
Midoriko turned toward her, and Kagome immediately noticed the way the woman’s expression changed again.
There it was.
That same strange look from before.
Her eyes moved over Kagome’s face before traveling upward toward her hair and then down toward the gown covering her body. Finally, her gaze settled near the side of Kagome’s head.
“What?”
Midoriko didn’t answer.
Kagome reached up and touched her hair. “Is there something on me?”
Still nothing.
“Midoriko?”
The ancient miko slowly approached.
Kagome held her ground, though the intensity of the woman’s stare was beginning to make her uncomfortable.
“You truly do not know.”
The words were barely above a whisper.
“Know what?”
Midoriko stopped in front of her, her gaze shifting once more toward Kagome’s ears.
Kagome finally reached up and touched one.
Her fingers stopped.
For a moment, she didn’t understand what she was feeling. Then her eyes widened.
The upper edge of her ear was wrong.
Not dramatically. It had not somehow transformed into one of the long pointed ears she associated with Sesshōmaru or other humanoid yōkai. But the rounded shape Kagome had known for the last three years was gone. The tip narrowed into a subtle, elegant point beneath her fingers.
Kagome quickly touched the other one.
It was the same.
“What happened to my ears?”
Midoriko’s expression tightened.
Kagome moved toward one of the smooth columns and tried to catch her reflection in its polished surface, but the pale stone offered nothing useful. She lifted both hands to her ears again, running her fingertips over them as though touching them enough times might somehow make them return to normal.
“They weren’t like this when I went to sleep.”
“I know.”
Kagome turned sharply. “You know?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Midoriko didn’t answer immediately.
Kagome’s hands slowly fell away from her ears. “You keep looking at me like you know something.”
“I know something is familiar.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Kagome waited.
Midoriko looked at her again, but this time Kagome paid closer attention. The woman wasn’t merely studying the strange ears. Her attention moved across Kagome’s entire appearance, lingering on details Kagome herself had barely considered.
The gown. The shawl. Her hair. Her eyes. Her ears.
It was not curiosity.
It was recognition.
Kagome’s stomach tightened. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
For the first time since appearing, Midoriko seemed uncertain how to answer.
“Midoriko.”
The ancient miko’s dark eyes met hers.
“Because you look like something I thought I would never see again.”
Kagome’s breath caught. “What?”
Midoriko raised one hand toward Kagome’s face before stopping just short of touching her. Her expression had softened into something Kagome couldn’t understand. There was wonder there, but also sadness.
“I do not yet know.”
The answer did nothing to make Kagome feel better.
“You can’t tell me that I look like some mysterious something you thought you’d never see again and then say you don’t know what it is.”
“I know what I recognize. I do not yet understand why I recognize it in you.”
“That somehow makes even less sense.”
“I know.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I cannot. Not yet.”
Frustration immediately pushed through Kagome’s confusion. “That sounds a lot like refusing.”
Midoriko gave her a patient look. “There is a difference between withholding an answer and not yet possessing one.”
Kagome opened her mouth and then closed it. She hated when people made reasonable points while she was irritated.
Midoriko’s gaze returned to the gown. “This clothing. Do you recognize it?”
Kagome looked down. “Yes.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
That earned her a confused look.
Kagome caught the edge of the soft blue shawl between her fingers. “I know that doesn’t make sense. I don’t consciously remember wearing it. But when I touched it, I knew it was mine.”
Midoriko became very still.
“I saw things too. Just for a second.”
“What things?”
“Moonlight, I think. Someone laughing. Hands touching the fabric. Blue light.” Kagome frowned as she tried to catch memories that had already disappeared. “I don’t know. It was gone almost immediately.”
“And you remember nothing else?”
“No.”
“Nothing about this place?”
Kagome looked around. “I feel like I should.”
Midoriko’s expression grew more serious. “That is what troubles me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You recognize things you cannot properly remember.”
The simple statement sent another chill through her.
Kagome glanced down at the gown. The shawl still felt familiar beneath her fingers. She touched one pointed ear again.
“What happened to me?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer came more gently this time.
Before Kagome could respond, Midoriko suddenly turned toward the far side of the chamber. Her entire posture changed.
“What?”
Midoriko said nothing.
She began walking.
“Midoriko?”
Kagome hurried after her.
The farther they moved through the chamber, the stronger the strange pressure inside Kagome’s chest became. It wasn’t painful, but something seemed to be pulling her forward. Calling to her.
She pressed one hand over her heart. “Do you feel that?”
“Yes.”
That answer made Kagome quicken her steps.
The columns gradually opened into another section of the chamber, and Kagome’s attention immediately landed on something that had not been visible before.
A small table stood alone beneath the strange silver light.
Something rested upon it.
Kagome slowed.
It was a box.
Beautiful, but surprisingly simple compared to everything surrounding it. Its surface was pale and smooth, decorated with markings Kagome couldn’t read but somehow felt she should understand. Around the box was a chain, and at the front of that chain sat a lock.
Kagome stopped breathing.
She had never seen it before. She knew that with absolute certainty. Yet the instant her eyes landed on the box, something deep inside her ached.
Not physically.
Deeper.
Kagome took one step toward it and then another.
“Kagome.”
She barely heard Midoriko.
Her entire attention remained fixed on the box. The strange pull in her chest grew stronger with every step. She didn’t know what was inside. She didn’t know why it was locked. She didn’t know why simply looking at it made her want to cry.
But she needed to touch it.
Kagome lifted her hand.
Midoriko caught her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Kagome froze, her hand suspended only inches above the locked box as Midoriko’s fingers tightened around her wrist.
“Why?”
Midoriko’s attention remained fixed entirely on the box. “I don’t know what will happen if you touch it.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know I shouldn’t?”
Midoriko slowly released her wrist. “Because the moment you reached for it, everything around you changed.”
Kagome’s hand immediately dropped to her side. “What changed?”
“Your spiritual energy.”
“What about it?”
“It reacted.”
“To the box?”
“Yes.”
Kagome looked toward it again.
Nothing appeared unusual. The pale surface remained perfectly still beneath the silver light, the strange markings decorating it giving no indication that it was anything more than an elaborate container. The chain surrounding it was different. Thick links crossed over the lid and wrapped tightly around every side, all of them meeting at the heavy lock positioned at the front.
The longer Kagome stared at it, the stronger the ache inside her became.
She pressed one hand against her chest. “Why does looking at it hurt?”
“Where?”
Kagome frowned as she tried to determine the answer. “I don’t know.”
“That is not particularly helpful.”
“I know.” Kagome closed her eyes for a moment. “It isn’t my chest. Not really. It just feels like it is because I don’t know where else to put it.”
Midoriko remained silent.
Kagome opened her eyes again and stared at the box. “It feels like I’m missing something.”
The words had left her before she fully understood them.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Midoriko’s attention shifted sharply toward her. “Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Kagome.”
“I really don’t.” Frustration crept into her voice. “I’m apparently inside myself, wearing clothes I recognize but can barely remember, my ears are suddenly pointed, and now there’s a box I’ve never seen before making me feel like I’ve lost something I didn’t even know I had. I’m a little confused.”
Midoriko considered her words before nodding. “Understandably.”
Kagome sighed.
At least someone was acknowledging it.
Turning her attention back toward the table, she carefully stepped around it without reaching for the box again. The markings covering its surface caught her attention, and she leaned closer to inspect them.
“Do you know what these say?”
“No.”
Kagome looked over her shoulder. “Really?”
Midoriko gave her a mildly unimpressed look.
“Sorry. Legendary miko. Ancient Jewel. I thought it was worth asking.”
“I have never seen these markings before.”
That answer bothered Kagome more than she wanted it to. Midoriko had lived centuries before Kagome had been born. If the markings were ancient and even she didn’t recognize them, then where had they come from?
Kagome reached toward one without thinking.
“Kagome.”
Her hand stopped. “I’m not touching the box.”
“You are about to.”
“I was going to touch the writing.”
“The writing is on the box.”
Kagome stared at her.
Midoriko stared back.
“Fine.”
Kagome withdrew her hand, catching the smallest hint of amusement in Midoriko’s eyes before it disappeared again.
“So what do we know?”
“Very little.”
“That seems to be becoming a theme tonight.”
“This place exists somewhere within you. Your appearance here differs from your physical appearance, and you recognize those differences despite having difficulty consciously accessing the memories attached to them.”
Kagome touched the edge of her shawl. “And this box is also within me.”
“Yes.”
“Which means whatever is inside it is probably connected to me.”
“That would be my assumption.”
Kagome stopped on the opposite side of the table. “Then why is it locked?”
Midoriko did not answer.
Kagome looked at the chain as the question settled heavily between them. If this place truly existed somewhere within Kagome, then who had put the box here?
More importantly, who had locked it?
“Did I do this?”
Midoriko looked toward her.
“Could I have locked it somehow and forgotten?”
“It is possible.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No.”
Kagome’s stomach tightened. “Why?”
“Because seals created by the self generally feel like the person who created them.”
“And this doesn’t feel like me?”
“I cannot say with certainty.”
“That sounds suspiciously like another way of saying no.”
Midoriko ignored the comment.
She studied the lock for several moments before slowly lifting one hand toward it. Unlike Kagome, she stopped well before touching the metal.
“There are layers here.”
“What kind of layers?”
“Spiritual ones.”
Kagome stepped closer as Midoriko closed her eyes. For several moments, nothing happened. Then Kagome felt a faint pulse move through the chamber, and the stars overhead seemed to brighten.
Midoriko immediately opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.
The light returned to normal.
“What was that?”
“A warning.”
“From the box?”
“From whatever is protecting it.”
For the first time since seeing it, the pull Kagome felt toward the box was joined by genuine fear.
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell if it’s dangerous?”
Midoriko hesitated. “I do not believe what is inside is dangerous to you.”
The careful wording did not escape Kagome. “But?”
“The seal itself may be.”
Kagome stared at the lock as her mind immediately began supplying possibilities, none of them pleasant.
A curse.
A demon.
Something connected to Naraku.
Something connected to the Jewel.
The Jewel.
Kagome slowly touched the place where the Shikon no Tama rested within her. “Midoriko, could this have something to do with the Jewel?”
“Perhaps.”
For the first time all night, Kagome felt as though she had found a thread she could actually follow.
“The Jewel was inside me before I even knew it existed. Maybe whatever this is happened because of that. You said you were connected to me through the Jewel. Maybe that’s why you can be here. And if this place is inside me, then maybe the box has something to do with why the Jewel was inside me in the first place.”
“It is possible.”
“And if it has something to do with my spiritual energy…”
Kagome stopped as an obvious explanation finally occurred to her.
“Oh.”
Midoriko looked toward her. “What?”
“I think I know what this is about.”
Midoriko’s expression remained cautious. “Explain.”
“My soul.”
The ancient miko went completely still.
Kagome didn’t notice. She was looking at the box again, pieces beginning to arrange themselves into an explanation that fit everything she already knew.
“That has to be it. Kaede said souls and spiritual power are connected, right? And mine has always been unusual because of what happened.”
“What happened?”
Kagome glanced at Midoriko.
Something about the woman’s expression made her hesitate. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
It had never occurred to Kagome that Midoriko might not know. Everyone knew. At least, everyone important to Kagome’s life in this era knew.
“About me and Kikyo.”
Midoriko’s expression changed.
Not recognition.
Confusion.
“Kikyo,” Kagome repeated. “The priestess who guarded the Shikon Jewel fifty years ago.”
“I know who Kikyo is.”
“Oh.”
Kagome relaxed.
Then Midoriko added, “I do not know what she has to do with you.”
Kagome blinked. “What?”
Midoriko waited.
Kagome gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “Well…everything, apparently.”
The confusion in Midoriko’s eyes deepened.
“That’s probably why my spiritual energy feels strange to you. It would explain why there might be something unusual about my soul too.”
Midoriko stepped closer. “What are you talking about?”
Kagome finally looked directly at her.
“I’m Kikyo’s reincarnation.”
The silence that followed was complete.
Kagome waited for Midoriko to respond, but the ancient miko simply stared at her.
“What?”
Midoriko’s face had gone unnervingly still. “Kagome.”
Something in her voice caused Kagome’s stomach to tighten. “Yes?”
“Who told you that?”
Kagome frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Who told you that you are Kikyo’s reincarnation?”
“Kaede did. And Inuyasha knows. Kikyo knows. Everyone knows.”
Midoriko looked from Kagome to the locked box and then back again.
When she spoke, her voice was very quiet.
“Tell me everything.”
Kagome shifted uncomfortably beneath Midoriko’s stare. “Everything?”
“Everything you know about your connection to Kikyo.”
Kagome glanced toward the locked box before looking back at her. “Okay.”
She wasn’t entirely sure where to begin. The story had become so tangled over the years that explaining it to someone who knew nothing about what had happened almost made Kagome realize how strange it actually was.
“Kikyo guarded the Shikon Jewel fifty years before I came here. She and Inuyasha…” Kagome hesitated. Even after all this time, explaining that particular part still carried an uncomfortable weight. “They loved each other. Naraku tricked them into believing they had betrayed one another, Kikyo died, and the Jewel was burned with her body.”
Midoriko listened without interrupting.
“Then I was born five hundred years later. On my fifteenth birthday, Mistress Centipede pulled me through the Bone-Eater’s Well because she could sense the Jewel inside me.”
“The Jewel was inside your body?”
Kagome nodded. “Apparently from birth. I didn’t know it was there until she ripped it out.”
Midoriko’s expression tightened slightly at that description, but she said nothing.
“That was how I met Inuyasha. He had been sealed to the Sacred Tree for fifty years, and I released him because Mistress Centipede was trying to kill me. After that, Kaede realized I looked like Kikyo and eventually figured out I was her reincarnation.”
“Because you resembled her?”
“Well, not just because of that. I had the Jewel.”
“The Jewel returning through you was considered proof?”
“I guess.”
Midoriko’s expression remained unreadable.
Kagome suddenly felt the need to defend an explanation she had never thought required defending before. “There was more proof later.”
“What proof?”
“Urasue.”
Midoriko waited.
“She was an ogress who stole Kikyo’s ashes and made a new body for her out of clay and graveyard soil.” Kagome grimaced slightly. “It was as pleasant as it sounds.”
“And this body lived?”
“Not at first. Urasue needed Kikyo’s soul.”
Midoriko’s eyes sharpened.
“Since I was Kikyo’s reincarnation, her soul was inside me. Urasue kidnapped me and used magic to pull it out.”
The change in Midoriko was immediate. “What?”
Kagome blinked.
“She removed a soul from you?”
“Yes.”
“And placed it into Kikyo’s body?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“No. Most of it came back to me.”
Midoriko stared at her.
“Kikyo kept part of it.”
“How?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Did you die?”
“No.”
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“For a while.”
“But you awakened afterward.”
“Yes.”
“As yourself.”
Kagome frowned. “Of course.”
Midoriko went silent.
“Why are you asking me like that?”
Instead of answering, Midoriko stepped away from the table and began pacing slowly through the chamber.
“If Urasue removed Kikyo’s soul from you, and Kikyo retained a portion of that soul afterward, then what remained inside you?”
“The rest of it.”
Midoriko stopped. “The rest of Kikyo’s soul?”
“Yes.”
“And that soul continued to be you.”
Kagome’s frown deepened. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Neither do I.”
That answer was considerably more frightening.
“What does that mean?”
“It means what you are describing does not match what I can perceive.”
Kagome felt the first stirrings of real fear. “You said something was wrong with my spiritual energy.”
“Yes.”
“Because of Kikyo.”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Kagome stared at her.
“I noticed the disturbance before you told me anything about Kikyo. I knew something within you was divided, but I did not understand why.”
“Divided?”
Midoriko looked at her. “Kagome, come here.”
Kagome hesitated before stepping closer.
Midoriko held out one hand.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to show you something.”
Kagome eyed her hand. “Is this going to hurt?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“That isn’t a very reassuring answer.”
“It is the only honest one I have.”
Kagome sighed before placing her hand in Midoriko’s.
The instant their skin touched, the chamber disappeared.
Kagome gasped as darkness surrounded her, but it was not empty. There was something inside it.
Light.
One source was close. It flickered around Kagome in soft pulses, familiar in a way she couldn’t explain. She felt it surrounding her and passing through her at the same time, as though she were standing inside her own heartbeat.
Farther away was another.
Kagome turned toward it.
That light was different.
Muted.
Faded.
And somehow sad.
She knew it.
“Kikyo.”
The name left her lips without thought.
Midoriko stood beside her in the darkness. “You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
Kagome took a step toward the distant light, but Midoriko tightened her grip on Kagome’s hand.
“Look again.”
“What?”
“Do not look at what you recognize. Look at what separates you.”
Kagome tried.
At first she saw nothing except the two lights. Then she noticed the space between them. They touched in places, thin strands stretching from one toward the other, tangled together so tightly that from a distance they might have appeared to be a single structure.
But they weren’t.
The closer Kagome looked, the more obvious the difference became.
The distant light did not begin inside hers.
It was attached to it.
Kagome stopped breathing.
“No.”
The darkness vanished.
The chamber returned so suddenly that Kagome stumbled backward and ripped her hand away from Midoriko’s.
“What did you do?”
“I showed you what I can perceive.”
Kagome shook her head. “No.”
“Kagome—”
“No. Kikyo’s soul is mine. I mean, it was mine. Before Urasue took part of it.”
Midoriko’s expression softened.
That somehow made everything worse.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to tell me something I don’t want to hear.”
Midoriko was silent.
Kagome’s stomach dropped.
“Oh, no.”
She stepped away.
“Kaede knows about souls. She’s a priestess. Kikyo was her sister. She knew who I was.”
“I am not questioning Kaede’s intentions.”
“Then what are you questioning?”
“The conclusion.”
Kagome stared at her.
“Reincarnation is the continuation of a soul through another life,” Midoriko explained carefully. “The life changes. The body changes. Memories may disappear. But the soul itself remains the soul.”
“Exactly.”
“No.”
Kagome froze.
“What I showed you was not one soul expressing itself through two bodies.”
Kagome shook her head.
“There are two.”
The words struck harder than Kagome expected.
She looked toward the locked box and then back at Midoriko.
“No.”
“I am sorry.”
“Kikyo took part of the soul. That has to be what you’re seeing.”
“If that were true, the portion remaining within you and the portion within Kikyo would possess the same spiritual identity.”
“They do.”
“They do not.”
Kagome’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“The presence attached to you bears its own spiritual identity. You recognized it as Kikyo because it is Kikyo.”
Kagome swallowed. “And the other?”
Midoriko’s gaze moved toward the box.
The ache inside Kagome returned.
Stronger now.
“The other presence is you.”
Kagome stared at the chains. “But you said it was sealed.”
“Most of it appears to be.”
“Most?”
“Whatever was done to you did not remove your soul. If it had, you would not be standing here. You would not have continued living as yourself. But something has suppressed a portion of what belongs to you.”
Kagome slowly pressed one hand against her chest. Her heart was pounding.
“If my soul is mine, then how is Kikyo’s inside me?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why did Urasue pull it out of me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did everyone think it was mine?”
“I don’t know.”
Kagome’s voice rose. “Then how can you be so sure?”
The question echoed through the chamber.
Midoriko did not flinch.
“Because I know the difference between one soul and two.”
Kagome’s anger disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
Of course she did.
Midoriko had spent centuries trapped within the Shikon Jewel, locked in an endless battle of souls. If anyone understood what a soul felt like, it would be her.
Kagome hated that realization.
She turned away and stared into the endless stars beyond the columns as her thoughts moved too quickly to hold. Kaede calling her Kikyo’s reincarnation. Inuyasha staring at her face when they first met. The similarities everyone had pointed out. The Jewel inside her body. Urasue. Kikyo awakening. The sensation of something being ripped from Kagome and then rushing back.
Every moment she had spent wondering whether Inuyasha saw Kagome when he looked at her or merely another version of the woman he had loved first.
Every comparison.
Every insecurity.
Every time she had told herself that being Kikyo’s reincarnation did not mean she had to become Kikyo.
Kagome wrapped her arms around herself. “If I’m not her…”
Her voice sounded strangely small.
Midoriko did not interrupt.
Kagome looked down at the unfamiliar gown that somehow belonged to her, at the hands she knew were hers, and then touched the pointed edge of her ear.
“If I’m not Kikyo’s reincarnation, then who am I?”
Midoriko watched her for a long moment. “You are Kagome.”
Kagome gave a weak, humorless laugh. “That doesn’t really answer the question.”
“No, but perhaps it is where we should begin.”
Kagome closed her eyes.
For fifteen years, she had known exactly who Kagome Higurashi was. Then she had fallen through a well, and after that, everyone had given her another name to carry alongside her own.
Kikyo.
Now, for the first time since entering the Feudal Era, someone was telling her that name had never belonged to her at all.
Kagome opened her eyes and looked toward the locked box.
Two souls.
One belonged to Kikyo.
One belonged to her.
And somehow, most of hers was trapped behind a lock.
A terrifying thought slowly formed.
“If Kikyo’s soul isn’t supposed to be inside me, then what put it there?”
Midoriko did not answer.
Kagome hadn’t really expected her to. Still, hearing another I don’t know would have been better than the silence that followed her question.
“I cannot tell you what placed Kikyo’s soul within you,” Midoriko finally said.
Kagome sighed. “I figured.”
“But we may be able to determine when it happened.”
“How?”
“You said you were born five hundred years after Kikyo died, and the Shikon Jewel was already within your body.”
“Apparently.”
“Yet you knew nothing of Kikyo before coming here?”
“No.”
“You had never heard her name?”
“Not once.”
“Had you heard mine?”
Kagome hesitated. “No.”
“The Shikon no Tama?”
“No.”
“The Bone-Eater’s Well?”
“That was just the old well in our shrine. Grandpa had probably told me twenty stories about it, but Grandpa has a story for everything. I didn’t know any of them were actually true.”
Midoriko nodded slowly. “Then begin there.”
“With Grandpa?”
“With the Well. Tell me exactly what happened the day you came through it.”
“It was my fifteenth birthday.”
Something in Midoriko’s expression changed.
Kagome frowned. “What?”
“Nothing yet. Continue.”
Kagome didn’t particularly like the yet, but she continued anyway.
“I was getting ready for school. Sōta came inside because Buyo had gone into the well house and he was too scared to get him.”
“Sōta?”
“My little brother.”
Midoriko nodded.
“So naturally, being the wonderful older sister that I am, I went to get the cat while making fun of him for being afraid.”
“I assume that decision ended well.”
Kagome gave her a flat look. “A giant centipede woman dragged me through a magical well five hundred years into the past.”
“I see.”
“In my defense, I did save the cat.”
Midoriko’s mouth twitched.
Kagome smiled faintly before the memory dragged her back into more serious territory. “Mistress Centipede came out of the Well and grabbed me. She kept talking about the Shikon Jewel, but I had no idea what she meant. Then something happened. There was this light. My power reacted. I managed to hurt her, she dropped me, and then I landed at the bottom of the Well.”
“And when you climbed out?”
“I was here.”
“In this era.”
“Yes.”
“What happened after that?”
“I found the Sacred Tree. Inuyasha was pinned to it.”
“Kikyo’s arrow.”
Kagome nodded. “Then Mistress Centipede attacked again. She bit into my side and pulled the Jewel out of me.”
Midoriko’s eyes narrowed. “And you survived.”
“Somehow.”
“You released Inuyasha afterward.”
“Yes.”
“And that was when the connection to Kikyo was first recognized?”
Kagome thought about it. “Kaede noticed I looked like her almost immediately.”
“But the claim that you were Kikyo’s reincarnation came after you passed through the Well.”
“Yes.”
Midoriko became quiet.
“What are you thinking?”
“That everything you have told me begins at the same point. Your arrival in this era. The discovery of the Jewel. Your connection to Kikyo. The eventual removal of Kikyo’s soul from your body. All of it follows your passage through the Bone-Eater’s Well.”
Kagome looked away.
She had never thought about it like that.
The Well had always divided her life into two pieces simply because that was when she discovered the Feudal Era. There had been Kagome before the Well and Kagome after the Well.
But if Midoriko was right, the difference might be far greater than Kagome had ever realized.
“How old are you now?”
“Eighteen.”
“And before you were fifteen?”
Kagome blinked. “What about it?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything.”
“That’s incredibly vague.”
“Then it should be easy.”
Kagome stared at her before sighing. “Fine. I grew up at the Higurashi shrine with Mama, Grandpa, and Sōta. My father died when I was little. I went to school. I had friends. I helped around the shrine whenever Grandpa could convince me to. I studied, although apparently not enough according to every teacher I have ever had.”
Midoriko waited.
“What else?”
“Your spiritual abilities.”
Kagome paused. “What about them?”
“When did they first appear?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do not remember?”
“No, I…” Kagome stopped.
She did remember.
At least, she thought she did.
There had never been a single moment when someone sat her down and explained that she possessed spiritual power. It had simply existed.
“I was little.”
“How little?”
“I don’t know. Really little.”
“What could you do?”
The question should have been simple.
It wasn’t.
Images moved through Kagome’s mind. Standing beneath the Sacred Tree at night. Watching tiny lights drift between its branches. Her mother kneeling in front of her. Something glowing between Kagome’s palms. A voice reminding her to be careful.
Kagome pressed one hand against her forehead.
“What is it?”
“I remember.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Midoriko’s brow furrowed.
“I know how stupid that sounds.”
“It does not sound stupid.”
“It feels stupid.”
Kagome closed her eyes.
The memories were there.
That was the strangest part.
They weren’t missing.
Kagome could remember running through the shrine grounds with Sōta. She could remember helping her mother hang laundry outside. She could remember sitting beside Grandpa while he told stories she only half listened to. She remembered school, birthdays, summer festivals, scraped knees, arguments, laughter.
Her childhood was there.
But when she tried to focus on certain pieces of it, something slipped. It was as though she could remember what had happened while some invisible hand kept turning her attention away from what those memories actually meant.
Kagome opened her eyes. “Mama used to teach me something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
Kagome concentrated.
Her mother’s face appeared easily. She was younger in the memory, her hair still long before she had eventually cut it short after Kagome’s father died. She was kneeling in front of Kagome beneath the night sky, both hands wrapped gently around Kagome’s much smaller ones.
Kagome could remember the warmth of them.
She could remember her mother smiling.
She could remember blue light.
Kagome gasped.
The chamber flickered, and for a fraction of a second, the stars above them blazed brilliantly before everything returned to normal.
“I saw that earlier.”
“The blue light?”
Kagome nodded quickly. “When I touched the shawl.”
“What was it?”
“I still don’t know.”
“Was your mother afraid of it?”
“No.”
The answer came instantly.
“You are certain.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because…” Kagome swallowed. “Because she was teaching me.”
Another memory pressed forward.
Kagome standing in the courtyard at home. Moonlight across the stones. Her mother telling her to concentrate. A warmth spreading through Kagome’s body.
The world becoming brighter.
Not because the sun had risen.
Because Kagome could see more of it.
Spiritual traces lingering against the shrine grounds. Tiny points of light floating in the darkness. Things she had once thought everyone could see.
“I could see things.”
“What things?”
“Spiritual energy. Spirits sometimes.” Kagome looked toward Midoriko. “Not like I do now. It was different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know.”
Midoriko nodded toward her. “What about your appearance?”
Kagome’s hand instinctively rose toward her ear. The subtle point beneath her fingers suddenly felt far less unfamiliar.
Something hurt.
A sharp pressure struck behind Kagome’s eyes, and she winced.
“Kagome?”
“I’m fine.”
“You are not.”
“It’s just a headache.”
Midoriko moved toward her, but Kagome waved her off and tried again.
She remembered standing in the bathroom at home. She remembered brushing her hair, except the memory did not match the girl she had believed herself to be.
Her hair was longer.
When moonlight from the window touched it, something blue moved through the black strands.
Kagome opened her eyes. “My hair.”
“What about it?”
“It used to…”
Kagome stopped and grabbed a section of it, pulling it forward. Here, within the chamber, the dark strands caught the strange silver light differently than they did in the waking world.
Blue shimmered through them.
Kagome released it immediately.
“No.”
Midoriko watched her.
“No, I would remember that.”
“You do.”
Kagome stared at her.
“You just did.”
The words struck with uncomfortable force.
“But I’ve looked at pictures of myself. I know what I looked like.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you recognize this gown? Why did you recognize the light? Why did these ears feel unfamiliar only after you consciously noticed them?”
The pressure behind Kagome’s eyes grew stronger.
“Stop.”
Midoriko immediately fell silent.
Kagome turned away and wrapped her arms around herself.
This was too much.
Finding out that Kikyo’s soul was separate from hers had already torn apart something Kagome had believed for years. Now Midoriko was asking questions that made Kagome doubt memories she had never questioned.
Except she wasn’t losing them.
That would have been easier to understand.
They were coming back.
No.
Not coming back.
They had never left.
Something had simply made them almost impossible to understand for what they were.
“What is happening to me?”
Her voice cracked.
“I do not know.”
Kagome laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “You say that a lot.”
“Would you prefer I lie?”
“No.”
Kagome wiped quickly beneath one eye before a tear could fall. “No, I wouldn’t.”
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Midoriko asked quietly, “What is the last thing you clearly remember being different? Before the memories become difficult. Before the things you once understood begin to lose their meaning.”
Kagome stared into the darkness beyond the columns.
She thought about her childhood. Her mother beneath the stars. The blue light. Her hair. The strange little spirits she remembered seeing around the shrine.
Then she thought about the first morning of her fifteenth birthday.
Getting dressed for school.
Arguing with Sōta.
Going into the well house.
Mistress Centipede.
The fall.
Kagome’s eyes widened.
“The Well.”
Midoriko said nothing.
“It was the Well.”
“You are certain?”
“No.” Kagome swallowed. “But everything before it feels different when I actually try to remember it. Everything after…”
She touched her ear again.
“After I came through, I looked the way I do now.”
“Human.”
The word landed strangely.
Kagome looked at her.
Midoriko seemed to realize the implication at the same moment.
Neither of them spoke.
Finally, Kagome nodded. “My powers were different too.”
“How?”
“I thought they were just waking up because of the Jewel. Because of Kikyo. Everyone kept saying my spiritual power came from her.”
Midoriko’s expression hardened slightly.
“But if she isn’t me…”
The thought finished itself.
Her power had never come from Kikyo.
Kagome pressed a hand against her chest. “You said Kikyo’s soul is attached to mine.”
“Yes.”
“And something has sealed part of mine away.”
“Yes.”
“What if those things happened at the same time?”
Midoriko became very still.
“The Well,” Kagome whispered.
For several moments, the only movement in the chamber came from the faint shimmer of stars overhead.
“If your memories are accurate,” Midoriko finally said, “you possessed abilities and physical traits before entering the Well that were suppressed afterward. Kikyo’s soul became connected to you sometime before Urasue was able to remove it, and the first point at which anyone identified you as Kikyo’s reincarnation was after you arrived in this era.”
Kagome nodded.
“Then until we find evidence otherwise, we begin there.”
“With the Well.”
“With your fifteenth birthday.”
The words sent a chill through her.
Kagome turned toward the box again.
Fifteen.
She had always thought of that birthday as the day her real adventure began. The day she found the Feudal Era. The day she met Inuyasha. The day she discovered the Shikon Jewel.
Now, standing inside herself and staring at a piece of her own soul locked behind chains, Kagome wondered if it had also been the day she lost something.
Something she had once known so completely that she hadn’t even understood it could be taken from her.
Kagome lowered her gaze to the white gown and closed her fingers around the pale blue shawl.
This time, when the feeling came, she didn’t push it away.
Mine.
Kagome tightened her grip.
“Yes,” she whispered.
For the first time, she answered the feeling instead of questioning it.
“Mine.”
Midoriko did not correct her.
She simply stood beside Kagome while she held the pale blue fabric between her fingers and stared at the locked box.
The word felt strange, not because Kagome doubted it anymore, but because she didn’t.
The gown was hers. The shawl was hers. Whatever memories had begun slipping through the cracks tonight belonged to her. The blue light she remembered beneath her mother’s hands had been hers. The spiritual abilities she had possessed before falling through the Well had been hers.
And whatever was trapped inside that box was hers too.
Kagome slowly released the shawl.
For years, she had been told that the strongest and strangest parts of herself existed because she had once been someone else. Her spiritual power. The Jewel. Her resemblance to Kikyo. Even her ability to purify things had always been explained through the same answer.
Kikyo.
Kagome had fought against the comparisons almost from the moment she arrived in the Feudal Era. She had argued with Inuyasha when he called her by Kikyo’s name. She had insisted that she was Kagome. She had told herself again and again that being someone’s reincarnation did not mean she had to live the same life.
But somewhere along the way, she had accepted the one thing everyone agreed upon.
She had been Kikyo.
Not in this life. Not in this body.
But once.
“If you’re right…”
“I am.”
Kagome glanced at Midoriko.
“There are many things I cannot explain tonight, Kagome. That is not one of them.”
Kagome swallowed. “If you’re right, then everyone has been wrong about me since I got here.”
“About this, yes.”
“Kaede too.”
“Yes.”
“Inuyasha.”
“Yes.”
“Kikyo.”
Midoriko hesitated only slightly. “If Kikyo believes you are her reincarnation, then yes.”
Kagome lowered her eyes.
That hurt more than she expected. Not because she wanted the belief to be true. She wasn’t sure she ever had. But because so much of the last three years had been built around it.
Kagome had spent years trying not to resent a dead woman for existing before her. She had spent years wondering whether Inuyasha looked at her and saw Kagome or Kikyo. She had spent years comparing herself to someone older, stronger, more graceful, more experienced, and permanently connected to the boy Kagome had once believed she might someday have a future with.
Every time Inuyasha ran to Kikyo, some small part of Kagome had wondered what Kikyo possessed that she did not.
The answer had always seemed obvious.
Kikyo was the original.
Kagome was the reincarnation.
A second life.
Another chance.
A girl who happened to have a different name and a different personality but carried the same soul.
Kagome’s hands curled slowly at her sides. “But I’m not.”
“No.”
Kagome closed her eyes and waited for the realization to hurt.
Instead, something inside her loosened.
Only slightly.
There were too many questions surrounding it for relief to completely settle in, but beneath the fear and confusion was something Kagome had not expected.
Freedom.
She opened her eyes. “If I’m not Kikyo’s reincarnation, then I was never supposed to become her.”
“Did someone tell you that you were?”
“Not exactly. No one ever said I had to become Kikyo. Not like that. But sometimes…” Kagome struggled to find the right words. “Sometimes it felt like everyone was waiting for me to catch up to her. Kikyo was powerful. She knew what she was doing. She was trained. She protected the Jewel. She was…” Kagome sighed. “She was Kikyo.”
“And you are Kagome.”
Kagome gave her a small smile. “You really like saying that.”
“You seem to need to hear it.”
The smile disappeared.
Midoriko’s expression softened. “There is no shame in that.”
For a moment, Kagome couldn’t speak. Then she looked away before Midoriko could see the sudden burning behind her eyes.
Unfortunately, Midoriko had apparently been dead far too long to be fooled by someone pretending not to cry.
“You are allowed to be frightened.”
“I know.”
“You are also allowed to be angry.”
“I know.”
“You do not sound convinced.”
Kagome rubbed quickly beneath one eye. “I said I know.”
Midoriko wisely decided not to argue.
Kagome appreciated that.
She took a slow breath and turned back toward the table. “What happens now?”
“We learn.”
Kagome waited for more.
None came.
“That’s it?”
“For tonight. We have already discovered more than either of us understood when this began.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“No, but attempting to force answers from something we do not understand would be foolish.”
Kagome’s eyes drifted toward the box. “You mean opening it.”
“Especially opening it.”
“But if what’s inside belongs to me—”
“Then we will return it to you.”
The certainty in Midoriko’s voice stopped her.
“But not by tearing apart a seal whose purpose we do not yet understand. We do not know who created it, how it is connected to Kikyo’s soul, or what will happen to you if it is broken incorrectly.”
Kagome’s stomach tightened. “Could it kill me?”
Midoriko was quiet.
Kagome’s heart sank. “That pause was way too long.”
“I do not know.”
“There it is again.”
“Yes.”
Kagome sighed.
“I would rather frustrate you with uncertainty than comfort you with a lie.”
Kagome couldn’t really argue with that.
She moved around the table and crouched slightly to study the lock without touching it. Up close, it seemed even heavier than before. The markings carved across its surface continued onto the chain, disappearing beneath each overlapping link.
“Can you come back?”
Midoriko looked at her.
“After I wake up. Can you come back here again?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so.”
“This is new to me as well.”
“Right.”
“I will try.”
That was enough.
Kagome nodded. “Then tomorrow night.”
Midoriko’s brow lifted slightly. “You have decided this will happen at night?”
“Well, I can’t exactly stop in the middle of fighting a demon and meditate.”
“You meditate?”
Kagome opened her mouth and then closed it.
“I could learn.”
Midoriko almost smiled.
Kagome pointed at her. “I saw that.”
“I did nothing.”
“You were making fun of me.”
“I would never.”
“You absolutely were.”
The faint amusement in Midoriko’s eyes remained, and strangely, the exchange helped.
The chamber no longer felt quite as enormous as it had when Kagome first opened her eyes. The stars were still impossible. The columns still disappeared into darkness. A portion of Kagome’s soul was apparently trapped inside a box she couldn’t open, and the soul of a woman who had died fifty years before Kagome entered this era was somehow attached to her.
None of that had changed.
But she wasn’t alone with it anymore.
“You’ll really help me?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you don’t know what I am?”
Something moved through Midoriko’s expression.
Kagome noticed. “What?”
“I have suspicions.”
Kagome’s eyes widened. “About what?”
“Questions for another night.”
“Oh, no.” Kagome shook her head. “You cannot possibly think you’re getting away with that after everything you just told me.”
“You have learned enough tonight.”
“I strongly disagree.”
“I expected you would.”
“Midoriko.”
“Kagome.”
Kagome stared at her.
Midoriko stared back.
“You are going to be incredibly annoying, aren’t you?”
“So I have been told.”
“By who?”
Midoriko’s expression became suspiciously innocent.
Kagome narrowed her eyes.
Before she could demand an answer, the chamber flickered.
Kagome immediately looked upward as several of the stars disappeared and then returned.
“What was that?”
Midoriko’s amusement vanished. “You are waking.”
The edges of the chamber had begun to blur. The pale columns seemed farther away than they had moments before, and the strange silver light was slowly dimming.
“Wait. I still have questions.”
“I know.”
“A lot of questions.”
“I know.”
“What am I supposed to do until tomorrow night?”
“Live.”
Kagome blinked. “That’s your advice?”
“Yes.”
“That is terrible advice.”
“It has served humanity surprisingly well.”
Kagome would have laughed if the chamber hadn’t chosen that moment to flicker again.
Midoriko’s form became briefly transparent.
The sight erased every trace of humor from Kagome.
“Midoriko?”
“I will find you again.”
Kagome nodded, but fear had already begun twisting through her stomach. The chamber was disappearing faster now, and she looked toward the locked box.
For one horrible moment, Kagome wondered whether she would remember any of this when she woke.
“Midoriko.”
“Yes?”
“If I forget—”
“You will not.”
Kagome looked at her. “How do you know?”
“Because whatever has been done to you is weakening.”
Kagome’s breath caught.
Midoriko looked toward the box. “I do not believe I could have reached you otherwise.”
The answer should have comforted her.
It didn’t.
“Is that dangerous?”
“I don’t know.”
Kagome let out a breath somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Of course you don’t.”
The stars disappeared one by one.
Kagome could feel the forest returning around her.
Cool night air.
The weight of Shippō curled against her side.
The faint crackle of their dying fire.
She could almost hear Inuyasha shifting somewhere above them.
But one question remained.
One thing Kagome needed before she returned to a world where everyone would still believe something about her that was apparently untrue.
“Midoriko?”
The woman’s fading figure turned toward her.
Kagome hesitated. After everything Midoriko had shown her, after seeing the two separate spiritual presences herself, she should not have needed reassurance.
But she did.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
Midoriko’s expression softened.
“Yes.”
Kagome swallowed. “About which part?”
For a moment, Midoriko said nothing.
Then the last of the stars began to disappear behind her.
Midoriko looked into Kagome’s eyes.
“You are not Kikyo.”