by Carly Chase
“She’s waking up!” the man said, calling out to someone outside the room. In a flash that person was there too, a striking, elegant woman, around 50, with long pure white hair. She was dressed in a pink and white kimono.
Well, of course she is – at this point it’d be stranger if she was wearing jeans. But where am I now – at least in relation to that priest’s house?
Suddenly the man was crouching beside her – it seemed that her bed was on the floor – and reaching to touch her face. Handsome as he was, and drowsy as Anya felt, she didn’t want some random man pawing at her. Her hand shot out almost reflexively and stopped his.
The man looked a bit dejected at that, but compassion still showed in his strangely golden eyes. She’d seen eyes like that before… That young man. No, they weren’t the same person, but…
“Are you a yokai?” she said, her voice thick.
The man looked a little pained as he considered what to say next, but the woman with the white hair answered for him.
“Yes. You are in the village of the kitsune. You are a welcome guest here – do not be afraid. I heard that you were looking after my daughter… I realize that this is probably very strange and awry for you, but we shall not harm you. Especially not him,” the woman said, with a knowing smile directed toward the handsome man.
“Thank you...” was all Anya could manage. It was all too weird, and she needed more rest. Shunning them by shifting over and showing them her back, she reclaimed some more of the sleep her body craved.
“She didn’t seem to recognize me, did she?” Kiba asked Sakura as they spoke quietly outside of the room where Anya lay sleeping.
“These things have not happened before, Kiba. Humans don’t know their destiny in the same ways that yokai do. If she can’t know you the way we know our true loves on sight, then you will just have to let her discover that you belong together the way humans do.”
“But what way is that? How can I possibly love her and want her so much, and yet to her I am a stranger or a possible threat that she has to swat away? What is the meaning of that?”
“It seems like times are changing, Kiba. I won’t lie, there are many yokai women who hoped you would be their match – you are powerful, you lead a clan, and you aren’t entirely unattractive… But this human, she is your destiny for a reason. Things that have never been seen before are happening here, and that means you have to learn, but that learning is probably part of the purpose of your pairing too. Who knows, maybe you herald some kind of new age where yokai and humans are no longer at odds. Maybe your children will be some new kind of yokai nobody has conceived of before – something wonderful. I know not. I only know that destiny does not make bad matches. Just look at your brother and my daughter.”
“Did he tell you, then? He can see Yuki now, it is how he found her.”
“No, no, he didn’t say. But it was clear enough when he was so determined to find her for us. I had been hoping for it for years, truth be told – those two, when they were kids, well, you couldn’t imagine a sweeter pairing.”
“But what should I do now? I was expecting her to wake and see me, you know, see me the way we see our destined loves, and now I don’t know how to treat her at all...”
“Come to know her, Kiba. Humans don’t trust in destiny, we know this. She needs to know you and find her love for you because of your actions and who you are.”
Kiba was filled with the resolve to do just what the wise kitsune matriarch had told him. He just wished he knew what actions that would actually mean.
“Could I ask you for some favors, then, Sakura?”
“Of course. Without you and Ikari my daughter would still be in their hands. Anything you need, if the village can provide it, it is granted.”
“Just some food and water I can offer her. And perhaps some clothing? We had to put her down on the grass on the way back here, and so she probably wants something clean to wear. I doubt there is anything here like the garments she is wearing but… Whatever you might have. I can pay, of course.”
“I’ll see to it. Don’t worry so much, Kiba. What is meant to be is meant to be. We in the village will take care of her basic needs, and you – well, you just need to show her the kind of person you are.”
Kiba saw what Sakura was trying to tell him, but it didn’t make him feel any less anxious. He was 28 years old, the alpha of a clan, and yet when his love had pushed him away with no recognition in her eyes, he had suddenly felt more unsure than he ever had in his life before. He knew Yuki’s mother well. She was an experienced, strong kitsune woman, and kitsune were far more disposed to treating with humans than the tiger clan, but how much did she know about human love, really?
“Thank you,” was all he could really say.
Chapter 9
When she awoke for the second time, Anya felt a lot better. She remembered almost instantly where she was, this time, and the events that had lead to her passing out. The man was there again, though, the good looking one. He was sitting patiently on the floor next to her, with a wooden tray with food in bowls next to him. Anya’s stomach churned noisily at the sight of it.
I wonder how long I was out. It sure feels like my body has something to say about how long it’s been since I last ate…
“I brought you food,” the man said softly, having noticed that she’d woken up.
“Thank you so much!” Anya said with genuine gratitude, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
But then the fact she was hungry gave way to some more unpleasant thoughts. She frowned and stopped herself from reaching for the food.
“Listen, I… I don’t know who you are but you look a lot like that younger guy, the one who was taking Shiro, the one got me to drink whatever that stuff was that made me pass out. I know he didn’t know it was going to do that, but still, I… What’s the situation here? Am I a hostage?”
“No! No, of course not. It is as Sakura, the lady who was here before said. You are a welcome guest in the kitsune village. We do need you here, to help us understand what happened to Yuki, but you are not a prisoner. Neither is Shiro, though she hasn’t woken up yet to be told that. I’m sorry, I didn’t think… I thought I was rescuing you, but I can see how it might seem like I was kidnapping you, now. Since you don’t realize...”
“Realize what?”
The man looked pensive, as if trying to decide whether or not to confess to something.
“Nothing I can explain in a satisfying way,” he said, finally.
“I suppose I have little choice but to trust you then,” Anya said, but kindly. For some reason she felt more at ease about this man, and the woman who’d been there before, than she had with Mamoru. She didn’t know why, but she was sure she’d been right not to accept what the priest had said about yokai being enemies always.
The man smiled.
“We don’t even know each other’s names...” he said, as if that was in some way remarkable.
“I’m Anya.”
The man smiled oddly, like it was the nicest word he’d ever heard, or the delightful answer to a riddle he’d been puzzling over.
“I’m Kiba. My brother, who is extremely sorry for making you drink the potion, is Ikari.”
“And, this food, what is it?”
Anya badly wanted the food, but this was another world and the food had been prepared by yokai – and what if they ate human flesh or something? The rice looked like rice, but there was a bowl of some kind of meat in a dark sauce, too.
“Sakura made it. She is an excellent cook. I think it’s chicken, though I haven’t had any, I was keeping it all for you – you’ve been unconscious for a day. You must eat.”
Well, that sounds normal. And if I’ve decided my best strategy is to trust them, I’m going to have to trust them about food.
She gratefully took the tray, and tried the meat - without even demanding that Kiba ate some first. It was delicious.
Anya’s first day in the kitsune village was full of new
experiences, but none intrigued her as much as the fact that Kiba insisted on being at her side and guiding her through everything.
She took a bath in a hot spring that the kitsune had divided up into an area for males and one for females, and yet Kiba, despite being thoroughly gentlemanly about the whole thing, had insisted on waiting for her behind some rocks and asking anybody else who wanted to bathe to wait until she was finished. This was after she’d expressed that she wasn’t used to being naked around strangers when she washed – even other women. She hadn’t expected him to do that, as she really didn’t want to put out her new hosts, but had just been trying to explain why she was a little embarrassed about what, to people here, was just a routine daily thing.
The bath had felt wonderful, and she’d resolved that next time she’d try and be more cool about other women from the village using it at the same time, although being alone had given her an opportunity to think about her situation in peace. No useful conclusions were forthcoming though. Her reason for being in this world felt no clearer than it had back at the priest's house – it was just that now, at least she wouldn’t have to become Mamoru’s maid until it revealed itself.
When she’d emerged, back in her old blue satin bathrobe, Kiba had presented her with a beautiful kimono in a similar light blue color, and waited outside of the room she’d slept in while Sakura taught her how to wear it and tie the obi belt properly.
“I'm sorry we don’t have clothing here more similar to yours, but I tried to choose a color you would like,” he said, now that Sakura had gone home to prepare more food and they were alone again.
“I… Actually Kiba, the clothes I was wearing, they’re the clothes people sleep in where I come from, not what they wear normally. When I was summoned to this world, I’d just got out of bed, and I hadn’t gotten dressed yet. Clothes like Sakura was wearing do exist in my world, but they are the traditional dress of a different country to my own. Not many people wear them now, even there, I don’t think. Everything about this place is reminiscent of a time hundreds of years ago in a country I’ve never been to or studied, especially, so to me, it kinda feels like going back in time and to a foreign country as well as to a new world with yokai and magic and stuff we just don’t have...”
Kiba looked sad for her, seeing how lonely and confusing everything had been. Anya realized then though, that she actually wasn’t having a bad time at all being a stranger here, aside from having been made unconscious by a potion. Everybody she’d met so far in the village had been very kind, and she didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
“But, I love these clothes. Thank you so much for choosing them for me.”
Kiba smiled.
“What about my clothes? If you don’t have yokai, I bet not a lot of people dress like me!”
He seemed to be almost joking with her.
“No, Kiba, nobody dresses like you in New York… well, not in their normal day to day lives, that’s for sure! But you wear it well!”
She wasn’t lying either, there was no denying that Kiba looked sexy as hell with his powerful body, long, sleek hair, and that beaten up, warrior style leather clothing. It had been troubling Anya a little how physically attractive she found him, and how well they were getting along, given the circumstances. She barely even knew what he was.
“So, you and Ikari dress differently from the kitsune… You’re not the same type of yokai as them, right? Ikari said he was a tiger, and Mamoru said kitsune were fox yokai, but you all look the same as humans to me… What does that mean? You are different tribes where they are represented by foxes, and you by tigers, something like that?”
Anya had been doubting everything Mamoru had told her about the forms of yokai for as long as she’d been in the village, given she hadn’t seen any of the lower yokai infiltrating Mamoru’s town, and here, she’d only seen kitsune and tiger yokai in their human forms. It had been playing on her mind – just how different were yokai really? Were they really just humans who could use some kind of magic that Mamoru and his people were afraid of, and so they’d developed a hatred for them, inventing legends of shapeshifting monsters that were more myth than fact?
But no, that wasn’t the case, as Kiba soon explained.
“The foxes and tigers refer to our other forms. Sakura and the other people in the village can take a form similar to a fox, though with more tails… Ikari and I can take the form of tigers. The legends of our people say that we are larger than true tigers, but I have never seen a true tiger, so I don’t know if that is correct. Have you ever seen a tiger in your world? It seems like we must have similar animals, or I suppose you wouldn’t know what a fox or a tiger was when I talked about them.”
She had, at the zoo, on a day out with her family when she was a child. It had been sleeping out in the summer sun, and Anya and her sister had thought it was marvelous. But she realized that even if she hadn’t ever seen one in the flesh, she would still have had things like movies and wildlife documentaries that they didn’t have the knowledge of here, so she’d know how big they were anyway. So much information, available so easily in her own world, and yet here was a man who had probably only seen paintings of an animal that was a big part of his identity. She wished she’d somehow been summoned here with her laptop and internet access, so she could show him...
“Yes, I have seen one, but in a cage, not out in its normal environment. They don’t live in my country, and they are very dangerous too, people wouldn’t want to go near a wild one...”
She was just talking about true tigers, but she realized she’d probably insulted him as soon as she’d said it.
“Not that people wouldn’t want to go near you unless you were in a cage, or anything! I mean, you still have human type thoughts and stuff, even if you can be a tiger too, right? I meant that the animals, they have different instincts to us, they hunt and they can kill us, and we can’t really sit them down and tell them not to. That’s why they’re scary. Also, tigers are beautiful. We don’t hate them or anything, we just know it’s not safe to try and play with one like it’s a kitten.”
He didn’t look offended, thankfully, but he did look serious.
“I understand. But for yokai, at least, for my kind, we are different when we take our animal forms. Some instincts and senses become sharper, and rationality gives way to more basic drives. That is why, in our villages, our families, our clans, whatever social structure we have found works for us as a people, we spend our time in our human forms and interact as civilized people. I transform if I have to fight, or if I can let myself run free and just enjoy that part of my nature, but when it comes to leading my clan as a society, I must think as I do now, in this form. And this is different too, between yokai of different kinds. What drives me as a tiger is not the same to what drives Sakura as a fox, or a yokai who takes the form of a dragon, or a bear, or anything else. And yet a kitsune and a tiger can belong together, like my brother and Yuki. Our human forms allow us to relate to each other, and sometimes, the differences between one and another are what is needed for them to be complete, and that is what fate demands...” Kiba trailed off, his eyes downcast and his expression inscrutable to Anya.
Anya was silent for a moment as she pondered what he was telling her. It didn’t sound like he lost control, or all agency when he used his tiger form, more like that he would be more at the whims of instincts. Different hormones or brain chemistry perhaps, if such physiology even applied to yokai. Perhaps it was just as a human could act more impulsively and give in to basic instincts when they were in a fit of rage, or when their life was in danger, or when they were really, really turned on. Was being a tiger like that, for him? But with the knowledge that that side of you was there in all of the people around you too, and that it was something you could, and should, celebrate in some circumstances? A side of you you had to nurture and develop just like your more rational personality, rather than something to be afraid of and shut off? It fascinated her.
“Kiba… I
know it’s a weird thing to ask you, but… Could you let me meet you in your other form?”
Chapter 10
Kiba was conflicted by what he’d been asked. Sakura’s advice about showing Anya who he was, so she could discover that they were supposed to be together in her own way, rang in his head. He’d tried to explain himself as well as he could, yet actually transforming, here and now, it was hard to know if it was too soon. Did she trust him enough yet to see both of his selves without balking at him?
He’d never really considered how humans felt about tigers before – in fact, he’d barely given any thought to what humans felt about anything until this business with Yuki had forced him to get involved in human matters. Yet here was Anya, who had seen tigers, telling him that they were something she – no, all people – were scared to get close to. Kiba had never truly experienced fear of any animal. He knew the strength of his tiger form combined with his human intelligence meant that he would always be the most powerful when dealing with a real beast. The only things that could make him afraid would be other higher yokai, and even then, only if there were a lot of them. Or perhaps a very powerful priest – and there hadn’t been anyone like that in this region in his lifetime. Pretty much no other living thing seemed to be a threat. But when he tried to see how a big, ferocious cat with claws and fangs might seem to a human, especially one unused to fighting, he imagined that his tiger form would be unnerving to Anya to say the least.
Plus, there was his own anxiety at his feelings for her. He’d been expecting the gnawing, dizzying feelings of being without her that he’d experienced ever since she’d appeared in this world to go away once he’d found her, but they hadn’t. Then he’d thought that perhaps they’d go away when she woke up, but of course, that had been when he’d realized she didn’t love him on sight. Now, being with her, talking to her, it both thrilled him and caused great anguish. He had never experienced this kind of all-consuming yet bittersweet desire before, and had never expected to. Unrequited love was something yokai just weren’t familiar with as a concept. And if he felt this bad in his human form, he knew it would be an order of magnitude worse in his more emotionally raw tiger form to be close to Anya and see fear, or rejection, or mistrust in her beautiful brown eyes, when all he wanted to do was touch her.
