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At first, it was only one. His gait caused tremors in the night, stirring the citizens of Musashi from their beds. Inuyasha was the first to spring to action, the first to greet him.
“Ma died,” the enormous horse hanyō rasped, as close to a whimper as one so large could make.
“This village has room for everyone,” Kaede’s voice called from the path. She had covered her sleeping yukata in a haori. “Big and small, human, demon, and hanyō.”
Kaede-sama was not the only one who had awakened to Jinenji’s arrival; many of the villagers had followed the noise to its source. Her words carried the message: Musashi is a place for everyone, and everyone in Musashi heard her words.
Inuyasha did not speak again that night. He climbed up a tree and watched the moon rise. Musashi was for everyone, human, demon, and hanyō.
“I will protect this place,” Inuyasha vowed. This village was, after all, his home.
The next hanyō was greeted first by Sango, who was ripe from her second pregnancy. She was working in the bountiful herb garden that Jinenji had grown on the outskirts of town, bordering Inuyasha’s forest, on a plot of land that the village had given him, when two figures came into view.
“Is this Inuyasha’s village?” the small girl asked, carrying her ailing mother on her shoulders, emerging shyly when Sango nodded in answer to her question.
The girl and her mother limped through the herbs, trampling some in their haste and exhaustion. They had traveled with barely any food for more days than they could count.
“Shiori-chan!” Sango called, trying to waddle her way to the blue-haired bat hanyō whose barriers had aided them so much in their quest to defeat Naraku. “Miroku, Inuyasha! Please hurry!”
Before Sango had made it three steps, a red and silver flash streaked past.
“Let’s get you two safe and fed,” Inuyasha had said, taking both upon his back and dashing forth to Kaede’s hut. “And Sango, if you see Jinenji, tell him to hurry the hell up after me!”
Jinenji was already out of his hut and bounding after Inuyasha, now as important a town healer as Kaede-sama herself.
Shizu and Shiori built a hut near Jinenji’s, on the outskirts of Musashi and in Inuyasha’s forest. They helped in Jinenji’s garden: drying herbs, making salves, and negotiating trades that the horse hanyō had always been too shy (and too generous) to execute.
Shiori would often join Inuyasha in his tree on the nights that he’d gone to the well, dashed of his hopes that maybe this time Kagome would be back; that maybe this time, he could see Kagome again. Shiori didn’t speak to him; she merely sat and watched the night, but in those moments of grief, it was what he needed.
Artwork commission by eliza-faust-diary
“She will find her way back to you,” was the only thing Shiori had ever said to Inuyasha during one of those lonely nights.
“How do you know?” Inuyasha had asked.
“I just do,” Shiori had answered. And they turned back to the moon, back to the comfort of each others’ silent company.
It had taken one year, but Shiori’s prediction came to fruition. Kagome climbed out of the well and Inuyasha’s soul became whole.
“Welcome back!” everyone had proclaimed, and Kagome had greeted and cried in many arms that day, but she only had eyes for Inuyasha.
Soon, the true test of Kaede’s promise, that Musashi was for everyone, would face its test. When Inuyasha and Kagome stepped to the headman to be declared husband and wife, Kaede stood next to them, her one eye sharp as she watched the man sign the ledger.
It was a time for both elation and fear. Inuyasha’s ears wiggled with his love for Kagome, the woman he was born for, now his, and his ears pinned back with his fear for the future, knowing the whispers that would travel across the land: that he was a hanyō whose wife was a miko.
And there were whispers. But they were not of the sullied miko, wife of a hanyō. They were cries for joy that their Inuyasha’s love had returned to him. That their protector would have his happy ending, as he deserved. When a village child tugged on his suikan and asked if he was going to have babies with Kagome-sama, Inuyasha nearly dropped to his knees and wept.
The laughter and acceptance of Inuyasha’s match had put a spring in Jinenji’s step, and some even heard the horse hanyō humming a jaunty tune as he tended to the plants in his garden.
“I told you that she would return to you,” Shiori had said, an illustrious twinkle in her violet eyes. “And your match has given hope to us all.”
Inuyasha did not need Shiori to clarify to know what she had meant. He hugged Shiori tight and they did weep together, as only two who had experienced the same darkness could.
The day that Kagome discovered that she was pregnant was the same day that the next hanyō arrived. He was small and fierce, having fled from the moth demons who had attacked him and killed his mother. An orphan.
Before Kagome and Inuyasha could take him in, Jinenji had volunteered.
“Sometimes it’s best for someone who knows to… try.” Jinenji’s enormous sky-blue eyes glistened with unshed tears as he looked down at the defiant boy.
It was only Kagome who knew, too, that Jinenji’s desire came also from a place of loneliness.
“We are here to help however it is needed, dear Jinenji,” Kagome had said, rubbing her soon-to-be swollen belly with pride. “Just call us and we will come running.”
Word that Musashi was a safe place for orphaned hanyō traveled like wildfire on the wind. A dragon hanyō came next, chased into Inuyasha’s forest by the remnant rabble of demons that Naraku had left behind; they were quickly dispatched by a bored flick of Tetsusaiga. She was taken in by Shiori and her mother and nursed back to health.
Then it was twin panther hanyō, who growled defiantly at Inuyasha, who growled right back.
“Damn kids gotta learn their place,” Inuyasha had said, but Kagome knew better than to believe the bluster, having caught Inuyasha sneaking them an injured game fowl to hunt and eat.
When demons attacked Musashi, they were met with a swift and violent end. For it was not just the slayers or the mikos or the hanyō who protected that home, but also the daiyōkai Sesshōmaru, hogosha to Rin, whom he had entrusted to Kaede’s care.
It was when Kohaku founded a new troop of demon slayers that old worries resurged. That Musashi’s home to all was challenged as a question, rather than as a fact. Many slayers looked upon the demons and humans living in harmony and scoffed, only to find themselves ejected forcibly by an angry monk, angry mikos, a set of slayer siblings, and nearly everyone else in the village: human, demon, and hanyō.
“Demons helped us win the war against Naraku,” Kohaku had scowled, throwing the weapon back at the bigoted ronin looking to re-establish himself. “And if that is not something you are willing to see, then you are not welcome here.”
The ronin made to retort, only to face down the stern and angry faces of every farmer, smith, warrior, hunter, archer, mother, herbalist, and child of the village: humans standing proudly with their demon and hanyō friends.
Musashi truly had become the village of humans, demons, and hanyō.
Kaede often looked back on those many years after Kikyō’s passing. When the villagers starved, and Inuyasha’s forest was full of haunts and warnings. She thought about the sleeping hanyō on the tree all those years ago: just a confused boy heartbroken and betrayed. A hanyō who had just needed love, just needed a family, just needed a place to belong. What she now looked out upon were the lush herb fields that had travelers coming all the way from Kyoto to visit. She looked upon the smiling faces of human and hanyō children, chasing and playing and carrying on. She watched as Jinenji scolded the slayers for using too much of the anesthetic he had created to smoke out a nuisance root demon. She watched Shiori and Rin teach the children to read, human and hanyō alike, explaining that to be able to read is worth more than a bountiful harvest.
But mostly Kaede reveled in the affection between the hanyō who was pinned to that tree and the miko who cheated time to find her way back to him. They were the reason Musashi was what it was now. They were the reason that Musashi was home to all: demons, humans, and hanyō alike.