Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Years after his apprenticeship at the bath house, Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi keeps a tight hold on his name. Sometimes he wakes up to the sound of his own voice reciting it in his sleep, syllables singing in neat order: Ni-gi-ha-ya-mi-Ko-ha-ku-nu-shi. Once in a while, he finds himself walking along to its beat, repeating it silently as though if he were to let it fully leave his mind it might never come back. Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi.

He refuses to be called by any variation on it other than "Nigihayami" or "Kohaku-nushi" and prefers to be addressed by the full breadth of it.

The young river spirit sat cross-legged, his green-blue eyes fixed on the circular table in front of him. A council of rivers was a rarity – after all, they typically ran their own courses straight through to the seas. Privately, he thought this one a foolishness. Almost refused attendance because of it – only deciding to attend at the last moment and only then with the intent to try to stop a foolish decision from being made.

Still, he kept silent for the moment, listening as the other spirits raged and wailed in alternation around him. Kohaku-nushi failed to see the point. Time had moved beyond them all. They had passed from being revered to mostly forgotten – plagued by pollution and other indignities, but in the grand scheme of things it hardly mattered, and no matter how much they might have wished to go back to the old days, no one had the power to turn back time.

"Is there nothing to be done!" A fist slammed into the table. Katsura. A spirit Kohaku-nushi barely knew but had come to surmise must be driven by rash impulse and little else.

The room erupted at this exclamation –
          “There must be something!”
          “This cannot stand!”
          “We must make them remember the old ways!”

The fervor built until Kohaku-nushi could stomach it no longer and lifted his head. “They filled in my river and built a town over it.” His words were quiet as his eyes made a slow, piercing sweep of the room. This was a topic that none had more right to speak on than he, and so the room fell silent when he did. “I survived it.”

Katsura sat down, still bristling. "We shouldn’t be reduced to just survival. What happened to your river is exactly my point," he insisted. "They pollute, they try to mold the landscape to their own liking! They fill in our rivers, they dam them, they change us to suit themselves without half a thought!"

"I'm sure they think, Katsura," Kohaku-nushi pointed out solemnly.

"You don't even have a river any more!" Katsura almost shouted. "What right do you have to be here?"

Kohaku-nushi cocked his head slightly, his dark green hair swept a little and looked almost black in the light. "Rivers have memories," he said, almost as if reciting the words. "When the rains come, the town is flooded. It remembers where it wants to run. Yours remembers what it once was."

"And now it's practically a cess pool," Katsura spat. "They throw things in there you wouldn't believe! Corpses, cars, oil, garbage... and they're talking about damming it. Digging a lake of all things!"

"They filled my river in," Kohaku-nushi repeated quietly. "But it remembers. I remember. And yours will too. Even in their world."

An ancient spirit, Shinanogawa-Chikuma, nodded from his pride of place at the head of the table. "Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi is right," he said, his voice deep, wide, and commanding. "No human action can ever change the essence of a river."

"But Kohaku-nushi was away?" a younger one named Ginzu-Miya said, his voice tentative. "He was away because a sorceress enslaved him. Because he forgot his name - because his river was filled in!"

Whispers flew around the table and Kohaku-nushi bowed his head. "I was foolish," he admitted. "As foolish as Katsura is being. I thought if I had more power I could save the Kohaku River and that was a mistake. All I did was poison its soul for a time."

"No one's talking about making deals with sorceresses," Katsura argued. "But something has to be done about the humans!"

"We need them," another, Takahashi, protested, standing just slightly. "Thy believe in us!"

"But what if they stop?" Ginzu-Miya asked. "Then what?"

"We can't make them believe in us," Kohaku-nushi shrugged.

"We can make a presence," Katsura insisted, "We can flood! We can rampage!"

"For what?" Kohaku-nushi asked. "They won't forget us. Even if they forget our names they won't stop recognizing our power."

"You can't prove that," Katsura said. "They observe us less and less every day! We need to take action!" He pounded his fist against the table again, and glared.

And Shinanogawa-Chikuma shook his head. "A vote," he said, "Will everyone agree to a vote?"

Every spirit around the table nodded - even the few that had remained silent throughout the meeting.

Shinanogawa-Chikuma nodded and, with a slight look to Kohaku-nushi, said, "All right, now. All in favor of..."

Later, on a walk along the spirited shores of the Kohaku River, the older spirit confided in the younger one.

"It's all Shimanto," Shinanogawa-Chikuma said, shaking his head.

Kohaku-nushi kept his eyes to the water as he walked. He couldn't bring himself to say anything. His feet made soft splashes in the river shallows as he tried to remember Shimanto's face. All he could gather was that Shimanto was a pale spirit, skin nearly translucent, with short cropped light blue hair and clear eyes of a color that Kohaku-nushi couldn't recall. He hadn’t said much at the meeting. Hadn’t even had a seat near Katsura, the instigator, or the Three Great Ones that had further pushed the idea.

"What makes you say that?" Kohaku asked, looking forward along his River.

"He's the clearest of us all," Shinanogawa-Chikuma replied. "The least touched by human influence - and the most afraid of it."

"But why?" Kohaku kicked the water, sending a spray of angry splashes out in front of him. "I don't understand - Why flood the Fukugawa to prove his point? He dried up on his own; he sold his river to Yubaba!"

"Fukugawa made a grave mistake," Shinanogawa-Chikuma said sympathetically, "And the humans would take more notice if a dry river were to flood. Any other they might attribute to rain."

"I still don't understand," Kohaku shook his head, eyebrows furrowed. "Why do they even think it's necessary?"

"You were gone for so long, Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi," Shinanogawa-Chikuma said. "The humans don't have as much respect for the Gods as they used to. They don't have as much respect for the rivers or even the land itself - they're so far removed from it they couldn't care less about how they treat it."

"But that doesn't matter!" Kohaku exclaimed. Spreading his arms, he planted his feet firmly. "The humans filled this river in!" he repeated. "They built a town over its waters, but it still flows just as it always did here!"

"Slower now," Shinanogawa-Chikuma observed.

The sparkling blue water swirled around their feet. Kohaku said, "Time will always bring change. The point is that the river remains as alive in spirit as it ever was."

Shinanogawa-Chikuma laughed then, large belly heaving and rolling with a dark sort of mirth. "Oh," he said, between chuckles. "I suppose you're too young to understand."

"Too young?" Kohaku asked, eyes widening in confusion.

"When the humans stop believing in us," Shinanogawa-Chikuma said, "We fade away. The spirits of our rivers. Us. We dry up and are forgotten without a chance of return." Shinanogawa-Chikuma indicated the Kohaku River. "This too in time will fade," he said, his voice all gravity now with not a trace of humor to be heard. "Even in this world."

And, much to Shinanogawa-Chikuma's surprise, Kohaku-nushi nodded fervently at this.

"Isn't it the way of things?" the young spirit asked. "That everything that lives dies and is reborn as something else?"

Shinanogawa-Chikuma laughed again, but lightly this time with the humor of old age interacting with youth.

"Ah," he said, "You are too young to understand."

Kohaku-nushi stared down the horizon. "I'm not too young to understand anything," he replied. "Age doesn't necessitate wisdom."

"Experience, then," Shinanogawa-Chikuma said. "You're too young to understand the desperation with which those close to death cling to life. The sullying of Shimanto frightens all of us, for he was once revered."

"Selfish," Kohaku-nushi shook his head in disappointment.

Shinanogawa-Chikuma tilted his head to consider the boy. "Can you say," he began after a time. "That you've never fought for your life or for something precious to you?"

Kohaku-nushi kept his silence. He lifted his head to watch the sun set and Shinanogawa-Chikuma put a comforting arm around his shoulders.

"I don't mean that they are right," he clarified. "But you understand?"

Kohaku-nushi nodded then. He did understand. And with all his heart, he wished that he didn't.

Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi kept hold of only one name more desperately than he did his own. Chihiro. He closed his eyes and remembered her face, sullen and wondering and bright.

Chi-hi-ro, who lived in Kawamichi, a town dangerously near Yubaba's Bathhouse and the Fukugawa River.

He knew she wouldn't remember him - wouldn't remember anything at all about her time in the Spirit World, but somehow...

Nigihayami Kohaku-nushi clenched his fist.

He had to save her.