Chapter 2

"Mononoke-hime..."
Tsuta gave the old man a queer look. "Danna, did you say something?"
"Mononoke-hime, she was the ancient princess of the wolves."
"I know the legend," she kneeled down. "Why did you say it when I walked past you though?"
"Please come with me." He walked away from the broken pottery and headed toward the campsite.
Tsuta and Hotaru exchanged confused looks as they followed the old man to the rows and rows of gray and while tents. The man walked into a dingy white tent that seemed to have been in every type of storm. He motioned for Tsuta and Hotaru to follow him.
The tent was dark and damp. The only light was coming from a small camping lantern that was suspended from a pole in the middle of the tent. Books and paper littered the ground, making a strange sort of carpet. A cot with a dark green blanket was off in one corner. In another corner were a camping stove and cooler. In the middle of the tent was a table covered in soda cans and more paper. Little by little the girls' eyes adjusted to the dim light.
"Please have a sit wherever you can find one. I am sorry about the mess, but I didn't think I would be having company. I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Oswada Toma. What are your names?"
"My name is Sei Tsuta."
"And my name is Tomoe Hotaru."
"That's nice." Tsuta raised an eyebrow; the man didn't seem to hear anything they had said. He was rummaging through a pile of papers and old scrolls.
"Here it is! Sorry if I ignored you, but this is what I wanted to show you."
He cleared the table with a sweep of his arm knocking the cans and paper to the floor. He unrolled a very old scroll. He smoothed it out, on the scroll was a picture of a girl around Hotaru and Tsutas' age.
"Mononoke-hime," Tsuta whispered.
"So you know who she is."
"I study ancient legends in my spare time, when school is not in the way," Tsuta replied.
Hotaru studied the scroll. "You know Tsuta, she kind of looks of like you."
Tsuta peered closer. "Now that you mention it she does. I don't think we could be related though."
Hotaru and Tsuta grinned at each other, the old man coughed.
"Oops, gomen no sai Oswada-san," Hotaru said.
"I was thinking the same thing, are you two sisters by any chance?"
"She and I? We are very distantly related by some relative," Hotaru answered.
Oswada-san raised an eyebrow this time.
"It's a long story," Hotaru sighed.
"The reason I showed this to you is because you reminded me of her." He gestured at Tsuta. "Also you reminded me of another tale, which looms around Mononoke-hime. Before I get into that, let me tell you about myself, I am a professor at a local college, as you can tell I teach Japanese mythology. You're probably wondering why someone in my field would be here, the legend I was talking about says that Mononoke-hime fell in love with a stranger that appeared out of nowhere. I have inferred that the stranger was an Emishi, thanks to some documents written by a Buddhist monk named Jiko-Bou. The era this legend was written in was five hundred years after the Emishi people died. But this village is said to be five hundred years younger than other Emishi villages, which have been discovered.
"So I my predications are correct this might the village of the stranger. More importantly it might prove that Mononoke-hime actually existed." Oswada-san finished with a sigh.
"I still don't understand why you are telling us all of this?" Tsuta asked.
"You see, the forest which is said to have been home to Mononoke-hime and her family might be destroyed to mine iron which has been found under a giant hill. If I could only prove that the forest has some historical significance then they wouldn't destroy it. Besides I thought you two might want to see something that the tour couldn't show you. It's not everyday that young people come on something educational, especially in summer, without their parents forcing them to."
"Who is going to destroy the forest?" Hotaru questioned.
"Someone named Shiratori Uri, he is the president of the Shiratori Corporation. He is a man whose only love is money. He will try to make a profit anyway he can, even if it hurts other people. I am sorry to say that he and I are cousins."
The two girls left the tent after saying good-bye to Oswada Toma.
"Do you think she could be related to you somehow?" Hotaru looked at Tsuta.
"Probably just a coincidence, after all I am much older than her. She was probably alive after the Silver Millennium was destroyed."
The two walked to their own tent, which was less cluttered than their new friend's tent.

The night air was refreshing after the long hot day. Tsuta stepped out of her tent as quietly as possible, so she wouldn't wake Hotaru. The camp was quiet except for the chirping of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl. Tsuta gave a sigh of pleasure, the moon cast an eerie glow, which cast strange shadows along the ground. Slowly she walked down a path that led to the remains of the Emishi village. In the dark the village looked deader than it did during the day. Even after all of the restoration, the village would never look like the Emishi village Tsuta had seen earlier. Once more she sighed and she turned to head back to her tent, a flicker of light caught her eye. Quickly she turned around in a fighting stance.
"Anyone there?" her voice wavered as she backed up so she could run back to the safety of her tent.
The light flickered again, Tsuta looked up to see the light coming from a hut that was built on poles.
"I never noticed this before," she said to herself. "Why would someone be in there at this time of night?"
A wooden ladder rested against the side of the structure. Tsuta just shrugged her shoulders and climbed the ladder, hoping that it would not fall from underneath her. When she got to the top, she saw the shadows of people dancing on the walls from flickering lamps. Tsuta's eyes grew round as she saw Hii-sama and the back of Ashitaka.
The hut was made, so that one wall was a cliff that bulged into the room. Tsuta noticed that cliff was a shintai and this hut was a shrine dedicated to it. An altar sat underneath the shintai, candles flickered on the altar in respect for the spirit in the cliff. Five men sat cross-legged across from the shintai. Ashitaka also sat cross-legged, his right arm was bandaged. Hii-sama sat at the head of the group, her eyes were filled with sadness as she threw stones across a piece of cloth.
Everyone waited in silence for Hii-sama to speak. Slowly Tsuta climbed the last rung of the ladder and as quietly as possible she hid outside the door. Hii-sama threw one last stone, then she spoke.
"Well, this has become a worrisome situation. That boar turned up from a land in the far west. Driven mad by the poison of his mortal wounds, his flesh rotting away, he ran and ran towards here, accumulating curses, until finally he became a Tatari-gami. My dear Ashitaka-hiko..."
"Hai."
"Show everyone your right arm."
Ashitaka stood up and removed his bandage. A black scar streaked across his forearm. The man gasped at the sight of the Tatari-gami's mark.
The man named Ji-ji was startled, "Hii-sama!"
Hii-sama spoke again, "My dear Ashitaka-hiko are you prepared to gaze at your own destiny?"
"I was prepared the moment I shot my arrow."
Hii-sama looked Ashitaka directly in the eye. "My prince, the wound will eventually reach your bone and will slowly kill you."
"Hii-sama isn't there anything thing we can do?" one man spoke out.
Another man questioned his prince's destiny, "Ashitaka saved our village and protected our people. To only sit and wait for death..."
Hii-sama interrupted the man before he could finish, "No one can change destiny. However, it is up to him to rise and meet it."
She pulled a small round ball of metal from underneath her tunic. "Look, this is the thing that ate into the boar's body. It smashed his bones, tore up his guts, giving him cruel pain and suffering. Otherwise, would the boar have become the likes of a Tatari-gami? There are some strange happenings in the lands to the west. Going there, to ascertain everything with unclouded eyes, you may possibly discover a way to discover a cure."
Tsuta squinted her eyes to get a better look at the metal ball. She turned her head and moved her head a little closer. Suddenly her eyes grew wide for a moment, then she shook her head. "Iron," she whispered.
"Hai," Ashitaka nodded.
An old man who wore a cap over his eyes spoke breaking the tension in the room. "We are the last of the Emishi people. We were defeated in war against the Yamato regime, we have been hidden away in this place for more than five hundred years. Now we have heard that the power of the Yamato king has withered, and that even the fangs of the Shoguns were broken. Yet, with each generation our bloodline grows thinner and weakens. Now the last of our princes must leave to for the lands of the west."
The silence shrouded the hut once more. Ashitaka turned to face the altar, he kneeled down and took a knife out of a red case. He cut off his mage and placed it on the altar, bowing and then getting up.
Hii-sama spoke one last time to her prince, "From this day forward you are dead to us. According to our rules, we may not see you off. I wish you well Ashitaka.
Tsuta ducked out of sight, even though the shadows hid her, her deep breathing would give her away. The Emishi prince should have noticed the girl in the shadows, but he heard nothing. She watched him walk away to gather supplies for his journey to the west.
Tsuta was about to follow Ashitaka, but Hii-sama said something to the assembled men.
"Something that the boar said when he died confused me. "One can look and see, but not touch" were his words. I asked the spirits about this, they told me that Ashitaka will not be alone on his journey, someone who is not from our time is watching him. Whoever it is invisible to mortal eyes."
Tsuta turned away from the hut, she looked down at her hands and realized that she was in her armor. Her silver armbands glittered in the flickering candlelight from the shrine.
'Why am I here? Inoshishi did something to me to show me his death, but this is going far beyond than what I accepted. Why does stuff like this always happen to me?' Tsuta thought.
Ashitaka saddled Yakkuru, he wore an orange mask and a cape made out of reeds. His bow and arrow were placed in front of him, just in case of any danger.
"Ani-sama!"
Before Ashitaka could ride away from the Emishi village forever, the girl named Kaya called out to him.
"Kaya, you know it is forbidden to watch me leave."
"I don't care about that, I wanted to give you this." She held up a small dagger that gleamed even in the dark.
"You crystal dagger? Kaya I can't take this."
"I want you to remember me, I blew a breath upon it to make a good-luck charm"
"Kaya, you know I can never forget you."
He pulled off his mask so that the girl could take one last look at him. He rode off leaving Kaya staring at him with her hands clasped.
'He's not leaving without me,' Sirius told herself.
She jumped off the shrine and ran past Kaya, even though the girl couldn't see the silver Senshi, she felt a breeze rush past her in the direction Ashitaka went.

Days passed as Ashitaka journeyed to the west. They rode across meadows of long green grass still thriving in late summer . Occasionally it would rain, which irritated Sirius. Even if she was invisible, she still felt the affects of nature.
One night while Ashitaka made camp, Sirius tried her powers out to see if they would blow something up. Sirius powered up for one of her weaker attacks, "Sirius Cloud of Storm..." a small storm cloud with lightening flashing in the center formed in her hand. She raised it above her head and aimed the cloud at a rock. "Electrocute!"
The cloud flew at the rock, instead of turning the rock to molecular dust the attack passed right through it.
"One can look and see, but not touch..." Sirius whispered. "I am a living ghost in a time long before feys and ancient gods died."
Sirius sighed as she headed back to her "friend's" camp.

After traveling over a mountain, the travelers saw a group of villagers being attacked by Samurai and soldiers.
"A war," Ashitaka said to himself, "No a massacre!"
"Blood thirsty bakas!" Sirius spat the sentence out of her mouth.
The soldiers were attacking anything that moved, villagers were killed or beaten no matter where they ran or hid.
"You wretches!"
"Encircle them!"
Samurai commanded the lesser soldiers to attack and kill everyone in sight. One samurai noticed Ashitaka on the mountain path.
"A warrior! Kill him!"
Archers aimed their arrows at the youth and fired. Ashitaka kicked Yakkuru and they made a run for it. Sirius just sighed and jumped out of the way of the flying arrows.
"Come back!" A soldier was about to slaughter a women before Ashitaka interrupted the killing. "STOP IT!" The youth threaded an arrow onto his bowstring, he aims the arrow, so it is on a direct course with the hilt of the soldier’s sword in order to knock it out of the soldier's hands. The Tatari-gami's mark began to quiver and shake and worms seemed to appear underneath the blue cloth of Ashitaka's tunic. The pain in his arm makes Ashitaka shoot the arrow with so much force that it cut the soldiers arms off and pined them to a tree with blood dripping from the muscles. One hand still clutched the soldier's sword.
The soldier didn't even the notice the pain for he was in a state of shock.
"What the hell is up with this arm," Ashitaka muttered.
"He won't get away! I see him!" An archer threaded an arrow and took aim at Ashitaka.
"I'm warning you, don't hinder me!"
The archer didn't listen to Ashitaka's words and still shot his arrow, Ashitaka shot his own arrow at the archer and decapitated him in the process. Yakkuru and his master were able escape to the forest.
"He's an oni!" one samurai said as Ashitaka rode off
Sailor Sirius watched all of this from a boulder on the mountain path. Her eyes were wide in disbelief. "Evil can be unpredictable in many ways. I wish I could have done something." She jumped off the boulder and ran after Ashitaka, inspecting the damage of the massacre as she ran.

The young warrior stopped at a small spring running down a hill a to calm the mark on his forearm. Sirius looked at him, his eyes remained emotionless.
"The wound is becoming darker."
The Senshi continued to watch him in silence.

That afternoon Ashitaka turned Yakkuru in the direction of village. His food supply was dwindling with each passing day. Sirius was beginning to enjoy that fact that no one could see her, whenever they passed someone, which was very rare, the Senshi loved to run at her full pass and blow the hat off the unsuspecting stranger.
Farmers on the way to the village stared at Ashitaka, they whispered and pointed at him. Yakkuru gave a nervous snort, but his master quietly reassured him. "This is just for a little while, we will leave soon Yakkuru."
The market was crowded, but the presence of Ashitaka startled quite a few people. They cleared a path for him. The whispering and the pointing started once more, Sirius rolled her at eyes and she cast the hats of a few gawkers into the wind.
A Buddhist monk, who was not very pleasing to look at, noticed Ashitaka. His nose was a dull red, as if a bee had stung it and the swelling never went away. He also had a huge wart to go along with his nose. He wore the usual orange and white monk robes, he also had an orange head covering to cover his baldhead. His prayer beads were tightly clasped in his hands, to complete the garb his sandals were six inches from the ground, but he balanced perfectly on them. He carried an umbrella on a long bamboo pole with him as well. Even if he seemed to be a holy man, he sure didn't act like it. The monk was at a soup merchant finishing the last of his meal.
"This soup tastes like donkey piss." He saw Ashitaka dealing with a rice vendor. "Oh, there he is!"
The rice vendor poured her rice into a burlap bag and handed it to Ashitaka. The crowd was still gathered around him, but at a safe distance. He handed the woman a small piece of yellow metal.
"Will this do?"
The woman's eye twitched as she snapped at Ashitaka. "What the hell is this? This isn't money! If you don't have any money, give me back my rice!"
The monk known as Jiko-Bou came to Ashitaka's aide. "Wait, wait, let this monk take a look." He took the lump of metal from the woman's hand. "Oh! This is... Woman, this is a sizable sakin nugget! So, if you prefer cash, I'll pay the bill and take this off your hands.
The villagers whispered amongst themselves once more, this time their eyes lit up with the thought of sakin.
"Everyone, is there a money changer around here? No? As far as I can see, it's worth a bag of rice, no, three bags!"
The crowd gasped in confusion, Ashitaka disappeared in the muddle before any chaos could happen
"Hey, wait a minute!"
Jiko-Bou tried to rush after Ashitaka, but the rice vendor grabbed his hand to pry her sakin from it.
"Give me back my sakin!"
Ashitaka was riding Yakkuru on a worn path outside the village. Sailor Sirius strolled beside him, taking in the fresh air that did not exist in her time. She heard deep breathing behind her, so she glanced back to see the monk running to catch up.
"Hey! Not so fast! No need to thank me. I'm the one who wants to thank you. When I was dragged into that backwater samurai skirmish, I was rescued due to your assistance. You fight like an oni!"
Ashitaka just glared at Jiko-Bou, out of the corner of his eye he noticed three men following them from the village.
"Hmm, so you noticed? It's what happens when you wave the likes of a sakin nugget in people's faces. Indeed, people's hearts harden and become rough like hemp. They plan to follow us, then kill us in our sleep. Shall we give them a demonstration on how fast we can run?"
Jiko-Bou took off in his six-inch sandals; Ashitaka pushed Yakkuru into a run, leaving the three men in the dust.
Sirius muttered, "Here we go again." under her breath and she took off after the two. The hat of one of the men blew off his head in an unseen wind and taunted him as he ran after it.

That night they stopped in a small cave, the ghostly remains of a village surrounded their small camp. Sirius rested outside the cave as she listened to their conversation. Jiko-Bou cooked Ashitaka's rice as the Emishi youth told him the story of the Tatari-gami.
"Hmm...so a boar became a Tatari-gami......"
"I followed his footprints, but just as I descended to the village, I lost them."
"That's to be expected. Look over there." The monk gestured to the village ruins. "This used to be a village the last time I visited. Floods, mudslides...... no doubt, many people must have died. War, poverty, sickness, starvation; the human world is crowded with the dead, who died swallowing their resentment. If you're talking about a curse, then look around. The whole damned world is cursed." He put a wooden spoon into the pot and tasted it. Savoring every taste of the rice. He took some meat from his bag and stirred it into the pot. "Yeah that's good."
"I made a mistake going down to the village. I murdered two people in the process."
Jiko-Bou stopped cooking and looked at Ashitaka. "No, because of you I was saved. Hand me your bowl. You must eat first." Jiko-Bou turned the bowl over in his hand, then he scooped some rice into it. "People die anyhow. It just comes sooner or later. Hmm, what an elegant bowl. I have seen only one other like it. Looking at you, it reminds me of a people of ancient times, as passed down in old writings. The heroic Emishi clan was said to exist in the far Eastern lands, sitting astride red elks, using arrowheads of stone."
Ashitaka looked quizzically at the monk, then he looked over the remains of the village.
"Don't worry I won't tell anyone where you're from. The essential thing is to not be consumed by death. Well, that was something I learned from my teacher. Go on, it's your rice. Eat up."
The youth looked down at his meal and took a few small bites. He reached into his pouch to remove the small iron ball. He handed it to the monk, who looked at it with while holding it in his chopsticks.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"This is...?" The monk gave his companion an odd look.
Sirius opened her eyes and turned her head to look at the two. Jiko-Bou handed the iron ball back, he ate more of his rice. Sirius got up and stared at the ball. She turned her head as she examined it, but Ashitaka put it back in her pouch before she could finish.
"It came from within the boar's body. It is what gave the gigantic boar the deadly wound."
"I wasn't done looking at that!" she waved her hand in front of his face, but she got no reaction. The Senshi grew a little irritated, so she sat down in a huff by the fire.
Ashitaka gazed at the monk as silence consumed them. The monk looked up to study the boy's face, finally he said something. "As you advance further and further west from here, within the mountain recesses, there is a deep forest that bars humans. It is the forest of the Shishi-gami".
"The forest of the Shishi-gami......" Ashitaka whispered.
"I've heard that the animals that inhabit the forest are all enormous, and exist as they were in ancient times."
'The Shishi-gami's forest, that must be the forest that Oswada-san's cousin wants to destroy," Sirius thought.
Her comrades finished eating, they cleaned up before they turned in for the night. Sirius looked from side to side to make sure that they were asleep. Slowly she reached for Ashitaka's pouch, carefully she undid the strings. He turned in his sleep, while Sirius's hand was still clutching the drawstrings. Instead of touching her, his arm passed right through Sirius's hand. Sirius let out a sigh of relief, she quickly pulled the iron ball form the pouch.
She hurried out of the cave carrying her prize.
Before the sun rose Ashitaka left the cave. Sirius had to move fast to slip the iron ball back into his pouch He bowed in the direction Jiko-Bou slept, then he galloped away on Yakkuru.
"See you there, my friend." Jiko-Bou murmured to his comrade.