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"The Fox, The Monk And The Mikado Of All Nights Dreaming "Written By: Seraphim Grace View Commisioned art for this fic. Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or its characters, they belong to Bandai etc. Feedback: Always appreciated and replied to. Pairings: 1x2, suggested 13x6 Notes: This is a version of a fairy tale that
Neil Gaiman published as The Dream Hunters, I have changed it a lot
to fit the story I wanted
"The Fox, The Monk And The Mikado Of All Nights Dreaming " Chapter 5 She does not come the next day, or the day after that. He visits the park daily but she does not appear. He begins to worry. After a week, in which she has not appeared, a tall man with a shock of salt and pepper hair and eyes like fire. He is a strong man with broad shoulders and despite his age, and he is easily as old as the lady, he carries himself like a young man. There is something in his stance that suggests to the boy that this man, unlike the lady, is a threat. He wears a black wool overcoat and has a PDA in his hand that he quickly stows in his pocket when he sees him. “Are you here to see the Lady Relena?” he asks and his voice is clipped and firm. “She was telling me a story.” He answers. “She has had a fall,” the man says, “she wanted to let you know. I am to buy you lunch and tell you part of a story.” “If it’s all the same,” the boy says, “I’ll be fine on my own.” The man rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath in a language the boy does not understand. “It is not all the same,” the man says, “the Lady Relena will never let me hear the end of it if I do not do this, and she has the amazing ability to tell when I am lying. Come, there is a lovely little bistro down the street. I am prepared to treat you to lunch, you look like you need it.” “Thank you, Mister,” he leaves it open because he does not know the man’s name. It looks as if even with her absence that the old lady is bullying him into accepting her kindnesses. “Barton,” he answers, “My name is Trowa Barton.” He takes an inordinate amount of pride in saying his name, as if he is proud to be a Barton though to the boy it means nothing. Although the man, Barton, calls it a bistro it is clear that the place he takes him is a restaurant, and that he is known there. He orders a table for two and does not have to wait. It is in a shadowed niche, out of the way of prying eyes, Barton sits with his back to the wall where he can scan the restaurant for what he considers to be a threat, and the boy suspects that under his perfectly tailored shirt and black jeans that he has a gun. “How do you know the Lady Relena?” the boy asks, he is worried he might have been lured here to be killed for the presumption of consorting with a real Lady. “Lena and I go back,” the man answers, “we have a history, now you can order what you like, I’m good for it.” He smiles at his own joke; “I understand they even have tuna sandwiches on the menu.” “Is she your wife?” the boy asks nervously, his eyes scan the menu but he doesn’t really see the words on the paper. “Me and Lena?” the man’s laugh is dry, “no Lena never looked at that way, and I never looked at her at all.” He calls over the waiter and orders tea, “now she told me that she was telling you the story of the war.” “No,” the boy corrects swiftly, “she was telling me about the fox, the monk and the evil sorcerer.” Barton smiles in such a way that suggests that he knew that all along, perhaps he was just testing the boy. “If you’ve made your mind up what you would like to eat, I’ll begin.” Far to the west of the forest in which the fox and the monk lived were the lands of men, and in the centre of those was the capital of Kyoto, where the emperor lived. And just outside the royal palace there was a great mansion that belonged to a magnificent onmyoji. He was an old man and very rich, he had a great mansion beside the palace, a second house where he kept his second wife, a small girl with golden hair and a soft voice, and a small house on the outskirts of town in which lived three witches. The onmyoji was rich and well respected. He was high in the bureau of divination and his wives were both very beautiful, and in the south wing of his great house was his concubine a girl who was barely fifteen with lips like plums of whom he was very fond. His two wives and his concubines were close friends and spent hours together without quarrel. He had the ear of the emperor and many of the great and powerful lords of the city felt that they owed their success to him. He was an old man with a knee that did not bend the way that it should and he had given up his hand for more power and had replaced it with a hook. Yet his wives and his concubine adored him but the onmyoji was unhappy. He was afraid. He had been born into his life rich with fear. He had been a fearful child who had grown into a fearful man. He was not afraid of any specific thing but he woke in the morning with the fear thick in his throat and he went to his bed with the fear thick about him. He had gathered his magics and his powers, and had become a powerful master of yin and yang so as to overwhelm his fear. He had failed. Nearly twenty years before he had learned of a boy whose death might alleviate his terror, that by accepting the boy’s calm as his own he would attain the peace he sought. To do so he had to kill the boy without violence or pain. He found the mother when she was still heavy with child and intended to murder her to take the boy’s calm as his own, but she sensed the evil intent within him and ran and he had lost him. As he laid out his articles of divination on a painted square of silk on a small table in the centre of his favourite room with his wives in the next room talking he knew that the boy was now a man and lived his life in perfect calm, without fear, but he did not know how to find him. He gave offerings to all the gods and demons that he knew and the spirits he controlled but they could not find the boy. He sent men searching for a boy with eyes the colour of the Edo seas but they could not find the boy. Without other recourse he went to the small house he owned on the outskirt of the town that he had let to three witches. He did not like to use their power for they charged a great price but his terror was greater than his fear of them. The house had been new when they had moved in when he was a young man but now it was derelict. The paper screens were torn and there was a large hole in the roof. The three witches kept to the shadows and sold herbs and remedies to the local women but at a high price and often the remedies that they purchased did not work out exactly as they had planned. And it was said that men who stayed the night in the house were never seen again, but because the onmyoji served the emperor none knew that they were beholden to him. The three women were beautiful but hard. The eldest had hair that she wore in two knots either side of her head, her expression was hard and she wore blue trimmed with gold, but it hung open mostly, except where her obi gathered it at her waist. The second eldest had hair as short as an indentured servant and a sweet face. She wore the Hakama of a man with only a cloth about her breasts. A large golden design hung from her left ear. The youngest had hair the colour of sake and wore the hanzubon and haori of a child with the ruined haori pulled over her bosoms. Her eyes were the colour of morning but of the three women she was the one who scared him most because he suspected that she might not be alive. Her skin was cool and she was utterly without mercy. Where her sisters could be wooed with promises and even flirted with, not so the youngest. There was grey marbling on her bare legs and sores on her feet, and her hands felt like pieces of clay. A few weeks before the events of this tale the onmyoji visited the witches in their dark house when the night was dark without moon. They had been the ones who had told him how to gain his peace twenty years before but the woman had escaped him when he had planned to strangle her and kill the baby to take its destiny as his own. He told them how his sleep was ruined because he had no peace. He told them that he could not enjoy his teenage concubine’s beauty because he had no peace. He told them how his wives worried because he had no peace and asked again about the man with the eyes the same colour as the emperor’s seas. “In the province of Mino,” the youngest one told him, her eyes were like chips of ice, “and on the side of a certain mountain there is a small temple It is so small and minor that there is a single monk to tend it. He is the boy you lost that night in the Great Snow, and he feels no fear. He has achieved a state of perfect calm but within the month he will lose that and will question all that he is and what he wants. If you can kill him before the end of the month you will take his calm as his own, and the rest of his life. I could weave the strand of his life into your own so that you will take what is his.” From the pocket of his robes he pulled sweet meats and shining gewgaws which he put into their hands and stroked her hair though it felt like strands of seaweed under his fingers. He caressed her cheek, which felt like the flesh of a rotten fish. She cooed for a few minutes then pushed him away. Her sisters kept the onmyoji in the house when she returned with a piece of stained cloth which she gave him, it looked like it might be stained with blood, but painted on it was a picture of what must have been the monk with his blue eyes and the onmyoji with a great shadow between them. From the jars on the shelves she took certain herbs, wrapping each in a small square of filthy silk and then gathered them all in the painted fabric. “Gather unto you all your servants of darkness and burn these herbs and a piece of the monk’s shadow and he will be taken into the dream world and his body left behind in this world will die, but,” she stopped and looked at him with her eyes that were like limpid pools, “if he does not die within the month then you will die in his place.” “This,” she said, “is the nature of the spell, he will have three dreams, in the first he will see his mother and she will present him with a box,” from the cabinet beside her she took a small lacquered box which was chipped at the corners and gave it to the onmyoji, “in the second dream he will see his father and he will give him the key which opens the box.” From her haori she pulled out a small filigree key chased with a curling dragon around the bar. “In the third dream he will see the person that he would love if he lived and on their instruction he will use the key to open the box and he will be trapped in the dream world and without a soul he will die. You must know this to start the spell.” He returned to his great palace and pushed away his beautiful teenage concubine with lips like plums and his wife who wore her hair in two twists on either side of her lovely face. From the kitchens he took a white plate and measured the herbs unto it in small piles. He took a candle that he had gotten from a demon that was made with the fat of unborn babies strangled with their birth cords in the womb, which he used only for the greatest magics he performed. The flame burned clear and bright and on the first night he took a pinch of the first herb and sprinkled it onto the flame. When he was certain it was all gone, he extinguished the flame. One the second night he lit the candle again and taking a pinch of the second herb he burned it as he had the first. On the third night he lit the candle and took a pinch of the third herb, which was a paste, and burned it between his fingers. He sent his most powerful oni to the Mino province where they would steal something of the monk’s; it was then that the fox overheard them. On the fourth night he burned the next herb that smelt of rotten things and the stench lingered throughout the house until the sun set the next day. Although it made his concubine sick to the stomach and his wife complained he knew he would not back down because with each day the sense of calm that settled over him grew and grew. On the fifth day he took a pinch from the plate where it seemed to be empty but was in fact a piece of the monk’s shadow that the oni had stolen and burned it as the candle burned out and the spell was complete. As the candle flickered out in a pool of it’s own grease the onmyoji for the first time felt a sense of peace. The boy looks up from his plate of food, Barton has told him the tale over a cup of tea that he sometimes tops up. “I think that’s more than enough for today,” he says, “it is a good place to leave the story for now, someone will come by tomorrow to tell you the next part.” “Will it be Lady Relena?” the boy asks, as he takes the last few bites from his plate, true to his word Barton treated him to a full meal, which was a large bowl of salad, a huge slab of lasagne and a tall glass of ice cold milk. “Unfortunately not,” Barton said, “and I can’t guarantee that it will be myself, but Lena only trusts a few of us with such delicate tasks, and only a few of us even know the story.” For a second he looks wolfish. “Are you okay to get home? I can give you a lift if you like.” “It’s okay,” the boy tells him, “I only live a little walk away.” Barton reaches into his pocket and takes out his wallet, he lays several bills on the table and then looks at the money. He takes out a few more bills and stuffs them into the pocket of his coat, then pushes his wallet into the pocket of her jeans. “Here,” he says handing her the coat, “the weather’s turned cold and you can always give me it back tomorrow.” Holding the coat, which is much too long for him, over his arm he looks at Barton with shock. The man is tall and thin but something about him reminds the boy of Relena. “Lena’s son died,” he tells the boy, “you remind her of someone and having met you I will agree you are very like him, you can fill a comfortable space within her, since she has started telling you the story she has been more at peace with herself and for that alone all of us would come to spoil you and tell you the story she began.” “Is she in the hospital?” the boy asks, surprised as they walk out of the restaurant. “No, she lives in the Residence,” the way he says it it’s clear that he means the palace by the sea. “If you want to visit her go to the east gate and ask for me, I’ll take you through to her.” “Why?” the boy asks. “Because you’re her friend.” Barton answers calmly, then leaving him with his coat and the money he has deliberately left in it, he just walks away.
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