The Antiquarian by swasdiva
Chapter 1
For Priestess Skye's "Blossom" Challenge - my first ever challenge entry! Herm... now that I think about it, it kinda fits the "History" challenge, too. Is it sooooo wrong to submit one fic for two themes? Yes? Well, poo...
Disclaimer: Do you see an Ex Libris on this bitch? I don't think so. I no own.
Word Count: 3074 (after edits)
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An Ex Libris is a latin phrase, meaning "from books". It can be a bookplate itself, but is used most often as a stylized symbol claiming ownership of a particular volume. People use them to chronicle valuable collections. They are reserved for the words that mean something.
His could have been so many things, but he chose the obvious, figuring its significance as his insignia over such a long time demanded a certain loyalty. It spread its five petals in a graphic starburst, contained in portion by a rectangular motif resembling a marriage between art nouveau and sumi-e. It was a simple, straightforward design printed in red lithography. It suited him.
He printed it on the frontispiece inside all his books, no matter where they came from, no matter where or when. Some of the authors in his collection he'd known personally. Goethe. Faulkner. Voltaire had been a morbid fellow. Lafcadio Hearn, who'd married a loving Japanese girl from a long line of loving Japanese girls beholden to blossoms, had been his dearest friend.
Starting two years ago in 1979, he began teaching his University classes from this conversational perspective, amalgamating authors spanning ages into a symposium of contemporaries and constructing an alternate universe for his World Literature students to explore. One girl, who sat studiously at the front of his class, had equated the success of his style with Lucy walking through the wardrobe to find Narnia. He had suggested it was more like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, or perhaps one of their classmates falling down an ancient well.
"Wouldn't that be something?" A young man two seats behind her had quipped. The class laughed, and Sesshoumaru glanced down at the roster on his clipboard.
Row 2, seat 3. Higurashi.
Higurashi Hiro was also an exceptional student, if a bit of a loud mouth. On certain days Sesshoumaru was tempted to spit a curt osuwari in rebuke, although that had never worked for him even on the boy who originated the command. Besides, there weren't many other similarities, he thought with a smirk, Higurashi's intelligence being a prime example.
Today the young man was quiet, along with the rest of the class. They had 15 more minutes to complete their midterm essay tests, and two dozen pencils were flying in a frenzy. Frantic marks, snapping lead and the resulting groans pommelled a repetitive war drum, penning battle hymns that stirred Sesshoumaru's blood and made his magic disguise harder to bear. He always needed a distraction on test days. That's where his books came in.
He retrieved the first edition he'd found at an estate sale from his desk. This one was on Ichibana. He'd purchased it on a whim when a photo reminded him of something a thoroughly modern girl had once taught herself to do. She'd been very proud of her first successful arrangement. It had genuinely been good, and her joyous triumph at something so simple, after all she'd done to change the world, had lifted his spirits, too. He reread that same page often and couldn't move past it now. There was a nick in the top left corner, highlighting the yellowed edge. He reveled it that for a moment, thumbing the parchment like a petal. The book would not be perfect without it.
The bell rang and he marveled at how finicky time was with its shifting speeds. It liked to race the Audobon when he immersed himself in a good book or wrote his own romance, but hobbled along a country road when the plot turned tragic. Pick one gear and stay there, he'd often told it. Time never listened.
A diaspora of students migrated toward his desk to drop off their tests and rush for the door, but some lingered to compare answers and sweat out their stress with friends. The girl who loved Narnia was one of them. She gathered bouquets of people effortlessly with the sincerity of her smile, but one bright bud remained unpicked. It wasn't self-assured enough to catch her eye yet, and it never would be at this rate.
There he stood three rows over from his crush, waving goodbye to his kendo partner and snatching glimpses of her over his shoulder. Higurashi Hiro.
A Higurashi is a type of cicada. Sesshoumaru was familiar with their expressive, orchestral night songs, and the nectar they preferred to drink. They thrived in groups and shed abalone skin at maturation, molting a jeweled shell. In adulthood, they could fly.
He flew along side one once. Her song had filled his senses.
He watched from the corner of his sight as Higurashi Hiro drooled all over his chin, publicly pining for the straight-A student with a unique attachment to C.S. Lewis. She had let slip on a visit during Sesshoumaru's office hours that she'd grown up on a shrine and was enamored with history. She knew so much of Japanese, but not a tittle of the world outside. She'd laughed, saying she felt like his class was the Meiji era of her life, the time to open doors and write new chapters. He'd agreed.
The girl had not laughed long. Her eyelids drooped, a Sakura in summer, and he'd braced himself against the news he knew was coming. He wasn't surprised she felt compelled to confide in him. He had learned long ago the value of support, and since then he carried an air that said so.
A cicada had many songs to sing, but the sweetest ones were secret.
As she smoothed her skirt under her legs and sat down, he'd jotted that note on a new leaf of paper.
"Taisho-sensei," she'd said so tremulously, hanging onto her stem of strength for dear life, "I don't think I'll be taking any more classes."
He'd pulled out her evasiveness like a weed. "Why not?"
"My father is sick. There's no one else to manage the shrine while he's in the hospital, and it's best to save the money." She'd braced her hands in her lap and bowed in her chair, leaning over as far as she could without hitting her forehead on his desk. "I just wanted to thank you for providing such an illuminating class. It's been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I mean it."
"Will you come back when he is well?"
There were two expressions on her face then. A prologue and epilogue, the desire for a new start and a resigned knowledge of how she thought the story ended. "With all the bills..." She'd shaken her head, a bit embarrassed to be divulging so much to her superior, not to mention a virtual stranger. "I don't think it's meant to be."
"There are many things not meant to be, that have a way of happening."
A book had waited patiently on his desk for just that introduction. It had been twiddling its thumbs there since he realized who this girl in his class really was. It was the second of two first editions he'd picked up at an exclusive event when the book came out, free gifts specially set aside by an editor friend. Being a promotional item, it could not be resold. That was good, because that was never his intention.
Sesshoumaru had picked up the book, given it a thorough once over, and handed it across the desk. The girl gaped at his outstretched hand like he revealed a magic jewel.
He'd quirked a brow, half irritated and half endeared. So even silly habits could be hereditary. "Miss–"
"Oh!" She'd snapped out of her trance with a twitch, immediately apologizing for interrupting him. "Gomenasai, Sensei! I didn't mean to–"
"It's quite alright," He'd said smoothly, deciding a little tease couldn't hurt, "but my hand is getting tired."
"Oh," she'd said again. Nodding her head graciously, she had accepted the book and inspected it with keen interest, turning pages with careful scrutiny until she read the edition notice. He had known exactly when she found it because her eyes impersonated Jaken's. "Is this a first edition of Prince Caspian?"
"That it is, although I'm not sure how you became so enthralled with this series when your experience is mainly Japanese literature and folklore."
She'd smiled wistfully. She'd smiled sadly. "My mother read me these books."
He'd waited for her to elaborate, counting on other traits to grow up family trees. She hadn't disappointed him.
"We didn't have the money to buy them, so she checked them out from the library." The girl gathered her skirt in her fists. "She died last year."
An unexpected lump had blossomed in his throat. "I'm sorry."
"That's alright. Thank you." She'd whispered. Unnerved by the subject and the silence, the girl had reopened the book to pay it more intimate attention. After he watched her eyes scan a few sentences and smile at sweet memories, she'd focused on the frontispiece.
"A Sakura blossom, that's really pretty. My mom loved them and their symbolism. She said it was always worth having hope, even if things didn't last. She said they were more beautiful that way, that their impression was enough to be immortal." Her eyes glowed wetly. "They're my favorite now."
There were a few poignant moments in Sesshoumaru's life when he was especially glad he'd been proven wrong about humans. That was one of them.
It was and will be your daughter's, too.
"Consider it yours."
"Huh?!" She mimicked Jaken's squawking with surprising alacrity. Sesshoumaru had to remind himself he'd faced scarier things, in theory. "Sensei... I couldn't–"
He'd held up a hand. "I insist. I shall just assume your next paper will be a complete analysis of its themes and influences. That must sound fair enough."
Nodding dizzily, she'd spread a tentative hand over the old book binding. She seemed to be in awe. "I can really keep this?"
"Yes. Your children should enjoy it. I imagine they would be drawn to magical worlds."
"Oh, I don't have any children yet, Sensei!"
He had felt something move softly inside him, like a hello kiss at dawn. The skin over his heart tingled where lips had once touched. "One day then."
She had blushed flagrantly and stood to leave, bowing in thanks and agreement. "Maybe one day."
Sesshoumaru sighed at the memory and flipped a page explaining the use of color in Ichibana, looking up at Higurashi Hiro again. Perhaps that day was soon.
"Try flowers, Higurashi."
The young man blinked in mortification, unaware he'd had an audience. "S-sensei?"
"Flowers. The Sakura festivals are soon, are they not?" Sesshoumaru continued to page through his brittle book, having mastered maneuvering his masked claws like the tongs antiquarians used with relics. He sketched a few notes on his legal pad, a page number here, a passage there. His placid face was full of silent psalms, voiceless and wise like a conscience, a reflection of the book in his hand. "They worked for me."
Higurashi Hiro glanced back to the girl giggling with her friends by the door of the classroom. A fresh determination blossomed in his eyes, which Sesshoumaru was glad to see.
"That's a great idea, Sensei." He bowed with a flourish, bursting with hope and beaming like a fool. It was a contagious energy, emitting its light through dark blue eyes. "Thanks a lot!"
The pair went out that week, and the next, and the next, perennially. Even months after she'd had to drop out, Higurashi Hiro would drop off papers she'd written in her free time, reviews of old stories, hints of new ones, humbly requesting her Sensei's honest critique. Sesshoumaru sent them back through her faithful courier until he saw her at her new husband's graduation, where he returned a brilliant piece on mythological monsters in person.
There are no real monsters, she'd written. Only vague personifications of what we fear in ourselves.
"Seems like certain attitudes run in the family."
Sesshoumaru pushed his reading glasses up his nose and glanced up from grading papers to see his 3rd oldest son leaning in the doorway. Kamui was a man now, having the looks to model but the brains for advanced robotics. A solid upbringing, and an otaku fascination with the new Gundam fad, had cultivated a penchant for the latter. That didn't mean he didn't appreciate his father's most recent academic concentration. He always offered a second pair of golden eyes to peruse and proofread papers, not insinuating his father needed the help but quick to pick a squabble nonetheless.
It ruffled Sesshoumaru's feathers, but in a welcoming way. It kept him on his toes. It kept things exciting. It was a contagious energy.
He was his mother's son.
Kamui strolled in and toppled on the couch opposite Sesshoumaru, kicking his feet up on the recently wiped coffee table and brushing a hand through his shoulder length black hair. He flipped through the typed, double-spaced pages in his hand. It was a copy of the new Mrs. Higurashi's most recent paper, one she didn't know Sesshoumaru had made. "She's really smart. It's a damn shame she had to quit."
"Study outside of school is still study." His father replied, marking a compliment in red ink. "She'll put that knowledge to good use eventually."
Kamui reached the end of the paper, reading the impressive last line a few times, and smiled ruefully. "Yeah, I know." There were no clocks in their house, but they could hear the metric buzz of electronics that humans easily tuned out. The VCR was especially verbose that evening. "Is it wrong that I can't wait to meet her? It means Ji-chan will be dead," Kamui brought up somber things too much for Sesshoumaru's liking, but Kagome had always valued honestly and open communication, so he was used to it. "It means Oka-san will be, too."
Although there was not much to discuss when he went down this road. "Yes."
"Yes, what? It's wrong?"
"No. I mean they will be dead."
Kamui was rarely satisfied by his blunt assessments. Sesshoumaru wondered if honesty perhaps wasn't the best way to make him stop asking. "Why can't I meet them now? Just a quick 'hey, how's it going?' or 'what's that Goshiboku legend again?'. I could pass as a tourist. Maybe one who resembles Ji-chan a little too much, but they won't really know who I am."
"Doesn't that answer your question?"
"You're their teacher, for shit's sake. I think that's plenty of meddling. Why do you get a pass?"
"Secrets no longer tempt me to betray them." Sesshoumaru regarded him with stoic sympathy. "They will still tempt you, Kamui."
His jaw clenched around a rude remark that wouldn't help matters. After all these years he had some self-control, Goddammit.
Assured his one rebellious child had given up for the night, Sesshoumaru thought back to another night when stories were not enough, when paints, inks and scraps of old scrolls came out of the cedarchest. Tiny toddler fingers had spread their imaginations across the page while older fingers grasped brushes to do the same. Their eldest, Sakura, had asked Kagome to paint what Aslan looked like. That night, he looked much less like a lion, and more like an equally regal beast they were all familiar with. "What did your mother always tell you, Kamui?"
Kamui's mind had unknowingly followed him to that memory. He took awhile to answer, too consumed with how his favorite novel had segued into family anecdotes of the titanic grandfather he never knew. "Follow Aslan's shadow, and the world will come alive."
"Yes, and where did she learn to say that?"
"From Oba-san's book, the one Oka-san read to us when we were little." He glanced up to the pristine volume of Prince Caspian displayed in a hermetic glass case on the shelf, the prize of his parents' extensive collection despite it was a copy his mother would never see. "The one I must wait to return when its other self disappears down a well."
"It is the only way Mrs. Higurashi will know Kagome lived a good life, but she won't believe you until then. She is destined to be both the villainous Telmarines and the heroes in her favorite story, exiled in the mortal world while her child lives a fairytale, but without having found Aslan and experiencing that war, she will neither see nor trust the creatures of Old Narnia. She won't see us for who or what we are." Checking a passing grade on his last paper, he set them neatly aside. Sesshoumaru faced his son. "Exposing yourself to them now has the cataclysmic potential to reverse things. Humans come to Narnia, not the other way around. We made a promise, a hard one, but one we must keep."
"Time travel's a bitch." Kamui cursed after his father's good advice sank in. "It's just, I want them to know how much I love them. How much Oka-san loved them until her dying breath. Why does destiny have to take so damn long?" He vaulted off the couch and rolled his shoulders, rolling off his uncharacteristic seriousness as well. Although he had a periodic tendency to ruminate, Kamui shown brightest when his faith was as strong as his mother's. Chuckling and shaking his head, he donned a slick motorcycle jacket, the one his girlfriend mentioned looked damned sexy with his Suzuki GS, and strolled out the front door with a wave. "See ya, Otou-san."
When the door clicked shut, Sesshoumaru stood. He didn't want to disturb the preservation of their Narnia, so instead he found a well-loved copy of Lafcadio's "Kokoro" angling for his attention. There was a large cardboard box idling in the hallway, filled to the brim with cherished old books he planned to give to two particular students as a graduation gift, or perhaps as a wedding gift, and "Kokoro" had been on his mind since the inception of the idea. Perhaps the book was eager to be reincarnated. Drawing it out of its shell on the bookcase, he browsed some chapters, mouthed some words aloud, and turning to the book's first page, ended his journey at the start.
"You'll see one day, Kamui. Destiny is happening now." He caressed the Ex Libris, the florid symbol of his house, the one she'd suggested be stamped in every member of their collection as a testament to what eternity meant. "It's happening now."
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Of all the authors I mentioned, I recommend Lafcadio Hearn the most. Born in Europe and living his early adulthood in America, he spent his most proliferant, precious and final years in Japan, adopting the name Koizumi Yakumo and influencing my life to the fullest. His style is beauty in print.