The Crack of Leather Wings [Flashback]

Inaba sat in the back row with his mother, dressed in their mourning clothes. Her hand was flat against his back, with face buried into his shoulder. He had never seen his mother cry, but it seemed a poor imitation of grief. His mother had always been a cold woman. She didn’t love Dad, she was just. . .

“Inachi Kurohane was a great man. Respected by his peers. Loved by his family. Above all he was. . .” His uncle said from the podium.

“Mom,” Inaba said, “I need some air.”

He brushed her hand away, stood, made himself flat against the row of chairs in front of them, and sidled past the watchers lined beside them. Uncle Kurohane’s voice followed Inaba as he shouldered open a double door. He walked into the foray, skirted around a lacquered table with trays of cookies and a mug of coffee. Pushed the front door open with an outstretched palm, cigarette already dangling from his lips.

Dry rotted boards of a bench groaned as he sat, bent fingers cupping lighter flame. Shoulders sagged, neck tilted back, and a cloud of smoke rose from his lips. A boy chased an orange ball down the sidewalk, and his father came calling after him. Inaba took another drag and thought of his father. He remembered his father's fingers stained yellow from nicotine. He remembered how he came home and flopped onto the couch from his long shifts. His excitement when he took down a killer from the district of.... And he remembered the Bats of Koumori Cave. When had father first taken me there?

[WC: 269]

Ribbons of smoke spiraled above. The images of memories loomed as Inaba closed his eyes. Father’s firm grasp around his wrist yanked him down a path through foothills mantled in fog. Little feet cycled in rapid strides to match pace with father. Leaves lashed against his face as Inachi pulled him from the path. Father looked back every few strides. Inaba’s restless breath caught in his throat, face flushed from the labor of pinwheeled legs.

“Where are we going, Dad?” The boy asked, looking up through a trail of cigarette haze.

“To meet some old friends of mine, soon to be your friends.”

“New friends! What are they like? Are they nice?”

“Some of them, yes–some of them are. . .”

“Would they like to play with my toys?”

“I don’t think so, Ina, they aren’t those types of friends.”

“What kind are they then, Dad?”

“They’re, well, you’ll just have to see for yourself, son.”

Foothills led to scarped boulders at a mountainous basin. Dry crusts of grass crunched underfoot, the rotations of tumbleweeds passed them. Red fingers of failing light lay across the horizon. They had walked the better part of the day, and Inaba’s little feet ached from the trek. Inachi halted abruptly, letting his son’s wrist free in the process. Inaba slammed into his father’s backside.

“We’re here,” Inachi said.

To the boy’s eye nothing had changed: another scarp, more dead brush, more sheer walls of rock. Inachi lifted a palm to a rock wall that stood before them, as the other held a seal. Black lettering slithered along its pocked surface, and stone heaved. The earth trembled below their feet.

[WC: 275: TWC: 544]

Chittering stone shifted into a doorway. Bat figureheads were wrought from malleable rock. Inachi walked into the dark, and Inaba followed. Dim torchlight lit their path, small fixtures of flickering light cast their shadows twisted on stalagmites of lime. Dripping water echoed through cavernous halls. Inaba bent to a mound of brown droppings that glowed blue in the dark.

“Don’t touch that.” His father said, “They eat berries polluted with foreign chakra.”

“Who does, father?”

“The bats.”

Inaba wrinkled his nose. Why would father care what the bats ate? He stood erect, spills of black bangs fell across his lilac gaze. The snap of leather echoed in the dark, like some tanner plying his trade. 

“W-what was. . .”

“This is your pup, Inachi?” A voice croaked from above them, “He looks slow.”

A monstrous thing hung upside down from the ceiling, covered head to tail in gray fur. Its wings spread to full length, sending eddies of dust past the boy. Inaba covered his eyes with his forearms, clamping them shut against the foul wind. He heard the rattle of pebbles as bounced on cavern floor. Felt the earth beneath him shiver under the burden of clawed feet. Recoiled the heat of rancid breath on his cheek, like the wheeze of an old witch. He opened his mouth to scream at the eyes that gleamed in the dark, but his father’s hand was cupped around his mouth.

“She will not hurt you, son,” he said softly, “Kurokotsu may be old, but her hearing is as sharp as ever. Do not raise your voice in her presence.” 

[WC: 267, TWC: 811]