Chapter Text
Ashitaka found himself once again on the banks of the pond he’d found with Koroku, the same banks where he’d laid helpless when Moro met with the boar tribe. The evening sunlight seemed to cast a halo around the island in the middle of the pond, and the air was heavy with magic.
But where was San?
Ashitaka ran alongside the pond, looking for any sign of where he should go, and he was surprised to find Moro lying on the bank, her lower half submerged in the shallow water.
“Moro! What happened to you?”
Dark circles rested under her closed eyes, and she didn’t even twitch to acknowledge him, though the great wolf was still breathing shallowly.
Running out of options, Ashitaka turned and shouted into the forest. “San! It’s me, Ashitaka! SAN!”
He continued shouting, pausing for a moment every few seconds to listen, and finally, finally, he heard San calling his name much closer than he expected.
In the direction he’d heard her voice, the huge form of Lord Okkoto was slowly emerging out of the darkness of the forest, but something was horribly wrong.
His white fur was covered in writhing, wriggling red-black worms.
He was turning into a demon, and somewhere in that writhing mess was San.
Smaller brown boar appeared, running in front of Okkoto and encircling Ashitaka in moments, but they were also wrong—they weren’t boars at all, he realized, just the skins of boars camouflaging dozens of men.
Indeed, as he watched, three blowpipes emerged from the boar-skin eye holes, and one skin lifted for a man who growled, “Leave, boy!”
Ashitaka stood his ground. “Fight me, and the Forest Spirit will never come.” He walked forward, and the boar-skins parted for him to approach the maddened white boar.
Ashitaka spread his arms wide. “Lord Okkoto, calm your fury! Oh mighty lord, let me have the girl, I beg of you! Please, let her go!”
The boar had stopped walking, at least, but he made no further move to acknowledge Ashitaka.
“San! Are you there?” he shouted louder. “It’s me, Ashitaka!”
The boar opened its mouth and screamed in rage, but as it did, Ashitaka caught sight of two feet kickout out of the tangle of darkness on its worm-covered snout. “San!”
Red-black worms burst from the beast and landed on Ashitaka and several of the boar-skins. Ashitaka brushed them aside, but the men under the skins screeched in terror, one of them pointing at him and shouting, “Kill him!”
Ashitaka dove to the ground to avoid a dozen poisoned darts that flew directly at him. One pieced his sleeve over his shoulder, missing his flesh by a fraction of an inch. Ashitaka rolled to his feet and ran between the boar-skins, shoving and clawing over the top of them as necessary.
“Stop him! He’ll ruin everything!” a man in red and white robes shouted, but then the wolf pups were there, tearing through the boar-skins and the men underneath, and Ashitaka left them to it, leaping instead onto the great boar’s wide snout.
He dug through the cursed worms with his bare hands, shouting San’s name. Okkoto’s curse fought him, tried to push him back, but he didn’t care—he dug and he dug until he saw a glimpse of his sister’s crystal dagger against a cream tunic.
“San!”
The cursed worms were constantly moving and shifting the two of them apart, but after exerting all his effort, Ashitaka finally found San’s face. She looked unconscious, but when he clasped his hands on either side of her face, she opened her eyes and gasped, “Ashitaka!”
Then the boar beneath them suddenly bucked tossed his head wildly, and while San was somehow anchored to the boar, Ashitaka was not—he started slipping.
“Ashitaka!” San screamed, grasping his hands desperately, but it wasn’t enough—Ashitaka went flying, slammed into Moro’s back, and finally landed in the pond, unconscious.
“Ashitaka…” Moro’s voice reverberated through his mind, dragging him back to awareness. “…can you save the girl you love?”
He came awake with a gasp, or what would have been a gasp if he weren’t underwater. Luckily the pond wasn’t terribly deep—Ashitaka kicked off the bottom and came coughing to the surface.
Above him, walking on the very surface of the water was a creature Ashitaka had only seen in dreams and distant silhouettes—it had the body of a deer, feet of a bird, the neck of a wolf, the face of a baboon, and horns like branches of a tree.
It was the Forest Spirit.
And it was walking over the pond straight for Moro and Okkoto, who were locked together in a death grip at the edge of the water.
Just as the Forest Spirit was about to pass over Ashitaka, however, there was a bang! and a bullet flew straight through its head.
There was no blood, but creature’s face scrunched weirdly and its front legs started sinking in the water.
From the western shore, Ashitaka saw Eboshi lower her rifle and start to reload. “Eboshi, hold your fire!” he cried, and the Forest Spirit seemed to react to his words—it looked up, its baboon face suddenly stretched back to normal, and stepped calmly back on top of the water, walking over the pond towards the dying wolf and boar on the shore.
Once it had passed him, Ashitaka turned back to Eboshi and the riflemen hiding at the base of the trees. “Eboshi, your enemy is not the Forest Spirit!”
Then he set off swimming for the cursed mess he’d left behind.
Okkoto was backing away as the Forest Spirit approached, and Moro was left holding a large glob of red-black ooze in her jaws.
“San!” Ashitaka gasped, and as soon as his feet touched the ground he ran to Moro and gathered the ooze-covered San in his arms. He carried her straight back to the water, begging, “Don’t die!” and then pulling them both underneath the surface.
Whether it was this particular pond had magical properties or simply water in general, he didn’t know, but he did know that it was a good defense against the demon ooze—within just a minute or two, it had melted away from San and Ashitaka and disappeared.
When Ashitaka brought them back to the surface, it was to a chaotic scene. Okkoto and Moro were laying on the shore, lifeless; the Forest Spirit was stretching its neck out into the heavens and looked like he was turning into the stars; and running towards it on the shore was Lady Eboshi with her rifle.
She dropped a knee and took aim.
“No! STOP!” Ashitaka tore his sword from its sheath and threw it end over end at her rifle. The blade lodged into the wooden casing, throwing it off target for a moment, and Ashitaka surged out of the water with San still unconscious in his arms, snarling, “Eboshi!”
Lady Eboshi looked at him, judged the distance between them, and raised the rife again at the Forest Spirit, sword and all.
The first time she tried to fire, the mechanism failed. The Forest Spirit turned its strange red eyes down on her, and little green vines started growing right out of the rifle’s wooden frame.
Lady Eboshi gasped and scrubbed off the vines as they grew, snarling, “You will die!”
She raised the rifle again, and this time the firing mechanism did not fail.
BANG
San woke just in time to see the bullet rip through the Forest Spirit’s star-glowing neck, and its head dropped to the ground.
San cried out in horror.
Ashitaka set her down on the bank and held her close as they helplessly watched Forest Spirit’s neck slowly collapse. Its skin seemed to deflate and peel away from a dark, burbling liquid that had once looked like a starry night sky.
Then the liquid exploded, shooting forth streams of darkness in every direction.
Lady Eboshi narrowly dodged one strand, San tackled Ashitaka back into the pond to avoid another, and everywhere the strange bubbling, expanding liquid was leaving death in its wake. Moss, grass, trees, men—everywhere, the cries of death were being heard. Even the pale little kodama spirits were falling all around the forest, looking like specks of white-green snow against the growing darkness.
The pond water seemed to be a protection against the spread of death—Ashitaka and San swam towards the island in the middle of the pond in relative safety while Jigo and his men scrambled to regroup.
Lady Eboshi was the one to pick up the Forest Spirit’s head. “Quick Jigo, bring me that box of yours!”
Most of Jigo’s men, however, had droped dead the moment they set foot in the liquid darkness.
“Be careful not to touch the spirit’s body—it’ll suck the life out of you!” Lady Eboshi shouted, and finally, a small group of the men managed to carry a lockbox close to her.
“Here it is!” Lady Eboshi grinned at Jigo. “One head, as promised!”
She tossed the head, and Jigo only just managed to catch it and shove it in the lockbox.
If Lady Eboshi had been watching her back, she would have seen a segment of the liquid darkness seep over Moro’s neck, and the wolf’s head straightened and started moving an wriggling on its own. Ashitaka saw it and began swimming back to the shore.
“Watch out!” faithful Gonza shouted, and Lady Eboshi turned just in time to avoid getting her head bitten off by the flying wolf’s head.
It took her arm instead and landed in a bubble of the darkness, never to move again.
“Milady!” Gonza caught her before she could fall.
“I told you… a wolf’s head can still bite…” Eboshi said faintly.
The liquid darkness was gathering itself into a massive body now. Jigo’s red and white tunic flapped about as he and his last three men were running for their lives with the lockbox carried between them, leaving Gonza and Lady Eboshi to their fates standing on the pond’s edge.
Ashitaka reached the shore rushed to help carry Eboshi into the water. “Gonza, we got to get to the island!”
“Island?” Gonza repeated. “I can’t swim!”
“Then walk along the bottom!” Ashitaka took Lady Eboshi and dived with her, swimming under water while large bubbles of darkness slid over the top. Gonza followed behind, half-swimming, half-walking along the bottom of the pond until it rose to form the island. San was waiting there with the two giant wolf pups, who were huddled together in despair.
San was not in despair.
She had taken the crystal dagger from her throat, broken its leather ties, and ran to the water’s edge where Ashitaka was dragging Eboshi up onto land.
“Give her to me! I’ll cut her throat!”
“Your claim has been avenged,” Ashitaka told her firmly. “Your mother saw to that.” He ducked out of his shirt and turned to Gonza, who was splashing up behind them. “Here, help me with this.”
Between the two of them, they wrapped Lady Eboshi up in the tunic, effectively staunching her wound and hopefully warming her before she could fall into shock. Ashitaka mildly noticed that his curse had spread to wrap around his torso, but that wasn’t important right now.
“Don’t waste your sympathy,” Eboshi hissed as they worked.
Ashitaka leaned over her and tied up his tunic sleeves securely over her front with a stern frown. “I promised Toki that I’d bring you back to Iron Town.”
A loud crack from across the pond caught their attention, and they saw that the liquid darkness had amalgamated into a strange, headless creature that was now lumbering slowly through the dead forest, upending trees in its wake.
“He’s searching for his head,” Ashitaka realized. “We can’t stay here. San,” he turned, and San flinched back from him as if startled to hear her own name, “you have to help us!”
“No!” she cried, clenching the crystal dagger tight and backing away from him. “You’re on their side! You always were!”
Ashitaka got to his feet and approached her slowly, hands spread wide as she screamed at all of them to just go away.
“San,” he said softly.
“Never! I hate all of you humans!” she shouted.
“Yes, I’m human, San,” Ashitaka acknowledged, “and so are you.”
“Stop it! I’m a wolf, you hear!”
“San…” Ashitaka stepped forward, carefully bringing his arms around her.
“Stay back!”
She struck his chest with her fist enclosed around the crystal dagger.
They both looked down at it briefly, and San looked horrified, but just like when he’d been shot, Ashitaka didn’t feel any pain. He took one more step forward and wrapped her in a gentle embrace.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I tried to stop it.”
Behind them, the headless creature of darkness roared.
“It’s over,” San whimpered, and finally she leaned into his embrace. “Everything’s over. The forest is dead.”
Ashitaka held her for a long moment, and then he pulled her back and held her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “Nothing is over. The two of us are still alive. Now, will you help me, San?”
Ashitaka’s first order of business was to drop off Lady Eboshi and Gonza with the rest of the men at the lakeshore. That done, he and San rode the wolf pups to Iron Town, where he warned Toki to get everyone onto the lake to avoid the liquid wall of death coming straight for them.
The headless Forest Spirit had grown into a monolithic creature that spread its deadly slime for miles with every step. Within minutes, Iron Town was engulfed in the oily ooze and burning to ash, but he was confident they’d gotten out in time.
Meanwhile, Ashitaka, San, and the wolves hunted down Jigo.
They found him and his three men carrying the lockbox up over the mountain.
Ashitaka and San dismounted from the pups and sent them to find safety while they confronted the men.
“Stop right there!” Ashitaka demanded as he slid down the slope and barred Jigo's path.
“Whoa! Oh, you’re both alive! Oh, how nice,” Jigo panted, trying for a smile.
Ashitaka took a threatening step forward. “I’m giving the creature back its head. Put the box down and back away!”
Jigo and his men stumbled back a step, taking the box with them. “Give the head back now? Come on, boy, don’t be silly. Now, when the sun’s about to come up? Look!” Jigo pointed at the monstrous headless creature that was still lumbering towards them. “He’s a brainless, swollen life-sucking god of death, but at sunrise he’ll vanish like a bad dream!”
“Sir, it’s coming!” one of the porters shouted. “We gotta get out of here!”
Jigo turned back to Ashitaka and made his last plea. “Look, everyone wants everything—that’s the way the world is! But I might actually get it!”
“Don’t force me to kill you,” Ashitaka sighed.
“Oh, dear, you make it sound so very easy,” Jigo laughed, crouching down and gripping his wooden sandals tight with his toes. “You really ought to relax!”
Jigo leapt and kicked out, using those tall wooden sandals of his as weapons aimed for Ashitaka’s skull. He dodged backwards and drew Jigo away from the box—in the corner of his eye, he saw another porter drop his side and pull a knife on San, but she was much faster than him and had soon knocked him down with a sharp blow to the head.
Ashitaka tried to keep track of her while he blocked kick after kick from Jigo’s sandals, and he soon felt the bite of splinters in his forearms, but he knew she could take care of herself as long as he kept Jigo busy.
San ran after the final two men lugging the box up the hill, but the headless death monster was closing in on them—they panicked, tossed the box aside, and ran for their lives.
“Ashitaka!” San shouted as she chased the tumbling box down the mountain, but Jigo heard her too and ran to catch it for himself.
The box knocked him off his feet, and he rolled with it until he collided with a large boulder. The oozing darkness was spreading up from the opposite direction, so Jigo scrambled up on top of the boulder with the box and shouted at the sun to rise faster.
Ashitaka, San, and the porter who had fought San all ran to boulder and piled on top of it to avoid the liquid darkness.
“Open the box!” Ashitaka demanded, but Jigo stood with one foot planted firmly on the lid.
“Don’t you see? It’s too late for that now!” the man argued.
“Why are you wasting your breath talking to him?” San seethed.
“Human hands must return it,” Ashitaka answered, glowering down in Jigo’s face.
Jigo seemed to finally understand that there was nothing left between him and an untimely demise if he didn’t comply.
He sighed and crouched down to unlock the box, muttering, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Green liquid spilled out of the box as soon as the lid was loosened. Ashitaka set the lid aside and saw that the head was fully submerged in the stuff, but he didn’t care. He and San reached into the slime and pulled the head out, holding it up together. As the slime oozed down their arms and torsos, it left the same black-and-purple curse marks that Ashitaka had been battling for weeks.
If this didn’t work, they were very, very dead.
“Forest Spirit!” Ashitaka shouted to the lumbering monster above them. “We give you back your head! Take it, and be at peace!”
The monster slowly crouched down over them.
“Well that certainly got his attention!” Jigo sweated.
The monster’s neck stretched out into a long arm that reached for the head.
Unsure what would happen on impact, Ashitaka wrapped an arm around San and held her close. Together, they looked up at the spirit’s hand coming straight for them, and it seemed to glow bright as the sun as they watched.
Jigo and his last rifleman huddled at their feet in terror, and then the strange glowing liquid arm hit them, and Ashitaka and San were lost in a world of blinding yellow fire.
Ashitaka woke to Yakul nibbling his hair.
He groaned at sat up, confused for a moment when all he could see, aside from San in his arms, was green.
Then he saw the giant wolf pups sitting on the boulder next to the empty lockbox, and he knew they’d done it—they’d given the Forest Spirit back its head, and it had cured the destruction it had brought to the land.
“San,” Ashitaka gasped, shaking her. “San, look!”
San slowly came awake and went through the same moment of confusion that he had. He laughed breathlessly and pulled them both to their feet, petting Yakul’s nose absently—the elk’s arrow wound was gone, healed like the rest of the land.
Everywhere they looked they saw grass and tender shoots all across the mountain.
San came back to Ashitaka’s side, staring at the greenery around them. “Even if all the trees return, it won’t be his forest anymore,” she murmured. “The Great Forest Spirit is dead now.”
“Never,” Ashitaka said firmly, turning to her. “He’s life itself. He’s not dead, San, he’s here, right now, trying to tell us something—that it’s time for both of us to live.”
He looked down at his hand where the demon mark had been just hours ago, and a faint pink scar was all that remained.
The curse was broken.
He was going to live.
The dawn had turned the world green.
Ashitaka later heard from the townsfolk that the Forest Spirit had collapsed against Iron Town and then it used the last of its power in a healing wind. The remains of the battle were blown away, forests were reborn, the kodama reappeared, and all the people who had made it to the lake were safe. Iron Town’s sick and wounded found themselves cured—even the lepers. Lady Eboshi survived her wounds and promised to rebuild Iron Town, though she’d found a new respect for the Wolf Girl who had helped save all their lives.
Jigo and his last rifleman also survived. They had been on task from the Emperor himself to retrieve the Forest Spirit’s head in a bid for immortality—they would not be well received if they returned to the Emperor’s court emptyhanded, so they were keeping a low profile. Iron Town saw them come and go occasionally.
San and Ashitaka stood there looking over the budding mountainside for a long while, but eventually Ashitaka gathered Yakul’s bridle and San mounted one of the wolf pups. They both paused and looked at each other when they realized they each had to decide where to go next.
“Ashitaka, you mean so much to me,” San said, “but I can’t forgive the humans for what they’ve done.”
“I understand,” Ashitaka nodded. “You’ll live in the forest, and I’ll go help them rebuild Iron Town. I’ll always be near,” he promised. “Yakul and I will come and visit you whenever we can, alright?”
San smiled and nodded. She touched her knee to the wolf pup’s side and trotted away, the second pup close behind.
Ashitaka watched them go, confident that he would see them all again very soon.