~21~
Tara’s House
(house of straw)
Tara’s body was her house, and for the first time in decades it was ravaged as if by a cyclone.
If she deemed it necessary to console herself over this chaos, she would remind herself that she had suspected what Willow was capable of. She had known Willow had the power and the motive to destroy her.
Tara’s body was her house, no longer a grand edifice of granite or stone. It was a house of straw, and all she needed was the spark of death to ignite it and burn it to the ground.
(london bridge is falling down
falling down)Suicide was prohibited by the collar she wore. There could be no self-immolation either in penance or in despair. She had to be content to wander through the rooms of her straw house, noting the blood-streaked walls, the piles of pain multiplying in all her unseen corners.
Tara wandered, and remembered that pain had a unique sort of beauty.
Pain, the great Teacher of life’s hardest lessons.
(the destruction of self brings everlasting life to humanity)While she understood this pain all splashed against the walls of her straw house, Tara did not understand why she couldn’t wake herself up. Pure control over her subconscious state was another power written into her collar. Wakeful reality lingered outside the doors and windows.
Her windows were bricked up, her doors boarded and fortified. There was no means of escape; she could not wake.
Panic appeared along the blood-streaked walls. She tried to calm herself by remembering the events that brought her here.
Joyce packing her bags for Tehran, her silence sad and golden.
Willow in her den armed with a rapier and compassion.
Fateful and astonishing conversation.
(by all the gods Tara
what has this world done to you?)The first seeds of panic had sprouted there as Willow vocalized Tara’s heritage. Foolish and courageous girl.
(Willow for the love of god put your fucking dagger at my throat!)Enter the marionette, the reaper.
The great guillotine of her Master’s collar had then fallen, separating Tara’s willpower from her physical body. With her eyes wide open, Tara had seen what her puppet hands were doing to Willow.
A four act tragedy, better than any Shakespeare, directed by the man behind the curtain. Willow had been unwittingly cast as the hapless heroine.
An orchestra of bone and blade. A stage of fallen books and blood drops.
The spine of Narnia, broken and discarded, a meaningless prop now. The script unknown, unrehearsed.
The unexpected relief of ritual death, a sudden finale. Willow triumphant, accepting her ovations as the curtain fell over Tara’s form.
To spend quality unconscious time in her house was expected. She had been the matron of a straw house many times before. Sometimes she walked out of her house and rejoined the land of the living, waking to pain and consequences. Sometimes the house crumbled around her, and she would flee into the basement and into the arms of her pure mother. Death was the gift of the basement, though she never stayed dead for very long.
It had been over five hundred years since she last died.
She had never been imprisoned inside her own house before. Power to emasculate a djinn was rare. Bricks and boards, there was no way out.
Panic would not serve her well, so she sat down on the floor and leaned against the soiled wall, waiting as patiently as any djinn could for a new Dawn.
Then the strangest smell emerged, of rotting rose petals.
A strange sound emerged, of rotting notes and declensions.
(london bridge is falling down
falling down
falling down)Tara followed sound and scent and found the intruder in her library, the storehouse of her memories.
The form of the uninvited woman seemed wreathed in shadows, yet her face was pale and faintly luminescent as algae that never sees the sun. She was wearing a long black Victorian gown and there was a wooden rosary around her neck. She was occupying herself by watering Tara’s plants with a jug of bleach, singing a familiar tune in a minor key.
(london bridge is falling down
my fair lady)“Who are you?” Tara demanded.
“Hush, little poppet,” the woman crooned, not looking at her, focusing all her dark intent on the deliberate destruction of Tara’s potted plants. “You are still only a child and should learn to trust your betters.”
Tara took another step into the library and tried to flick on the lamp.
“That won’t work, you know,” the intruder continued, finally looking at her and wagging one pale finger at Tara as if she were a naughty child. She had a frightening beauty, with eyebrows dark and dour, cheekbones high and dainty, and the very timbre of her voice trembled on the brink of freakish madness.
Tara had no doubt that this woman was insane.
“It’s all dark in the house now,” the stranger said, setting down the jug of bleach. She stepped to the nearest shelf and ran her hand along Tara’s memory-books. “You write your thoughts on the madhouse wall but I can still read them. The voices of the damned still have a song to sing and even if the voices aren’t real they still have good ideas. Stay sleeping. My head will sing while yours is silent, and the orchestra is missing the fiddler.”
Enough talk. Tara moved to eject this unwanted visitor from her house, but she suddenly stopped. There was a burning sensation on her lips.
Her body began to thicken, as if cement were being pumped through her veins.
Panic fled, and was replaced by fear.
Tara looked at this woman, this stranger, and knew her for what she was.
No clan woman this. No mark in her elbow, claiming lordship and dominion.
“Tell me your name,” Tara commanded, even as hardness solidified her bones, congealed her muscles and tissues. She could barely say the words, and knew that soon she would not be able to speak at all.
“Yes, they call us Drusilla in the night-time, yes they do, and when daylight comes I have a new song to sing.”
The stranger then focused all her dark enjoyment on the thousands of books before her, containing every memory of Tara’s endless life. She drew her wickedly white finger along the shelf and Tara was reminded of her Master’s inspections of the cleanliness of her den.
Trapped as she was now, Tara began to feel angry. She was not totally without weapons here in her own house. She watched Drusilla’s every movement, analysing, deducing, understanding.
This woman had no clan-kinship with the Romany or the Sumerians, yet she still had access to the Source. She was a rogue, then. No laws to govern or protect her. She also radiated psychic talent, but it was a gift that had been spoiled, left to rot in overly hot sun like rose petals.
The rosary. Significant, that.
One of several siblings, raised in London’s East End, and from her birth she vowed to dedicate her life to God. Devout Catholic parents praised her choices, until the visions began. Dreams of serpents, lakes of fire, great holes in the universe through which she would inevitably tumble.
Caught up in studying the woman, Tara suddenly noticed where Drusilla had stopped. Near the floor were a number of black-bound volumes. She opened her mouth to yell, scream, plead even, but nothing emerged. She was trussed up like a witch awaiting a brand.
That book contained one of the worst memories of Tara’s life.
(oh my Lilith!)“Miss Edith shouldn’t have been naughty,” Drusilla simply stated. “If she had minded me, she could have been here for this. She rather likes the juicy bits, the bits that bleed between the teeth. She’s fortunate she likes being tied up. It’s one of her favourite things.”
Tara had no idea of whom Drusilla spoke. The words themselves seemed out of order and terrifying.
The book fell open in the witch’s hands. She began to leaf through it, a dainty smile on her vivid lips. “Such pretty fire,” she said. “Such beautiful pain. A birthday massacre for the King of Cups and he isn’t even thirsty.”
Tara struggled against her invisible bonds, all the while concentrating on the woman before her, unraveling the gauze of madness that obscured her soul.
(dolls with blindfolds, sitting all in a row
Hush-a, hush-a, they all fall down)Drusilla was smiling over some horrific thing in that terrible book. She shivered as she read as if aroused. In one such throe of sadistic ecstasy, she glanced back down at the bookcase.
A slim red volume had been hidden behind the heavy tomes of destruction and despair.
Her eyes opened wide and a smile broke upon her flawless face. She let the heavy black book fall to the ground. “Oops,” she said girlishly. “Someone’s gone and spilled all your insides out.” She bent down as if to retrieve it, but her pale arm snaked deeper into the case to pull out the little red book.
Tara’s entire existence was jolted into stillness.
Drusilla rose slowly, licking her lips with her pink tongue. Three taps on her rosary for providence. She lifted the book to her nose and sniffed. “Usually we smell oranges, don’t we?” she said.
Tara knew the scent of this book. Imperial Jasmine and Prada.
(strong coconut rinse)Tiny droplets of blood were starting to appear on the witch’s scalp-line. She moved her red lips as she read, her eyes twinkling with malice. Rage rippled through Tara’s extremities, but she was still helpless, unable to move, unable to speak.
Prisoner of war.
“Are your mother’s parents still alive?” the woman read aloud.
Those had been the first words Tara spoke to Willow.
Drusilla took the page and ripped it from the book in a slow and loving manner. When the page fluttered to the ground the true memory was gone. Stolen and erased.
Another page gasped its way to the library floor. Another Willow-minute gone.
If Tara believed in God, she may have asked for help, to stop this insane pillage.
God died with Buffy.
Violently.
Tara was going to have to save herself.
She closed her eyes to the mutilation of her precious Willow-book and deliberately began creating a new one, remembering the way that Willow held her handbag, the fluid grace in her step, the red waterfall of her hair as she read from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Remembering all these things would be only an echo to the reality she had lived, but it was better than losing it completely. The new Willow-book was formed far and away from the destructive witch who kept pulling out pages, one after another.
Tara fought to stay ahead of the witch, populating the new book with everything she could remember about that fateful first encounter with Willow.
Then Drusilla came to the part where Willow noticed her coming through the curtain, Tara bearing the dream upon her tongue. Drusilla chuckled, even as spasms of pain crossed her face. Tara opened her eyes, and saw blood in the corners of the witch’s mouth, streaking her perfect teeth.
Then the woman’s fingernails began to fall out, leaving raw patches that looked like pickled brains. Tara realized now what was happening. A bloodstone curse.
The kiss loomed. Soon that original and vital memory would be gone as well.
Drusilla unexpectedly stopped in her macabre desecration. She closed the slim volume on her marred finger before sweeping her way to where Tara stood, frozen in the doorway. She drew a finger down Tara’s cheek. “We see inside, don’t we poppet?” the witch murmured. “Inside where all the other universes come to play? I shall tell you a secret now, pet. I shall whisper it inside your mouth.”
The witch kissed her then, biting her softly on her lower lip. Then she breathed inside Tara’s mouth, “The great serpent has a bag of echoes and he’s going to swallow the mother world. Unless you destroy it first. That’s always been your destiny, Tara. You are the fire that chastens as it burns even down into the roots of the willow tree. Guard well your existence, Tara, for there are so few who can conjure Dawn.”
The woman licked her lips after she pulled away, her small pink perfect tongue flickering like the forked tongue of a cobra. In a more conversational tone, she continued, “It seems they are going to keep you alive, Miss Moppet. But really, if we are to see the whole future we might as well prophesy on your entrails. After all, the entrails of the swine only predict for the swineherd.”
Drusilla put her attention on the near lifeless Willow-book again, to return to the pillage and rape of Tara for soon all of Willow would be gone.
With Willow’s demise, all hope would follow. Tara would not be any better than her fallen sister, Sineya.
(witches and magicians
they bound us first, bound us to mortal coils, jealous of our connection to the Source
in turn we persecuted them and tortured them and branded them in the name of vengeance
and the cycle of hatred will never cease)It was inevitable. Tara would hasten the end with all diligence and speed, for then it would be over, it would all finally be over, collars and marks and slavery, this imprisonment of flesh and bone, this flesh sock she despised. She would return to the haven of her pure mother and nevermore roam.
Drusilla had been actively watching her face. Her teeth, all white and small and deadly, they gleamed as she smiled. “You feel for her?” she asked in that blasted Cockney accent. “You desire her? How precious!”
Tara’s heart pounded ever harder within its steel ribcage. She tried to close her mind to this woman, to sever the connection.
“It’s too bad that you didn’t play well together in the sandbox, little one,” Drusilla continued. “You have been severely punished. No ice cream for you. And no Willow, either. You killed her.”
Drusilla’s face was so near, pale cheek next to Tara’s pale cheek. There was a roar in Tara’s mind as she heard those words and replayed the battle in the poppy den.
Broken bones, punctured skin, slices and dices and julienne fries.
Tara’s ritual death. Not Willow’s.
(not Willow)The witch laughed a last time, then she choked and coughed on the blood that was pooling in her mouth. She spat on the floor and several of her teeth landed near the castrated pages of the Willow-book. Smiling even broader, hideous and disfigured now, Drusilla lifted her spare hand and pulled out hunks of her hair, staring at the bits of scalp with insane revelry in her eyes.
“Daddy still wants me,” the witch said, dropping the book on the floor.
Then she was gone, and two heartbeats after her departure Tara felt life and volition returning to her body. Her limbs waking, her muscles softening, and with every renewed sensation there was a great and terrible pressure in her breast.
(the spine of Narnia broke on the floor)Once again she replayed their battle in her mind, slower this time, some omniscient observer to watch laconically as she broke Willow’s ribs and cut Willow’s arm, smashed her nose and gained the blade to slash the stomach, all punctuated with body blows and kicks, all of Willow’s precious mortal blood a dark and laughing rain.
Once the compulsion was broken, Tara knew no more.
It could be true. Willow could be dead.
Dead as these empty pages on the floor.
Anger and sorrow twisted her chest, wrung out her everlasting heart. With wooden steps she walked to the blizzard of pages on the floor and began picking them up, staring at them as if they could spontaneously erupt into memory and truth.
(is Willow truly dead?)She held those pages in her arms when something changed. Her eyes flew wide open; she dropped the pages and placed her hands on her belly. She felt the warmth of carmine blood before she felt the roaring pain. Tara looked down to see a great gash emerge on her abdomen, all dark and slippery and secretive.
Another invisible swipe of an invisible knife, and the exquisite lining of her abdominal wall was torn asunder, revealing the pale naked folds of her intestines. They had secrets to tell, so much truth anchored here.
(we might as well prophesy on your entrails)No use in trying to wake herself now. Willow hadn’t injured her too badly in their fight, a couple stab wounds, a few bruises. Nothing significant.
If Tara woke now she would wake to a body nuked and raped and burned, ravaged beyond belief and beyond the pale.
Willow must be dead. Tara must have been captured. Her captors must intend to use her for their own grim ends. She had roughly sixty seconds before the incantation of prophecy would be complete and all her truth stolen, the many threads of the future gathered and interpreted.
Fuck this. She would give them another lesson first.
She pressed one hand against the awful chasm on her belly and turned, her hand grasping the lintel of the library door as she staggered forth. She closed her eyes, just long enough to summon the doorway to the basement.
When she opened them again, the entrance to the basement was a mere ten feet away.
If she could get there.
It had been many hundred years since any injury had this opportunity to seek her spark. This mortal wound of chasm and peeking pieces of gut; this was a red tide that would drown her completely in a flood of her own blood.
This injury would kill her, as she had killed Willow.
So be it.
A race then, to see if she could get to the door before the incantation was complete.
Tara found that she was crying as she lurched along the refuse-strewn floor. This kind of pain was impossible to endure; she could feel her house of straw trembling in the cyclone.
Three more steps, Tara. Don’t think about the pain. Think about your pure mother.
Two more.
Think of the Haleakala in the first stirrings of Dawn.
Last one.
(Lilith and Laura, Zahara and Artemis
Willow
Willow, I’m sorry!)Her hand was slick on the doorknob, and its function evaded her with simple obstinacy. She wiped her hand on her pants and tried again. This time she found purchase and turned the knob.
Suicide was prohibited, but not even her Master could keep her from casting her mind, soul and silence into oblivion, leaving her body to live on in name only.
With one questing foot upon the landing, she heard a voice call her name. Tara turned her head to see another strange woman in her house, olive-skinned, dark haired, radiating another witch’s brand. The mark of Sineya seemed to float above her head, casting her existence into realms of shadow.
Another mark was upon her elbow.
(the black cauldron)Tara trembled to see the emblem of her first oppressors, the mirror of which was inked into the soft vulnerability of her inner elbow joint. Twice-caged already, twice-imprisoned, dual layers of captors who cared only for this link, this doorway to the basement and the home of the pure mother. The eternal Source.
And with the piercing clarity that arises only upon the veil between the worlds, Tara beheld one last mark upon this Romany woman. It was placed at the point between the brows, the centre of consciousness and free will.
(the golden crown)Strange. Blood feuds aren’t what they used to be. This woman’s face was not full of malice or sadistic triumph; rather it was wide open with shock and mutual betrayal.
She raised her hand to Tara, imploring, begging. Had Tara been further away from the basement landing, she might have paused, if only to hear words of contrition from this woman’s lips. Maybe even an apology for the bloodstone curse that had gone wrong.
But Tara’s insides were out.
Tara turned away from the woman, and in her peripheral sight she saw the woman first walk and then run in her direction.
It was too late for apologies now. Too late for repentance and forgiveness.
Too late.
Just as Tara closed the door behind her she realized that the requisite minute had passed and truth would be flowing from her guts into Drusilla’s hands, the incantation complete. Her life a book open for the reading.
Too late.
(let go)Tara shut her mind on the dread implications and focused only on this one moment in time, a joyous reconnection with the Source. It had been so long.
On the first step down her hair and clothing began to steam with the incredible heat rising from the basement floor.
On the second step down she could feel her bare feet rejoicing in the cherry hot metal of the stairs, her skin exulting even as it burned. It was incredibly luxurious; she could feel herself relaxing, smiling even.
On the third step down the heat and fire from the stairs and walls surrounded her, dancing with joyful abandon on the surface of her skin.
And on the fourth step down the fire penetrated her with a million tiny needles, racing through her veins and bursting from her eyes and open mouth. Tara wept fiery tears of gratitude and joy.
The steps came quicker now that her blood had stopped flowing, burned into crystalline structures of complex destiny. The chasm on her belly had burned black, and her clothing fell from her in crisped tatters and remnants.
Her skin continued to glow as she welcomed the fire deep within her, the fire of her origin, the fire of her pure mother.
At the bottom step she lifted her hands and closed her aching eyes. She waited for the cool welcoming touch of her mother. This was her realm and Tara would not enter without invitation.
(this is the only way to save myself
by destroying myself
just as Dawn has saved the world
by destroying it)The touch came, a smooth kiss on her brow, a whispered murmur of love in her ear. Formless and omnipresent, her pure mother was everywhere and nowhere.
(well done my child
the second act is about to begin
release the dragon)Tara respectfully closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her silence merged with the Great Silence, her spark with the Source.
And she lifted her head once more, lifted her hands and from her palms came a rearing dragon of fire, and with it she touched the walls of her house, her house of pain, her house of straw.
She could feel the walls ignite, the floors burn. The true prophecy birthed of entrails and intent would burst from her body and strike the nearest person in the material world. Such was the will of her mother.
(now
come rest)Tara took the last best step, down onto the molten floor, and let her consciousness fall into the blackest abyss.
And her house continued to burn.
*
To be continued with Chapter 22: Prophecy of Entrails
(the dragon holocaust)Jen
aka Tara the Phoenix
by zampsa19752001 » Tue Jan 08, 2013 5:08 am 
You also got the dibs for Chapter 19, way to go! As for Giles' spell, a bit more about that is coming soon.
Drusilla needs to pay big time. 
I can't believe it. I mean it. That is impossible! It is against the laws of the kitten board, isn't it?! 
Oh my GOD! I don't know to do with my self right now!
