Hey D, I hope you're enjoying the long read.
Good to hear from you New Slang. As it happens, I have an update right here . . .
By the way, D let me know that several of my earlier posts to DR were cut off during the transfer to the current KB host. You can find all the previous chapters posted at
http://technopagan78.livejournal.com/.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Professor Espenson snapped shut her book bag and offered off a few rapid fire reminders before ending class, all of which Willow had already noted in her calendar. Another student asked about an upcoming assignment and Willow answered automatically, her brain focused on the usual five things at once, in this instance integrating Professor Noxon’s discussion on Mill on the Floss with the prior discussion of Wuthering Heights, rethinking a line of code for her network security assignment (actually completed by the third week of school, but it didn’t hurt to triple-check), reminding herself to check with Buffy before stopping at the grocery store for milk, checking for remnants of gum on the floor (Lecture Hall 131 was notorious for gum), and the one constant in her thoughts: the kiss from two nights earlier.
They’d not kissed again, but holding hands was different now, cuddling under the covers was different, too. They now slept on their sides and curled together, Willow on the inside. Not everything changed, Tara still whispered in her sleep, Willow always woke in the middle hours of the night. Their relationship was evolving, but how and why? The day before Tara and she had gone to the Espresso Pump (a post-boot buying treat) and Willow had watched wonderingly as Tara added without thinking one sugar and a splash of non-fat to her tea. Wonderingly because she’d stopped drinking her tea with sugar and a splash of non-fat almost a year ago, wonderingly because now she could not remember why she’d stopped. Little steps, delicate steps, steady and sure, moving towards something neither could speak aloud, and Willow could not begin to fathom entirely.
Willow’s eyes drifted towards a nearby clock: three p.m. The same as on her cell phone and laptop and probably on all the clocks at Benton’s Clockworks at Morgan and Magnolia Boulevard. Class was over. She was now out of her chair, row six, chair three (some things should never vary) and stepping around the laggards attempting to gain the good graces of Professor Espenson (as if simply smiling at their professor would curry favor!) before slipping out the door and into the always crowded corridors of Regents Hall. Some sharp maneuvers around a pair of Goths and a dodge to the left of three football players and a sorority girl wearing a pair of drawstring pants with the word “Juicy” stitched across the bottom and Willow broke free, coming out into the sunlight. Her eyes searched the benches lining the university main mall and she spotted Tara sitting cross-legged, an open book resting on her lap, looking out towards the obelisk that dominated the mall’s southern end. Willow started towards her, a grin opening up on her face as soon as Tara took notice and offered her shy smile in return, the one Willow could never think was anything but adorable.
“Hey, you,” Willow called out as she drew closer. “Were you waiting long?”
“Not long,” Tara said, moving off the bench.
“What’s that you’re reading.”
“Forrest of the S-Souls, it’s a book by this tarot master named Rachel Pollack. Anya is letting me buy it on credit.”
“On credit, huh.”
They were now standing within inches of one another. Not sure, more tentatively than she liked, Willow leaned closer, kissed Tara’s cheek, and whispered near her ear, “Thanks for coming to meet me,” before pulling back and asking, “Should we head over to your friend’s bookstore.”
Tara brushed her fingers near Willow’s. “Albert’s expecting us. There’s probably going to be cookies.”
“Cookies,” Willow repeated as Tara took her laptop bag from her shoulder. Even though she adored the gesture, she said, “You don’t have to carry that.”
Tara smiled her lop-sided smile. “I know.”
***
It was one of Willow’s drive to campus days, and so they took the car to Albert’s even though afternoon parking in downtown Sunnydale was its usual nightmare.
“I keep meaning to ask do you know how to drive?”
Willow was finishing parallel parking her car on the side street around the corner from Albert’s used bookstore. A spot found after four circles around the block.
“One of my foster m-mother’s taught me. I used to pick up her kids from school. But I was too young to apply for an actual license.”
“Your foster mom let you drive around without a license?”
“Routine vampire attacks kind of over-s-shadowed the letter of the law thing.”
Willow glanced at the passenger side mirror to confirm her tires were sufficiently close to the curb. “I was asking because I was planning on reactivating Tara’s old license.”
Tara made a sound showing surprised, and Willow gave herself a mental slap upside the head. She’d intended to be far more suave. Instead, she blurted the idea, she didn’t even ask it as a question. This was more and more a problem lately. What happened to smooth Willow? There was a time, an admittedly brief time, when suavity might not have been her middle name, but certainly a potential nickname.
“You could do that?” Tara said, getting out of the car and unaware yanking Willow out of babble-thoughts.
“I’ve already reactivated Tara’s social security number and medical records at Sunnydale Hospital,” Willow followed Tara onto the sidewalk. “I never took her off my automobile insurance, so that stuff is already squared away.” It’s what my Tara would have wanted Willow didn’t add.
“You did all of this for Buffy, before I mean?”
“Pretty much,” Willow confirmed, her words coming out slowly. “Buffy hadn’t passed her behind the wheel driver’s test, but I sort of gave her a license anyway.”
There was an expression on Tara’s face she couldn’t read, and Willow jumped to a conclusion. “You’re getting a wig about my messing with public records. I know it was over-stepping.”
“Will, I’m not getting a w-wig about your giving Buffy a driver’s license, I don’t know . . . I guess I’m impressed.” Tara stopped them on the sidewalk. “I m-mean all these things you have to keep thinking of, taking into account. I can’t help you with any of it.”
“Hey. I didn’t mean to—”
“We’re being too careful,” Tara interrupted.
Amusement and something Willow couldn’t quite identify showed in Tara’s eyes. Whatever it was, it soothed Willow’s nerves.
“I guess it’s part of the newness; we’re still wiggy with the new thing.” We’re still wiggy about the kiss Willow didn’t say, but neither did Tara. Which was why Willow’s inner suavity was kaput, she almost realized.
A smile broke out on Tara’s face, one soon mirrored on Willow’s. Standing in the center of the sidewalk, they shared the smile as others passed them by until Tara said, “Let’s go.”
Twenty steps later they found Albert at his usual post, but with a tea pot and three cups set, plus a plate of ginger cookies. “You must be Willow. I can’t tell you how much I’ve looked forward to this day,” he said, coming from behind the counter and holding out both hands.
Albert was an inch or so shorter than Giles, dressed in a slouchy knit sweater with a shawl collar, dark slacks, and well-oiled oxfords. Hands roughened by age and something else clasped around Willow’s, and eyes the color of sapphire bore deep. From somewhere deep in the back of Willow’s thoughts she realized they’d met before, but she couldn’t place a time or place.
“Have we met?” Willow said. “I’ve not been in here before, but . . .”
“Probably, here or there. I’ve lived in Sunnydale a very long time.”
Willow thought she detected the faintest trace of an accent. “But not always?”
“No, not always. But come, let’s sit behind the counter while the tea is hot and the cookies still warm.”
***
Uncle Albert’s Books Used and Almost New was exactly like and unlike what Willow expected. Books lined the walls floor to ceiling, additional shelf units maybe a meter and a half tall ran down the center of the store in two rows, back to back, balancing against one another. Carelessly written cardboard labels marked sections: history, life science, physical science, psychology, philosophy, literature and popular fiction. There was an entire section devoted to poetry, and another to theology. She couldn’t account for why she’d never stepped inside until this day; she’d even intended to on a few occasions, hoping to find a novel or a book of stories. Interested because Xander had described the owner as an older and more casually dressed version of Agent Mulder, someone open to “extreme possibilities,” and Spike, of all (undead) people, had once mentioned there was no better bookstore for poetry, but something had always seemed to come up, she’d find what she was looking for elsewhere or she’d realize she didn’t need it.
Willow accepted a second ginger cookie off a plate she was reasonably sure was Noritake china from the company’s “Nippon” era and continued to listen to Albert and Tara chat about Rachel Pollack, the author of the book Tara was buying on credit from the Magic Box. Apparently Pollack was some famous expert on the tarot and in this reality a fiction writer as well, much to Tara’s obvious delight. Willow tucked that bit of information away in one of the corners of her mind and made a mental note to investigate, but mostly she simply watched Tara interact with someone Willow didn’t know, realizing she was seeing very clearly the Tara who’d lived on her own for years and who’d grown up faster than anyone else she knew, including Buffy. Willow listened to how Tara choose her words and how her stammer came and went and how it seemed less connected to the emotions she was feeling at the time and more to the actual words she’d said before. Her Tara had stammered over her feelings; this Tara stammered over sounds. But was this really true, or was even thinking about any of this just an excuse to watch Tara’s lips move, to watch the expressions come and pass over her face, and then wonder over her modest beauty, wonder when they’d next kiss? Willow took a bite of her cookie and re-focused.
Albert’s and Tara’s conversation soon drifted to other topics, nineteenth century fiction, which pulled Willow in for a while, and then a debate over histories of the nineteenth century occult, which left Willow out, soon turning to a minor wrangle over the better historian of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the relative importance of Pamela Coleman Smith that somehow turned and twisted into a question for Willow. Taken by surprise, Willow could come up with no other response than,
“What?”
“Your great-grandmother on your father’s side, she was a Revane, correct?” Albert asked, looking at Willow over his tea cup.
“Her name was Irene Revane. Are you saying she knew this Pamela Coleman Smith person?”
“No, no. I was just thinking about women who’ve slipped from the histories. Pamela Coleman Smith illustrated the so called Rider tarot pack but only a very few remember her name. The Revane line was one of the first to establish itself in the Americas, but it more or less disappeared from notice when among other things Irene Revane did not produce a daughter.” Albert tilted his head to the side, his eyes appraising. “How very surprising. You didn’t know Irene was a witch, did you?”
***
Willow saw Albert’s lips continue to move, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying over the roaring in her head. A hand closed over hers, and she turned to look at Tara. Had Tara known this? It was impossible.
“You’re saying my father’s grandmother cast spells. She was like me,” Willow said to Albert.
“I think it would be more accurate to say you are like her,” Albert corrected.
It was impossible. Her great-grandmother a witch, it was simply impossible. Willow’s memories of her were few; she’d died when Willow was four. But Willow could picture her all the same, a frail old woman weeding her flower beds, hanging sheets out to dry, and pulling out pans of ginger cookies from the oven.
Willow looked down at the cookie she held in her hand and she heard her great-grandmother’s voice admiring her great-granddaughter’s hair, like fine silk spun from the sunset. Hair likes hers, the hair of a Revane.
“She met my great-grandfather in San Francisco. He was a grocer and she had a job at the bakery next door. His parents didn’t approve because she wasn’t Jewish, and she was sixteen, but Jacob married her anyway. They had a son, Otto, and then the earthquake wiped them out and they moved down to Los Angeles to live with Jacob’s brother. Jacob’s mother was already dead and his father died under some fallen bricks; everything they owned was lost in the fire and so there was nothing left to keep them,” Willow said, telling the family story for herself, needing to grab hold of what she knew to be true.
And then she saw Albert holding out a thin brown folder with gold leaf corners. Willow took it in her hand and opened it. The photograph was spotted. One corner was torn. Irene and Jacob, the great-grandfather she’d never met because he died years before she was born. Irene and Jacob. Irene sitting on a backless chair and wearing a hat decorated with flowers, Jacob standing with his left hand tucked into his vest pocket. He’d always hidden his left hand because he’d accidentally cut off the tips of his ring and little finger on a cutting board.
“I have a few others.”
“Why would you have pictures of my family?”
“The picture was taken before they married, before Irene left behind her craft and broke the line. She loved him, you see. Loved him so much she had no regrets. Jacob would never have been able to accept who she was, what she was below the skin. And so she let go her gift. He was her everything you see. It wasn’t until he’d long passed and she had the most adorable little great-granddaughter that she felt it once again, the quickening of her heart on nights the moon was full, on the sunsets of the solstices and the sunrises of the equinoxes. But time ran out . . .”
Albert stood up and took Willow’s teacup from her hand. “Come along you two. It’s time I took you into the annex, a back room so to speak.”
“Willow?” Tara said softly, grasping hold of Willow’s hand, pulling Willow back into some semblance of herself.
Hand in hand, they followed Albert through the store to a side door Willow hadn’t noticed before, entering into another room, another impossibility. Willow sniffed the air and scented the magicks, like cinnamon and cumin combined. Flavors that seemed to coat her tongue. A shiver passed along her skin. Her eyes opened wide.
This room was far bigger than the first, with bookshelf lining walls that easily reached three meters and a bank of library tables running parallel down the middle. On nearly every table books were scattered, some open, most closed. Above the tables hung reading lamps, which flickered with light cast by something other than electricity. Her hand still closed in Tara’s, Willow followed as Albert led them to a glass covered bookcase centered along the room’s furthest wall. Albert traced with a finger over the glass, before producing a key to open the case.
“She left this and the photographs with me for safe keeping, knowing someday you’d stop by for cookies and tea.” Albert took down a narrow volume and handed it to Willow.
The book’s cover was leather, well-oiled, and embossed with a pattern of Tudor roses. Willow held it to her nose and caught the long ago scent of white lilies, her great-grandmother’s perfume, and she knew. She knew this book had belonged to Irene. With trembling fingers she opened it towards the middle and saw a handwriting she’d have known anywhere. “This was hers. This belonged to my great-grandmother,” she said the words aloud because they were too wonderful to say silently in her thoughts.
Willow turned the pages to the front piece and saw: A book of shadows, 1902-. There was no end date, but written below in a hand still bold: This is for my great-grand-daughter, Willow Danielle Rosenberg.
Sound, taste, smell, sight full, her senses overloaded, Willow leaned back, into Tara, standing tall and strong behind her. Warm hands closed around her shoulders and she leaned back harder. Please don’t let me fall.
“How could she have known?” Willow asked.
“How could she not have known?” Tara said near Willow’s ear. “How could anyone not know you were special? I knew the moment I met you.”
“The book is yours, Willow. Held by me in trust until I could vouch its correct return.” Albert made a satisfied sigh. “An unexpected check mark for my list of things to do. So, are the two of you ready for a final round of tea. I believe in addition to the ginger cookies Mrs. Edwards left a slice of pumpkin spice cake tucked in my ice box.”
***
An hour later they walked out of the bookstore. Willow still had questions. Questions about how Albert came to hold her great-grandmother’s book of shadows, he’d been a tad dodgy on the subject; what was the nature of Uncle Albert’s “annex,” more than dodgy, entirely evasive; and dozens more, but those remained mostly half-formed tingles in the back of Willow’s thoughts. She handed Tara the car keys and got in on the passenger side, not noticing she’d left Tara to drive them home until they were half-way there.
“You’re driving,” Willow said, not loudly, but suddenly.
“And this would be because you h-handed me the car keys,” Tara said, making the right turn onto University parkway. “I thought you were too distracted to drive? If you want I can pull over.”
A Civic made a left turn from the right lane; Tara neatly avoided him with a mild tap on the brakes. Willow would have honked the horn.
“No, no. I’m good with the being a passenger. By the way, when it comes time, you can teach Dawn to drive.”
“Should we stop to pick up milk?”
“Nah, I can go later. I think I’m a little too . . .” Willow trailed off. She had no idea what she was a “little too.”
“Surprised?” Tara gave Willow a brief glance and turned her eyes back to the road.
“Did you know?”
“That Albert wanted to give you s-something? No. He just called and invited the two of us for tea.”
They reached their turn on Revello and moments later pulled into the driveway, Tara neatly parking Willow’s car to the left so that Buffy could pull into the garage later. Tara turned to Willow and reached to brush back a lock of hair.
“This is big, isn’t it. I m-mean it’s sort of what you didn’t want.”
“And sort of what I’ve always wanted,” Willow said slowly. “I don’t know exactly what to think. The whole magicks and me. We’ve had a pretty rocky relationship to put the smallest possible word on it.”
“I trust you,” Tara said.
“Why? I mean if anyone knows the wrongness of me and magicks it’s you. And if anyone knows how wrong magicks can get, it’s you. I mean no one knows the wrong better.”
“I trust you.”
They got out of the car, headed into the house, where they found a note from Dawn saying she was studying with Lisa and Kit and would be home later, and another from Buffy saying she’d be home for dinner and not to pick up milk.
“Why don’t I m-make dinner tonight?”
Willow looked at Tara gratefully. What she needed more than anything was a nap. “You don’t mind?”
“Maybe I can impress you. I’ve been wanting to have you try my vegetable soup, and I could m-make biscuits to go with?”
“Really you don’t mind me bailing for a little shut-eye?”
“Go upstairs. I’ll call you down w-when dinner’s ready.”
Willow brushed a kiss on Tara’s cheek, and noticed Tara smelled like autumn leaves. “If you can’t find something in the kitchen, holler, okay?”
***
Upstairs, Willow stripped out of her outer clothes and crawled under the bed covers. She’d put Irene’s book on the bed stand, and now she looked at it from her pillow. Her brain was too busy to process anything she was feeling. Part of her wanted to call Miss Hartness, another part of her wished Giles would come back soon from wherever he’d gone (Giles had left on a mysterious errand the day earlier), but the biggest part of her longed to talk to her Tara. And it was that biggest part of her that was also making her feel slightly icky. Tara was downstairs, she knew that, she accepted it. There was no “her” Tara anymore, except there was. Would there always be?
She flipped from her side onto her back trying to make sense of everything. Having Irene’s book of shadows meant the world to her, the world, the moon, the universe, everything. But it also triggered in her every fear she’d had since leaving Devon Coven. She was done with magicks, so why did magicks seem to keep coming for her. All of her biggest mistakes, all of her trespasses (now there was a nice theological quandary, was magick a trespass) had come from magicks. Or not. In her thoughts, Miss Hartness’ gentle voice chided her to remember most of her mistakes had their root in feeling inadequate to Buffy, to her parents’ ambitions for her, to Cordelia Chase’s fashion sense (go irony there), and, breath it so very softly, to Tara. She’d turned magicks into something they should never be, a salve for hurt feelings, a compensation for not being the “cool” girl, a method for “evening the playing field,” and thus she’d missed their wonder. She’d missed everything Tara had tried, tried so very, very hard, to teach her. Magicks were her Achilles’ heel. Except they weren’t. Miss Hartness whispered, and someone else, someone whose voice was like music, singing her to sleep.
***
Tara looked with surprise at the two pots, a cooking board, two knives, three wooden spoons, two mixing bowls, and sundry other items all of which were now in need of a good scrubbing. I cook like my grandmother she thought to herself, remembering her grandmother’s forever cluttered kitchen. Underneath the kitchen sink she found a dish pan and dish soap and set to work, one eye on the soup now simmering on the stove, the other eye on the biscuits baking in the oven, but her thoughts mostly focused on the very unexpected events of the day.
A tiny part of her, more than a smidge, less than snippet, was jealous. What wouldn’t she give to have her great-grandmother’s book of shadows, or the book of any in her line? What wouldn’t she give to have that, and not simply because the magicks of her line were needed to help her fight the apprentice, but because such a book was her legacy. Another part, a much larger part, was worried, because she knew Willow wanted more than anything to leave magicks behind her. And she understood that desire; magicks had nearly cost Willow the entirety of her spirit, they’d been a wedge deep within Willow’s soul, and they’d been the source of the greatest heart ache of Willow’s life. And that precisely was the problem. She understood what Willow wanted, so by what right should she be happy? By what right should she be happy Albert had returned Irene’s book. Except that it was magicks that linked them together; it was magicks that were their shared gift. And so she could not be anything but happy, plus a tiny bit jealous and a bigger bit worried.
The sound of Buffy coming through the front door pulled Tara out of the confusion of her thoughts. “In here,” she called out, stirring the soup pot, wondering if she should also make a green salad.
“Wow, whatever you’re making smells terrific,” Buffy said coming into the kitchen, a gallon of milk hanging from one hand. She stopped in the middle of the room. “Tara. That’s so funny, for a moment there, I was certain you were . . .”
My counterpart, Tara almost asked. “Willow’s upstairs taking a nap before dinner. How was practice?”
“Not so motivated with Giles away.” Buffy went to the refrigerator to put away the milk and take out an apple. “I managed to get through four repetitions of the new floor exercises, but the last set were pretty haphazard. So any word from the mysterious Englishman?”
“Willow found a message from Dawn, none from Giles. I made vegetable soup and biscuits for dinner,” Tara said, suddenly remembering it was time to take the biscuits out of the oven. “You don’t happen to have a w-warming basket, do you?”
Her blank expression firmly in place, Buffy shook her head.
“I’ll just put them in this, then, and cover them with a cloth,” Tara said, reaching for a large bowl and a clean dish towel. The soup’s ready. Do you w-want to set the table while I go up to w-wake Willow?”
“Did something happen? You look kind of, I don’t know, like big news girl.”
“No, not me. I’m not a big news girl.”
Buffy nodded, her expression far from certain. “I’ll set the table. I’m taking it Dawn’s ditching us for whatever junk food she can score at Kit’s?”
“Willow m-mentioned something about veggie burgers.”
“Better than Doublemeat.” Buffy said, but Tara was already through the door.
Not sure why she was feeling nervous talking to Buffy, Tara headed up the bedroom and found Willow fast asleep, lying on her side, bathed in the light from the Tinkerbell lamp kept on the dresser. She sat down on the edge of the bed and touched Willow’s cheek, touched skin soft and warm. Underneath closed lids, Willow’s eyes were darting back and forth in some fast moving pattern and Tara wondered what Willow was dreaming, and if the dream was happy. “I hope so,” she whispered. She said Willow’s name twice, the second time slightly louder and Willow began to stir, awareness slowly appearing on her face, and then a smile.
“I think I was dreaming of you.” Willow’s voice was thick with sleep. “I was following you along a trail in a dark woods.”
“A dark woods?”
“You were wearing the most adorable shorts, with pockets on the sides of the legs and snaps at the cuffs. And your hair was done up in all these little braids, each one tied off with a tiny shell.”
“Shorts, braids, and shells, huh? What w-were you wearing?”
“I’m not sure.” Willow opened her eyes. “What would you want me to be wearing?”
Tara didn’t have to think long. “Your red sweater with the v-neck and your long black skirt.”
“For a walk through the woods.” Willow deadpanned.
Undeterred, Tara responded, “You s-said there was a trail.”
Willow sat up and pressed a quick kiss on Tara’s cheek. “Someone is feeling a little saucy tonight.”
It was hard, but Tara held her ground, managing not to drop her eyes, if not entirely suppressing the pink rising in her cheeks. “Actually, I m-made soup and biscuits.” Was that what she was feeling, was this feeling “saucy”?
Willow offered a measuring stare in return, and then shook her head. “Thank you for letting me sleep and for making dinner. You’re kind of a life-saver you know. Fighting off vamps one minute, letting me spaz the next.”
“You’re feeling b-better?”
“A lot. I’m still not sure what I think about having Irene’s book, but I’m not so frantic, you know?”
Tara stood up from the bed and held out her hand; warm fingers curled around her own. “Come on. Let’s go downstairs. I’m still debating whether or not to make a salad.”
They found Buffy finished setting the table and bringing out the soup pot and ersatz bread basket. “I made a salad. And by made I mean I opened up the bag o’ lettuce, dumped it in a bowl, and stirred in some of that pear and gorgonzola dressing Will likes. I also opened a bottle of the Cab Franc we picked up last month,” Buffy said, nodding at the open bottle on the table. “Does anyone want water instead?”
“Tara does,” Willow said. She offered up a sly smile. “But pour her a glass of the red, too.”
Buffy started to do as Willow instructed, but stopped and said, “Wait a sec. Tara, you don’t drink, do you?”
“I’ve never . . .”
Willow put her fingers over Tara’s lips. “The Cab Franc we picked up is delicious, but if you don’t care for it, don’t worry.”
Made breathless by the gesture, Tara could only nod. Fortunately, before her legs gave out, everyone was soon sitting down at the table.
“What do you think?” Willow asked after Tara took a tentative sip of the wine.
Tara tried but couldn’t think of words to describe the flavor except velvety and that didn’t seem to make much sense. “It’s nice, sort of what I expected, but sort of not.”
“This one is a little lighter than most. Some day I’d like to take you wine tasting. Just north of here there are dozens of vineyards. Buffy and I have gone a few times. When I was a teenager, my parents liked to vacation around Cambria.”
“Willow’s our resident wine snob, while Xander usually steps in as the beer guy.”
“So Buffy, beer still bad?” Willow asked, sending Buffy inexplicably into peels of laughter.
Together they told the story to Tara, of Buffy and a trio of frat boys turned cave people by some very bad home brew, which lead to other stories of the more comical events on the hellmouth, Tara “remembering” small bits and pieces, this while they ate their dinner, Buffy and Tara going for seconds since there was a plan to patrol later. The stories so engrossing that when Buffy asked her question to Tara it seemed to come out of no where.
“Uncle Albert’s was interesting,” Willow said, after too long a hesitation.
“Interesting is such an interesting word. Interesting how?”
“Interesting because it was more than I expected. More than a bookstore I mean.”
Willow’s eyes flicked towards Tara’s, and Tara wondered if she should speak up, but then Willow began telling Buffy the events of their afternoon, meeting at the university, taking her car to Uncle Albert’s, sharing cookies and tea, and then the surprise.
“You found out your great-grandmother was a witch? How would Albert know that, exactly?” Buffy asked, leaning back in her chair.
“I’m not entirely sure. For one thing, he had Irene’s book of shadows.” Willow’s tone was tentative. “He gave it to me. It’s sitting up on the nightstand.”
“Are you going to read it, Will?” Buffy asked after several long moments.
“Right now I think I’m more comfortable with the less confusing letting it sit on the nightstand. I mean, it’s a family heirloom, right. But it’s not like I can give it to my father. Ira Rosenberg has never been all that keen on the idea of his daughter being a witch. I’m pretty sure he’d plotz to learn his grandmother was one, too.”
“Maybe. But Will, won’t having it . . .”
“Pull me back?” Willow shook her head. “I won’t go back. I made too many promises to you, to Dawn, to Xander and Giles, and to . . . I made too many promises, and I made promises to myself.”
And then, because the conversation had no where else to go, for now at least, they turned back to regular things, clearing the table, tidying the kitchen, Willow heading upstairs to work on an upcoming paper for the novels class and Tara and Buffy heading out on patrol.
***
Tara spun around mid-air to deliver another kick, this one hitting chest-level and sending the vampire stumbling back against the tombstone. Behind her, she could hear Buffy battling two of them at once and to her left she heard something running. Her arm swung wide, using momentum as much as anything, to plunge the stake into the vampire’s heart. A cloud of dust burst outward, and Tara pivoted left to meet the next attacker. He was dressed in a mismatched sports jersey and board shorts and he’d been her age when he died. Tara jumped backwards, briefly lighting atop a tombstone, before springing over his head to stake him from the side. More dust clouded the air.
“So, are these guys working tag-team tonight or what?” Buffy said.
Tara turned around. Buffy was standing with her hands on her hips, grinning from the fight. “M-maybe,” she said, her breath labored, feeling a twinge of envy that the Slayer was anything but out of breath.
“Do you think they’re part of any, what did you call them, advanced teams?”
Tara shook her head. The vampires they’d seen tonight had been far too disorganized. “I’m g-guessing they’re just regular ones. Or m-maybe they’re coming for the show.”
“Whenever a big evil is about to make way for the hellmouth the lookies usually start to gather.” Buffy nodded eastward. “We should check out the Mayor’s crypt. It’s kind of a sacred spot for the demon-y types.”
Tara fell into step with Buffy, and the two moved rapidly over through the cemetery, the third they’d swept. From the corner of her eye she could see Buffy was again grinding her jaw. It had been that way all night. Tara finally forced herself to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.
“You’re not happy about Willow f-finding her great-grandmother’s book?” The question was really a statement, and Buffy treated it for what it was.
“It’s just things were finally starting to get good. Will was finally free of all the witch-y stuff. She wasn’t even thinking about . . .”
“How do you know?” Tara asked softly. “How do you know what she was thinking about?”
Buffy came to a sharp stop. “I know she wasn’t feeling their pull anymore. She was starting to feel happy again. All that darkness, it was finally leaving her alone.”
“You make it sound like the darkness was alive or . . .”
“I mean like an addiction or something.”
Tara let out a long slow breath. “I know that’s how all of you think about it. Like magicks is some sort of drug or s-something.”
“And you know different?”
The challenge was in front of her. “I know magicks aren’t a drug. Look, I get it. I mean I get why they’d seem that way. But Willow wasn’t being pulled in by some sort of force.”
“Willow used magicks, Tara. She used them. You weren’t there. You didn’t see.”
Didn’t I? Tara almost said. “Willow didn’t need to learn how to stop using magicks. She needed to stop . . .”
“Stop what?”
Stop compensating. “Wanting to be someone she wasn’t,” Tara said softly. More loudly, she added, “I think that’s what she learned from Miss Hartness, but she can’t really learn who she is unless . . .”
“She starts using magicks again?”
“Not using. People use drugs. It’s not using. What W-Willow needs is to be Willow. She needs to be herself.”
They continued back and forth, arguing. Buffy becoming more and more upset. Tara finding it harder and harder simply to speak, her tongue becoming more and more a piece of lead in her mouth. And then from somewhere deep inside came this truth.
“Buffy, you think you know what’s to come, who she is. You really have no idea.”
They stopped. Above them the stars and the moon shown down, shown down on two small figures trying to make sense of the world they lived in, two figures struck still, struck silent.
After a while Buffy flashed a quick smile and cocked her head. They needed to move again. Especially if they wanted to be home by any semblance of a reasonable hour. Still, it was well past two before they returned to the house, an unexpected trio of grappler demons putting up a lengthy fight. Tired beyond the telling, Tara headed upstairs ahead of Buffy and crept into the bedroom.
Willow was asleep, tucked under the covers, holding a pillow to her chest. Tara changed quietly into her bed clothes and after a brief visit to the bathroom slipped into bed, moving close behind Willow, and then sighing softly as Willow shifted in her sleep, moving into Tara’s waiting arms. Tara tucked her head against Willow’s and breathed in the scents of clean hair and skin, wondering as always at Willow’s seeming fragility, and then she too fell into her dreams.
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