This is a response to the
April Challenge: The Anniversary Challenge, but is too long to fit in one post (how?). And is also a sequel to a story (inspired by the March Ice-cream challenge) I haven't finished writing yet. Yes, Craig Lucas and I.
Canon divergent AU. Clearly. Consequently, a lot of universe building allusion and sketchiness.
If I had 3 more hours, I'd cut it by a third. As it is, you get this purple mess.
Notes for non-North Amerikaners: the land we live on is conceived of as resting on the back of a giant turtle. Hence N. America is the turtle island.
Notes for everyone else: it's elephants all the way down. You can't trick me!
Title: Witches of Gramercy Park Part 1/2
(A disqualified response to the April Challenge: Anniversary
Rating: R for copious and gratuitous Reality. Also, maybe, the sex acts.
Slowly she walks through the brush. Taking in the tender shoots. The dew chilling her palm and fingers, thrilling her hands. The clean smell of mist and fog. The condensation settling around her exposed skin turning into drops like a secret rain. Slowly she closes her eyes and lets her senses expand. Floating fur of coyote. Dead pigeon. Norwegian rat. Harvest mouse burrow. Blackbird. Heron. Red-tail hawk. Rabbit trail. The beating heart of a startled mouse. Somewhere far away, an owl. The pulsing beat of wings rustling a branch. Elm bark. Birch dust. The rat-a-tat-tat of beak against branch.
Hi, woodpecker. I haven’t seen you in a while. Will you stay? A grey and yellow streak flits from branch to branch somewhere beyond her sight, but so clearly in her mind’s eye. Its little crown stripes spiky in the damp.
So strange . . . she thinks,
a warbler. They never come here. A gust of wind swirls through the rolling hills, going up and through. Shushing through the growth, until the quickening green of the woods catches the upward draft, and the whuff of breeze falls back to the earth like a falling sigh. The earth is breathing. Breathing itself in, stretching its limbs, unfurling itself luxuriantly in a riot of reds and greens. Softly, she too extends herself like the earth she’s standing on.
Slow, her breath. Slow, her heart. Slow, her mind. And slow, the time.
Breathe, she tells herself,
breathe with the earth. And lets it all fall away. Gone, the sparrow; gone, the path she stood on; gone, the smoke; gone, her breath; gone, her body. Gone. All gone to the place where things go when they no longer exist. Gone, the seasons; and gone, the reason for seasons.
Her senses fall away. Her body falls away. Time falls away. She falls into the earth.
Past the surface, past the leaves and the mud and gravel and the stones and the worms burrowing in the earth. Past the blood and bricks. The ashes and the tears. The shell pits and the bones of dead things—dead long ago. Past the screams and dreams of men, women and children—coming, living, dying, burning, crying . . . gone. Past the stratum of man and man-made things. Down into the very bones of the mother herself—broken, pierced shattered. And past her bones into somewhere she can hear the blood of the earth flowing somewhere deep with a molten groan; where the very pulse of the mother begins. Past rock. Past history. Past everything.
Past.
Dark sun. Dark moon. Dark earth. All dark. Darkness on darkness. Restless. Devouring.
No! The voice inside her screams.
No, it whispers.
In the beginning was darkness.
Be still, she says to her soul.
To become who you are, you must first be what you are not. So be afraid. The darkness is forever. Wait, she says to her soul,
until you are not afraid. There is always darkness. Let it fall upon you. The darkness is the darkness of God.
Under her hands, where they have fallen to touch the earth, the stone cuts into the roots of outspread fingers and drinks her blood. The earth is pleased with her offering.
The darkness turns over in its restless sleep. And laughs. The laughter echoes hollowly through her, chilling her to the bone in a body she does not possess.
You have done well today. But one day you will be gone.One day, she agrees.
Yes.Senses return in the now familiar prickling sensation—like a blanket of needles draping into the inside of her flesh in a sinusoidal ripple, her skin tingling and her heart pounding. This time, she finds herself atop an isolated hill, in a clearing almost like a fairy circle. She is kneeling, with shredded palms, before a rock anointed with the blood of her hands. The shape of her palm heels have left curved blotches on the rock-face, and below them, uneven streaks where her fingers have brushed away. The bloody marks against the wavy pattern of the gneiss and the weathering cracks look like nothing so much as a very old, wrinkly face, weeping with closed eyes.
The sound of a fat, oily plop of rich blood against wet humus brings her completely back to her senses. She unzips the vertical opening under her left breast and pulls out a white handkerchief to sop up the already clotting fluid. Gentle lavage from the squirt bottle from her hip, and some careful tweezing of grit and other vegetal matter, cleans out the wound. Then a quiet prayer of propitiation and thanks before she tapes the pre-shaped gauze pad to her hands, and she’s ready to leave.
Her left knee cracks with the strain as she stands, and she grunts. With fists on her waist she turns first one way and then the other, groaning with the rippling cracks of her spine. Clasping her hands over her head, she arches back into a stretch, which—frilly heck!—cracks the joints in her sternum, before bending over to brush the dirt off her knees. She wonders how soon she’ll be too old for this. Eight years later, and she’s still not used it; each ritual meant to keep the sleeping monsters asleep sapping her body, taking a little bite out of her very soul. She smiles to herself, wryly, mockingly—thirty-eight years old and already feeling the Atlaean burden of her duties. She closes her eyes and takes a centering breath—a thankful breath. It’s a modest price for her sins; and the smallest of tokens for all the joys. Gingerly making her way down the slope courtesy of a rabbit trail that only she (and the rabbits, of course) can see, she takes stock of her body. Back: ok. Butt: tense. Thighs: tense. Knees: tight. Calves: ok. Shoulders: knotted. Upper arms: tight. Hands: ouch!
How hard was I gripping that rock, she wonders. Back on the official trail, she kicks her legs loose while pulling on her gloves. With a nylon snap of hood over head, she jogs away towards the water.
The thing about New Yorkers is they’ve seen everything. It could be a rain of locusts and the Hudson turning red with blood, and all they want to know is: 1) is my train on time and 2) is alternate-side-of-the-street parking suspended. Also they like to mind their own damn business. So, of course, the distant sight of the Lululemon lady in the Hudson River leaves barely an impression on the waiter rushing off the bus to report for his morning shift at the café. And if it maybe looked like she was in the middle of the river instead of close to the shore—and that she was treading on the surface of the water—surely that was a trick, of light and a hungover brain with no caffeine. And also you can’t see real good when you’re holding your garment-bagged uniform over your head to save yourself from the rain.
And because New York cabbies have also seen everything and driven everywhere—including from Astoria, Queens to the Philadelphia airport—Sajid Usmani, license number: 3740757, expires: 4/3/2021, did not blink at picking up the crazy, red-headed jogger near the highway on-ramp at a ridiculously healthy hour of morning.
Without even umbrella. With the kind of rains this city getting, past few years in April. Who does this? Crazy people, that is what, he grumbles as he rummages about in the trunk for a towel to give to the soaked woman.
No problem, madam. Wet seat no good for customers.Now warm and dry in the back seat of the cab—ok “dry” is an exaggeration, more like warm and not being rained on anymore—she finally gives in to the gravitic pull exerted by the little black body in the right pocket of her Japanese bubble jacket. Because her gloves are damp and she is loath to remove them, she ends up fumbling around with the now over-reactive capacitive screen.
Like a chimp, she thinks.
No, chimps are smart—a retarded chimp. No, developmentally retrograde . . . “retarded” is rude, rude-o, Rudy McRuderson . . . Just rude. She cycles through the flashlight and night mode before finally getting airplane mode to switch off. Within seconds of latching on to the tower, the screen lights up, dinging with notifications.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of him in early morning darkness on the orange-lit deck of a scow in the middle of a river, looking supremely grumpy.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of him standing atop the remains of an uprooted tree, looking sleepy.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of him standing in front of a filled-in hole, giving a happy thumbs up.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of him standing by a diamond-shaped, red and white checkerboard sign, looking awed. Water as far as the eye can see starting to glow gently orange behind him.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of him in front of a sign, The Meeting of Rivers.
An MMS from Xander: Photo of the view of a bridge sandwiched between the sunrise and his middle finger.
An SMS from Xander: You owe me!
An SMS from Xander: See you soon.
She scrolls past each one, getting more and more annoyed until she gets to the final oldest unread notification; which makes her feel squidgy.
Tara 5:53 AM
Sweetie, ok?
Willow’s face lights up with a radiant smile that wipes away the Xander-induced scowl. She is about reply to the message when she decides that she’d better see what the Voicemail is all about. She recognises the Breast Center’s 646 number right away. Her eyes scan the relevant words in the transcribed message—Jerry . . . Dr. Roy’s office . . . sorry . . . emergency . . . cancel . . . will call—and mutters darkly under her breath. But it’s the ID above that message that she can see arrived only 4 minutes after Jerry’s message that really gives her a turn. Wincing with trepidation, she taps the notification to see what it says. She gets as far as:
Sweet tea Doctor Roy’s office just called . . .
And thumbs the home button on her phone with an angrily muttered, “Darn it, Jerry! I told you . . .”
Wondering what consequences await her back at the ol’ homestead she leans forward, rapping against the driver’s partition, changing the destination and adding another stop. If she’s going to be in trouble, she might as well bring offerings.
***
At the apartment on Park Avenue South—or East 31st street, as Tara Maclay prefers to think of it—the morning is not going as planned.
I had a list, she thinks, refusing all hypotheses that she is taking on any spousal characteristics.
There was a plan. . . .But, as they say, Gods and two-year olds are no respecters of such things.
The morning has started with a very unfortunate toothbrush negotiation that while not ending in tears has resulted in resentful pouting; and an addition to her already numerous list: 14) Get Willow to explain why only grownups get electric toothbrushes.
And now the shirtless tyrant is insisting on “totht” even though she normally has no use for it. Not being one to stand in the way of taste-bud evolution, she walks sceptically to the kitchen while shaking her head at the little splashes of milk on the table that have escaped her attention. Bunging a frozen slice of sweet milk-bread in the toaster, she goes back to the fridge to pull out some butter, and the tub of little blueberries (simply a sweet and healthful addition to breakfast, not a bribe, at all).
The toaster dings as she is serving up the washed blueberries in the much favoured Clifford bowl. And she carries the three food-items, plus a butter knife, out to the table. The mistake she makes isn’t that she reserves the berries to her custody. No. The mistake is: not buttering the slice before bringing it to the table. Because as soon the baby in the booster seat realises what’s happening, she pipes up in the time honoured—and much cursed—refrain of her class.
“I do it!”
“Baby,” Tara says patiently, “It’s hot ok? I don’t want you to get an owwie.”
“Noo . . . I wantth to do it.”
“Remember how we talked about how there are some things grownups do for kids?”
Processing this information with the ruminating wiliness of a mule, she accepts the grownups stipulation and sub-clauses it with, “Mommy do it.”
Keeping her tone very reasonable and matter-of-fact, Tara says, “Mommy’s not here. How about, Mama does it?”
Taking in this fresh and sorrowfully devastating news of Mommy’s absence (for the fourth time), she pokes the remains of her soft-boiled egg with a crestfallen spoon. “Nooo . . . Mommy! . . .”
Not sure if she is frustrated or amused, Tara considers her little bundle of joy, the joy of her life, Joy Rosenberg-Maclay, with a tiny frown (and, as personally meaningful as the middle name Eva was to both of them, Tara put the kibosh on that on account of child-abuse via acronym). The similarity of lip-quavering expression between the precocious fruit of her loins and her precious lover is just too uncanny for words. And just as she is about to inevitably escalate the situation, the echoing chimes of iPhone and iPad cut in to interrupt the stand-off.
Hoping to heavens it’s Willow, she flips her phone over to see Buffy calling. “Hey,” she answers the phone.
Wondering at the strangeness of Tara’s manner, Buffy says, “Hey, Tara, it’s Buffy.”
Chuckling at Buffy’s confusion she says, “I know. But your favourite pocket-sized person is having quite a start to her day. So let’s not get her excited by saying your name.”
“Oh, no! Is she being rowdy, slayer-Joy instead of calm, Wicca-Joy? You want Aunt Buffy to talk to her?”
“Bu—” she begins, but catches herself. “It’s okay. You might be too subtle for her,” she deadpans. Then wondering why Buffy is calling she asks, “Everything, ok?”
“Oh? Yeah!” Buffy exclaims. “I was just calling to say, ‘hi’, you know. Maybe say ‘hi’ to the cutie. Oh my God, Tara, I found her the cutest little dress! And just to check in. I’m so excited about tomorrow. Are you excited?”
While Buffy talks, Tara uses the time to butter the slice of toast, and slides it over to Joy, wisely not making the mistake of cutting it into pieces before the child queen has made her wishes known. Tara thinks that Buffy must be really excited if she’s calling to tell her how excited she is. Seventeen hours before she gets on the plane.
“I’m very excited,” she laughs. “Are you sure you don’t want me or Willow to come get you?”
“Don’t be silly. I can cab it. There’s no need to come all the way out. I’m sure you guys have plenty of things to do before the party.”
“We could bring the little queen.”
“It’s okay, I’m just going to—” Buffy cuts herself off. “Just a minute,” she says, and Tara hears muffled voices in the background. “Sorry, Tara. I’ve got to go. But I’ll see you soon, ok?”
“Ok. I’ll see you soon,” she says and hangs up.
Shaking her head at the random and—despite the time difference with London—oddly-timed phone call, Tara taps the phone against her palm. She wonders if she was being entirely honest with Buffy about being excited.
Pleased to see for the moment that Joy is eating her toast and amusing herself quietly with utensils, Tara slides the bowl of blueberries over to the girl. Joy makes happy chomping noises while showing off her teeth; then tears a piece of buttered bread, grabs a berry, rolls it up in the bread and shoves it in her face while making nomming sounds.
Strange how she looks like me but acts like Willow, thinks Tara, and snorts.
Thinking about Willow brings her back to her earlier thought of possibly having lied to Buffy about her enthusiasm for the next day’s party. When she had planned the get-together, to celebrate the continuing good news at the end of their 5 year vigil, she had thought they could make a long, family weekend of it. Maybe take time off the day before and relax. But the closer the day has gotten, the cagier and more avoidant Willow has been. And as for today, she can see from Willow’s synced calendar that her day is packed: a phone conference with the Watcher station in Edinburgh, an appointment with the ice-cream shop’s accountant, a theory session with trainees from the Witch squad, an appointment with their tech provider—all, except for the accountant, unimportant; and definitely not urgent.
Definitely avoiding.Her phone pings, and she sees the series of photos from Xander: on a boat, with his eye patch visible; with a stuffed animal of some kind on his shoulder; and finally with his sleeve pulled over his hand while holding a hook. Irrepressible Xander. She realises that the selfies have been sent to her only and she appreciates the unspoken gift of just-between-friends. Then realising where he is and how much earlier in the day it is for him, thinks, Saint Xander—agreeing to take Willow’s latest project all the way out to Illinois. And reminds herself to give him an extra hug when she sees him. And then feels bad for thinking the Watcher phone conference wasn’t important. Because Willow’s been spending all her free time getting this one piece of technology to work around magic so that they can keep an eye on the anomaly there.
“Mama, c’ I have juice, peez?”
Looking up at the very polite request, Tara decides it’s time for payback. “Green juice?” she asks, referring to Willow’s mystery blend of seaweed, bitter vegetables, and best-not-to-ask.
“Echh . . .” is the descriptive sound, accompanied by a shake of her tiny head.
Still playing, as she walks towards the fridge, she says, “But Mommy drinks the green juice.” And watches as Joy’s love of all things Mommy collides with her sugar loving palate. Pulling the plastic jar of turbidly jaunty green fluid she shakes it. “Sure?”
Now genuinely worried that her Mama might make her drink the icky stuff, she vibrates in place. “Noo . . .!” she cries.
Relenting, Tara pulls the pint jar of fresh-squeezed OJ and offers it. “Orange?” she asks. And her lips go wide with mirth at the combo-plate expression of disgust and relief.
While she is rinsing the sippy-cup to accept the juice, the house phone rings. Knowing that most calls to their land-line are less than urgent, she doesn’t hurry to get it. Walking over to the table to deliver the juice, she lets the machine answer. When the incoming message gets to the caller’s voice, she dashes to answer it.
“Hi! Jerry. Sorry. Baby breakfast time.”
“No problem, Tara,” he says. “I just wanted to call to see if I could catch Willow at home. Dr. Roy’s been trying her cell, and just left her a message. But I thought I’d try at home just in case.”
Caught back-footed, Tara loses some coherence. “No, she’s not . . . er. She’s out at, er . . . She’s working early today. Wh . . . why? . . . what’s up?”
“Oh, that’s good. I was hoping she hadn’t left home just to see the doc. She has to cancel because of a patient emergency. But she’ll reschedule once they’ve spoken again.”
“O-okay. Thanks, Jerry. I’ll let her know.”
She walks back to the table thoughtfully.
An appointment with her oncologist and no record of it in her calendar. Sneaky. Suddenly, she remembers the last several weeks’ worth of complaints about stiffness, and the rapidly depleting Advil—not just the Advil, but also the occasional Tramadol. Hmm, thinks Tara,
Ms. Drugs-make-me-loopy on opioids.
And a secret early-morning onco appointment. Tara’s heart races with anxiety before she reins it in.
Nothing to be too concerned about, probably just a follow-up. Jerry sounded very relaxed. She taps long fingers on the table, realises what she’s doing, and stops. She glares at her cell phone as the digital clock blips over another minute without a response from the love of her life.
The love of her life. Tara still remembers the moment they met. Willow had been bright like the sun. And she? Doomed (so she thought) to a life of darkness, possibly evil. And the thought of Willow had been a secret fire in her heart. Remembers how for the first time she had felt warm in the wintertime.
I thought it was the southern California sun, but really it was Willow. Her springtime girl who had chilled her to the bone that Pink Moon.
The girl who gave me her fire. The girl with the flushed face and shaking hands the first time they took their clothes off. The girl who is still shy, until you get her naked. Almost as if once stripped of the shell of her clothes she has nothing left to hide. Like opening the barn doors on a halogen flood. The light now followed always by the shadow—the dark gash in her bright soul that Willow fears, but also sadly accepts.
But for Tara, who knows about things in a different way, the experience is different. The darkness not dimming Willow’s light, but drawing a clear line around it, outlining it—framing it—so that it shines even brighter. A complementing contrast that heightens the light. Like a touch of salt in caramel—startling, but making the sweet even sweeter.
Ironic, that the cruelty of her childhood—the fear of the demon, the shame of her existence—and the gravitational push-pull of magic should serve her so well now. Serve to love her Willow—help her fight her demons. Her Willow, who has always been a keep things to herself until they explode kind of girl; but which Tara has been pushing back against with a combination of kisses, cajoling, and just plain yelling. Her Willow. . . .
Whose ass I’m going to kick, from here to Sunday, if she doesn’t come clean soon with what’s bothering her.***
Willow swings the door closed behind her with a kick of her foot as she steps into the apartment. The door crashes into the frame much (much!) more firmly than she intends.
Yikes! “Sorry,” she yells into the space, grumbling about the hinge as she kicks her wet sneakers off in the hallway.
The metal key-bowl spins and wobbles with a pleasing waung-waouun-waunnn sound as the keys land in it. The dry air in the apartment tickles her nose and she sneezes. Sniffing against the tickle, she starts to unzip, but is shaken by another sneeze. And another. Now exhausted by the sneezing, and feeling too tired to undress in the hallway like a civilised person, she walks herself—wet jacket, wet socks, breakfast loot and all—into the living-slash-kitchen space to undress there.
Leaving the bag on the coffee table, she collapses on to the sofa while shaking the circulation back into her wrist. She bends down to take off her nasty, soppy socks when she hears the plop-flop of tiny feet rushing towards her.
Water dripping from her dark hair, spraying droplets all over the wood floor and utterly sky-clad, a most aggrieved toddler flings her arms around Willow’s head with a wail. “Mama took offmy panths . . .!”
Mama is trailing only a few feet behind with a hooded, Teddy-bear towel—a twisted moue of wry exasperation on her face. Willow notes the randomly dampened strands of disarrayed hair, the deep set of sleep-interrupted eyes, the still-fading pillow crease on her jaw, and the special eyebrow of, Just You Wait Till We Get the Crying Baby Situation Resolved.
Disengaging from the strangle-hold of babyish despair, Willow lifts the girl into her lap. With an exaggerated pouty face of sympathy she looks into wide, tearless eyes. “She took off your pants?”
The child nods a pouting frown of injured dignity.
With confused amusement she hugs the child and mutters, not quite under her breath, “Boy. I should
be so lucky.” In her peripheral vision, Willow spots blue eyes narrowing dangerously. Sensing the stern swell of annoyance she quickly changes tack. Re-establishing eye contact with the tea-cup human, Willow says very seriously, “You know, sometimes Mama takes my pants off, but I don’t cry about it.” Hearing the long hiss of indrawn breath, Willow realises that she may have heeled over too much and rights herself. “You had to take a bath?” she asks the most precious cargo in her arms, who gives her a guarded nod in return. “Well, you gotta take your clothes off, dontcha?” she says seriously.
Sensing darkly that there’s no more sympathy to be had, the little squirt simply hides her face in her mother’s neck and whimpers.
In response to Willow’s raised eye brows, Tara sighs, “She wanted to do it herself,” and shakes her head in rueful admiration of the smug little manipulator quietly hogging hugs in her other mother’s lap. She walks over and drapes the towel around the naked child, leaning in to give Willow’s rain-cold lips a welcome-home kiss when she feels a tiny, jealous hand pushing at her jaw.
“No! Mommy kisses me!” the girl proclaims possessively. Stubborn blue eyes accept the salute from Mommy’s lips with the royal entitlement of a queen receiving her crown, before turning imperiously into the lap of her rightful Willow-throne.
Looking down at the consequence-evading cuddle-bunnies burrowing into their members-only hug, Tara squelches a pang of jealousy at being excluded from the huddle and continues with her tale of incredulity. Indicating the situation before her she says, “Then, she wanted only Mommy to do it . . .” Taking a seat, she drapes an arm around her sweetie who—risking the wrath of the little tyrant in her lap, and hoping to deter the wrath of the body regnant by her side—returns the favour with a little smile.
Glad to finally be home, Willow leans her head against Tara’s. “How come such an early bath, baby?” she asks softly.
Knowing that Mommy couldn’t possibly have any other baby, Joy replies for Tara, “I spilted th’ jooth in my pantth.” Completely without any irony.
“But first, she spilt her milk on her shirt. And wouldn’t stop complaining about how cold it was.”
“Rough morning?” Willow whispers.
She shakes her head. Not really. “You?”
Picking at the damp leaves and sodden, tiny twigs still clinging to Willow’s jacket, she enjoys the rumbled hmmm of agreement and is savouring the weight of Willow’s head against hers when she realises: She is picking at damp leaves and sodden, tiny twigs still clinging to Willow’s jacket, which is in direct contact with their child’s freshly clean skin. She also registers the dampness on the arm of her sweatshirt, the cool wetness where Willow’s soggy foot has just started to make contact with her dry one; not to mention the perilous progress of unidentifiable vegetable matter into a two-year old mouth.
Fast as lightning, soft as rain, she snatches the leafy bud out of Joy’s pincer grip. “Dammit. Willow . . .!”
The tired red-head, though, is comfily snuggled into the radiating warmth of toddler heat. “What, baby?” she asks with foggy alarm.
The rules lawyer is quick to interject, “Mama said a bad wuhd. Mama bad.”
Tara huffs in incredulity at her child as she tugs at a pinched handful of the jacket to indicate the problem. “Sweetie, I just gave her a bath. And . . .” she nudges Willow’s elbow with a loose fist, “you’ve got the couch all wet.”
“Ruh-roh!” says Willow, and the child in her lap giggles loudly. “Mommy’s ba-a-d.”
The little mimic is happy to play along. “Mommys bad. Mommys bad!” It’s so much fun when Mama and Mommy are bad
She slides the girl off her lap and wraps the towel snugly around her, settling the hood over her head. “Well, hey there, Boo Boo!” Willow says in her best Smokey Bear voice and gets a soft giggle out of the girl. She leans right for a quick kiss of apology. “Sorry, baby,” she says, and leans down to finish removing her socks. “I’ll go get her cleaned up again.”
When her Mommy stands up, Joy sticks an arm out of her towel and holds it up in the universal kiddy gesture of “pick me up”.
“What?!” exclaims Willows, squelching the wet socks together in one hand. “Didn’t I hear you running all the way here? You can walk back just fine, missy!” Tapping her on the head with one gloved finger, she shepherds the child forward. Turning back to say, “I brought bagels,” she stumbles and cracks her shin on the coffee table. She winces with a sharp exclamation, which draws a delighted laugh from her child.
Falling back onto the sofa, Willow grabs at the girl. “Oh, yeah?” she taunts back from her lying down position, “You want me to tickle you? Hanh? Hanh?” she asks, extending her fingers.
A muffled buzz from Willow’s pocket gives Joy enough of a distraction to dodge away, squealing. The sight of the Caller ID makes Willow spring up in her seat like a sockeye.
“Doctor Ro—” The phone slips out of her glove-clumsy hand, bounces off her knee, ricochets onto the table before finally cart-wheeling to a stop on the wooden surface.
Squealing Girl turns into Giggle Girl as Tara hands the phone back to the sheepish Clumsy Girl with an expression of tolerant concern that Willow knows so, so well. Tara accepts the baton of tickle-monsterness from Willow and extending a toothy jaw to match her extended tickle-claw, chases the now naked girl out of the living room.
“Hey, Dr. Roy! Sorry about that.” She pauses to listen to the voice on the other end. “Yeah, yeah. Just surprised.”
“Willow, I’m really sorry about this morning. But one of my 19th floors had a difficult night. And I wanted to get some things worked out before the family arrived.”
“End of life stuff?” Willow asks softly
“Yeah,” is the serious reply. A small pause and then, “Any way . . . I’m really, really sorry. But . . . Both Diagnostics
and Imaging left me presents. For you.”
“Oh.”
“I know you were worried. Because it’s what you do. But everything still looks good.”
Willow gulps a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”
“If all my patients looked this good four years out from surgery I’d be sleeping more.”
“So everything looks good.”
“Willow. This is why I’m calling you. To tell you not to worry. Your scans are clear. The blood work’s fine. You’re fine.”
“So the—”
“The joint pain’s nothing to worry about. Like I said, just Tamoxifen withdrawal. Once your body adjusts to the new hormone levels which are your old hormone levels, you’ll be fine. At least until the real thing happens, and then it’ll be Dr. Pastore’s job.”
“That’ll be fun. A pre-teen
and pre-menopause—just a barrelful of . . . something rolling right over ya.” Despite stoppering her throat so tightly she feels the wetness filing her eyes. “Just . . . with the aching and joint pain and the tiredness . . . I was scared ‘cause, you know?”
“Willow, I know. But every year, your panels’ve been coming back solid. You’ve been eating well, exercising . . . You’re in great shape.” Hearing the silence on the line the doctor correctly interprets the hesitation to believe. “The paranoia and hypochondria will get you faster than any disease. Enjoy your life.”
Completely overcome with relief she lets the tears come. “Dr Roy,” her voice is hoarse and starts to crack. “Kaanti,” she says to her doctor, acknowledging they’ve long since moved beyond a purely professional association, “thanks for everything. I don’t know how to thank you for everything.”
“That’s easy—stay out of my office. Stop calling my admin for appointments. Ok? He’ll send you a reminder when it’s time for your follow-ups.” The two women share a laugh. Knowing her point has been made and acknowledged, Dr Roy continues, “You have a beautiful family—enjoy your life.”
“Thank you,” Willow says with a teary smile.
“Also, tell your very lovely wife, thanks for the goodie basket.”
This is the moment Tara walks in on: weeping Willow with her head bowed.
Knowing full well whom Willow is speaking to, her heart seizes. The rational part of herself reminds her that doctors, especially theirs, do not give bad news over phone after they’ve already cancelled an early morning appointment. And manages to wrestle her heart into submission when she catches sight of the tiny upturned corner of Willow’s lips.
“She’s right here,” Willow says, her tiny smile turning into a full blown one. “How do you,” she asks, turning on the speaker, “know it wasn’t me?”
“Oh, so you knew it was Holi last month?”
“Aaaah . . .” is the particular sound of hesitation she makes. “I just put you on speaker.”
“Tara, I don’t know where you found those sweets but my husband ate them for every meal. Plus snacks. I don’t know whether to thank you for how happy he was. Or blame you for all the moaning about tight pants.”
Tara ducks her head with pleasure at the compliment. “I’ll have Willow send you the address. Just a small thank you.”
Willow watches her partner’s bashful pleasure. Still so shy about compliments from strangers, she thinks. Not really a stranger, though, she corrects herself; not wanting to offend anyone even in her thoughts.
“A better thank you would be if you kept her out of my hair. I don’t know how you deal with having two children. And no help at all.”
“Hey!” the Her in question interjects in her own defence.
Tara chuckles indulgently. “I don’t have much of a choice.”
“Lucky Willow. Also, because you’ve been so nice to my husband, I decided to be nice to your wife. Seeing how she likes to hug her reports like a comfy-blanky, I’m sending out a copy by messenger.”
“Thanks, Dr. Roy.”
“You’re welcome. You three take care now.”
Watching Willow put her phone away, Tara sits down on the coffee table. Letting her wife have a moment of avoidance to make herself feel better, she waits until the woman runs out of all her fidgety options. Raising Willow’s eyes to her with a gentle knuckle, she strokes the sweet face. “What’s happening, baby?”
Willow shakes her head roughly—angry at being caught out in her fears, angry at herself for having to be soothed like a baby.
“Tara, stop! I’m not a child.”
Unrelenting, she replies, “Baby, it’s something. You didn’t tell me you were meeting the doctor today. Or that you went in for tests.”
“’S nothing.”
Tara raises an eyebrow at her, “Should I call Dr. Roy back?”
“I was just . . . it’s been hard to sleep . . .” Seeing Tara’s confused frown of annoyance she tests the waters of confession. “. . . With all the joint aches and . . . I’m up all night with all the thoughts . . . I started thinking about what you told me about your mother . . .” Seeing Tara close her eyes, and not wanting a bigger emotional scene, she starts to wrap it up. “And the weird dreams . . . just gets a little crazy. You know. Like always.”
What’s a girl to do? Her baby is a worrier. Always has been. She kisses her softly on the lips. On a cheek. Near her ear. “You know I can help with that . . .”
Not wanting to add more items to Tara’s Willow-Plate-of-Crazy, she cuts in, “I don’t want you up all night! Trying to talk me off a ledge only I can see.”
Tara laughs. “I meant the other thing,” she says, making her eyes soft and blinking slowly. “That shuts all those thoughts up completely.” So funny how Willow still dithers when
she’s not the one making innuendoes.
“Sorry, baby.”
Not sure why Willow is apologising, but very sure that she’s now nervous, Tara lets it go. Taking the quiet moment between them, she pulls her love’s hands into her lap and starts tugging the gloves off. “Let me see.”
Knowing that she is overdue for her usual examination when she returns from these periodic rituals, Willow submits quietly to the gentle attentions. “It’s not so bad. Just stings a bit.”
When she undresses the hands and turns them over to examine the damage, she is more concerned by the gelid feel of Willow’s skin. “Sweetie! You’re completely chilled.”
“Just a little rain, baby.”
Hauling her up by the jacket and contemplating the truth in Dr. Roy’s words, she directs Willow towards their bedroom. Shutting the door she begins to undress Willow, first making sure that the wet jacket goes nowhere near any porous surface. “You’re going to catch a cold . . .”
“Ha!” Willow retorts as she allows herself to be bundled into a fluffy white cotton robe, “You don’t catch a cold because of temperature!” “And,” she expounds, hoping no one heard her sneezing out in the hallway,” the virus takes at least 36 hours to incubate.”
“Well, you are, sweetie. And I’m going to say, I told you so. Now,” she says pushing Willow away from her, “get that gauze off your hands. I’m going to run you a hot bath.”
“With the pink salt?” asks Willow hopefully, and bounces at the smile she receives.
As soon as she sits on the bed, a series of jaw-splitting, eye-crunching yawns rip through her. She flops back into the mattress and stretches—all the way to her fingers. The pull of plaster tape against tight skin reminds her of her task and she holds her hands up in front of her face, half-heartedly fingering at the edge of the sticky material, wincing, ow-ing, muttering and pouting like a big baby.
“Hey, what’s Joy up to?”
“She’s teaching Kermit and Big Bird how to sing.”
She frowns in disgust at the thought of the frog. “Too bad you got her all cleaned up. We could have taken a bath together.”
Happy not to have to deal with the splashy mess Tara says, “It’s fine. You guys waste more water than you use.”
“Hey, you know what wastes less water?” asks Willow, perking up a little. “Two people in the tub taking up all that volume.”
“Because we can just sit around in the tub and let the two-year old go unsupervised.”
“Almost two and a half,” Willow corrects, not wanting to cast any aspersions on her Boo Boo’s maturity. “She’s unsupervised now. You’re just mad I asked you second. Jealous, that’s what you are.”
“Yes, Willow,” Tara comes out of the bath room, wiping her hands on a small towel, “I’m just green that you’re going to run away with a younger, cuter version of me.”
“Eww . . .baby! That’s so wrong. She’s my baby.”
“Wait. I thought I was your baby.”
“You’re saying it all wrong. You’re
my baby. She’s my
baby.”
Shaking her head, Tara approaches the bed. “Ok,” she demands, “hands.” Willow sits up and scoots back on the bed so that Tara can sit down next to her. Taking Willow’s hands in hers she turns the small hands this way and that, taking in the scrapes and cuts, and the deep gouges.
“I cleaned it, see? And I even remembered to take the dressing and tape with me.”
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Meh.”
“Keep it out of the bath, ok?”
Willow looks so sleepy-soft and pliable, so vulnerable.
I bet I could get her to talk to me, she thinks. But the pallor of her skin and the glazed, wideness of pupil stays her intention. Besides she has all sorts of work to get to, as well. The girls’ll need to be briefed about the new spring flavours; it’s time to make sure the new signs go up and that the registers are re-programmed with the new seasonal promotional rates.
Later . . . when Joy’s asleep; and they have a few hours. She pulls the sheet and duvet up from the foot of the bed and drapes them over Willow. “Take a nap until the tub’s full,” she says with a kiss to Willow’s forehead. “I’ve set the timer.”
She heads further down the hallway to Joy’s room. Collecting the child and her toys, she hustles the whole caboodle along to the living room so she can keep an eye on little Miss Adventure while she makes her phone calls; still preferring the homey, light-filled atmosphere of the windowed room to the stark orderliness of the organised study.
Online chore time and shop homework slides by quickly and she realises that she hasn’t heard the timer go off; and that the periodic noises of play have vanished from the room. Looking up, she notices that Joy is missing from the room. Hoping she hasn’t gotten into anything too messy, she goes in search of her, and is rewarded by the sound of voices from the master bedroom.
She finds mother and daughter in the bathroom. Joy is standing on her little footstool so she can reach into the tub to splash the water around—the high walls of the Japanese-style tub otherwise reaching as high as her neck. Willow is on the floor, her hands draped over the walls of the tub. The lurid burnt-sienna of her hair drapes over the whiteness of the robe, which is, in turn, stark against the matt black of granite floor and tub, making her skin look even paler than usual. The two are splashing water about, whispering and giggling. Intrigued and charmed by the tableau, Tara interrupts their enchanting conspiracy by clearing her throat. One blue gaze and one green gaze turn to look at her with identical wide-eyed stares: the same rise of brow, the same loose-jawed chagrin; the same sheepish twitch of cheek.
Joy breaks the tableau by furiously splashing the water and leaping down from the footstool with a squeal to whisper something in Willow’s ear that gets them both laughing. But there’s something about the unusual depth of laughter, and languidness of Willow’s movements that prods at Tara.
And then Willow turns a knowingly evaluative gaze at her. The maple-shot fluorite of her irises shrinking into a thin ring around darkening pupils, her voice very low in her chest, she says, “Very pretty . . .”
“What’s going on here?”
“Fishes!” yells the little girl.
One eyebrow goes up. “Fish?” she asks sceptically.
“No . . .!” comes the disgusted reply. “Fishshezz!”
“Oh” she replies, thoroughly schooled. “Really?”
“Yah!” says the girl, with a healthy heaping overtone of “duh!”
“Hey!” Willow scolds gently, getting up to sit on the edge of the tub, towering over the sassy child, “Be nice.”
Mommy’s voice is soft but the tone is rumbly and low. Joy understands that this means business. She purses her lips and ducks her head.
Tara tilts her head at Willow who slowly shakes her head. The muscles in her face twitch. Tara thinks she’s trying to smile but what actually shows is an abstracted grimace. Feeling bad for their little girl, Tara prompts with a smile, “So . . . fishes . . .”
Happy to be in the good graces of the normally strict parent, Joy perks up, rattling off names; looking to Mommy for re-assurance each time she says a difficult name. “ ‘Turgeon, twout, thhunfish. Ummm. Thhaamon . . . Eeuhw! Mmm . . . bo-ny fish . . . benny? . . . mm-m-mi?llow . . .”
Seeing the little naturalist’s strength of recollection, and tongue, fading, Tara throws her a line. “Wow!” she says, “So many fishes!” And tries to discern what it is exactly about the way Willow reaches down to pull the child into her lap. “Did Mommy teach you?”
“Th’ beah tawd me. Many many. So many fishes,” she pronounces sagely. Tilting her head up at Willow with an acutely sympathetic expression says, “Mama dothn’t know.”
With a deep hmmm, Willow pulls the child’s dark brown hair free from the confines of her hug and gently fingers the long strands, gently stroking through the tresses.“Smart Boo Boo . . .”
Is Willow slurring? Tara wonders
The proud bear cub nods—obvious things are obvious—and turns a satisfied gaze at her ignorant Mama.
Tara experiences the disembodied disjointedness of being in two places at once—her own eyes look back at her, the shot brown of the hair being stroked is precisely the same shade as hers; the high plumpness of baby cheeks, stolen from her own childhood. For all the decades that stretch between then and now, Tara is instantly translated in time. Her Mama is sitting at the edge of the tub brushing her hair with a new brush. Not really new. Just new for her. The hog hair brush is old.
Special, she explains.
Makes your hair shine. The soft bristles won’t pull at your hair, baby. Really, Mama? Mama doesn’t lie. The brush glides through her hair without snagging and pulling her scalp. Like magic.
Willow rests her chin on Joy’s head and engulfs her in a possessive embrace. Tara feels the echo of the hug both then and now, ripples of feeling dissonating into splintered arcs. Melancholy, loss, anger at loss, the need for love to fill that loss, the powerful need to protect the child she has from the loss of the child she was. And the sudden, desperate upwelling of tooth-aching lust for the woman who loves both these children—especially the one who straddles all those decades that stretch between then and now. The dissipation of the ravening explosion in her stomach and chest into a warmth of tender affection brings her back to the present. This temporal transit comes with the smallest of costs: the excision of only a tiny moment from her momentous life.
Her next experience of awareness is seeing little blue eyes looking up at her from waist-high saying, “Mommy’s cold.”
One hand trailing ever so slowly in the water, Willow seems mesmerised by something in there. With a voice that does not belong to her come the words, “The water’s so dark.”
A shiver runs through her. The water is definitely bright pink with the scented salts. Finally letting her alarm surface, Tara places a stay-here gesture on Joy’s head and moves towards Willow. “Willow, sweetie?” she says with a soft caution in her voice.
She is looking at a fire by the side of a hill. And the moon is reflected on the pool of dark water. The fish are asleep deep below the surface. And from somewhere—not here—come the comforting howls of a small wolf-pack. She looks back to the fire and sees him. Tall and tan. His long hair, let loose for the night, is shiny and dark. She can smell the beaver oil on his skin, glistening in the firelight.
He looks at the spectre in alarm. Whatever she is, she cannot be human. With her skin so pink and raw, like the Creator has not finished colouring her. And the strange colour of her hair. He says to himself, “Machta manito.” Evil spirit.
The strange spirit-woman approaches him.
Surely, she won’t cross the fire. The spirits of the underworld, like animals, fear the light and heat. But she doesn’t seem afraid. Alarmed but not frightened—he is, after all, a seer of his clan—he makes a gesture of warding. And here under the full moon, where he has just communed with the spirits of the sky, his powers are strong.
Yet she keeps coming. Right up to the fire. And now he’s frightened. Strange energies rise around her. There is no wind but her hair billows around her shoulders. Her face is painted with streaks of blood. He can see her eyes: black like the deepest night without stars. They are not eyes. They are doorways to that strange, dark place his ancestors left behind when they came to this world; and the door is open. His clan mother had warned him as a small child.
Before you become a man, the spirits will test you. He knows the time has come. He readies his blade. She only opens her hands and lets it drip into the fire—the blood falls to the earth as red and thick as any human’s, hissing up on the coals like any animal’s, smelling like anything made from this earth—and the smoke rises in a haze.
The vision is confusing. The hills levelled, the sweet waters gone. Forests of stone where trees used to be. Strange beasts with wheel-legs travelling straight paths, not crooked and dodging to hide their tracks from hunters. The land full of strange, unfinished, white, clay people like the spirit before him. Smoke rising from the plains and valleys. And most of all blood—gorges of blood and all his people swept away. The land without a heart—all the veins and lines of power drained from the arteries of the dying turtle; the turtle’s shell cracking in strange shapes. He tries to pull away from the terrifying vision.
Lies! He thinks. Meant to fool him into some action that will betray his own spirit. But as he struggles, he is pulled deeper in. And he sees it. Here in the grave of the hills of Manahachtanànk, the rivers of blood will still; and fill with power once again. A keeper will be appointed. Great, earth mother, the Goddess, will choose one to knit the wound back together. It will be a time of strange manitowak and upheaval, but the organs of the turtle will be restored. The keeper must have a guardian—a guardian as dark as the powers that are coming.
When the blood-smoke recedes from his lungs, he looks at the blood-painted, dark-eyed one—her chest is rent open, two rivers meet where two hearts beat—a strange demon with two hearts. He begins to understand the test—he must bind the guardian to the land—and weeps. Only blood can pay for blood. Weeps like no man in his long house has wept before. Weeps for what he must do. And what he can never have.
She looks up to meet his eyes and blinks. Everything is so hazy in the swirling dark. Where is she? “Who are you?”
The words send a chill through Tara’s spine. And when she meets Willow’s eyes she realises what it is that bothered her before—hands trembling, she approaches Willow, cradles the sweet face in two hands and strokes her cheeks with soft thumbs—the green has not receded with the pupils, it’s filled in with a dark stain.
The scream of sorrow strikes Willow’s heart with a grievous pain.
He was fine a second ago, why is he crying? He looks like such a small child, smaller even than her Boo Boo cub. She reaches forward to comfort him. “Hey, hey, don’t cry. It’ll be okay.”
Even though the voice is dark and strange, it is still soft and kind with that familiar childlike hitch.
Oh Willow! And through her worry, she smiles and nods, “I know.”
Urging her to her feet, guiding her by the elbow, she leads Willow to the bed. Small, wide eyes look up to her in question. “It’s ok, baby. Mommy’s not feeling well. We’re going to tuck her in. Ok?”
“Mommy has an owwie?”
“Yeah,” she says turning her worried face to Willow as she lays her down on the bed, “she does.”
***
Knowing it would be faster to just take Joy downstairs to where the junior slayers are, Tara still forces herself to make the call and wait for someone to come to their apartment. In the time that it takes someone to hop-to, she packs a small go-bag for Joy; and explains to her that she’s going to be spending some time with her other favoured class of friends. Quite luckily, the small child and Ege, the Turkish slayer, have formed a mutual attachment of great, rambunctious exuberance—the lonely, young woman missing her many siblings and small cousins here in the States. After explaining, in no uncertain terms, that they are not to be disturbed under any circumstances—not for an apocalypse, not for an alien invasion, not for the second coming . . . not for any blessed thing—until she gives the all clear, she hands Joy off. Then calls the doorman to hold all visitors and packages, and turns off the ringer on the intercom and land line.
***
Willow wants to comfort the dark man. There’s something about him that calls to her. Beyond the sadness of his dark, brown eyes, she senses his youth, his innocence and kindness; and his soft reedy strength—so much like her Tara. But as she reaches out her hand to him, she falls through him.
Through the earth, past the surface, past the leaves and the mud and gravel and the stones. Past the rabbit holes and burrows, and the worms tunnelling in the earth. Past the shell pits and the bones of dead things—dead long ago. Past the blood and bricks. The ashes and the tears. Down into the very bones of the mother herself. And past her bones into somewhere she can hear the blood of the earth flowing somewhere deep with a molten groan; where the very pulse of the earth begins.
No! She says. And stops herself.
She wakes up and feels that familiar sense of floating. Like her soul is floating away somewhere else. She needs to find Tara.
***
She finds Willow in the hallway looking distraught, leaning on the wall with one arm out. Tara puts an arm around her waist and holds her up.
“Tara? Baby,” comes the small voice that’s now fully Willow, “something’s happening.”
“I know, baby.” She places an arm around Willow’s waist and guides her back into the bedroom.
In the doorway, she whirls in Tara’s arms—time is going in and out. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
Tara closes the door. “Shh . . . It’s fine,” she says, “it’s fine,” stroking her hair back from her face, comforting her. For the third time that day she leads Willow to the edge of bed and makes her sit. This time, Willow’s arms go around her in a desperate hug, and she buries her face in Tara’s chest.
Rocking herself like a child, before turning swirling, green and black eyes on Tara, she says, “I’m drifting away. You’ve got to hold me down.”
Even though it’s very hard for Tara to meet the disturbing gaze, she doesn’t flinch. Continuing to stroke the hair from Willow’s head, she places a kiss on her forehead and gives her a smile.
Gingerly, Willow smiles back. “You’re so good to me,” she says and turns her head to press many desperate kisses on Tara’s breast.
Circling both arms around Willows head, she pulls her even closer to her heart, and bends her head to lay a cheek on that precious head. She lets herself feel for the strange energy surrounding her girl, and feels her love reaching out for her. Something in her is fragmenting—the sun of her aura wavering and weak, something dark is creeping about. In that second she gets an inkling of whatever emotional turmoil Willow must be experiencing. Willow and Magic are enemies only when she’s upset.
She tilts Willow’s head back and kisses her. Insistently, softly. Then again. And again. When she feels Willow respond to her, she parts her lips and offers her mouth into the kiss. Willow accepts, and they kiss—deeply—tongues stroking wetly.
When they part lips, panting, Willow whimpers once and blinks. She stares at Tara in the shaded twilight of their room—the line of cheek and jaw, the softness of skin, the parted lips, the sweetness of her mouth, her heaving chest—and wonders why their lips are so far apart.
One second she is looking down at an open-mouthed Willow, the next second that mouth is against hers—insisting on hot, deep-tongued caresses. Willow’s hands are everywhere: her face, her ass, gliding down her back, creeping up her waist. She feels the coolness of one hand sliding under her shirt, while another is at her shoulder blades, stroking through the long hair. And that aching, ravening feeling from before comes back with stunning clarity. She pulls back with a moaning gasp, not wanting to give in to that purely physical urge when she’s not even sure that Willow is all here. Tara holds Willow back with a palm against her shoulder when she tries to renew the contact. And again. They stand there panting and heaving.
But this time when confused Willow meets her gaze while licking dry lips, all she sees is green eyes widening dark from the centre—not from mystical forces, just with wonder and desire. With a shuddering gasp she lets herself fall on Willow—tongue and tooth—like a starving predator. The cool skin at her throat still tastes of the outside—sharp, mineral damp; and rich musk of fertile soil, sweet tree-pollen, and city smoke. Pulling deeply on the pulse there, she pushes Willow back toward the bed. Reaching down to the top of run-strong thighs, and lifting as she plants a shin and knee on the solid foam, she heaves Willow flat onto the mattress. Chasing the taste of skin down the V of parted robe, she presses her thigh into Willow’s centre, grinding her own against Willow’s hip. The responsive sound of pleasure sends a frisson skittering up her spine. Crawling after Willow, who heel-and-elbows her way further up the bed, she halts the inching progress by clamping teeth on her chin. Gently, she kisses her way up Willow’s jaw and back along her cheek towards her seeking mouth. Tongues meet again in soft peeking touches and then in suckling caresses in the same rhythm as hips rolling and pressing into each other.
Wanting more sensation—more friction—she settles her weight into Willow and moves her right hand down Willow’s body imagining the softness of skin from the way the fabric of the robe glides so easily against it. Waiting until the moment that Willow’s moving hips are on an upstroke, she slides her hand under Willow’s ass and pulls her firmly into her own body. Releasing Willow’s lips with a sigh of relief, she continues pulling the body below her closer and closer and closer into herself. Burying her nose in Willow’s neck she takes in the rising warmth of her lover’s actual scent as her skins warms up to banish the cool, mineral aroma of the outside world. Sticking her tongue out, she tastes the warming skin, suckling and sucking until she can feel the pulse throbbing under her tongue.
Inspired by the warm scent of Willow’s neck, Tara pushes herself up onto elbows then hands; and feeling for the annoying sash keeping her from her pleasure pulls it away and throws the robe open by the lapels. Without wasting a second she latches on to an already cold-aroused nipple and coaxes it into stiffness with the heat of her mouth.
Willow feels the heat on her breast like a searing brand and arches into the contact. It feel like the whole of her breast is in her lover’s mouth and when she feels the flat of Tara’s tongue drag from undercurve to the length of nipple, drawing the whole of it deep into her mouth with a series of pulsing sucks, she grabs on to Tara’s head not knowing if she should push her away or pull her further into her body. Needing something to hold on to—to ground herself in the moment of pleasure—she finds the band holding Tara’s long hair bag and releases it to let the brown-gold hair fall around her, tickling her face and shoulders, caressing her chest.
The feel of Willow’s fingers massaging her scalp and clenching and unclenching in her hair sends a shiver down Tara’s side. Following the unconscious tug upwards, she tosses the hair out of eyes with a flick of her head, and finds Willow’s mouth again; alternately chasing her tongue and luring it back with her own.
Even though she has no coherent thought, Willow understands she is being tortured—by that juicy tongue, and those hot hands roaming all over her skin, taking what they want and offering nothing in return. The rasp of cool cotton and the metallic scrape of zipper against tender skin is all torture. If only she can touch the warmth she can find some relief.
Tara feels hands desperately pushing at her shoulder fumbling around her neck searching for something, and she realises she is still clothed. Not wanting to give up the taste of mouth and tongue she crawls up, swatting Willows hands away, holding them down to the bed and pressing down in an unspoken command. Kneeling into a crouch, still connected at the mouth, she unzips her sweatshirt and flings it away from the bed. Still bent over Willow, poised in a hungry crouch, she runs her hands up and down the body at her disposal. Taking in the rising flush, the straining muscles, the heaving chest; and most of all the eyes—lidded with pleasure, frank with desire, and burning with lust. Tara leans into Willow’s body like a waking cat—a single glide of hands, arms and body from hips to waist to ribs to breasts and nipples and to the shoulder and down her arms—and pulls her up. Clasping her by the waist she sweeps the robe off one shoulder and then the next. Pulling Willow right up against her chest she hisses with the heat of contact—finally—of chest to chest, stomach to stomach. Willow’s sawing moan rips right through to her centre and she feels a gush of wetness. Sitting Willow on her thigh and astride her hips, she pulls her wet centre into her, encouraging her to ride. Until she realises that the cotton of her pajama pants is soaking with Willows arousal.
With the feel of Tara’s breasts pressed up under hers and the heat of Tara’s skin engulfing hers, the feel of Tara’s arms around her and under her, Willow finally feels warm. Warm but not sated. Spreading her fingers on Tara’s back she pulls tighter, and closer. And still, she wants more. There are words she could say, but her mind is closing against itself, wandering in the dark again.
Tara hears the words before Willow pulls back to look at her with eyes she’s not sure really see her. Then she hears Willow’s voice again, “Please baby.”
Ungently, she lays Willow back on the mattress, making her feel her body against itself. Roughly she drags her hands down Willows body past hips to thighs, watching the furrowing progress of her fingers. And softly skims her fingers up the inner thighs, stroking back and again, silently communicating what’s to come. Leaning over and past her chest, breathing her in, Tara nuzzles into the heating body under her—pressing one hand into the mattress by Willow’s head and pressing the other between her legs, following the wet traces further and further up through her folds.
Falling through time and endless sensation, Willow reaches out in the erotic haze—unfurling green tendrils towards the blue. She clasps a hand around a slender shoulder and lets the rolling sensation pour through her.
The throaty moan from Willow, when Tara strokes through her wetness and right into her is a red hot goad. She suspends her breath as green eyes close in an ecstatic gasp, relishes the brush of hot cheek against her forearm as Willow arches and adjusts into the sensation. Unwilling to let Willow recede from her, Tara pulls her back with a beckoning twist of fingers. Looking into the dark flare of green eyes she swallows against the heat of the moment. "Look at me," she pants. "Let me see you." Green eyes squeeze shut in an anguish of pleasure; with a fervent clutch of shoulder they open helplessly to electric blue.
Letting her heart acclimate to the thudding beat of the erotic surge she begins the rhythm slowly, drawing Willow's hips into a rising cadence with each draw and thrust. Tara pulls and releases until the body beneath hers stops resisting the sensual lure and falls open, giving in to the passionate pleading.
Weaving fingers through the silken fall of brown hair, Willow rests a trembling palm against Tara's hot cheek and strokes gently with her thumb. Falling endlessly through time and feeling she reaches for succour, and finds herself suspended over a nervous precipice held only by her lover’s knowing fingers. Unable to bear the distance of their sweat washed bodies she surges in to the reclining press of the body holding her down. Awash in an ocean of timeless pleasure Willow calls out over and over again for her lover, letting go of herself to reach for her always—seeking with her hips, seizing hold with her thighs.
Each cry pours over Tara with scalding arousal. Her skin flushes and burns, getting tighter with each sound. Each cry a jet hot flare smelting the scaffold of her composure and driving the tempo of their loving—faster and faster and harder and rougher—until they are fucking. The room swells with heat and the guttural harmony of panting breaths against sharp cries. Tara cradles the arching body to her, and feels the heat inside her bloom until she is sure she’s burning up from the inside. She slakes herself in the baptismal evidence of her lover’s desire for her. Unable to stop, she presses the hot nova of lust inside her into Willow, wresting helpless cries with every draw—wanting more and more, needing to know the sensation of that beautiful body, fluttering . . . beating against her, like a heart against its cage. Until finally Willow can take no more and comes undone in her arms with a loud cry.
She comes undone but her arms remain clamped around her love. Squeezing her eyes shut Willow tries to fit the feeling inside her into something containable. The two of them lie on their sides gasping and panting against each other as if arising from some deep submergence. Waiting until the rapid pants of breath and runaway percussion of her heart slow to something bearable, she seizes Tara, burying her face in her neck. When she finally meets the familiar eyes and soft expression, still panting she asks, "What did you just do to me?"
Softly, fingers push sweat matted hair off Willows face and forehead, and soft wide lips taker hers in a kiss. Pulling back wetly, Tara watches Willows heart beating in her neck.
Flipping on to her back and flinging an arm out, Willow groans and laughs.
Tara follows with her, rolling hip to hip, and ends up on Willow’s other side, leaning her elbow by a red head, looking down at half-lidded, green eyes. “Oh, really?” she says, pleased with the free sounding burst of laughter.
Still panting with exertion, the erotic echoes pulsing through her centre, she gasps, “That was . . . that . . . Baby, that was so fucking hot.”
Shade-dimmed cobalt eyes flare with dark satisfaction. Pressing wide lips into a plump moue of sexy-playfulness she kisses the words on to Willow’s cheek, “You should have seen it from my side.” And lets a shiver runs through her.
“Oh,” Willow breathes. “Feel free to do that any time you like, then.”
The shared smile turns into laughter and delirious giggles as they clutch at each other. Breathless again, they separate and gaze at each other, taking the quiet moments to catch their breath.
Stroking soothingly from hip up to waist and back again, Tara asks, “All here now, baby? You with me?”
Willow nods sleepily and reaches the back of her hand to stroke a cheek bone, wondering when it surfaced to break the round face of her girl into these sharp planes. She strokes her knuckles across cheek to jaw, down to chin and back, before following the line of long neck and trailing down to chest. There, she turns her hand to cup the enticing curve of pendent breast, and drags the pads of her fingers back up and towards the cleavage only to stop at the polka dot cicatrice.
As Willow continues to circle her fingers around the long-healed wound with some inscrutable aim, Tara brings her free hand to rest on the lightly-curving scar on the top of Willow’s left breast—the pale pink of semi-newness starting to fade into a ghost white—and smiles wryly. “Matched set,” she says.
Willow’s expression clouds with old anger before softening to sadness. “No. Never say that. It’s not the same.” She resumes her fingers’ walk to the long, diagonal scar, high on Tara’s back where ribs had been sawn away and levered apart to make room for sponges, and hemostats, and that delicate, life-saving graft of metal and polyester.
Tara can feel the strange combination of oversensitivity and numbness where searching fingers dance over the scar—un-concealable evidence of the fragility of life, and some small amount of self-consciousness. “Sorry I can’t wear bikinis for you at the beach anymore,” she teases familiarly, in an attempt to joke Willow out of her edging progress into moodiness. “Do you still think I’m perfect?”
Prepared for a peevish frown, a swat, or a groan—or even a speech of over-assurance at the re-excavation of this hoary, old chestnut—she is stunned when Willow slams a hand over her eyes and sobs. Unsure of what to do she settles for soft kisses on damp hair and gentle shushes.
“Thank you,” whispers Willow, wiping away tears with her wrist and covering her eyes with her forearm.
“For what?” she whispers back.
“Everything,” says Willow. “For being here. For Joy. For our life.”
“Oh, honey, no,” says Tara to the still hidden face. “No . . . It’s you and me. Together. It’s our life. I couldn’t do it without you. Right?”
With a deep sighing breath, Willow nods. “Sorry, I’m being all Weepy Gal. It’s just the hormones.”
“Hey,” she jostles the concealing arm. “How many times do I have to remind you? This is the room . . . Remember?”
Willow nods. “Sorry . . .” she sniffs.
“You’re doing it again,” Tara warns but gets no response. She tries to pull a resisting arm from Willow’s face. “Are you hiding, sweetie?” she asks, watching as Willow bites her bottom lip. “You think I don’t see you? Are you two?”
Willow mumbles something.
“What, sweetie?”
“No,” she protests, exactly as a two-year old would.
Tara finally succeeds at removing the arm from over Willow’s eyes. Looking right at her, she says, “We talked about this. Hiding things from me. You can’t just—”
“Baby?” pleads Willow, “I’m naked.” And adds sadly, “Don’t scold me when I’m naked.”
Tara lies down with her head on Willow’s shoulder and drapes an arm over her chest. Immediately they settle into their favourite position—belly to hip, breast to side, cheek to head—and enjoy the comfort of breathing together.
“Sorry I’ve been the Gone Girl.” Willow finally breaks the silence. “I panicked. I started thinking about mets and got a little crazy.”
Tara nods. “Well,” she jokes, wanting to keep the mood light, “their batting average has been concerning this season.”
“Goof!” says Willow stroking at the draped arm. “You’re funny.”
“Funny odd, or funny ha-ha?”
“Yes.”
After a moment of silence, Willow continues, “And I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Sweetie, it’s my job to worry about you.”
“But you have so many things to take care of. And Joy . . .”
“Honey, it’s my job to worry about both of you. Just like you worry about both of us.” Tara nudges Willow in the rib when she doesn’t get a response, and relaxes when she receives a nod.
“Did I tell you,” asks Willow in a dreamy voice, “how much I love that she looks like you?” Willow smiles when she feels the tickle of smiling lips against her breast. “It’s how I know she’s good. Not like me.”
Tara hears Willow gulp and, instead of a smile, feels something wet tickling her hair. She props herself up on her elbow and sees the tears streaming down the round cheeks and the pressed frown of sadness on red lips. Gently she wipes the tears away, pressing soft butterfly kisses to those lips until they relax. “Oh, honey. She’s just a baby. She was always going to be good.”
Willow shakes her head. “No, see, I panicked because,” and her voice goes rough, “I thought I was going to die,” getting more gravelly with each word. “And I really didn’t want to die. I mean really, really didn’t. And I—”she stops, cutting her confession short.
Worried once again, Tara looks down at her sleep-lidded lover admitting to, but not actually admitting, strange things to her. “Baby, what are you saying?”
Willow objects to an explanation. “Clothes,” she says.
Tara nods her understanding and lies down again, her mind ticking over with all her thoughts.
***
She waits for Willow to drift away into tired sleep. Then she sits up and crosses her legs in a posture of meditation. She brings the upturned palm of her left hand to rest on the thigh, close against her body, the ring finger touching the thumb in a seal of strength; and rests the back of her open, right hand against the knee, index finger curled to thumb in the seal of wisdom. Letting go of her outer senses, she calls on her hidden eyes, using her sense of the vibrations that comprise this world, and concentrates on the sleeper by her knees. Already the heat of their shared connection is draining away from the body before her, colour and life being drained by dark tendrils in the music of her aura. Something is claiming her—stealing the heat from her sun, making her dimmer. Cold.
So cold!She breaks the meditation once she has found the knowledge she seeks and climbs down from the bed. With one last kiss-check to make sure Willow is asleep, she strips off and heads to the bathroom where fragrant steam still rises from the tub. After a shower and scrub, she dunks herself in the fortuitously prepared cleansing bath. And emerges, wringing her hair, anadyomene.
Mostly dry, and dressed in clean clothes and a cloak of conviction, she heads into the living room to find the phone. One call doesn’t go far—only eight floors down to Absolute Zero Inc., a subsidiary of Entropy LLC, a Delaware Corporation registered to operate in New York. Which, is in turn, owned by Heliokoil PLC of Ireland, which—if were you inclined to look into—would be registered as a wholly owned subsidiary of Therophoneus PLC out of Bulgaria. Why Bulgaria? Because someone at the Watcher/Slayer organization is a fan of Xena (and also, apparently, ancient languages).
Tara does not recognise the very young voice that answers the phone.
How is it, she wonders,
my own child spends more time down there than I ever do, and I helped found the place . . . this is ridiculous. And vows to visit the fifth floor more often. The transformation of the intimately close Scooby gang into the sprawling expansiveness of Scooby Corp. should be no excuse for not knowing the kids who work out of the “office”, right there in her own building. “Erm, hi. Who’s this?”
Modern technology being what it is, Caller ID displays the name—MACLAY, TARA—quite helpfully. Although for the nineteen-year old, recently moved from Dallas, TX, who has just noticed this fact after already having answered the phone, this is not so helpful. The name of one of the more scary-powerful practitioners of magic in the world blinking up at her in 8-bits is enough to send her into a spaztastic tizzy. “Hi, er, Ms. M-Maclay . . . I mean . . . nngh . . . Tara,” she fumbles, remembering the admonition of her older cohorts that Ms. Maclay-erm-Tara doesn’t like to stand on formality. “H-ha-ahh . . .how. Can I help you?” she stammers out before she remembers that she’s been asked a question. “I mean, I’m er . . . My name is, erm, Sheela?”
Tara wryly presses her lips down on the small laugh daring to crack her composure, telling herself to be kind to this clearly very nervous young person; who not so long ago (fine, quite a while ago) might have been her, or even Willow. “Hi, Sheela. We haven’t met but, hello.”
“Hello,” comes the snappy response. “Er, uh, sorry about before. I was . . . aghrrm . . . eating something and the phone surprised me and it was, you know,
you . . . and I got a little—”
“That’s ok, Sheela, I get it,” Tara says, smiling. But worried for what she has felt in the strands around her, and sensing the now quiet calm over the line, pushes on, “Is Julie there?”
“Yeah, she is. I mean . . . not, like . . . right here, but she’s around—”
“No, that’s fine . . . Can you find her and tell her to meet me in the basement? Right away? And tell her to bring Miki with her.”
“Basement. Ok. Yeah. I mean, yes, I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks, Sheela. And, and don’t forget to tell her it’s for the basement, ok?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replies Sheela, very smartly, seriously, having caught on to the note of gravity in the caller’s voice.
Another time, Tara might wince at the “ma’am”, or even correct the girl, gently. But for now, she lets it go. “Ok, bye.”
***
Julie frightens quite a few customers when she comes stomping through the entrance of the shop, yelling, “Holy shit, holy shit, you guys! Basement 911! Miki, you—” and stops abruptly when she notices the wide eyes of . . .
Oh crap, customers! The clock behind the counter smiles its lopsided 11:13 smile (the shop opens everyday at 11 am).
Smiling a (hopefully not fake-looking) grin, she throws a significant look to the dark, frizzy-haired girl behind the counter and says as calmly as possible, “Sorry, could you come with the keys? There’s a problem with the freezer.” Then with a dopey apologetic look to the shoppers, in her best mid-western gee-whiz, says, “We’re in the middle of a fresh batch back there,” pointing to the closed-off rear of the store, “and it would be
just a disaster if the cooling system goes.”
The startled civilians nod approvingly—relieved that their gustatory delights are being protected with due diligence and alacrity—and return to their unconcerned epicureanism.
Knowing that there are no keys to the basement, only an electronic number-pad, Mikayla makes a great show of picking up a set of keys—she has no idea whose—from behind the counter and makes a slow, dignified exit from the shop.
“Really?” she hisses at her fellow witch, “keys?” as they jostle each other around the corner on to East 31st towards the freight entrance.
Julie rolls her eyes, acknowledging the idiocy of her own actions. “I know, dammit! I just freaked. It’s the basement, you know?!” Her shoulders rise with her voice as she stabs repeatedly at the elevator button.
“Girl,” says Mikayla, “you need to calm down!” The furrow between her brows, and her increasing breaths, both, belying her attempts to calm her colleague. “You know you can’t sling magic if y’ all over the place.”
The elevator arrives with a groan, the door sliding open with a tiny motorised screech. And with that the girls take a joint, deep breath and step in, trying to prepare themselves for the gods know what, down there.
***
Making their way past the crated stacks of fresh fruit, the giant tins of fruit pulp, the dairy reach-in, and the walk-in, Julie and Mikayla arrive at the edge of the broad red line marking the danger zone in the basement of the ice-cream shop. The serious cast of Tara’s face whets their nervousness to a keener edge. Moving with urgency, they grab the insulated jackets off the waiting coat-rack and struggle into the heavy garments.
Fumbling with her buttons, Julie steps abreast of Tara with a worried “What’s up?” When the older woman turns grim eyes to her, Julie isn’t quite sure which it is that sends the shiver racing up her spine: the temperature of the room, or the glacial stillness of those determined eyes.
Knowing she is upsetting her protégés Tara smiles, the twinkle of rippling irises doing much to quell the girls’ stomach-bats. “Hey, Jules, Miki. I need to cast a seeing. I need an amplifier,” she says, indicating Mikayla with her eyes, “and an anchor,” she finishes softly, touching Julie’s wrist.
From behind them, where she is still buttoning up the garment designed to protect them from the debilitating cold of the entropic sink, Mikayla asks innocently, “Is Willow ok?” She looks up from fastening the last button at her collar when she hears no answer, only to encounter two sets of gazes on her: one wide-eyed and the other neutrally impassive. She wonders if it’s something she’s said. “Normally, she’s the one . . . working? Down . . . here . . .” she trails off hesitantly, but is immediately re-assured by the ducking smile and crinkle of soft blue eyes.
“How do you want to do this?” asks Julie nervously. Anchoring in the magical chaos of this strange, thaumaturgical field will be something she has never attempted. And in her heart doesn’t want to do . . . is afraid to do. She is not a child. She knows that this place is made quiescent by some sort of spiritual bargain that she cannot yet begin to understand, but has only faintly sensed whenever she has cast with Willow.
Tara makes sure she has the full attention of both young women before she speaks. “Three points in a circle—me to the wind, you’re the ground. Mikayla?” she asks the round-faced girl. “You know how to see the patterns?” and watches carefully as the girl nods without hesitation. Tara’s expression twitches in a half-smile of approval. This is the young woman’s talent, a tremulous sensitivity to emotional and psychic states, like a needle on the most sensitive of seismographs. “Good. Help me make it bigger . . . whatever I see?” The two women—teacher and student—nod at each other. More serious, she turns to Julie. “Don’t let her drift away,” she says before turning toward the space ahead of them.
“What—”Julie begins to ask, but is interrupted by a glancing brush on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry about me.” Her tone is soft but imperative—commanding. A directive from mistress to apprentice.
The three of them push aside the plastic flaps of the cold room and stride into the barely restrained, pulsing coldness of energy-leaving-this-world.
***
The shape all laid out in salt and herbs, they step into the figure. With a gasp of sudden perception Julie realises that only two of them—student and apprentice—are wearing the insulated coats here in this space where her nose hairs tingle and crack with cold, and her breath turns to fog even before the sounds leave her throat. Noticing Tara’s cleanse-dampened hair, she starts to protest. Too late. Tara sits down in her spot—the point of a triangle facing the dimensional singularity. The ritual has begun.
Each woman says the incantation; each adding her voice to the other—first one, then two, then three. Three times three. The circle is cast. A simple geometrical shape transformed into a magical space. As the older woman sinks into her meditation, opening herself to another sight, they complete the magical circuit—anchor to amplifier, and both to seer, but not she to them. She is in the wind, buffeted about by strange currents invisible to all but the most talented.
Sitting at her teacher’s side with her left hand on the woman’s right shoulder, initially, all that Mikayla is sensible of—apart from the stupefying cold—is the heavy warmth extending through her where her right hand is gripped in Julie’s left hand. She concentrates on the candle in the centre of the circle, sinking into the light, separating the incandescent layers of flame in her mind—the successively cooler shades blending outward from hottest to coolest. Then suddenly the body under her right hand seems to explode with a massive surge and she falls into that space between wick and flame where everything burns but nothing is visible. Her breath rises and falls, and is suspended in a durationless instant of time. The surge envelops her; from wick to smoke, her psyche evanesces into sublimating layers of colour and heat. Neurons, glial cells, neural sheaths, electrical impulses, action, feeling, thought—everything—fulminating into insubstantiation. Only the vibrating note at the heart of flame remains. But before her very self can dissipate in that place without place or time, the heaviness asserts itself again. Like a magnetic field in a particle accelerator, the intangible will of the anchor holds the plasma of her spirit confined, tying her to time and space. Slowly? Quickly? Such tenuous concepts are beyond her now in this place where she is cradled in the light.
Oh, god! The light! Then she hears the voice: Help me see.
As soon as she takes her place in the circle, Julie’s heart thrums fast like a mouse, like the humming of a dragon-fly’s wing. All she can imagine is green eyes, in the slightest of bodies, swirling with blackness; a voice rumbling so deep with darkness that not even the roaring heat of the sun can block the sound; and the dark, dark clouds full of rampaging destruction roaring into sudden existence above New York Bay. And those same eyes glowing red, suspended by lightning, high above a promontory in the middle of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers—the meeting place of rivers where the blood of the turtle merges, where lines of power that hold this continent together converge. She thinks about the thing that lives under the earth kept sated and pliant only by blood propitiation, and the darkness in the woman who pays that blood. And she is scared. She is a witch—and has been for many years—her mothers and fathers before her holding stubbornly to the wisdom of the old worlds from which they came, and passing it on to her. The simple wisdom of the land, the duty of steward to legacy: care, sacrifice, and harvest; you give to receive; the earth provides to the husbander; the earth is you and you are part of the earth, be careful how you weave the strands of magic lest you unravel them elsewhere. Elemental forces, even primordial forces are something she discovered only when a tall, dark-skinned, bald man and his dark-haired, quicksilver companion with the whisky voice arrived with a proposition for her one summer’s day at her parents’ farm. Forces that can rip through dimensions; destroy reality? These are things that she still hesitates to touch. Her fear threatens to overtake her. The swirling cold outside slowly draws her in, her soul quailing from the sensation yet unable to resist the draw. On one side of her, she feels ethereal—everything dissipating into ghostly non-existence. On the other side, the body under her right hand seems to lift up, swelled by a refulgent light that she can see only in her mind’s eye. The light pushes back the cold, filling her with heat, cocooning her in warmth.
So bright. Oh, god! The light! Does she hear the voice? Or does she recall it? “Don’t let her drift away.” She remembers why she is here and pulls her mind back into itself. Drawing comfort from the sun-like warmth, she stretches her awareness into it. She imagines a radicle, a shoot, a plant, a shrub, a tree, uncurling sunward, roots creeping earthward, holding fast to the earth. Solid. Anchored. Simple wisdom of the earth: what you receive you give.
Palms flat on the thighs of crossed legs, Tara Maclay sits with her back to the storm. Aware of the warmth of other palms on each of her shoulders, she can sense the fear, and the fragility bracketing her. But she does not begrudge them this. Were she anyone else, she too might be scared. But as she opens her senses to part the veil between true reality and perception, she imagines for one elusive moment that she can see subatomic particles vibrating at the very frequencies that make up matter. And then she lets her awareness fall into that place between sensing and being that her mother had tried to teach her, but she ended up learning on her own much later in life. She thinks about the place she is sitting in, letting her sight rise all around her: the basement, the shop above, the lobby, the office floors above, the apartments above that, the cold behind her, the shell constraining the doorway, the strange dark spirits growing in this land, the lines of magic slowly knitting themselves back into existence slowly luring these spirits back into waking. . . . The ease with which she finds this place pleases her, filling her with joy, and gratitude for the woman who taught her so much. She may be sitting on a concrete floor in the basement of a skyscraper in Manhattan, but the basement is only a pit deep inside the earth, and concrete is only made from the bones of the earth. Earth to earth, inside the earth. She draws the power into herself—the loose energy of millions of souls traversing the landscape above and around her. Through brick, through block, through stone and schist, along avenues and streets, and secret underground rivers still flowing under the roads, the power flows towards her, into her. She lets the power fill her before shaping it around her in a dome-shield of will. She lets the power flow through her into her two companions. They ground her and she grounds them—earth to earth, within the earth.
Sensing the power and energy collecting before it, the dank pulse howls in rising appetite. Tara ignores it.
Shh . . . she whispers to it in her mind, slowly caressing it with the energy she has gathered into herself. The storm leans into her, seeking the comfort of the light; letting her taste the skin of it, letting her hear the voice of it. The voice is a line of music amongst the many strands that make up the world she inhabits: the spiky cacophony of the city floating on the rolling bass of the mountains and rivers around her; the soft tinkling bursts of animals and birds; the alto legato of green things; the many chromatic pulses of people, interrupted by the percussive thumps of births and deaths. Cosmic staves of an unending symphony. So gently, so easily she picks out the colourful strand of her lover—her life. How could she ever miss it? The thread that weaves through her, forever; and now weaves through the very rocks of their home—woven in love and blood, and darkness and light. A thread made of and making this land; a shining thread even the Moirae would tremble to touch. She plucks the thread and it trills in the very core of her: Willow. And then she hears the strange discordant note.
Oh, there, my sweet love, she thinks. Wrapped around the shining note of power and harmony is the cold, oily voice of the thing under the earth that sleeps—secretly, sibilantly crooning its song to her love—the dark note twining itself around her light, damping the pure vibration and stealing the energy of it.
Pulling more deeply against the will of the two girls flanking her, Tara draws the shield of light against herself. Dark energies behind her wail against their bonds. She struggles to maintain the balance between just enough energy to sate the thing that rages, and feeding it so much energy that it breaks through. Reaching for the Willow-note with the light, she tugs against the dark strand, repelling and luring it in turn. Like a rudderless boat on the high seas she can feel the crosswinds and waves of magical energy in this place tossing her around. Like a fisherman in that rudderless boat, she can feel the beast thrashing, and pulling at her power like an enraged shark on a line. She can feel her skin frosting over, her breath congealing, her blood sludging. Her controls slips. And before she can clamp her will against it, she is pulled down . . . down . . . down
Down into the earth. Into the memory of earth where she is shattered into fragments as her hills are levelled to farms. Her bones crumbled to gravel and splintered into stones to build houses. Her rivers dammed. Her people killed, their blood choking her lakes. Forests turned to a wasteland of graves, fertilising nothing but the twisted crop of a strange peoples’ greed and killing lust. Where man sheds blood, the earth drinks blood. The more man spills, the more she drinks. Blood is not water, water slakes. Blood is rich, blood it sticks. The more you give, the more she takes. The mouth of the earth to her maws, the more you shed, the more she wants—hot blood, trickling to her hot heart. Giver of life, taker of life. Gullet hot with glut of blood. Molten maws: fire of hell. Well of life, welling with blood. Hot blood, Hell Mother. Hell mouth.
In a soft echo, the words of a frightened girl come back to her, “The earth has teeth.” In a soft echo—of the shining, forever thread winding through her—comes the understanding. She listens for the echo in the echo, letting her time-sense stretch across eras. Listening for the bass of the dark note rolling so slowly through eons, like a sinuous snake riding the wave of time. And riding that long dark vibration of dark, is a glowing dark, a warm dark; so familiar to her—the dark that defends against the dark—Buffy, Faith, all their girls awoken by the ritual of the scythe. The One Power in All the World. And now, twining around and with it, the bright note that sings in her heart,
cordis chordae.No, she realises,
not a discordant note. Only the contrary motion, of contrapuntal melody. She lets go of amplifier and anchor—gently withdrawing her energy, returning their wills to them—lets them fall back into themselves, exhausted and freezing in the sweat of exertion. And turns to the dark mouth where the earth now shows its teeth. Smile or threat; who can tell?
Now no longer afraid, Tara Maclay, lover of Willow Rosenberg, protector, witch, faces the teeth of the earth. The energies she has drawn to herself stream outward from her body, pushing her up from the earth, suspending her in an invisible wind. She reaches out her arms, palms outward, almost in a gesture of blessing. Shares her vision—echo of an echo, the melodic counterpoint that must exist to balance the harmony. Cosmic staves of a never-ending symphony. The bright note must play, undarkened. The cord must strike, undampened. Or the harmony is lost.
The cold pulses. An exhalation of mystical laughter that chills her to bone.
You have done well today. But one day she will be gone.No, she disagrees,
the music will always be.And reaching out with her will, she snaps the dark tendrils still grasping at her love’s soul, ending the drain on her energies; snuffs the candle in the circle with a gesture of wrist, collapsing the dome-shield of light; and brushes the salt with her foot, breaking the circle.
It is done.
***
Willow wakes from her nap all cotton-mouthed and groggy, entirely unsure what time it is. She breathes in the lover-scent on the pillow she’s holding and smiles, “Mmmhhhhnnn . . .”
The languidness of remembered pleasure makes itself known through physical sensation—the swollen fullness of her lips, the tingle of skin on her neck, and the slick tenderness between her thighs. Curling into the delicious sensation, she hugs the pillow tightly, taking a deep inhale. “Mmm . . . Baby . . .” she says, turning over, stretching her arm out to find her lover.
But the bed is empty. The room is dark—the blackout shades have been drawn. And the apartment has the ringing quality of sound that normally goes with emptiness. Frowning, she pushes herself off the bed. Her left palm hurts like crazy with the contact and she sits back down with a petulant, “Ahh . . . oww!”
Why is the dressing off, she asks herself.
Did I take the dressing off? Cradling the stinging palm she pouts at the absence of her cuddle buddy.
Noticing the gumminess of her mouth, Willow goes stumbling in search of water. But there are no glasses, or tumblers, or anything to drink out of, at the sink. Swaying around like a drunk penguin, she scans the floor for her wooly pajama pants and sweatshirt so she can head to the kitchen. Eventually she finds them neatly folded on the reading chair in the corner of the room. Her hands feel stiff, knuckles and wrist aching; and the fabric brushing against her palms stings as she pulls on the clothes. “Stupid hands,” she mumbles. “Stupid no bandage,” she continues to mutter out loud. Her hands ache again as she swings the back of them against her face to wipe away the sleep and the grainy tear trails. “Stupid hurt. Stupid feelings making it hurt,” she says as she finally arrives at the sink in the bright room. She squints at the water pouring in to her glass, and adds for good measure, “Stupid light.”
The sound of keys in the lock, and of baby-squeals of delight that she loves so much, alerts her to the return of her missing family. Grumpily slapping her feet on the floor, she stomps over to the entryway to register her complaint.
***
When Tara shows up on the fifth floor “office” of the New York City chapter of Scooby corp to rescue her child from the slayers, she thinks it might be other way around. Her little angel’s thrill-seeking gene is in the full flower of its expression: the high-pitched echo of, “Again! Again!” reaches her ears as she pushes open the heavy sound-dampening doors. When she enters to claim the baby being sat—or, she notes with a wince, being thrown around the room—she realises that the office is humming with activity that makes it look like an old time exchange floor.
There seems to be some sort of mission happening in—she squints to read the screen—Georgia (the country, not the state) that many slayers are very excited about. In the other half of the room, which is sectioned off by thick mesh, and glass doors with symbols of protection etched in, a group is gathered around a multi-monitor display—exchanging agitated comments and staring intently at a data-feed that is refreshing by the second. And then suddenly, one of them pushes away from the console with a disgusted expression and storms out of the room. Over the sound of the slamming door, Tara hears something about sending a Watcher to do a witch’s job. And another one goes running after him while shaking her head.
Taking in the craziness around her, and the drained and despondent expressions of her stunned assistants as they take in the activity, Tara decides that maybe they should just come down to the apartment with her and be quiet there. After all, it is close to lunchtime for both her babies. What’s two more?
***
The first thing Tara hears is a sleep-roughened and petulant voice saying, “I woke up and you were gone, baby. And there was no one in the house. You didn’t even leave a note.”
From behind her she hears a throaty noise and turns around to see Mikayla coughing. “Sorry,” says Mikayla continuing to cough, and clearing her throat, “just the damp.”
Julie smiles sympathetically—not at all looking like she just smacked the back of Miki’s head when she started laughing—and waves Tara’s attention back to Willow. The two of them are fine.
Joy is having the best day ever. First she got to eat breakfast shirtless, then there were tub splashies and the bear taught her names of many, many fishies, then there were jumping games and muffins, and then Mama promised for lunch she didn’t have to eat the broccoli stems just the crunchy part on top. And now! Mommy’s still home.
When Tara turns around to look at Mikayla is when Willow realises they have company. She looks sheepish and does the elbow wave thing that she does when she’s feeling self-conscious. “Hey guys,” she greets, and mouths a “sorry” to Tara.
As soon as Mama lets go of her hand, Joy is off like a shot—leading with her head, swinging her arms, and squishing her little fingers—to go find Willow’s hand, which she does, with much squeezing, and tugging further into the hallway. And the all ‘round merriment continues when Mommy makes those exaggerated funny noises of pain. Silly Mommy. Joy knows she can’t pull anyone’s hand off, but it’s just fun to pretend.
Tara decides she had better go get things under control there before Joy manages to open the cuts on Willow’s hand and there are bloodstains on everything. But first, her wrung out assistants.
“The baby’s food has date-labels. So except for that just help yourself to anything in the fridge. Or not in the fridge.”
She starts to apologise for not actually serving them but they both wave her off with a, “please!” and an, “as if!”
“Sorry,” adds Tara as she wanders off towards the blinds, “there’s no meat in the house.” And out of the corner of her eye, she catches Willow looking squirrelly. “Except for Willow’s stash of secret bacon,” she reveals, smiling craftily at Willow, “in the freezer.”
“Baby, no!” Willow protests, looking affronted. “There’s no bacon in the freezer. None!”
Hah, she thinks,
bacon in the freezer. What a notion. Maybe some guanciale, she grins to herself,
underneath the lettuce. In the crisper drawer. How else does tasty carbonara get made?
The two girls shrug. “It’s fine,” says Julie. “I don’t think I could eat anything too heavy right now.”
Mikayla says nothing. She’s vegetarian anyway.
“There’s bean soup, and some braised bean curd with vegetables,” Tara offers, thinking about all the food that’s already cooked. Digressing for a moment she says, “I’m going to open the shades. Is that ok?” She knows it’ll be a shock, but she needs the light after the darkness of the basement. And then, remembering, as she pulls on the bead-chain, exclaims, “Oh! And bagels.”
The two girls look up from their foraging in the kitchen and nod gratefully; then squint, like moles, against the brightness as it comes rushing in through the tall, pre-war windows.
Finally, Tara walks over to the side of the dining table where Willow and Joy are having some sort of negotiation. Willow turns as she approaches and puts her arms around Tara’s waist.
“You didn’t go to the shop,” says Willow, enjoying the weight of Tara’s arms on her shoulders where her wrists are crossed behind her head.
Tara shakes her head. “They can take care of things. I called Trey in.”
Willow nods in approval. Trey is their oldest “civilian” employee. And has been with them almost since the beginning. He can roll out the new flavours and get the register set up, no problem.
Pulling Tara closer in using only her fingertips, Willow gives her a quick nudge with her hips. “Hey,” she prods, with a quick glance at Tara’s assistants, “You guys go to work?” She says “work” with the special tone that indicates “not economic activity” and “yes mystic activity”.
Tara strokes and twirls the sleep-tangled hair by Willow’s neck and leans in for a soft kiss but is interrupted by the large mewling cat pawing at their thighs and trying to weave in through their legs.
But wait! They don’t have a cat. They do however have a child who occasionally exhibits intense resource hoarding tendencies when it comes to her mommas playing kissy-face around her.
Willow ignores the little spoiler and continues leaning forward to make the tender contact. At sound of the whine that follows, she places her hand on the little head and gives it two gentle raps to indicate that she should be quiet.
Satisfied with the connection, Tara licks her lip, leans back and asks Willow, “Feeling better now?”
Willow nods, closing her eyes in pleasure at the slight tug of scalp where her dark-haired beauty still has a hold on her hair.
“You were leaking,” explains Tara. “Or, you were draining. It still had you.” Tara watches the green eyes go wide with a slight parting of lips, and moves her hand to caress a pale cheek. “But you’re all warm now.”
Agitated, Willow tries to pull away from the embrace but is held in place. “Baby! You were casting in the basement? You went walking in the n—”
Knowing that the next phrase out of Willow’s mouth is going to be “nether realms” and knowing that is not what she told the girls, Tara cuts her off with a thumb to her lips. “Sweetie, you’re getting a little excited.”
Undeterred, Willow continues, “That’s . . . that’s . . . crazy! I mean, I’m not saying
you’re crazy, just that it was a crazy thing to
do. Not that you
do crazy things. I mean
I do the crazy things. But . . .” and, still unwilling to put down the shovel, continues, “no preparation? Down
there? Just like that! Even I don’t . . .” She notices the two other people in the kitchen, each looking up from their individual stages of sandwich prep.
Why doesn’t anyone ever go for the bean curd? It’s good. It’s a good recipe. I got it off the chef at Noodletown, it’s great. “You guys okay?” she asks them.
Knowing not to get sucked into drama, they just nod.
Willow turns her attention back to her love, and says sincerely, “Thank you, baby.” And then reciprocating the inspections of earlier in the day begins to pull down Tara’s lower eyelids to check the veins, checks the pupils and colour, and brings the back of her hand to Tara’s forehead to check the temperature. Which then reminds Tara she still has a job to do.
“Sweetie,” she instructs firmly, finally bending down to haul up their little pouter pigeon who has been quietly hugging Mommy’s thigh, “why don’t you sit here with this good girl . . .” The girl tries to hide her proud smile behind a frown but is swept away by the pleasure of the compliment. “And I’ll take care of your hands. Then we can eat.” And waiting for Willow to have a seat, plops the little butt in front of her on the table.
“Hey,” Willow says softly to the toddler, her hands on either side of her tummy, “Mama has to put a bandaid on me. So I need you to sit here and play quietly.”
“Play ony on th’ cawp’t,” the baby says, pointing her fat little finger in the direction of the living room.
“You can sit here on the chair next to me, baby,” Willow says, softly patting the girl’s little stomach.
“Play he-aw?” she asks, and looks intently at Mommy—who nods—before looking uncertainly back at Mama gathering things in the kitchen. Then, wagging her finger-arm from her elbow, she shakes her head blinking emphatically and informs Mommy, “No toyss th taybaw.” Speaking very slowly and clearly, because she knows that Mommy sometimes forgets things, like she herself does.
Without even looking, Willow knows her spouse is laughing at her all the way over there in the kitchen. But she keeps any huffy comment or gesture to herself because for a child to feel safe and secure both parents need to—darn it—be on the same page. Otherwise that’s just not a good dynamic. Not good . . . bad! Gently pushing Joy’s hair off her forehead with the back of her hand she assures the child,
and Mama, “Just this one time.” Waiting for her child to acknowledge the condition, she says again, “Only this time,” and twists in her chair to look at Tara. “Right, Mama?”
In reply, Mama detours to one corner of the living-room to grab the small, colourful box as she heads to the table with the medical supplies. “Only this time,” she agrees, as she’d rather not have the girls interrupt their much needed lunch to watch the little trouble-maker while she’s dressing Willow’s hands.
Stimulated beyond belief by the exotic idea of toys at the table, Joy bounces in place like a little maniac, kicking her legs like a Double Crown-winning jockey in second place at Belmont.
Tara sets down the medical supplies and the box full of toys on the table. While she is settling Joy into the booster seat, Willow spots the soft, fabric amphibian in the box and—snagging it quickly it before the child notices—shoves it under her butt. The brunette gives her a look of amazed disbelief, and the unrepentant red-head gives her an exaggerated mock sneer of disgust and sticks out her tongue.
Looking directly into the big eyes of the girl who seems to be vibrating with excitement, Tara says seriously, “Can you play by yourself for a little while?”
“O-keh!” the tiny human responds, in her excitement by-passing her neck and nodding wildly from the waist.
Recognising the echo of her own spazziness, Willow cuts in. “But quietly, ok?”
“Keh,” the tiny voice says seriously.
The proud mommy leans over and kisses her sweet Boo Boo on the head. “You’re such a good girl!”
Like any little puppy receiving happy treats she plays along with the attention. Poking herself in the chest, she proclaims, “I’m be gud!”
As she is up-ending the toy-box for easy access, Tara turns to share a quick look with Willow just to affirm the sheer cuteness of their little girl. Willow holds the squishy horse up to the left side of her face to cover her expression as she bites her lower lip and scrunches her eyes in an expression of,
I know, right?Joy reaches out with both arms to gather the toys to herself with all the expertise of a craps dealer collecting losing wagers. And only just now realising the great injustice that Mommy has perpetrated, she shoots an arm out to snatch the hossy out of Willow’s hand.
“Ow, baby! Be gentle,” reminds a rightly affronted Willow.
Knowing she’s being scolded, she ducks her head in a small pout and nods. Almost as if she is reminding herself of the fact, she declares as solemnly as she asks, “Mommy hass a nowwie?”
Regretful of her sharpness Willow is happy to downplay the extent of her owwie. “Yeah, but just a tiny one.”
When her Mama sits down at the table, emptying the bowl of its contents, she recognises the owwie related cotton balls and scrunches up her nose before arriving at a very insightful conclusion. “Mama gonna fiss it!”
“Darn tootin’!” Willow gives the bouncing girl a one-armed hug before wrangling her child’s already toy-distracted head into a sloppy kiss. “You’re such a smart girl!” Slowly she turns her head and bats her eyes at Tara as she puts her hands out on the table. “Mama always fixes it.”
Joy settles into her chair to build a house for her dinoes and hossies. Froggy is missing but—pleased with this magical phenomenon of being allowed to play with her toys at the table—she doesn’t even notice.
With a sorrowful expression, Tara runs tapered fingers over the scabs gelling roughly over her lover’s normally smooth palms. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she says pursing her lips into a deep frown. “I should have looked at these earlier.”
Lifting a gently stroking hand up to her lips for a kiss Willow says, “It’s okay, baby.”
“Honey, these are scabbing over.” And noticing something new, clucks at her, “Some of these still have dirt in them!”
Ever chagrined not to be the good student, Willow pouts a little at the soft rebuke. “Sorry, baby. I thought I cleaned it.”
“Willow” she warns, “I have to open them up again . . .”
“It’s okay, baby.”
“It’s going to—”
“Be very intense?” teases Willow, calling back to their interrupted nether-realms interlude. “Maybe,” she continues, tilting her eyes up to the right in an overblown posture of recollection, “like nothing we’ve ever—” but cuts herself off when she notices the dangerously narrowed eyes giving her a very dubious look.
Willow responds with an overly innocent shrugging grin.
Cracking the seal on a bottle of sterile saline solution, Tara explains “So, I’m going to have to get these wet again . . .” As she screws the rinse cap on, she becomes aware of the straight line she has just fed her punster partner as soon as the words leave her mouth.
“You’ve never minded getting me wet before.”
Mindful of their own privacy, Tara tries to keep her voice low, but the whispering hiss of “Willow!?” is sharp enough to warn the junior witches to stay the hell away from the table with their lunches and detour to the sofa instead. “Little pitchers . . .” she says significantly.
“Don’t comprehend the doubling of entendres.” She turns to see what the girl is up to, and notices one of the plastic horses being walled up, but the little pitcher in question is otherwise unconcerned with any shenanigans of the blue variety. Caught up in her worry about the horse being Fortunatoed, she loses track of her nurse’s progress with the treatment and yelps when Tara runs a wet gauze pad over her hand.
Her caretaker tsks and raises an unsympathetic brow at her, “Don’t be a big baby. You weren’t complaining before.”
Having been scolded before, Willow casts a furtive look at the sandwich-moochers before dropping her voice. “I wasn’t complaining because I was being distracted by,” she cocks her head saucily, “other feelings.”
Happy to have her charge diverted by naughty-talk as she starts to peel off a raspberry coloured strand from her palm, Tara suppresses the amusement on only half her face and ends up with the asymmetrical, knowing smile that makes Willow want to hug herself. “Well, you did seem quite . . . anaesthetized.”
“I definitely wasn’t feeling any pain. Although, doctor,” she leans in confidentially, “I’m feeling a little sore,” and indicates a downward direction with a gesture of her eyes. “Maybe, you could, you know, kiss it better?”
Dr. Maclay pronounces the name, “Willow . . .” sternly, in an attempt to stay on task; but only ends up escalating the flirtatious game when the sound of her lover’s name falls into the pitch of arousal.
Unfortunately for the two of them, just when things are getting real interesting—but very luckily for the innocence of the lounging lunchers—Megasaurus decides to go on a big time rampage, knocking down all the walls and snarfing the horses. Once again, leaving Willow very concerned about the murderous appetites of the little human she has helped to make. Maybe they’re letting her spend too much time with all the slayers . . .
Noticing her mother’s steady gaze on her and miraculously remembering the instruction to play quietly, Joy returns to building a bigger and better house for the hossies—one the dino can’t break so easily.
But Willow’s hand really does hurt now, especially where the smaller jagged cuts that are already starting to heal are being gently coaxed into bleeding again so that the wounds can be thoroughly debrided. She winces each time Tara prods her hand and silently appreciates the sympathetic grimace being offered her by her wife. She lets her attention drift, relinquishing risquéness in favour of letting Tara concentrate on the treatment.
The light from the window shines right through blue pupils—like angled morning sun on a reflectionless Mediterranean sea rippling so clearly against the edge of washed brown rocks—lightening Tara’s eyes from their usual cerulean into a kind of manganese-blue Willow remembers from that one time in Amorgos. She takes in the bent, dark head, the serious eyes looking more deep-set these days, the defined line of cheek and marvels at the woman she is looking at. For a second and a half, nostalgia squeezes a fist around her heart and she mourns the loss of all their photographs from Sunnydale. How many people will remember the baby-cheeked, blonde, nineteen-year old she first fell in love with? She’ll never be able to pull out a picture of their first summer together as a couple, and point to the soft girl with ombré gold hair and say to Joy, Look! There’s your Mama, isn’t she pretty? The thought catches in her throat with suddenness, the melancholiness of it so intensely . . .well, melancholic, that she can’t wait until her hormones even out and she can stop with the emotional see-saw.
“Willow?” her baby’s voice pulls her out of the melancholic thought.
“Mnh?”
At the distracted reply Tara looks up from her own rubber-gloved hands where she’s pressing the lido pad into Willow-hand, and gives her a quizzical look. “Well, I guess it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Willow flashes the familiar, sheepish tongue-peeking grin. “Don’t feel a thing baby.” She flexes and curls her hands. “Good as new!”
“Not yet,” she says as she pulls the gloves off her hand, rolling them up one in the other and putting them in the discard bowl. She spreads a towel between them and, with the crooking fingers of a give-me gesture, says, “Bandage time.”
Very excited to see the tiny, white spray can with the orange cap, Willow makes a little “yay”, celebrating the goodness of finally having the liquid haemoglobin available in the US. She goggles at the red mist settling over her hand and lifts her eyes to share a look with Tara, knowing she’s thinking the same thing: anti-vampire types spraying, essentially, plasticised blood over open wounds. WTF! Something catches her attention and she cocks her head suddenly, looking not unlike a contemplative magpie. “You hear that, baby?”
Tara disengages her attention from the sound of the spray where she is trying for even coverage but hears nothing. “Hear what?”
“You don’t hear that?” she returns her frowning gaze to attentive blue eyes.
Shaking the can of liquid skin she observes Willow’s posture of tense attention, and wonders if the ritual she has just conducted in the basement will need bolstering. She shakes her head. She’s counting off the drying time for the Granulox before she applies the liquid bandage when Willow sits up again.
“There!” she exclaims.
Even Joy looks up at her mother, wondering if her goofy mom-playmate is starting a new game, but goes back to playing by herself when Willow doesn’t meet her look.
Tara waits a second, and then hears it—a soft, insistent buzz. Less than a half second later, she hears it again and realisation dawns. Willow’s phone.
“My phone,” says Willow. And then with rising horror, “My phone! Baby, what time is it?”
“Almost one?” she guesses.
Miki is putting plates in the sink and reads the time off the oven display as she leans against the sink, “12:46. Whoops . . .” she exclaims as the number blinks over, “Seven,” and makes for the fridge.
“Baby!” she twitches in her seat, “I have a meeting at one.”
She says nothing, only swatting at Willow to remind her to stay still. The cut on her left hand is rather large and maybe an actual bandage there will be better.
Meanwhile, the Willow-train of worry is picking up steam. “I was supposed to consolidate the account statements. And the categories . . . And email him the corrected payroll reports!”
Tara begins to explain, “Willow, I—”
But the verbal inertia is strong with this one. “It’s going to take me at least a half hour to get to Alan’s office,” she continues, turning aggrieved, sad-panda eyes to Tara.
Holding her girl’s hand firmly still as she wraps it with gauze, she levels a flat gaze at her. “Willow, I called him. He’s happy to re-schedule for another day.”
Very upset now, she whines, “Oh, but I already cancelled on him once and—”
“Sweetie, October is a long time away.”
“We really needed to go over the categories for the new—”
“Sweetie!” she says firmly, the arch of her eyebrows clearly conveying her exasperation at Willow’s ridiculous fixation on a tax return they’ve already filed an extension for.
But Tara has made a slight miscalculation. Her Willow-will-you-please-stop voice is hardly distinguishable from her Mom voice, and the tone snaps Joy’s attention to her mother’s stern face. With no idea why she’s being scolded, she stares at her Mama with a pitiful expression of wide-eyed sadness, her lower lip starting to stick out with just the teeniest of quavers.
Mikayla, who has been quietly watching this little family drama from her place in the kitchen—where she has now helped herself to a beer from the fridge—purses her lips in an effort to maintain a neutral expression.
Aint no reason to be cracking up. ‘Cept that child and her mother got the same damn face on. So much for Darth Rosenberg . . . Snickering quietly, she turns to share a look with Julie, whom she finds unconcernedly flipping through the issue of EW she has cadged off the coffee table.
Feeling Miki’s gaze on her, Julie looks up and rolls her eyes with a small shake of her head, entirely unaffected by what must be the thousandth variation of the same scene.
Every damn time, she thinks. And wonders how Ms. Grumpy McPoutyface over at the table ever got crowned the Guardian of Magic. She slumps back into the cushions as she flips a page, and sighs.
That Charlie Hunnam is just a hunk! But, she thinks, shaking her head,
as wooden as a plank.Impending toddler tears turns out to be a better distraction than being scolded and Willow rushes to soothe her little pal. “Not you, Boo Boo. Mama’s scolding me. Sometimes, Mommy’s a little silly.” She picks Joy up and transfers the little pouter carefully to her lap. “See?” she points the two of them to face Tara. “Mama’s not mad at you,” she reassures, with a hug, and lays a plump cheek on her daughter’s head. “Are ya?” she asks playfully, with just a touch of the breathless earnestness that never fails to melt Tara.
Tara looks at the open faces of her two adorable girls and smiles helplessly. She leans across the corner of the table. “No, I’m not mad at you, baby,” she says, and releases their child from her duties as a human shield against wifely chastisement. “But your Mommy is
extremely silly.”
“Streeemly!” Joy happily mimics her Mama as she kicks her legs.
Tara stands up and hefts Joy onto her hip with an exaggerated “oof!” which makes the baby laugh, and heads to the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s get you fed.”
***
Concluded in Part 2