Bad Eurotrip, Chapter 4
Jun. 25th, 2004 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookThe morning after the long meeting finally arrives. This is the last chapter in which our original characters will talk this much, we swear. After this, smooth sailing. (edited on 6/26 for tiny clarification.)
Previous chapters here
Original story, "Bad Trip," here
ACT FOUR: NATURE OF THE BEAST
"Wake up, Xander!"
He opened his eye and saw beige plastic. He was slumped at a desk with his chin on his chest, his nap interrupted by Willow's urgent whisper. Willow herself was seated at another desk just to his right, marking passages in a textbook with a fluorescent yellow highlighter.
"So glad you could join us, Mr. Harris." It was Giles, standing at the front of the classroom, a piece of chalk poised over the board. "I do hope we aren't disturbing you."
Xander heard giggles from the desks around him. He glanced about the classroom, saw it was filled with ranks of teenage girls, all snickering and gossiping and passing notes to each other. A quick check reassured him that he was wearing pants--Thanks God, it's not going to be one of those dreams--but he still felt terribly big and awkward, crammed like a gorilla into a dinky little high-schooler's desk.
"Quiet down, girls," Giles said, turning his back to the class as he began to draw. "We'll begin by going over today's lesson plan."
"This isn't fair," Xander protested. "I already graduated."
"Hush, you," Anya admonished him. She was sitting to his left, just inside his blind spot. "Don't you know that you'll never graduate?"
"Not if you don't keep up," Willow added. "You're falling further behind by the minute."
"As I mentioned before, we'll be having a pop quiz." Giles sounded very serious, but the things he was putting up on the chalkboard were mere doodles; stick figures in skirts and wigs, google-eyed snakes, suns and moons. "I trust you all completed the assigned reading."
"You didn't do your homework, did you, Xander?" Anya gave him a disappointed frown. "Well, this time you're on your own."
"But Willow didn't do it either," he protested. "I was just over at her house."
Willow sighed. "I'm not in this class anymore, Xander. Remember?"
On the chalkboard, Giles was now drawing a large cartoon heart.
Xander twisted around in his seat and scanned the row behind him. "Hey, Buffy," he hissed. "Can I copy your answers?"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Sorry, Xander," she shrugged. "I don't understand myself."
"Before I hand out the quiz," Giles continued, "you may also recall that this is career day. We'll go clockwise around the room, and please answer promptly when called on." He stooped to pick up a cardboard box filled with flimsy plastic hats. "If you don't have any better ideas, I'm afraid you'll have to be a fireman by default."
Xander leaned back in his seat, grinning with relief. "Okay. I've got this one covered."
Behind him, Buffy laughed and snapped her gum.
Willow shook her head. "No you don't, Xander. It's time to wake up. You'll miss breakfast."
"What?"
Xander opened his eye, this time for real, and blinked a couple of times to dispel the afterimage of the sunny California classroom. As his vision gradually came into focus, he saw Willow standing next to his bed, bundled up in a wooly jacket and scarf.
"Thought that would get your attention," Willow smiled. "The kitchen crew are taking final requests for breakfast, so you might wanna get your butt downstairs. Dawn's down there already."
Xander propped himself up on one elbow and groggily surveyed his tiny bedroom. Kennedy was hovering in the doorway, and she gave him a polite wave as he glanced in her direction.
Willow was still talking. "I have to go do some stuff with Miss Harkness, and we'll be heading into town, so if there are any letters or postcards you want to send..."
"Nah, I'm cool." Xander reached up to run a hand through his hair, belatedly realizing that it was still little more than stubble. "What about Giles and the others... the Euro-Slayers? Is there gonna be another meeting, or--"
"Who knows?" Kennedy shrugged. "Everyone seems to have wandered off or something, so I guess we're on our own for now. Maybe later we'll curl up in front of the fireplace and yell at each other some more."
Xander winced. Ouch. "Yeah, okay. Look, time for the man of the house to make himself presentable for breakfast." He made a shooing gesture and the two women scuttled out of the room, laughing.
...........
Ten minutes later, Xander was maneuvering himself down the stairs, favoring his still-healing leg. The interior of the house was dimly lit, and from the glimpses of dull gray sky that filtered in through the odd window, it looked like it was either raining outside, or on the verge of starting.
After a stop by the kitchen to put in a request for breakfast and cadge a cup of coffee, he continued down the hall to the dining room. Here he found Dawn sitting at the far end of a bulky mahogany table, making her way slowly through a pile of waffles slathered in gooey syrup.
"Hey, kiddo," Xander said. Dawn gave him a welcoming nod, motioning him towards the chair next to her, as she finished chewing a mouthful of waffle.
The surface of the table was covered with books and papers--dictionaries, leather-bound journals, photocopied manuscript pages bristling with Post-It notes. Xander settled into his seat, carefully nudging the clutter aside to clear a space for his coffee mug. "Wow," he muttered. "Didn't know they were giving us homework."
"Nng," Dawn mumbled, taking a gulp from her juice glass. "It's some stuff I'm helping Milly with."
"Milly... Carter, right?" Xander strained to conjure up a mental image of the shy witch who'd played secretary at last night's meeting, taking down minutes in her spiral-bound notebook. Did she wear glasses? He couldn't remember.
"Uh-huh," Dawn nodded. "She's actually pretty smart. She does a lot of Miss Harkness's research and stuff. And I think she likes you," she added with a smirk.
"She likes me? Says who?"
"I dunno, Xander. She was, like, totally staring at you while you were talking about your vision quest and stuff. I swear she was checking you out." Dawn returned her attention to her plate. "Anyway, that's my exciting life. How about you? You sleep okay?"
"Yeah, pretty good," he answered. "Again with the funky dreams, though."
"Dreams?" Dawn paused in the middle of spearing a strawberry with her fork and shot him a curious look. "Anything, you know, significant?"
Xander shook his head. "Just regular dumb stuff. I'm back in high school, there's a test I haven't studied for, Giles thinks I'm an idiot. Okay, that part's probably more of a documentary." He sighed. "Sorry about last night, Dawn. I was being a jerk."
Dawn popped the strawberry into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Her eyes were serious. "Yeah, okay," she said slowly. "Not like I don't get why you were upset. I was kinda mad at Giles too. I mean, dramatic much?" She dropped her chin to her chest and pitched her voice into a parody of Giles at his most fatherly and condescending. "Even though I've been gone and have been running a secret society behind your backs, it's obvious to me what's going on with Buffy. Get with the program!" She snorted and dragged her fork through the syrup, making little lines.
"Yeah, there was that." Xander took a deep breath. "I meant, uh, the other part. What you said about us... the way we were talking about Buffy. You were right. That wasn't very cool. And I just wanted you to know--I'm sorry."
Dawn shrugged, but didn't look at him. "Could've been worse," she said. "I thought for a minute there that you were going to start going on about... You know. What Spike did to her."
Xander paused. He had come close to blurting that out--it had been right on the edge of his tongue. He tried to rape her! He'd even visualized the look on Giles's face when he heard the news. So, G-Man, what do you think of your brilliant theory now?
"Yeah. Probably could have won the argument with that one, huh?" He tried to offer a smile, but it felt wrong on his face. The memory shimmered back into his mind of Buffy sitting on the edge of the bathtub, bruised and tear-streaked, and a tight knot formed in his stomach, sticky and hot like the syrup on Dawn's plate. Maybe I should have said it. If it's so important we know everything that's going on with Buffy... why didn't I?
"I'm glad you didn't. Tell them, I mean," Dawn said softly.
Xander shot her a look. It got to him, on a level he really couldn't control, the idea that women could do that--defend Spike even after what he'd done. He remembered Dawn's face when he'd told her. I don't believe you.
But Dawn didn't look defensive, just thoughtful. "Buffy wouldn't have wanted them to know," she said. "I wouldn't even have known if you hadn't told me." Then she let out a little sound like a laugh. "It's like... she didn't want me to think of her like that. Or him." She fell silent for a moment.
"If you hadn't told me about that," she said, "then last night? I probably would have been like, 'Gee Giles, what took you so long to catch on?'"
The twisting feeling in his gut got stronger. "So you think he's right?" he managed. "You really think that Buffy--"
"Was into Spike? Yeah. In hindsight, kinda obvious." At Xander's blank look, she snorted. "Oh, c'mon, Xander. You know how she gets with guys. With the secret stuff and the sneaking around? Even at Hemery, in L.A., there was this biker guy she liked. Hello to climb-out-the-window time." She sighed dramatically. "And that was even before she was the Slayer, I think."
Xander was feeling really nauseous now. Oh, God, she's right. No, wait, she's wrong. Buffy didn't sneak around with Riley. Or... Oh, God.
"Here you go!" The girl who'd taken his breakfast order came trotting into the dining room bearing a large plate, which she set down in front of him with a theatrical flourish. Xander stared at the plate. A mixture of odors wafted into his nose. Eggs and ham and a soupy lake of what looked like--
"Are those baked beans?" he blurted. His stomach gave an ungentle lurch.
"Yep. Full British starter plate. Give it a try. Better to try than never know, innit?" She winked at him and disappeared back through the swinging door.
Dawn eyed his food doubtfully. "Better tuck in. I bet those beans get really nasty cold."
Xander grimaced and reached for a piece of toast instead. "Dawn. Look. I don't--I'm never going to be down with the whole 'we love Spike' school. I've seen way too much of the guy in his non-heroic moments. I have scars. Don't even try."
She made a face. "Get real, Xander. We're talking about Buffy here, not me." She paused, toyed with the butter knife. "You want my opinion? I hope he did go to hell. And I hope it really hurts."
Momentarily absorbed in swabbing up eggs with his toast, Xander looked up to see her face in profile, set into a fierce expression. He swallowed. "Uh... okay. No arguments here." Since when did Dawn get so damn scary?
"So all this talk about Buffy being in love with Spike? Yeah, it seems crazy to me. I mean, I--" She blew out a puff of air that sent strands of hair swirling around her face.
"I don't get how she could still feel that way. Y'know. After what he did," she continued. "But I guess that's where the love thing comes in, huh? That always seems to make people nuts." She rolled her eyes then, and looked down at her empty plate. "Which makes it even weirder that anyone would choose to do it in the first place. Fall in love, I mean."
"Choose?" Xander laughed hollowly. "I wish. It's like something that's done to you, and then you're stuck." He considered the beans for a moment, fork hovering, then speared a fried tomato instead. "It's like... you remember that thing with what's-his-face and the magic letterman jacket?" he asked her, mouth full.
Dawn rolled her eyes, nodded. "Yeah. And I like remember acting like a total idiot. But that was a spell, Xan."
"No, that's what it's like," he told her. "Falling in love. It just happens. And then your whole life changes. Like getting drafted or, or..." He pondered. "What's that thing they used to do to British sailors?"
"Press-ganged?" Dawn suggested helpfully. "Shanghaied?"
"Yeah, something like that." Xander leaned back in his chair, waving a half-eaten piece of toast for dramatic effect as he set the scene. "Okay. Picture this. Say you're just this slacker. You're cruising along, you don't have a care in the world. Then one day you go off on a bender in a roadside bar or something... and then when you wake up, you find out that while you were sleeping or drunk or whatever, somebody's signed you up for the army. It's like... your body does this thing without you knowing, and by the time your brain finds out, you're already in boot camp."
"Uh-huh." Dawn looked unconvinced.
"And then before you know it, you're shipping out. And your brain's like, 'Hey, how do I get off this boat?' Only you can't because that makes you a deserter. And your brain's all, 'Hell no, I'm not a deserter,' and there's the firing squad thing... It's like, you can't get out and you can't go back, and all you can say then is 'Stupid body! See if I ever listen to you again...'" he trailed off, his argument losing steam under the weight of Dawn's bemused expression.
There was silence for a moment, and then she raised an eyebrow. "So... love makes you crazy, then."
He thought about it for awhile and decided he didn't have much else to add. "Yeah," he said finally. "Kinda does."
"Guess that explains everything then." Dawn sighed, put her elbows on the table, let her head fall into her hands. "We're screwed."
...........
Kennedy nudged the door open and, after peeking through to make sure the coast was clear, stepped into the kitchen. Glancing around the room, she saw that the three women she'd met yesterday--young Meg, glamorous Alexa, dotty old Tish--were evidently hard at work on the evening's menu.
Meg, the girl with braided hair, looked up as she entered. "Hello again," she grinned, dumping a handful of chopped onion into a bubbling soup pot. "Hey, Alexa, your friend's back."
Alexa was standing at the sink, toweling off the last of the breakfast dishes. She turned and flashed a dazzling smile. "Darling! So good to see you!" The woman was wearing her hair in an efficient ponytail today, Kennedy noticed, exposing her elegant neck. "What can we do you for?"
"Just a bottle of water, thanks." Kennedy made her way over to the refrigerator and knelt to rummage through the bottles and cans on its lower shelves.
"Ey, I thought you'd gone off with the other lot," Meg frowned. "With Willow and Miss Harkness."
"Nah." Kennedy straightened, jamming the water bottle into the pocket of her sweatpants. "I was getting this vibe that they had some heavy Wicca stuff to talk about. Thought I'd leave 'em alone and go for a run instead." She motioned down at the sneakers on her feet. "Slayers gotta stay in shape, you know?"
"Oh, I wouldn't if I were you, dearie." Tish, the oldest of the three, tottered by carrying a tray of steaming sausage rolls. "It looks like it's going to rain."
"Now, now," Alexa said. "Don't you go putting her off, Tish. She's setting a good example for the rest of us." She ran her hands along the curve of her hips, which as far as Kennedy could tell required no improvement whatsoever.
"Well, guess I'd better get going." Kennedy took a step towards the door, then paused as a thought struck her. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Certainly," Alexa replied.
"It's just... we've been here for a day or so already, and we haven't really met anyone yet." Kennedy made a vague sweeping motion. "I mean, there's you guys, and Miss Harkness, and a couple of others who were at the meeting... But this is supposed to be some kind of coven, right? Shouldn't there be, I dunno, a few more actual witches?"
"Ah, yes." Alexa wandered over to the stove and gave the soup pot a thoughtful stir. "That's a delicate matter, you see."
"The others are a bit scared of her," Meg chirped brightly. "Of Willow. They think she's liable to turn them into frogs or whatever. Give 'em the evil eye, right?" She made a circle with her thumb and index finger. "Ooh, spooky!"
Kennedy gave Alexa a questioning look, and the older woman nodded. "It's true, I'm afraid. You might be suprised to learn that witches are a little superstitious."
"Well, I guess I can see why," Kennedy snorted. "I mean, Willow's an actual witch, doing magic spells and stuff. It seems like the rest of you guys just sit around reading books and holding hands and, I dunno, baking cakes. No offense," she added hastily.
"None taken, dearie," Tish beamed as she waddled past.
Circling the kitchen's central island, Alexa took Kennedy by the arm and led her towards the stove. "There's more than one way to work magic, love. You could even say that the very idea of magic was born in the kitchen. You want transmutation? Water into wine? Try grapes into wine, rice into sake... wheat flour into bread." Alexa picked up a ladle with her free hand and tapped the side of the soup pot. "And here's your witches' cauldron, darling."
Kennedy gave her a blank look. "Uh, if you say so. But food and magic... kind of a big difference, don't you think?"
Alexa laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. With the right ingredients I could make you laugh or cry, have you seeing visions or dancing in the streets." She motioned towards a shelf of tattered cookbooks. "Poisons to hurt your enemies, little treats to drive a lover wild with desire... there are recipes for everything, if you take the time to learn them."
She leaned in conspiratorially, and Kennedy caught the faint spicy smell of cinnamon or nutmeg. "Honestly, sweetie. Just between us girls... haven't you ever sweetened someone with chocolate, or loosened them up with a little drink?" Alexa chuckled at Kennedy's guilty reaction. "Congratulations, darling. There's a little bit of witch in you after all."
"So you're saying it's not just about the leg of toad and eye of newt..."
"Oh, they have their uses too." Alexa reached across the stove and twirled her fingers in a pot of thick reddish sauce, then held them up to Kennedy's lips. "But you must admit this tastes better."
Kennedy gave the witch a dubious look. "Go on," Alexa smiled. "Be a devil."
What the hell, Kennedy thought, and brushed her tongue quickly across the woman's fingers. A second later, a blush colored her cheeks as she tasted the rich sauce. "Damn. That is good!"
"Almost magical, one might say." Alexa sighed. "But not quite. I suppose I'll have to keep working on it." She gave Kennedy a broad grin and turned back to the stove. "Well, I'd better let you go. Enjoy your run!"
"Right. The running." Kennedy felt as if she'd been suddenly awakened from a light sleep. "I guess I'll see you guys at dinner, then."
"And dessert, dearie," Tish called as Kennedy waved goodbye and stepped out the kitchen door. "Never forget dessert!"
...........
Miss Harkness glanced up as Willow slid back into the car. "So, did you get all your letters sent?"
"Uh-huh." Willow tugged on her seatbelt and buckled herself in. "A postcard to my parents, and some stuff Kennedy wanted me to send off to her family." She exhaled slowly. "I guess I really ought to give mom and dad a call sometime. I just phoned them the one time after they moved to L.A., and all they wanted to talk about was this Jasmine person. It was like they'd joined a cult or something."
Miss Harkness briskly fired up the tiny car's engine and eased into the street. Despite her stiff hip, Miss Harkness had insisted on taking the wheel. She might be a wise and powerful witch, Willow thought, but she still drove like a little old lady.
"They're always hooting at me!" Miss Harkness puffed angrily as she chugged cautiously forward into a roundabout to a chorus of blaring car horns. "Shove off!" she shouted out the window in irritation. A mini-van filled with jersey-clad soccer fans whizzed by, the lads leaning out the window flinging rude gestures.
Willow clung to her seatbelt. "So, uh, where are we going?"
"I'd like to take a little drive out to the White Horse, if you don't mind." Miss Harkness's tone indicated that she didn't expect Willow to disagree. She stared fixedly at the road. "It's just outside of town. Be a dear and find the Bratton turnoff for me, would you?"
Following the signs, Willow directed the little car a mile or so out into the country. Soon the horse came into view, a huge off-white silhouette carved into the grassy hillside. Once the car came to a stop, Willow fished her umbrella out of the back--the rain seemed to have stopped for the time being, but it seemed foolish to take the chance--and went around to help Miss Harkness out of the driver's seat.
"Thank you, dear." The old woman straightened carefully and planted her cane firmly on the ground, then squinted up the sheer slope of the hill at the dingy outline of the Westbury Horse. "The old gray mare," she sighed. "She ain't what she used to be. But neither am I, I suppose."
Slowly and carefully, Miss Harkness began making her way along the path that led up to the hillside, with Willow trailing a respectful distance behind. "I used to come up here all the time, you know. It makes for a nice contemplative little walk. But nowadays..." she gestured down at her hip.
"Are you going to be okay?" Willow asked, concerned. "It looks like kind of a steep hike."
"Yes, so I recall," Miss Harkness replied. "But let's see how far we get."
Willow watched anxiously as the old witch hobbled along the path, waiting for her to stumble and fall. "Actually, I was, uh, kind of wondering," she ventured. "About the hip. Couldn't you, you know..."
"Fix it with magic, you mean?" Miss Harkness gave her a knowing look. "Why yes, I suppose there may be something in the Mercurian Rites one could employ for that purpose. But why stop there?" She made a sweeping gesture with her free hand. "Let's roll back the aging process a few years while we're at it. Maybe, I don't know, fifty years? Or sixty? What do you think?"
Willow frowned dubiously. "I guess. If you really wanted to, I mean."
The old woman chuckled. "And then apply some choice glamours, a love spell or two... I could have my pick of handsome gentlemen. Mr. Giles is a fine specimen, to be sure, but I have my eye on that strapping young friend of yours. Xander Harris, was it? I rather fancy him."
"That's not funny." Willow gave her a hurt look. "I know you wouldn't do that. And... And I wouldn't either. I know better now."
"And what is it," Miss Harkness snapped, "that you now know? Tell me what you've learned, child."
Willow sighed. "Magic has consequences," she answered mechanically, staring down at her plodding feet. "It's a great power, and we have to use that power responsibly." She idly wondered when they were going to reach the steep part of the path. Soon, she thought, the going would be too difficult for the old woman.
"Magic? I fear you've missed the point entirely." Miss Harkness paused. She stood still for a moment, her gray hair whipping dramatically in the stiff breeze, then turned and began leading them off the path, into the grassy scrub that covered the hillside. "Actions. Decisions. These are the things that have consequences, Willow," she continued in a conversational tone. "Magic is merely a means to an end, one of many."
"Okaaay." Willow frowned. "Um, I get that. I guess. But magic is what we do, right? I mean, hey, witches here."
"Magic," the old witch replied, "is an exercise of human will. And the most powerful magics, the ones that come so easily to you, are an expression of that will in its purest form." She halted, leaning heavily on her cane. "Where others would use weapons to cause harm, or drugs to poison and seduce, we use magic instead. The tools are different, but the act is the same."
"Hold on a minute," Willow protested. "The things I've done, the bad things--you think I'd ever have done that if it weren't for the magic? Like I'd just be going around slipping roofies in peoples' drinks and, I dunno, shooting up liquor stores?" She shook her head vigorously. "Nuh-uh. No way. You don't know what it's like... Or, well, maybe you do know what it's like, being a witch and all, but having all this power. I-It's like..." She struggled to find the words. "Like having everything in the world at my fingertips. Like I'm walking around with a loaded gun!"
"It's not the gun that kills, Willow." Miss Harkness's eyes narrowed, as if probing for hidden weaknesses. "It's the person who pulls the trigger. The person who desires to hurt, out of fear or rage, and doesn't care where the bullets fly. The person who desires to bend others to their will. And that desire is the thing you must learn to control."
"I'm totally controlled! I'm controlled 24/7!" Willow's voice grew louder as she spoke, almost to a shout. "Controlling myself is all I do!"
Miss Harkness noted the anger burning in Willow's eyes, the tension in her posture. "You call that control?" she asked disdainfully. "It's merely suppression. And the things we suppress have a way of slipping out when we're not paying attention." She turned to regard the white horse, and her thin lips twitched in a faint smile. "Look and see for yourself."
"Huh?" Willow looked around, following the old woman's gaze to the silhouette of the Westbury Horse. The carving was less than a hundred yards ahead of them, across the level ground of the...
The level ground? Of the hillside?
Willow spun about in a sudden fit of disorientation. She glanced backward, expecting to see the horizon, but instead a steep hill reared up behind them. Except it wasn't a hill, she realized; it was the ground, laced with hedges and roadways and telephone poles, and somehow skewed so far off-kilter that the sheer hillside where they stood was now a level plain, while the flat surface of the earth became a treacherous slope.
As she stared at the rotated landscape, a sporty little car zoomed along the road, clinging impossibly to its tilted surface. For one dreadful instant Willow felt gravity tugging at her sleeve, and the world gave a fitful lurch that almost spilled her sideways onto the ground.
"Easy, girl," Miss Harkness cautioned her. "Best let it be for now. If you made it stop, we'd just go tumbling down the slope like Jack and Jill. And I'd hate to break the other hip."
"I--I don't understand," Willow sputtered. "How did this happen? What did you do?!"
"I did nothing," Miss Harkness replied evenly. "This is your doing, Willow. It was your will, conscious or not, that we should walk up the hill to see the white horse. And now the world is doing its best to accommodate you." She turned away and resumed walking across the tilted hillside. "Or rather, to accommodate me. You've gone to rather a lot of effort to make the going easier for an old woman. I suppose it would be ungrateful of me to complain."
Willow stared. Birds flew past at odd angles. "S-so you're not angry with me?" she sputtered.
"Oh, tsk, tsk!" Miss Harkness called over her shoulder. "Bad, bad Willow, bending the rules of time and space again. Still, I must admit it's rather entertaining." She reached the edge of the hill carving, and began making her way counter-clockwise around the outline of the horse. "Not to mention creative. I half expected you to levitate us up the hill, or something similarly trite."
Willow came along after her, tottering a little unsteadily and trying hard not to look at the bizarrely skewed landscape around them. Instead she focused on the horse, whose crude silhouette stretched out almost two hundred feet across the hillside before them. They plodded on a moment in silence as the old witch gathered her thoughts.
"Willow," Miss Harkness began. "Why didn't you notice what was happening as we came up the hill?"
"I guess I wasn't paying attention," Willow replied. "I must have been looking down at the ground or something."
"Exactly." Miss Harkness tapped the soil with her cane for emphasis. "And that's just how we live our lives. The past behind us, vanishing from sight and beyond our power to alter, and the unknown future waiting ahead. Only in the present moment do we live, and choose, and act. But as we do that, we change the path that lies ahead in ways we can't possibly imagine."
She glanced back at Willow, who was still following a pace behind her. "We have no more vision than the ants that crawl on the ground. But with every step, we shake the ground like an elephant. It's a dangerous combination."
"Look," Willow protested. "I'm sorry I did that thing just now. I didn't mean to, and I'll make it stop as soon as I can, okay?"
Miss Harkness chuckled dryly. "Don't worry, Willow. The play of actions and consequences isn't some kind of mechanical calculation, where you unleash one demon for every two laws of nature you suspend. The future is shaped by the decisions we make, not the tools we use to carry them out."
"Alright then." Willow came to a stop and stood there, arms folded, just below the muzzle of the white horse. "I know you brought me here to tell me off about something. So what was it? What did I do?"
The old witch halted as well, and scratched the side of her nose in a gesture of mild exasperation. "You Americans really are terribly direct, aren't you? Very well." She turned to look at Willow. "You, Miss Rosenberg, have accomplished something truly amazing. You've revived a ritual that's been lost for thousands of years, an incantation that also happens to be the only effective weapon anyone has found against an immeasurably powerful enemy."
Willow nodded warily. "The spell I used on the Potentials... the Slayers, I mean."
"Yes. A spell known as the Charm of Set, according to Miss Carter's research." Miss Harkness's expression darkened another degree. "A ritual which can only be performed by a properly trained witch--oh, excuse me, Wicca--with the talent and experience to harness the most powerful of dark magics."
"Thus," Willow concluded, "enabling said witch to thwart The First and undo all its evil plans. Really not seeing the downside so far."
"Really?" Miss Harkness seemed disappointed, but not surprised. "Think, girl. Put yourself in the enemy's position. If such a weapon had been discovered against you, and that weapon could be wielded by just a handful of people in the entire world..."
"Uh-huh. Your point being...?"
"You've placed us all on the frontlines, my child. Every witch, every Wicca, every warlock and shaman and misguided dabbler. The enemy now has no priority more urgent than that of wiping every one of us from the face of the earth." A thin finger pointed accusingly at Willow's chest. "There's the consequence of your action, girl. Cause and effect."
"What? But I never..." Her eyes widened as the realization sank in. "Oh no. Oh God. I didn't mean to..."
"We had to make our own decision, too. Whether to help you, now that you'd committed us to your fight... or to turn you away, cut you off. Perhaps even bargain with the enemy for our own lives. Some say it's worked before." Miss Harkness sighed. "But the coven decided in your favor. You should thank Roderick and Mandy, the two we sent to you in America. They were the most adamant that we should join you in your reckless gamble."
"Reckless?" Willow was trembling with frustration, her hands bunched into fists. "What else could I have done? What choice did I have? They would have killed him--killed Xander! And then the rest of us, too!"
The old woman's expression softened a little. "You had a choice, Willow. And I believe you chose well. But now we must all be prepared for the consequences." She straightened herself with a quiet groan, and began moving down the front profile of the great white horse towards the bottom of the hill. "Come, my dear. We're almost reached the end of today's lesson."
Willow followed along after her, preoccupied with her own thoughts, as they completed their circuit of the Westbury Horse and began heading back down the path to their waiting car. The slope of the hill began to level out and their skewed perspective gradually corrected itself, the horizon sliding down to its normal position as Willow's accidental enchantment quietly unraveled.
At length, Willow raised her head again, and her face was pale but resolute. "There's no way out, is there? If I do nothing, if I don't use my power... then I'm still making a decision. And that has consequences too."
"Exactly." Miss Harkness gave her shoulder an encouraging pat. "And one can never tell what those consequences will be until it's far too late. In meantime we can only do our best, and try to set right the things we've made wrong."
Willow made a sour face. "And then we can go fix everything we screwed up when we fixed our last bunch of mistakes. Does it ever end?"
The old woman laughed. "Goodness, no. But hopefully one's judgement improves with practice." She glanced over her shoulder at the hillside above them, and she frowned as she studied the white silhouette on its slope. "And in the end, the outcome of our actions will make itself clear. Look."
Following the direction of Miss Harkness's gesturing hand, Willow turned to look at the figure on the hillside. As she stared, the giant carving flickered and flowed and returned to its familiar shape--a prancing white horse, strutting peacefully across the Wiltshire landscape.
But for a few seconds the witches saw a different form, the one that had been shaped by their thoughts and fears as they traced the outline of the Westbury Horse. Its shape was that of a coiled gargoyle, part serpent and part dragon, a writhing beast which spread its wings and clawed the earth and turned its screeching maw up to the heavens. In a moment it was gone, but the sudden chill of its presence still lingered in the air.
"Oh my," Miss Harkness said ruefully. "I don't think that bodes well."
Previous chapters here
Original story, "Bad Trip," here
ACT FOUR: NATURE OF THE BEAST
"Wake up, Xander!"
He opened his eye and saw beige plastic. He was slumped at a desk with his chin on his chest, his nap interrupted by Willow's urgent whisper. Willow herself was seated at another desk just to his right, marking passages in a textbook with a fluorescent yellow highlighter.
"So glad you could join us, Mr. Harris." It was Giles, standing at the front of the classroom, a piece of chalk poised over the board. "I do hope we aren't disturbing you."
Xander heard giggles from the desks around him. He glanced about the classroom, saw it was filled with ranks of teenage girls, all snickering and gossiping and passing notes to each other. A quick check reassured him that he was wearing pants--Thanks God, it's not going to be one of those dreams--but he still felt terribly big and awkward, crammed like a gorilla into a dinky little high-schooler's desk.
"Quiet down, girls," Giles said, turning his back to the class as he began to draw. "We'll begin by going over today's lesson plan."
"This isn't fair," Xander protested. "I already graduated."
"Hush, you," Anya admonished him. She was sitting to his left, just inside his blind spot. "Don't you know that you'll never graduate?"
"Not if you don't keep up," Willow added. "You're falling further behind by the minute."
"As I mentioned before, we'll be having a pop quiz." Giles sounded very serious, but the things he was putting up on the chalkboard were mere doodles; stick figures in skirts and wigs, google-eyed snakes, suns and moons. "I trust you all completed the assigned reading."
"You didn't do your homework, did you, Xander?" Anya gave him a disappointed frown. "Well, this time you're on your own."
"But Willow didn't do it either," he protested. "I was just over at her house."
Willow sighed. "I'm not in this class anymore, Xander. Remember?"
On the chalkboard, Giles was now drawing a large cartoon heart.
Xander twisted around in his seat and scanned the row behind him. "Hey, Buffy," he hissed. "Can I copy your answers?"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Sorry, Xander," she shrugged. "I don't understand myself."
"Before I hand out the quiz," Giles continued, "you may also recall that this is career day. We'll go clockwise around the room, and please answer promptly when called on." He stooped to pick up a cardboard box filled with flimsy plastic hats. "If you don't have any better ideas, I'm afraid you'll have to be a fireman by default."
Xander leaned back in his seat, grinning with relief. "Okay. I've got this one covered."
Behind him, Buffy laughed and snapped her gum.
Willow shook her head. "No you don't, Xander. It's time to wake up. You'll miss breakfast."
"What?"
Xander opened his eye, this time for real, and blinked a couple of times to dispel the afterimage of the sunny California classroom. As his vision gradually came into focus, he saw Willow standing next to his bed, bundled up in a wooly jacket and scarf.
"Thought that would get your attention," Willow smiled. "The kitchen crew are taking final requests for breakfast, so you might wanna get your butt downstairs. Dawn's down there already."
Xander propped himself up on one elbow and groggily surveyed his tiny bedroom. Kennedy was hovering in the doorway, and she gave him a polite wave as he glanced in her direction.
Willow was still talking. "I have to go do some stuff with Miss Harkness, and we'll be heading into town, so if there are any letters or postcards you want to send..."
"Nah, I'm cool." Xander reached up to run a hand through his hair, belatedly realizing that it was still little more than stubble. "What about Giles and the others... the Euro-Slayers? Is there gonna be another meeting, or--"
"Who knows?" Kennedy shrugged. "Everyone seems to have wandered off or something, so I guess we're on our own for now. Maybe later we'll curl up in front of the fireplace and yell at each other some more."
Xander winced. Ouch. "Yeah, okay. Look, time for the man of the house to make himself presentable for breakfast." He made a shooing gesture and the two women scuttled out of the room, laughing.
...........
Ten minutes later, Xander was maneuvering himself down the stairs, favoring his still-healing leg. The interior of the house was dimly lit, and from the glimpses of dull gray sky that filtered in through the odd window, it looked like it was either raining outside, or on the verge of starting.
After a stop by the kitchen to put in a request for breakfast and cadge a cup of coffee, he continued down the hall to the dining room. Here he found Dawn sitting at the far end of a bulky mahogany table, making her way slowly through a pile of waffles slathered in gooey syrup.
"Hey, kiddo," Xander said. Dawn gave him a welcoming nod, motioning him towards the chair next to her, as she finished chewing a mouthful of waffle.
The surface of the table was covered with books and papers--dictionaries, leather-bound journals, photocopied manuscript pages bristling with Post-It notes. Xander settled into his seat, carefully nudging the clutter aside to clear a space for his coffee mug. "Wow," he muttered. "Didn't know they were giving us homework."
"Nng," Dawn mumbled, taking a gulp from her juice glass. "It's some stuff I'm helping Milly with."
"Milly... Carter, right?" Xander strained to conjure up a mental image of the shy witch who'd played secretary at last night's meeting, taking down minutes in her spiral-bound notebook. Did she wear glasses? He couldn't remember.
"Uh-huh," Dawn nodded. "She's actually pretty smart. She does a lot of Miss Harkness's research and stuff. And I think she likes you," she added with a smirk.
"She likes me? Says who?"
"I dunno, Xander. She was, like, totally staring at you while you were talking about your vision quest and stuff. I swear she was checking you out." Dawn returned her attention to her plate. "Anyway, that's my exciting life. How about you? You sleep okay?"
"Yeah, pretty good," he answered. "Again with the funky dreams, though."
"Dreams?" Dawn paused in the middle of spearing a strawberry with her fork and shot him a curious look. "Anything, you know, significant?"
Xander shook his head. "Just regular dumb stuff. I'm back in high school, there's a test I haven't studied for, Giles thinks I'm an idiot. Okay, that part's probably more of a documentary." He sighed. "Sorry about last night, Dawn. I was being a jerk."
Dawn popped the strawberry into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Her eyes were serious. "Yeah, okay," she said slowly. "Not like I don't get why you were upset. I was kinda mad at Giles too. I mean, dramatic much?" She dropped her chin to her chest and pitched her voice into a parody of Giles at his most fatherly and condescending. "Even though I've been gone and have been running a secret society behind your backs, it's obvious to me what's going on with Buffy. Get with the program!" She snorted and dragged her fork through the syrup, making little lines.
"Yeah, there was that." Xander took a deep breath. "I meant, uh, the other part. What you said about us... the way we were talking about Buffy. You were right. That wasn't very cool. And I just wanted you to know--I'm sorry."
Dawn shrugged, but didn't look at him. "Could've been worse," she said. "I thought for a minute there that you were going to start going on about... You know. What Spike did to her."
Xander paused. He had come close to blurting that out--it had been right on the edge of his tongue. He tried to rape her! He'd even visualized the look on Giles's face when he heard the news. So, G-Man, what do you think of your brilliant theory now?
"Yeah. Probably could have won the argument with that one, huh?" He tried to offer a smile, but it felt wrong on his face. The memory shimmered back into his mind of Buffy sitting on the edge of the bathtub, bruised and tear-streaked, and a tight knot formed in his stomach, sticky and hot like the syrup on Dawn's plate. Maybe I should have said it. If it's so important we know everything that's going on with Buffy... why didn't I?
"I'm glad you didn't. Tell them, I mean," Dawn said softly.
Xander shot her a look. It got to him, on a level he really couldn't control, the idea that women could do that--defend Spike even after what he'd done. He remembered Dawn's face when he'd told her. I don't believe you.
But Dawn didn't look defensive, just thoughtful. "Buffy wouldn't have wanted them to know," she said. "I wouldn't even have known if you hadn't told me." Then she let out a little sound like a laugh. "It's like... she didn't want me to think of her like that. Or him." She fell silent for a moment.
"If you hadn't told me about that," she said, "then last night? I probably would have been like, 'Gee Giles, what took you so long to catch on?'"
The twisting feeling in his gut got stronger. "So you think he's right?" he managed. "You really think that Buffy--"
"Was into Spike? Yeah. In hindsight, kinda obvious." At Xander's blank look, she snorted. "Oh, c'mon, Xander. You know how she gets with guys. With the secret stuff and the sneaking around? Even at Hemery, in L.A., there was this biker guy she liked. Hello to climb-out-the-window time." She sighed dramatically. "And that was even before she was the Slayer, I think."
Xander was feeling really nauseous now. Oh, God, she's right. No, wait, she's wrong. Buffy didn't sneak around with Riley. Or... Oh, God.
"Here you go!" The girl who'd taken his breakfast order came trotting into the dining room bearing a large plate, which she set down in front of him with a theatrical flourish. Xander stared at the plate. A mixture of odors wafted into his nose. Eggs and ham and a soupy lake of what looked like--
"Are those baked beans?" he blurted. His stomach gave an ungentle lurch.
"Yep. Full British starter plate. Give it a try. Better to try than never know, innit?" She winked at him and disappeared back through the swinging door.
Dawn eyed his food doubtfully. "Better tuck in. I bet those beans get really nasty cold."
Xander grimaced and reached for a piece of toast instead. "Dawn. Look. I don't--I'm never going to be down with the whole 'we love Spike' school. I've seen way too much of the guy in his non-heroic moments. I have scars. Don't even try."
She made a face. "Get real, Xander. We're talking about Buffy here, not me." She paused, toyed with the butter knife. "You want my opinion? I hope he did go to hell. And I hope it really hurts."
Momentarily absorbed in swabbing up eggs with his toast, Xander looked up to see her face in profile, set into a fierce expression. He swallowed. "Uh... okay. No arguments here." Since when did Dawn get so damn scary?
"So all this talk about Buffy being in love with Spike? Yeah, it seems crazy to me. I mean, I--" She blew out a puff of air that sent strands of hair swirling around her face.
"I don't get how she could still feel that way. Y'know. After what he did," she continued. "But I guess that's where the love thing comes in, huh? That always seems to make people nuts." She rolled her eyes then, and looked down at her empty plate. "Which makes it even weirder that anyone would choose to do it in the first place. Fall in love, I mean."
"Choose?" Xander laughed hollowly. "I wish. It's like something that's done to you, and then you're stuck." He considered the beans for a moment, fork hovering, then speared a fried tomato instead. "It's like... you remember that thing with what's-his-face and the magic letterman jacket?" he asked her, mouth full.
Dawn rolled her eyes, nodded. "Yeah. And I like remember acting like a total idiot. But that was a spell, Xan."
"No, that's what it's like," he told her. "Falling in love. It just happens. And then your whole life changes. Like getting drafted or, or..." He pondered. "What's that thing they used to do to British sailors?"
"Press-ganged?" Dawn suggested helpfully. "Shanghaied?"
"Yeah, something like that." Xander leaned back in his chair, waving a half-eaten piece of toast for dramatic effect as he set the scene. "Okay. Picture this. Say you're just this slacker. You're cruising along, you don't have a care in the world. Then one day you go off on a bender in a roadside bar or something... and then when you wake up, you find out that while you were sleeping or drunk or whatever, somebody's signed you up for the army. It's like... your body does this thing without you knowing, and by the time your brain finds out, you're already in boot camp."
"Uh-huh." Dawn looked unconvinced.
"And then before you know it, you're shipping out. And your brain's like, 'Hey, how do I get off this boat?' Only you can't because that makes you a deserter. And your brain's all, 'Hell no, I'm not a deserter,' and there's the firing squad thing... It's like, you can't get out and you can't go back, and all you can say then is 'Stupid body! See if I ever listen to you again...'" he trailed off, his argument losing steam under the weight of Dawn's bemused expression.
There was silence for a moment, and then she raised an eyebrow. "So... love makes you crazy, then."
He thought about it for awhile and decided he didn't have much else to add. "Yeah," he said finally. "Kinda does."
"Guess that explains everything then." Dawn sighed, put her elbows on the table, let her head fall into her hands. "We're screwed."
...........
Kennedy nudged the door open and, after peeking through to make sure the coast was clear, stepped into the kitchen. Glancing around the room, she saw that the three women she'd met yesterday--young Meg, glamorous Alexa, dotty old Tish--were evidently hard at work on the evening's menu.
Meg, the girl with braided hair, looked up as she entered. "Hello again," she grinned, dumping a handful of chopped onion into a bubbling soup pot. "Hey, Alexa, your friend's back."
Alexa was standing at the sink, toweling off the last of the breakfast dishes. She turned and flashed a dazzling smile. "Darling! So good to see you!" The woman was wearing her hair in an efficient ponytail today, Kennedy noticed, exposing her elegant neck. "What can we do you for?"
"Just a bottle of water, thanks." Kennedy made her way over to the refrigerator and knelt to rummage through the bottles and cans on its lower shelves.
"Ey, I thought you'd gone off with the other lot," Meg frowned. "With Willow and Miss Harkness."
"Nah." Kennedy straightened, jamming the water bottle into the pocket of her sweatpants. "I was getting this vibe that they had some heavy Wicca stuff to talk about. Thought I'd leave 'em alone and go for a run instead." She motioned down at the sneakers on her feet. "Slayers gotta stay in shape, you know?"
"Oh, I wouldn't if I were you, dearie." Tish, the oldest of the three, tottered by carrying a tray of steaming sausage rolls. "It looks like it's going to rain."
"Now, now," Alexa said. "Don't you go putting her off, Tish. She's setting a good example for the rest of us." She ran her hands along the curve of her hips, which as far as Kennedy could tell required no improvement whatsoever.
"Well, guess I'd better get going." Kennedy took a step towards the door, then paused as a thought struck her. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Certainly," Alexa replied.
"It's just... we've been here for a day or so already, and we haven't really met anyone yet." Kennedy made a vague sweeping motion. "I mean, there's you guys, and Miss Harkness, and a couple of others who were at the meeting... But this is supposed to be some kind of coven, right? Shouldn't there be, I dunno, a few more actual witches?"
"Ah, yes." Alexa wandered over to the stove and gave the soup pot a thoughtful stir. "That's a delicate matter, you see."
"The others are a bit scared of her," Meg chirped brightly. "Of Willow. They think she's liable to turn them into frogs or whatever. Give 'em the evil eye, right?" She made a circle with her thumb and index finger. "Ooh, spooky!"
Kennedy gave Alexa a questioning look, and the older woman nodded. "It's true, I'm afraid. You might be suprised to learn that witches are a little superstitious."
"Well, I guess I can see why," Kennedy snorted. "I mean, Willow's an actual witch, doing magic spells and stuff. It seems like the rest of you guys just sit around reading books and holding hands and, I dunno, baking cakes. No offense," she added hastily.
"None taken, dearie," Tish beamed as she waddled past.
Circling the kitchen's central island, Alexa took Kennedy by the arm and led her towards the stove. "There's more than one way to work magic, love. You could even say that the very idea of magic was born in the kitchen. You want transmutation? Water into wine? Try grapes into wine, rice into sake... wheat flour into bread." Alexa picked up a ladle with her free hand and tapped the side of the soup pot. "And here's your witches' cauldron, darling."
Kennedy gave her a blank look. "Uh, if you say so. But food and magic... kind of a big difference, don't you think?"
Alexa laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. With the right ingredients I could make you laugh or cry, have you seeing visions or dancing in the streets." She motioned towards a shelf of tattered cookbooks. "Poisons to hurt your enemies, little treats to drive a lover wild with desire... there are recipes for everything, if you take the time to learn them."
She leaned in conspiratorially, and Kennedy caught the faint spicy smell of cinnamon or nutmeg. "Honestly, sweetie. Just between us girls... haven't you ever sweetened someone with chocolate, or loosened them up with a little drink?" Alexa chuckled at Kennedy's guilty reaction. "Congratulations, darling. There's a little bit of witch in you after all."
"So you're saying it's not just about the leg of toad and eye of newt..."
"Oh, they have their uses too." Alexa reached across the stove and twirled her fingers in a pot of thick reddish sauce, then held them up to Kennedy's lips. "But you must admit this tastes better."
Kennedy gave the witch a dubious look. "Go on," Alexa smiled. "Be a devil."
What the hell, Kennedy thought, and brushed her tongue quickly across the woman's fingers. A second later, a blush colored her cheeks as she tasted the rich sauce. "Damn. That is good!"
"Almost magical, one might say." Alexa sighed. "But not quite. I suppose I'll have to keep working on it." She gave Kennedy a broad grin and turned back to the stove. "Well, I'd better let you go. Enjoy your run!"
"Right. The running." Kennedy felt as if she'd been suddenly awakened from a light sleep. "I guess I'll see you guys at dinner, then."
"And dessert, dearie," Tish called as Kennedy waved goodbye and stepped out the kitchen door. "Never forget dessert!"
...........
Miss Harkness glanced up as Willow slid back into the car. "So, did you get all your letters sent?"
"Uh-huh." Willow tugged on her seatbelt and buckled herself in. "A postcard to my parents, and some stuff Kennedy wanted me to send off to her family." She exhaled slowly. "I guess I really ought to give mom and dad a call sometime. I just phoned them the one time after they moved to L.A., and all they wanted to talk about was this Jasmine person. It was like they'd joined a cult or something."
Miss Harkness briskly fired up the tiny car's engine and eased into the street. Despite her stiff hip, Miss Harkness had insisted on taking the wheel. She might be a wise and powerful witch, Willow thought, but she still drove like a little old lady.
"They're always hooting at me!" Miss Harkness puffed angrily as she chugged cautiously forward into a roundabout to a chorus of blaring car horns. "Shove off!" she shouted out the window in irritation. A mini-van filled with jersey-clad soccer fans whizzed by, the lads leaning out the window flinging rude gestures.
Willow clung to her seatbelt. "So, uh, where are we going?"
"I'd like to take a little drive out to the White Horse, if you don't mind." Miss Harkness's tone indicated that she didn't expect Willow to disagree. She stared fixedly at the road. "It's just outside of town. Be a dear and find the Bratton turnoff for me, would you?"
Following the signs, Willow directed the little car a mile or so out into the country. Soon the horse came into view, a huge off-white silhouette carved into the grassy hillside. Once the car came to a stop, Willow fished her umbrella out of the back--the rain seemed to have stopped for the time being, but it seemed foolish to take the chance--and went around to help Miss Harkness out of the driver's seat.
"Thank you, dear." The old woman straightened carefully and planted her cane firmly on the ground, then squinted up the sheer slope of the hill at the dingy outline of the Westbury Horse. "The old gray mare," she sighed. "She ain't what she used to be. But neither am I, I suppose."
Slowly and carefully, Miss Harkness began making her way along the path that led up to the hillside, with Willow trailing a respectful distance behind. "I used to come up here all the time, you know. It makes for a nice contemplative little walk. But nowadays..." she gestured down at her hip.
"Are you going to be okay?" Willow asked, concerned. "It looks like kind of a steep hike."
"Yes, so I recall," Miss Harkness replied. "But let's see how far we get."
Willow watched anxiously as the old witch hobbled along the path, waiting for her to stumble and fall. "Actually, I was, uh, kind of wondering," she ventured. "About the hip. Couldn't you, you know..."
"Fix it with magic, you mean?" Miss Harkness gave her a knowing look. "Why yes, I suppose there may be something in the Mercurian Rites one could employ for that purpose. But why stop there?" She made a sweeping gesture with her free hand. "Let's roll back the aging process a few years while we're at it. Maybe, I don't know, fifty years? Or sixty? What do you think?"
Willow frowned dubiously. "I guess. If you really wanted to, I mean."
The old woman chuckled. "And then apply some choice glamours, a love spell or two... I could have my pick of handsome gentlemen. Mr. Giles is a fine specimen, to be sure, but I have my eye on that strapping young friend of yours. Xander Harris, was it? I rather fancy him."
"That's not funny." Willow gave her a hurt look. "I know you wouldn't do that. And... And I wouldn't either. I know better now."
"And what is it," Miss Harkness snapped, "that you now know? Tell me what you've learned, child."
Willow sighed. "Magic has consequences," she answered mechanically, staring down at her plodding feet. "It's a great power, and we have to use that power responsibly." She idly wondered when they were going to reach the steep part of the path. Soon, she thought, the going would be too difficult for the old woman.
"Magic? I fear you've missed the point entirely." Miss Harkness paused. She stood still for a moment, her gray hair whipping dramatically in the stiff breeze, then turned and began leading them off the path, into the grassy scrub that covered the hillside. "Actions. Decisions. These are the things that have consequences, Willow," she continued in a conversational tone. "Magic is merely a means to an end, one of many."
"Okaaay." Willow frowned. "Um, I get that. I guess. But magic is what we do, right? I mean, hey, witches here."
"Magic," the old witch replied, "is an exercise of human will. And the most powerful magics, the ones that come so easily to you, are an expression of that will in its purest form." She halted, leaning heavily on her cane. "Where others would use weapons to cause harm, or drugs to poison and seduce, we use magic instead. The tools are different, but the act is the same."
"Hold on a minute," Willow protested. "The things I've done, the bad things--you think I'd ever have done that if it weren't for the magic? Like I'd just be going around slipping roofies in peoples' drinks and, I dunno, shooting up liquor stores?" She shook her head vigorously. "Nuh-uh. No way. You don't know what it's like... Or, well, maybe you do know what it's like, being a witch and all, but having all this power. I-It's like..." She struggled to find the words. "Like having everything in the world at my fingertips. Like I'm walking around with a loaded gun!"
"It's not the gun that kills, Willow." Miss Harkness's eyes narrowed, as if probing for hidden weaknesses. "It's the person who pulls the trigger. The person who desires to hurt, out of fear or rage, and doesn't care where the bullets fly. The person who desires to bend others to their will. And that desire is the thing you must learn to control."
"I'm totally controlled! I'm controlled 24/7!" Willow's voice grew louder as she spoke, almost to a shout. "Controlling myself is all I do!"
Miss Harkness noted the anger burning in Willow's eyes, the tension in her posture. "You call that control?" she asked disdainfully. "It's merely suppression. And the things we suppress have a way of slipping out when we're not paying attention." She turned to regard the white horse, and her thin lips twitched in a faint smile. "Look and see for yourself."
"Huh?" Willow looked around, following the old woman's gaze to the silhouette of the Westbury Horse. The carving was less than a hundred yards ahead of them, across the level ground of the...
The level ground? Of the hillside?
Willow spun about in a sudden fit of disorientation. She glanced backward, expecting to see the horizon, but instead a steep hill reared up behind them. Except it wasn't a hill, she realized; it was the ground, laced with hedges and roadways and telephone poles, and somehow skewed so far off-kilter that the sheer hillside where they stood was now a level plain, while the flat surface of the earth became a treacherous slope.
As she stared at the rotated landscape, a sporty little car zoomed along the road, clinging impossibly to its tilted surface. For one dreadful instant Willow felt gravity tugging at her sleeve, and the world gave a fitful lurch that almost spilled her sideways onto the ground.
"Easy, girl," Miss Harkness cautioned her. "Best let it be for now. If you made it stop, we'd just go tumbling down the slope like Jack and Jill. And I'd hate to break the other hip."
"I--I don't understand," Willow sputtered. "How did this happen? What did you do?!"
"I did nothing," Miss Harkness replied evenly. "This is your doing, Willow. It was your will, conscious or not, that we should walk up the hill to see the white horse. And now the world is doing its best to accommodate you." She turned away and resumed walking across the tilted hillside. "Or rather, to accommodate me. You've gone to rather a lot of effort to make the going easier for an old woman. I suppose it would be ungrateful of me to complain."
Willow stared. Birds flew past at odd angles. "S-so you're not angry with me?" she sputtered.
"Oh, tsk, tsk!" Miss Harkness called over her shoulder. "Bad, bad Willow, bending the rules of time and space again. Still, I must admit it's rather entertaining." She reached the edge of the hill carving, and began making her way counter-clockwise around the outline of the horse. "Not to mention creative. I half expected you to levitate us up the hill, or something similarly trite."
Willow came along after her, tottering a little unsteadily and trying hard not to look at the bizarrely skewed landscape around them. Instead she focused on the horse, whose crude silhouette stretched out almost two hundred feet across the hillside before them. They plodded on a moment in silence as the old witch gathered her thoughts.
"Willow," Miss Harkness began. "Why didn't you notice what was happening as we came up the hill?"
"I guess I wasn't paying attention," Willow replied. "I must have been looking down at the ground or something."
"Exactly." Miss Harkness tapped the soil with her cane for emphasis. "And that's just how we live our lives. The past behind us, vanishing from sight and beyond our power to alter, and the unknown future waiting ahead. Only in the present moment do we live, and choose, and act. But as we do that, we change the path that lies ahead in ways we can't possibly imagine."
She glanced back at Willow, who was still following a pace behind her. "We have no more vision than the ants that crawl on the ground. But with every step, we shake the ground like an elephant. It's a dangerous combination."
"Look," Willow protested. "I'm sorry I did that thing just now. I didn't mean to, and I'll make it stop as soon as I can, okay?"
Miss Harkness chuckled dryly. "Don't worry, Willow. The play of actions and consequences isn't some kind of mechanical calculation, where you unleash one demon for every two laws of nature you suspend. The future is shaped by the decisions we make, not the tools we use to carry them out."
"Alright then." Willow came to a stop and stood there, arms folded, just below the muzzle of the white horse. "I know you brought me here to tell me off about something. So what was it? What did I do?"
The old witch halted as well, and scratched the side of her nose in a gesture of mild exasperation. "You Americans really are terribly direct, aren't you? Very well." She turned to look at Willow. "You, Miss Rosenberg, have accomplished something truly amazing. You've revived a ritual that's been lost for thousands of years, an incantation that also happens to be the only effective weapon anyone has found against an immeasurably powerful enemy."
Willow nodded warily. "The spell I used on the Potentials... the Slayers, I mean."
"Yes. A spell known as the Charm of Set, according to Miss Carter's research." Miss Harkness's expression darkened another degree. "A ritual which can only be performed by a properly trained witch--oh, excuse me, Wicca--with the talent and experience to harness the most powerful of dark magics."
"Thus," Willow concluded, "enabling said witch to thwart The First and undo all its evil plans. Really not seeing the downside so far."
"Really?" Miss Harkness seemed disappointed, but not surprised. "Think, girl. Put yourself in the enemy's position. If such a weapon had been discovered against you, and that weapon could be wielded by just a handful of people in the entire world..."
"Uh-huh. Your point being...?"
"You've placed us all on the frontlines, my child. Every witch, every Wicca, every warlock and shaman and misguided dabbler. The enemy now has no priority more urgent than that of wiping every one of us from the face of the earth." A thin finger pointed accusingly at Willow's chest. "There's the consequence of your action, girl. Cause and effect."
"What? But I never..." Her eyes widened as the realization sank in. "Oh no. Oh God. I didn't mean to..."
"We had to make our own decision, too. Whether to help you, now that you'd committed us to your fight... or to turn you away, cut you off. Perhaps even bargain with the enemy for our own lives. Some say it's worked before." Miss Harkness sighed. "But the coven decided in your favor. You should thank Roderick and Mandy, the two we sent to you in America. They were the most adamant that we should join you in your reckless gamble."
"Reckless?" Willow was trembling with frustration, her hands bunched into fists. "What else could I have done? What choice did I have? They would have killed him--killed Xander! And then the rest of us, too!"
The old woman's expression softened a little. "You had a choice, Willow. And I believe you chose well. But now we must all be prepared for the consequences." She straightened herself with a quiet groan, and began moving down the front profile of the great white horse towards the bottom of the hill. "Come, my dear. We're almost reached the end of today's lesson."
Willow followed along after her, preoccupied with her own thoughts, as they completed their circuit of the Westbury Horse and began heading back down the path to their waiting car. The slope of the hill began to level out and their skewed perspective gradually corrected itself, the horizon sliding down to its normal position as Willow's accidental enchantment quietly unraveled.
At length, Willow raised her head again, and her face was pale but resolute. "There's no way out, is there? If I do nothing, if I don't use my power... then I'm still making a decision. And that has consequences too."
"Exactly." Miss Harkness gave her shoulder an encouraging pat. "And one can never tell what those consequences will be until it's far too late. In meantime we can only do our best, and try to set right the things we've made wrong."
Willow made a sour face. "And then we can go fix everything we screwed up when we fixed our last bunch of mistakes. Does it ever end?"
The old woman laughed. "Goodness, no. But hopefully one's judgement improves with practice." She glanced over her shoulder at the hillside above them, and she frowned as she studied the white silhouette on its slope. "And in the end, the outcome of our actions will make itself clear. Look."
Following the direction of Miss Harkness's gesturing hand, Willow turned to look at the figure on the hillside. As she stared, the giant carving flickered and flowed and returned to its familiar shape--a prancing white horse, strutting peacefully across the Wiltshire landscape.
But for a few seconds the witches saw a different form, the one that had been shaped by their thoughts and fears as they traced the outline of the Westbury Horse. Its shape was that of a coiled gargoyle, part serpent and part dragon, a writhing beast which spread its wings and clawed the earth and turned its screeching maw up to the heavens. In a moment it was gone, but the sudden chill of its presence still lingered in the air.
"Oh my," Miss Harkness said ruefully. "I don't think that bodes well."
Re: Commentses!
Date: 2004-06-27 03:42 pm (UTC)I'm generally relieved you liked this chapter - I'd been starting to worry we'd been getting a little too bogged down in long conversations and original characters past the point of reader patience. We're still new enough at this where failed execution is a major worry, and that's a little stress-making, since we have some really boss plot stuff planned that I'm itching to get to. The exciting parts are coming soon, we swear it!
But first, yes, you called it - life lessons. It's become kind of a contiuting theme.
Also, "scuttled"? I dunno....cockroaches scuttle. Scuttling seems kinda....exoskeletal.
Okay, that made me laugh out loud this morning. New verb then - scampered? Something cute, and hee-hee-hee-ish...
I really liked the whole Xander/Dawn conversation, but this especially -- showing that Buffy's bad-boy thing isn't just the darkness of the Slayer, &c &c.
Hee. The funny part is, the fellow we're referring to here is the guy from the Buffy movie, which is indeed after she became the Slayer, so Dawn is technically wrong. (I'd written a little bit about Dawn's memories regarding Buffy's early Slayer career in a deleted scene that we'll probably use later - stay tuned.) So you could read Buffy's whole drawn-to-darknness thing pretty much either way. Heh.
OK, the whole scene was nice. But this? LOVED this bit. Ghod that was funny. And that's how it IS, too.
All thanks on this one go to Toys. For a fun little easter egg, see if you can note any similarity between this speech and Spike's one about getting his soul back, back in the underworld.
We do love us our continuity porn...
Re: Commentses!
Date: 2004-06-27 04:08 pm (UTC)Feeling a little "Restless," are we? (heh)
You know how we love our dream sequences. Plus, it seemed like a good way to ease back into the story after a two-week hiatus...
Hmmmmmm, fireman when the floods roll back?
Hookles noted that too, but it's actually more of a coincidence. At some point, perhaps when we sit down to do the oft-promised "liner notes", we'll expound on the elemental symbolism and what it means to be a "fire-man" in the context of this story. Of course, all this elemental stuff is ultimately inspired by "Restless"...
Man of the house? What about Giles?!
As noted a couple of lines earlier, Giles has stepped out for the moment, so Xander temporarily holds the Y-chromosome monopoly.
OK, the whole scene was nice. But this? LOVED this bit. Ghod that was funny. And that's how it IS, too.
Especially for Xander - he seems to have made a career of falling into bed (or against bookshelf) and then trying to figure out what he's doing after the fact. This also seemed to tie in nicely with Willow and Miss Harkness's talk about unknowable consequences. Plus, funny!
Feel dumb saying "I liked this a whole lot," but again, just like with the Dawn/Xander talk, it's not "just" about Buffy stuff any more....it's about well you know life.
Aw, thanks. We wanted to play around a bit with the interconnections between magic (an ill-defined concept in the Buffyverse) and everything else in life, and this chapter gave us a chance to look at it from a couple of different directions. I hope that doesn't sound too calculated...
Continuity porn!
Hee hee. :-)
Heh, heh. I love the triple grrrls. Even if they do like Kennedy.
I think they like everybody - it's just that everyone else's kitchen witch scenes keep ending up on the cutting-room floor. I'm glad you're enjoying the running joke, though; we're trying not to lay it on too thick. :-)
LOVE Miss Harkness. Did we clear that up last installment? OK then.
Aw, shucks...
Oh TOO bloody cool. This one, right?
Actually this one. We couldn't see the point of having a coven in Westbury if they didn't go out to see the horse.
((facepalm)) Oh, Willow....what did you just do? Use your enormous squishy frontal lobes and THINK!
The Hook reckoned it would be out of character for Willow to catch on too quickly...
((whimpers)) More soon?
Yes, very soon. Good little readers get
candynew chapters. :-)Re: Commentses!
Date: 2004-06-28 04:43 am (UTC)(standing off-camera with a bullhorn) "Keep moving! Don't just stand there! Do something with your hands, Willow!"
Aha. Xander DOES tend to wind up in these head-counselor-of-the-girls'-dorm situations, doesn't he....
Yep. We were kind of spoofing that a bit in the opening dream...
No no, it actually does remind me of how Gaiman brings them on in I think Doll's House in Sandman. It's definitely there and enjoyable and pointed up a bit, but not at all whomping you on the head.
You've got me dead to rights - I'm just a Neil Gaiman wanna-be. (In all honesty, I found Sandman a little precious, but I loved Neverwhere and American Gods.)
Actually, while I'm plugging stuff, let me just mention that I finally caught Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind yesterday and I'm sooo glad I caught it while it was still in the theaters...
Of course they COULD go out to see the Cerne Abbas Giant, HAHAHAHAHAHA....
Good lord, no! You could put somebody's eye out with that, uh, club of his.
What about six-foot-tall Amazonian readers? Do they get
crackcandy too?Sorry, I guess they'll have to settle for naked Giles. :-)
Re: Commentses!
Date: 2004-06-28 06:24 am (UTC)I wouldn't dare!
American Gods RULES. I haven't read Neverwhere yet.
Neverwhere is very cute; not a thrilling blockbuster like American Gods, but cute. I'd almost recommend watching the video instead, though - it has that charming microbudget BBC look, and it's now out on DVD.
Speaking of American Gods, and while I'm wearing my influences on my sleeve... is it just me, or is that book a little reminiscent of early Tim Powers? I'm thinking specifically of Last Call...
Most guys I know seem to find Sandman a little precious, I d'know why
Huh, curious. I'm trying to remember when I started getting a little impatient with it; I know I thought the early issues were nice and spooky, and I have fond memories of stories like A Doll's House and The Kindly Ones. I suspect that it was Dream's family that put me off - those colorful, quippy Incarnations, a perfect little Goth pantheon of irrelevant layabouts. (At least Death works for a living, so to speak.)
Say what you will about Gaiman's prose style (aHEM), one of the things I loved best about Sandman was how he gathered all kinds of mythologies and stories and styles together....like a lot of the underpinnings of "Bad Trip," maybe! hehehe.
Yeah, you've probably got me there. I always did have a fondness for mythology, though...
I LOVE that movie. I cannot convey to you how violently I LOVE that movie.
I cannot convey to you how totally unshocked I am by this information. After all, you're a Dennis Potter fan, are you not?
Okay, now you have to help me persuade the Hookster to go see it. :-)
ME: Look at Frodo! (Elijah Wood)
Yeah, same here. I was, like, "Butt out, Frodo!" Followed by "Man, Kirsten Dunst looks like a Martian. But Kate Winslet is Teh Hawt!"
But WHEN? You TEASE!
Uh, when I stop procrastinating and get back to work on the final three pics. But first I have to check some costume details from this one Angel episode...
Re: Commentses!
Date: 2004-06-28 09:14 am (UTC)Only little snippets, I'm afraid. I'll have to catch it the next time the Sci-Fi channel has a break in its rotation of "Stargate" and "Boa vs. Python."
Awwwwwwww, you didn't like DELIRIUM? She's one of my ab fav characters of all time.
She's fun, yes, but I'm inclined to think that the recurring gallery of "Endless" may well be one of the aspects of the comic that struck me as terribly precious. For some reason, thinking back on the story, I don't have the same feelings about Dream's subordinates like the guy with the pumpkin head. But it's been a long time since I read it. (And the impressions I have are largely overshadowed by Pete Milligan's "Shade The Changing Man," which ran roughly simultaneously.)
You don't like the road trip Dream and Delirium take to track down Destruction?
The whole "search for Destruction" thing kinda bugged me, since it served to demonstrate once again that Dream's family don't actually do anything; it seems like they're just an arbitrary collection of D-initialed concepts incarnated as a byproduct of human activity. But maybe there was a better explanation that I've since forgotten.
I once wanted to ironically dress as someone-who-dresses-up-as-Gaiman's-death for Halloween, but I thought that was too much irony for one little ankh....
Er, yeah. Perhaps too many layers. :-)
I hadn't thought of the connection, but it is kind of Pottery.
Yah-hah, with maybe a pinch of Philip K. Dick for seasoning. Another example of latter-day Potterism, I'd say, was Vanilla Sky - presumably the Spanish-language original would score higher on the artistic integrity meter, but I was actually pretty happy with the Tom Cruise remake. (On the strength of which I then subjected myself to Minority Report, so they didn't necessarily do me any favors there.)
Did you see Cold Lazarus? That was soooooo boss.
I think we've discussed this before, which means I've probably already mentioned that Cold Lazarus is absolutely fantastic and incredibly moving. God damn, that Dennis Potter...
I take it you've seen Brimstone & Treacle, right? Now that was a strange little piece.
Cameron Diaz dances around in her panties!
I think that's Kirsten Dunst, right? The bobble-headed former child actor who plays Mary Jane in the Spider-Man movies? But otherwise, salient points all. I'd actually heard the tip about the hair colors, and it is indeed very helpful.
Tim was really rather distressed that Frodo had acted so sleazily to get at her
Hardly a showcase of professional ethics. Still, it's an understandable motivation. :-)
But Giles was't in any Angel episodes!
Yeah, and he won't be getting a costume...
Re: I must buy some mints to hide the smell of sulfur
Date: 2004-06-28 07:24 pm (UTC)Somehow I managed to miss that one. And gee, it seemed like the very definition of "appointment viewing"...
Hunh. I actually enjoyed all the family squabbling. It reminded me of Zelazny's Amber royalty, or, better, the Greek gods.
I started to find the Amber siblings tedious after a while, too. Maybe it's just me.
Hunh, I think other than Delirium wanting to find him and maybe a time-is-out-of-joint thing that was about all the plot there was. But Dream guarded his kingdom, didn't he? And they certainly mess around enough in the affairs of mortals....
In that case, I suppose they're just an extra set of gods with a specific mandate to mess with humanity's heads. It seemed like they were meant to be somehow more profound or cosmic or abstract or something, but I guess perhaps not.
Actually, the slapped-togetherness of the forgetting machine or whatever it was called reminded me of Brazil, too (the aggressively cheerfully incompetent plumbers).
Yeah, that was a bit Gilliam-esque, wasn't it? But there was some of the same kind of crummy semi-competence on display in "Being John Malkovich," too. Good point about the Pythonosity of the memory-crawling, too.
I just honestly don't care to watch Tom Cruise at length in much of anything (it's sort of like my Tom Hanks problem; I just don't like looking at them).
Fair enough. Maybe you could check out "Abre Los Ojos" for me, then...
HA, ha ha, oh lord, that was so bad. Ghod that was bad.
Did you know that the American public would rather live in a chaotic world of violence and crime than live with the merest possibility that a single innocent person might one day perhaps be unjustly sentenced to, uh, a long nap? Did you know that Spielberg is a complete frickin' crackhead whose attempts at social commentary are laughably puerile and naive?
Apart from Bladerunner and possibly some bits of Total Recall, Hollywood has done Dick no favors, but they've ripped off his vision consistently (well, so did cyberpunk, so....).
I think they've tended to rip off his plot devices, but generally not the underlying ideas they're meant to embody - the unreliability of our perceptions, the frustration and heartbreak of living in a flawed, imperfect world, all that Gnostic stuff. Every now and then I see a movie that strikes me as similar in spirit to Dick's work, but I can't think of a lot of examples right now... maybe the last couple of David Lynch movies, or that "Wild Palms" miniseries way back when.
I mean, we don't know Martin Taylor is the devil, he's just....diabolical.
And yet he ends up doing some good, however inadvertently. This gets me thinking again about the whole concept of the villain-as-protagonist; if heroes generally protect the status quo against disruption, and the status quo sucks, then doesn't the guy who's trying to shake things up have at least an outside chance of making the world a better place whether he means to or not?
Re: whittled down because of stupid lj comment restrictions
Date: 2004-06-29 07:21 am (UTC)I also liked the first one best... as with King's Dark Tower series, the story starts to seem more mundane once the ground rules are fully established. While we're talking Zelazny, I should also credit Creatures of Light and Darkness as a big influence...
Dick's ideas themselves aren't that striking or noteworthy -- you have precogs, androids (robots), empaths, visions -- it's what he does with them that's extraordinary.
Exactly. They're all stock genre devices, but he used them to make broader points. Comics writer Grant Morrison, and Joss Whedon when he's on top of his game, have a similar knack for imbuing familiar gimmicks with deeper significance. These folks aren't as original and creative as some of their peers, but they have a knack for making good use of the props on hand.
American cinema at this point is great at making technically marvelous movies that LOOK neat, but SAY nothing (and THINK less).
Generally true, but it seems like we've been seeing some improvement of late. I'm not going to try and sell you on the philosophical nuances of Terminator 3 - I thought it was pretty interesting, but maybe I'm imagining things - and Lord knows things like Eternal Sunshine are hardly indicative of a broader trend, but even mainstream multiplex bait like the Spider-Man and Lord of the Rings movies seem smarter and more thoughtful than they would have been five or ten years ago.
Or am I just on crack? Your call. :-)
Hm... Good observations on Do Androids Dream Of Etc., which you clearly remember better than I do, and on Brimstone & Treacle. I'm tickled by this bit...
We've all heard the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions -- how much of that is really true?
Or in this case, is the road to heaven paved with bad ones?
This gets me wondering again about ends and means and morality. Should people by judged by their intentions, or their actions, or the results of these actions? Hookles tells me that Catholicism is pretty clear that you'll be judged by your intentions - what's in your heart, as they say - but as mere mortals, we have neither the ability to see other peoples' motives or to judge the ultimate outcome of their actions. Rather to my surprise, our story in progress seems to be leading to the conclusion that ethical behavior isn't so much about making the right decision, as taking responsibility for the results. Huh.
I'm reminded of Steven King's analysis in DM that the horror story exists to rip apart and then re-establish a status quo
Yeah, that was pretty astute. It's hard to think of cases where the monster is the status quo and the heroes are the disruptors thereof.
It's like that question in the last season of Angel: can you do good better by working within the system and to some extent preserving it or just saying "Fuck it" and pulling down the pillars of the temple?
Yeah, that would have been an interesting subject. Do you have any idea what conclusion they reached? I really couldn't tell.
Actually, Buffy as a hero figure is interesting, because in the conclusion of her series she doesn't either preserve the status quo or totally break it -- she changes it, profoundly and permanently.
True. In theory, it's a pretty clever solution to the inherent paradox of being a subversive agent of patriarchal orthodoxy. But it might have worked better if the final season had depicted Buffy's abilities as an empowering gift, rather than a horrible burden rooted in some kind of demonic gang rape. Sigh.