Chapter Seventeen
Flesh Prison
Wakefulness eluded Tara for a long time. She struggled in the blanket that Ethan had laid on her, her muscles twitching and jerking as she witnessed the land gone mad, seeing all the hordes of hell following Caleb, his minions slavering over the taste of new power on their tongues and exulting in the fire and brimstone of Caleb's wake. The sleep held her thickly, and it was long minutes before she finally was able to force her eyes open. She shut them again almost immediately; waking up had put her back in contact with her body, and her body was royally ticked off.
So Tara lay there with her eyes closed, and felt the spokes of the amulet poke her breasts, and smelled the faint antiseptic smell of the hospice, and listened to Willow's gentle breathing in the bed next to her. With her eyes shut she could still see the horrifying images of her dream, and she softly groaned aloud, knowing what she had to do next. It wasn't a mere dream, Tara, it was a prophecy, and it must be written down. Steeling herself against the pain that cracked through her like a shot from a rifle, Tara sat up and carefully rubbed her eyes. Her whole body throbbed in pain, yet she felt a little better for the sleep; her head was clear and her duty obvious.
Dim lights from the hallway softly illuminated the room, and Tara lit her watch to see what time it was, shocked to discover it was two in the morning. No matter. Do what must be done, first, then worry about the rest. Tara tucked her chocolate brown hair behind her ears and very slowly got up from the couch, shuffling a bit in her socks, going straight for the slender redhead sleeping so very delicately. Tara lifted her hand and ran her finger softly along the scar down Willow's cheek, then she carefully tucked Willow's hair away from her eyes. Some part of her yearned for Willow's eyes to open at her touch, but she knew it was unlikely. Coming out a coma took days, weeks even, and she couldn't force it.
Couldn't she? An amazing idea began to form in Tara's mind, but she skirted it, fearing it would pop like a bubble if she examined it too closely. She let it percolate back there, this tremendous idea that could bring Willow out of her coma, and sat stroking Willow's hair.
The dream, Tara. Tara sighed and shuffled to her purse, wincing at every step. She pulled out a dog-eared notepad and a pen, then sat herself again on the brown couch, only content if she could keep Willow constantly in her sight. Flipping to the first available page, she began to write. And though she didn't remember much about what had happened in the earlier portion of the dream, she remembered that she saw Donny and her mother and her father, and that Caleb had told her over and over that she wouldn't be able to trust them. But then later, with Willow, and Tara's pen faltered. She hated to write it down, to relive the horror of Willow's calculated cold betrayal, but could it only have been Caleb messing with her mind? Deep down, she knew she was Willow's angel, but that only meant she was here to perform a mission from the gods. She was an attendant, a guardian
(a nurse)
and no more. It could be possible for Willow to betray her like that. How much of what Caleb had shown her was true prophecy, and how much was false?
Tara finally finished writing down her thoughts and impressions, her head throbbing and her entire body aching with a malaise so deep she felt nauseous. She got up again from the couch and took out the clipboard with Willow's vitals, surprised to see a note there from John, telling her to visit the nurse's station when she woke. She quickly cast her practiced eye down the list of vitals, satisfied that Willow was doing well. And as much as she knew she should go talk to John, all Tara wanted to do was curl up beside Willow's body, and rest her head on Willow's shoulder, and lay her hand on Willow's stomach, and fall asleep once more.
No, Tara. Never. Don't even think it. You have a job to do, so do it. Be a nurse, Tara. Only a nurse.
Tara shambled out of Willow's room like a zombie, stopping briefly at the washroom to use the facility and to splash water on her face, hoping it would help wake her. She eventually made her way to the nurse's station, where John was reading through some paperwork. "Hi, John," Tara said, smiling and then yawning.
John quirked a smile back at her. "So, you're up," he said. "Ethan left a note for you." He held out a folded piece of paper, and Tara took it and immediately turned back around to return to Willow's room. "Tara, are you all right?" she heard John ask, so she returned her gaze to his.
"I'm fine, really," she said.
"You look terrible," John admitted.
"Gee thanks," Tara quipped. "I'm still prettier than you."
John chuckled. "Take care of yourself, okay?" he asked, getting serious again. "I'm looking after Willow tonight. You should go home and sleep the rest of the night in your own bed, not that sorry excuse of a couch."
"I'll take it under advisement," Tara replied, smiling and yawning again. He waved his hand at her in dismissal, smiling back at her, and she started to walk down the hallway, opening the piece of paper.
"Tara," it said. "I don't know when you will wake up, so I've left this note with John. I want you to go home and take care of those rabbits, okay? And then I want you to take tomorrow off. I've got April coming in for you. Sheila and Ira Rosenberg got delayed in their travel, so they won't be coming until Wednesday. Under no circumstances are you to do any wound work tonight or tomorrow. Go home and rest, you've still got a long haul ahead of you. And I know what you're thinking. We'll phone you the minute Willow wakes up, if she happens to wake while you are gone." There was a big blank space, then the words, "GO HOME!" written next to a smiley face, with Ethan's loopy signature on the bottom.
Tara smiled through the rippling shocks of pain that continued to traumatize her system. While it was true that taking Willow's injury did not equal getting that same injury (or her own head and rib would now be broken), the same injury nestled somewhere deeper inside her, in her organs, in her blood, even in her bones. And she could definitely feel it now, and knew that there was dried blood on the amulet of Thespia from her weeping
(demon claws, demon tears)
chest wound. So, yes, Ethan sir, it will be home, rabbits, bath, and bed.
But she couldn't leave without spending a little more time with Willow, so she sat at her girl's bedside and held her hand. Willow's knuckles were still abraded; Tara hadn't healed them, not with other and far worse injuries to deal with. And though Tara knew she shouldn't, she couldn't get into this habit because Willow was about to wake, and she was a nurse, only a nurse, she still took that hand gently in her palm, and touched the scrapes lightly with her softly questing fingers, and brought it up to her lips and kissed it, allowing a few tears to fall. The romantic in her would have had Willow wake at that point, open her eyes in undying devotion, and softly verbalize her gratitude for her nurse, but that didn't happen. That was Hollywood, not real life. No Hollywood here.
Tara finally left the hospice near three in the morning. The sky was black, the air was clean with a refreshing tang of ocean and pine, and Tara breathed slowly and deeply of it, careful of her wounded chest. The streets of Los Osos were asleep, and she encountered no one else on the roads on the short drive home.
Just as Ethan had promised, Tara found the two rabbits in a cage in her covered porch; they were both large and sleeping, but woke as Tara jostled the cage to bring them into the house. As she took the cage in her hands she was filled with an immeasurable amount of pride; she was finally growing up. She was taking an animal without Donny forcing her to. Swift on the heels of that realization came another: it was because of Willow. She would never have grown like this had it not been for her. That comatose redhead in the hospice had turned Tara's life upside down, had brought her into new powers, new depths of love and anguish, and she wasn't even awake to know it. And when she was awake? She still wouldn't know. Tara would be only a nurse to her. A nurse. A nurse. Nothing else.
And it was enough. Just barely enough for Tara to have given up her own hopes and dreams. Her own life. The words of Aranaea always came back to haunt her, "My dearest and most precious child, this time you will be the rabbit, you are my sacrifice to save the world. You are the lamb."
Tara unlocked the door and pushed herself and the cage through. She may have to be a nurse at the hospice, but here in her comfortable home she could fantasize all she wanted, and she mentally vowed to do so during her bath. It would be torture, to dream of unattainable things
(like Willow joining me in the bathtub)
but it would be better than the alternative, which was no dreaming at all.
Tara set down the cage by her abraded paisley chair and shuffled into the kitchen for a cup of instant soup. Once she had the steaming concoction in hand, she returned to the chair and sat down heavily. Blowing on her soup to cool it, she set it aside on a table and opened the cage, drawing out a rabbit.
The rabbit struggled briefly in her soft yet firm grip, then settled down as Tara laid it on her lap and stroked it lovingly. It had soft grey fur and inquisitive eyes, and it's claws were untrimmed and sharp. It laid it's ears down along the length of its back and seemed to enjoy Tara's caresses. And for a moment, she couldn't do it, she couldn't murder this rabbit, no matter how gently, how carefully. So she forced herself to think of Willow, of her duty to heal her, her injunction by the gods themselves, it must be done and only she could do it. The rabbit, this poor defenceless rabbit, had to be the sacrifice. For now.
So Tara closed her eyes, and breathed softly, and felt the fur against her fingers. She formed in her mind her own image; that of an apple tree, heavily laden with luscious fruit, free for the taking (though no one had taken any yet), glorious above all other trees. With a little push, she sent it deeper inside herself.
Oh my god
It was just like watching the horrific sped-up version of her mother's wilting, seeing her apple tree get blasted by disease, the leaves turning from green to twisted black, endlessly falling to litter the ground with vileness. Even the bark on her tree turned ashen grey under the ferocious onslaught of Willow's pain. Even as Tara saw it her spirit wilted as well, and she desperately forced back a wave of despair. The rabbit, that's why I have the rabbit. Only once in her life had it ever been like this, the night she had taken the cow at Donny's insistence, and she wondered if even two rabbits would be enough.
Tara steeled herself. If not, she'd get another cow. A horse. A buffalo. A demon. Whatever it took.
(It's all for Willow)
Tara sharply inhaled, then exhaled as she drew out the thin streams of tar, the dread purple stain, sending them swiftly to the barrier of her fingers. Then, a little push, a little poke, and...
and...
There was a wall.
And there was a jubilant whisper in her mind. "I am the First," the voice said, and she recognized it, and was sore afraid. And the fear threatened to crumble her, to enslave her, but she only thought of Willow, of Willow's warm breath against her cheek, of her hands that had clutched her so desperately, of her lips...
So Tara pushed harder, forming the streams of tar into battering rams, and with them she pummelled the vast blank wall of her fingers. Still nothing. So she visualized deeper, and formed the pain, the purple, into the vast battering ram known as Grond, with sleek wolf's head and fire in it's maw, built for the destruction of Gondor. And with it she assaulted the wall once more, yet her efforts did not leave a single mark.
This was no mere wall. It was a blockade of blackness, a seamless endless barrier built of ravaging hate and anchored in despair. It was immovable, it was permanent, and it encompassed Tara completely.
And her flesh was her prison, and she let forth a terrible howl of despair, and ripped her fingers from the rabbit, and dissolved into fresh tears of anguish and hysteria. Tara remembered her dream then, and the malevolent glee Caleb had in his voice when he had said, "The rules have changed, sweetheart."
He knew.
Gods, he knew!
(What else in that dream is true?)
With trembling hands, Tara shoved the still-breathing, thriving body of the rabbit back into the cage. Fresh horror struck her
(I'm dying)
and she retched. Stumbling to the phone, she disregarded the fact it was just past three in the morning and dialled Ethan's number.
His voice was thick with sleep, but he sounded alert. "What's wrong, Tara?" he asked.
She cried for long minutes, hiccupping and gasping in her grief, knowing that Ethan was only getting more and more concerned, but unable to stop. Finally she simply asked, "Ethan, can you come? Please?"
"Are you home?"
"Yes."
"I'll be right there." She heard the phone click, but she held the receiver in her cold hands until the phone began beeping discordantly, and only then remembered to hang it back up. Tara shuffled back to her living room, looking at the books, the mini-lights, her posters, anything to keep her from thinking of the awful consequences. Yet the true horror of her situation kept crawling in her mouth like bile, and with a fresh bout of sobbing she recalled her earlier prophetic dream when she first met Willow as a goddess. In the dream she had taken the tar from Willow, the dreaded purple stain, had satiated herself to death on it.
And it was payment enough for Tara, to see her beloved once again at peace, even though she herself was inundated with the dreaded purple stain, and could verily feel the weakening beats of her steadfast heart.
Hadn't her mother warned, "For the love of this woman, you will surely die?"
("You took too much, Tara," her mother had said. "You took it, and you can't give it away.")
Tara had the door open as soon as she saw his truck come down her street some fifteen minutes later. He bustled into her home, shutting the door behind him, veered around the rabbit cage and drew his arm about her trembling shoulders. She shuddered against him, burrowing into the warm bulk of his body and allowed him to usher her back into the living room. "Tara, please tell me," he said, a note of desperation in his voice.
"I couldn't," she started, then sobbed some more, forcing him to wait. "I couldn't use the rabbit," she finally said, her eyes shut, leaning against him.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "It didn't work? The magic didn't work?" Tara nodded against his shoulder. "What do we do?" he asked, that note of desperation in his voice becoming a symphony of worry.
Tara looked up at him, at his honest and earnest face, and she willed herself to say the next words. "Can I try to take some of your life-force, Ethan? To heal my face? I need to know how far this curse extends."
She was close enough to see his Adam's apple bob as he gulped once, a little nervously, but then he grinned falsely and said, "Of course. What do I do?"
"Just sit there," she said, lifting her hands to touch his face. She closed her eyes and sunk into Ethan's body, and it reminded her of Donny, and she was filled with fear. What if she took too much? What if Ethan left her, too? Could she really trust him? She shook her concerns away, lined up a procession of his cells, and brought them to the barrier. Tara took a deep breath, then pulled.
And the procession dashed itself against
(the first)
the adamant wall.
Tara removed her fingers. It was over. Ethan looked into her eyes, and she could see his love there. It was obvious, just as obvious as the tiny gold flecks in his blue irises. She could give him only despair. It seemed that's what she was good at. "Is there anything else you could try?" he asked. "Another animal, a demon even, like what happened in Los Angeles?"
Tara was beyond tears, beyond hope. "Thank you for coming," she said quietly, with a clear tone of dismissal.
"Tara, I..."
"Please go. I'll talk to you soon, I promise. I just have to figure things out," she said, closing her reddened eyes. He nodded, got up from the creaky couch, and silently left her.
In the darkness without, and the darkness within, Tara sat.
"Goddess?" she said aloud.
Nothing.
"Aranaea? Thespia? Maia?"
Nothing.
Sob.
"God of my father?" she croaked. "Can anyone hear me?"
Nothing.
"That's ridiculous," Tara shouted aloud, her voice trembling in her fury. "I just talked to you yesterday, after I defeated Caleb. I talked, and you answered!"
But even as she finished saying the words, she had her answer. Caleb was just settling in back then. In the many hours in between then and now, he had plenty of time to wreak his mischief on her mind, to build that adamant wall. A prison, indeed. She should have known. Willow had been imprisoned just like this. Shouldn't Tara be grateful she's at least conscious? Alive, and living? Not enduring whatever nightmares Caleb had inflicted on defenceless Willow? Yes, Tara, be grateful. You're not dead.
Not yet, at least. With the kind of pain you've been taking, who knows what will happen next?
("You took too much, Tara," her mother said. "You took it, and you can't give it away.")
Tara thought back to the early hours of Sunday morning, when she had returned from Los Angeles and had gone straight to Willow's room. Now, as the same grief rolled through her, she once again asked, her voice trembling in fright and pain, "Willow, can you save me?"
Thousands of miles away, nestled in the green cultivated vales of Devon, England, a coven of witches sat in council. And one of them lifted her head, breaking their vision of Tara's anguish, and tears were streaming down her face. As Althanea recalled Tara's frustration, of hitting the vast blank wall, she was filled with resolve. "We shall do whatever we must to fix this," she vowed, and drew comfort from the murmurings of the others.
"What will you do?" a young witch asked.
"I believe I'm going to America."
