Chapter Thirty Eight

Caleb's Gift

Tara stood with bare feet on the back porch, the wood still damp from last night's thunderstorm. She had her eyes closed, seeking out the sun through her pink eyelids as thin clouds scuttled across the morning sky. The air smelled glorious, thick with pine resin and tinged with the sea that crashed relentlessly against Morro Rock. She smiled, glad once again of her decision to settle here in Los Osos.

She had woken before Willow this morning, woken by several painful jabs of headache that had since resolved into a low thrum. Willow woke as Tara got up and they exchanged some very pleasant good morning greetings. Tara had been a little anxious about Willow; she hadn't planned on making love to Willow last night, but with the barrier of demon grooves finally gone she could barely contain herself. Willow's greeting had squashed that anxiety quite thoroughly.

Tara stood on the porch and waited for Willow to come downstairs. Two opposing sensations battled for supremacy in her mind. She was thinking of the long cool table, the metal tube in the featureless room. She was remembering the taste of Willow's skin when she swirled her tongue around the coral nipple. Tara worried about the amulet. Ethan would want to do an MRI, but it was clearly out of the question. (Never remove the amulet. Not for bathing, not for sleeping. Not ever.) It simply wouldn't work. Tara thought of the moonlight splashing over Willow's body, casting her in shades of white and black. No metal could go inside the magnetic field of the MRI. The CAT scan, however, just might work. So she asked

(precious lover built with honey in her veins)

Willow to contact Thespia, to ask her a question, and now she waited, her stomach growling in protest of her necessary fast.

Yet it took a little while for Willow to join her on the porch, and Tara relived as much pleasure as she could of the previous night. She considered it a buffer against the bitterness of the day ahead. She didn't open her eyes, even as she heard the sliding door hiss on its track. Willow embraced her from behind, wrapping her arms lightly and carefully about Tara's stomach, resting her chin on Tara's shoulder. Tara placed her hands on Willow's and breathed her in. Willow held her for a few moments, then whispered, "It just has to be touching your skin, and the chain has to remain intact. If the chain is broken, or if it leaves your skin even for the tiniest moment, then..." Her voice trailed off.

"Mmm?" Tara prompted, feeling warm and comfortable, even though her headache had now traveled down her spine, radiating out from her lower back, encapsulating even her aching abdomen. It was with a wry smile that Tara wished for the gremlin pain of pre-Willow days. How soft and slim that pain was compared to now! Tara suddenly realized that she hadn't made the tree for herself for a very long time. She was scared to find out if she actually could. How much of her mental abilities were meditation or magic?

"You'll have to fight Caleb for control of your body," Willow continued, still in a whisper, her voice smooth yet a jolt in her hands displayed her torment.

Tara turned in Willow's arms, clasping her hands around Willow's small waist. It was difficult to be concerned with Caleb at this moment. "I guess we'll have to make sure that doesn't happen," she said, then lightly kissed Willow on her mouth. She rested her head on Willow's shoulder, felt the thin sunlight bathe them both in warmth. She could stay thus forever, couldn't she? How she wished to freeze this moment, delay her entry into that featureless room, her body in repose on the cool table.

But it was just over an hour later she found herself wearing a thin, hospital-issue gown with an equally thin blue housecoat over top. She was sitting in a little cubby next to the imaging unit, and Willow was holding her hand. The technologist, Doug, a young man she didn't know very well and who looked at their joined hands with an odd look, deftly placed an IV lock in her hand. Her stomach roiled in pain and in hunger. She could feel the weight of the amulet on her chest. Willow's hands were soft, and warm.

It was after Doug injected the dye for the scan that Ethan showed up, his hair in disarray, his eyes a little bleary, as if he'd been drinking. "Good morning, Tara, Willow." He kept his eyes deliberately blank, and Tara saw right through it, even as a flush of heat from the dye rippled through her body.

Tara only smiled as Willow replied, "Good morning, Dr. Daniels."

"I'm glad you are here today, Tara," he said softly, and she remembered the pleading look on his face when he had begged her to take a few tests. (I know you can't love me the way I love you but it's tearing me apart to see you like this!) She had told him to wait until after she'd tried a demon, but Willow persuaded her otherwise. She believed that knowledge hurt him a little.

"Now, I know you have the amulet on. Can you take it off for the test?" he was asking.

Tara shook her head. "It always has to be touching my skin. With Willow's help, we'll move it to wrap around my foot while we do the scan," Tara replied.

"You know that Willow is not allowed in the room during the scan," he said, softly, looking at an imaginary speck on the wall.

"I know," Willow said.

He looked at her, at their joined hands, then said, "Willow, you can join Doug and I in the imaging room, all right? You don't have to wait here."

Tara could see it then, his love for her, how it blazed from him like the sun, warming her to her core. She looked back at him, showing her own admiration and respect, and nothing more. She knew he would understand. Soon he would go on as he had in the past, open and flirtatious, with a new girl on his arm at every office party. It's just the way he was.

And Tara wondered where she would be that day he presented a new girl. She would like to imagine that she would be here as well, brown-haired and scar free. But fear had been growing in her, malignant and oozing, and she tried to keep her mind blank as she faced entering that metal tube. Even without sitting on the floor, she attempted some meditation, some way of shielding her from the truth that was coming. Tara knew the scan would show something. It had to. While it was easy to remove herself from the pain, especially in her moments with Willow (and oh last night, with Willow quivering on my fingers, her hands on my breasts, oh!), it always remained. It tainted her every move. It was an undercurrent in the ocean, threatening to rip her under at any moment and drown her.

She hadn't made a tree, not in a long time. She didn't want to find out she couldn't. She didn't want to see if she could. She was afraid of what it would show, her fruit malignant and diseased, the leaves blackening and falling in a night blizzard. How many leaves would be left?

Something had to give. She couldn't bear it much longer. No matter how many pain rooms she built in her mind to house the aches, the tears, the screams, there was never enough. She'd never worked through the pain before. She always had the animals as her sacrifice.

This is what Willow would have been feeling, Tara. Her broken skull, broken rib, vampire bite. Would you have left it to her?

Never. Not just because she was in love with her. Not just because Willow became her only source of light, her only reason to live. And not just because she'd been told to by the goddess Aranaea.

She chose to take it. It was her choice. Save Willow, so Willow can save the world.

From in her meditation, Tara felt Willow squeeze her hand. She looked up and into her girlfriend's eyes. "It's time," Willow said.

Ethan was already in the imaging room. Doug held the door to the CT room open, and she and Willow walked through. The room was dull, painted in industrial yellow, and the bulk of the space was taken by the sliding cold metal table and the massive tube. Tara pulled the amulet out from where it lay; it was warm with her body heat. Tara looked at Doug and said with a clear tone of dismissal, "It's all right, Willow will be out in a minute."

The young man shrugged and left the room. Tara could see Ethan turn aside in the booth; he didn't want to watch. Tara looked at Willow, and when their eyes met there was understanding. They had to be very careful here. Tara grasped the chain of the amulet with her hand, tightened it until the whites of her knuckles showed. She nodded and Willow began to lift the amulet, slowly, over Tara's head until they held it in their hands in front of Tara's body.

Tara sat on the edge of the cool table, then bent over, lifting her knees. With Willow's hands guiding her, Tara wrapped the chain of the amulet two times over her ankle. Before Tara let go, Willow firmly pressed the chain of the amulet into her skin. She continued to hold the amulet to her foot as Tara let go, then Tara lay down on the table, adjusting the headrest. Willow squeezed her ankle, tucked the pendant under Tara's calf and then let go, heaving a small sigh of relief.

"I'll be close," Willow promised, and she took Tara's hand, squeezed it gently, then lifted it to her lips, pressing a kiss on Tara's knuckles. Tara was sharply reminded of Peter Whitney, and she swore she could almost smell his lilies. Willow touched her hair, then bent gracefully at the waist to kiss her, fairylike and soft, on the lips. Tara watched Willow leave, the door clicking with graceless finality, leaving Tara alone in the dark and cool room. Her chest felt incredibly light without the weight of the amulet on it; she could feel it on her foot and it felt odd.

"Okay, Tara, here we go." It was Ethan's voice, not Doug's, and Tara was grateful. She slowed her breathing, closed her eyes, and tried not to move.

"How are you, sweetie?" It was Willow's voice, coming through the small speaker.

"I'm okay," Tara replied, lying to Willow, knowing that Ethan and Doug could also hear every word she said.

"Just try to relax. If you need to talk to us, try not to move. Be as still as you can." It was Doug's voice this time, repeating the obvious to Tara Maclay, RN. She supposed she didn't mind. She began to calm herself, to use the techniques taught for generations by her family. Yet even with her meditation techniques it took some time for her to escape from her body, wracked with pain and torment as it was. Finally she seemed to slide away, her tumultuous thoughts receding, her worries washing away, and for a moment she was still. She wondered how much time was left; she felt she had been in the tube forever.

She would need the recollection of that quiet moment, later.

There she floated, escaping as she could the shackles of her body, even as the machine hummed around her and her body crept slowly upwards. She could imagine their faces, Ethan and Willow, there in the imaging room, watching as sliver by sliver, her body showed up on the scans. She was torn in indecision; would she want something obvious to be found, easily diagnosed and easily dealt with? There was comfort in knowing, even if the news was bad. Or would she prefer to find nothing at all, for it was borrowed pain, Willow's pain, and how could it show up even with the use of technology? It would work itself out, eventually, because Willow, left as a normal person, would have also healed eventually.

You know better.

The thought paralyzed her. It raced on ahead of her.

When you looked, that very first day, when you brought her the tree, you knew she was dying. She wouldn't heal, Tara. I would have taken her first.

Oh, god no. Not here!

You remember why, don't you, you filthy little whore? It was me. I vowed to consume her, just as I consume you. I vowed to feed on her, leave her broken and useless.

Tara meditated, trying to flee the insidious voice that she heard only in her mind. It was an oily voice, and it covered her with a thin layer of filth and despair.

The joke is on you, this time. In three days, you'll be dancing with your mother in hell, and I will rule the world.

Tara felt him pulling on her, trying to get her to faint, but something stopped him this time. As she felt him tug she began to recollect, with loving detail, every moment of her heart-stopping encounter with Willow this very early morning. Her red hair spilling over the pillow. The moonlight caressing her skin. Her neck arching back as Tara slid her hand down her body. Her hands reaching up to touch Tara's healed breasts for the first time. And, and...

And her slippery walls convulsing on Tara's fingers, her hips arching in delight, her breasts heaving with her panted breath...

NO!

Tara had a seizure.

First, she smelled Peter Whitney's lilies, mixed with Willow's nectar. Her head expanded from within, and she hurtled into unconsciousness, a hole deeper and blacker than any before, where not even Caleb waited for her.

Was it eleven minutes she stayed in that abyss? The time was hard to reconcile. For Tara the darkness was merely a moment, and she was entranced by the depth of it, the feeling of it warm and close on her skin. It wasn't a terrifying dark, and that puzzled the woman/girl/child that sat within, remembering the close awful dark spaces of her youth like nails in a coffin. Instead the dark was familiar, thick and warm like hot chocolate and feathered with angel wings. It filled her with hope. Caleb could not touch her here. And she wondered if this is what death felt like.

Her peace was shaken as she came back to the world, where lights were shone in her eyes and something thick that was between her teeth was removed. She could hear the voices, frantic, above her and though they spoke English, she could not evince enough interest to understand them. Tara merely sought the one face that mattered most, and found it at the foot of her long cool table. Willow stood there, her face pale and frightened, holding Tara's ankle and the coiled amulet in her warm hands.

A look passed between them, keeping the worried voices at bay. Tara, emerging from the seizure as a moth from a chrysalis, she wrapped the memory of those dark feathered wings around her and locked them in place with the love she saw in Willow's eyes. She continued to look only at Willow, even as Ethan and Doug pulled her from the CT table, Ethan carrying her in his arms to a hastily brought gurney, laying her upon it.

Willow still held her foot, pressing the amulet softly into Tara's skin.

Into a recovery room, the pale curtains drawn about her bed, the men still fussing over her. Willow sat at her side and now there were tears in her eyes as she looked upon Tara. A final pat over the amulet, tucking the pendant again under Tara's calf, and Willow drew a blanket over her, leaving her hands untucked, one pale arm crossing over her chest, her other hand firm in Willow's.

There were tears in Willow's eyes.

Tara felt tired; a bone-sapping weariness that left her feeling thick and stupid. She longed to return to the cocoon of unconsciousness, to feel those dark feathery wings on her again. Yet she felt the warmth of Willow's hand, and the emerald cut eyes didn't look away from her. Willow's eyelashes were dark and wet, saline drops hanging delicately from them, rainbows of God's promise to everyone but her. With her softened breath, Tara yearned to sink into Willow, to find out what truth Willow had witnessed to bring her such exquisite tears.

It would take only a moment. She was touching Willow even now. Would Willow even notice if Tara took a peek?

(I'd never look without asking. Tara, I never would.)

Would Tara do less?

No.

So she touched Willow's palm, and merely wondered if the source of Willow's pain was in the imaging booth where her lover had stood sentinel. Watching and waiting, as slices of Tara's body were shown in shades of grey, unable to do anything but watch, and wait. How did Willow keep the injustice of it all from driving her mad?

Tara slept, and wished that warm body was slumbering next to her. It wasn't a very deep sleep, as she felt peripherally aware of the room and everyone in it. She could hear herself softly snoring, she could hear a low buzz of noise from the voices in the room, pitched quiet. She chose not to open her eyes, but let herself doze, dipping in and out of the warm feathery depths until time had no more meaning.

When she finally began her slow ascent to consciousness, Tara was aware that the atmosphere in the room had changed. The room was dark, and Willow still held her hand. The back of Tara's palm was wet. The only light came from the light box, and it was mostly covered with gray on gray scans. Were her two benefactors arguing just moments ago?

Tara opened her eyes, glad of the darkness. She could see Willow's head swivel to look at her. Tara opened her mouth and said the one thing that had come into her mind during the intervening hours of mind-twilight. "The world delights in the merry-go-round of blame, Willow. Don't you get on it, too. The choice was mine, and mine completely."

She could not have anticipated that her words would completely unhinge Willow. A low sob ripped from Willow's throat, tears began streaking down her face in earnest, and as she cried, she laid her head on Tara's chest. With her free hand, Tara stroked Willow's fine red hair, touching the tips of Willow's ears, running her fingers on her neck. Willow quivered under her touch, and continued to hiccup and sob.

It was not the only sound in the room. Backlit by the light box, Ethan stood half-veiled in shadow, his face disappointed and angry. As he noticed her eyes on him, he roughly turned away, balling his hands into fists, choking back tears of his own. He stood with his broad back to her, his wavy brown hair black in the darkness of the room. Tara felt the weight of Willow's head on her, wet warmth from her tears soaking through the thin hospital sheet, her spine trembling with her heaving breath.

Tara finally looked at the light box. The scans showed her brain.

She felt the agony rip upward through her stomach and heart with a heated force. Tara decided she hated Aranaea. She felt the weight of Willow's head on her, even as she looked at her brain. There was no more time. No dreams of backyard-Willow with tangy tomato plants and sunshine, belly big. Tara finally understood the true nature of Caleb's gift.

It was a shadow.