Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. I bow in the direction of California, where Joss lives. Mutant Evils rules! Selat.
Psychomachia
Part Five
The dandelion, bruised and battered, lay on the floor where Buffy had dropped it. It had been trodden on with iron-heeled boots, its stem smashed to a smear--its failing blossom faded from a round happy-face to a wan and dull-silver moon. Its clock had rung out its hour indeed. Buffy had forgotten it. If she had remembered, she would not have cared. She was half-hidden behind the feast-table, in a corner of the empty hall--the only one left behind, now that the Hunt's obscene meal was consumed. Buffy sat propped against a wall, her head listing sideways, her bleary eyes seeing everything, but caring for nothing. Anomie's enchantment imprisoned her still. The little dragon perched on her knee, rustling like a hornet at the door of its nest, ready to sting again.
White angel-feathers strewed the floor, trampled in the mud and filth and blood. Blood smeared the Black Knight's dinner-table, blood spotted the floor, blood splattered the walls, blood was everywhere. The Angel had died slowly, in agony, torn by claws, transfixed by fangs, tormented by the demon knights who were also hungry vampires. They had cast aside every morsel of the good meal laid by the nuns, in their lust to get at the Angel's forbidden flesh. What else should vampires hunger for, more than a living Soul? They had all trooped out in the end, and left the Angel's body sprawled across the bloody table, arms flung out and one leg trailing over the table-edge as if in sleep . . . but this sleep was death.
Buffy had barely noticed, and cared less. Her eyes were open, her mind awake; but she might as well have been in another world. Sometimes she focused on the dragon's pretty wings, and then--vaguely--she smiled a little.
But at last the dragon yawned, fell to grooming its catfish-whiskers with a long, curling, forked tongue; and then pillowed its head on its forefeet and shut its fiery eyes.
Buffy yawned too. She shifted again, and the dragon on her knee opened an eye, disturbed. It spat a tiny red sparkle, rose with a hiss, paced down the length of her leg and came off her foot in an arcing serpentine curve, like a snake pouring over a rock. It settled on the floor, turning itself three times round and curling into a ball that was barely the size of a fist; and slept. Buffy sighed groggily and knuckled her eye-sockets, and then hitched herself away from the tiny sleeping monster. She climbed to her feet and stood leaning face-to the wall, eyes at half-mast, the cool stone soothing on her forehead. Time passed.
The dragon whistled a tiny, breathy snore, steam jetting from its nostrils. Buffy stood in her corner, blankly. The gown of her habit had fallen open with her movement. It was ripped from neckline halfway to the hem. Once her hand wandered upward and patted dazed at her bared throat. Her neck had been ripped too, tattered by savage bites that still slowly bled across her tender skin, for the knights had played with her. She remembered it vaguely, without heat. As if in a dream, she saw their grinning faces, every one the face of Angel. Bestial Angels encircling her. They had fought over her like scavenger hounds--as if they would tear her in two. They had . . .
And now she remembered the Angel in that dire hour, how he had not fought to save himself, but when the vampire knights dragged her to the floor, he had thrown off the adversaries who held him. One of his wings had been half-torn from its socket, and hung limp and bleeding, broken in two different places; a vampire was still fastened like a leech to his throat. But he had summoned the strength to beckon the vampires around Buffy. They had surged off her and onto him--and everything that would have been visited on her, they had done to him instead--and she had been left alone.
Buffy's mouth quivered as she remembered. She even made a tiny sound, because the dragon still slept. Then she turned her face further away from the light, groping back toward apathy.
A woman stepped out of her shadow.
Buffy saw it all, the other woman's face taking form in her shadow, all but cheek to cheek. An eye opening and looking into hers, a huff of breath against her face--and then the woman slid past her and out, brushing against Buffy as she went. She pulled herself loose from the wall like a dream-creature, a wraith. But she was real enough to cast a shadow of her own.
She wore a nun's habit like Buffy's, of the coarsest blanket-cloth, as rough as frieze. Her hair hung in tangles over her face, she had lost her wimple; her feet were as bare as her head, her whole demeanor was a disgrace. She glanced slyly sidelong at Buffy, seeing in Buffy's disordered clothes the mirror of her own estate; and then she grinned, as if well pleased. Everything about her was feral, ferocious, disturbing. A wild-woman look. She raked one hand through her hair, plucked at the bodice of her gown and grimaced. The neckline hung open and one small breast was briefly exposed; then as she paced down the length of the hall, the dress swirled round her legs, getting between her knees and hampering her, and she kicked her skirts out of her way in disgust. Though Buffy did not yet know it, she was the Maid of the Black Book.
Her nostrils flared and she swerved, halfway down the hall. One long step brought her to the dandelion. She bent over double like a stick-figure folding up, plucked it off the floor, put it into her mouth, tasted it, took it out and shook it fiercely in the air. Then she crouched down with knees akimbo and put out a cautious finger to touch an angel-feather lying there. There was a sizzle, and the Maid leapt back with a hiss. She whipped her burned finger into her mouth, and sucked on it.
Around her, the hall continued to transform itself, as it had since the Wild Hunt broke in. It was painting itself with gloom, draping itself with cobwebs of woe, bones underfoot and chill drafts whistling through the holes in the roof. Centipedes rustled in the corners, twining round the carcasses of slain mice. Pigeons hung mummified above, slowly rotating; great spiders scuttled across them. Owls floated there too--but they were the hunted now, not the hunters. Their shadows were hunting them, their own shadows running swiftly behind them. If ever they came too close to floor or wall, their shadows leapt straight up at them, snatched them out of the air and ate them. And, outside, tower was piling atop tower, wall climbing wall, the gargoyles leeringly multiplied, till with a snap from every roof of the dark castle, black banners unfurled and flourished themselves against the gulfs of the night.
The feral Maid paid no attention. She crouched again, low to the floor, angling her body sinuously. The feather at her feet was a shining mote of light. She held the dandelion close over the feather--and it became a letter. By the light of the feather, she bent her head to read, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.
Then she rose with a glitter of sharp teeth. She uttered a shrill cry, a summons.
She came pacing down the length of the hall, and out through the far door. The only light came from the scattered feathers, though it lit everything like many torches. But the Maid, turning her head as she passed Buffy, was built out of blackness, and bars of light slanted across her face like paint upon a surface, an imitation of flesh, grinning.
The nuns came timidly from their hiding-places, drawn by the Maid's voice. They peeped through inconspicuous doorways, ventured around corners, full of fear. Their habits were smudged with dust and cobwebs, there were tear-tracks on their innocent faces. One of them--it was Flibbertigibbet--bent to pick up a fallen feather. She kissed it, cradled it against her cheek, wept to see it so bedraggled. She hurried across to the dandelion-letter, snatched it up and held it in the feather's light. Reading it, she began to chant.
"Make me a torch at my true love's heart; I carry a flame for a summer girl's sake. Of soul and of shadow in equal part Is the black hollow pit where she dwells in her dark; Is the coal in my chest where I kindled the spark . . ."
Around her, other nuns busied themselves gathering feathers like treasure into their skirts. The Maid came back, chivying a last few sisters before her--leaping and dancing behind them, clapping her hands. With their sisters, their frail voices rising one by one, the newcomers joined in the song.
"--Let her fight me with blows, let her fight me with tears-- I have waited for her for a hundred long years. "
At last they were all singing in rhymed couplets, with Flibbertigibbet calling and the rest answering each couplet, a sighing of wind answered by a sough of leaves in a wood.
"She was made for the hunt by old men full of lies." "Let her quarry delight in the glance of her eyes. " "Let them fall for her lures where she waits in her bed--" "On the bones of her woes and old lovers long dead." "Or, if they fear her teeth, let them leave me the fight." "Mine the gold in the gleam of her smile in the night ."
Buffy heard them vaguely. Who were they singing about?
Suddenly all the nuns made a concerted rush toward the feast-table. Their chant broke off. They were praying aloud, moaning, wringing their hands. Follysweetkiss fell over in a faint, and two others held her up, clasping her in their arms. It was the dead Angel they were mourning, of course. It was many long moments before the Maid lost her patience and sprang at them, scattering them; then they returned to their song.
"She'll fight me with mazes and memories of heaven--" "Threadbare will and fool's-gold are the gifts I have given. " "She'll fight with her ghosts, fling back all that I gave--" "Once I gave her myself in the warmth of the grave." "She'll fight with all love, with her life, with each friend--" "But I'll give her the light though I burn in the end."
Buffy pressed her cheek along the wall, enjoying the cool masonry against her hot skin. The hall swam in and out of focus, now that the dragon of anomie was a little distance away. And she saw . . . a blackness that seethed in every corner, but the Angel's feathers were white stars driving it back. The notes of the nuns' song were swords against the night. But shadows gathered. The stones underfoot were cracked with faces, beginning to yawn their jaws open and glare with mouse-hole eyes. A spider ran over her hand and along the wall, and a crack snapped shut on it like a hungry mouth; its waving legs stuck out, then were drawn inward. But she did not recoil, did not care.
She no longer saw the darkling Maid, who had retreated somewhere into the gloom.
She listened to the song.
"I have suffered her fists and the wrath of her fear." "I have hung on the cross of my madness for her. " "As her wheel turned, I bled. In her despair, I fell--" "I have wept in her chains at the threshold of hell."
Buffy's face scrunched with a sudden misery. Feeling rushed back through her limbs, warmth to her frozen heart. Her mouth gaped open and a whisper of a sob shook her.
The end of the song struck her like molten tears.
"I will burn her grave clean with my soul's deep desire." "And at the end of days, I will give the girl fire."
Buffy wailed aloud.
The dragon slitted one drowsy eye open, and she sprang at it, galvanized into action. As she did, the Maid came charging--charging down the length of the hall, hair flying, deadly silent though Buffy screamed on and on--and Buffy reached the little dragon first, snatched it up like a toy and hugged it desperately to her. It yielded to her yearning hands, snuggled in her breast like a lover. The Maid reached them a heartbeat later. They struggled--the Maid wielded a snowy feather like a razor-blade, burning and slashing her own fingers as she held it--but Buffy fought her insanely, fighting to keep hold of the dragon. And the dragon, snaking through their joined hands, bit and clawed and breathed thin jets of fire at the Maid.
The scourge of the angel-feather meant nothing to Buffy, did not hurt her. But it hurt the Maid desperately, till tears streamed from her eyes; as for the dragon, it feared the feather and was always twisting away from its touch.
The Maid had to knock Buffy down and almost break her arm, before Buffy let her at the dragon.
She sank the shaft of the feather into the scaley little monster's heart. At this, Buffy in her delirium burst into a passion of keening cries, and slumped to the floor with conquered Anomie cradled against her heart.
The Maid staggered away, bleeding from many wounds and bone-deep burns inflicted by the blessed feather. Her eyes had been blacked by Buffy's fists, her bruises were beyond count. A knot of anguished nuns enfolded her, supporting her as she reeled. The looks they cast Buffy were not charitable. Accusing, even. They whisked their skirts away from her as they passed. At this, Buffy cowered and her voice came small and meek: "Let's not fight ourselves . . . oh, I'm so tired . . ."
"Your conscience should be wringing you!" hissed Fair Play at her.
She still clutched the dragon, throttling it in her hold.
The Maid rose, put her helpers aside, came to Buffy and stood over her while Buffy cowered. But at she did, when at last she stooped, was to kiss Buffy's forehead like a mother.
"What do I have to do," said Buffy in that small timid tone.
The Maid's jaws yawned open and the sound of her voice shocked Buffy, because it seemed strange to her that the Maid would talk, could talk. And her tone was as strange as the fact that she spoke. Her words were like echoes, hollow. "I cannot bear him." Her finger pointed at Buffy. "You must do it."
Cringing, Buffy set down the dragon, hurried past her and over to the table. The dead Angel shone there upon the rude trestle-boards. She took the corpse by the wrist and opposite arm, and rolled it over, accepting its weight across her bowed shoulders; she rose with the Angel upon her back. It was very heavy and its limp arm flopped over to dangle past her waist--for she was small, and the Angel was long-limbed and big--hand swaying to and fro. Carrying the Angel, she fell in behind the Maid and followed her.
The nuns flocked around them. The Maid waved at the nuns, and they all began to sing again.
"Make me a torch at my true love's heart." "I carry a flame for a summer girl's sake--"
In the whirling words of the song, Buffy became snared and swept away resistless, herself a feather shed into the abyss.
It seemed to Buffy they had been walking forever and all of existence was whirling around her, no end and no destination in sight.
Then they arrived; and all she saw was sky and world. Except it wasn't. What she took for trees, grasslands, blossomfields was--when she looked straight at any one thing--completely different, and yet she was convinced that it was what she took it for. She saw the outdoors. No, she was indoors, in the library of the nunnery where she had first run into Angel in his knight's armor. She knew she was in the library. But she felt as if she was standing unprotected upon earth's bones and under sky. The rushes beneath her feet were fresh as living grass. The pillars went up and met above like trunks of trees. Their boughs interlaced, leaved with books in shelves, and the scent of the library was the fragrance of a forest.
There was the round window overhead, the sunshine falling in its gold wedding-ring, the circular table whose wood was worked with a zodiacal wheel. It was the library, yet still something else.
The Maid was circling the library, with the bold steps of a doe in a coppice. She rustled the books as she passed. She seemed to bring the wind along. She beckoned Buffy onward, and Buffy, bent beneath her angelic burden, followed the Maid and then gladly shrugged off the weight on her back. It was only then that she noticed--really noticed--the light streaming down from the eyot window high above. "It's day again," she said stupidly.
"This is your world of day."
"There's the sun! It's been so long--"
"Day will not last," said the Maid behind her. "The black night will come."
"The Black Knight? Can he even get here?"
"You opened the doors, night will come through. Now is the time," said the Maid, "to reach for help. You must summon the magician."
The dead Angel lay on the big table, among illuminated manuscripts whose pages were flowered with poetry. The library lived around him, he was the only dead thing there. There were bits of blue like daytime sky under the spread fingers of his limp hand--they were ink on black-and-gold capitals, interwoven with vine-leaves. And there were open books like windows to stormy midnights, silvered summer dawns and azure horizons. His open eyes, dull as dry river-pebbles, were less like life than those books. Buffy stole a guilty look at him, and with this strange double knowledge, realized how he resembled her own vampire Angel.
Every strength and beauty that had been her Angel's, was there in that maimed face. No wonder she recognized him.
She wanted to kiss him and bring him back to life, but perhaps that only worked in Spike's case.
"It's not so easy." That was the Maid again. Buffy jumped. "Not so easy," the Maid repeated. All the nuns had flocked behind her like ewe-lambs and stood close around, gazing every which way as if they had never seen books before in their lives. Being so near, Buffy couldn't help but notice the strangest thing. The Maid had spoken, but without moving her lips in more than a sigh. It was the nuns, all talking in chorus, who gave her that echo-voice.
And Buffy realized that the Maid herself, standing in the full light of the sun streaming down, had thinned to transparency--little more than a shadow, a shade cast by the close-ranked nuns behind her. Their shadow, animated with their voices. Or was it the other way around? Were the nuns nothing but shadows cast by the mysterious Maid? Whose features, now that Buffy peered at her, were familiar. And the voices of the nuns were familiar too, oddly so, all like one voice. Just as their expressions all suddenly reminded Buffy of her own face in a mirror.
Whose shadow was that--the Maid? It was Buffy who stood between the Maid and the light above.
She began to suspect a dreadful truth--that she was alone in the room. Just herself, and the dead man.
"I know what you are," she blurted.
"Do you?" said the manifold voice.
"Yes, I do! You're not like my nuns. You came from outside me, you're what makes me strong for the fight. But you're not me."
"I rise from your heart," said the voice of the shadow instantly, "from within you, and without you, I'm nothing. Smoke and madness. The loneliness behind the locked doors of a empty room. You are the hands that make me strong."
"Then tell me what you are," Buffy commanded.
The Maid appeared to reflect, and then began, with an air of explanation, "There was a girl who swallowed a dragon." Buffy looked at her indignantly, and she tried another tack: "There were two knights and they ate a monster."
"That so? Then why're you the maid of the 'black book', huh?"
"Aren't we all characters in a story?" said the voice. "In your story, Buffy." The Maid leaned forward and fixed Buffy with a compelling glance. And Buffy was reminded of another time, when she had laid in a graveyard, in the cradle of a book, and poured out her whole story . . . secure in the knowledge that only a dead man could hear. This was like that time, yes. She was convinced of it now. There was no one here but herself and the dead Angel.
"Tell me about this magician, then," she commanded.
"I am gravely wounded." The Maid tottered, seemed almost to faint. "We can't help you any longer, I'm too weak and they're--" Here she looked scornfully at the nuns. "Divided," she said with a shrug. "You're weak, little Slayer. Divided. Must enfold. Make yourselves one. Only in the enfolding is there true power, here--that's why will is a magician, why you must summon Will. Summon him now, or else--."
"What? You telling me the future, here?"
"You must summon him! Sing him to you with a poem."
"I think I can remember that song they all sang," Buffy began, doubtfully. "Make me a torch at, at my true love's heart--"
"No! That song was for you, not for him, other songs are what will fetch him to you. Call him. You need his help."
"Uh, why?"
"Divide," said the multiple voices of the nuns, silvery-dark. "In this place you have no power until you are undivided. You sinned!" The words were a deafening chorus, all the nuns baying--they had gathered in a tight-packed knot, their beady eyes glaring. While the Maid bared her teeth, and the myriad of voices clamored and chattered. "You sinned in the garden. Sinned again with the Angel. Now you must pay. A long road ahead. Go forth, Buffy, leave this house, your mother's house, go out and follow your road. Go questing. Fight the giant and the dragon, the monster that waits beneath the bridge, the tempest ogre and the Other Dragon. Do all this, and you will arrive at the place of choice. Give up the man, give up the man--"
"Who? But he's dead," Buffy protested, shrinking away. "I don't even want him. Really don't like dead guys--"
"The Black Knight is coming, his shadows run before him."
"But this is my world--the day world--he can't come here!"
"Too late, Buffy. I can't help you anymore. I can guide you," the Maid looked down, "but I'm nothing here. In the end, you're the only thing you'll have."
It was true, there were shadows creeping round the edges of the bright sunny chamber, sending their long fingers up the walls and pulling at the books. Buffy could see leather-bound manuscripts inching and jittering. Soon they would begin to fall in avalanches. She looked at the round eye of the window directly above, and saw day dim to nightfall in a single blink. The chamber became dark. The faces of the nuns were becoming blurs, and the Maid was more like a shadow every instant. "What do I have to do?" Buffy cried.
The voices echoed all around her, a silvery din: "Read in my book, read in my book, read in my book, read in my book--"
"Won't you help me?"
"I can do this one last thing," said the voice, fading. The nuns were gone now and only the Maid herself, now clearly Buffy's own shadow, could be seen. Buffy found herself turning with her shadow, bowing over the dead Angel on the table. She bent like a puppet, and her shadow bent with her and pressed a kiss to the Angel's cold mouth--then tattered away to nothing.
Then Buffy was alone in the library.
A book was beneath her hand; she lifted it in a hurry and looked underneath it at the shadow it cast. The light was almost entirely gone now. "Read my book?" Was that what the Maid wanted her to do? She opened the book, found nothing but writing in it. Straining to see, she began to read the page.
Each grain of Sand, Every Stone on the Land, Each rock and each hill, Each fountain and rill, Each herb and each tree, Mountain, hill, earth and sea, Cloud, Meteor and Star, Are Men Seen Afar.
But there was no life in the words. The ink lay dead on the page, the illumination wan and dull--no magic there. Buffy's hands shook as she frantically leafed back and forth, searching for the right poem. But no matter which page she tried, the magic eluded her.
Winter wakens all my care; Now these leaves waxeth bare; Oft I sigh, and I mourn sore When it comes to my thought Of the world's joy how it all goes into nought.
"It's wrong, all wrong! Is this even the right book?"
Then with a gasp she turned the whole book over, holding it upside-down above the tabletop, and at last she knew she had gotten it right. She ignored the book then. She craned past it, and read the writing on the pages of its shadow--and the words leaped forth and engulfed her.
In our life's blissful rebirth Wrong was wrought with woman's plight-- Mother Kynde now sets it right. Then you laughed, but now you weep Your woe awakes, that once did sleep Childing-pine shall pinch you deep: Praise the one who paid your price.
That was right, she had come back from the grave! Been reborn on the pyre of Sunnydale, without suffering birth-pangs . . . only, it was Spike who had paid the price. He had paid it with his pain, and burning death.
Thy love's sun uprising Was wondrous like birthing: Birth and death are not unlike. For, as gleam glides through glass, Of your kisses he is born And through the coffin, unbroken, shall glow.
At this, the whole library--the whole darkening world--became as a shadow to Buffy, and was banished like a shadow, swept away by a flood of sunlight.
She tumbled into that summer land again. Oh, how the tapestries shimmered into flower and grass, and all the shelves transformed to fruiting trees. And the sunshine beat down on her head and shoulders, warm. They were out of the library, now. The books blew around her, mere leaves; the zodiac table was a boulder enlivened with lichen . . . and the Angel upon it shuddered in every limb--shuddering off his death, shedding feathers and maimed wings--eyes opening, one hand faltering to touch where the Maid had kissed. Transformed. Angel. It was Angel. She knew it by the silver amulet around his neck. He sat up, visibly breathing, alive, and said, "Buffy?"
It was neither midnight nor noon, but mid-morning. They were on a sunny hillside, in a world of living green. She leaned both hands against the rough surface of the boulder, her hair blowing in the breeze, and looked across Angel at the man who stood opposite: the magician, Spike.
They were all together at last: she, Spike, and Angel.
To be continued.