NB: Please mind note 2 RE. tense ****ft - Scene with Mack and Willow in
Mack's basement office is offset with indent. I hope it doesn't post all
funky...
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THE COVEN
The rise of the greatest Seeyo in History prior to the Natural
re-situation
of Humanity in the Cosmic.
By Binky (binky29AToptonline.net)
Description: Uber. Science Fiction. Mid-21st century.
Spoilers: None. This is 100 percent AU/uber
Pairings: Willow/Other, Willow/Tara.
Rating: Mature
Summary: A woman from the mysterious organization The Coven appears in
Sunnydale to help eight-year-old Willow Rosenberg unlock her latent powers
Warnings: Violence, strong language, moderate to graphic ***ual
language/situations, character death
Feedback: Yes, please, including criticism (the gentle kind)
Distribution: Please email before copying/printing/archiving.
Note 1: *text* denotes italics
Note 2: Alt/memory scene denoted by five-space indent
Tara and Willow and other characters from the television show *Buffy the
Vampire Slayer* and *Angel* were created by Joss Whedon.
--------------------------------------------------
Prologue: Witch Maclay
Part 4
--------------------------------------------------
*Two and a half months later.*
Xander sighed and unconsciously picked at the small dots of the strawberry
scab on his forearm-three weeks old, from when Connor pushed him to the
pavement after school as the latest of the ongoing payback for the
incident
over two months ago. Will was late again.
She was probably hanging out with Mack, as she seemed to do more and more
these days, helping out with her mysterious projects, or if not, in the
library where she lost track of time buried in the dusty stacks of books
too
old and fragile or too out-of-date-deemed useless or irrelevant today to
have been digitally transferred and made ****table, freed from its paper
(or
in some of the most rare cases, parchment) restraints.
Regardless, it seemed Will had forgotten him again. He would give her just
five more minutes before he gave up and went home. Waiting for him was the
most recent release of a shooter-immersion game that they had been, up
until
two months ago, just before the incident with Kev and Mack, anticipating
with barely controllable 8 (Willow) and just-turned-ten (Xander) year old
impatience. It had taken all his strength of will to not tear the box open
as soon as he'd gone home after school last night to find it had arrived
in
the day's mail. Instead, he had vowed to behave and wait for Will to share
the honors after school today. Even being a year-and-a-half older than
her,
gaming was the one thing he could consistently hold his own on with
Willow.
Shooting aliens was often more instinct than intellect and he had plenty
of
the former, even if Willow outclassed him in the brains department-as she
did most of the older kids at school. Also, his larger hands and quicker
feet made manipulating the controllers easier. It made gaming one of the
things that balanced out the relation****p between the two very different
friends, though sometimes she'd insist on taking apart the game after
they'd
played through it. Xander didn't mind too much, since she usually put it
back after she was done. Will was a little weird that way. Plus she had a
way of having her tongue peek out from the corner of her mouth when she
was
really deeply involved pulling the guts out of a chipboard that was kind
of
cute.
Xander shook his head fiercely. He had to stop thinking like that, or else
he might slip and scare Will off. She didn't seem into those things. Not
yet, anyway.
The allotted five minutes came and went, then five more. Finally, as he
gathered his bag to really (really) leave this time, Willow came barreling
around the corner of the main building, weighed down as usual by her own
bag, out of breath. "Xan! You waited!"
"Of course I did, Will." He stood patiently as Willow dropped her bag at
her
feet and bent over, her hands on her knees, taking deep gulps of air. When
she straightened a minute later, they wordlessly traded bags with
practiced
ease and started out of the courtyard toward Xander's home.
"So, what was it today? Library or dungeon?" Xander referred to Mack's
basement office with the latter.
"Ms. Mack," Willow admitted sheepishly. "We started some, uh, advanced
maths
last period and kind of didn't hear the bell."
Xander nodded and said nothing, though the back of his neck felt a little
hot, and not, he knew, from the afternoon California sun. Jealous, he
realized. He was jealous of Mack, and all the time she was getting to
spend
with his best friend. Finally, in a quiet voice, he said, "Don't know why
you need to study so hard, Will. Last time I checked, they were talking
about bumping you up a couple grades anyhow." Out of your league, Harris,
he
thought. She's out of your league, too.
Willow felt the slight undercurrent in her best friend's voice then a
sharp
stab through her heart. She didn't ever want to lose Xander. He was the
best
thing to happen to her in. well, forever. Before Xander, she'd had no
friends. Without him, she'd have none again, except, maybe, now, for Ms.
Mack, and possibly Wood, in the library. But two adult non-parent
authority
types didn't really count for friends. She had to explain, make things
right. Plus, the secret she had been keeping was threatening to make her
head explode. Surely Ms. Mack would understand if she let Xander in on
what
they had been doing? Maybe she could even tutor Xander as well, then it
would be like having the best of both worlds. She realized that Xander
hadn't
said anything, and in fact, had been waiting for her to respond. She
hesitated a second more, before deciding she couldn't. Not without saying
something to Ms. Mack first. They continued awkwardly a while before she
thought of a compromise. "The kinds of stuff we do isn't so much class
stuff. More like, um, arts, I guess."
Xander frowned. "Arts? Like what? Painting?"
"With our minds," Leigh said. "Knowledge isn't just what you find in
books and files."
"Are you talking about experience, too?" Willow ventured.
"Well, experience is its own category that produces knowledge, yes,
but
the distinction
between written knowledge and practice is often overstated. After
all,
everything that's
been written has already been experienced, contemplated, filtered,
then
presented in the
author's own words, own interpretation of the event. Do you
understand?"
"I-I think so." Willow thought about it some more. She was only eight
and a half, but the
brain capacity she'd been able to unlock and put to use was already
incredible.
Something she'd read recently came to the forefront of the cacophony
of
thought. "You
mean, like, pure reason?"
Leigh paused a moment as her own mind re-aligned to the line of
thought
to which the
young girl had connected. She thought of the book Willow had been
toting when they
officially met, the one the librarian had given her-Wood. Like
herself,
a recent addition
to the school faculty. She got a strange vibe from him and she knew,
by
use of her Talent
when she visited the library after her curiosity about the fellow
from
Willow's constant
mention of him got the better of her, that he got the same from her.
He
had given Willow
the book on the neo-Kantians. What had Wood been thinking giving her
a
book like that?
Willow's eyes had become so bright at the connection, Leigh didn't
want
to quash it. On
the contrary, she needed to nurture that desire for deeper
understanding. "Yes, something
very like that, but push it beyond, if you can."
"Beyond?"
"Beyond reason altogether."
"Not exactly," Willow said evasively. They walked on. Xander's house was
six
blocks south from the school, Willow's two blocks further north from the
Harris home. Both were well inside the lower-middle-income zone, though
Willow's was better kept. Xander's mother wasn't much one for housework.
They crossed the street to the midway point of the short travel. "It's
kind
of hard to describe. It's more like. mental arts."
Xander's look was clearly doubtful, and Willow sank back into deep
thought,
to find a better way to phrase it.
"Through the years, humans have had a number of names for what lay
beyond
comprehension. Most of those names referred to a Divine or a group of
divine beings.
After we outgrew our Gods-Parents, left their home and set ourselves
up
in our own, the
perspective ****fted. The old mystics and philosophers described it as
the Sublime, the A
Priori. When we were outstripped by our technology, it became
self-perpetuating technology,
or the perfect machine, with perfect intelligence. In digi-speak,
it's
the Code before all codes,
the one that unlocks the rest and gives them meaning. Still others
took
a little of all the
definitions, including the primitive ones, and identify it simply as
the Cosmic, and leave it at that.
That's how we describe it in my own tradition."
"Your own tradition?"
Leigh hesitated just briefly before beginning. She had already
decided,
when Willow began
visiting just a few days after the incident with Connor and her
friend
Xander, that honesty
would be the best route to take with handling the young prodigy. Not
long after the visits began,
Willow had overcome her initial shyness-indeed, had shown little fear
in asking whatever
question came to her curious mind. "In my own family, along my
mother's
line, we follow a
tradition that favors animism and a general respect for all of
nature.
When I grew older, and
started a life on my own and a family of my own, I joined an
organization that tolerates a number
of different, though ultimately similar or at least compatible views
on
the underlying purpose of
human life to see, experience, interact, feel our connections, our
smallness but our ability, yet not
to rule. We call our group the Coven."
Willow frowned. "Like a coven of witches?"
Leigh did not hesitate on this question. "Yes," she said firmly. At
the
girl's suddenly concerned
expression, she laughed. "But not bad witches." She grinned and
added,
"At least not all of us."
"Kind of like. doing puzzles," Willow said, "like, uh, brain teasers."
Xander's dark eyebrows shot up, still skeptical that any extra time spent
in
school that wasn't mandatory could be anything but punishment. "And that's
fun?"
"It is, sometimes," Willow defended, though she was a bit deflated that
Xander still didn't understand, and didn't appreciate the value of her
after-class sessions with Ms. Mack. But she didn't completely blame him.
Her
explanation had been pretty lame. She hesitated, knowing she was treading
in
dangerous waters as far as disclosing the secret she'd been asked to keep.
"Ms. Mack is actually pretty funny. She says she's a witch. She even
showed
me a little magic."
The point of light hovered between them, dancing briefly to Willow's
delight before Leigh snuffed
it by closing her fist around it, then opening her hand to prove its
disappearance.
"How'd you do that?" Willow asked. With an eight year old's lack of
tact, she grasped Leigh's
hand in the both of hers to examine it more closely.
Leigh laughed and let herself be inspected. "It's just a parlor
trick.
Any witch in her second year
could do it. I'll show you some time."
Willow looked up at Ms. Mack with awe clear in her eyes. Her
expression
****fted then, to one
of concern. "It didn't burn?"
Leigh's heart leapt. And just like that, she softened to the girl and
to her assignment. She recalled
that Leda had had the same expression on her face once when she was
five or so, after an
incident, one of the earlier ones, when Tom restrained her from
leaving
an argument and had left
a bruise on her wrist. Until then, she had been able to hide her
marital problems from their young
daughter. It was only when the concern on their daughter's face had
turned to fear a year later
that she truly started to resent her husband's need to control, then
eventually despise the man
himself. Willow's gentle probing manipulation brought her back to the
task, literally, at hand. "No.
Tickles, actually." You're a good kid, with a big heart, still. I
hope
your parents know how lucky
they are, and keep you that way. If they can. As long as they can.
"Magic?" Xander's expression was still a little mystified.
Willow nodded, knowing the explanation wasn't sufficient, but bound by her
promise to Ms. Mack to not provide more-at least not without asking her.
"You know, uh, tricks with lights and stuff. But mostly it's serious
stuff.
reading and-and extra math and world history. That kind of thing."
Xander said nothing though the somewhat disgusted look on his face at the
last made his position known. Willow accepted that, and just hoped he was
okay with the explanation, for now.
They crossed the final street to his block. His was the third house down.
Xander held the fence door open for Willow and the two friends made their
way past the side of the building to the back entrance. It was closer to
the
stairs to the basement where Xander's play room with his various consoles
set up on the family's throwaway wraparound multi-screen with the blown
television tuner was.
"Is your mom home?" Willow asked. She wanted to be polite and say hello to
let Xander's mother know she was visiting. Else, Mrs. Harris might never
know she had anyone else in her home since she never seemed to interact
with
her son when he got home after school. That suited Willow fine. She got
along with Mrs. Harris well enough. It was Mr. Harris she found a little
scary, with his loud voice and boisterous manner and sometimes smelling of
alcohol. But he worked a late ****ft as a mechanic in the Uni-Train depot
and
thankfully shouldn't be home until late, Xander had told her.
"Nope. Not today. Do you need to call home?"
Willow shook her head. She had already told her mother she would be
staying
late for a school activity-which was mostly the truth, as she did visit
and
in fact extended her session with Ms. Mack. The visits were never
scheduled
but somehow had become regular, and she visited Mack's basement office at
least twice a week, from fifteen minutes to an hour. Today's visit had
been
fairly short and she still wouldn't be expected for at least another
couple
of hours before dinner. She hadn't mentioned going to Xander's house to
pass
the time until then. Her parents weren't fond of Xander, or more to the
point, the Harrises. They headed for the basement.
As Xander was loading the cartridges and Willow read the blurb and
screen-shots on the back of the now-empty product box, he unexpectedly
picked up the previous conversation again. "So you do all this studying,
that's really not studying?" He thought some more about it. "You know,
word
is she came in from some private school in Montana or Arkansas or Brazil
or
someplace like that. Some kind of weird alternate-method school or
something."
Xander handed her a hand controller and booted the game. "Yeah. I heard
that, too."
Xander's voice became suddenly soft. "You gonna transfer, Will?"
Willow laughed. "What?"
But Xander didn't say anything back.
"Transfer? To her school? No!" They watched the backstory of the game
scroll
past, both only paying half their attention to it. The backstories were
always the same or similar for urban shooters like this program. Either
you
played the undercover cop, the mercenary hired by the victim's family to
take revenge, or, if you had the right codes, the soldier in the crime
syndicate. The narrative ended and Willow opted for the cop scenario. She
always played that one, while Xander favored the mercenary. Later, they
might try the other roles, though Willow never played the soldier. The
warnings on the product box about the particularly adult nature of the
violence and graphic *** of that scenario scared her more than it tickled
her childish curiousity, as it did Xander's. Plus you had to pay extra for
the special code that unlocked that narrative, so Xander, restricted by a
boy's typical lack of funds, often just got the clean(er) version.
Regardless, his parents never checked. "It's nothing like that, Xander.
I'm
not going to transfer. In fact."
"I, um, wanted to thank you again for taking the time to tutor me.
The
things we talk about.
They make things so easy. The Regents. we're taking them this year
like
always, in a couple
months, and what you've shown me. it makes everything so clear. Like
I
know the question
before it's even asked."
Leigh nodded, remembering a similar feeling when she was in Willow's
position many years
ago when her own mother had started taking her on walks together
through the woods around
their family farm. Of course, she would not have put it in the same
terms Willow was using.
"Or-Or it's like the answers are written in the questions." Willow
hesitated, then found she
couldn't continue.
"What is it, Willow?"
"It's just that. I'm not sure what the point is, anymore. I mean, I'm
grateful for you showing
me what you've shown me, but now that I know what the game is, is
there
anything else but to
play it out?"
Leigh frowned. "I'm afraid you've lost me, sweetie."
"I mean, everything makes sense, now. But will it make a difference?
After the Regents, I'll
place into the next levels of school, have a scholar****p, and take a
few degrees, like my father.
Then I might get an intern****p at one of the big companies, be hired,
work until I retire, then
watch the teevee or game all day long as I live off my retirement
plan.
Isn't. Isn't there
anything else?"
The question momentarily stunned Leigh. Aside from Willow's
conception
of what one did
as a retiree in the late years of one's life, it was an adult
question,
yet it was not. And how do
you provide an honest answer to a question you hadn't found the
answer
for yourself? It would
be easy to become flippant, advise Willow it wasn't a question for an
eight-year old, but that
would tip her hand to the perceptive young girl. She would know Leigh
was just like all the
other adults in her life. Her father and mother. Her teachers.
Snyder.
Leigh had to tread carefully.
"Well, I can't tell you the answer to that, Willow. The truth is, I'm
not sure. What we talked
about before, remember? I've had experiences that you wouldn't
understand, would never
understand, and vice versa. In my case. I told you, I have a
daughter?
She's a few years
older than you. Everything I do now, she's always the first thing I
think about, my first
consideration. I think what works in my situation is that if she can
exceed me, that would be
enough. I would think the sacrifices I've made were worthwhile, if
she
exceeds me."
"Exceeds you?"
Leigh considered it before answering, "In whatever she does that
gives
her joy. Her craft, for
example. A husband and family, maybe, though that better be many
years
down the road."
She smiled at her musings. "Whatever. It would be enough if she was
happier than I was. Or
am."
Willow frowned. "What if she doesn't want to be happy that way?"
"What?"
"What if being, um, not happy suited her more?"
Leigh found her mouth opening and closing a couple of times before
she
huffed, "Well, that's
just ridiculous."
Willow's expression let Leigh know what she thought of that answer.
Reluctantly, Leigh relented. "You know what, Willow? You're right."
"I am?"
"I don't know what I was thinking, putting that kind of pressure on
her. She needs to live for
herself first. Even if that means the choices she makes aren't ones
that make me happy. Thank
you for pointing that out to me."
Willow smiled sheepishly and shrugged, but enjoyed the
acknowledgement.
"Does she go to
the school you usually teach at?"
"The Coven.? Well, yes, I guess you could say she does... attend
there."
"It sounds like a nice place," Willow said.
This is way too soon, Leigh thought. But if she handled this
correctly,
perhaps she could make
more headway in her assignment today than she had in the months she'd
already been here.
"I think it is. It's, um, not anything like Sunnydale."
"And you miss it." It was a statement.
"I certainly do. It's where my daughter is. But more than that. "
Leigh
hesitated. "I left this
society some years ago. It's. difficult being back here. In this way
of
life, I mean. The things
we just talked about? About what's expected of you here? It's very
different in the Coven.
There are pressures there, too, of course, though I find them more
tolerable than the ones I had
with the life I used to live here. And it's not possible to cut off
these two places from each
other." Leigh trailed off, more inside herself than out. She had not
had to think about these
things in a while.
Willow noticed and let the woman sit with her own thoughts. But she
was
a child still and began
to squirm, the silence making her feel a little bored.
It brought Leigh back to the present. She shook her head in
embarrassment. "Sorry."
Willow smiled and shrugged. "It's okay. I daydream sometimes, too."
"Do you really-?"
Willow quickly inserted herself before Mack could ask the next
obvious
question. "Maybe I
could visit?"
"The Coven?" Beat. "Why not? Yes, you might like it. It may suit
you."
Leigh paused again to
consider it further. "We even have an accredited high school and
college degree program for a
number of disciplines, believe it or not, though from what you've
told
me, your parents are more
the traditional type and would probably not favor our. free form
approach to education." Leigh
realized she was sounding more and more like a college brochure and
tried to ease back out.
"But you're more than welcome to just visit. In fact, let me extend a
personal invitation, and my
formal offer. If you decide to visit, ask me, and I'll make the
arrangements."
"Okay."
Had it been anyone else-child or adult-Leigh would have thought she'd
been blown off. But
she was satisfied with the answer because she knew Willow was sincere
and would at least
weigh it seriously.
"We talked about the Regents and where I might end up after, and I'm
pretty
sure her school is not for me." Unconsciously, she began playing her story
as Xander set up the mercenary on his own screen.
"So she's just helping you prepare for the Regents next month?" There was
a
little color back in Xander's voice.
"Kinda."
"Gods, I hate taking that thing. Why do they have to give it to you every
year?" but Xander was back to being good old Xander. Willow was relieved.
Leigh checked the clock on the wall. "We still have some time left.
Did
you want to try the
meditation again?"
Willow smiled and nodded. She enjoyed meditation. It was when the
most
extraordinary ideas
came to her. She was beginning to see patterns in the quiet. At
first,
Ms. Mack had guided her in
the white space with her soft voice, had set the context for the
wanderings. She would bring them
into forests dense with old-growth trees, or barren, icy mountains
incapable of sup****ting life of
any kind but the hardiest and most primitive. Or again, caves lined
with the dark leathery skins
and pinpoint eye-lights of bats and filled with the crackling whisper
of centipede feet. Gradually,
the silence itself was enough to start the journey, and she no longer
needed the assurance of Leigh
taking the lead.
Oddly, it was also usually the time she felt the woman opened up to
her
the most, when she knew
her teacher was sincere in genuinely enjoying Willow's visits, else
Willow might have ceased
coming long ago. Ms. Mack seemed a bit. lonely. Even in talking about
her home at the
mysterious Coven, or her brief mentions of her daughter who she
****elded from any or all prying
eyes, certainly not when she was lecturing in a classroom full of
students in various degrees of
attentiveness or lack thereof, she seemed. not completely there. Had
Willow been more
experienced, she may have thought that strange, that the woman's
priorities were, more often than
not, somehow askew.
"Did you have anything in particular you wanted to bring into the
quiet
time?" Leigh was a
practiced empathic witch, and sensed that she was the object of
Willow's
meditation. She wanted
to stop that, reassert the boundaries between mentor and student,
adult
and child.
Her softly worded intrusion worked and Willow ceased that
exploration.
She shook her head and
returned to the quiet. But she took the hint. No matter. Lately,
meditation had been very enjoyable.
She felt like she was on the edge of something in the quiet time, all
her own. A breakthrough was
waiting for her.
"We, um, do some reading, and discuss things. There's some really good
practical things. Like shortcuts. They make understanding math problems
easier." She thought back at how easy it was now to grasp the Calculus
concepts that had made her pause just three months ago. Yes, she had been
able to do them before, but they took a lot of time. Now, she could
actually
see the solutions. They seemed to instantly fall into place as she looked
at
the equations, as if she could see the concepts behind the theories, down
to
the level of the symbol-the glyphs and characters making up the
mathematical
language. Surely it would help in the Regents next month. Maybe if Ms.
Mack
agreed to tutor Xander, he'd score well enough to get into some
accelerated
courses next year, too. Then they could study together.
Willow's eyes had closed as she recalled another topic of
conversation,
the one from last time when
she had first felt it, that thing that had stirred something deep
within her soul. "Tell me more about
your brand of knowing."
"What do you want to know?"
"You said that by your tradition, in your Coven, you seek
understanding. What do you do with it
when you've found it?"
Leigh considered it, then said, simply, "The best you can.
Unfortunately, for most that means simply
surviving."
"But there's more?"
"Honestly? I wouldn't know." Leigh shrugged apologetically. "I count
myself among the majority
on that."
Willow nodded at the honesty of the response. She left Leigh's side
and
went on. She thought she
understood. The pleasure of *Knowing* filled her, and Knowing seemed
just as pleased back. It was
warm and happy to find a child in its home, after so long alone.
"And,
uh, if it finds you? What do you
do with it if it finds you?"
"Do with it?" Leigh had to pause at that.
In her mind, Willow reached out.
"Oh gods." she heard Ms. Mack mutter. "What did you. How did you-?"
"Holy ****, Will, what the **** was that?" Willow opened her eyes to
Xander
peering at her, hovering next to her, concern all over his face. "Are you
alright?"
"I'm fine. why? What happened?"
"You went all glowy! Then the program played through to the end, in, like,
10 seconds." He ejected the cartridge and peeled back the cover to look at
the disc, as if he could see a physical flaw that would explain what he
had
just seen.
"I. went all glowy?"
Xander put down the cartridge and frowned. "Well, your hands did, at
least.
And some of your arms, too." He reinstalled the cartridge. It booted as
normal. "I guess I'll return it for an exchange. Bummer, though. Now we
know
how it ends, and how to fight the Boss. You sure you're okay? How are your
hands?"
"Th-They're fine."
Xander was still frowning. "Maybe it was the controller and not your
hands?"
He took the device from her slightly trembling grasp. It seemed to be
functioning normally enough. As he fussed with the buttons he did not
notice
how Willow had become pale, her eyes closing again as every bit of
information from the program replayed itself in her mind in excruciating
detail-not just the cop scenario, but the mercenary and the soldier, too,
all within seconds, simultaneously. The product box warnings had not been
exaggerated. The soldier's story was particularly violent and gory, the
****ing explicit, and-oh, so cold because both were pointless. She felt
nauseous, about to pass out.
Willow opened her eyes. Ms. Mack's entire basement office, was, in
direct contrast to its
normal poorly lit gloom, brilliant in the glow of thousands of pixie
lights hanging and dancing
around them.
"Oh," said Ms. Mack, finally. "You don't need me to show you how to
do
this one, then."
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END - Witch Maclay, part 4
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