Title:
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle - Lillian (Part 177)
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Constructive criticism is always welcome. Flames just demonstrate you have a tiny mind.
Katharynrosser1@hotmail.com
Spoiler Warning: Pretty limited. The story occurs in an alternate universe as set up in “The Wish” though reference is made to events that occur in both realities. Nothing is referenced that occurs after S5 though. Guess why? Most “spoilers” would be for the first chronicle of this fic rather than the show and if you haven’t read that then much of this will make no sense but you can try and get round it by reading the preface to Part 104 which summarises most of what went before.
Distribution This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens (This applies to all of the Sidestep Chronicle)
Summary: Tara recognises a name from Willow’s dreams and brings her own memories of what she was told about that person to the fore.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc, etc. I am making zilch from this series of stories. You know the drill. ‘The Missing Manual’ series is a copyright of… someone who isn’t me. I make use of the title for humorous Willow-thought only.
Rating: R – a general rating for occasional content. Individual parts might be less than this level.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever – others couples as necessary but nothing unconventional.
Notes: This part addresses some of the back-story I’ve worked into earlier parts of this story and also into the Beginnings Cycle. I’ve changed some relevant names from that earlier fic to fit this continuity, but essentially it remains the same. Oh, and just because it’s stated in this part doesn’t make it necessarily so. This is what Tara understands to be the truth and Willow wonders about. But neither of them might have all the facts.
Thanks To: My own special woman Louise who helps me so much with this on top of everything else. Those other friends and family who’ve also helped us overcome everything that was put in my way. Celia and Kerry who shaped this story and continue to do so when I think back to what they told me in the past. Xita for keeping the story hanging around and continuing to give us TKTWATBW. Those readers who’re still with me, even those lagging so far behind. You’ll get here eventually I hope! Of course by the time you do you’re not lagging behind any more.
The Sidestep Chronicle – Second Chronicle
Lillian
By
Katharyn Rosser
“What’s wrong?” Willow asked. The tone of Tara’s voice when she’d asked her to reveal everything had made her turn to face her girlfriend. Suddenly she was the one who was worried about Tara. And the look on her face… what had she said?
Tara wanted all the details of the dreams again? More information on this – potential - figment of her imagination? Was her girlfriend worried about
him, the dead Mayor who was in her dreams?
Or was it something else?
It had been a reaction to the name. So maybe something about the family there? With a young woman, the Mom of the little girl, who shared so many of Tara’s features – but definitely
wasn’t her. When she dreamed of Tara it
was Tara. This wasn’t. It was -
“Lillian,” Tara asked, her voice very quiet. “You said her name was Lillian.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“Yes, that’s right. What is it sweetie?” Willow replied. What was that expression on Tara’s face? Filling her voice? Disbelief? Perhaps a little curiosity. Some amazement and worry? She even hesitated to use Tara’s own trick to look at her girlfriend’s aura. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that mix of emotions was.
What was it about her ever-evolving dream that had made it worse for Tara than anything that had come before? The Mayor? He was there… it was him. That had to be it. What did Tara know? Or think she knew?
Had he said something to her? Something that made sense now? That could be it, remembering what he’d told her when she’d worked for him.
The alternative was…
Was it really that bad to dream about someone called Lillian? Or ‘Lilly’ as Willow had already started to think of her. It seemed to be what they called her.
“Lillian Maclay?” Tara checked again.
She of the hair almost as red as Willow’s own. A hint at the family origins perhaps. On the other hand it didn’t always hold true. Not many people expected a Rosenberg to have naturally red hair.
It just wasn’t
expected.
What’d Tara been expecting?
They already established that the house was the house that still stood out there today, where they’d spent some bad times and some perfectly wonderful times. A house that’d always been in the family. It had been built by Tara’s family – seemingly a little before the time in the dream.
So yes, it was the Maclay name that Lilly shared. Somehow the name had persisted down the years, in the same place… Maybe that wasn’t so surprising given what else Tara had told her had been passed down through the family. Not a demon, something worse. Belief. Fear. Systematic abuse of the women of the family that always made Willow’s blood boil whenever she thought about it.
A family that could get away with that for generations was the sort of family to live in the same house all that time. At least in the movies it was always the creepy, abusive folks that stayed in the same place.
And yet Tara didn’t think of her family like that… go figure.
“I think they called her Lilly,” Willow decided as she looked back on her dream. It seemed right and it wasn’t like she
knew anything. More that she
felt everything. “You knew her?” Willow didn’t understand the recognition; it seemed so long ago for all that it seemed shiny and new, fresh and relevant in her head. So what was Tara getting so worried about?
Because worry was certainly the predominant emotion in both her lover’s voice and her expression right now. “No, of course you didn’t. Lilly was… well, she must have been long dead before your parents were even born. It feels that old.”
“Yes, I mean… No,” Tara said with a sad little smile touching the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t know her. Nor did my Momma. I think maybe my grandmother did, maybe when she was very little… or her Mom. Lilly would’ve been pretty old by then I suppose. But we still heard about her. We were all told about her.”
“Really? Your grandmother? That kind of gives us a timeframe for these dreams baby. It must be…” she did a little mental calculation and give or take a decade or two she was uncertain about, it sounded like the turn of the century or so. She said so to Tara.
Why was she dreaming about the turn of the twentieth-century?
“Is that when you think it was?” Tara asked, clearly troubled.
“Probably,” Willow hedged. Okay, so she was making some sweeping guesses and there really wasn’t anything that told her for sure like a nice, convenient calendar hung on the wall where she could see or dream it.
It seemed to fit though. In those days didn’t women have children younger? But maybe lots of them too? Lilly only seemed to have one – little Ruth. Willow was willing to make guesses, but she’d have preferred to base her supposition on hard facts. If it was going to be important, and Tara’s reaction to what had been a curious sequence of dreams told her it might well be more important now than it had been a few minutes ago.
It was important because of Lilly.
She hadn’t even mentioned
him since asking for all the details again. And he might be the biggest clue of them all. They knew roughly when he’d arrived in and founded Sunnydale and plainly in the dream he wasn’t there yet.
“Baby,” she asked quietly, “why am I dreaming about your family?” If there was a person there that Tara had heard of, it couldn’t all just been a figment of her unconscious mind. Especially since she’d known nothing about that far back in Maclay history.
But also meant that…
he wasn’t a figment either.
Probably. Surely one part couldn’t be ‘real’ and another part a figment?
Oh for a users manual for her dreams. ‘Willow-Dreams: The Missing Manual.’
Why she was dreaming was a question she’d asked of herself a hundred times, and she’d talked it through with Tara several more. After realising these weren’t normal dreams, at first they’d thought she was just transposing something else into a setting she kind of knew. Then later maybe some sort of guilt over the Mayor had entered the mix – or maybe he’d just represented every other person she’d killed.
He’d been the last after all. Not that she wouldn’t have recognised any of the faces of those people… each and every one was ingrained in her mind.
There’d been all sorts of theories.
The farm hadn’t changed that much over the years… even if she hadn’t ever seen it how it looked in her dreams.
But if Lilly was real, really real, then all that changed. All the theories were nothing but… theories. The truth was something else. She’d never seen or heard of Lilly, of that she was certain. Not even from Tara.
Hence her surprise.
And also Tara’s reaction. If Tara
had told her then it could’ve still been explained as a creation of her mind. A random name assigned to a random – if repetitive – character in a dream. But what were the odds of all this being random?
Pretty long and getting longer still.
Clearly Tara knew she hadn’t told her anything about Lilly either, or the old theories would still hold more weight.
“I don’t know,” Tara replied. “I don’t know… you never even knew any of them so how can you…?” She shrugged, which just made Willow place a small kiss on her girlfriends collarbone.
Okay… okay… new theory. “What if…? Maybe… maybe it’s coming from you?” Willow suggested. She couldn’t really see what else it could be. Certainly anything about a family background must have come from Tara, unless it wasn’t at all real. And the setting… she supposed that could just be a result of having been there in her own lifetime? More than once. Except everything looked different. “Somehow.”
What had been old when she’d been on the farm with Tara, looked new in her dream. She’d never seen the Maclay home looking like it did in her head now. It had… aged. Been added to and changed, but mainly aged. The mind could play tricks though…
The Mayor… both of them had things to feel guilty about there.
It
could’ve come from Tara.
“Me?” Tara did a double take. As much of a double take as a person could do lying with someone else in bed. With her eyes mostly. “It’s your dream…”
Willow moved as much as she needed to and kissed her. “You know we have this connection, and we don’t know how that really works. Well, sometimes we can feel things, even push it further than that. Maybe it’s something to do with your dreams and I’m remembering them for you? You’re sharing them, unconsciously? Maybe?” she shrugged.
“I haven’t dreamed about anyone in my family for years, except that time Donny was being chased by the penguins,” Tara told her.
Willow smiled, she hadn’t known Donny but the way Tara had told it that had been a funny dream. Bullies should get their comeuppance from penguins. “No,” she said. “There are no penguins. Nothing out of place. That’s why its strange… In a dream usually something is out of place. Usually there’s something, on some level, that I know shouldn’t be there. Something I’m ignoring or justifying because it’s a dream.”
Tara nodded.
“It fits, because it’s a dream, but I also know its wrong? There isn’t any of that. And after all that I’ve had, one of them
should have involved at least one penguin.”
“Or possibly a frog,” Tara suggested, proving she’d understood.
Then again she’d probably even have been able to justify the penguins, after all it got pretty cold up on the farm in winter. And it stayed cooler than most zoos in the summer. There could’ve been a colony of penguins, but there wasn’t. The stream was probably too small for them.
Too many frogs.
What Tara had said though – she hadn’t dreamed about her family for years. “But,” she asked, “you
used to dream about them?”
Her girlfriend nodded.
“‘Them’ meaning your mom and dad?”
“Them… after what happened, you know? But long before then I had a few dreams about Lilly,” Tara revealed. “I was dreaming of Lilly when I was little. After I was told about it.”
It?
Not her.
It.
‘It’ meaning Lilly? Or ‘it’ meaning something had happened. She couldn’t see Tara referring to anyone, any person, as ‘it’ – let alone anyone in her family. Not even Donny.
Willow turned to lay her head on the pillow looking at Tara, who was in her turn looking up at the ceiling as if it was a canvas some grand scene was playing out on. But it was still just a ceiling. All it did was hold what was above out of their space. Not to Tara though, not right now. “About what?” Willow asked.
“About Lillian, Lilly… she was always called Lilly when Momma told me about her too, just like you said.” Tara said. “I never knew what she looked like – so I made her up for myself, from what they told me. It wasn’t like they described her, but I could see her you know?”
“I think she looks a lot like you,” Willow said.
“Really?” Tara asked, clearly surprised.
“With red hair.”
“I never thought of her like that,” her girlfriend admitted. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. My grandmother had red-hair too.”
Willow couldn’t remember her own parents telling her much about a member of their families she’d never even met. Except for Great-Uncle Daniel, but he’d really been noteworthy in so many ‘interesting’ ways. Always worthy of talking about at family gatherings. Maybe he was where her thoughts of penguins were coming from…
Now that was disturbing.
Anyway, Lilly… “What did you Mom tell you about her?” she wondered.
“She was the start of it all, sweetie,” Tara said, still looking up at – or perhaps a little through – the ceiling. As if looking up at their stars… The same stars Lilly herself would’ve looked up at years before. But Lilly would’ve seen them before the night was hidden by the glow from the ground. All the lights of the cities.
She missed the nights on the farm, where the moon and stars were the only source of illumination.
“All?” she wondered. There was only one thing she could think of which fitted the bill, but she wasn’t going to push that subject unless she really had to. It wasn’t something she liked to think about, what had been done to the women in that family – to Tara.
What might have become of Tara if things had just been a little different.
They were what they were, but what small quirks of fate set history on its course?
She’d seen the room that would have become her lover’s… except Tara wouldn’t have been hers would she? In that different world…
But she would. Somehow.
Somehow Willow had to suppose she would. That was what fate was all about – it was what the lawyers had told Tara, and in this at least they both tended to believe them. Perhaps she’d have joined Tara in that room. Not a nice place, but not so bad if they’d been together.
What was she thinking? It was horrible – what had been done to those girls and women would always be horrible.
Willow barely needed to hear the words to know she was on the right lines already. There was an expression Tara took on when she thought about this kind of stuff, one she could always pick up on. They just knew each other so well.
“She was the start of what was done to the women in my family,” Tara said. “The lies they told to my Mom and all the rest. To me.”
Willow wrapped a comforting hand over her lover’s stomach, pulling herself in a little closer, snuggling against her side, and immediately felt Tara’s own hand close around it, squeezing in return. “That they, and you, were demons? Because of the magic…?” She didn’t really need to ask the question but it was a way of getting Tara to go there, to talk to her about it a little more. Now the subject was out there she didn’t feel bad for asking.
If only to reveal just what Lilly had to do with it, which was all Willow was interested in. It might even be important.
“Yeah,” Tara replied simply.
“It’s sick,” Willow said. “What they did. Screwed up in the worst way. To make you believe you were a demon just because you were a woman and able to do magic?” It made her blood boil to think about what Tara’s father had done to her, and what more he’d been prepared to do.
A choice he’d have made and would’ve been accepted – because it was reinforced by generations of the men in that family repressing their wives, daughters and sisters. That wasn’t a tradition, it was sick. Tara had been raised in the 1980’s! Reaganomics, realism, Star Wars! How could a man do that to his daughter in
this world?
She didn’t like to think ill of the dead but… damn it was good job she’d never met him.
Tara’s mother, buying into it, had reinforced that lie as well. Her mom must have told her the same things her father had. What would make a person do that when she must’ve known it wasn’t really true? Before her Mom had been born women had probably had fewer rights and less ways out. Especially around that area, but there wasn’t much of an excuse for a more modern woman. Was there?
But all the thoughts of abuse, lies and sick minds were mollified just a little by this possibility.
Lilly was the reason as well as the excuse? Was that it? Was there something behind it they’d believed even a hundred years later? Something that explained, even if it couldn’t ever excuse?
What had Lilly done that would make a family do that? Willingly turn to darkness?
Tara just nodded at her words and Willow knew she was more than aware of how bad it had been. She’d believed it so much back then that she’d allowed… things to happen. Things before and with the vampire…
Or rather she’d not taken action, just because she’d thought it wouldn’t make any difference. Willow knew how that would have made Tara feel after the fact. People had died because of it, though Willow was sure that no family which could produced a woman like Tara would’ve ever wanted that. The beliefs they’d forced into this beautiful young woman had gotten people killed, because Tara hadn’t thought she was worth anything as a human at the time.
It’d been a temporary state.
Tara had allowed the vampire to exist and the vampire had killed people.
And that did matter, to both of them. Even now, years later.
Even after all the people they’d saved. Tara never quite focused on how many people were alive just because of her even
before meeting the vampire. In a numbers game it was a landslide in the favour of good.
But it wasn’t just about the numbers.
It never would be again.
That was why they’d let Drusilla and Darla go. It was never about the numbers. They couldn’t have let Toni die just to assure the vampires were killed – even knowing that even if it only took a week to catch them as many as twenty other people could’ve died.
The numbers game was a fast ticket to guilt city.
After the nod, Tara drew a breath and Willow knew she was going to speak, but knowing that hadn’t taken more than four years of love to figure out. No ma’am, that one was easy.
“They would’ve…” Tara said simply. “They’d have done it to me, Daddy would. Momma too if she’d still been alive,” she guessed.
Willow had the impression that last part was something her girlfriend had never thought about too much before. It’d been done to her mother, it would’ve been done to Tara – but it was tough to think about her mother doing it to her daughter. Taking part in that – but clearly she
had believed in the demon thing. Perhaps it was easier to believe in demons when magic was a part of your heritage?
When being a demon yourself was something you’d always been taught by people you trusted.
Demons did exist. They killed them every night, And they’d also both met deranged humans who believed themselves possessed or to be demons. What’d happened in Tara’s family had plainly been different though. It’d gone on for generations. One person was a delusion, a mental illness.
The Maclay family had been… systemic.
Willow herself had grown up with science; she’d come to magic late in her life – after returning from death and vampirism. Science, at that point, had been downgraded somewhat in its pre-eminence.
So unless… unless it had really been true, and Tara was the exception to the rule – an unaffected Maclay woman…
No. Willow didn’t believe that at all. It
had to have all been a lie. A dirty, misogynist lie. No matter how it had started, and what reasons had been behind it once upon a time, by Tara’s time it had been
nothing but a lie.
Which was the point of the conversation they were having.
“If things had gone differently,” Tara explained, “then when I turned twenty Daddy would’ve been forced to lock me up too. He was willing to let me go to college for a few years, even though we knew I’d never finish. But he would’ve come for me. He’d would’ve had to.”
“Would have been forced to? Had to?” Willow felt she had to ask the question. “Sorry, but I call bullshit.”
Someone had to and there was no one else here to do it. She wasn’t sure Tara had ever really dealt with this – in the aftermath of discovering her father’s lies Tara had been busy with other things. Things that were very good for Willow, at least as she was now. “Or would he have
chosen to do it?” She squeezed her girlfriend’s fingers for emphasis, her other hand touching the pendant that Tara had given her – the one that had been her Mom’s. She hadn’t realised she’d been playing with it. It was something she’d hated so much when it’d been hurting Tara.
And it something she treasured now it had been rendered powerless and given to her by the woman she loved.
This was an important question she was asking. Something Tara might not have had to think about before.
“Chosen to… I guess,” Tara agreed. “But there
was something…. Something real. I know you don’t believe it, but believe me Will - sometimes my Mom did have things wrong with her. He wasn’t a bad man. We’ve both known bad people – and he wasn’t one.”
It sounded to Willow like Tara
wanted to believe that maybe her father hadn’t been all that bad. It was natural, and she was ready to concede that not knowing the whole story meant she was casting him in a bad light without evidence, but on the other hand… The men in that family had been
locking women up. Ray Maclay, a modern educated man, had married into that family, taken the name and chosen to continue that.
In anything but a marriage that would’ve been seen as a crime.
Even in marriage it was a crime now. And to perpetuate it across generations? Willow thought it was monstrous. Tara was right. They’d seen monsters and bad people of all kinds. Willow well knew what monstrous really meant.
And this was it.
Whatever reason there might have been once, and she doubted there was one good enough; it couldn’t have been a reason generations later. Not a justified reason. Luckily there was no sign of any of this in her dream…
On the other hand Tara had said Lilly was the first. Was the dream of the time before it’d happened? Whatever it was.
And… who was really there? Or who had been really there? They knew who was there – in the dream. Was the dream real? Was it a history? Was it her imagination?
Was it a collection of metaphors, telling her something else? Did it mean
anything at all?
“Baby,” Willow insisted not wanting to find her dream was going to turn so sad. And if, instead, it was just a product of her own mind then she had to admit that now the seed had been planted that could take it in the same direction.
It might be the dreams turned that way just through the suggestion. Could they ever be sure whether they were real then? Every time she wondered, every time Tara told her something… wasn’t she more likely to dream about that?
“Baby, your mom was sick. She had cancer… there’s no telling what it might have been doing to her, if it was pressing on parts of her brain. Or it could have been the drugs they put her on…”
“No,” Tara said firmly. “It was before that. It was
long before that. It’s something I always remember. As far back as I can go… there was always something.”
Willow was about to interrupt, to tell her how it could have been coming on for a long time – or it might even have been her mother’s protests about being locked up which made her… say loud and violent? If that was what Tara meant? Resisting being abused like that might have become the very reason for doing it. All the justification Tara’s father and grandfather had needed to keep the family tradition going in spite of what the modern world taught them.
Tara’s grandfather had been to Europe in the war. He’d seen, so Tara said, some of the worst things modern history recalled. How could he have come back and continued lock up his own family after he’d fought for freedom?
She knew she’d have been loud and violent if Ira had tried to lock her up.
Or she hoped she would’ve been anyway.
As for her Mom, her Mom would have kicked Ira’s ass to the moon for trying anything like it.
Willow hoped she wouldn’t have just been a ‘good girl’ and accepted it. Fortunately she’d never have to find out. Neither would Tara.
She didn’t get chance to tell that to her girl though, because she kept on right on going. “And my grandmother too. You see baby, I remember that until she died they shared the same room when they had to.”
The same awful, windowless room. To those sensitive to it, as they both were, a place could hold an emotional echo of what’d come before… if the emotion was strong enough. Staying in that room too long almost made Willow retch, so powerful was it.
“But not a demon,” Willow insisted. “You never saw a demon right? Or anything demonic?” She wanted it to be a statement, but there was always the chance…
“Not until some came along and killed them…” Tara admitted.
Willow could see this wasn’t a good topic for the woman she loved, but she had to try to make the argument. Willow had to believe the Maclay women were as strong as Tara. She couldn’t believe her girl would’ve accepted what her father had thought he could do to her.
She had to believe Tara would, at least, have shouted, screamed and kicked out at the injustice. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she have found a way to fight against it? To get herself away from it? “They were being locked up, all of them,” Willow suggested. “Of
course they tried to get out – to stop it. If it’d been me, I’d have been wild. Mad as hell… I might even have used magic to stop it from happening – if I’d known how.”
“Maybe,” Tara turned her head to look her girlfriend in the eyes again. “Except that never happened Will. All I know is I never remember them trying to get out, and that I believed it too, just as much as they did. I think I believed it because they did… maybe. But I believed it so much…”
“What?” Willow asked gently, but she already knew what it was. Tara was remembering how she’d been told – and believed – she was to be evil, a demon. When she, or the vampire, had come to know Tara it hadn’t mattered what Willow did as a vampire.
Of course Tara had hated it – but there’d been a part of her girlfriend Willow to be just another kind of demon. Back then… She’d allowed things to happen. Tara had actually believed herself to be worse than a vampire…
Or at least that she would be.
People had died. There was no denying it.
And it was her family’s fault.
“Nothing,” Tara lied.
The only time Tara ever ‘lied’ to her was when she understood Willow already knew the truth. They could see it in each other’s eyes and feel it in each other’s souls. It wasn’t even a lie when the truth was right there in plain sight. It was just a denial.
“But there
was something wrong,” Tara went on and insisted. “There really was.”
“Not with you,” Willow responded, equally insistent. They’d have seen the evidence by now. Willow wouldn’t be sharing her bed, her heart and soul with a demon.
But then Tara had already done that – after a fashion. Even if the demon had never reciprocated.
If it had all been true the demon would have been as close to Tara as she could have gotten… and why did that sound familiar? At least the demon supposed to have been in Tara would’ve been one that manifested only in magic or uncontrolled a few days a month – and why did that sound familiar? Hadn’t women always been made to feel shame about the natural processes of their bodies?
Anyway, it was still better than a demon that had removed your soul at your death. Removed the ability to love.
“Not with you,” she repeated.
“No, not with me,” Tara admitted.
“And even at twenty you were probably older than Lilly,” Willow told her. “At least the Lilly I see. She’s nice, but young. I guess they did that back then. Married, I mean. And had kids well before they were twenty.”
Tara seemed a little surprised that she found herself smiling, as if this was something she thought she shouldn’t be smiling about. Tara had always liked hearing about the dreams on some level, at least until now. They’d worried her in the intensity – but not so much the content… until now. Until the Mayor. Until Lilly had become a part of it – or identified as such anyway. “Have you seen her sick, love?” Tara asked. “In your dream?”
“No,” Willow told her. “I mean I don’t think so. I’m not sure I even know what I’m looking for.” No one had been sick. Everyone had been just fine. Working hard… but fine.
“Oh, I don’t either,” Tara said, “But you’d know if you saw it. You’d definitely know.” She obviously knew what she’d been told.
Once upon a time.
-------------------------------
“Mommy?”
“Yes, honey?” The question had come just as she’d been about to turn out the light in her daughter’s bedroom for the night. Her
daughter. Let Ray see to tucking Donny in. She was the one who always looked after Tara at bedtime.
There was a lot of Ray in Donny.
And there was a lot of her in Tara. Everyone said so, beside the one thing no one outside the family really knew about.
Of course she loved Donny, and spent time with him whenever she could – but she didn’t think it made her a bad mom to enjoy time with Tara just a little more. It would be a little lonely when Tara joined her brother at school.
Ray wouldn’t listen when she told him he had to do more with his daughter. To be fair he only had so much time around working the farm, and she wouldn’t have liked any less with Tara. But perhaps they should have been doing more as a complete family – when Donny would leave Tara alone.
Having them both at the same dinner table caused enough problems – and it was almost always Donny’s fault. It was very rare Tara goaded him and still rarer she’d admit where the big black bruises on her arm had come from.
It certainly wasn’t Ray, a man who’d never raised his hand in his life, and that only left her brother.
“Why was Lilly bad?” Tara asked carefully.
‘Bad.’ That was her father’s delicate phrasing she was using now.
And her grandfather’s, though she’d never known him.
She looked back at her daughter and then checked outside the room again. The hallway was clear, she couldn’t hear Ray or Donny anywhere around. This was a woman’s conversation. Or at least it was a Maclay women’s conversation.
She’d wondered when Tara might get around to asking a question like this… just she hadn’t thought it would be so soon after learning a little more of the family history.
But Tara was smart as a button. And she’d had the good sense to wait. To wait until Ray had finished with the telling and until her Mom was putting her to bed. Oh yes, she was as sharp as a tack this one.
Tacks, buttons, clever little girls.
What would she say to her Tara now?
What could she say?
What should
she say?
This was the first time Tara had asked, was it the first time she’d challenge the truth as well? Challenge her fate, what was going to happen as inevitably as the sun rising. There was always a challenge. She’d challenged it as a girl too, with her own mother. Tara’s recently departed grandmother, who’d challenged it in her day. Challenging it didn’t do any good. No good at all.
The truth was what it was. Wishing didn’t make it any different.
Oh, Tara was so far from being stupid, even Ray already acknowledged she was the one who would have to make use of the college fund they’d been saving for since Donny had been born. That was if he’d let her out of his sight for a couple of years before she had to come home.
She’d made the point firmly. They’d fought and argued about it, and Ray had listened to her as he always did.
Ray loved her, and he understood what missing college had done to her – all the knowledge, the life she’d missed out on. She’d persuaded him that Tara, if their daughter had the grades, would get the college fund. It seemed harsh to write Donny off so early in his life, and to expect so much of their daughter, but he had to stay here to work the farm anyway and… it was already obvious that unless he changed dramatically Donny would never be a scholar.
He had to stay just as much as Tara did. At least until Tara was married and someone else
could take over from Donny… Someone would have to watch after the demon once she and Ray were gone and she never wanted that to be Donny. Not Donny alone.
Better a kind man, with a sense of responsibility. A man who’d love, protect and guard against her daughter. A husband like Ray had been to her, once he’d come to accept what her father had told him and joined the family. Not a bully of a brother who already resented her for what she was cursed with.
There was a demon in them both – she and her daughter. Ray was… older than she was and this wasn’t a task for an old man. Old enough that he’d pass well before Tara entered her 6th decade. Maclay men… didn’t last.
Tara was the one who’d go to college, even if she’d never have chance to finish there. She’d get that chance, and she wouldn’t waste it. Maybe she’d even find her partner there. Someone who could come back with her.
Tara’s maternal grandfather would’ve been horrified, but it was another age now. An age where… her daughter should be able to have some sort of life before it was all taken away from her anyway.
Her daughter.
She was the one who’d carried the Maclay name into this generation. They did it because they had to. People hereabouts didn’t care to lose track of who was a Maclay, especially a Maclay woman, so Ray had taken her name when they married. He’d had the bad luck to fall in love with the prettiest girl in High School. His words, like the ones she’d fallen for, but he never mentioned the bad luck.
And he’d known the rumours about the family too.
She wasn’t sure he’d understood
what it’d meant but he’d known. And once her father had given him the truth to end all the rumours… He’d stayed with her anyway. Even though it had cost him his dream of qualifying as a lawyer and moving to the city. He’d stayed with her and become a farmer, a father, a lover, a husband and a keeper.
Sometimes, locked in that room, she still wondered why he stayed, much as she knew he loved her.
Was love enough for this? Plainly it was. It was why, locked in there, she could never resent him.
He’d given up just as much as the demon had taken from her. She fancied it was these sacrifices that’d helped him see that Tara had to have her chance. One they’d both missed.
He’d known what was going to happen just a couple of years after graduation, but they’d already been married and had Donny by the time it’d actually come around to her twentieth. Ray had been visiting the farm for years before, for one reason and another, and only latterly because of her. His own Dad had been a great friend of her poppa.
And everyone knew about the Maclays.
They weren’t sure what they knew, but they did know.
Everyone hereabouts appreciated that there had to be sacrifices made, and not just by the Maclay family. Everyone knew that any woman who came here for another length of time, especially any woman born into the family was going to be cursed.
But they also understood they had to support the Maclay family – keep their secrets and let their men join the family. And in return the problem would be contained. It was an understanding that went back to the beginning. One that she and Ray had perpetuated. That Donny, if not Tara’s husband, would perpetuate.
What a shame about Donny.
If Tara was her daughter, then Donny was certainly Ray’s son. Ray had things to teach a son he couldn’t share with a daughter who’d be cursed in her turn. But Donny didn’t care about much besides himself and his pony – certainly he had no feelings for his sister’s wellbeing.
Ray wanted Donny to be strong, a man before his time. If the boy hadn’t been so lazy then her husband would have had Donny doing most of the household chores by now. Tara was still too young to help much and Ray wanted their son to take the pressure off his Mom. Sometimes she didn’t feel too good – and it was nothing to do with the curse. Something… something else was happening.
Naturally Ray worried about her and so loaded things onto Donny.
And Donny thought about himself.
Not only was he lazy, except for the things he wanted to do like tending to his pony, but he was also becoming a bully. Donny just foisted anything he didn’t want to do onto Tara – and no amount of discipline could break him of the habit.
Eventually Ray had started to shout at Tara for being weak enough to let Donny bully her that way – an empty gesture of frustration at his inability to deal with his son. But Tara wasn’t weak. Tara was… willing. As her she was already aware, there was a will of steel that ran through the girl – you’d have to have one not to react to Donny’s taunts.
Tara seemed to take the point of view she was doing it for her mother, because Momma got tired easily, and she did what her brother asked with barely a murmur of complaint.
And that made her feel guilty for what Tara was suffering.
As mother and daughter they never fought. Ever. It wasn’t natural; she could smile about that. Maybe it would come, when Tara started to go through the changes that would make her a woman. As Tara started to see what she could and should have been in her adult life… but couldn’t be.
The extent of Tara’s fights with Donny were when he hit her and she took it. Oh, the look in her eyes then. Sometimes she’d cry, if it was too hard or too painful, but mostly she looked at him with infinite patience.
And somehow even she, her mother, found that scary – what Tara could and would take. Not because she was weak, but because she was so very, very strong. It was as if Tara knew her time would come.
It wasn’t fair though. If she kept getting tired Tara was going to grow up a prisoner of the household before she was ever a prisoner of the room with no windows where generations of Maclay women had gone for a few days each month.
And all because Ray couldn’t control Donny properly?
Sharp as a tack, she’d thought about her daughter. Not so.
Tara was as sharp as a razor, or and this was a strange thought, a pointy stick.
But one which was really, really sharp.
And pointy.
Not that Tara really ever showed that strength to Ray. The girl even hid her talents away, refusing to embarrass Donny by proving that though she was three years below him at school, she was already way ahead of him in most subjects.
Even so, Tara had still made Ray realise she was the one who had to go to college – if anyone did. At least unless Donny bucked his ideas up. It didn’t seem likely though. Donny hated school and learning. It couldn’t have been hard for Ray to realise what needed to happen.
Tara avoided asking her Dad questions too. Most of the time their interaction boiled down to some genuinely warm hugs before bed, and the words ‘Yes, Sir.’
Ray didn’t encourage or reward her questions, perhaps because Donny only ever asked the genuinely stupid and selfish ones.
Oh, that was a terrible thing fro a mother to think.
But true.
She thought that maybe Ray hated to admit to himself that his daughter could’ve had a future, if her future hadn’t already been planned out for her already. A future that was right here, rarely straying beyond the boundary fence outside. It hurt him that the daughter he loved was going to feel more restricted by this house than anyone else ever
had. Even his wife.
Tara was meant for so much more than the farm. She was meant to see the world, enjoy it and live.
She knew it hurt him to know that because it hurt both of them.
She didn’t think harshly of her husband’s relationship with her daughter. If Tara did
ask a question, he’d always answer her. Always. No matter how long it took. But when Tara really wanted to know something – especially on certain subjects – then she’d wait until they were alone. Mother and daughter.
She didn’t feel bad about being glad either.
Just like now.
She had to admit to herself… she liked it that way. Having something, a relationship, that was just hers. Something precious to her.
But what should she say? ‘Why was Lilly bad?’… Out of the mouths of babes. Such a simple question and such a desperately complex answer.
There was a simple truth that was the easiest part of her answer. “She wasn’t bad, honey.” Her eventual answer was going to be the one she’d had explained to her years and years ago. She might even have asked the same question of her mother. It annoyed her that she wasn’t sure whether she ever had.
Tara knew what her future held already. They’d both told her tonight, in a roundabout way. They hadn’t spelt it out, but bright spark Tara… She knew even if she didn’t understand what it would mean.
Right now home was all she knew, so was she bothered about having to stay here? No… that was a worry for later years.
Especially if her daughter went to college and saw a world outside this house, town and state.
Out of state? That was something she’d never had the chance to do despite an Ivy League scholarship offer. But Tara knew something of the future now. Something of the past too.
Which was why she was asking this very perceptive question.
“But you and Daddy said…” Tara said.
And they had. They really had. She’d used the word ‘bad’ just as often as Ray had. More perhaps. I’m sorry Lilly. I’m sorry.
“I know baby, but ‘bad’ is one of those words we use which can mean a few things.”
“Like ‘cool’?” Tara asked in a whisper. Ray hated the word.
Thank the goddess Tara had thought of it though, because she wasn’t sure she could have come up with an example on the spur of the moment. “Like ‘cool’ can mean…”
“Good, far away and cold,” Tara said with a smile, as if she’d just come first in dictionary practice. And Tara’s teachers told her she usually did. It wasn’t that she was the cleverest child in the class, but she was the most applied and least distracted of her classmates.
And so very, very perceptive. Tara took just as long to learn facts as anyone else, but she was very, very good and putting them in their proper context and linking one thing to another.
“That’s right. It wasn’t that we meant Lilly was bad like… naughty,” she said.
“Like Donny?” Tara wondered.
“You shouldn’t say that Tara,” she said. But she didn’t argue with her daughter’s conclusion. Donny could be naughty, even if when he wasn’t actually being bad. “Lilly was…” How could she put this?
How should she put this? Tara might well repeat it to Ray, who had a slightly different interpretation based on what her father had told him. She didn’t want Tara getting him mad because of something she’d told her.
She could anticipate Tara’s follow-up questions to anything she might say though.
Lilly was first. First what?
Lilly was cursed. What’s a curse? And where did it come from?
Lilly was afflicted. What’s an affliction? And why couldn’t the doctor help?
“Lilly had an accident,” she finally said. “She kept having accidents. With the magic.”
Tara frowned, puzzled. It was a success of sorts, if she’d explained it badly Tara would’ve challenged it already.
“You know how I said you have to be real careful with the magic and never, ever, do anything alone?” she followed up before Tara came out of her thoughtfulness.
“Uhuh,” Tara responded – which was something else Ray hated. Tara was real careful when she did that. Everything was measured with her. Everything was appropriate to the situation. She could do it here, just with her Mom. Something so simple as ‘uhuh.’
“Say ‘yes’ Tara,” she said. “You aren’t a monkey.” She tickled her daughter under the arms to make the point.
“Yes, mommy.”
“Well, Lilly had no mommy around to tell her that, about the magic. How to be safe with it, because the magic was new to her.” Was that even part way true? They didn’t know for sure, so it wasn’t a lie. It fitted with the story Tara had been told tonight, and it fitted with the truth as they all understood it. But could Lilly have really not known about magic?
What about her own Mom?
The story worked though, in the telling. It worked, at least so far as the men were concerned. The Maclay women thought they knew better – but neither version of the facts could be taken as gospel.
So, now, to Tara it was true as it was.
She’d said it. Tara would believe it. And it was
true as far as she knew it to be – at least until Tara was a little older and understood there were some things you shouldn’t ever
say to Daddy.
Even if he sort of knew about them… She just didn’t want throw it in Ray’s face. Or have Tara do that.
“So she had accidents?” Tara asked.
“Yes.”
“Worse than smashing Gran’s vase?” Tara wondered, obviously trying to quantify it.
“Much worse,” she replied. The focus of children; always comparing things to the biggest things in their own experiences. It was sweet. It was innocence. Innocence they’d perhaps risked removing from Tara when they’d told her the story earlier on this evening. Maybe she could cling onto it though. Wasn’t innocence a choice? A state of mind?
She hoped so.
Besides, though Tara had been the one punished for breaking the treasured family heirloom she strongly suspected it had been Donny’s horseplay that had knocked her over and, in turn, caused it to smash.
Tara wasn’t clumsy. Not in word, or deed. If Ray had let her go she might have taken dance classes, but because he hadn’t on the grounds of cost, they’d gotten her some suitable records and a little turntable of her own. Tara was more graceful than she was, though definitely no Fontaine. They’d see what the blooming of womanhood did to that grace. Would it enhance it? Or make her more awkward and less confident as it had done for her?
It’d be impossible not to love her anyway.
“What did she do?” Tara asked her, apparently satisfied about just how serious it had been.
Such a question. One that hadn’t really been answered in the story at all. What had Lilly done? Even to Maclay women the truth was lost in family myth, but it was worse than any slip she herself had suffered, that much was clear. Someone, a member of the family, had died. Could it have been any worse than that? “It was just a very bad accident, munchkin.”
“Worse than you had?” Tara wondered.
Smart girl. Linking two and two and getting the right result. Of course there’d never been a recent accident – nothing serious anyway - being locked up at certain times was the way to prevent it. It’d always worked since Lilly… and her daughter.
Compared to the horror of that first ‘accident’ everything after that’d been no more than reminders. One or two more public than the people around here had liked. That was what she knew, and what she’d heard from her own mother. “Yes, honey. I never really…” She didn’t want to say there was no reason for her to be locked up. There was a reason – it protected everyone. But to a child… “We know to be careful now – Lilly didn’t understand that right away. That’s why she had the accident.”
“Was it worse than I’ll have?” Tara asked very quietly.
She wanted to cry as her daughter asked the question. She had to blink as her eyes filled, and she knew Tara saw it too. Why? Why did it have to be this way? Why did it have to happen? Why was it always
this way?
She knew the answer. They could never take a chance again whilst they still had the magic. It was the same reason the Maclay women had always made sure their daughters were trained in how to use – and not use – the magic. To give them control. Accidents happened – Lilly was the proof.
But because they could
use the magic, they were something to be feared.
And there was no way out of that cycle.
She couldn’t really believe that Tara would ever lose control and hurt someone by accident – they knew what to watch out for. They knew how to control the magic now. The ‘demon’ as folks around here liked to call it was firmly corked in the bottle.
That was what Ray called it too.
She had her own theories about the ‘demon.’ But there was no doubt that it was dangerous, this thing they contained inside themselves. Call it a demon if you must – that wasn’t so very far from the truth in a manner of speaking.
But could she really lie to Tara and say that it couldn’t happen to her? The risk of losing control to what was within them was too great. They, neither of them – and none of the people in the past – were ‘bad.’
However both of them, like the women who’d lived here in the past, were a part of the Maclay family. Ray was right about that, and he was doing his best to give Tara as much time as he could, which was why he was even willing to consider college if Tara got the grades.
She knew her daughter would get the grades, even from more than a decade away.
Maybe he’d be less enthusiastic later, when Tara was older and the demon was closer, but that didn’t mean Tara wouldn’t be able to go.
This curse, this affliction didn’t mean she couldn’t have hope for Tara though did it? Couldn’t she hope it would pass Tara by?
Couldn’t she hope it’d never affect daughter’s children either?
Of course, these days a woman could choose not to have children, and she wouldn’t want her daughter to do that for the wrong reasons. Let it be a choice – not something to avoid this house and that room being their fate.
Right now, with Donny as Tara’s prospective ‘keeper’, she felt sorrier for her than she ever had for herself.
An accident worse than Tara would have? “Much worse than you’ll ever have,” she said. She couldn’t lie to her daughter and tell her there would be no curse. That went against history and all the evidence, but maybe Tara wouldn’t have to be locked up. She was teaching her daughter about the magic with the emphasis on caution, control and not overusing it.
Only ever for the really important things.
Respect was the key. For others and for the magic.
Magic wasn’t a battery to be drained and recharged. It was a bargain where there was always price to be paid. If Tara respected that she’d be alright.
She was showing her daughter where the dangers and the darkness lay in wait for her to go a step too far. It had as much to do with ethics and personal morality as it did with the magic itself. There were things you simply didn’t
do. And if you did… it became easier to take the next step.
And the next.
Before you knew it, with the purest of intentions, you could find yourself surrounded by darkness. But not Tara. Never Tara. Even now she knew better than that.
There had been Lilly first… but the facts became clearer later in the family history. Ruth, her daughter, had shared that fate. And Lilly’s granddaughters, twins, one of whom had been her great-grandmother had… They hadn’t had an accident. They’d… descended into darkness. One by choice – and one led that way by love for her sister.
If anything it was they, rather than Lilly, that the town and neighbours remembered.
And feared. It was their example she didn’t ever want Tara to follow.
Nor would she. Tara had a clearly defined personal morality already and, more than that, she cared. Now, if her son and daughter’s personalities had been reversed? She’d have been terrified for Tara and the people around here.
Maybe, when Ray saw she wasn’t a threat, he’d choose to not lock her up. That was the aim, but she had to tell Tara the truth. As things were now it would happen the usual way.
She didn’t want any company from her own daughter when she had to be locked away in that room. Even though it was so desperately lonely. Of course Tara had seen her in there, if briefly. Ray had insisted Tara see it. It was important; she remembered the same thing happening with her own mother at just about Tara’s age.
Tara had to understand she was alright – that she chose to be there. But also that it was serious.
When the time came she didn’t want Tara there for the whole time with her though.
That was the last thing she wanted for her daughter. Maybe only when it was really bad and something actually went wrong…? Ray was a kinder man than her father had ever been. He came to his duties reluctantly and never with an ounce of enthusiasm.
With daddy, she’d never been sure if it was duty or… something less pure.
“Lilly was the start of it all, sweetie.”
“The first one?” Tara asked.
“That’s right.” And she cursed us all through her carelessness, even if she wasn’t the worst. Damn her and whatever she did to deserve it.
It felt bad to think of poor Lilly that way, but what else was she to think?
She cursed us all.
--------------------------------
“Oh, sweetie,” Willow cradled her lover’s head – but Tara wasn’t upset. She was strangely quiet about it all as she’d recalled her mother’s words. Her impressions of a hundred conversations and many more silent moments.
“It’s okay,” Tara reassured her. “Because it
was a lie. At least the demon part.”
Willow knew Tara thought it was far from okay though. Lies never were, not lies that took such a toll on people over the years. And…
“Was it?” Willow asked slowly and felt Tara start. “I mean, yes the demon was a lie, but there was something behind it. You said so yourself, Lilly… something was supposed to have happened to her. And the others.”
“I never knew them.”
“What did you see when your Dad showed you your mom that time, when you were young?” There must have been something there, and only Tara’s Mom had been ill, the others… they’d been affected in some way, surely? Perhaps some hereditary illness, except why wouldn’t they have seen a doctor in more recent years – when medicine could have helped.
Willow believed then, it explained a lot what Tara had said. It hadn’t always been there. It had
started.
Every myth had some basis in reality, and hearing how Tara’s dad had loved her mom… she was willing to believe that he’d believed too.
Something had gotten to the Maclay family. Scared them. Made the women something to be afraid of. Surely it wasn’t just the fear of men about powerful women in their midst? It hadn’t been the case in her dreams so far… if they were real.
The men weren’t afraid of Lilly there. What changed? What had Lilly done?
“Did your Mom really believe it?” Willow asked. A modern woman, in the modern world – or at least educated in that world whilst living in something resembling The Crucible. That was the thing she found toughest to accept.
Tara, she could see, hadn’t thought about this in that light. Something
had been wrong with someone in the family. Perhaps there hadn’t been a demon, but there had been something… somewhere. Sometime.
And it seemed to be Lilly who was the key.
What had she done to scare everyone so much? Who’d died?
And what did Richard Wilkins have to do with it? Or was that truly just a dream?
-------------------
She dreamed of Lilly once more that night.
Another night than the dream that’d woken her and prompted their conversation.
She remembered this dream so clearly, like the others.
Lilly and
him outside on a clear night – perfectly dark but for the thin crescent of the moon shedding a little light. The barn was a little further along.
“They’re like the stars,” Lilly had said looking at the glittering frost on the ground.
“You can see the real stars,”
he’d told her looking upwards.
Lilly hadn’t waited to reply. “These are prettier.”
“That they might be,”
he’d agreed. “But I still prefer the stars in the sky.”
Silence had reigned for a few moments, each looking at their respective stars. Then, finally,
he’d asked the question. “Can you make them go away?”
he’d wondered.
He’d been testing her.
“Yes,” Lilly had admitted.
“Will you show me ma’am?” Always so polite.
“I have chores to do,” Lilly hadn’t wanted to do it at all.
“So late?”
He’d known an excuse when he’d heard it. “Lilly,”
he’d told her. “God has given you a gift.”
Lilly had paused, considered and then left
him there without looking back. But where’d she’d been looking…
A circle of mild heat had melted the frost, a perfect circle had been formed. Within that circle the grass had greened, grown… even the little meadow flowers that had survived to take root alongside the house had grown… flowered. In the middle of the night, and out of season.
“That’s my girl,”
he’d whispered before coming inside for the night himself.
Willow knew she’d given everything
he wanted then.
How did she know that?
How could she know what
he wanted?
**********************
Bascially then: you write good...fic great...me like.
). Willow may be rightly terrified of what she's going to face--her father alone, whose refusal to visit his daughter's grave pretty much implies he would have trouble separating the vampire from his child--but Tara is going back as more or less who she was when she left.
Anyway, I just wanted to say what a great job you’re doing with this. Hopefully, now that I’m caught up I’ll be able to give you some better feedback for your next update.
