By January
-- I've always been a coward,
And I don't know what's good for me.
Here I go!
It's coming for me through the trees.
Help me, someone!
Help me, please! --Once, it happened. There were new creatures and new secrets in the forest, and unsure of where she belonged, she slid into an old dream. The forest was quiet because there was tribute to be paid to the local gods, and the shrubbery far and wide was rich with preparation. The girl looked most delicate. She was radiant from someone else's kindness and love. To her, the tree was always beautiful. But it took the poised evening had served her up so tantalizingly to enchant him. Spreading out his branches, puffing up his flowers and his deep brown bark, and sifting the sunset, he had met her, face to face, her eyes to his everything, and he had carried her up, enthralled.
She fumbled to find her balance and crawled up and up and up. The crown of the tree had been hidden from her for years and her mind was in a flurry at this turn of events. Every limb she crawled on bent under her weight and the joy at finally doing what she'd always wanted.
The spurs she had come to use years ago in hopes that the hounds would surprise her with a secret attack dug into the wood flesh of the tree, and the tree himself, used to woodpeckers and starfish, couldn't see that these wounds were deeper and sadder than all the little scratches that he mused gave him character. Once, when the soft landings and little nests of the birds had seemed so insubstantial he had yearned for the blur of her to grind into him. And now she was. He grimaced, she was lost in success, and it hurt like hell.
When she walked away that night, she found wood ticks in her hair and sharp fragments of wood embedded in her stomach. It had been so coarse; though, she mused, if there had been any burning fires they would both be ashes, nothing. It had been so unpoetic. Her hands were swollen, but nothing in her head felt as decadently new or refreshed or reexcited as she had though might be. What was this? There were thin bruises all over her body. She didn't go home. She morosely wondered if she was just scraping that urge out of her system and why she felt so dirty. She stayed up all night by herself and went back to her tree again. As he snapped her up, she saw her horse under the tree snarling. Telling herself she deserved it, for all she'd suffered at his beck and call and teasing, she became another Daphne. Her skin start to fade brown and rough. She felt looped; whatever the prize was being able to sit in the tree, she was simply tired from scampering up and around him. That's all she did. Each time she shimmied up harder frantically trying to find substance in this gift he was giving her, and each time she ached more. She couldn't help thinking it was disgusting.
It is not to say that the tree was not a magnificent tree and not worthy of pretty girls dancing about it's limbs: it had beautiful curves, its fruit was sweet, and its leaves rustled like silvery dove's wings in the high winds and like butterflies in the breeze. Its branches were delicate, though. It stood alone, away from a grove and had grown up with no evergreen shading it from the weather and the world. That young girl who lived in the forest had been so kind to him, but she envisioned their lives in such an awkward way. Her touch was painfully greedy, and he only had the strength to hold up his branches so high, for so long.
The girl kept tumbling down like Alice. Her knees were thatched with red and little bits of bark, her hair a mess. From the ground, she saw the patch of blackberries. She groaned; forbidden fruit, how cliche. That's what had grown up around her tree. Those bushes hadn't been there before, but her world and his world was no longer just themselves, the sun, and the moon. Those changes in their worlds were sweeping them into a whirlwind. Maybe the seeds were carried in by those winds of change; maybe seeds had gotten stuck the coat of some meandering creature. Maybe her little creature.
-- I found a fox
Caught by dogs --About a year before, she had come from a walk, maybe to see her tree or maybe not, she didn't remember, to see little red forest-creature gently sucking a splinter out of her mare's left hoof. The effrontery, the simplicity, the beauty confused her, but with mixed motives she found pleasure in the attention.
Day after day she returned to her scarlet horse with the little animal. Sometimes they lay in the grass, their long tails loosely entwined together after afternoons of something to which the girl was alien, but drawn. Talking? The girl talked. She gossiped with the sun about their forest and reassured her when the golden friend yearned for the dark owl that lived in the hills. She discussed with the moon the world at large and what was in the great big books he leant her. She pandered around her tree, swirling about everything and anything but holding the bit firm in her stallion's mouth, choking it still. Her horse and the fox grew closer, and one day, the girl watched them when they thought she was asleep. When they stared into each other's eyes, when her horse lay in the grass and the fox curled up in its legs and fed it grapes from far way lands, when their soft animal language drifted to her scathed ears, she felt something in her stir. She pet the little fox gingerly; he glided up her arm and nestled behind her neck, his amber tail brushing her face. The gentle tickle of his soft fur was surreal; the only caress she had know was the rough, convex bark of her tree, the occasional bright touch of the moon, or her own shamed hand. Her fox was redolent with perfumes of flowers hidden from large hands and hoofs; the only scents she knew was the landscape of musk from her tree, the dust of knowledge misting down from the moon, and her own girl smells out of which years and years and years had taken any magic. The fox winked at her in the rain. He listened wide eyed to her stories and her sadness and her secrets. He lowered his gaze flattered when her face aglow in the sunset turned to him. The trees may have ears, the trees may know the world around them from a thousand knots and birds chirping to them, but they do not have the eyes that make her feel worthy of the world about which she meandered and courageous within the life she had been given.
-- He let me take him in my hands.
His little heart,
It beats so fast,
And I'm ashamed of running away
From nothing real --She almost crushed it once, holding it to her bosom like any paperback lover, but fluidly it skipped from under her angry fingers between the ears of her horse and looked at her eye to eye. He held her gaze as she plummeted into humiliation. He batted a leaf stuck in her hair to the ground and licked the cut a twig had given her. Her mind worked deleriously for days, recycling that wonderful caught breathe through her body leaving her so light and giddy she thought she might float away.
Sometimes she'd overhear a traveling bard singing songs of love and a bewitching scarlet wood nymph and marveled when she realized that the legendary red lady painted with gossamer words for the wolves and squirrels was herself.
She waved to the dogs that prowled through the forest. She became aware of their sleek curves and taut muscles. They were creatures of beauty. She had once seen one and her horse drinking in a stream, snout to snout. Classic.
She was fascinated by the scar on the fox's underbelly where the dogs had sunk their teeth in the soft flesh. What did it mean, that this little thing had survived those frothing hounds of love? It grew a comfort to run her fingers over it when she was afraid, of them or anything else. He melted into a purr whenever her gaze or her touch wafted toward him. Sometimes it was so soft only she could have heard it and he could have sensed it. But wide eyed and amazed at the other, both felt these subtleties rise up phoenixly and bloom. This was orchids that a breathe could spin into dust and lilies that snarled back, woven in the crimson mane of Heart.
Was what she and her woodland friend felt love? Was this love of which lions and lyrics alike moan and she had for years craved? It was a flat land; it was a land rolling with hills. It was a desert; it was a jungle. Whether or not her tree was there, she felt *it*. This 'it' that made her feel free to grow into a strong woman and made her happy when the weather was bad and who made her glow like lightening bugs watching a falling star. Without her tree? What was churning up inside her? Her -- who is she without that which was the center of balance for every thought, hope, dream, and sigh for years upon end? It is easy to stay the same...
-- I just can't deal with this,
But I'm still afraid to be there,
Among your hounds of love,
And feel your arms surround me.
I've always been a coward,
And never know what's good for me. --But the rider, the red cloaked, red horsed, red lipped and red eyed, knows that she has changed. She is beginning to understand. She smiles at the Willow-tree, for she and her heart and her love are as one, and she accepts this happily.
The odor of bacon flushed out this vision. Willow awoke with a groan; Xander and Buffy were miserably failing to cook over the withered fire in the clearing out of which she and Oz had stumbled. She looked down at him, sublime and with his head on her chest. Listening to her heart... Subconsciously he was hers -- like a lozenge, a cherry-flavored horror dissolved on her tongue.
Guilt bolted through her, and she chewed her lip at the shock that her stupidity, the mistakes and death she caused, and her utter idiocy and selfishness and her stupidity hadn't changed him. Was this what the bond between the girl and her little fox-love meant? You aren't your mistakes? The red fox and the red horse and the red-haired rider swam in her view, nodding yes from a tangled embrace and calm smile. Is this love? Don't answer that! What right did he have to forgive her when she couldn't forgive herself? You must begin to understand: it's the right of the red kids in red shoes, Miss Willow-Tree...
It was as if she had not just brushed a hot burner but realized that she had been wearing it as a halo for the past year and a half. In a groggy panic, she balked -- you don't get it; I'm not worthy...
She slipped out from under Oz, laying his head on the ground. She stood up and tried to twist the knots out of her back and the leaves out of her hair. She started to tip toe over to her friends and all the kids, unzombifying themselves to crappy cooking and bizarre cheer, her sun and moon and her flora and fauna.
She broke out into a mad run in the other direction. Past trees, past animals, past it all, past the past. Sobbing she threw herself to the ground and when she rolled to a stop, she was in a small grove. The morning was quiet. She stared into the blindly blue sky.
Where, why, how, what the fuck is happening to me...
She didn't see him pad up to her. She was splayed out in the white dusting of dandelions. He sat next to her and his gaze caught hers. The world was muffled out in his stare, and Willow held her breathe. His eyes glistened with static sadness and thorough forgiveness. She'd seen that emotion too much in his eyes; maybe that's why they were so red... He watched the ants crawl over her face and then kissed her nose. Somewhere a fire-spark blurred into a firefly, and a woodsman carved his axehead into a lararium. An alpha particle retired to a rider's thermos of alphabet soup, and an exotic locust absent mindedly nibbled on the one enchanted blade of grass that broke its curse and it plumed into the form of the goddess, who trotted off to spread peace and understanding in the modern world instead of consuming it whole. Oz castled up in her vision, but looked at her eye to eye. Madness exhaled.
Willow growled like peacock and flipped Oz over like a playing card. Up she rose, preening and purring. The Queen of Hearts nuzzled his neck, her red hair falling into his. Her foxy tart smiled, and they kissed the mad, bad world and all of its mad, bad trouble away as another day and forever began.
-- Do you know what I really need?
Do you know what I really need?
I need love love love love love, yeah!
The End
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