Listen, children, to a story that was written long ago

So go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend;

Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end.

But there won’t be any trumpets blowing, come the Judgment Day…

On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.

So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill,

Asking for the buried treasure, tons of gold for which they’d kill.

Came a message from the King: none with our brothers will we share—

All the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried there.

So go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend;

Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end.

But there won’t be any trumpets blowing, come the Judgment Day…

On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.

So the valley cried in anger: mount your horses, draw your swords!

And they killed the mountain people; so they won their just reward.

Now they stood beside the treasure on a mountain dark and red,

Turned the stone and looked beneath it: Peace On Earth was all it said.

So go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend;

Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end.

But there won’t be any trumpets blowing, come the Judgment Day…

On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.

Chapter Two: On the Bloody Morning After

Willow gazes around the little store she has bought. It has a spacious enough apartment through a door at the back, but she does not care much about her living space.

The store is flooded with sunlight, as the front is all windows, rather like in Greg’s house. Everything is a creamy white, the color of the yards and yards of both woven and unwoven hemp that she brings with her. There is a counter towards the back, where she will put the cash register when she has one. There are shelves lining the walls, and the floor is lovely polished honey-colored wood.

The store reminds her of Greg. Willow misses him terribly.

Fiddle, Oboe and Timpani roam the store and the apartment at the back, learning the layout and introducing themselves to the space.

Willow decides she will live up to her cliché and sell organic, homemade, expensive things. Hemp jewelry, hand-dipped candles, home-stirred soap, self-spun linen clothing. Willow turns and spins faster than a dreidl to where her linen bag lies in her apartment behind the store.

Her familiars join her faster than she can blink, and slowly, deliberately, faster than a dreidl spinning across a table, Willow begins to unpack.

April 25^th, 2008; Los Angeles, California

Excerpt from a magic-supply online newsgroup message number 8654, posted 25/4/08:

On a lighter note, there’s a new magick shoppe in town! Just off of West Hollywood, this charming shop, modestly called Sacred Threads & Other Things Crafted With Love, run by a sweet, quiet young woman named Salix (no last name given), sells everything any casual practitioner could want (and more!). Besides the many foreign objects (including several luminous Orbs of Thesulah), there are many different crafts handmade by Salix herself. These things include blessed water (conveniently scented with mint, rosemary, ginger and apple), hand-dipped candles (in all shapes, colors, sizes and styles), and painstakingly woven ropes—reputed to be unbreakable. Salix has said that there is a warding spell set around the shop to keep out those with bad intentions—it may indeed be true. The shop is a lovely place to simply relax. Salix sells hot tea and cocoa as well, so have a cuppa while browsing through her equally handmade spellbooks. * * * * 

Saturday, April 14^th, 2007; Sunnydale, California

Willow is unhappy.

She is desperately, torturously unhappy.

There are four people who know; there are three people who care.

Cordelia knows, and cares. She talks to Willow on the phone several times a week, and it is perhaps because she cannot see Willow’s convincingly bright smile that she can detect the undertone of despair in her voice. It tears Cordelia apart to know that her friend suffers; it makes her hurt inside to know that nobody in Sunnydale is Willow’s true friend or confidante. Cordelia is not particularly a confidante, either, but Willow talks to her, and Cordelia hears a little of what her friend does not say. Cordelia loves Willow dearly, stays awake at night and worries for her. But she knows something of hiding pain, and is aware that Willow will fall apart if she is confronted with her unhappiness. Cordelia could support Willow during her collapse, but it would be hard. Cordelia is aware that her spirit is not as selfless and giving as Willow’s, and therefore worries that she will not have enough love left for herself, and Gunn, and their children, Thea and Paul. So she talks to Willow at least twice a week, and lies awake in Gunn’s arms at night, biting her lip in worry for her friend that she cannot help.

Angel knows, and cares. He can see the way Willow’s shoulders slump whenever she thinks nobody is looking, notices the shadows under her eyes before she goes to apply another layer of concealer. He has tried to talk to Buffy about it, but all that introduces are suspicions and accusations: “Why are you watching Willow?” and “I’m her best friend—don’t you think I would notice if something were wrong?” Angel watches as her ‘friends’ ignore her, watches as she tries to care for them more than she cares for herself, watches as she slowly begins to crumble inside because there is nobody loving her. But he does not approach her—the brooding, worried persona was one he had to abandon along with his golden eyes and knife-sharp teeth when the Powers That Be granted him absolution. He knows that Willow would cut herself off from him, assure him she was fine; he knows that he might hurt more than help, knows that as far as friends go, he is not a very good one. So he sits and watches as Willow leans discreetly against a bookshelf because she is so exhausted from not caring about herself, and slowly begins to brood again.

Spike knows, and tells himself he does not care. He can smell the exhaustion emanating from Willow, can almost see its waves as it takes over her frail being. He can hear the slightly sluggish thrumming of the blood in her veins, can see the veins through her skin as she grows more and more transparent. He can tell every time she’s lost blood, knows it happens almost every night, and is angry at her because she lets herself be hurt and because he wants to be taking her blood, savoring it, siphoning it carefully, slowly, so that she begs for it, finally, so that she is not in pain. He insists every night in his crypt to all of the spiders and mice that will listen that he does not care, and insists again that he is not lying.

Oz knows, and truly does not care. He is the causer of a lot of her pain, and it is he who is so crudely siphoning away her blood. He savors her pain, loves what she weakly lets him do to her. He is aware of the people who notice the girl he used to love waste away, and he knows they will not do anything—Just as he is sure than Willow will never stop him from hurting her.

***

On a cheerful Saturday morning, Buffy and Willow go shopping. 

Willow is aware that ‘going shopping’ with Buffy is merely figurative, as in the eleven years she has been Buffy’s closest friend and confidante, she has never bought anything while with Buffy. Instead, she functions as Buffy’s faithful shopping cart as Buffy goes from store to store, requisitioning Willow’s fashion advice and not listening to a word of it, acquiring bag after bag of expensive, sexy clothing that she piles in Willow’s arms.

Now it is four o’clock in the afternoon—they have been at the mall since eight-thirty, and even Buffy’s shopping adrenaline is running low. There is a last shop she wants to go to, at the end of a mostly deserted corridor in the mall. It sells beach-wear, poolside-wear, at low prices. Buffy rushes ahead as Willow struggles to catch up, lugging bags from the Limited, Express, Banana Republic, the Gap, Steve Madden, Claire’s Accessories, and even Old Navy. Buffy heads straight into the many racks of bathing-suits, ignoring her friend lumbering helplessly into the store. Willow stops at the cash register and smiles kindly at the cashier, an acne-ridden boy of about sixteen. “Would you mind watching these bags for me?” Willow asks politely, breathlessly, and it is all the boy can do to smile and nod at the same time.

Willow somehow manages to put all of the bags down neatly without creating an avalanche of some sort and enters the maze of racks. Now she does not join Buffy and follow her along eagerly; Willow wants to get a new swimsuit, as all of her others are worn down from long days at the beach. Willow does not want to get any bathing-suit, however; she wants to get one that will, perhaps, make her look beautiful. Willow is aware, at the outermost edge of her consciousness, that she is a mere accessory to Oz, that he does not love her. She is like a pen to him, kind of; one that he chews on, and one that he will discard if it gets too ragged. Perhaps, when they go to the pool on Wednesday, if Willow somehow looks sexy in her new bathing-suit, if she somehow outshines the other women at the pool, maybe she will cease to be a mere accessory, and maybe Oz will love her again.

There is a slight problem, though, one that impedes her whenever she buys clothing. She cannot show her thighs. Not in skirts with slits, not in shorts. When she wears a bathing-suit, Willow must have boyshort bathing-suit bottoms, and she must always be careful to never spread her legs when anyone can see. Oz has told her this, and when he told her he hurt her so that she would remember. She has scars on her thighs, on her lower back, between her legs that nobody except Oz should know are there. Oz likes them there, he put them there himself. He says that it marks her as his, and whenever he reminds her of this, he adds another scar, slowly and painfully, and leaves her alone to wash away the blood dripping down her legs.

If she gets too ragged, Oz will not care for her, even a little bit, and then it will all be lost.

Willow shakes her head, feels the long hair whirl up and settle back around her shoulders. She does not want to think of the pain before it will happen. It only exists when she is in the midst of pain; otherwise she is normal Willow, happy Willow, Willow-who-lives-to-make-others-happy.

Willow takes a bathing-suit off the rack, puts it back with a faint sigh of disgust. All of the suits with boyshorts are for twelve-year old girls with delusions of sexiness; all she can find are suits that look like they’ve fallen out of the pages of a Delia’s catalog. Delia’s was all fine and good when she was a teenager, and she is aware that she still looks like one, but that doesn’t mean she wants to enhance that illusion.

“Willow, what are you doing?” Buffy asks, suddenly invading Willow’s space.

“Looking for a bathing-suit,” Willow explains patiently. “I want a new one.”

“There are tons of nice ones over there,” Buffy observes, pointing to the section with thongs and string bikinis.

“I need—want—one with boyshorts,” Willow says.

“Oh,” Buffy says. After a moment of semi-awkward silence, the Slayer charitably offers, “Try this one on!”

It was in Buffy’s heaping armful of bathing-suits. It is a black two-piece bathing-suit—with boyshorts—and a bikini halter-top. Willow wonders where on earth Buffy found it, but does not bother to ask. Buffy scrunches the bathing-suit up and precariously shoves it into Willow’s hands, trying to balance the many other bathing-suits she cradles in her arms.

“Thanks, Buffy,” Willow says, and goes into the changing rooms.

The suit is even better than she thought. While the boyshorts covered up the necessary areas, they were cut down the seams on the sides and laced, showing a little more of Willow’s near-translucently pale skin. The top is not exactly a bikini but more like a corset made of lycra. The hem ends just two inches above her belly button, and the neckline is cut low, leaving space for her cleavage to be demonstrated, thanks in most part to the push-up underwire in the top.

Yes, Willow wants this bathing-suit.

April 29^th, 2008; Los Angeles, California

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Times’ business section, 28/4/08:

Just off of West Hollywood I encountered a small shop run by one single, frail young woman who calls herself Salix (to all of you poor fools, salix means ‘willow’ in the Latin). While I browsed the many shelves adorning the walls, Salix floated about, making sure I could find what I wanted and then tending to the other customers. The shop—Sacred Threads And Other Things Crafted With Love (a long, difficult title, but none could be more accurate)—sells all sorts of things, the majority handmade by Salix herself. The rest are more exotic items, sporting names like ‘Orb of Ramjerin’ or ‘Unicorn’s Horn’ (finely grated into a dust and sifted through a sacred filter, no less). Among the tamer items in Sacred Threads (etc.) are hand-dipped candles, made in various colors and scents, in many different styles. Many of these candles, if bought in bulk (i.e., more than seven), come with instructions on how to craft them at home. There is homemade soap, perfume, clothing, and jewelry. To all ‘hippies’—if you are in need of any hemp at all, in the form of jewelry or as yet unwoven, Sacred Threads is where to get it! The hemp is dyed, of course, in many different colors ranging all over the spectrum. Salix also sells, at a lovely low price, hot tea and cocoa for those crispy days. There are soft chairs along one of the walls, so you can curl up with a cup of tea. Watch out, Starbucks™! And last but not least, on homemade and recycled paper, there are a great many of what Salix labels as ‘spellbooks’—for health, good luck, and the ‘Darker Arts’, the latter of which Salix keeps in the back of the store and only takes out if you meet her standards. I predict a long and quiet future for Salix and her shop.

Wednesday, April 18^th, 2007; Sunnydale, California

Willow wakes up in the morning with a surprise: she is not in pain. For some reason, Oz has not been hurting her as much lately. It is hard to tell what he is thinking; most of the time, Oz is his usual emotionless self, except when he is angry, and that is when he hurts her, yells at her, calls her terrible things. If she did not know better, though, Willow might speculate that Oz was being cautious around her. But that is silly. Oz has never cared what she thought.

Today Willow walks about with a thrumming air of excitement. Today is the day she has her chance to win back Oz’s heart, to be more than a ragged accessory. Today Willow thrillingly pulls on her new black bathing-suit, wraps a dark green batiked sarong (that she has borrowed from Buffy) around her waist, and goes to the pool to meet Oz.

Willow has let her hair hang loose today, without headband or hairtie. It falls down onto her shoulders in thick waves of fiery, bloody red, and for the first time in a long time, Willow feels beautiful. The women give her angry up-and-down looks, and shift uncomfortably on their towel-draped beach chairs; the men stop and shoot furtive, appraising glances her way.

Oz comes, and Willow gives him a lovely, full-faced smile. For once he smiles back sincerely, and her heart leaps in her chest because she is so glad to have made Oz happy. For at least three hours they swim and lie in the sun together, and Willow savors the tenderness with which Oz spreads sunscreen on her exposed back.

Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Willow leaves Oz dozing on his towel and goes for a quick swim, staying close to the side of the pool where her lover relaxes so that he can see where she is. Oz likes to know where she is at all times.

At four-fifteen, Willow climbs out of the pool, receiving admiring stares for her long, water-slicked legs, but she does not notice them because Oz is no longer by their towels. She thinks perhaps he is at the bathrooms, but he is not, so she goes to the bar next, just in time to see Oz walk off with a bronze-skinned, black-haired beauty with longer legs and a tinier swimsuit that Willow could ever hope to possess. Oz turns, catches her eye and lets her see the way his arm snakes around the other woman’s waist; the woman pauses, asks him something, turns herself, sees Willow, and smirks. They come back, joined at the hip like only Willow and Oz should be, and they wait.

Finally Oz says, “Willow, this is Aleashah.”

Aleashah smiles. It is a perfect, even-toothed, full-lipped smile. Willow can see why Oz likes her. “Nice to meet you,” Aleashah says, extending a long-fingered, manicured hand.

Willow does not know what is going on inside her, because she has not felt this emotion in so long. But she does not think she can stand that Oz is introducing her to the woman he’s about to at least temporarily cheat on her with. Oz has cheated before, Willow knows, but never this starkly, never this cruelly. And suddenly Willow has a thought—why should I put up with this? It is a question Willow is unable to answer, and it fills her further with this foreign emotion—anger.

Willow does not shake Aleashah’s hand and say, “You too.”

No.

Willow smacks the offending hand away and says, “I wish I could say the same.”

Aleashah looks amused; Oz looks angry. “Willow…” he begins warningly.

“Be quiet, Oz,” Willow tells him, and in his surprise, he is. “The person to whom you seem to have glued yourself is my boyfriend,” she informs Aleashah coldly.

“He doesn’t seem to have any markings on him that say so,” Aleashah tells her.

“That’s true,” Willow acknowledges. “Fine.”

Aleashah looks surprised but pleased that Willow has given up this easily; Oz looks wary.

“However,” Willow says, “There are a few things you should know.”

“What are those?” Aleashah asks patiently.

“I’ve been going out with him for something like nine years now,” Willow says, “Although we missed a year in between because the girl he was cheating on me with tried to kill me…”

“Willow, no,” Oz says, as if she is some kind of dog.

“…so he killed her instead,” Willow continues. “You might know the band she was in. They used to be very popular in good ol’ Sunnydale—Shy?” 

Aleashah nods stiffly and removes her arm from around Oz’s waist; she does remember.

“Veruca,” Willow continues, “was the lead singer.

“So Oz here,” she says, indicating him with a sweep of her hand, “Took a year off for some soul-searching, then came back and we picked up like nothing had happened. He cheated on me consistently, but never so rudely as right now.”

Aleashah not-so-subtly steps away from Oz.

“So, have him if you want,” Willow pronounces finally, “But, along with all that history, he’s less than a Viking in the sack.” 

Oz blanches.

“And,” Willow adds at last, “He likes giving pain.”

With one last look at the two of them, Oz standing stiffly, Aleashah giving him a disgusted glance and walking huffily away, Willow turns and goes home.

May 2^nd, 2008; Los Angeles, California

Willow will indulge herself; she figures that as long as she does not become a corrupt corporate whore she deserves all that she can exult in.

Therefore, after clearing the appropriate spaces for what she wants, she dials a phone number only known to an elite few.

It rings seven times and then an impatient voice answers. “Who is this?”

“Hey, Bill, it’s Willow,” she says, forgetting to speak slowly, the words falling as quickly as firing bullets out of her mouth. “It’s Willow Rosenberg.”

There’s a pause, as if the listener is trying to repeat her words slowly to himself. Then, “Willow Rosenberg? Ms. Rosenberg has been reported missing for a year now.”

“I know, Bill. I’m back. I had to do some… soul-searching.”

“Who are you and how did you get hold of this number?”

“Oh, shut up, Bill. It’s me! I helped you design Windows 4050 last year, and told you that it was alright if you didn’t give me credit as long as I got an extra 200 thousand?”

There’s another pause, and then Bill Gates says, “Where the Hell were you, Willow? We were trying to write a Windows 5000 but we couldn’t get the glitches out without you!”

“What?” Willow blinks, sure she’s heard wrong. “But you said you wouldn’t be involved at all in the making of Windows 5000—that you were sick of computers and that you wanted to relax in the Bahamas with some beautiful women. I seem to remember,” Willow adds slyly, “That you invited me along…?”

“What did I say?” Bill Gates asks slowly.

“…And that you’d leave all the work to the small-timers who were trying to acquire fortunes as big as yours!” Willow exclaims.

The pause this time is long and torturous, and then Bill Gates laughs as though he cannot believe it. “God, Willow, it is you!” he almost shouts. “Where have you been? We had a coffee date April of 2007!”

Willow cannot remember this coffee date, but she does not doubt it. “Look, Bill, I’d love to chat, but I’m in a bit of a crunch right now and I need my 500 thousand.”

She is sure Bill Gates doesn’t even blink an eye. “Sure! I’ll send a check, shall I? To your place in Sunnydale?”

“NO! No. No, not Sunnydale,” Willow says quickly, panicking. “I live in Los Angeles now.”

Bill Gates does not show his alarm, if there is any, at her outburst. “LA? How nice. Well then, d’you want me just to see if I can transfer the money to your account?”

Her old bank account in HSBC. “Yes, that would be great, Bill. Thanks.”

She can almost hear his smile. “Sure, Willow. And can we renew that coffee date sometime?” He sounds wistful. It is nice to know someone missed her while she was with Greg. 

“Of course, Bill.”

Wednesday, April 18^th, 2007; Sunnydale, California

The moment Willow steps inside the house that she and Oz share she is overwhelmed with a deep sense of sorrow: sorrow that she has deprived Oz of what obviously fulfills his needs, sorrow that she has disappointed him. It is too late for her to remember why her anger was so well-founded; her loyalty to Oz has suddenly, inexplicably, sprung up anew, and she collapses to the floor in the hallway just inside the door.

After a while she picks herself up and goes upstairs. Perhaps her familiars can comfort her.

She has three familiars, one of whom she’s just recently acquired. She has never heard of a witch or warlock with three familiars, but she figures, as Oz has told her before, that it’s just another malfunction of hers. They are: Fiddle, a ferret, who is a phenomenon in himself because he is raven-black, except for his blazing gold eyes—he wandered into her room by way of the balcony about four years before; Timpani, a large Rex rabbit with velvet-soft purple-grey fur and soft black eyes who found Willow by loitering around the backyard; and the last and newest familiar, Oboe, a creamy-white and grey female ferret who spoke to Willow while she was putting in volunteer hours at the ASPCA a little more than a month before.

Much to Oz’s disgust, the familiars have the guest room to themselves. Willow has built a paradise for them in there, with litter boxes discreetly placed against the far wall, potted plants everywhere, and little hammocks and mattresses scattered hither and thither. Fiddle and Oboe and Timpani love their room, they have told Willow so themselves. She loves to make them happy simply because it is so easy to please them. They do not expect much of her but thrill over almost whatever she gives them, and they love her unconditionally in return.

Willow would never dream of betraying that love.

Willow knocks gently on the door to their room, just out of politeness, and then enters, sits among the cluster of bonsai trees and fountains at the center of the room. Eventually each of them flows over, and they tell her something.

There is something wrong, Oboe begins silently.

Willow furrows her eyebrows in worry. “What is it?”

Sshh, Timpani cautions. The wolf will be back soon.

Oz? Willow thinks, surprised. What does he have to do with anything?

Fiddle and me can’t tell, Timpani confesses, but Oboe says there’s something…

Fiddle and I, Willow corrects absentmindedly.

Come with me, Oboe says. I will show you.

Willow obediently gets up and follows her familiar into her own bedroom. What is it? Willow asks. I can’t see—

Not see, Oboe explains. Feel. With your magic. There’s something there.

Willow sighs, but extends her powers, carefully, searchingly. Her familiars will know if she has not really tried. She reaches farther—farther—

And then bumps into something with a resounding BANG.

Willow closes her eyes, allows the ‘images’ of what she’s just found assault the insides of her eyelids. What she finds is a rippling gold bubble that stretches over the whole house, and it smells of wolf.

Whatis it? Willow asks Oboe.

I could only sense it because I’m new and the wolf didn’t remember to include me, Oboe explains. This is about six years old, and I think it’s renewed around tomorrow every year. It’s going weak.

Oh, Willow says faintly. But what does it do?

It… No, Oboe says. It won’t make any sense to you until it’s gone.

But Oz made it, Willow observes. Won’t he be upset if I knock it down?

K N O C K I TD O W N !Willow’s familiars command together, and their force together, and their absolute certainty, is what makes Willow do it.

The bubble, like Oboe had said, is not very strong, and Willow pokes at it until it wobbles like a jelly, and then she slices it. Each slice shimmers and disappears, and then there is no bubble.

Well, Willow comments, that was anticlimactic—

Something inside her bedroom, stretches, squeaks, and suddenly explodes outward, throwing Willow and all three of her familiars hard against the wall, and then it is all dark.

***

Willow wakes slowly, groggily, hours later, and hates Oz.

How dare he control her that way? This is about six years old, Oboe had said. Since 2001, then. Since Oz came back, he has been contorting her feelings, making her love him, worship him, forgive him… and hurting her…

Willow leaps to her feet, suddenly energized, runs her hand over her hips, thighs, breasts, knows the thin, painful scars that he has made sure nobody will ever see.

“How long did you plan to keep me like this, Oz?” Willow growls to the empty air, and is suddenly afraid.

The explosion—it was a deliberate backlash from the spell, meant to kill, or at least greatly injure, whoever broke it without Oz’s say-so. Apparently, Oz does not mind if he kills her.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Willow mutters. There is no time to pack—Oz will be home any second. Her familiars crowd around her as Willow shoves her laptop and cellphone into her backpack, then searches wildly for her wallet.

It is quickly found and the backpack is zipped, and then, with animals trailing earnestly behind, Willow trips clumsily down the stairs. 

There are two rooms between the stairs and the front door—the living room and the dining room. 

Oz is sitting patiently, quietly, in the living room. He is leaned back in the La-Z Boy, feet propped up, arms folded behind his head. “Going somewhere, Willow-my-Willow?” he asks smoothly. His eyes are cold.

When Willow does not answer, he stands slowly, deliberately, and advances. His eyes are black and his hands are clawed and dangerous as he stalks towards her. One by one, Willow’s precious familiars pounce on him and each get swiped away, leaving a slowly descending trail of blood in the air.

Willow drops her backpack and steps backward as Oz comes nearer. “Oz, no,” she moans, but then he has her arm in an iron grip. 

He drags her up the stairs as Willow tries desperately to think of a spell that will save her, but she cannot kill Oz, because who will side with her when his body is found…? All of the spells she knows kill immediately.

Then they are in Oz’s room. There is no bed in there, as he very rarely condescends to sleep with Willow and is usually out with some more adequate girlfriend. No, there is no bed in Oz’s room. There is a table, low to the ground, rather like an operation table; there is a stool, conveniently level with the table; there is a dresser. In the three bottom drawers of the dresser, there are clothes.

In the top drawer there is pain.

Oz throws Willow to the table, and fumbles for the top drawer.He takes out four pairs of handcuffs, locks Willow’s hands and feet to the table. “You don’t even know what pain is,” Oz threatens her, and turns back to the drawer.

Willow does know what pain is. Her proof scars her thighs, legs, breasts; but she knows that she will soon be hurt far worse than she ever has been, because she has just defied Oz more than she ever has before.

There is a clinking of metal, a rusting of leather while Oz rummages around in the top drawer, and then he turns back to her, his hands empty. His face is twisted into a sadistic grin as he rips Willow’s sarong and bathing-suit off, leaving her frightened and naked on the table.

For some perverse reason, all Willow can think of are songs, not spells:

I’m cold and I am shamed, lying naked on the floor…

Ten minutes later, Willow’s stomach is blessedly numb and she stops biting her now-bleeding bottom lip. Oz notices, frowns at her.

“Not enough distraction for you?” 

Old love, new love, every love but true love…

Oz puts down the bloody coat hanger, unzips his pants. Willow’s eyes widen.

“Oz, no!” It is inevitable that he rape her, Willow supposes; it is a final humiliation, a smack in the face that she is beneath him and completely at his mercy. He has raped her before, but this time it is obvious he does not plan to use a condom as he always has.

Oz cocks his head at her and then realizes what she’s afraid of. “You don’t want to have my babies, Willow?” he asks, faking insult.

She glares at him.

“Well, I don’t have any condoms handy…” Oz nonchalantly cats his eyes around the room, mocking her, exaggerating his worry over the search for protection. He does not care.

Willow’s eyes begin scanning the area around her, looking for anything, anything, that could function as a condom. Her eyes light upon the coat hanger lying by her hip and a terrible thought occurs to her; she quickly looks at the other side of the room.

Her quick movement, however, catches Oz’s eye, and the same thought enters his mind. He picks up the coat hanger again, spins it between his thumb and index finger. “Always knew you were a smart girl,” he says, and spreads her legs with his knee, forcing the coat hanger between them.

Screams are never answered in Sunnydale.

***

Around four o’clock in the morning, Willow opens blood-encrusted eyes to see… nothing. At first she is terrified that once she passed out, Oz blinded her, but then she realizes it is past midnight, because she can just make out the abandoned hump of Oz’s stool by her head, and the dark shape of the dresser.

Willow lies perfectly still, listening as well as she can for any sound at all that will tell her where Oz is. The house is silent, except for a little scratching on the stairs, like a mouse or… Fiddle and Timpani and Oboe! It must be one of them! Elated, Willow moves, twists her torso to sit up and get off the table, and screams in pain. Her stomach is stiff with dried blood and ragged cuts, her legs covered with deep slashes. She suddenly realizes it hurts to breathe because of the bruises on her ribs and the scratches on her breasts, and she breaks down in tears because her wrists are bleeding and raw; she is still secured in handcuffs.

There is a slight movement by the door, and then: Willow?

Yes, yes, yes! Willow sobs. Oboe, Fiddle, Timpani, I’m here—are you okay?

Then Oboe is on the table by her shoulder, and her eyes are bright with anger as she says, What did that wolf do to you? All I can smell is blood, but it’s too dark for me to see properly.

It hurts too much to move, Willow whispers, and my hands are cuffed.

There is a humming noise, and then the light in the ceiling flickers on. There is a collective gasp from each of her familiars, and then Timpani screams, I’ll kill him! I will!

Be quiet, Timpani, Fiddle cautions.

Quiet, nothing, Timpani retorts loudly. Just look what he’s done to her.

Willow wants to cover herself up, even if the only people seeing her are her familiars. The blood at the crux of her legs is still flowing from deep inside her, and her womb burns.

Can you get me out of these handcuffs somehow? she asks her familiars. We need to leave.

Oboe walks around the table, her body stiff with fury, and begins to work on picking the lock on one of the handcuffs. Fiddle jumps up to take another one, and Timpani sits by, helpless.

I’m sorry, Willow, he says, but I don’t have little paws like they have—

It’s okay, Timpani, Willow assures him, and then clenches her teeth as one of the handcuffs excruciatingly comes loose.

Finally, each handcuff is off and Willow and her familiars somehow get her into some clothing and outside to her car.

***

Willow gets out of the car, because she knows she is not driving well. She has stopped the car a little off the road, in the grass on one side of the highway. She opens the door and falls out; it is only the door that was keeping her upright. She cries into the grass, feels the terrified trembling bodies of Fiddle and Oboe and Timpani pressing into the small of her back and her stomach. They are frightened, she is frightening them. Willow tries to stand, falls back in the grass. She cannot stop crying because she hurts so badly, Oz has never hurt her this much before. She can barely believe she made it down the stairs to the front door and to the car. She wonders if she has left a trail of blood…?

Oboe moves up her arm gingerly, nestles between her shoulder and chin, licks her face tenderly. “Oh, Goddess,” Willow moans, as there is nobody else to hear her, “If you were ever to help me, please help me now…”

The Goddess does not answer, but Greg does.

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