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Remember not, Lord, our offences,
nor the offences of our forefathers;
neither take thou vengeance of our sins:
spare us, good Lord, spare thy people,
whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood,
and be not angry with us for ever.
Spare us, good Lord.
From all evil and mischief;
from sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil;
from thy wrath, and from everlasting damnation,
good Lord, deliver us.
- From the Anglican Church THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
~
"What about cursing her? Red's done it to you, TWICE!"
"Why don't *you* drag her to whatever insane demon witch doctor gave you back *your* soul?"
"She'd never survive the trials, and neither would you, ya ponce! Had to have yours shoved down your throat like a--"
"Oh my GOD will you two shut up? That spell won't keep her out forever, and it's cruel to just let her go on like this."
"It would be more cruel to restore her soul. She couldn't possibly cope with... I can't believe you even suggested that, Spike. Putting aside our personal--"
"Personal? PERSONAL? YOU personally drove her out of her tree and then made her into an immortal fucking loony! That's the *personal* of this! I loved her for a hundred years! Took care of her like you couldn't be bothered to do, and it was all YOUR fault to begin with!"
Daddy and My Spike. But no -- they aren't either of them right anymore. They're like kittens on my skin now, soft and furry and pointy sharp. Scratch! Scratch!
Miss Edith agrees it's most unpleasant for them to shout as if we can't hear them, inside and out. Their plans are written in our veins, after all. Daddy to me and me to My Spike. They want to restore my soul so I'll be torn and frayed just like they are. And that naughty Slayer who hates us all and spills us whoosh! Dust to ashes and blood and memory on the wind, she only wants...
I've gone blind. All I can see is black and faded sparkling. Death, rebirth, and the stars forever singing. Pointed sticks. Pointed sticks.
"I'll take care of it. I understand that neither of you can."
"No." "LIKE HELL!"
I would sing if I still had a mouth. Chop, chop, stab, stab whoosh! Miss Edith cries because wolves ate hers when we weren't looking, and I left her on a train in a place that is only a crater in the edge of the world today. It's no place at all anymore.
I remain quiet, because I can say so much more this way.
~
There's a boy here who smells like Daddy and Grandmother. He sits in front of my cage and watches me and asks me questions without answers.
"Who are you to me? My father made you, and my mother made him. Does that make you my sister? My aunt?"
Silly boy. Silly questions. I ask him if he'd like tea, and his eyes tell me he'd rather drink my blood from my breast like Grandmother did. Poor thing -- another lost lamb like so many others we caught and roasted and licked clean today and yesterday and forever.
"No thank you." His tongue is so polite and pink. The stars tell me that he shouldn't be -- heartbeat and living flesh and bones that break. He asks me how he happened when Grandmother and Daddy are dead. "Angel says you... know things. You see things other people don't."
I watch him. Blue, blue eyes, like my Spike. Daddy dragged my Spike away screaming that he wouldn't let them do it. Ever.
Feed me to the lions. Call me a snake. I'm sorry, Pet. Woosh.
"I'm a princess," I tell the boy who smells like pine and brick and coarse linen. Hearthstone and beeswax and lemon tart. "You won't let me hurt it, will you? This baby is the one good thing we ever did together. Daddy has forgotten his promise to tell you that. Grandmother is very cross."
He's pale; translucent like steam on glass. His heartbreak rings like fairy bells. So pretty. Like funeral bells. The rush of the ocean outside the cave. Woosh!
"My... mother said that?" Tears like silver on skin gone dead, clean, pure white. I hold my hand up to the bars, and he is paler, even, than my death.
His fingertips touch my fingertips, and Angel's baby cries.
His story plays like a movie behind my eyes. "You didn't want to go for a walk," I tell him, and brush his shiny hair. So pretty, like a doll. He opens the cage with a kick -- crash! And falls into my arms. Poor little boy. I could be your mummy.
"No. Yes," he sobs, "Please."
I take off his clothes for changing and he takes off my dirty dress and our skin shines like moonlight together. Little lamb, little dove. He crawls into me -- he can go back inside for a little while, then explode and be reborn, just like his own Mummy! I will be dust for him. For all of the alone.
He pumps and cries and thrusts and whimpers and trembles. My poor little brother. What can I do but hold him inside my womb until he bursts hot and wet and calls me Mommy?
~
The Slayer watches me when the others have gone. She turns a wooden stake over and over in her hands and looks and looks, like a wolf waiting for the lamb to leave the flock. But she has the lamb in a cage, helpless and trapped, so why does she wait?
I look back at her. She has pretty eyes, full of violence and blood. I see so many endings in her eyes, the color of moss growing on trees. So much dust running through her fingers. She's so small to be so horrible. She took them all away from me -- Daddy and My Spike. I look at her tiny bones, fragile like a bird, I could snap her so easily and I can't see whatever they see. There's no butterfly in there, only a carrion crow waiting, waiting for the flesh to fail. To fall to dust.
She holds a pointed wooden stake in her hand, meant for my heart. She says nothing but I know she's just waiting. For now, she's waiting.
I would rather listen to the rats chatter and think about the boy with the blue, blue eyes.
~
They take turns, Daddy and My Spike. Standing, looking, pacing, pacing, back and forth, back and forth like hungry cats. Spike smokes those smelly cigarettes he likes so much. He says he's quit, but I know my prince -- he never quits.
He talks and talks to me, but I can't always hear him above the sound of the sea. I try to tell him, but he shouts, "We're nowhere near the ocean, Dru! Christ! Don't you see what's going on here?"
I see. I see so much more than he imagines. They think I don't know. They think I'm a child who hides under the covers and thinks she's safe. But I feel the cold metal of the bars and the hard stone of the floor. I smell the salt air and taste the dust on my tongue. I know that they'll keep coming for me, chasing me, catching me and sheering my wool until there's nothing left and I'm bare. Bare rock and sand and dust. An ocean breeze. A final cry. The end.
"I didn't want to bring you back here. I wanted to let you go. I can't... I can't make this decision, Dru. I can't... You made me. You gave me this existence, this... you gave me everything, whatever it's become now, damn it, and I can't just... dismiss that and... FUCK!"
My poor Spike. "All things come to an end, even the endless," I tell him. We end and begin and end again. That's the way the ocean ebbs and flows. That's the way the flowers bloom and die. The bees sting and die. The birds fly and fall. That's the way of everything. "Though I walk in Death's shadow, I fear He is with me."
I am not afraid. Neither is Spike. But William is. He's still there in those eyes.
"Stop talking like that. I'm not going to let them kill you!"
Doesn't my darling prince know... we're already dead. He was never buried at all, my poor dearest. I meant to bury him when he stopped breathing, there in the warm, manure-sweet hay. But I couldn't stop holding him. I sang to him while he slept, all the next day, nobody else came. I sang, and then the sun set, and he woke, and we went out to play.
Now he's bruised, so much deader than he was then. It's that nasty girl. The one with the sunlight in her hair. It stings us all.
"Now, my William. Don't fret. They won't kill us."
His eyes go wide. So blue, but like the sky in summer, not like the boy with the eyes of storming sea. He comes closer, holds onto the bars like they can keep his dust from twisting away. "What have you seen, Pet? Did the stars tell you what's going to happen?"
My hand flies out, fingertips over his soft lips. "Don't tell secrets, lovely boy. If they hear you, they'll know."
He nods, comes closer still. He smells like wood and salted tears. "Know what? Dru, tell me. What's gonna happen?"
I kiss his lips softly. His tongue is like butterfly wings, urging, seeking entrance into my mouth, and we kiss. We kiss like that first time, all those first times. I liked it best when it was my William and Me. Before he was Spike and when Daddy still hurt us. He tangles his fingers in my hair like rats and pulls, forces me closer, my body and his body, but there is steel between us, and he's not like the boy. He won't kick open the cage for me because She wouldn't like it. He won't because They won't let him. The soul, Angel, the Slayer who Steals.
"I'm going to be free," I whisper to him, like a lullaby, so he can dream sweetly again instead of crying and shouting like he usually does.
My poor, sweet prince.
~
Daddy hasn't been the same since a long, long time ago. He's nice, now. And sad. He looks at me with those eyes, that darkness that killed me, but there's no sharp edges. They're all dulled and covered in shadow and shame.
He sits there, so quiet. So far away. He won't come closer. He is afraid of me.
Of me! The monster, the beast that tore my family, that ate my sisters, my mother. Drank my father down, drank down my soul and brought the stars down in the dirt. Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been a thousand-thousand moons since last I confessed. And he is afraid of me!
I laugh at the notion. He winces as if I'd hit him. Oh no. I never hit Daddy. Not even when he was naughty. That was never my place.
"Drusilla."
He names me, and I am real again. Like the song of the sea. It's cold in the waves, cold like the ground. But wet, like the blood. In Him, all things are risen.
"It's very cold," I tell him. He should know, it's only fair!
He rises quickly. "I can get you another blanket. Or... maybe I should build a fire down here for you. I didn't even think that you might..." He blanches whiter than dead white. "You don't mean temperature wise. You're not cold."
I just smile at him. It's not his fault, really. He's lived with the gypsies so long that he can no longer see out of the caravan. He doesn't want me to tell him his fortune. He wants me to tell him mine. But that's a secret between me and the One Who Waits Beyond.
"Stupid," he says, shaking his head. Daddy is so pretty, even with his short hair, so carefully cut. I know he thinks if he controls his hair, he controls his fate. He told me about gel when he came home last time, and we played such lovely games. Oh, yes, I remember the games. I miss them so. Rocks and sticks and jumping ropes. The bruises fade so quickly, and the pain lingers only a moment longer than that. Only Daddy knows how to play properly. Even my Spike is too gentle unless driven to anger.
Luckily, I know the things that make him angry. Just as I know there are weak spots in the soul that holds Daddy captive and makes him Angel. Angel the dog who eats suffering, Ruff! Ruff! Grrrrr.
"I'm sorry for the things I've done to you, Dru. I know you don't... understand, or need to hear it, but I need to say it."
The bugs beneath my feet are small compared to the ones in Brazil. There was a demon there, a sticky thing with antlers. I was angry with my Spike and so I went with the sticky demon, and we reveled at Mardi Gras and drank and danced until the sky opened and washed the blood away. South America is lovely and warm.
"I don't even know if you hear me. Sometimes you do. I've seen it in your eyes, that you remember. That you understand. I hope... I hope that part of you hears, and knows. If I could change what I did, to you above all others..."
I hiss at him, because kitty cats don't like slimy snakes! Besides. The dust gets into my eyes and makes them wet. I want the Daddy-Angel Thing to play properly, that's all. He looks right at me, and I look into him and I say,
"Be in me."
~
Such lovely games. He laughs as I ride him, just like a pony. But he cries when I cut him with the knife I took from his boot. Silver stings him like the dog he is. Woof! He shouts and snarls, but I have told him not to move unless I say so, and he is playing properly. His hands on me, holding me still so I can slide on the merry go round... up and down... up and down.
He's not really Daddy. But I can make him play. It's almost better that he cries and laughs and deep within, fights against me. Daddy likes it when they fight him. He screams for God, God, God and God comes! Daddy is precious and holy that way. He slams up into me, the sacrifice for the sins of all, and God rushes into me and turns me to stardust in the sunrise and the rush of ocean waves.
When I am whole again, Daddy is sleeping. I've been too rough, I suppose. I hurt his soul. But he'll wake up. The naughty Slayer will come and wake him with warm, bloody kisses.
I rise and pull my dress down and look at him for a while, so pretty. Red and pink and white. So much lovely flesh beneath the skin. All that blood stolen... from where? He doesn't taste the way people should. The way Daddy would.
"Oh... fuck. Dru, what have you done?"
My Spike! He runs down the stairs to stand beside me, staring down at my Angel with horror in his eyes. But when he looks at me... I see satisfaction. Joy. Freedom.
"We're free, My Spike. I told you we would be."
"Bloody Hell, Dru, you made a mess of the wanker. What did you do?" He arches an eyebrow at Daddy's nudity, "I mean, besides the obvious. Never mind. It doesn't matter. We have to get the hell out of here before the Slayers wake up."
Slayers! More than one. Too many. Hundreds. I've known they were there, I could hear them whisper. Such naughty girls. But I thought they were rats! Except for the giant who cries in the garden. I wanted to ask her about beanstalk seeds. I don't think there are any such thing, but it never hurts to ask.
We run and run, out of the castle and across the moors. It's barely nightfall, there's so much time until the dawn, until the end. So much time. We run so fast I can't see the shadows of the heather, or the animals that run beside us, or the other night things that sense us pass but can't see us either. We run to the end of the world.
Then there are cliffs we climb down, and into a dark, wet cave only a few feet above the beach. I could step down into the sand. Dark and wet.
My Spike bustles me deep into the cave and starts a fire. Does a soul make your body cold, I wonder?
"We should be safe here," he lies, and looks out into the night over the ocean. Mmm. The smell. I know that smell. Copper and ash, coral and scale. Death.
It's a long time before he speaks again, and all I've done is watch him. So lovely, my William. He does his hair the color of sun clouds just for me, but I see the deepest ginger walnut peeking beneath like distress. Cheeks like a carving of a Greek god, and lips that sing heavenly tunes against my breast. He has called me many things of beauty, things of affection. I have so often been glad I made him. That Daddy and Grandmother let me...
"Dru... what do you want to do now? Nobody bothered to ask you. But I am."
That's easy. "I want to dance!" So I do. The music is lovely. Neptune sings like an angel. But not like Daddy -- Daddy can't sing a note. I twirl and I spin and I sway.
Spike watches me dance, and he cries. Then he curses, and wipes the tears away. The dawn is coming. We've sat here almost all night. We dance together as the nasty sun's rays touch the horizon somewhere far away from our cave.
But I've known it was coming. From the moment Daddy trapped me, I've known.
Spike looks into my eyes, still holding me. "I can't let you go, Dru. But I can't keep you, either. And Angel -- the fucker -- is right. We can't give you a soul. How would you ever be able to..." He shakes his head. "I don't know if I can... but I have to. Somebody has to, and it should be me, because I've loved you so long and so well..."
"Shhhh." I hold him and he cries again. Poor Spike. His new soul is so full of sorrow.
We fall to the ground, and it's not stone, but soft, sweet grass. And we are not in a cave at the end of all things, but in the field outside his home on that first night when he rose, and we touched and kissed and bit and came together again and again. This is my flesh. It's the first night all over again, on the last night.
The light fills the front of the cave, and I hold him, and we sleep. I hear him singing in my dreams. I see him in the field again, naked and wild, laughing at the night. He pierces me, and I hear him crying, "I'm sorry, Pet."