FF: The Tumbleweed Chronicles (3/?)

[Zephyr <winter_herald@xxxxxxxxx>]

Title: The Tumbleweed Chronicles (3/?)
Author: Zephyr (winter_herald@xxxxxxxxx)
Summary: Buffy and Willow go on a road trip through the desert. AU after
season 4.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Love it.
Archiving: If you want it. Just let me know so I can go see.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Buffy, the show and its characters. But the
engine spirit is mine.

The Tumbleweed Chronicles - Chapter 3

* * *

Would it be incredibly childish if I said that I'm afraid of the 
dark? After living in Sunnydale, I should be used to it. But if anything, 
I've only been shown that there are many things in the dark to be afraid 
of. There are monsters. There are demons. There are risen corpses and 
fallen souls.

Sitting right next to me is the light to their darkness. She fights them; 
she slays them. She protects me. So why do I still feel afraid? Maybe 
it's because she's driving, with her eyes on the road and her hands on the 
wheel, instead of gazing into my eyes as she holds me and says that 
everything will be all right. I want to hold her hand in mine, and squeeze 
it and feel her squeeze back, just like we always do when there's trouble 
and we're in it. I want to pull her close and hold her and... no. I do 
not want to lick her neck. Not in the slightest. No more than I want to 
hold her down on black satin sheets while I... not at all.

I have a hormone problem. I realize this.

We're back on the highway now, driving through the gloom under a sea of 
stars. For a while, I watched the shadowed trees and scrub flying past the 
window, but it all started to blur together into one shifting silhouette, 
like a very noir flipbook animation, with one tree morphing into another, 
and another, and another. After a while of that, I leaned back into my 
seat and turned my face upward.

Now I've been staring up at the sky for so long that it feels like the 
stars are carving trails of light in my eyes. It's like leaving the 
shutter open on a camera and letting the night sky do its work, as the 
Earth spins around, and around, and around. The Milky Way is a blood red 
band across my vision, stretching from one side of the sky to the other. I 
wonder how many people you'd have to kill to get that much blood? Probably 
a lot. Or just one really, really big one.

Too many depressing thoughts are coursing through my head. I blink a few 
times, trying to clear the streaks and smears on the insides of my eyelids, 
then look around. The starlight is casting everything in pale gray with a 
ruddy tint. If I look at it right, it's not like blood at all. It's like 
rust, all over everything, just waiting for a strong wind to come along and 
blow everything away in a cloud of corroded flakes.

Buffy is different. Her skin is pale porcelain, but her hair has kept its 
golden hue. She glances over, maybe at me and maybe at the rear view 
mirror, and I catch a glimpse of her eyes. They're deep and strong as 
always. They're like twin wells, full of life even in a cold dry 
desert. And then they flick back to the road, and I feel like a parched 
traveler whose cup was taken after only a sip.

There aren't any other cars. It's strange that the only other person we've 
seen since this all started was the grimy motel manager. Sure, people 
might be reasonably spooked by a supernatural manifestation this huge, but 
back in Sunnydale even in the worst of times there were people hanging 
around getting worst-of-timesed. Sometimes eaten. Here, it's like they 
all just vanished. All except us and a dirty-talking innkeeper who made a 
nice thump when he hit the wall. Which was wrong, even if he did sort 
of... which was wrong.

Again, I think, too many depressing thoughts. I'm here, and Buffy's here, 
and that's what counts. And it's too early in the... morning? to have 
regrets. But after I glance over at the digital clock and do a little 
mental math, I start to worry.

"Buffy?" I ask. "Have you been doing seventy the whole time we've been 
driving?" She seems to consider this as she peeks through the wheel at the 
speedometer.

"Yeah, I guess," she says. "Do you want me to slow down?" Her voice 
sounds strange, as if it's trickling out of her mouth like a stream of 
blood... I mean water.

"No," I say, frowning. Doesn't she realize? "It's just that... it's only 
a couple hundred miles from Sunnydale to Vegas."

She lets her foot relax on the gas pedal, and we start to slow down as she 
looks over at me with her worried face. Nice to see I'm not the only 
one. On the other hand, if she's worried that means I'm probably right, 
and there really is something to worry about... oh boy.

"This could be a problem," she says. That's a something. It's a 
problem! A big, big problem!

"Yeah," I say.

I try to organize my thoughts, but it's mostly useless. Everything is 
fuzzy here, everything is shadowed. Sometimes I'll try to find a thought, 
and it will just slip by like the shadow of a cat across a roof at 
midnight. Or a...

"What's that?" I yell, as a dark blot streaks across the headlight 
beams. It is followed by another, and I can see ripples against the sand 
around us. Buffy starts looking around in full Slayer mode, but it's 
futile until one of the things stops right in front of us. It's a ways 
away, just barely visible at the edge of the light.

"I don't know," says Buffy. "But it's not of the good."

I barely have time to clutch at my seat. She slams her foot down on the 
gas, shooting us forward again. The headlights crawl over it as we get 
closer, and it raises it's -- head? -- to the sky and screams. It's not a 
scream I can hear; it's more like the thought of a scream bypassing my ears 
entirely on the way to my brain. It's like in a nightmare, when you can't 
really hear anything but there's this knowledge, this little voice telling 
you that this... this is a scream.

And then I can hear screaming, and it's mine, because the shadowy thing is 
passing through us - or us through it.

I feel like we're starting to go off the road, but Buffy has an iron Slayer 
grip on the steering wheel. I wouldn't want to be the wheel right now, but 
I'll say this much -- it isn't turning. Panting heavily, I look around for 
the shadow. It's irrational, I know; the thing is behind us now, probably 
lost in the darkness. It seems darker here than it was before, even, like 
maybe a few clouds are coming out.

I look over at Buffy. She's calming down now, and she no longer has the 
death grip on the wheel or the compression foot-lock on the gas pedal.

"Maybe," she says, "I should have just flashed my brights."

I don't know what that was. I don't know if I want to know. When we drove 
through it... I remember seeing it spread its arms as if it was welcoming 
us, and even though the headlights were hurting it just kept on coming, and 
then it went through us like a crack through a frozen lake. And I don't 
feel so good. I look down at my hands, and they're... dirty.

It's a scene from a bloody thriller, but instead of feeling like I have 
blood on my hands I feel like they're covered by a dark taint that slides 
over my skin like grease, seeps through my pores and coats my soul. I 
wonder if they make a scouring pad for this sort of thing? I'm rubbing my 
hands together now, and I'm not sure if it's to try to clean them or to 
stop them from doing anything else.

I look over at Buffy to see how she's doing. She looks okay. If anything, 
she's more the Slayer than before; which would make sense, because there 
are demony things about. Whatever it is, whatever it was... I don't know.

She looks over at me. I'm still breathing a little heavy, but I flash her 
an "I'm okay" smile. Then I see her eyes. The starlight is flashing off 
her irises, revealing a bright green-yellow color. They're like cat's 
eyes. And I begin to wonder just what that shadow really was.

"Umm, Buffy?" I say, and she gets a worried expression to mirror 
mine. "Your... your eyes?"

She leans over in her seat and glances in the rear-view mirror, and her 
face changes from worried to afraid.

"So it's real," she murmurs, then, "It's really there. Willow, you... I 
can't... no, I can't!" She's yanking on the door lock now, flipping it up 
and down in her haste. Finally, she leaves it unlocked and shoves the door 
open, almost tumbling out into the road. I reach over instinctively to 
catch her arm, but she shakes off my hand. Then I'm being shoved against 
the other door by strong Slayer-hands, and then I'm looking into her 
forlorn eyes as she stumbles off into the night. She says one last thing 
before I lose sight of her. She says, "Willow, I'm sorry."

Sorry? Sorry for wha... oh, that... hey! Buffy's leaving! Come 
back! She's getting out of the car! Why is she getting out of the 
car? Look, there she goes, stalking off into the desert like some sort 
of... predator. She's moving like a hunter now, jogging away at a fair clip.

And just when I was starting to get some of my better ideas. Like leaving.

But now I can't. Leave, that is. I can't just leave her here in the dark, 
and... hey! She can't just leave me here in the dark, either; it's some 
sort of rule or something. But I guess she's laying down the "possessed by 
a dark entity" card right at the moment.

I climb over the gearshift and dive out of the door she just left. I 
suppose I could have just used my door, but it's a little late for that 
now. Tumbling out into the road, I'm glad there aren't any other cars 
around. Solitude can be bliss, when it means you're not getting run 
over. But not when it means your best friend is running off into the darkness.

Well, if she's running, than I'm running too. And so I am. I'm running 
after her over the sand and through the scrub. All the trees I saw as dark 
blobs while we were driving rear up to taunt me now, reaching out with 
arm-like branches and trying to stop me from reaching her.

Unfortunately, my hesitation may have already cost me the chase. I can 
barely see the flash of blonde in the starlight far ahead of me. She's 
getting away fast, and soon there might not be anything left of her. The 
scrub tugs and scrapes at my jeans, and I'm pretty sure they'll be bound 
for the scrap heap when this is all over. Then again, ruined clothes are 
pretty much a fact of life in Sunnydale.

In due course I, Buffy, and the universe at large seem to come to a mutual 
realization: there's no way I can outrun a Slayer. Her waving hair 
disappears in the distance, blending in with the waving of starlit desert 
trees in a faint, faint breeze.

Great. This is just great. And I mean that in a sarcastic 
way. See? Sarcasm. I'm out in the middle of the desert, Buffy is even 
more out in the middle of the desert. And she's getting rapidly more 
middly. While I'm standing a couple hundred yards from a Jeep whose only 
use, as far as I can tell, would be to drive me further into darkness.

Nevertheless, standing out in the middle of the desert won't do me any 
good. I plod back to the Jeep. It takes a while. The Jeep is just where 
we left it, the headlights still shining. Whoops! Better turn those off, 
or the battery will be dead in the morning. Maybe we would have to get a 
nice fellow traveler to jump us. Oh, there aren't any, you say? Well, 
that's just a shame.

I turn off the headlights and take the key from the ignition.

Maybe we're going in the wrong direction. Maybe after we left the motel, 
we got all turned around and we've been going in circles. I look up the 
road; I look down the road -- it's all pretty dark, but I think it's 
straight both ways. And I don't remember any really big circles on the map 
around here.

So, as far as I know, this is the road to Las Vegas, and hasn't stopped 
being the road to Las Vegas anytime recently. Look! There's even a sign 
over there with a "15" on it in one of those nifty little colored shield 
thingies, except that the color part isn't quite as visible in this light.

And beyond that -- it's one of those emergency phones they put along the 
highways in case someone has an... emergency. Hence the name. I jump up 
and walk over to it, pushing on it a bit to make sure it's solid. I lift 
the receiver off the hook, and dial a very familiar number. It rings. And 
rings.

"Uh, Hello?" the sturdy British voice on the other side of the line says, 
and I almost sigh in relief.

"Giles? It's Willow. Buffy's not Buffy."

"Um, yes, well, in what way, exactly, is she not, um, herself?"

"Well, yesterday she was all giddy and happy and 'eye-haw, a big cloud of 
darkness, let's drive right into the middle of it and have some fun!' But 
now she's been all... non-Buffy with green glowy eyes. Giles, she has 
glowy eyes!"

"It, uh, it could just be an upsetting of natural circadian rhythms due to 
the, uh, darkness effect."

"Giles, she got a good night's sleep. We both did," I say, blushing a 
little as I remember just how we woke up. "And, and Giles, her eyes are 
glowy!"

"Well, er, that sounds..." he says. He's stuttering more than usual. I 
wonder if something's up?

"Giles, come back to bed."

My eyes go wide. I don't recognize that voice.

This can't be happening.

"I'll, uh, I'll look into it," Giles says, "but in the meantime, as long as 
she's not acting dangerously I'm sure you'll be fine. I, uh, have to go 
now. Bye." And he hangs up. Just like that. Oh, well, maybe I am 
overreacting. Maybe Buffy is just having a bad day, and she'll come back 
in a poof of smoke any time now.

Right. And my name's Sabrina.

I slam the phone back onto its hook and hit the box with my 
hand. Ow. Yep, that's solid all right.

I have to do something, I know. But I can't think of what, and I'm 
standing out here all alone at, well, night, sort of. This is really too 
much. My Buffy-shaped travelling companion is acting weird, possibly 
possessed, and missing, I'm out in the middle of nowhere, and Giles can't 
help because he's... he's... otherwise occupied. And in Sunnydale. I 
need... I need Buffy.

But right now I have only the clothes on my back, my wits, and... my 
daypack, which is in the Jeep. And inside that is something that could 
save me, or lose me entirely. I haul the pack from the back seat and root 
through it until I come up with a thin, black book.

This is my personal Book of Shadows. It contains the record of my progress 
as a witch, some herb and gem lore, a few recipes, and, of course, 
spells. I hoped I wouldn't have to use them. I've been fuzzy ever since 
we entered the twilight zone, though I was slow to notice it at first. My 
magical senses have been wiggling too. Who knows if my spells will even work?

But I'm at the Last Resort now, and I've booked a room for one.

I climb into the back seat of the Jeep. It's roomier back here, and it's 
not like driving is going to get me anywhere. With a sigh, I start looking 
through my spellbook.

Now, where shall I start? The book contains mostly my research of the past 
few months. Before that I relied on old arcana or fragments of spells, 
like the restoration spell Jenny translated before she died. But recently 
I've begun formulating my own. And they work. Most of the time. I'm not 
strong enough to cast all of them by myself, though. Not yet. Some of 
them I've done with Tara, back in Sunnydale. And some I can only do with 
certain ingredients to focus the power.

It's pretty dark in the back seat, as the stars are just barely shining 
through the side windows. I reach up to flick on the roof light, but then 
I pull back. This would be a perfect opportunity to see if my magic even 
works normally here. I clear my mind and try to dismiss the darkness 
that's been bothering me, figuratively and literally.

"Lumenum accende!" I say. I can feel the energy running through me -- it 
takes too much, really. A spell as simple as this should take only a 
spark. Still, it works, and a small bubble of light begins to float above 
my head. It seems subdued, but it's enough to read by.

I flip through the pages. I have a copy of my spells and other work on my 
laptop, but the battery only lasts so long and I haven't been able to get 
one of those cigarette lighter plug-ins. Besides, there is something 
comforting about the scratchy sound of pages turning. Maybe Giles is 
starting to rub off on me. Next thing you know, I'll be commenting on how 
good the books smell.

There's a scratching sound outside as well. I peer out the windows, but I 
can't see much. Just the same old tree, shrub, sand, shrub, tree. I hope 
it's nothing dangerous, but I start flipping pages faster anyway.

I finally decide on a spell to call a guide. It's a melding of a location 
spell and one to call on nearby spirits. With any luck, there are some 
nice spirits around here in addition to... whatever that black thing 
was. And the spell shouldn't call anything harmful, at least in theory. I 
take a few moments to run over the invocation in my head.

I haven't done much casting in the back seat of a car. But I've done it 
under worse conditions, and at least here it's quiet. And I don't think I 
want to spend more time outside than I have to. There could be more 
shadows. Or snakes.

I take an orange candle from my pack and hold it in front of me. I hope 
this doesn't take long. It wouldn't do to drip wax in here. After 
starting it with a lighter I brought for just that purpose, I close my eyes 
and begin my chant.

"Spirits of this place, hear me. I seek one of darkness in darkness."

The vague feeling of discomfort I've been receiving from the mystical 
twilight turns into a humming in my ears. But I think I can feel the spell 
start to take effect.

"Myrddin, I beseech thee. I stand at a crossroads whose forks go unseen."

Around me I can see a faint sheen of energy through which the interior 
walls of the Jeep pulse back and forth.

"Bring me a guide through black to gold!"

The shadows around me begin to writhe, but suddenly the dizziness in my 
head vanishes, and I can feel it bending the air around me instead of 
twisting my overworked brain cells.

My hands start to tingle, and I realize that I have to touch something to 
infuse it with the guide spirit. I reach for one of my crystals with my 
right hand, holding the candle steady with my left. Something doesn't feel 
right, though, and I'm not sure it's the spell.

The Jeep rocks. It pitches from side to side, as if shaken by something 
outside. I think I can see a shadow outside the front windshield, but only 
for a moment. Then I'm falling down into the footwell. My candle flies 
onto the other side of the floor and goes out. Hope it didn't burn 
anything. I grab onto the door handle to steady myself.

The rocking stops. But I think I can feel a purring vibration around me, 
below me. I pull myself up. The headlights are flashing, and the thing in 
front of us yells like a screech owl and disappears.

And then everything is quiet.

I retrieve the candle from where it fell. There's a tiny scorch mark on 
the carpet. Maybe it'll... rub off, or something.

"Ungh," I say. What just happened? I guess the car alarm must have come 
on. Take that, you nasty burglar demons! Trying to break in and steal my 
stuff, no doubt. Or me. Like they stole Buffy.

I climb into the front seat and debate leaving. If Buffy... decided to 
come back, I would want to be here. But if she doesn't, I have no chance 
to find her if I just stay. And maybe if I keep on going, there will be 
another town, one with people actually interested in helping.

I slip the key into the ignition. The Jeep seems to start up readily, even 
eagerly. Though maybe it's just me. I could easily be imagining things 
since I got knocked around after that... spell. The spell. I did it all 
right, and then I got knocked aside and grabbed the handle...

"I guess I found my guide?" I say. The headlights wink at me. "This is cool!"

The engine purrs a little. It's like a big cat. I think about petting the 
seat next to me, but I don't know how that would be taken. I look around, 
and everything seems a little big lighter. I glance over at the brush 
where Buffy ran to, and it looks just slightly shorter...

"Do you think we could?" I say, getting another purr in 
response. Great! I buckle up and settle in.

And we head out across the brush and sand. Buffy, I will find you.

* * *


Zephyr

For though I bring warm remembrance of spring twilight,
There follows close behind me a messenger, cold-lipped crier,
Bringer of tales carried by frozen wings to friendly fires.
See how the sky is darkest before the dawn breaks night,
And mildest before the snapping of winter's frosty bite.


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