chapter 24: a tear and a smile - part I

Six hours of listening to Xander chant and Giles had nearly lost all hope of bringing forth the First Witch.

The sun had disappeared long before and now a starless night sky surrounded them. There was no light and except for the flames rising from the fire burning at the base of the foothills, the desert was pitch black.

Giles looked at Xander as a cold, crisp wind whipped through the canyon from the east, slashing at his face and numbing his hands and feet. Xander was chanting, kneeling in front of the blazing fire, reciting verse after verse, oblivious to the night's freezing wind. Xander had been going at the pages of the Zy Qasdor and the Book of Leviticus without a moment's rest since he'd started up again two hours earlier.

That had been when Giles had dowsed the flames of the bonfire, convinced that he and Xander had accomplished their task.

After four hours of chanting and exalting the spirit of the First Witch, he'd told Xander that Willow had the extra power she needed. Giles had been certain of this as he walked to his car, gesturing at the boy to hurry. But when he'd looked over his shoulder, he saw Xander staring up at the sky.

"Something's not right, Giles," he'd said. "We don't have it. I can feel it...here." He placed his hand over his heart as he leveled his gaze at Giles.

Moving quickly to a patch of bushes on the side of the road, Giles gathered an armload of dried twigs and branches before making his way back to the smoldering bonfire at the bottom of the hill. There, he unpacked his books from his knapsack and pulled a box of matches from his inside vest pocket. He then struck the flint against the rough surface on the side of the box and tossed the flaming bit of wood into the shrubbery and glowing embers. Giles had decided that if Xander needed to chant some more—then more chanting was what they had to do.

Now Giles was rifling through his books, searching for the next verse Xander needed to recite aloud. As he'd done for the past two hours, he found the page quickly and shoved it in front of Xander as he pointed a shaking finger to where the boy had to begin reading. Xander's determined voice vibrated through the darkness as Giles watched the flames leap from the bonfire. They were his guide. The higher the flames rose, the more robust Xander's chanting, which meant the First Witch was close.

Giles’ body shivered and his lips trembled as he pulled his gaze away from the fire and placed another book in Xander’s hand. He prayed she was nearby. There was only one book left in his knapsack.

Giles had trusted Xander's instincts about staying in the desert. If Xander thought he needed to do more chanting, who was Giles to argue? Xander was the one with the gift to see into the heart of things. Still, Giles wondered how a spell gone awry had given the youth such a powerful gift.

"Keep alert, Watcher," he chastised himself for daydreaming. He then felt a wave of exhaustion, tempting his eyelids to close as he looked at Xander. The boy’s voice was strong and steady, but his eyes had a dull, lifelessness to them. Had he crossed from Earth’s dimension into the witch’s world? Giles took the book from Xander's cold unmoving fingers.

He didn't even pause or look around. He kept chanting. Giles had guessed right. Xander didn't need this volume of the Zy Qasdor.

He knew the words by heart.

Giles sat on the ground, stared at the fire and listened. He could barely make out what Xander was saying. The words flying from his lips sounded like the wings of humming birds flapping inside Giles' eardrums. He clasped his hands together and rolled his head from side to side, stretching his tired neck muscles. A Watcher shouldn’t be able to understand what the world’s First Witch needed to hear anyway, he figured. The most important thing about the ritual was that Willow received the power she needed to save Dawn and Buffy, and stop the world from turning into Shemhazi’s playground.

Giles eyes flew open as he felt the daylight on his face. He must have fallen asleep, he guessed as he jumped to his feet. Immediately, he saw that Xander was still chanting—chanting in the freezing cold. His skin was white with blue patches beneath his sunken eyes and then gray spots covered the hollow of his cheeks. His eyes were black and unblinking. His dry, cracked lips looked as if they'd been cut with small knives. Giles then glanced at the fire. It was a smoking pile of ashes. Bloody hell, he'd been asleep for a while.

He reached into his knapsack and pulled out the last book. It was the third volume of the Zy Qasdor. He could barely hold it. His fingers were stiff and frozen as he pried the book open. It was the book he’d held the night he’d met Luke in his nightmare.

“This is it. You've got to use your heart to reach her.” Giles passed the book to Xander and turning away from him faced the dead fire. “A sincere request from someone with your gift can not be refused.”

How much longer do we have to stay out here?

Giles' brow furrowed as he pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and stared at Xander’s lips. They were moving, reciting the verses. He hadn't stopped. Giles could hear that and he could see his lips moving. But then he’d also heard Xander speak to him…in his mind?

I’m a block of ice, G-man—a frozen man-cube in a bulky denim jacket with no scarf or mittens.

Giles nodded in understanding as he took off his scarf and wrapped it around Xander’s neck. “It won’t take much longer. You’re almost there. You're so close to the witch’s magic, you can practically touch it."

Giles stumbled backward, startled as the fire suddenly soared high into the air. He thought he'd seen a woman's face in the flames and peered intently into the blaze. But she was gone. Giles threw the last of the dried branches and sprigs into the fire. Xander was still chanting. Then, Giles felt a warm hand on his cheek and spun around. He gasped at the sight in front of him and then clutched at his racing heart. Hopefully, the adrenaline rush wouldn't kill him.

"Dear Lord," he whispered. He hadn't expected her to be corporeal.

She was standing beside the fire.

The First Witch reminded him of Cordelia Chase. A tall, lean dark-skinned woman with black hair piled high on her head and green eyes, sprinkled with flecks of yellow. She was dressed in a long white tunic, tied under her bosoms with a gold-colored sash. Quite a handsome figure, breathed Giles as he reached down slowly and pulled Xander to his feet.

He nudged the young man with his elbow, awakening him from his trance. “I believe you can stop chanting now.”


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Giles flung open the passenger door of the car and thumped Xander lightly on top of the head. “Wake up. We’re here.”

Xander’s body jerked as he lurched forward, his knees crunching against the dashboard. “Okay, okay. I’m up.”

Giles wondered if he should wait for Xander to rise properly before hurrying into his flat. They’d had a hard night in the desert and Giles for one was exhausted. Of course, Xander was most likely more tired than he. The youth had called forth the spirit of the First Witch. He was the one who had channeled the witch’s essence. He had served as the conduit to transfer the power from the First Witch to Willow. Not an easy sodding job, grumbled Giles thoughtfully. Not by a Berkshire mile.

“Get out of the car.” He opened the rear door and grabbed his books and knapsack from the back seat without looking at Xander. He then half-walked, half-stumbled toward the front gate of the courtyard leading to his flat, juggling the books in his arms. What he wouldn’t give for a spot of tea and a chance to rest his bum on the sofa, he thought as he grabbed a falling book from mid-air.

“Xander,” he called over his shoulder. “Get a move on, we’ve got so much more to do.”

Giles stopped at the bottom of the stairs to his flat. He hugged the books in his arms and sighed aloud. He couldn’t stop his brain from replaying the mistakes that had led his Slayer, Dawn and all of them to this point. If it hadn’t been for Willow’s arrogance and his carelessness, none of this would have happened.

He and Willow had forgotten the fundamentals of magic. They had both ignored the rules of casting spells in their haste to save the day. You must balance nature for magic to work; he’d told Willow that plenty of times. Otherwise, you can count on hitting a brick wall of consequences head first. You take something away—you must give something back so the world doesn’t spin out of control.

In the desert, the First Witch had explained that Willow's spell had not simply eliminated joy from their thoughts. The spell had obliterated each of their unique memories of what had given them their greatest joy. Add to this slight of hand that one of these newly joyless creatures had been a Slayer and the consequence of her lost joy was Shemhazi, suddenly with an open invitation to return to Earth.

“Now he can make your world his, and his world is hell,” she’d said. Then as Giles watched the centuries of pain mar her lovely face, she'd added solemnly, “He brings hell to earth with the vengeance of God in his wake. Shemhazi was my creator, my husband, the father of our son, and the destroyer of our lives. He will destroy this world and more if he is not stopped.”

Giles hadn't understood all of what the First Witch had said, but he'd figured it out as he drove back to Sunnydale from the desert. Two thoughts had been stripped from the Scoobies in a misinformed effort to protect them from Luke. Giles' spell had worked along with Willow’s. He'd taken fear from their thoughts, but unbeknownst to him, Willow had taken joy, leaving them not only joyless, but uncaring.

His joy had been his intellect.

It was what he needed to help his Slayer survive, but he feared that he’d never be able to keep her alive for long. Without joy or fear, he'd disintegrated into an angry drunkard. For Willow, her fear had been her inability to control herself and her joy was her ability to love. Without them, she'd turned into a power hungry creature who decided to cast another spell, causing her to dismiss love as foolishness.

When the First Witch explained this part, Giles had understood it. Willow had been a powerful witch in her own right before any spells had been cast. After the spells, she had transcended time and space. She’d merged with the First Witch, stole parts of her mind and her power, and that’s how Shemhazi found them. He’d created the First Witch. The fallen angel of God had been cast from heaven and destroyed a village, killed its men and raped its women, with his band of unholy followers at his side. But in his mind, he'd been compassionate and taught the conquered women the art of using herbs and roots and words to heal and seduce and please. But when the First Witch, his reluctant wife, had learned how to use her powers fully and had challenged him, he’d punished her brutally. He turned their son into a demon. But not a garden variety demon, chuckled Giles joylessly. He’d made Luke, a vampire who didn’t need blood, but craved it constantly. He was a vampire who could stand in the sunlight and sweat, but never burn. He was a demon that couldn’t remain on Earth or in Hell or any dimension long enough to be anything but a killer, a vicious murderer without a reason for his deeds. Giles grimaced as he recalled the anguish on the witch’s face and the tears in her voice as she relayed the story of her origin and her son's descent into lunacy.

He raised his head toward the heavens as a dozen black birds fluttered up from the treetops and crisscrossed in the sky before soaring toward the sun. He squinted as the brightness of the daylight hurt his eyes.

“Hurry!” He shouted at Xander. “We’ve got to get inside.”

As he walked through the courtyard, he thought about Anya's joy and her fear. She loved being a human woman in love with a human man, and returning to a life of vengeance had been her only fear. And Tara, he knew if she’d been in her right mind, she’d never have followed Willow so blindly. Maybe her joy had been her ability to choose. The First Witch hadn't explained what had happened to Xander, but it didn't matter. The boy had always been somewhat of a mystery to Giles. Often clumsy, bigoted and adolescent, he also could be the best friend with keenest insights and a heroic willingness to sacrifice his life or his sanity for any one of his girls.

Still, there were missing pieces to the puzzle, thought Giles. What joy had been taken from Buffy? She had been dead and then brought back to Earth by Willow's magic. She hadn't seemed that different after the spell or before she'd left for New York. Giles shivered. He didn't have an answer to that one, not a clue.

He lumbered up the steps to the door of his flat and hugged the books protectively to this chest with one hand and pulled his keys from his pocket with the other hand. He then pushed the key into the hole, turned the knob and kicked open the door with his foot. The stench of stale Scotch and old sweat flooded his nostrils, making him wince. He’d spent two months inside this dingy flat, sloshing down a fifth of Scotch a day, barely remembering to shower or to change his clothes. He exhaled slowly, thinking how the foulness of the odor shouldn't have surprised him.

Giles stepped into the foyer of his apartment and stopped abruptly, his head jerking up, as he heard a noise in the kitchen. He bent his knees and quietly deposited the books on the floor just inside the door.

“What is it?”

Giles jumped at the sound of Xander's voice behind him.

“Shush,” he gestured sharply, bringing his finger to his lips.

Giles nodded at Xander and pointed in the direction of the kitchen where he’d heard the noise. He waved his hand and signaled for him to move toward the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. They’d come at whatever it was from two angles. Giles moved toward the noise from his side of the room. Then he heard the noise again. It had a familiar cadence, a pitch he’d heard before.

“Who’s there?” Giles said loudly. He glanced at Xander and shrugged, apologetically. The boy frowned and raised his hands in frustration as if asking why he had even bothered to tiptoe into the room in the first place.

“Giles?” A small excited voice called out. He craned his neck as he felt Xander rush past him toward the sound.

“Anya!” Xander shouted, spinning and turning around, searching the empty room for the source of the voice. “Where are you?”

“Here.” The voice bounced from the ceiling to the walls.

Giles pulled his glasses from his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose slowly as he realized where Anya actually was.

“Xander,” he began, but the boy had sprinted from the living room into the kitchen, looking frantically into corners and peering behind the refrigerator.

“Xander!” Giles’ voice was stern. “Keep still.” The boy stumbled into the room and stared at him, a bewildered expression covered his face. “She’s here, but she’s not here,” he explained.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I imagine she’s trapped in between dimensions.” Giles looked at nothing in particular. “Anya, is that right?”

“Think so,” her voice vibrated through the room. “I am not exactly certain. But that sounds about right.”

“Is the portal jumper with you?”

“No.” Again her voice came from everywhere and no where. “He is in your dimension.”

“Have you seen Buffy and Dawn?” asked Giles, ignoring Xander’s panic-stricken face.

“Yes,” Anya’s voice responded quickly.

“Are they okay?”

“Last I saw Buffy, she was fine,” said Anya. “Dawn, though…we were on our way to her when Luke left me here.”

“Is Willow stronger?” asked Giles as he sat down at his desk in the hall outside of the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” The voice asked. “Stronger?”

“Giles, that doesn’t matter right now,” exclaimed Xander. “Where’s Anya?”

“He left me here to rot. Damned bastard,” said Anya. “I will show him. He cannot get rid of me that easily.”

“Can you get out?” Giles asked.

“No, not yet. But I will find a way,” she said. “I will not stay here forever.”

Xander wobbled to the sofa and plopped down. The exhaustion Giles had seen building on his face in the car had taken over his body. He looked dreadful. His eyes sunken and his cheeks hollow. He’d been operating on the fumes of the First Witch, Giles imagined, and now he was burnt out.

“Xander." Giles nudged his shoulder. "Xander." He looked up at Giles, but his eyes were empty. Invisible Anya might bloody well be more than the boy could take.

“You had better find Luke." Giles heard Anya's voice in his ear and felt her breath on his neck. “He is here in Sunnydale.”

“What! He's here? Why?"

"Dawn is here."

"Oh, my God."

"Do you want to see Dawn dead?”

“Damn it girl, what do you mean?”

“Why do you think he left me here in between things? I’m his muse, his memories, his pawn. Except I do not have the power he needs to escape.”

“He still thinks he needs Dawn, doesn't he?” asked Giles. "Everything we read in the third volume of the Zy Qasdor was a bloody lie. Glory's last revenge. She suckered us into this family feud...Do you know why, he’s really here?”

“Yes. But for some reason I cannot tell you. Not when I am trapped here. But I can give you clues.”

“Alright then dear, please proceed.”

“You must go to the park and pick up the Key.”

Giles looked down at his hands. He still had the car keys clenched in his fist.

“No, go to the park and pick up the Key!”

“Oh, sorry,” he mumbled. “Xander, let’s go.”

“No.” Anya’s voice sounded frantic. “He cannot go. He must not face Luke, not with his ability. Seeing the truth in Luke’s heart would kill him.”

“Okay…right.” Giles picked up his knapsack from the floor, grabbed the third volume of the Zy Qasdor and walked out of the flat. He hadn’t had tea or a chance to sit, and he was heading off to face the Portal Jumper without the slightest clue as to how he’d save Dawn.

He sprinted through the courtyard and into his car. He’d figure it out on his way to the park.

to be continued...