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Pianissimo
by Mad Poetess
She watches the raindrops hit the windowpane, and almost sings. Listen to the
rhythm of the falling rain... The plink and plunk on the gutter above is
perfect accompaniment, if she were going to.
She doesn't sing. She doesn't want to sing without Willow.
Tara used to sing with her mother. It's the earliest thing she remembers, Mamma
leaning over her crib and singing. Hush, little baby, don't say a word...
And later, when she was old enough to sing along, Mamma would fiddle around
tuning that old cheap pine guitar, and they'd sing together. Rock and roll from
the radio, when Donnie got that itch in his hand to turn the dial. Mamma would
smile and say shh... and they'd change the station back before Daddy got home
from work. When Daddy was around and listening, it was songs from the top forty
Christian station, and those were pretty too, the four part harmony, pretty
young voices, weathered old ones, raised together in praise.
Sometimes, when it was just the two of them, all alone, Tara and Mamma, and the
wind just felt right, they'd sing old hill songs. Those were the ones she loved
best. "True Balladeer." Or "Lily of the West," with Mamma singing the low parts,
and Tara making up a descant on the chorus.
Though she tried to swear my life away, she still disturbs my rest. I still
must smile at Molly-o, the Lily of the West... In the plink-plunk silence of
her motel room, Tara sings a few words, then trails off. It could be the air
conditioning, making her feel like her throat is drying up. Bad filter. All
those city dust allergies that used to have her coughing and sneezing at school,
but never at home, where the wet grass and the willow trees and the pollen in
the air only made her want to dance barefoot in it all night.
But mostly, she doesn't want to sing, without Willow.
When Mamma died, her throat closed up almost worse than it is now. Got so she
could barely bring herself to talk, couldn't do anything but whisper and mumble.
Donnie thought she was going crazy; Daddy, she suspected, thought she was
possessed. Staying out late, telling him she'd been at the library, sneaking out
the window... He thought she was joyriding with boys, parking, doing things
she'd never had a taste for in her life. He'd have been so much angrier if he'd
known what she was really doing.
Two in the morning, and Tara was climbing down the blackjack tree next to her
window, little cloth bag over her shoulder, and hiking her way up the hill to
that bare place in the rocks. Sitting in a clearing of stone, sheltered from the
lights of home, the lights of town, by the tall trees all around, with powder
and potion and a doll's eye crystal spread out before her. Singing, the only way
she could, in a tiny tuneless whisper. Hush, little baby, don't say a word,
mamma's gonna buy you a mockingbird... She wasn't asking for what wasn't
right. Not digging in the soil down in the graveyard with a jar of adderwort and
a conjure-man's spell. She knew better. Mamma had told her better. She was just
singing. The herbs were for remembrance. The crystal for focus. The song...
She'd just wanted somebody to hear her.
The house was silent, and her throat was sore, by the time she'd finally run.
Enoughenoughenough, she'd said to herself, her voice echoing in the empty house
as she shoved her things into a carry-bag. Packed up Mamma's trunk, and called a
taxi cab to come all the way out to the old house on Rural Route Six, to take
her to the bus station. On the way to California, she'd hummed deep in her
chest, not loud enough for anyone to hear... She's leaving home...
Mamma'd taught her to like the Beatles as much as the Statler Brothers. Anything
that she could sing along with, anything at all.
Then...then there was fear, and loneliness, and how could she possibly learn all
these things when she'd barely learned how to spend the night alone in her dorm
room, without knowing her brother and father were only a few rooms away, nearby
if anything should happen? These people in Sunnydale didn't know her, didn't
understand her, wouldn't want to hear her if she opened her mouth anyway.
Somebody'd handed her a flyer to join the campus Women's Chorus, and she'd
almost laughed in the girl's face, except she'd been too busy hiding behind her
hair and staring at her shoes.
Then out of the blue, when she was skulking her way around classes, wondering if
she should give up on being brave enough to answer questions in American
History, and just register for the sign language course, so she could pretend
she had a reason not to speak --there was Willow. This girl with the bright red
hair who bubbled and babbled constantly, and Tara had been more tongue-tied than
ever. Impressed, bedazzled, overwhelmed, and unable to say a single word without
sounding like the dork of the century.
Willow seemed to fill in all her silent spaces with sound, though. Even when
they were quiet, just sitting together, there was the soft blanket of her
breathing, the smooth whisper of the skin of her hand over Tara's forearm, like
old, comfortable cotton sheets. The sound of Willow's thoughts, going a mile a
minute in her head, so fast and so strong that Tara could almost hear them
buzzing.
Willow didn't sing, couldn't sing, laughed when she'd told Tara that her voice
made frogs cover their ears. But one night, before they'd ever kissed, even,
when Willow had been uncharacteristically silent, Tara had forced the words from
her mouth to ask what was wrong, and Willow had said, "I miss Oz."
She hadn't known what to answer. "I know you do? I'm sorry you miss your
boyfriend, but I hope he never comes back, because I think I'm falling in love
with you? I'd bring him back right now and let you both sleep in my bed, if it
would take away the blackness in your aura, the shadows in your eyes?" In the
end, she'd just put her arms around Willow, and set her chin on that too-thin
shoulder, and sung, very low. There was a girl, lived up on Rocky Ridge...
and fairer than the summer sun was she...
She'd sung to Willow while she sat quietly, and she'd sung when Willow began to
shudder, and she'd sung when the sobs had choked their way out of Willow's mouth
and the head whose hair she stroked had pressed itself into her hand and she
could feel the wetness of tears against her palm. At the end, she was down to
the lullabyes she'd missed for so long, wondering at how much her voice sounded
like her mother's as she promised mockingbirds and diamond rings to the girl who
was falling asleep in her arms.
When Willow finally did sing with her, late one night when they were getting too
silly to care what they were doing, Tara understood what she meant about
the frogs -- but it didn't make any difference. In the privacy of her room, with
Willow leaning against her, it only mattered that she sang at all. That her
voice joined with Tara's own, a bright wall of sound against the darkness all
around them.
A year and a half later, Tara had spun in circles in the sunlight. Spinning and
laughing and singing as loudly as any of the spellbound passers-by. Louder,
Tara, girl, sing like you mean it, she could hear her mother saying somewhere.
Forte! And she did, she sang, not looking to see if anyone was watching her, not
caring if they thought she looked like an autumn fool, only seeing Willow's
smile, Willow's eyes, Willow's hands as they led her home and took her to bed,
and made her sing... Made her throat open up and the song come tumbling out as
everything exploded in light and music.
Tara turns and looks at the wall, shutting out the sound of plinking on the
gutters, the hiss of the air conditioner. She clutches the motel pillow tighter
to her chest, and tries not to hear her own voice. It doesn't work. I'm under
your spell... She hears herself singing it, feels her teeth vibrate, feels
the crumbly prickles of Lethe's Bramble against the skin of her breast, where
she'd tucked it into her bodice that day. Between her fingers, when she'd held
it as she read the book that told her what it did. What Willow had done. What...
It pounds in her head now, a discordant jumble of notes. Under your spell..
Under... How much is me, how much is you? Can anybody hear me? Can anybody hear
me? Willow?
If that mockingbird don't sing... Tara hears, somewhere in the depths of
her mind, drowning out her own song, and Tara curls tighter around the pillow.
Pretending it's a warm body. Pretending the voice is her mother's, pretending
the empty space in her rented bed is filled with her lover, pretending the music
is real, any of it, and the whole world isn't dead and silent as a stone. She
swallows the tears, swallows the stone in her own mouth, trying to imagine how
she'll ever sing again, when right now she's not sure if she can even breathe.
the end
Lyrics are traditional, except for "She's Leaving Home" by
Lennon&McCartney, "Rhythm of the Rain" by the Cascades, and "Under Your Spell,"
by Joss Whedon, of course. "The Girl From Rocky Ridge," doesn't exist, unless
someone decides to write it.
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