Red Velvet: Power Dream
Title: Red Velvet, Chapter Fourteen: Power Dream
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author: creyr
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: NC-17 overall, PG this part
Word count: 1,069
Summary: One day, William takes a short cut through the forest . . . and his life is never going to be the same.
Feedback: Oh, yes, please!
Warnings: Highlight: Bestiality, torture, mutilation, object rape
Betas: ribby and tested_tempted
Notes: Biliography.

Previous Chapters






William lay back on his pallet, watching the moon cross the opening in the roof. The air was warm and scented. He was eighteen this night, a man now, no longer a boy. His eyes grew heavy.

He was running. He tore through the house, feet moving frantically. He thought at first that he was hunted, for black shapes trailed him, huntsmen in black robes. But they soon disappeared, falling behind his furious pace.

And still he ran, now seeking. Now the hunter.

He burst out of the house, following the twisting streets of the town, never questioning the direction his steps were leading him.

Flowers cropped up in his path and he trod on them without concern. But then he ran out of the town and into the forest. He halted then, unsure. But he spied a blossom of hawthorn lying on the duff where it did not belong.

He was running again, following the flower trail deeper into the forest. The trails twisted and turned, far into the tangled brakes and briars. He caught a glimpse of his prey, golden hair flying like a gonfalon with her speed.

She was waiting for him, perched on a sprawling limb of an oak. Flowers wove through her hair and fell from her gown. William stopped, panting.

“I am Olwen the Hawthorne. You are one of my people.”

He had heard of Olwen, but her legend said that she was the daughter of a giant, not a tree. William wondered in what tale he had become enmeshed.

She laughed then, clear like silvery rain on a spring morning. “They shall not have you, the men of the dead god. We are all part of our mother.”

“The virgin mother?” William was confused by her, his mind overwhelmed by her beauty.

“No, my child, our mother is all around us. She is the light. She is the earth and the moon and the stars. My eyes do not deceive me. You are filled with her light, a proper supplicant. Come and greet her.”

The golden maiden placed her hand on a large twisted elder tree standing nearby. A tremble ran through the elder and it shuddered, bark rippling. William told himself desperately that he walked in a dream and no harm could come to him from such a tree.

A face appeared in the bark, wizened, wrinkled, full of valleys, but still yet a face like those dried apple dolls that Agatha had made for the village children after the last harvest was in. The tree grew eyes in its face, opening wide.

William feared it though his mind knew he was dreaming still. When she spoke, his knees weakened under him and he dropped, unwilling, to kneel before her. For here was power indeed, that even he with his limited experience could feel. Power such as Robert and his ilk hardly dared dream, but sought in the destruction of other men.

“Thank you, Olwen, my dear. He is as you have said.”

She stepped forward then, bark showering around them as she moved and Will ducked his head, fearing some blow. When he dared to look he saw a woman in the height of her life, clad in green raiment with flowers falling from her golden-brown hair. Her dressed seemed made of leaves and moss, and her skin was lightly brown. Her eyes were green and gold, as deep as any forest pool and yet contained more secrets.

“I am Gwraig Uaine. The Lady of the Wood.”

Will had no idea how one greeted ancient and powerful gods who came to life in one’s inner eye. He tried to speak, but his wits had deserted him.

“William of Wyre,” he finally managed.

“Yes. The trees speak of you, the child from the outer darkness who dares to enter our precincts. Tell me, William, do all men have your bravery?”

He would flee, if he could, but her power pressed upon him, forcing his tongue to move.

“Say not bravery, Lady. Say instead foolishness. The foolish bravery of a man in love.”

For no other inducement would have kept him coming through Bodlith. No lure but love.

“And few men dare love as you do.”

He stiffened. Would she condemn his choice too, as the rest of the world outside the wood did? Xander had never treated their union as anything out of the ordinary, so he had assumed the old ones accepted such matters.

“I think that one has little choice in where one loves. Perhaps the gods know better.”

“Well thrust, my child. You have found the true power in this world which those who serve the dead god will never know. Though he tried to tell them. We shall, in time, defeat them for this reason. And they shall not have mastery here.”

“But you are losing against those priests that you disdain so,” Will protested. “Losing the forest to axes and fire.”

“We never fight directly. It is not the way of the forest lords. We fight instead with guile and trickery. The forest will endure.”

She seemed to go dim at that point, the light in her dying a little.

“I asked Olwen to bring you because the wolf is one of my most blessed children. Forgive me, but I doubted that any child of the other world could love him as he deserves.”

“He is beautiful and powerful. I take what he gives me willingly against the day when he tires of my limitations.”

“You have your own power though, child of the air. I will gladly claim you as one of my own. Do not turn away from the other side of your heritage.”

William felt again the bitterness of the bastard, raised without knowledge of his father. “I have no heritage.”

Her eyes were deep as still pools in the forest with sunlight sparkling on them. “If the eyes cannot see, and the ears cannot hear, then the mind cannot think. Open your eyes, William.”

William started, feeling as though he was falling from a great cliff, but he did as she had said, opening his eyes. But he was in his own bed beneath the rafters, not in the ancient forest hall. And he was still nameless and powerless, and in love with a forest lord who would either get him killed or tire of him, leaving him heartsore and broken.

Next: Cynydd