I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent to blow up the King and the Parliament.
"Is that what he looked like? Sort of blank-looking, you know."
"Dawn, did I make fun of your culture's traditions when I was living in your country?"
"Hmm, let me think about that one, Rupert. Yes."
Giles nodded in concession as he placed the effigy on top of the large bonfire. "Well, I didn't do it in front of children," he said, glancing at Madelyn,
"We were children. Hell, I was hardly older than Madelyn when we first met."
Giles stopped, took off his glasses. "Do you have to mention that fact, love?" he asked as he polished them.
"It is sort of disgusting, Aunt Dawn," Madelyn chimed in.
Dawn shook her head and returned to adding kindling to the internal structure of the bonfire. "I still say that thing doesn't have a face."
Giles sighed. "Madelyn, would you mind running into the house and getting a marker so that we can draw a face on Guy Fawkes for your aunt?"
The girl nodded and raced off into the mansion. Dawn watched her go, then picked up a bottle of kerosene and began to sprinkle it liberally over the bonfire. "You know, back in the States, we usually had holidays when somebody did something good, like discover a continent or free the slaves or chop down a cherry tree. But try to blow up Parliament? How exactly does that earn you a holiday?"
"It sends a signal," Giles explained, laying the last large timber in place. "Don't mess with the English, or we'll burn in you in effigy for all eternity."
"Here you go," Madelyn said as she ran out of the mansion with a permanent marker and handed it to Giles, who promptly drew a crude smiley face.
"Should he really be smiling if we are about to set him on fire?" Dawn asked. She walked up to the effigy, straightened it. "Those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom remember us—if at all—not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men," she quoted. "The stuffed men."
"Shape without form, shade without colour," Madelyn said, her face suddenly very pale. "Paralysed force, gesture without motion."
Giles looked at his niece, surprised. "Why yes," he said. "You've read the poem?"
The girl shook her head violently. "I can sense them, their dried voices. They whisper together, are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass." She dropped to her knees.
Dawn shot a quick frightened glance at her husband, then dropped down next to Madelyn. "It's okay, dear," she said. "It'll be all right."
Madelyn didn't seem to hear. "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams, in death's dream kingdom," she continued, inchoate. "These do not appear."
Dawn looked up at Giles in alarm. "What are we going to do?" she asked.
"I don't know," Giles said. "Bonfire Night isn't usually associated with any convergence of energies. And Eliot was far from being an occultist. Come, I'll help you get her into the house. You can stay with her while I check the books."
"Sightless," Madelyn said, "unless the eyes reappear as the perpetual star multifoliate rose of death's twilight kingdom."
Giles entered, looking worried. "No change?" he asked.
Dawn shook her head. "She just keeps reciting Eliot."
"I called the coven in Devon," Giles said. "They said they had picked up some subtle fluctuation in the astral relays, but no one exhibited symptoms even remotely like Madelyn's."
"None of them are as sensitive as Madelyn is," Dawn countered. "Not even Althanea."
Giles nodded. "We can hope that, based on the particular Eliot poems she's quoting, whatever is going on is tied somehow to Bonfire Night. Perhaps when the day passes, so will whatever this is that has its hold on her."
Dawn looked at her husband. "We can't count on that."
"No," Giles agreed. "We can't." He sighed. "Occult interpretations of Eliot's poetry are a dime a dozen, considering the subject matter, but none are particularly plausible, and they all contradict each other. I've been trying to research the history of Bonfire Night, see if I can't come up with some explanation for why this might happen tonight."
"Any luck?"
"One of the Gunpowder plotters, Ambrose Rokewood, is commonly assumed to have been some type of warlock, and it's speculated the plotters may have had a Star of Rivenok. It would be how they were able to keep their plans secret from the authorities so long."
"Madelyn's been talking about stars," Dawn pointed out.
"Yes," said Giles, taking a step forward. "It's one of the poem's leitmotifs. Along with eyes." He picked up the copy of Collected Poems 1909-1935 and paged through until he came to "The Hollow Men."
"Here the stone images are raised, here they receive the supplication of a dead man's hand under the twinkle of a fading star," he read.
"Stonehenge?" Dawn asked.
Giles shook his head. "Eliot's poems are less about meaning and more about the vibrancy of its images, the sound of its words, the evocation of emotion."
"Then why would demonic energies use it to manifest through Madelyn?"
"I don't know," Giles admitted. "I can only assume that it required Bonfire Night connection. There's nothing in Pound's or Lowell's ouvre which quite fits."
"And a single epigraph is enough to establish 'The Hollow Men' as a Bonfire Night poem?" Dawn asked.
"First horseman," Madelyn said. "On its white horse."
Giles glanced at his niece, then back at Dawn. "That's not from the poem," he said, then knelt down in front of Madelyn. "What is it dear?"
"First horseman, on its white horse," Madelyn repeated. "Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow. For Thine is the Kingdom."
Giles sighed. "She's lapsed back into the Eliot," he said. He looked over at Dawn next to him, both of them kneeling at Madelyn's side. "We will help her, Dawn," he said forcefully. He rested his arm on his wife's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze."
"The four horsemen of the Apocalypse," Giles explained. "War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. The first horseman, as Madelyn said, rides upon a white horse. 'And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.' Revelation, chapter 6, verse 2. King James version."
"Poetic," Dawn replied, scanning the Tradescan Codex for anything that might help. "And here I thought the Eliot was depressing."
"Do you have any bloody idea what it could mean?" Giles asks.
Dawn shrugged. "Christian eschatology isn't exactly my strong suit."
Giles paced back and forth. "Some interpret Revelations not as eschatology but as a description of the events of the first century Christian era. The first horsemen represents forces external to the Roman Empire, the Parthian archer."
"I doubt she's trying to give us a history lesson, Rupert."
"Yes, quite right. Others interpret the passage metaphorically—"
"I don't need a lesson in bloody Biblical hermeneutics!" Dawn and Giles just stood in stunned silence for a moment, as if the echoes of her shouting were still reverberating through the room. Then Dawn began to sob. "I can't do it, Rupert. I can't—"
Giles walked over slowly to his wife, took her in his arms. "Dawn, listen to me. We will fix this. We will find out what is happening to Madelyn, and we will stop it. I promise you."
Dawn just continued to cry.
"What if we're looking at this wrong?" asked Giles.
"What do you mean?"
"We've been assuming that whatever is doing this chose 'The Hollow Men' because it's Bonfire Night. But it didn't—you chose the poem because it was Bonfire Night."
Understanding lit in Dawn's eyes. "I was the one who began to quote from it before Madelyn went—before this happened to Madelyn."
"So perhaps the relevant forces just picked up on it because it was the last thing you said."
Dawn frowned. "But then this could be anything. Do we even know that it is connected to Bonfire Night anymore?"
"The coven did detect a slight increase in astral activity. If they could locate a focus point—"
"Call them. Call them now."
Giles nodded and left the room.
"It's going to be okay, sweetie," Dawn said, stroking the face of Madelyn as she laid on the bed, curled up in the fetal position. "We're going to beat this."
"Lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone," Madelyn whispered back.
Giles re-entered the room.
"Did they know anything?"
Giles nods, his face somber. "They performed the detection spell. The focus of the astral energies is . . . Bath, England."
A shadow passed over Dawn's face. "Here."
"They suggested we attempted to further pinpoint the precise location from here."
Dawn nodded. "I'll get the Tanaka powder. The Cloutier trance?"
"Dawn, it's precisely Madelyn's extra sensitivity to mystical currents that rendered her suspectible to this, whatever it is."
"I know it's dangerous, Rupert. But Madelyn is Buffy's daughter. We can't stand back and do nothing while—"
Giles nodded. "Which is precisely why I'm going to be the one going under."
"This is my responsibility."
"Madelyn's my niece as well, Dawn. Unless you don't think I meant it when I said our vows?"
"You can't just make this decision for me," Dawn said.
"I'm not. But the Council needs you more. I'm old; I'm expendable."
"You're not expendable to me."
"You have how many references in the Tradescan Codex?" When he saw the look of determination collapse on Dawn's face, he knew he had won. Dawn's destiny was too important to put at risk, because if the Codex could be trusted, it was so closely intertwined with Madelyn's.
Giles concentrates, lets his mind fall into the Cloutier trance. He's uncertain at first. He's cast plenty of spells, but hasn't really experimented with different mental states since his Ripper days.
When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Dawn, fading into and out of existence. He's taken back at first, then realizes it's only how the trance is interpreting her status as the Key. He sees faint signatures of other spells that have been cast in their house. He turns and Madelyn shines with light and darkness, pulsating with the sheer magnitude of her inherited powers.
"This is the way the world ends," Madelyn whispers, but the trance amplifies her voice even as it distorts it, "not with a bang but a whimper." He hears another voice mixed within it, speaking in unison with her. He looks closer and can see Madelyn's voice as she recites Eliot's verse, watch it shimmer as she breathes in and out. And there, in the middle of the light and dark, there is a part to her breath which is foreign. From the metaphorical perspective of the Cloutier trance, it is quite clear that Madelyn has been quite literally breathing in and out the demonic energies. He follows the trail of the demonic signature as it travels from Madelyn outside the house through the window.
He looks out the window and everything falls into place.
Dawn watched as Giles grabbed the burning incense and raced out of the room.
She ran after him. "What is it?" she asked.
"Yshnak demon," he answered as he ran. Dawn followed him through the hall and out the back door. "Posesses an inanimate object and uses it to send out psychic energy."
Dawn watched as Giles threw the burning incense into the bonfire they had built that afternoon. The kerosene caught, causing the bonfire to erupt in a sudden immolation. The flame spread to the effigy of Guy Fawkes as it too became covered in flame.
From inside the mansion, Dawn could hear Madelyn's screams.
The three watched as the once-demon-posessed effigy burned away into nothing.
"You sure you're all right, Madelyn?" Dawn said as she handed her niece a caramel apple.
The girl nodded. "Just weak is all. The demon was so loud in my mind, I couldn't hear anything but that poetry. I couldn't think anything else."
"It could have been worse," Giles noted. "Your aunt could have quoted American poetry. Joyce Kilmer, even."
Dawn turned towards her husband. "Eliot was an American."
"Who fled your shores the first bloody chance he got," Giles observed. "Along with Pound, Stein, H.D., and everyone else with even a modicum of talent. Including, might I add, your own lovely self."
"You saved yourself with that last part, mister."
"Did I? I assure you, no ulterior motive was involved." He paused. "The only thing that still bothers me is that comment about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Do you have any idea what you meant by that, Madelyn?"
The little girl nodded. "It's already begun."
Dawn looked confused. "What has?"
"The apocalypse," Madelyn answered. "The first horseman's come and gone. Fifth November, 1605 Christian Era."
Giles nods. "The very first Bonfire Night."
"So who was the first horseman?" Dawn asked as she began to undress. "Guy Fawkes or James I?"
Giles sighed. "It could have been the Dh'rgth demon who whispered into Fawkes' ear and told him to confess for all I know. It's not as if Christian eschatology is really any of our strong suits. The Tradescan Codex is much clearer and more reliable as prophetic texts go."
Dawn nodded and sat on the bed. "So what are we going to do about it?"
"I'll call London tomorrow and ask Lydia to put someone on the case. If it's been over four hundred years since the first horseman of the apocalypse, I think it'll wait until tomorrow." He sighed. "I'm more worried about Madelyn."
"She seemed okay when I put her to bed."
"If she's that sensitive to astral currents, then she's not just vulnerable to Yshnaks. There's a whole host of mystical phenomena that could have a similar threat. And with the type of power she holds, I can't imagine a greater danger."
Dawn looked up at her husband. "What are you suggesting?"
"She has to learn greater control, Dawn. Being able to control her own powers isn't enough, not anymore. She has to have such a strong discipline over her own mind that there's no way something like this could ever happen again."
Dawn nodded. "I'll call Althanea in the morning. Now come to bed, Rupert. She's fine for the night."
And Giles turned off the lights, got in bed, and made love to his wife.
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!
The End