Happy
Passover, Willow
Parts
1 & 2
By Sam James
Willow, Buffy, Giles, Xander and the whole town of Sunnydale belong to Fox and Mutant Enemy. I'm just, er, borrowing them.
"Are you looking for anything in particular, Willow or is this some ritual thingie?" Buffy asked her roommate curiously. Willow was scurrying around their dorm room carrying a candle and a feather. She was using the feather to gather crumbs and the candle to burn them.
"Both actually," Willow answered. "I'm searching for chumutz."
"You've lost me on the second sentence."
"It's part of the Jewish holiday of Passover," Willow explained. "We search for crumbs of bread and other things we're not allowed to eat on Passover."
"What aren't you allowed to eat?"
Willow ticked them off on her hands, "Anything made of wheat except for matzah, which is a sort of unleavened cracker which tastes like cardboard. You'll see me eat a lot of it next week and then never again until next Passover. And we can't eat anything from which you might be able to make bread, like rice or corn. This means I have to carefully check all the ingredients of everything I eat. You won't believe how much stuff has corn syrup in it until you've had to look at every package of whipped cream and non-diary creamer in the supermarket. And Jews from European backgrounds can't eat peas or legumes like peanuts."
Buffy looked at Willow suspiciously, "How do I know that you haven't been replaced by a demon who can't eat human food and is just making all of that up as a cover?"
Willow sighed. As much as she liked Buffy there were some disagreeable aspects of being a vampire slayer's roommate. "Call Xander," she suggested. "He's tried my matzah on a couple of occasions and attended a few Seders at my house."
"Seder?" Buffy asked.
"The word means order, as in order of a religious service. But it's really a feast celebrating the Jews' exodus from Egypt."
"Exodus as in the Bible?"
"Literally, the one in the Bible. The Jews were slaves in Egypt, building cities for Pharaoh until Moses came and told Pharaoh to 'Let my people go.'"
"I thought that was an African-American song?" Buffy had vague memories of hearing a social studies teacher play an old record.
"Well, that too. African American slaves used the Jews' escape from Egypt as an metaphor for their own eventually freedom. My mom's seder has a lot of those multicultural connections. Oh, you're invited of course."
"I'm invited?" Buffy grinned. "To a feast?" Like any college student, Buffy salivated at the thought of free food. "But how could you have a feast with all the things you aren't allowed to eat?"
Willow giggled. "We Jews love a challenge. In fact, my mother probably does more baking for Passover than she does the entire rest of the year. There's chicken soup with matzah balls, gefilte fish, brisket and turkey, potato kugel, bitter herbs with haroset&ldots;"
"I don't know what any of that is, but it sounds delicious."
"Trust me," Willow smiled. "You'll fill up. But first we tell the story of the Exodus, ask the four questions, and sing lots of songs."
"I can sing," Buffy protested.
"In Hebrew?"
"Did N'Sync write any songs in Hebrew?" Willow shook her head. "I guess not then."
Willow finished her search of the dorm room and then turned to her roommate. "Do you have a penny?" Buffy flicked a coin over to her. "I hereby sell all my chumutz to you."
Buffy looked at her quizzically. "Another part of the holiday is that we're not allowed to own any of the food we can't eat. So we have to sell it all to non-Jews. In my case that means you now own my popcorn and the half of a bagel in the fridge.
"Great," Buffy said. "I missed breakfast." She went over to the fridge but stopped when the two girls heard a knock on their door. Willow opened it and a tall, blond girl walked in. Buffy immediately recognized her. "Lily, what are you doing here? Why didn't you just call if you needed me?" It was her friend from her summer in L.A. who had taken her place as a waitress.
"This woman wanted to meet you," Lily waved a person into the room. In walked a wrinkled old lady who seemed even older than Willow's great aunt. Her hands were calloused from hard physical labor. She walked in slowly and nervously, positioning herself at a distance from the others in the room. She hesitated before each movement.
Buffy made the connection. "It's happening again? The demons are taking more children and working them until they grow old and dumping them back?"
"I remember your telling us about that," Willow added. "They were in a dimension with different time sequencing so that years passed there while only minutes did here. You know, that would be great for those late night cram sessions-study a week for a test and still have time to slay the night away."
"Don't even think it," Buffy warned. "We're not going back."
"The Liberator!" the woman cried on hearing Buffy's voice. She got on her knees and kissed the hem of Buffy's dress.
Buffy's eyes looked a question at Lilly. The tall girl replied, "That's all she kept saying, she wanted to see the Liberator. It took me forever to realize she meant you."
"Liberator, you must help," the old woman kept repeating the phrase.
"If they're taking more people I will help," Buffy promised, ignoring the fact that she had just said they would not go. "The last time I just freed a few of the youngest slaves. This time, I'm taking them all and shutting Ken's demons down permanently."
Willow giggled. "Just like in the Passover story. Let my people go!" She looked thoughtful for a moment. "You know, we might just be able to use this. There's a lot of power in symbolism and Jews have been using these symbols for freedom for thousands of years."
"Okay," Buffy came to a decision and like a general, set the agenda of her followers. "Willow, you get together with Tara and Anya to see if the three of you can figure out a way back into that dimension," Buffy ordered. "I'll call Xander and tell him to meet us at Giles' to get weapons."
"But, we have the Seder," Willow protested. "My whole family will be there. I can't just skip out."
"You're forgetting the different time rate," Buffy reminded her. "Besides, you said this holiday is about freeing slaves. This Passover, instead of telling the story of an exodus, you'll help cause one."
When Willow walked into Giles' house, the main table had already been turned into an arsenal. Buffy had a sword and her crossbow. Xander had his rocket launcher which they never had returned to the armory. Riley had his stun-gun and a few lethal looking daggers. "Take your pick," Buffy waved Willow to the table.
"Other peoples' roommates just share their shoes and sweaters," Willow muttered to herself as she selected her old reliable tranquilizer dart gun and an axe.
"What's with you and that axe?" asked Buffy curiously, remembering how the girl had once used it against Xander while under the influence of Amy's spell.
"Buffy," Xander mock-scolded. "Have you forgotten she's a hacker?"
Willow resisted the urge to use the axe on him again as Buffy asked Anya, "Aren't you going to pick a weapon?"
"I still don't see why we're doing this," the former demon said. "It's none of our business if they bend a few labor laws. We certainly don't need to go charging into their second-rate Hell. We have better things to do, Xander. Alone together."
"Anya," Xander said patiently. "They're enslaving people. That's evil."
"No more evil than your own Thomas Jefferson or George Washington," Anya replied. "They owned slaves. Slaves of their own species I might add. When I saw George, he certainly didn't seem to feel guilty about it."
"You knew Washington?" Tara was amazed.
Anya smiled. She loved talking about her glory days, "Who do you think turned his teeth into wood?"
Riley turned to Buffy with his, "I couldn't possibly have heard that, right?" expression which he had mastered quite quickly since learning about the Slayer and Slayerettes. Buffy shrugged.
"Okay, is everyone ready?" the Slayer took command. "Weapons?" Everyone brandished their chosen armament. "Spells?" Willow held up a potion while Tara hoisted a heavy spellbook. "All right then, Lily decided to stay behind, even though she did save the day last time, so she'll be our anchor back." Lily nodded, holding tight to a crystal Willow had given her.
Tara drew a circle around the Scooby Gang and then recited a lengthy spell. Tara stopped but Willow grinned and added a bit from the Passover seder, 'L'moleech Ahmo bamedbar kee l'olam hasdo.' As the circle glowed with a light that began spiraling around the group, Giles translated, "To Him who guided His people through the wilderness; for His mercy endureth forever."
The light filled the room, shrunk down the size of an apple and then flowed into the crystal in Lily's hand. When the light faded, Willow, Buffy, and the others were gone.
*=*=*=*=*
"Work you slaves work," a demon yelled to a group of five frightened children huddled together for warmth. He cracked a whip over their heads. "This is your last warning." He began to whip the scared kids, reaching back with his arm to snap the whip forward. But the whip didn't move. He pulled on it with his demonic strength but something held it back. The demon turned. Holding his whip was a small, blond girl, no more than 120 pounds or so. He dropped his whip and charged. The girl calmly grabbed his arm and sent him flying into a wall.
"Hi there," Buffy said to the stunned demon. "Miss me?"
"The Liberator," the slaves began to call to her. "She has returned."
"How do you know about me?" Buffy asked as her friends emerged from their hiding places.
"Your story has been passed down from generation to generation," the oldest of the slaves said. "Each group tells it to the new ones before being returned back to Earth that once there was a human who dared fight back and that someday she will return. As you have."
"Okay," Buffy looked at her friends and then surveyed the surrounding area. She fired a crossbow bolt at another demon who was running toward them. "Strategy time," she turned to Willow and Giles, the two most likely to think of something.
"You could try the Moses gambit," Willow suggested.
Riley fired his gun and Xander his rocket launcher at a whole group of demons.
"The Moses thing is what?" Xander asked.
Willow sang, "Tell, Old Pharaoh. To let my people go!"
"That's your plan," Xander was incredulous. "Just tell the bad demons to stop?"
"Well, we do need more than that," Willow said. She began singing again, "Thus says the Lord, brave Moses said. Let my people go. If not I'll smite your first born dead. Let my people go!"
Giles looked at Willow and Tara. "I believe you have something there. But are you up to it?"
"I think so," Willow said.
Buffy glared at two demons who emerged from the rubble made by Xander's rocket. The two ran away.
"It would have to be illusion, of course," Tara explained, taking Willow's hand into her own. "But together we could make it work." The two smiled the same smile.
Riley looked at them. "Buffy, are those two&ldots; ouch" Buffy stepped on his foot, hard.
"So, who's the Pharaoh?" Everyone looked at each other.
Anya sighed. She went over to the demon Buffy had thrown against the wall. "Take me to your leader."
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