Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

She got so lost in her own dismal thoughts that she didn’t hear Rupert coming.

“Ah!” he said, “There you are! I just wanted to let you know we received the reply from Wolf’s sister - the one who is the bard - and she has agreed to be your maid of honor.”

Privately, Virginia wondered how Rupert had managed to discover this information before either she or Wolf had heard about it, but all she said was “That’s nice.”

“Very good,” he continued, “And now as far as the processional music goes, what do you think of ...”

“Whatever you like, Rupert,” she interrupted him. “I told you to just take care of the whole thing.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Except for your dress. How is that coming along, by the way?”

“I’ll get around to it.”

“The wedding is a week from tomorrow, Virginia! You can’t let these things go that long! It takes time to do the fittings!”

“Rupert, I’m going shopping in New York. I can just go and buy one off the rack. It doesn’t have to be hand-sewn.”

“But ...”

“I’ll go ... soon. I will,” she promised. “Just please take care of the rest of it yourself. I really am not interested in the details.”

He gave her an odd look as he walked away, like he had every time she’d said something like that about not being interested in planning her own wedding. She supposed she was very different from other women in that way; she’d even known many whose whole lives seemed to revolve around their wedding plans, though she’d always thought that was a bit sad. What did they have to look forward to when the wedding was over, she’d always wondered?

That thought reminded her again about the baby. What was she, Virginia, going to do with one? She didn’t know anything about babies, she’d been no more interested in them than she had been in planning a wedding. When everyone else was fussing and cooing over someone’s baby, Virginia had always stayed carefully in the background so she wouldn’t feel obligated to hold it. She thought of them as noisy, smelly, sticky things, full of drool and snot, and apt to spit up. But her near-miscarriage had taught her that she couldn’t go back to the way she used to be. The fear of loss had torn something deep inside her that even now hurt to think about. She felt as if she were in some impossible catch-22 situation - at one end, not wanting a baby in the least, and at the other not being able to bear not having one. Not that she had much choice in the matter now. She wouldn’t stay pregnant forever. Early June, she thought again, as she had, over and over since the doctor had told her the due date. This time next year she’d have a four month old baby. She just couldn’t imagine it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of her father rushing towards her, shouting, “Virginia! Virginia! You won’t believe what I found! Look at this!”

He was carrying one of those enormous ledger-type antique binders that the records room had been full of - the kind in which you’d imagine Scrooge kept his books. He shoved it in her face. She drew back quickly and pushed it away.

“Dad, the smell ...”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot,” he said. “But you gotta see, it’s in German! And that’s not all - here ...”

He dumped the ledger on the ground in blatant disregard of its dilapidated state and fished in his shirt pocket for a piece of paper, which he quickly unfolded and handed to her.

“This was under this book,” he explained. “I mean, the original was under it. I just copied what I could make out.”

He explained in what condition the original had been.

“And it did smell,” he acknowledged. “I noticed that when I moved the ledger. It smelled like something died. That was probably what made you sick.”

“Uh huh,” she said, reading what he had written. “Dad, are you sure this is something that goes with that?” She indicated the ledger.

“Well, no,” he admitted. “But it was under it and it’s old and seems to be part of a poem - it looked like it was in stanzas, at least - so I thought it might be important.”

“Because it’s in English,” she continued. “We were looking for something written by Grimm, which would be in German, like that journal or ledger or whatever it is - shouldn’t you be more careful with that? - but what would a poem written in English have to do with his stay here?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “Maybe it was something he was collecting as part of his notes? And maybe it has nothing at all to do with him. I thought maybe we could sound Wendell out about this ‘Basquel Queen’ it’s talking about, although we might have to drag him to New York to get anything out of him.”

A movement caught her eye and Virginia looked up to see Wolf walking towards them.

“Virginia!” he exclaimed. “I just remembered - wasn’t there something we were supposed to be looking for? I’m not sure exactly what, but ...”

Her dad held up the crumbling leather-bound tome.

“You mean you remember it now?” he asked, astonished.

Wolf looked questioningly at him and they quickly explained what everyone but them had forgotten, and how the forget spell had worked directly on the item they’d been looking for so that even they had a hard time finding it. He agreed that finding the journal must have broken the spell, but when he discovered what Virginia had done to locate it, he was horrified.

“You did that on purpose?!!” he cried.

She looked away and swallowed, then replied rather sharply, “Yeah, well, I didn’t really believe it would work, okay?”

She didn’t really want to hear a lecture from him though she felt she probably deserved it.

Her father shoved the notes he’d made from the obscure poem he’d found under the book at Wolf, effectively distracting him from further comments about her health, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“You have any idea what any of this means?” he asked, explaining where he’d gotten it.

Wolf studied it for a few moments.

“No,” he finally said. “But I’ll bet Wendell does.”

Wendell, too, had been overwhelmed with a sense of urgency about something whose nature he couldn’t quite recall. He was therefore deeply satisfied when Antony had walked into the council chamber bearing the journal written in a strange language of his own world. That was what they were supposed to be looking for, he thought. Once he had seen it, it had all come back.

He’d proposed that they begin translating it at once, but had been a bit disappointed to discover that neither Antony nor Virginia spoke any German. Reluctantly, he’d just decided that they’d simply have to import someone from their world, since he was disinclined to allow the artifact to leave his palace, when Antony suggested using the mice.

“The ones that translated that carved inscription for you?” he asked, glad he’d seen the play of their adventure. As difficult as it had been to watch himself be a dog - and watch his body inhabited by one - he’d learned quite a bit from seeing everything else it showed.

“Yes! I’ll go and get them,” his former manservant volunteered, then hesitated as he dug some paper out of his shirt pocket. “I almost forgot. Here. See what you can make of this.”

He tossed it on the table. Wendell unfolded the paper and read what it said as Virginia told him where it had been found.

“We thought ‘Basquel Queen’ might mean something to you,” she said. “Does it?”

He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “The Basquel were supposed to be a race of forest sprites, related to the elves and fairies, only wingless. According to legend, they ranged throughout the northern forests, all the way north to what is now the Eighth Kingdom. But either they’ve all died out or they never really existed in the first place.”

“The dryads?” asked Wolf.

“Yes!” Wendell exclaimed. “Dryads. I couldn’t recall the name. But that’s it.”

“So dryads aren’t real,” said Virginia, almost to herself. Wendell thought she sounded vaguely disappointed.

“Well, they might have been,” he reminded her.

“What happened to them, then?” she asked. “Or, at least, what was supposed to have happened to them?”

“I ... don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think I ever heard. Odd, isn’t it?”

“It’s part of the forget spell,” offered Wolf.

“I thought we’d decided it was broken.”

“Breaking it wouldn’t help you remember something you never learned in the first place,” the half-wolf explained. “If the spell has existed through several generations - and it looks like it has - whatever did happen has been forgotten permanently.” He looked unusually pensive, Wendell thought.

“Was there anything else?” he asked.

Wolf shook his head, hesitated a moment, and then said, “There’s an old ruin in the Second Kingdom. Up north - I can’t remember exactly where right now - but it’s rumored to be the dryad royal palace.”

Wendell perked up. So did Virginia, he noticed.

“How much is left of this ruin?” he asked.

“Yes,” seconded Virginia, “Do you think there might be anything left there that could help us?”

“I think it’s still partly intact,” ventured Wolf. “But I don’t know - it’s supposed to be cursed.”

“Oh, dear,” said Wendell.

“Cursed how?” she asked.

“I don’t think I ever heard,” Wolf replied. “Maybe no one has. Everyone just stays away from it.”

“Maybe it’s not really cursed, then,” she suggested. “Maybe that’s just something else like the forget spell was - to keep people away.”

“I don’t think so,” he told her. “A simple curse would be much easier to do. That forget spell was very complicated - it took a very powerful wizard or witch both to cast it and to make it last so long. We were just fortunate that whoever did it forgot to include Virginia’s dimension. But even for someone very powerful, it’s easier to just do a curse. That way even if the forget spell was broken, the curse would still be in effect. And it would be a very potent curse, too, with that kind of force behind it.”

Wendell was staring at Wolf in amazement.

“How do you know all this?” he asked.

Wolf looked away.

“I ... uh ... learned it in school,” he replied.

“You mean you didn’t?” Virginia asked Wendell. It wasn’t the first time Wolf had gone on about magic and its workings to her. He’d done it almost from the day she met him. But she’d assumed, from his remarks, that such knowledge was commonly taught in the Nine Kingdoms’ schools. Yet, if the king of the Fourth Kingdom hadn’t learned it ...

“To be honest,” the king replied sheepishly, “I was never interested in magic at all. I don’t think I would have been in any case, and with my stepmother ... I’m sorry Virginia ... I ... well, I’m afraid I hated it. Oh, I know what to stay away from, I think - like not to swallow a dragon dung bean or put a whisper cockle under my pillow - but I suppose I didn’t pay any attention to anything more complicated than that.” He looked at Wolf. “So I guess you are the resident expert, at least as far as it goes,” he announced. “From what you were saying, should I conclude that this wizard or witch was a more powerful one than ...”

“Yes, probably so,” agreed Wolf. “Since Snow White’s stepmother - and that was who we were dealing with, not Virginia’s mother Christine, from what I can figure out - just used several mirrors already in existence to enhance her ability.”

“But you told me you knew the witch was my mother,” cried Virginia.

He had explained to her then how the witch both was and was not her mother: The old queen, her body useless, had needed someone she could easily control who had the inherent magical potential. Her mother, mentally disturbed and at the time dependent on prescription drugs, fit the requirements. She hadn’t been exactly possessed in the demonic sense, but she had quite literally given her will completely away. Wolf hadn’t explained it to her at the time - and she wasn’t sure she could have listened even if he had - because he hadn’t known enough about the person who had been Christine Lewis. But it made sense, Virginia thought. In her mother’s final moments, she’d seemed suddenly to be free, as she had intermittently from the time Virginia had confronted her.

But this brought up another problem. Unlike her mother, the old queen was not dead. She still lay in her undead state in the cellar of the house in the swamp, for all they knew. Wendell had done nothing to get rid of her. He’d said he doubted there was anything he could do that her magic couldn’t counteract, and Virginia had to admit he was probably right about that. But it was also true, they agreed, that she might be looking for a new minion - another easily led woman of power. Virginia had shivered at the thought which sprang to her mind - how alike her mother and grandmother seemed to be: Each lived in their own little world of fantasy, and while her mother had been dependent on drugs, her grandmother spent her days and nights high on expensive wine. And now she was really all alone as well.

Virginia had felt guilty for some time for not going to see her grandmother after she returned from her adventure to let her know where she was and that she was all right. She simply had no idea how to tell the old woman what had happened to her daughter without giving away where she had been and what all was involved. Nor did she have any idea how to explain her relationship with the man who had apparently tried to cook her. But after a long discussion about the old queen’s hold on her mother and the danger of that happening again with someone else, they had all come to the conclusion that it was safer in the long run for Christine’s mother to be where they could keep an eye on her. And that meant bringing her to the Nine Kingdoms.

So here Virginia was, standing once again outside her grandmother’s Gramercy Park apartment, preparing to go in and invite Grandma to the wedding. She had a little consolation prize to offer, since she knew the old woman would be a bit insulted at being left out of the planning stage: Virginia intended to suggest they go shopping for her wedding dress together. That would effectively take away all Virginia’s choice in the matter, she knew, but she reasoned that she had never been much interested in such details anyway, so it really didn’t matter. The hard part was going to be explaining what had happened to her mother, and following that, explaining about Wolf.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Just knock, she told herself. The sooner you start, the sooner it’ll be over with.

She knocked, waited a moment, and then used her key as she always had before.

“Grandma?” she called. “It’s me, Virginia.”

She waited for the usual reply of ‘Oh, for a moment there I thought it was your mother ...’, but when she found her grandmother in the sitting room, this time she said instead, “Oh, for a while there I thought you’d gone off to wherever it was your mother disappeared.”

The opening was too great for Virginia to resist.

“Well,” she replied, “I ... kinda did.”

As she’d half expected, the old woman perked up at the words, but her face held such hope that Virginia was loathe to dash it. Her expression, however, evidently gave the news away. In the next moment, her grandmother’s face fell and she looked away, blinking and licking her lips.

“It’s not good news, is it?” she asked quietly.

“No.”

The older woman tossed aside the Times crossword in her lap, and strode to her liquor cabinet.

“I know it’s still a bit early, but I believe this can be called a reasonable cause.”

She poured herself not wine this time, but whiskey, then held the bottle up and looked over her shoulder at her granddaughter.

“Oh, no thank you,” Virginia told her.

Grandma shrugged and returned to her seat.

“So tell me what happened,” she said.

“It’s a long story,” Virginia warned her.

The old woman’s plucked eyebrow rose with irony.

“I believe I have time,” she said haughtily.

Before leaving the penthouse she shared with Wolf, they’d several times gone over what Virginia could reasonably say. She was a terrible liar, but there were several smaller truths, none of which was terribly important in itself, that could safely be bent even by Virginia to make coherent an altered version of the story. With no other way open to her except a revelation of the complete truth, Virginia plunged into their made-up tale.

The dog she’d had with her that last night had been her mother’s dog, she said. He’d gotten away from the man who was bringing it to her - the man that had attacked them in the apartment. At the mention of Wolf, her grandmother had at first been alarmed, then suspicious.

“He might have had something to do with her death, you know,” she declared.

“No, Grandma, he didn’t,” she replied truthfully. “In fact, he’s not like that at all. He’s a friend of King Wendell’s that was sent to bring us the news.”

“Well, he certainly had an odd way of doing it,” snapped the older woman sarcastically. Then, as the rest of the sentence sank in as Virginia had hoped it would, she added, “King who?”

“King Wendell,” repeated Virginia. “He’s the king of the small country mom disappeared to.”

“What country is it? And what was your mother doing there that a friend of the king was sent to notify us of ... about her?”

It took a bit of coaxing, but Virginia was finally able to convince her grandmother that only Wolf could properly explain the full account of her mother’s disappearance. Even then, the old woman could not be persuaded to meet with him in his apartment - though the address clearly impressed her - until Virginia informed her that they were engaged.

“To that?” she cried. “I’m sorry, Virginia, I realize he fits the economic version of suitable which I held up for you, but regardless of how well he is connected socially, a man who behaves in that fashion at all is not acceptable.”

“He can explain it, Grandma.”

“No doubt,” was the curt reply. “That’s what they all say.”

“Please give him a chance,” Virginia begged. “At least come hear what he has to say.”

Her grandmother sighed.

“Very well, I’ll meet him,” she agreed. “But only in the interest of hearing what he has to say about your mother. Hopefully, you’ll come to your senses before it’s too late, like it was for her. When is this wedding, by the way?”

Virginia bit her lip.

“Saturday.”

“THIS Saturday?!”

“Yes.”

“Why so soon?” Grandma demanded. “Tell me you’re not pregnant.”

Virginia was silent. She hadn’t anticipated having to say anything to her grandmother about the baby just yet, but she couldn’t lie to her about it.

“Oh, God,” the old woman groaned. “Virginia, you know you don’t have to go through with this. In my day a woman wouldn’t have had any choice, but now it’s perfectly acceptable to simply get rid of it.”

“I don’t want to get rid of it,” Virginia told her, a bit more sharply than she’d intended.

Her grandmother sighed.

“All right,” she said. “But I know you’re going to regret it.” - Then, probably realizing how what she said had sounded, added, “The marriage, I mean.”

Finally, she noticed the ring.

“With his money you think he could at least have gotten you diamonds,” she spat. “This just shows how unenthusiastic he probably is about the whole thing. Snaring a man into matrimony is one thing, Virginia. Making him feel trapped is quite another."

Virginia saw the ring’s little eyes grow wide with indignation. Her grandmother’s analysis of Wolf’s feelings about the wedding was already so far from reality that Virginia’d had to fight to keep from smiling, which Grandma would have considered impertinent, given what she was saying. So she had to put her hand to her mouth and bite down on it as the ring sweetly sang,

Your grandma there is quite a lush;
Why don't you tell her just to hush?
Why does she have to come at all?
She'd do naught but spoil that ball.
She's so sauced she can't see straight -
She'll be passed out at this rate.

Nevertheless, her grandmother had been charmed by Wolf. He’d apologized profusely for his former behavior, explaining that he’d had a flashback of malaria he’d picked up from a former campaign in the tropics, and must have been delirious. He had no memory of his behavior that day, he said, but Virginia had assured him it was execrable. Could her grandmother ever forgive him? Upon hearing his explanation, Grandma had looked straight at her and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that was what happened, Virginia?”

For once in her life, Virginia didn’t hear the disapproving, slightly condescending tone in the older woman’s voice. All she thought was: He’s got her. Thank God.

Wolf had gone on to tell her a modified story of her daughter’s history - carefully leaving out all mention of wrongdoing, except for one. While he didn’t avoid mentioning that Christine had married the king - Wendell’s father - he was quick to point out that they hadn’t known at the time that she was still married to Tony.

Virginia watched, amused, as her grandmother’s eyes changed from dreamy and glazed one minute - as she dreamed of Christine in a crown - to shifty the next as she tried to think up some reasonable justification for her daughter’s bigamy.

“Well, you know, they weren’t really married,” she ventured. “Christine and Tony. They hadn’t been for years, at least not in the ... um ... conjugal sense. She’d always intended to get a divorce ...”

He left the location of the kingdom a mystery, however, telling her it was a surprise he was reserving for the wedding. Virginia knew that made her grandmother a bit suspicious, but in view of the obvious wealth surrounding her, she said nothing about it even later when they were shopping together, though she did try to induce her granddaughter to tell her the wedding’s location. But beyond informing the older woman that the climate was much like New York’s (Grandma had claimed she wouldn’t know what to wear if she didn’t know where she was going), Virginia managed to avoid having to answer her.

At that moment, far away in the royal palace of the Second Kingdom, Queen Riding Hood III was contemplating the invitation she’d received. For a brief while, she wondered idly why she hadn’t thrown it out as soon as she’d received it, but a quick perusal of its contents reminded her that she’d not only been invited to an event she found repugnant, she had been insulted into the bargain.

The invitation was to the wedding of King Wendell’s step-sister (now he was claiming that line as family, she noted sarcastically. How interesting). But the event in itself was reasonable enough - the girl was a hero of the Kingdoms and as such was entitled to a wedding of that scale if she wished one. Queen Riding Hood III had no quarrel with that. What she found thoroughly disgusting was that the poor misguided thing intended to marry a wolf!

The excuse for this abominable pairing was that the wolf was also supposedly a great hero. Riding Hood had discovered shortly after Wendell’s coronation (what a fiasco that had turned out to be!) that Wendell intended to declare the wolf as such and had promptly boycotted the awards ceremony. When she discovered later what the wolf’s prize for this world-saving had been, she had been very glad she hadn’t still been present - and she had also felt quite vindicated in the knowledge that the wolf in question had obviously not undertaken the quest for altruistic reasons. If she were to dangle such a thing as that pardon in front of her own wolf population, she had no doubt that they would all appear quite the heros until they had the thing in their hands or until the next full moon, whichever came first. Then the land would descend into a bloody anarchy.

Still, the heroine Virginia was an adult, and if she wished to practice beastiality - Riding Hood shuddered, trying not to imagine what disgusting form such a pairing would take - that was her own business. She wasn’t a subject of Riding Hood’s after all.

No, what really irked her was that the invitation specified that the wedding guests were required to arrive in costume, as for a masked ball. This was obviously a method for allowing the wolf guests to remain anonymous, and since, thanks to the pardon, that certainly wasn’t necessary any longer in Wendell’s kingdom, Riding Hood knew it had to be meant as a slight to her.

How dare he! she thought indignantly. This must be Wendell’s method of getting back at me for missing his award ceremony (and approving a dog in his place, she acknowledged with a slight twinge of guilt, quickly overcome).

He couldn’t possibly expect me to really show up for this, she decided. Which is why I really should. But I can’t wait any longer to return the invitation! As it is, I’ll need to send it by magic missive. The question is how can I turn this to my advantage?

Suddenly an idea came to her: She might in fact be able to accomplish exactly what they were trying, by their insult to her, to avoid. If she were to go, even if she managed to recognize only one of the wolfs as one of her subjects, she could treat it as an example upon its return. That should send a clear message to Wendell, she thought! And it would be especially satisfying if that wolf happened to be a member of the wedding party!