Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

For another moment, his mind pondered how Elie could be lying in his arms if he had lost her, though he knew deep down that the scent was not hers. Then he awoke completely with the memory of where he was and who lay with him, a shudder of revulsion sweeping through him as he opened his eyes to see the golden hair where Elie’s dark tresses should have been. Fighting the instinct to push her away, he slowly peeled himself off of the queen.

She didn’t wake, simply stirred slightly in her sleep. That slight movement of just her chin and shoulder tugged at something inside him, drawing and bonding her to him as her scent had done. Unable to resist the temptation of something so long denied, he reveled in the fullness of the bond, shivering at the feeling of completion it offered to him. But he knew who she was and what she stood for, and he struggled against his instinct. She could not be his mate. She was Riding Hood, enemy to all the half-wolfs, and he’d hated her since cubhood; hated her House for killing his parents; hated her now for killing his children ... and his mate. She was not his mate.

Yet he couldn’t deny what his body told him - that he had mated with her while he was a wolf. It made him feel unclean, as if he had defiled himself, loving the person responsible for his family’s death. No, not love! he insisted to himself. There is no love! Only the wolf had mated with her, as he had been afraid it would because ... because ...

No!

He had tried to stop himself from changing. His brother managed it sometimes, he knew, but it hadn’t been possible for Rafe. Not here, not now. And he knew resisting had only made it worse. Strange that it was only at this late date that he should understand Simon a little better. His eating binges made perfect sense now, viewed from Rafe’s current perspective.

He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind.

Even that first night at the inn, she had overwhelmed him, and it had taken all of his strength to turn away from her. He had tried desperately to think of Elie, to call up a picture of her in his mind’s eye, smiling and alive, but all that had come was the image of Claire, silhouetted against the night sky in the single window of their room, the moon waxing to full behind her as she looked out, her cotton nightdress floating about her, enticing him with what lay beneath it. Guilt-stricken, he had curled up in the corner, wondering how he would make it through the full moon, hoping the curse of the dryads would take them both before then.

It hadn’t worked out that way. And now, he had to almost laugh at the irony of it. What was the dryad curse compared to his own life? Simon had been right all along - they were cursed from birth, being wolfs. And Rafe had been cursed thrice over before ever entering this ruin. What could it do to him that he wouldn’t welcome? He realized suddenly that he was playing with her hair, curling it around his fingers in an absent caress. Abruptly he let it go, though he was careful to do it gently so as not to wake her, then scrambled back away out of reach, drawing his knees up to his chin and hugging them tightly against his chest. He didn’t want her awake, looking at him; he didn’t think he could withstand it, and he had fallen too much into temptation already. He had to remember, he told himself, remember what he had found when he’d run home that day after hearing Elie’s last plaintive howl to him. He had to remember the blood and the look of horror frozen on his daughter’s dead face, and Charlie...

Slowly, the formless thing emerged, drawn by the pain and anguish it sensed above. For a long time it had lain silently, waiting, empty; seeking others whose loss and heartbreak could give it expression; wanting...

Tears tracked silently down Rafe's cheeks as he remembered how he'd carried Charlie to his aunt's, running all the way, and how she'd told him there was nothing that could be done. He hadn't been able to remember anything after that except... except...

He shuddered and gasped at the sudden rush of memory he hadn't wanted, that he'd forced himself to forget, to push out of the reach of conscious thought. Charlie...

He had rushed into his aunt's, his son's limp body in his arms, one hand cradling the bloody mess of a wound in his skull. She had taken one look and shaken her head even though he knew Charlie's heart was still beating; he could hear it as clearly as if it were full moon, he wasn't dead, how could she be telling him he was? He'd tried to argue, to explain, but she wouldn't listen to him, and it was taking so much time, so much time and then... and then...

Fragments of memory flew at him: Someone shouting wildly (was it him, he wondered?)... his aunt falling backwards onto the floor... Charlie thrashing violently, uncontrolled... his son’s eyes staring, just staring... the forest flying by as he ran... the smell of the wet earth... a sword encrusted with rusty blood, lying in the flowers...

Outside in the hallway, a darkness like a shadow swelled, its pulsing essence resonating with the suffering, pain and longing it felt within the room; growing, feeding on it, gaining strength; thinking, feeling...

She had done it, thought Rafe. She had killed them all as surely as if she’d wielded the sword herself. They were all gone and with them the only chance for any happiness he’d ever had. But that’s how it is, he thought. Life is sorrow. For a wolf it is sorrow. Look at my aunt. My happiness may have lasted longer than hers but it was doomed from the start just the same. As Simon’s will be.

He thought momentarily of his brother’s not-yet-born child, at his own surprise when he’d caught the telltale scent in Virginia, but it only stirred old memories of his own, too painful now to examine. He resolutely pushed them away, staring with hate at the sleeping figure across from him on the floor.

She knows nothing, sitting in her ivory castle, he thought bitterly. What could she know? She has no mate, no family, no children. Her life is made of parties and fashion, and inciting the hatred of wolfs. She doesn’t know pain! She doesn’t know the torture of imagining what your children had to endure before they died!... I should show her. I should show her what it’s like, what they must have felt! I could show her... There was blood everywhere... I could make her bleed . . . I could slit her throat as she did Melody’s, cut her as Elie was cut, SMASH HER BLOODY SKULL IN!!!

His breath quickened and he trembled as he stood over her, full of a rage he hadn’t felt since that day he’d run from his aunt’s house, still carrying the dead body of his son, staring down at the flaxen-haired woman he hated so absolutely, a heavy weight in his right hand. A slight glimmer of remaining curiosity drew his eye to the weight’s source: a good-sized chunk of limestone, long ago spalled away from the ceiling of the room. He could do it, he thought. He could crush in her skull, as Charlie’s had been crushed. It would bleed, small bits of the bone forming little grainy lumps in the red muck as it soaked her hair, her dress, the bedroll on which she lay, before it puddled around her on the gray stone floor. Would she go into convulsions, he wondered, thrashing around, knowing nothing, brainless, because her brain had been smashed with the blow? Would he see that too, the little soft lumps of it, all coated with blood like everything else, lying on the mat, on the floor, in his hand?

In his hand...

Suddenly something went wrong with his eyes - they burned and refused to focus, so that Claire’s image dissolved into a watery blur. He wanted so to kill her, to take revenge for what had been done to his family, yet he couldn’t. His hand shook, the angles of the stone cutting into his palm, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t...

With a great effort, he turned away from her, throwing the stone through the window into the misty forest as hard as he could, the emptiness inside him crying out in anguish...

The hall seemed endless. Claire had been walking down it for a long time, although she couldn't quite remember from where she had come. But she didn't look back, to do so was pointless, she knew. She just walked on, through the hallway with its plain white walls and ceiling, and its black and white tiled floor. The far end of it was shrouded in darkness, but she would get there just the same, of that she was certain.

She noticed then that she was carrying a bouquet of flowers: white lilacs mixed with purple hyacinths. Their combined fragrance wafted up, overwhelming in its intensity, though she hadn't noticed it before. She saw also that she was dressed, as always, in her riding clothes, this time of a uniform and unrelieved blood red.

After awhile, she thought she saw a door at the end of the hall that looked vaguely familiar. As she drew nearer she realized it was the door to her throne room - a red double door with gold hardware set into a gothic arch, each half with nine panels. At least, that was how it usually looked. Now, however, there was something different about it - the surface appeared shiny and wet, as if it had been freshly painted and the paint had not yet had time to dry. She reached out for the handle, something she rarely had to do, since usually a servant was always ready to open this door for her, and turned it. As it opened, the surface of the paint shook with the vibration, creating little channels and rivulets of viscous red drips.

Her throne room lay in ruins. Several columns had fallen, although the ceiling still held, and the furniture, including the throne, was all broken and covered with cobwebs and dust. A dull, grey light shone in through the windows, but the gardens without remained shrouded in thick fog. The room smelled damp and mildewy, noticeable even over the cloying scent of her bouquet.

At its far end, facing her in front of the broken throne stood Rafe, dressed in the formal clothes he'd worn when she'd first seen him. He smiled at her, his eyes loving. Slowly she walked up to him and he took her hand, pulling her to him, and kissed her lightly on the lips. The light dimmed. Candles sprang up all around them and she saw that he was holding her crown. He looked down at it, then at her before he reverently set it upon her head.

A chorus of howling broke out. She turned, startled, suddenly seeing hundreds, no, thousands of wolfs, of all ages, standing in the darkness, each holding a candle. All were howling joyfully, their fangs clearly visible. Claire turned to look at Rafe and saw that he was howling too, his eyes wild and animal-like. Then the heroine Virginia approached her, still wearing her wedding dress.

"You're one of us now," she explained, and gestured around behind her. Claire glanced down at her own backside and gasped at the sight of the fluffy tail growing there. It twitched with her nervousness. In front of her Virginia began to howl.

She ran blindly back the way she had come, but it had somehow changed so that she could no longer recognize it. Behind her she heard the sound of thousands of feet giving chase ... The hallway ended abruptly with a gaping hole in the floor, the stairs within it spiraling down into darkness. Without hesitation, she plunged into it.

The stone stairs wound downwards, their moist and dripping surface covered with lichens and dark stains. Darkness seemed to lie ahead, but receded as she approached it, as if she were somehow creating her own light. The crowd giving chase behind her had quieted, but she could still feel them; knew they pursued her and waited above for her return. Blindly, she continued on. The stairs seemed endless, the walls unrelenting. Terror loomed in her imagination. She was taking far too long to get away; surely she would be caught! It seemed then that she could feel them reaching out for her from behind, almost touching the hem of her coat. She ran faster. Her foot slipped. She fell, hard, onto the sharp stone edge of the stairs and passed right through. Darkness closed around her as she felt herself falling, falling, down, far down into a void. It was impossible for her to tell how long it was until she found herself at rest. There was no impact, no injury. She simply stopped. All was black.

She felt around her, groping in the darkness. The floor was stone; it felt cold, gritty, and moist, but she could discover nothing else from where she sat. Then, far away, she thought she saw a light. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. The light grew stronger and she rose and walked towards it. A rectangle of blue light slowly resolved itself in the blackness and grew larger. Was it a window, she wondered as she drew nearer? She thought she could detect the faraway sound of water running. Had she found a way out at last?

Her hopes were soon dashed. She had only come upon a mirror, lying at a half-canted angle in the corner of a room, she supposed. Her own reflection stared back at her sadly, her hair long and unbound, her red riding clothes deepening to black in the dim light. Oddly, in the mirror it seemed to be raining, though she felt nothing herself from where she stood. As she looked closer, she could see the rain was falling sideways. Her curiosity piqued, she reached out... and her hand disappeared into a pool of water, the little rippling waves fanning out in a circle around her arm. Odd how dizzy it made her, she thought, and with the thought, fell into the mirror.

She lay now in the room where she and Rafe had spent the night as lovers, but it was no longer in ruins. A warm fire crackled in the fireplace, above which a family crest, carved into the rock could be seen: A dragon holding a shield, its long tail wrapped around a sword, wings spread. High above her, the ceiling was lost in shadow, though she knew now what was there, or rather what had been there: Branches of the living tree which had given this palace life long ago. It was stone and wood, though not constructed from dead parts of those materials, but from the living stone and wood themselves, the magic of the dryads shaping them. And she knew somehow that the explanation for all she did not know about these long-ago people - the dryads, or as they called themselves, the Basquel - lay in the tower, now gone to rubble. She rose from the soft leaf cushion of her chair to go there...

And sank, mired in sand. It spilled towards her legs from the far edges of the room, all of it save the nearby, but out of reach, hearth sinking inexorably downwards into a funnel. Rafe stood safely on the stone of the fireplace apron, watching her. She reached out to him, pleading, but he merely stared her a bit longer before tossing her a bouquet of red tulips. Then he was gone. The thick, glossy petals of the flowers spilled around her like so many drops of blood. She screamed.

And sat up, the grey light of dawn spilling in through the window in the ruined room, her chest heaving, trying to catch her breath. It was only a dream, she thought, relieved. It was only a dream. But somehow it seemed more real to her than the evening before. She could almost believe it never happened but for a dull, though not altogether unpleasant, ache in her groin. Rafe was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’s out feeding the horses, she thought, and picked herself up from the bedroll. It gave her a feeling of security to be doing something normal at last, in the daylight; made the memory of the nightmare she’d had recede away. She noticed then the scrap of clothing that yesterday had been a dress she was wearing. The sight of it reminded her that she’d made love to a wolf. She turned her back on it deliberately and got dressed.

A good bit of the day went by before she realized he had gone for good. The horses had not been fed, so she brought them food and water - for the first time ever - and then set about looking for something to feed herself. She thought she could handle the team well enough - Rafe had said something about horses knowing their way home. It was too late by then to start out, though, so she resigned herself to spending another night at the ruins. She knew she was hoping he would come back, and she tried to tell herself to stop it, that it was better this way: They’d both be spared a tearful goodbye. After all, no matter what had passed between them, nothing could come of it. She was still the queen. That she couldn’t change. She should thank him for making it so easy on her, she thought as she brushed the tears she couldn’t stop away.

Later, sitting in front of the cold bed of ashes in the old fireplace (she had no idea how to build a fire), her nightmare came back to haunt her, and she remembered the things he’d accused her of before he’d changed his shape. Maybe he left because he couldn’t stand the sight of me, she thought guiltily. Maybe he was ashamed of what we did. She knew he'd been of two minds in how he felt about her; his unspoken reactions to being near her were so radically different from the things he'd said, even before last night, she thought. When he awoke as himself once more this morning did he run away in disgust? she wondered. Odd how it was the human part of him that was enraged. The beast had been... She blushed hotly, vaguely ashamed of having lay with it, though she realized now that her reaction was due to her training and had nothing to do with the wolfs themselves. They were not truly animals, even then. Animals, even enchanted ones, wouldn't have told her the things he had last night, the things she'd hold in her heart forever, though now, here, alone, she knew she didn't deserve to have heard them, not after what she had done to him in her foolish ignorance. She deserved much more what he had done at the end of her dream - to have him stand and watch as she was slowly pulled to her doom. She could still feel the sand sucking her down, the red flecks of her crime sprinkled upon it.

But that memory triggered another. Somehow, in the dream, she had known that the secret of the dryads' disappearance lay in the ruins of the old tower. And the vividness of the dream made it too important to ignore. She might not be able to do anything to correct the wrong she'd done to Rafe (and she tried desperately not to think too closely of exactly what that was), but she could at least try to find out what her dream meant, she thought. That was the least she could do.

Although there was still a bit of daylight left, she lit the lantern, since she knew the part of the palace she intended to investigate would be quite dark. Instinctively, she had returned to the place where she'd seen the ghostly image of the tower appear the night before, but there was nothing visible there now except for the azure late-afternoon sky and the pile of debris into which the tower had crumbled. Nor did there appear to be any reasonable method of digging down into the rubble, she noted as she scoured its perimeter. In the dream, however, the aboveground floors of the tower had not been her destination. What she sought lay far below the surface. Perhaps there was another way in, she decided.

Upon investigation, she discovered to her disappointment that the only ground-floor rooms which had backed up to the tower were ones she and Rafe had thoroughly explored. She was about to resign herself to failure when she noticed the scrape marks on the littered floor where an old chest had been recently moved. She drew her eyebrows together and stared at it, sure it hadn't looked that way before. Had Rafe moved it before he left, she wondered suddenly?

The chest was still pulled part of the way out from the wall, enough so that, with the aid of the lantern, she could clearly see the crumbling hole in the wall behind it; a hole that gave onto a spiral stone staircase. It was so like the one in her dream that she shivered. Taking a deep breath, she gathered her skirts and stepped through.

It took a moment for her to steady herself, she felt so much like she'd fallen into her dream. Only this staircase should have an end, she told herself. And, in case it didn't, she could always go back the way she'd come, since nothing was chasing her now, she reasoned. She took a step down, her heart still beating wildly, as if it expected some monstrous creature to come looming up at her from the murky depths, but none did. She took another step, then another. When she at last reached the cave-in, she had taken fifty-three of them.

If there had been more stairs, the cave-in effectively blocked them, but Claire paid no attention to that fact. She stood staring at the hole from where most of the debris had fallen. It opened into a dark room, inside of which a pinpoint of light shone, far away. Her skin prickled at the feeling of deja-vu, but she slipped inside, nevertheless, and walked slowly towards it.

Her own reflection stared back at her. The light she'd seen had been her own lantern, shining back from out of the mirror. She breathed a sigh of relief, then noticed with a shock that it was the same mirror she'd seen in her dream: It lay at the exact angle she remembered and had an identical frame. The right side of it was wet, the ceiling above having leaked onto it for a long time, judging by the tiny stalactites edging the shadowed crack in it. Her hand shaking, Claire reached out to touch the glass...

The mirror fell to the floor with a crash. Startled, Claire screamed and jumped back. A cloud of dust rose into the stale air of the room, oddly amplifying the small light source. She squinted down at the mirror, relieved to find the glass unbroken. The frame had been splintered in the fall, she noticed, but there was no bad luck attached to that, fortunately. As the dust settled, she noticed something flat and brown beneath the splintered wood. It was parchment, she saw, old and water-stained, most of the ink on it bleeding to a fuzzy blur, no longer legible. Claire bent and picked it up.