Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

Maybe that's what woke me, she thought, but then wondered why Wolf hadn't heard it. He still seemed sound asleep next to her, his arms wound around her (why his arm didn't go to sleep in that position she didn't know), one hand resting on the swelling in her belly.

She twisted restlessly, needing to change position, but he went on sleeping, his impossibly long eyelashes lying peacefully against his cheek.

How come men are the only ones who get naturally long, thick eyelashes like that? she wondered idly, curious then if the baby would inherit those from him. Only if it's a boy, she decided.

But that line of thought brought her back to her last doctor's visit, two days ago. Not that she hadn't thought about it in the meantime.

She couldn't help it; every time she went to Dr. Oberon, she was terrified - terrified he would somehow detect that her baby wasn't entirely human. She didn't know what would happen if he did, but she was sure it wouldn't be good. Various scenarios had occurred to her and most of them ended with them all locked away somewhere as laboratory specimens – or worse, Wolf and the baby were locked away and Virginia, having been discarded after the birth, couldn't get near either of them. That really frightened her, even though she knew rationally that it wasn't likely to happen. They could always make a run for the mirror if they had to; it wasn't like gynecologists kept security guards around just in case their patients needed to be locked up. She'd just seen too many grade B science fiction movies on the late show – and of course been abandoned by her own mother. She wondered if she'd ever completely get over that fear – of being left alone.

Predictable science fiction plot notwithstanding, she'd still be a lot more comfortable and relaxed if she didn't have to see Dr. Oberon every month – not that there was anything wrong with the man, he was very nice. Virginia had just, after having thought about it for awhile, decided that seeing him was rather useless. After all, she reasoned, suppose she got sick, or suffered from one of the problems pregnant women could get? (She had no idea what they might be and didn't want to – Wolf was the one who had read the books the doctor had given to her about pregnancy and childbirth.) But what could be done about it if her baby weren't even human anyway, or at least what could be done without them finding out the truth?

Wolf himself didn't seem to help. Despite her pleading every time they went to the doctor, he talked like only Wolf could about what seemed like every tiny detail of her pregnancy – and even stuff she didn't think had anything to do with being pregnant. She always spent the entire time petrified that he'd say something to give away what he was, even though she had to acknowledge he was right when he'd told her that he'd had lots of practice at hiding his nature from the world, so it wasn't likely to just slip out.

She looked down at his face again, this time catching the slight hint of a smile about his lips. On closer examination, she noticed the glint of green peeking out from under those lashes.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed, but he still feigned not to hear her. She squirmed and stuck her fingers in his ribs. He jerked away and laughed, his eyes finally opening completely.

"I was listening to the cub, it's awake too," he informed her.

"I thought you said you could only hear it during full moon," she countered.

"It's more noticeable then," he acknowledged, "But since I know what I'm looking for, I can hear it sometimes now too." His smile told her he was still listening to it.

Virginia couldn't feel anything, not even something she could pretend was the baby moving, like maybe her stomach growling or gas. It somehow didn't seem quite fair; after all, she was the one carrying it. She was the one who had to have her body all stretched and bloated out of shape.

But that thought only brought her back to thinking about Wolf's motives again: Not that she thought he didn't love her, but she couldn't help wondering if it was a lover he saw when he looked at her or simply the mother of his child. Sure, they'd made love last night, but she'd reached the point now where they really had to get creative to do it, and of course that made her feel even more like a small whale. Maybe, she thought, maybe he's only doing it at all just to try to please me. After all, I can hardly be called sexy looking like this.

"You ready for the big day?" Wolf purred into her ear, interrupting her mental rambling.

"What?" she asked, then, remembering, "Oh. The midwinter feast."

He smiled. "I'll bet Wendell has a wonderful breakfast planned."

"Probably," she agreed.

It was, in fact, an enormous breakfast, served buffet style in the ballroom, which had been festooned with greenery and red ribbons for the occasion. Virginia blinked when she saw it. The smell of the freshly cut spruce, the colors, the food, and the large stack of presents piled on and up the grand staircase made her look around for a Christmas tree, but of course there was none. No wonder he thought all the Christmas decorations in New York were for the midwinter feast, she thought.

"Oooh, look at the presents, Virginia," Wolf exclaimed, though not until he had finished piling a large stack of bacon on his plate.

"Yeah, there sure are a lot of them," she agreed.

"No, no," he said. "I mean look at the presents."

Well, one thing about Wolf, he wasn't subtle. Not about things like this anyway, she thought wryly.

"Okay, Wolf, I'll look," she agreed. "Just let me get something to eat first."

She glanced over the buffet, groaning with such breakfast delicacies as smoked salmon, kippers, crusty bread and moldy cheeses, and selected a pear. Wolf frowned.

"Oh, Virginia, you need to eat more than that," he said.

She glared at him. "Wolf," she said severely. It was enough.

"I'm sorry," he said contritely. "It's just that I want to be sure you eat enough. I don't want you to start getting sick again."

"We've had this conversation before," she pointed out. "You can't control everything I eat."

"I know," he replied in a tiny voice. He sounded so pitiful that she relented.

"I was going to come back for more anyway," she told him, and deliberately changed the subject, "What is it you wanted to show me?"

"Oh!" he bounced over to the grand staircase. "Look at these!"

She went along with it, her eyes scanning the tags until she finally spied her own name written in Wolf's florid hand.

The box was enormous. She stared at it a moment, then looked up at Wolf curiously. He was staring back at her gleefully.

"Bet you can't guess what it is," he taunted.

I'll bet I can't either, she thought, and asked, "Is this what you said you got me in New York?"

He nodded, still grinning from ear to ear.

How'd he get it through the mirror? she wanted to know. And when?

"Go ahead, guess," he insisted.

"Oh, I can't," she said.

"Pleeeeeeeeeeezzzzze," he pleaded.

She sighed.

"Okay, let me think a minute."

She thought. It couldn't be clothes or jewelry, the box was too big. She had no idea at all what would come in a box that size. In fact, she hadn't gotten a present that big since ... Oh.

It wasn't really for her after all, she thought. It was for the baby. The only things that came in boxes that size were for children. Probably a cradle or a baby swing (she hoped it wasn't a bike or something, but she really didn't think Wolf would get that far ahead of the baby's development).

"Well?" he asked hopefully.

"I really don't know," she lied, trying to hide her disappointment.

"Oh, come on," he continued to cajole her.

She knew he wouldn't give up.

"Okay, um ... an elephant?"

"Nope!"

"I don't know then."

"Guess again."

She sighed again.

"No, Wolf. I want to wait and be surprised."

"Oh," he said, somewhat mollified. "Well you'll never guess anyway."

"Then there's no point in trying," she declared. "Now let's go eat breakfast."

That never failed to distract him, she knew. The trouble was, nowadays he seemed more interested in her diet than his own.

The evening still looked like the Christmas special to Virginia. After the feast, which had involved 26 courses and taken seven hours, everyone gathered in the ballroom, now lit with thousands of candles, and sang songs. Only, none of the songs were ones she recognized, not even Jingle Bells, so she just listened while everyone else sang. Wolf, of course, sang loudly and exuberantly, but he had a pretty good voice, she thought.

Wendell made an effort to join in and look convincingly jolly, even though Rupert had had to go back to his own hold for the holiday. All the lords were required to be in attendance at home for the midwinter feast, where they were expected to take provisions to the needy in their districts, so Wendell had not, nor would he ever, expect Rupert to stay on at the palace during the festivities. Similarly, Wolf had not expected his Aunt Millie to return with his sister Dierdre's baby due any moment. She still hadn't given birth; they knew that much at least, since Wendell had gifted Millie with a magic missive to send back to them as a birth announcement, and it hadn't yet appeared.

Samantha the Necromancer had stayed on, however, as had Princess Gwendolyn. In fact, the sight of the fairy Ice Princess sitting quite close to Wendell made Virginia more than a little curious. She'd never managed to discover - not that she'd tried terribly hard - exactly what the friction was between her and Rupert. Virginia, at least, had assumed there was friction there because of the comment both Rupert and Wendell had made upon her arrival and by Rupert's diffident behavior towards Gwendolyn. But whatever it was, Wendell obviously knew about it and apparently didn't care, because he had never seemed less than natural talking to her, including now.

The music came to a stop. Wendell stood up.

"All right," he announced. "Now it's time for what you've all been waiting for -- at least for what Wolf's been waiting for -- since dinner ended."

Everyone laughed. He beckoned to a servant, who came forward carrying a red velvet bag. They'd all had to draw numbers before the feast and Virginia knew that now Wendell was going to select who won the right to give away the first gift.

Wendell unfolded the paper he'd chosen and looked up.

"Seven," he said knowingly.

Wolf howled and everyone else groaned. He'd told everyone his number was seven so often they all had it memorized. Grasping Virginia by the wrist, he nearly dragged her to the present-filled stairway, where he fixed her with an eager and expectant stare.

She tried to play along and act excited, since she knew everyone was in such a festive mood, but her heart wasn't really in it. She didn't need positive proof that Wolf only saw a mother when he looked at her now and was really afraid she might start crying when she opened the box.

Oh, what the hell, she finally decided. Maybe they'll think they're tears of joy. Except their ignorance of how she really felt would probably only make it worse.

She pulled on the ribbon and it fell away. Slowly she lifted the lid and peeked in. The box was empty.

She shot a curious glance at Wolf while she heard her father ask, "What is it, honey?"

"It's empty," she said, her voice small and full of confusion.

"Oh, no ... no it's not," her husband insisted. "Here." He dived headfirst into the box to get something, emerging with a small slip of paper, which he handed reverently to her.

She took it, though her eyes never left the look of happy self-satisfaction on his face until she felt it in her hand. Then she looked down and read:

My dearest sweet Virginia,
I love you so much no gift seems enough for me to get for you. But I found out there was a special New Year's celebration at the Plaza Hotel, so I've reserved us a room there for it. I wanted our first New Year's together to be extra romantic, especially since it's the last one before we become parents. I hope you feel the same.
Your loving husband,
Wolf

She looked up at him and then down at the paper again.

"Do you like it?" she heard him ask earnestly.

"I love it, Wolf," she replied, her voice choked with tears.

Virginia's grandmother watched the exchange with an attitude of arch irony. In her opinion, Wolf's gift was no proper present. A man of means should get his wife jewelry, not a night in a hotel, no matter how swank. That Virginia seemed so pleased by the token only showed how low the girl's expectations had sunken. Not that much could be done to alter the situation since she'd gotten herself pregnant, but it didn't mean that Simon couldn't be educated. And, seeing his hand resting familiarly on Virginia's swelling belly, she thought that his education might do well to start with that: It just didn't do to show that kind of affection in public; it was vulgar. Not to mention it drew unneeded attention to just how big her granddaughter was getting. Surely that couldn't be natural. She knew that Virginia's appetite had increased quite a bit. The girl was going to be sorry after the child was born and she was left with all that extra baggage to get rid of.

A part of Helen whispered to her that this place was different, that Simon was different and that it might have some effect on how Virginia carried the baby, but she pushed that voice angrily aside, focusing instead on Simon's status, or rather, his lack thereof: Different, yes, she thought, He's different, all right. He's a member of an oppressed minority. And while King Wendell might have granted them that pardon, it's not likely to have any more immediate effect than the civil rights legislation had for the blacks in 1964. Oh, Virginia, how could you have let yourself get mixed up with him? A short order cook - at least a white short order cook - would have been a better catch. Even your father was a better catch.

She noticed suddenly that one of the king's courtiers was watching her and realized that her expression was probably anything but attractive. Deliberately, she relaxed her facial muscles and took a deep breath. What was the matter with her anyway, she wondered? Why did she have to be so sour, especially at Christmastime? (She couldn't think of the holiday as anything except Christmas.) Simon might be a minority, but he was a national hero and a friend of the king. She ought to focus on that, not on how her granddaughter could have done better. After all, it was too late to do anything about it now, so why dwell on it? Careful, Helen, you're going to start in again. Think of something else!

Unfortunately, the only thing that came to mind was to wonder exactly what was so different about Simon's kind. She'd been rather successful at ignoring that topic before, telling herself that there probably was no real difference; that it was like that incomprehensible racial thing in Bosnia, where people who had no connection to the place couldn't tell the difference between the two sides. No, wait, she thought. Wasn't that a religious difference? Oh, who knows. It's just ridiculously stupid, like this probably is. The main thing is that Simon doesn't look any different than anyone else.

He does seem rather hairy, the voice in her given to argument observed.

Well, so are a lot of men. In fact there are plenty of men in the world a lot hairier than Simon.

Which world? The old world or this one? This is a magic world. Elves and fairies live here, you've seen them.

Yes, of course, but Simon obviously isn't an elf or a fairy.

No, he's a half-wolf, came the reply. What exactly does that mean?

She caught her breath; the mental image that came to her was similar to that of a satyr: Could her grandson-in-law have a wolf's body from the waist down? Was that what it meant? Unable to resist, she eyed him critically, though at the moment it was rather hard as he was wearing a frock coat. Come to think of it, he always seemed to be wearing some kind of long coat. She wondered if that meant anything, but decided her fears were probably groundless since she could see his feet - well, his shoes - perfectly well, and they appeared to be normal human feet, not paws.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the approach of her son-in-law, accompanied by that annoying woman with the cat. She sighed wearily as she prepared herself to be civil to them.

"Merry Yule to you, Helen," he offered. She could hear in his voice that he'd rather she wasn't around, but since she felt the same about him, she wasn't offended.

"I doubt that's the proper salutation for the occasion," she felt obligated to point out.

"Oh, well," he said jovially, "You know what? I don't care."

She tried flashing him a freezing smile, preparing to move away quickly, but he ignored it. Not that she shouldn't have been surprised – he'd never known what any of her high society body language meant. Or, she reflected, he hadn't cared about that either.

"Wendell and I have kind of gone together to get you a little something," he began, looking over his wassail mug for the king.

"That's King Wendell," she snapped, "You should address him by his proper title."

Helen had no idea what suddenly made her say such a thing. After all, why did she care if Tony got himself into trouble with the king? She tried to ignore it, as her son-in-law did, though for different reasons, but the smirk on his lady friend's face grated on her.

Tony finally caught the king's eye and hauled him over.

"Ah, yes," he remarked. "We can't forget Virginia's grandmother, now can we?"

He made a curt gesture to a servant, who marched up carrying a sealed letter on a silver tray.

"Here we go," he prattled as he removed the parchment envelope and presented it to her.

She looked down at it, at the little impressed ‘w' on the white wax seal. On the other side was written her name: Lady Helen Charles.

She opened it.

Be it known that henceforth, the property of – a legal boundary description, which took up most of the page followed – including all rights and privileges therein, doth belong to the Lady Helen Charles, for her to dispose of as she sees fit. Sworn to this day, Midwinter of the first year of his reign, King Wendell the First of the Fourth Kingdom.

"I picked it out," Tony confided. "Wendell just took care of the legal stuff."

She thought she might be going to cry. Didn't they want her here, she wondered? She'd thought she was welcome at the royal palace.

The other, more rational side of her told her not to be so stupid, that it was only a gift and a good one at that. One's husband should get one jewelry. From anyone else, real estate was quite desirable. But she couldn't seem to move.

The king mistook her hesitation.

"We had assumed you wished to stay in our dimension," he explained. "If that isn't the case...?"

She was fortunately saved from needing to answer immediately by a messenger who breathlessly ran into the room.

"Your Majesty," he wheezed, obviously impatient and ill-at-ease.

"Please excuse me," Wendell told them smoothly, leading the man away with a smile. But as Helen watched, she saw his expression suddenly shift to grave concern. He glanced up at the clock, then spoke a few more words to the messenger, who nodded and vanished as quickly as he'd come. Wendell returned and apologized for the interruption. But though he carried on as if nothing unusual had taken place, Helen was unable to shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. She glanced up at the clock herself. It read three minutes until midnight.

"Yes," said Wendell. "Almost the hour. They're passing around the toasts now."

As if on cue a liveried servant held a tray of champagne glasses at her elbow. She took one, a part of her mind thinking finally something besides wassail, but was too distracted to really think much more about the drink she now held numbly in her hand. Something was about to happen; probably had already happened. She could feel it.

Stop it, Helen, you're being ridiculous, she ordered herself. You've been in a mood all day; this is just more of it. But the feeling didn't go away, not even when Wendell called everyone's attention to the time and raised his own glass in salute. She looked around the room for some clue to why she felt this way, seeing all the others in a kind of slow motion: Simon was frowning at the two glasses in his hands while her granddaughter, holding none, glared icily at him. No help there. Tony was grinning inanely, talking to that cat-lover Samantha, but not looking at her; his eyes were on the clock. Samantha herself was trying to balance her animal with one hand while holding the glass in the other. The scene refreshed Helen's indignation that Roland had not been able to attend, but did little else. The servants had all retreated to the kitchen. Which brought her back to Wendell, standing partway up the now-cleared stairway.

The clock struck. She held her breath for the count of twelve, expecting she didn't know what, but when it had ended, Wendell simply declared, "To the new year. May it be peaceful and prosperous," and drained his glass. Everyone else did the same, except Virginia -- and Simon. Nothing else happened, though as it always did when she watched New Year's celebrations on TV, the party came abruptly to an end. Wendell formally thanked everyone for coming, then walked over to Simon and Virginia.

"May I have a word with you?" she heard him say, and noticed he appeared as distracted now as she felt.

"Something happened, didn't it?" her granddaughter asked. "It's about what that messenger came to report."

"Yes," he said, "I don't quite know how to tell you this."

"Just say it," Simon suggested.

"Doctor Mellifict ... has escaped."