Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

What had Gwen seen? she wondered. The girl had tried to brush off her odd reaction, saying that she was sorry, she'd mistaken him for someone else. The trouble was, it had take her so long to say it. She'd started into the room with a name on her lips, Virginia was certain, halting only when Dr. Oberon had gasped out, "You have wings! Oh, my God! Are they real??" And, now that she'd thought about it some more, Virginia decided that Gwen's reaction to his surprise went far beyond natural bewilderment. She'd been totally confused; as confused as Virginia herself had felt when she'd first found the three trolls in her apartment with her unconscious father.

Yet, as suspicious as she'd been of Dr. Oberon's sudden fascination with the Nine Kingdoms, she couldn't honestly lay the blame for this mystery on him. He had too obviously not known who - or even what - Gwen was. No, whatever it was about him that bothered Virginia, it had nothing to do with Gwen. At least, she thought, he'd come back to New York with no trouble. She'd been a little worried that he'd insist on staying in the Nine Kingdoms forever, after the way he'd eagerly insisted that they take him with them.

"Huff puff, I still think it can't be a coincidence," said her husband from his seat at the small breakfast table.

"What?" she asked.

He looked up from the maps he had spread out in front of him.

"Europe," he explained. "It looks too much like the Nine Kingdoms. Even Gerard thinks so."

Gerard was the German-speaking mouse serving as their translator. Virginia got up and peered over Wolf's shoulder.

"See?" he said. "This ‘Italy' here is shaped like a boot – just like the First Kingdom. And this group of islands, here, ‘Great Britian' is just where the Sixth Kingdom is. It's not exactly an island, but it's in the same place otherwise. And the Third Kingdom, that's ‘Spain', the Fourth Kingdom is ‘France' and right now we're in the eastern part of the Fifth Kingdom, ‘Germany'. There are even mountains right where the Ninth Kingdom should be and a country there called ‘Switzerland'."

"Okay," she said. "But how do you explain the Second Kingdom, then? There's not really a whole country that corresponds to that." Privately, while she thought the coastline did look a slight bit familiar, especially around the Mediterranean, she also thought he was probably analyzing the whole thing way too hard.

"Oh, huff puff!" he exclaimed. "It's not countries, it's the whole thing - it's the same continent, just divided up differently, or not differently in some cases, and called something else!"

"If you say so."

She yawned and felt again the little flutter of the child inside her. The movement wrenched at her heart in a way both similar to and different from the way she felt in Wolf's arms. She put her hand over the baby and noticed Wolf smiling at her.

"You can hear her, can't you?" she asked. Although she hadn't appreciated Samantha's telling them the baby's sex, she didn't doubt the wizard's accuracy.

Wolf placed his hand on hers. "It's full moon tonight," he said.

"Oh, that's right," she agreed.

He stared at her a moment more before drawing her onto his lap and folding his arms around her.

"I never thought I would look forward to full moons," he murmured. "I'm going to miss this when she's born."

"Mmm ..." she said, laying her head against his chest.

"Tired?"

"Not really. Just bored, I guess."

He stroked her hair.

"I've got to get this done so we can start out early in the morning," he groaned. "It shouldn't take too much longer."

She sighed, then sat up.

"I know," she said. "I'll go down and get us something to eat."

"Eat!" he breathed. "Oh! Oh, that's a great idea! But why don't you just call the room service?"

"I need the exercise," she explained. "Just want to stretch my legs."

She got up and put on her coat.

"Okay," he agreed hesitantly. "But it's full moon, remember? You can't stay away too long."

"Don't worry, I'll be right back."

She walked out of the restaurant at the end of the street carrying four orders of veal schnitzel with spaetzle in two neatly folded white paper sacks. Three of the orders were for Wolf. She glanced up at the rapidly darkening sky, the round, white ball of the full moon just visible on the horizon. If Wolf had still been reacting to it she'd have needed to get him six, maybe twelve orders. She wondered vaguely how she was going to deal with that when the time came.

There was just enough daylight left for her to get back to the hotel. She picked her way along the salted cement of the snow-cleared sidewalk, struck again by the juxtaposition of the various ages of building styles which lined the street. Streamlined 1950s designs stood side by side with both the elegant cut-glass and lights of the ultra-modern and with the half-timbered construction of the very old. The effect was eerily like New York overlaid onto Kissingtown – but of course, Hanau was nowhere near as large as New York. Then again, it wasn't as small as Kissingtown, either, she reasoned.

She'd just reached the corner of the hotel when the streetlights came on, startling her momentarily. The flash made her glance at the lamppost across the street; the one in front of the park entrance. It was then that she saw him.

He was tall and bone-thin in a black overcoat, his wild, chestnut-colored hair uncovered. The sight of him took her breath away and plunged her momentarily into total confusion. Rafe, here? she thought. But that's impossible. No, it must just be someone who resembles him.

Still, the gist of what Wolf had been talking about back in their room came back to her. Europe and the Nine Kingdoms one and the same? she thought. What if, then ... could there be other versions of the people I know here? Another Rafe, or ... another Wolf? She had to know.

His back was to her now; he was turned away from the chill of the wind. He must be waiting on a bus, she thought as she crossed the street towards him. Halfway there she realized how silly she was going to look, whether he turned out to be her brother-in-law's double or not. What was she going to say, she wondered? Where was she supposedly going? But then she thought she'd look even sillier dithering in the middle of the street, so she purposely trudged the rest of the way across. I'll be going to look at something in that park, she decided.

He still had his back to her as she reached the curb. Brazenly, she walked within inches of him, but, not wanting to turn and stare, kept walking towards the park entrance. I'll get a good look at him on the way back, she thought, hoping his bus wouldn't come in the meanwhile. If only I were Wolf, I could smell him to see if it's the same. But she thought that at close range his back had looked very like Rafe's. Not that she was intimately familiar with Rafe's back, she had to admit.

There was a stone marker just outside the park. Virginia peered meaningfully at it for a few moments. She'd just begun to wonder if she'd waited too long when she felt rather than heard someone behind her. She turned around.

Rafe stood there, a little half-smile on his face. Phosphorous flecks glittered in his green eyes and she realized he hadn't been turning away from the wind at all. He'd been staring at the moon.

"I wondered when one of you would notice me," he whispered silkily. "How interesting that it was you and not my esteemed brother."

She took a step backward and his hand shot out, grabbing her firmly by the wrist. The bag of food she held plopped to the ground.

"W ... what d'you want from us?" she asked shakily.

"He needs to be away from you for a little while, I think," came the reply. "After that ... well, the smell of that food is making me very hungry."

Wolf blinked. The light over the table, never overly bright to begin with, dimmed momentarily, before recovering and then brightening too much. Again.

"Stupid electric lights," he muttered, but he rubbed his eyes tiredly. The heat seemed to be malfunctioning too, he thought. The room was getting too warm for comfort; he was starting to sweat. He blinked again and tried to focus. Gerard the mouse swam into view. He stared back at the wolf with terror in his eyes. Wolf's stomach growled.

"What?" he demanded of the mouse irritably.

"Ah ... nothing," replied the mouse hastily. Too hastily. "That is ... your eyes, they ..."

"What about them?" the wolf growled.

"Ah ... um ..." blabbered Gerard, then, as if an idea suddenly occurred to him, he said, "Shouldn't Virginia have come back by now?"

Wolf gasped. He'd become engrossed in a story he was reading about the last heir to the throne of Austria and how his father had refused to name him king because he'd married an ‘unsuitable woman.' Then they'd both been killed and it had started a world-wide war. It had sounded more like something that happened in the Nine Kingdoms than here, he'd thought. But he'd forgotten about the time. He looked up.

The full moon shone through the glass of the windowpanes with a golden-silvery light. Wolf stared back in awe of it, the purity of light, the beauty of how it reflected in everything, lit everything with a luminous halo of pure silver. The light caressed him, her touch feathery soft, kissing his eyelids, his nose, his lips, his throat. His breathing deepened; he felt himself burning inside, burning with desire for ...

"Virginia."

Oh, no, where did she go? he wondered. To get some food, but it shouldn't be taking this long, she said she'd be right back, she knew it was full moon tonight and that she had to stay near me, she wouldn't go off, she wouldn't, no, no, no, no, "Oh cripes!"

"I have to find her," he muttered, stumbling to the door and flinging it open without a backwards glance at his companion.

Gerard sighed in relief and scurried to a hiding place he'd discovered on his first day at the hotel. Just in case.

The first thing he noticed in the lobby were the two policemen conversing quietly with the desk clerk. Wolf's initial reaction was to hide, run away, but he forced himself to stay calm. After all, they couldn't possibly be looking for him – no one in this dimension had ever even heard of a half-wolf. He gave a quick swipe to his rear end to make sure his tail was still completely in his pants - oh, but it's so big now, it'll make too much of a bulge - not to worry, not to worry, you're still wearing your coat, they won't notice - and set off across the lobby. The conversation the men were having, carried on in German, remained meaningless to him.

When he was nearly to the door, he realized he should really ask the desk clerk if he'd seen Virginia, or if she'd left a message for him. He steeled himself, trying to calculate how much time he had until the cramps started, and realized he had no way of knowing – his cycle was too mixed up. Virginia's previous presence might delay the effects awhile, or it might bring them on sooner. Still, if she had left a message, he'd need to hear it, not go chasing off after his wild imagination.

With every ounce of willpower he possessed, he strode up to the desk. And waited. The clerk resolutely ignored him, apparently engrossed in a vigorous argument with the police. A small part of him wondered what it was about and if the clerk were about to be arrested. The other part of him hoped not, because it would delay him even further and he was being delayed enough, and what could possibly be so important they couldn't look at him!

He cleared his throat. Loudly. A half-second later he hadn't gotten any reaction, so he banged his hand on the desk.

"Excuse me!" he said.

The clerk and the two policemen looked up.

"One minute," the clerk said in English, then by way of explanation, added, "A woman was just abducted outside."

Wolf froze. A whine started to build in him. "Oh, no ..." he exclaimed, panic-stricken.

"Was ist los?" asked one of the policemen.

"Ich weiss nicht," the clerk shot back at him, then to Wolf he said, in English, "Sir, what is it? You have knowledge of this?"

"Ohhhh ..." Wolf couldn't speak. He knew he was dripping sweat, and the twisting in his gut caused by his fear that Virginia was the abductee told him the cramps were imminent. He had to get away, get out of here before that happened. He had to find her.

"Tell us, please," the man pleaded.

"M ... my wife ..." he managed to croak out as his eyes darted wildly about, groping for the exit.

"Yes?"

"She didn't come back!" he shouted at them angrily. "She went out to get us dinner and she didn't come back, okay?"

"Sir, please, calm down," said the clerk hastily. "The woman I saw being abducted was in front of the Schlossgarten, across the street. It's unlikely she was even a guest here. How does your wife look? Have you a photo?"

"Um ... no ..." A picture of Virginia was not something he carried around. Why would he need one when he could always see her in his mind?

"Well," said the clerk as if he'd thought of something that could end the matter, "unless your wife is pregnant, it couldn't possibly be her."

Wolf snapped. It was as if the information pushed him over the threshold of the change in an instant. Leaving three astonished men in his wake who weren't quite sure what had happened to him - he was gone so quickly - he dashed out the door and across the busy street, too focused on his quest to even hear the horns blaring at him. The discovery of her scent in that spot, where he had expected it to be, did not surprise him, nor did the fear he could detect within it. But the familiar scent mixed with it stopped him. His own brother had taken her, taken his mate. This was not an abduction, he knew. It was a challenge.