Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

Unable to tear her eyes away from the fantastical creature, she watched as it dipped gracefully forward, plunged the distance towards the ground and alit no more than fifty feet away from them with no more sound than the rush of air past its wings and the crunch of dead leaves and twigs beneath a soft footfall. Yet the dragon was immense, towering over them even from that distance, watching them speculatively - at least it seemed so to her - as it carefully folded its wings across its back. On the ground, she was suddenly seized with fear - with its wings no longer outspread, it resembled nothing so much as a living dinosaur - one of the predatory types, its wicked teeth visible along the line of its great jaw. Behind its head, she supposed to protect the upper portion of its sinewy neck, rose a bony, plated crest, and from this, as well as from where she might have called them whiskers, trailed what looked like long filaments of black ribbon. The hide appeared black in the shadows, but in the light seemed to refract the colors near it, and as she watched, the beast began to fade into a thickening mist, the last remnants of what she could see its glowing amber-colored eyes.

The mist thinned and a man walked forward from it, the dragon no longer visible. She blinked, trying to make sense of what had happened but succeeding only in becoming annoyed as she felt another contraction building. She needed to concentrate and the constant interruption of labor made it virtually impossible. By the time she could once again think, the man was squatting in front of her.

In coloring he was much like her husband, with olive skin and thick black hair, though his fell well past his shoulders, and he wore a full but neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He was dressed all in black, but his eyes - of a hazel so pale it appeared to be amber - were kind as he said, “I am sorry for the interference but it has unfortunately become necessary,” then gave a kind of cursory glance in Reginald’s direction before stretching out a long-fingered hand towards her belly.

Wolf caught him by the wrist.

“I mean you no harm,” the man said without struggling.

“Why are you here?” her husband demanded.

“Wolf?” she asked. Did he know who this was, she wondered? Or, could this be the person he needed to protect her from? What might have happened had he touched her?

“I am afraid there is no time for a complete explanation,” the man told them, with a meaningful look at her middle. “You must come with me.”

She felt Wolf stiffen. “No,” he said decisively. Still, if the man were as much of a threat as she’d thought, wouldn’t Wolf have reacted much more strongly, she wondered?

“The journey will do none of you any harm,” the man insisted, “And it requires no acrobatics; in practice it will be much the same as the transportation you were about to give the magic mirrors - though hopefully a bit smoother.” He smiled, showing prominent, but even, very white teeth.

“Where are you taking us?” Virginia asked, her voice querulous.

“To Dragon Mountain,” came the reply. “A mirror is about to be born there.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Wolf demanded. “Why don’t you just take us back to Wendell’s castle?”

The man sighed in exasperation. “Because I don’t fit inside it,” he said. “I am sorry it has to be this way, but you must hurry and decide. The babe will come soon.” As if to lend support to his words, Virginia felt another contraction overtake her, though she wondered at his explanation. If he didn’t fit, did that mean that he was ... ?

Her thought was abruptly cut off by a panicked shout from Reginald: “No!”

The man glanced back at him.

“I’m afraid you will have to come along as well,” he said apologetically.

Strangely, Reginald’s wild-eyed fear gave Virginia courage; grateful as she was for his rescuing her, she’d had enough of his irrational attitude. Why not go to Dragon Mountain, she thought? At least the dwarves probably had midwives, which was more than she was likely to get out here.

No sooner had the thought entered her mind than they were suddenly inside a vast cavern full of screaming dwarves. She had just enough time to comprehend that the dragon was standing directly over them before she heard the man’s resonant voice say, clearly and loudly, “I come not in challenge.” Then the dragon turned to mist and once again vanished from sight. The man was nowhere to be seen.

After what seemed like a long moment of dead silence, a bell rang in the distance and someone shouted, “All clear!” As if on cue, the dwarves all gathered in the center of the room, surrounding them, but their attention was not upon the three newcomers.

“Comrades!” declared a voice, “The birth of the new mirror is upon us!”

Virginia looked up, deja vu overcoming her as she once again saw a mirror rise from the roiling depths of liquid in the incubator. Though rectangular in shape, and not oval as the Truth Mirror had been, it too was covered with a crust of roughly hewn metal. As she watched, the husk abruptly shattered, revealing the newborn glass beneath.

“Behold the first Traveling Mirror born since recorded times!” declared the announcer. “It shall be a gift to the firstborn child of the heros of the Nine Kingdoms, Princess Virginia and her husband, the noble Wolf.”

The irony of having her child receive a magical, enchanted birthday gift while her actual birth went on in the midst of the gift-givers, unattended, was not lost on Virginia, as another contraction, stronger than the rest, had plowed through her on what seemed like the heels of the one before. She panted, feeling the next one starting to build already, staring in a daze at the image of New York City as the mirror was gently lowered to the floor. The baby was starting to really come, she realized soberly. She half-felt as if she ought to push and wondered if it would really do any good to try and delay it.

Wolf exclaimed, “Huff puff, could it be?” under his breath, and put his arms around her, though not in the most comfortable position. She wanted to tell him to move just a bit when she realized he was picking her up.

“No!” she cried, “Wolf, no, don’t ... don’t move me!” But her words did no good. He caught her up awkwardly against her feeble struggle and dashed through the mirror.

Tom stared at the picture of himself and Julie for a moment longer before he transferred it to the cardboard box into which he was putting all the personal items he kept in his office. His heart still felt the pang of loss, but he was no longer overwhelmed with guilt for her death; not since he’d met Wolf’s aunt. Yet he’d found he could no longer continue with his old life - he felt as if that Tom Oberon had died with Julie and a new Oberon had come into being with the discovery of the Nine Kingdoms - or at least he was about to come into being; Tom, after what he knew were an excessive amount of absences, had decided to turn his practice entirely over to his partner. He’d put his co-op on the market and was about to make the Nine Kingdoms his home permanently. They had a need there for good doctors with his skill, he thought. Smiling sadly, he placed the picture gently into the box.

A flash of movement outside the window caught his eye and he looked up, his jaw agape as he watched a cistern on the roof of a building across Fifth Avenue suddenly burst, spilling its contents. More incredibly, the cistern on the adjoining building split open at the same time. Two pigeons which had alit on his sill turned to bright spots of iridescent color in the corner of his eye. They had flown away by the time he turned to stare at them, but below, in the park, something winked, a momentary spark of light. He knew by its position what it was.

His box forgotten, he took the express elevator down to street level and dashed out the door. Tremors shook the ground as he left the exit and he stumbled for a moment, looking up and down the street. Fire hydrants spewed their contents onto the concrete, creating miniature streams which cascaded noisily into the storm sewers, but strangely no one he passed seemed aware that anything was amiss. People caught cabs, hurried across streets against the traffic, which honked its horns and swerved around double-parked cars as if the day were like any other, even when the singular cloud in the clear blue sky, hovering over the antenna atop the Empire State building, sent an abrupt bolt of lightning onto the structure and the walls began to crack and split.

On the corner, the facade of the Plaza Hotel suddenly altered, its spires spinning upwards towards the sky, its walls glowing whiter, until it seemed as if it intended to imitate Neuschwanstein. At the same time, the surrounding buildings began to slowly sink into the earth.

Tom ran across the street to the park, towards the mirror, knowing that somehow the magic of the kingdoms had crossed over to the world of his birth, but not knowing how. As he looked back, the Chrysler building blossomed into a gossamer rain of multi-hued stardust, and a giant striding down the East River stepped gingerly across the Brooklyn Bridge. Passing older men and women sitting on benches, and young couples throwing bread crumbs to ducks on a pond, all seemingly oblivious, he ran, head down, feeling rather than seeing the Empire State building transform itself into a growing mountain in the center of the city - or what had been the city - his only thought that he must find the mirror quickly.

He came upon it abruptly, shocked back to his own reality by the sight of Wolf and Virginia crouching before it. It was obvious she was in the last stages of labor. Feeling less lost, that at least there was something here he could actually handle, he ran up to them, panting heavily.

“Doc, Doc, you’re here!” exclaimed Wolf excitedly. “The baby, it’s ...”

“Yes, I see,” he replied, kneeling beside Virginia. The lower part of her nightgown was soaked; he could see a dirty robe lying in the grass a few feet away, closer to the portal, which remained waveringly open. Is that why this is happening? his wondered inanely. Should someone shut it off? With an effort, he forced himself to concentrate on the impending birth.

“You’re doing fine,” he told the mother. “I can see the head. Just push whenever you need to ... yes, it’s crowning, just one more push ...”

Virginia yelped as the head broke free and Tom could hear Wolf whine in the background.

“Okay, don’t push for a minute.”

“Oh, right!” she retorted sarcastically, the way he’d heard all new mothers do.

Quickly, he made sure the baby’s neck and throat were clear and then told Virginia to go ahead. The baby, a girl, plopped out into his arms, coughed, and began to wail. Just as suddenly he noticed that the ground was no longer shaking, but he forced himself to examine the infant carefully before allowing himself to look at his surroundings. After his experiences with Wolf, he was surprised to find that she looked in all respects that he could see, quite human.

Without preamble, he handed her to her waiting parents and purposely continued his regular procedure of taking care of the mother - waiting for the placenta to come and checking for any tears. Fortunately, Virginia required no stitches; he wasn’t sure where he would have found anything to stitch her up with if she had. Only after all of that was done did he dare look up.

He was no longer in Central Park, but in a real forest which lay at the foot of a tall, snow-capped mountain. No trace of the city remained on the horizon except part of a spire of what had once been the Plaza Hotel, but which was now he didn’t know what. A palace, perhaps, or a royal castle? The bustling noises of New York had faded into the soft caress of a breeze and the distant song of birds.

The mirror itself remained open; he wondered momentarily if closing it would break the spell, but it didn’t look as if his patient or her husband could answer his questions or were even aware of what had happened: They had eyes for only their daughter.