Sohna and Vivian - My Brother's Keeper

Both Virginia and Wolf watched transfixed as the ‘Virginia’ on the television walked her bike out to the elevator. But when the scene finally shifted to the Snow White Memorial Prison, Virginia recovered enough presence of mind to dive for one of the blank videocassettes lined up on the shelf beside the TV. Unfortunately, the cellophane the tape was wrapped with refused to yield and she wasted several seconds in a futile effort to tear it until Wolf simply took it out of her hands and ripped through it with his teeth. His eyes never left the screen, however. Virginia shoved it in the VCR and pressed ‘record’ just as Wendell reached the prison.

“Not exactly the red carpet treatment!” he was complaining. Had he really been that much of a petulant brat, she wondered? She supposed he must have been - the details of her trip down the elevator had been exact, from the conversation with Murray to the exact content of the meal she’d left her father that night. Not that she’d have remembered those barbequed ribs if she’d been asked, but seeing it enacted brought it all immediately back. Which served to remind her once again of exactly how weird the situation was: Her life was being played out on television!

She felt Wolf take her hand, then realized suddenly where the onscreen trolls were headed: to her mother’s cell. Her mother was the one calling them. No, not them - him; the one who’d wanted to burn her feet. But to her surprise, she was able to watch her mother and remain detached, and not because it was simply some actress pretending to be her, for Virginia knew very well her mother had said and done those exact things. Together the two of them watched Wendell get turned into a dog and run away. Then she felt Wolf’s hand tighten almost painfully around hers. She gasped and looked up at him, and as he shook his gaze loose from the TV screen, she saw the haunted look in his eyes. He looked down at their clasped hands, loosened his grip, then pressed her hand between both of his. As she glanced back at the TV, she saw - him. Heard him tell her mother he was a half-wolf and saw - for the first time ever - his eyes change to yellow animal-eyes. And then, before she could completely recover from this discovery, her mother had let him out of his cell and was demanding his will. With a knot in her stomach, she heard him give it to her, thinking how at that moment the actor was so like her Wolf - not so much in exactness of feature, but in something else she couldn’t quite define. It somehow played up the enormity of what she was seeing - that the casting office for a network television program had gone to such lengths - because despite what she’d told Wolf about such shows being filled with stars earlier, she’d never seen this guy in anything. But how had they known?

Wolf watched ‘himself’ get out of prison with a curious unsurprise that the man he’d only just seen in the commercial should be portraying him. He had seemed wolflike driving the car. Here there was no doubt. He didn’t know whether, if the man’s clothes were to suddenly fall off, he would be more surprised to find he really had a tail or that he didn’t. The brief moment when he’d allowed the animal to surface, to give credence to his claim of being a half-wolf, he recognized as a special effect, however. It was well done, but simply not realistic. For one thing, his eyes didn’t change color, except in certain angles of reflected light when they’d appear red, much the same as an animal’s would. For another ... ooooohhhh, what am I doing??? he thought. Our entire adventure is somehow being documented where no one should have heard about it! Why am I analyzing a special effect???? In the back of his mind, he felt his brother’s memory smile cynically. Yet in spite of his absorption in the fine details of digital special effects, he hadn’t missed feeling Virginia stiffen when she’d seen his eyes change. If they watched the whole thing, how much more would she see? What if his animal nature was too savage for her? Would she hate him? And what about the cub she was carrying? Would she hate it, too? On the screen, the bicycle flew into the air and Virginia crashed to the pavement. Wolf’s heart lurched in his chest, the pain of watching her suffer made worse by seeing, immediately afterward, an image of himself smiling at finally being outdoors after so many years in a cell. He realized he was crying, the tears streaming down his face, and he barely noticed the trolls as they proclaimed the dimension they’d entered to be the Tenth Kingdom.

Abruptly, the television blinked off. He growled.

“Wolf ...” began Virginia..

“Why’d you turn it off?!!” he demanded angrily. She jumped at the harshness in his tone, and he suddenly realized what was happening to him.

“Virginia ...” he said hoarsely, “I ...”

She placed her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and he took it.

“It’s happening to you again, isn’t it?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He really didn’t have to.

“Let’s sit down.” They had been standing the whole time, both of them too surprised to even move. Obediently, he sat down on the floor. She put her arms around him and he pulled her in and held her tightly. Cripes, she feels so wonderful, he thought. Just the feel of her soothed him like nothing else ever had.

“I turned it off because I though it would be better for both of us to watch it off of the tape, where we could stop it when we wanted to,” she said. “It is still recording.”

Still holding him, she looked up. “Can you really do that with your eyes?” she asked.

He froze, alarmed for a moment by her question, until he realized there was no fear in it. She only seemed curious.

“I’d like to know,” she added.

“Not exactly,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Not exactly how?” she asked. Her left hand started towards his face, but stopped when she apparently noticed she was holding some odd pink thing. After transferring it to her other hand, she caressed the tracks his tears had made. “Show me,” she said.

He’d been going to refuse - he’d really doubted he could even do it now. Although it was a simple enough action, it did require that he have the right mental state. Or, at least not the wrong mental state, which he’d had - he’d been terrified of her seeing anything more animal-like about him. But he’d gotten distracted wondering what the thing she was holding could be, so that when she finally asked, he simply showed her. Her reaction, one of amused surprise, relieved him deeply, so much so that he remembered his dinner was sitting in front of him. He leaned forward, picked up one of the spare ribs and took a bite out of it.

Virginia, too, picked up one of the ribs on her plate. But it was already cold, and when she got it close, the first thing she noticed was a large gob of glistening fat quivering on one end. The sight of it revolted her, though she thought Wolf’s marinade smelled pretty good. She knew she should really take a bite of it to please him - he’d concocted the marinade yesterday especially for this night, he’d said - but the idea somehow made her stomach turn. So she put it back down, noticing again that she was still holding the pregnancy test in her right hand.

“What is that pink thing?” Wolf asked. His voice was still a little rough, but otherwise he sounded quite normal.

“Oh,” she replied. “It’s a pregnancy test.”

“What does it test about it?” he asked.

“It just tells me if I am or not,” she said. He was silent. She looked up at him, into his eyes, now so human, so full of the wonder they always held when they looked at her, and a bit of humor, too, as he reached out to touch her face. With a little shiver she recalled the way his eyes had changed: alien and wild, different, but somehow familiar and still recognizable as uniquely him. The special effects hadn’t got it; in fact compared to the real thing, they were absurd, as primitive as a pie tin used for a spaceship. Even now he seemed phantasmagorical to her, when there was nothing about his fully dressed self to suggest he was anything other than entirely human.

“How did you know that I was?” she asked him.

“It’s in your scent,” he replied, his voice low, nearly a whisper.

He ran his fingers through her hair, then took the wand from her hand. “How does this work?” he asked.

“Oh, it just finds chemical changes in my body.”

He smiled.

“Isn’t that what I did, Virginia?”

Of course, she thought. Why didn’t I think of it that way? Still, it didn’t explain ...

“But how could you have known it right afterwards?” she wanted to know. He smiled again.

“I didn’t,” he told her, “Not till the next day.”

She was about to comment on his hair-splitting, when he continued, “And I didn’t really know for sure until the day after that.; By then you’d been asleep for so long I was starting to get worried.

I knew you were probably just exhausted from everything that happened, but ...” He didn’t finish.

She remembered the look on his face when she’d awakened that day in Wendell’s castle. Oh, I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. You’ve been asleep for two days. She felt slightly disappointed, since she’d thought he’d been worried about what she’d had to go through until now. But then, on the heels of her disappointment, came the memory of him, still dressed in the livery of the House of White, carrying her from the ballroom past princes, kings and queens, and staying with her until she cried herself to sleep. She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly, felt his answering squeeze. He was so excited about the prospect of a baby and she could still not quite believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. Even thinking about it brought a cold flame of fear licking at the base of her spine. She stared unseeingly at the red light on the video recorder and willed herself to think of something else.

“Wolf?”

“Hmm?”

“How could they have known what was going to happen to us? All those small details - that all happened, at least they did for me. Did it for you?”

He hesitated a moment and she felt his muscles tighten before he answered, “Yes.”

She knew he was thinking about how he’d given his will away. Watching that had chilled her, even though she knew it had come to nothing. Hadn’t it?

“You’re thinking of what you had to tell ... her to get free, aren’t you?” She couldn’t bring herself to call the woman her mother. Her mother had been someone else, someone from long ago.

He nodded without looking at her.

“But it didn’t make any difference,” she told him as gently as she could. “She didn’t have any control over you.”

He looked away, and suddenly she could feel him shaking. How much did you have to go through that you never told me? she wondered. An image sprang into her mind of him, in Little Lamb Village, wild with some unspoken turmoil asking her to tie him up. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? he’d asked. She’d thought he was delirious. Wasn’t he?

“Is that ... is that why you wanted me to tie you?”

She felt the gasping sob he let out, saw him glance at her then quickly away. His eyes were full of tears.

“You were afraid you’d hurt me?”

He stared pointedly away and did not reply.

“But you didn’t,” she pointed out. “The ropes didn’t hold you. You got free and you didn’t hurt me at all. You didn’t hurt anyone!”

She doesn’t know, he thought. How could he tell her? He’d thought the same thing at the time, that if he hadn’t tried to hurt her then, he wouldn’t be likely to, ever. But now he was not so sure. His cycle was suddenly all wrong: if he couldn’t even control his most basic emotions in the middle of the month, what would he be like during the full moon? Why had it been his destiny to have Virginia for his mate? So far as he knew, no half-wolf had ever mated outside the pack except into a few gypsy bands. Virginia would in all likelihood never have accepted him if she hadn’t been from this dimension where beings like himself did not exist. She didn’t know what he really was, not yet. But she would. The strange electronic play would show her, in minute detail, probably not tonight, but soon.

Though he knew, logically, that it would be better for her to see and know ahead of time what would happen to him, rather than trying to absorb that kind of knowledge in the middle of having to handle the problems it created - oh, yes, that’s a delicate way of putting it, he thought sarcastically - emotionally, he didn’t want her to know what happened to him at all. It was far too easy for him to imagine her looking at him with horror and running away, screaming. He knew he’d never be able to take it if she did. And in his present state, how would he react? He remembered enough of the last full moon to know the feelings she’d stirred in him - they’d been in the barn and he must have done something to frighten her, because he could recall her backing away holding a pitchfork - and what he’d wanted to do to her did not involve eating. If Tony hadn’t walked in at just that moment, she’d hate him now. Maybe it would’ve been better if she did, he thought. It would have been awful to bear - he remembered the anguish he’d felt after she’d left him in Kissingtown - but that was nothing compared to how he’d manage now, after knowing what it was like for her to love him in return.

A small, objective part of his brain knew he was wallowing in raw emotion, yet he felt helpless to stop himself. After all, no logical argument he could imagine would adequately explain what was happening to him or why.

“Virginia ...” His voice came out as little more than a hoarse croak.

“What?” Her voice was so soft, so full of caring and concern.

Cripes, how can I stand to lose that? he thought.; His throat closed. For a moment he couldn’t speak at all. She shifted around and looked up at him, her eyes mirroring the concern he’d heard in her voice. With a shudder, he hugged her to him as tightly as he could, his eyes closed.

“I think I need to go back,” he finally managed to whisper.

She pulled away a little and looked at him. In her eyes he saw fear - but it was fear for him, not of him. Not yet.

“It’s that bad?” she asked. He could hear her worry for him.

He took a deep breath. Talking about it did help, he thought, although he knew he’d never be able to tell her everything. Just the bare minimum. Just what she’d have to know.

“Only that I’m worried about what’s going to happen when my cycle comes up. If I’m this out of control in the middle of the month, I don’t want to think about what might happen then.” He traced his fingers lightly down the side of her face, unable to stop his own tears from falling. How much longer do I have before she’s gone? he wondered.

“This isn’t the beginning of it, then?” she asked.

“No. It’s not due to start until Wednesday.”

“Okay,” she said tentatively, laying her head against his chest. “That should probably leave us enough time to find someone who can help you if we leave now.”

“NO!!!!” he shouted. Virginia jumped, startled, but recovered her composure quickly.

“I’m sorry!” he told her. “I didn’t mean to ...”

“I understand,” she said, starting to get up. “Come on, let’s go.”

He pulled her back down. She looked at him questioningly.

“If we leave now, we’ll miss the other parts of the program,” he said. Why did I say that? We could have just left and she’d never have seen! - No, it’s important. It doesn’t make sense that anyone here could have known about our lives in the Nine Kingdoms, but somehow they do. There has to be a reason. I can’t just ignore it. Even if it means I’ll lose her ...

Virginia bit her lip.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing bad’s going to happen to me, all right?!” he said sharply. “Not until Wednesday! Is that clear enough?” Oooooh, what am I doing? I’m going to lose what little time I have left with her!

This time, however, she didn’t even flinch, just regarded him levelly.

“All right,” she conceded. “We can probably fit three shows on a tape. That means that after tomorrow night, we can just program the machine to tape the rest of them automatically. So we can leave Sunday morning, is that okay?”

He nodded.

“Okay.”

Virginia lay awake in bed, watching the play of lights from the city wash across the ceiling. Beside her she could hear Wolf’s soft, steady breathing. His arms were still wrapped around her as they had been when he’d finally fallen asleep. She was desperately worried about him - she knew there was definitely something he was not telling her. He’d spent most of the evening gazing at her face, tracing it with his fingers, over and over, as if he might never see it again. Their lovemaking had been the same. Although the way he’d undressed her on the living room floor had been somewhat reminiscent of that day in the woods, that was where any resemblance ended. Usually he was playful and adventurous. Tonight had been intense and full of a painful urgency. Is he going to die? she wondered, the thought itself bringing tears. Is that what he knows that he won’t tell me? The tears spilled out over her cheek and onto the pillow. She couldn’t stop them, though she tried very hard not to sob: She didn’t want to wake him. Why was I afraid of being pregnant? Why couldn’t I have been happy like he was? He loves the baby so much ... And he might never even get to see it. He kept putting his hand there like he was saying goodbye.

The tears choked her; she could no longer keep the sobs from escaping. Carefully, she climbed out from under Wolf’s arm and crept down the hall to the other bedroom, closing the door behind her, where she flung herself on the bed and cried herself to sleep.