A.N.D. - Through the Looking Glass

“Don’t mind me, I’m not eating a lot of cooked food anyway.” Virginia went into the living room, away from the stomach-roiling scent of the bacon, but Littlebit followed her.

“Please tell me how I can help the pack. Do you want me to sew for King Wendell? I will if you ask me to.”

The words were willing, but the tone was not. Virginia wondered if her sudden rush of queasiness was due to morning sickness or the realization that she could, if she wanted, force Littlebit into agreeing to take a job she obviously was afraid of.

But why?

“Don’t you want to sew anymore?” Virginia asked. “What else can you do?”

“The only thing I really can do is sew.” Littlebit sank onto the sofa. “I like it. I like being good at something. I just... I’m scared to work for royalty.”

“Bad experience with Queen Red?”

Littlebit gasped, jumping to her feet. “How did you know?”

“Your brother saw the scars on your neck from the collar.” Her neck was covered with a scarf, Virginia realized. All the blouses she’d sewn had high necks or matching scarves.

Littlebit twisted her hands together, staring down at her knotted fingers. “He must be so ashamed of me.”

Virginia stood up and Littlebit leaned back, obviously ready to bolt. With slow, exaggerated motions, Virginia put her half-eaten breakfast down and came over with her hands held out. When she was close enough, she pulled the trembling wolf-woman into a hug. “He’s not ashamed. He’s sorry. I’m sorry too. It must have been bad.”

She wanted to know more, but she didn’t dare ask; it felt like Littlebit was ready to shake to pieces despite the hug.

“I had to, I had to, I had nowhere else to go,” Littlebit panted. “I had to go work for the queen! There was nowhere else to go!”

“She must have liked your work,” Virginia said cautiously. “Didn’t she? Or she wouldn’t have...”

“Given me the collar? Yes, she liked my work, enough to overlook my nature and my tail. But when something goes wrong, the wolf is the first to be blamed. The wolf is always the first to be blamed, especially there!” Littlebit wrenched her way out of the hug. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!”

“Do what?”

Littlebit stared wildly at her. “Does it matter? Do you think the pardon made people stop hating us? Stop blaming us? All King Wendell needs to know is that Queen Red accused me and pardon or not, he’ll wonder. He’ll wonder every time he sees me, every time he sees my work, every time he-”

Her voice was rising hysterically, and Virginia shushed her. “Okay, okay, I get the message. I can get you a sewing job here. I won’t make you work for Wendell. Calm down!”

Littlebit gulped down a few big breaths, and finally stopped trembling. “But if I don’t work for him, what can I do for you?”

“Oh, I have an idea...”

“Who was working on the new royal cloaks?” With the faire opening in a few weeks, Roz the wardrobe mistress was starting to sound strained and snappish. “We need to get them trimmed by the next meeting; the almanac says it’s going to be cold this year and we can’t have royalty walking around in something plain.”

“They’re finished,” Virginia said with a wink to the timid Littlebit, who was looking around at the raucous cacophony of a Faire meeting with wide eyes.

“What do you mean finished? Sewn together finished or finished finished?”

“Finished finished. Totally finished. One less thing to worry about.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Roz snapped. “Show me.”

Virginia couldn’t resist the chance to show off a little. Rather than simply handing the bundled costumes over to Roz, she flipped the queen’s cloak open and shook it out so that everyone could see.

Roz’s immediate reaction was lost in the spontaneous moan of envy that rose up from the sewing circle.

“I’m so jealous I could spit,” one of the other seamstresses said. “When did you buy the embroidery machine? I’ve wanted one for years.”

“I didn’t.” Virginia grinned broadly at Littlebit, who started and shook out the king’s cloak that she was holding. Another “ooooooooohhhhhhhh!” went up from the seamstresses.

“What do you mean ‘you didn’t’?” Roz demanded, taking the king’s cloak and running a practiced hand over it. “It would take forever to do this amount of embroidery by hand!”

“I work fast,” Littlebit told her.

“Uh huh.” Roz stared at Littlebit for a moment. Virginia was proud to see that for once Littlebit met her eyes and didn’t back down. Finally Roz threw a chemise with some half-finished blackwork on the collar at her. “Prove how fast you are. Cuffs to match collar.”

Littlebit took the blouse, ran her fingers over the stitching, flipped the collar inside out for a look at the back, and measured the cuffs. Then, to Virginia’s surprise, she smiled.

Roz promptly went back to business, inspecting the work that had been done individually, handing out assignments, reminding them how much work still had to be done. Virginia was soon so busy tacking royal insignias on guardsman’s tunics and listening to the wenches and the seamstresses gossip that she totally forgot about Littlebit.

Until the wolf woman stepped around her to hand the blouse back to Roz.

“If you can’t get it finished, at least keep working until the end of the meeting,” Roz snapped, not looking up from the Maid Marion robe she was cutting out.

“It is finished.”

Roz still didn’t look up. “I wanted the cuffs too.”

Littlebit was starting to look quite pleased with herself. “The cuffs are finished. I mirrored the pattern on the left and right, it will look a little more balanced that way.”

Roz’s head came up and her rotary cutter went down. She took the blouse and looked over the embroidery, her expression fading from skepticism to awe. “You are so hired!”

Littlebit smiled broadly and Virginia felt her lips curving too. She gave Littlebit another wink and the “thumbs up” sign.

“She’s not the only one hiring you,” Maggie said, taking the blouse from Roz and looking at the stitchwork. “I’ve got three faires this summer, and one of them gave me a wardrobe allowance instead of a costume. When you’re through with these, I want to hear your rates for individual commissions.”

“Wait in line, I want her first!” Michelle called. “I haven’t finished the costume for my new act!”

Final costume fittings tended to resemble an assembly line. Roz set up a series of curtained cubicles, each with a seamstress and a mirror, and they ran through the crew as fast as possible.

Most of the performers would strike a few poses (the actors often paying more attention to their faces than their costumes), maybe jump up and down a few times to make sure nothing came loose, and then have just a few quick comments-“felt okay” or perhaps a request to raise a hem or let out the armholes. Then the performer would slither out, drop the costume onto either the “pass” or “alter” pile, and yank on street clothes. It took only a few minutes per person.

But then there was Wolf. He burst into the curtained area like he was making a grand entrance, nimbly leaping up onto the stool and bowing to an imaginary audience. Catching sight of himself in the mirror, he started posing like a roomful of Madonna wannabes practicing Vogue.

“Cuffs,” he told Virginia, “are worn low over the hand this season, with just one button. Breeches should be tight enough to...” he waved his backside at the mirror, craning to look, “show off the assets.”

The ring snickered and broke into a song from The Scarlet Pimpernel.

“Someone has to strike a pose,
and bear the weight of well-tailored clothes!
That is why the Lord created men!”

“You shush!” Virginia ordered, smothering it under a pincushion. “And you behave!” She frowned at Wolf. “Now, c’mon, take off your clothes.”

“You’ve said that more romantically,” Wolf pouted, jumping down so he could sit on the stool to pull off his shoes.

“We’ve been in more romantic circumstances,” Virginia pointed out, gathering up his costume and shoving it at him.

He did look good. Oh, he looked very good. Since most of the Big Bad Wolves in the storybook pictures had fur and paws, Virginia had decided to go interpretive with Wolf’s costume, aiming for a “bad boy” look that wasn’t too bad for the family-friendly side of the faire. The result turned out to be a cross between a Hollywood pirate and Wolf’s black velvet formal outfit from the Kingdoms. Well, she’d liked that outfit!

He had long black pants tucked into high black leather boots, a billowing white shirt with puffy sleeves, and a black vest that Littlebit had covered with silver moons and galloping grey wolves. It was all topped off with a black frockcoat that Littlebit had really gone all out on. At first look the cuffs and front seemed to be decorated with little multicolored squares, but a second glance showed each square to be a scene from a famous fairytale. Rapunzel’s hair cascaded down his left lapel; Cinderella threw a twinkling shoe on his right lapel. Three little pigs were chased around one cuff, golden eggs rolled around the other, and on the back of his collar a red cape peeked out from behind his long hair.

And then there was his tail. Even though it wasn’t technically part of his costume, Virginia couldn’t resist fluffing it out for effect. Wolf shivered as she ran her fingers through the thick, soft, fur.

“That tail is all wrong!” Without so much as a warning call, Angel had swept open the curtain. “It’s stupid looking!”

“I beg your pardon!” Wolf snapped back.

Virginia gave a warning tug to the tail still in her hands. “Let me handle this,” she hissed in Wolf’s ear. “I bet she’s just being bitchy because she didn’t get to catch you with your pants off.”

“It’s all wrong!” Angel continued to insist. “What were you thinking? He’s got black hair, why did you give him a grey tail?”

Virginia faced her down. “Because a black one would disappear against his costume. And he can’t quite be the big, bad, wolf in periwinkle blue or pink, now could he?”

“It doesn’t even look real!”

Virginia grabbed tighter, lest the twitching “fake” tail lash right out of her hands. Wolf turned as far as he could, considering that she still had a pretty good grip on him.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I like it, so it’s this tail or nothing,” Wolf challenged.

There was a long pause, and Virginia held her breath. Angel was the sort of egotist who would fire performers for talking back. Would her lust or her pride win out?

Lust. “I suppose if you care that much about it, it’s not that important. Consider it me doing you a favor.” Angel came right into the cubicle, rolling her hips in a manner that she probably thought provocative. Virginia privately thought she just looked like she had rickets. Whatever Wolf was thinking was hidden behind a politely blank expression; now that Angel had stopped insulting his tail he apparently didn’t intend to press a fight.

“You still need something,” Angel walked around Wolf, taking him in from all angles. “I know!” She stopped and reached to caress his face, already prickly despite his having shaved earlier. “You need a beard! Look, there’s the makings of a goatee already.”

Wolf looked at her and Virginia shrugged. Of course she’d noticed that his five o’clock shadow formed a distinct goatee, but she’d never been into hairy faces. On the other hand, if it kept the peace, she was all for it.

Angel kept stroking Wolf, apparently not noticing that he was holding himself rigid and unresponsive. “Yes, you need a goatee. You’ll look very period. And I like men with facial hair. It tickles!”

You like men with a pulse! Virginia thought cattily, but aloud she just said, “That sounds like fun.”

“You want to be tickled, Virginia?” Wolf turned away from Angel’s hand as if it wasn’t there. “I could do that.” He pulled her into a hug, his fingers dancing along her ribs. Virginia was so busy squirming and squealing that she didn’t notice when Angel stormed out.

But Roz did. “Hey! Save it for your own time, you two! We’ve got a whole faire to clothe!”

Angel’s revenge wasn’t long in coming. After the fittings, Virginia took her pile of alterations back to the sewing circle, where everyone was sewing full-tilt. Littlebit was already there, stitching steadily away among the wenches and seamstresses. She had been adopted, just as Virginia had been, and was starting to lose her nervous edge around strangers.

Virginia watched her for a moment. While the other sewers would often put their work down for a moment to gossip, compare, fidget, stretch, or yawn, Littlebit worked like a little machine; every stitch in its place, nothing stopping or distracting her until the thread was knotted and snipped. It was the secret of her great speed, and watching her was like watching a ballet. Littlebit had everything down to such a science that it was almost shocking that she accidentally knocked a ruler to the floor when she reached for her scissors.

Instantly Angel was there, although the sound of the wooden ruler couldn’t even be heard over the sound of the seamstresses talking, much less the general buzz in the hall. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you, are you on staff?” she asked Littlebit.

“Not yet, but she’s a valuable asset. I was going to get around to the paperwork after this rush,” Roz said, nudging Angel aside to take another armload of clothing. “She’s been sort of freelancing.”

“Well she can’t.” It was a flat order. Littlebit squeaked and froze, and Angel turned a patently, patronizingly, false smile to her as she dripped polite venom. “I’m so sorry, honey, but we don’t have any extra money in the budget this year. No more workers.” She pulled Littlebit’s work out of unresisting fingers. “Although this isn’t half bad. Practice hard, and maybe there will be room next year. Sorry for your time and inconvenience. Here,” she contemptuously threw the piece at Virginia, almost hitting her in the face. “You finish this.” She didn’t quite laugh as she slithered away, but the intent was obvious.

Littlebit started to shake, her eyes welling with tears. “I didn’t... I didn’t do anything wrong...” She turned desperately to Virginia. “What did I do wrong?”

“Absolutely nothing!” Maggie launched to her feet. “Sweetie, you sit right there and keep going. I’m going to iron this out.” She marched after Angel.

“But... but... Angel runs the faire...” Littlebit whispered.

Nantucket Nan snorted. “Angel’s only onsite management, she doesn’t actually own it. Maggie’s been at this for twice as long as she has, and she’s got contacts in every faire in the country. She knows the owners better than Angel does.”

“So why does Angel run things?” Littlebit asked, watching worriedly as the two women argued inaudibly with many gestures.

Roz snorted derisively. “Angel got it in exchange for services rendered, if you know what I mean. But everybody who hasn’t slept with her hates her, and half her castoffs do too. Everyone knows it’s Maggie who really runs things. She’s the only one who can keep Angel in line. And the owners know that if Maggie leaves, she’ll take half the performers with her to a rival faire.”

Angel tossed her head and walked away from Maggie, who made a rude gesture behind her back. Just then Little Red ran up and whispered urgently in Maggie’s ear, with many darting glances at the departing Angel and gestures back to the actor’s area. Maggie nodded, patted Red, then stomped back to the sewing circle.

“Li- I mean, Elizabeth’s back in?” Virginia asked hopefully.

Maggie shook her head. “Nope. She really can defend that budget crap to the owners. But don’t worry,” she told the quivering Littlebit. “Angel may speak for the faire, but I speak for the wenches, and I meant it when I asked you to work for me. Angel can’t stop me from hiring a freelancer with my own money, or for asking said freelancer to work near me. She can’t stop any of us from hiring you individually, or one of the boothies to hire you for their sales staff.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t come after me,” Virginia said tensely.

Maggie shook her head. “You and your honey are going to be feeding the masses. Angel can’t mess that up; few other caterers will take a job like this, and she’ll lose her position if the actors don’t get fed. Besides, the two of you already have contracts with the faire. If she breaks them, I’ll tell the owners it’s because she was thinking with the wrong organ. They know what she’s like.”

“I can’t believe she’d fire Littlebit because of me.”

Maggie snorted. “She didn’t. Your honey just turned down Angel’s order to attend ‘private rehearsals’ at her place. She can’t punish him, she can’t punish you, so she hurt your family the only way she can.” Littlebit was still trembling in her chair with tears in her eyes. Maggie winked at her, handing back the work that had been taken. “Don’t worry about it honey. We’re gonna watch out for you.”

Wolf throttled the impulse to lean his head out of the bus window and let his tongue loll. Such things weren’t done here, apparently. Took half the fun out of riding in a car, that was for sure! Still, it was the first time he was going to see the place where the Renaissance Festival was held, and that was almost exciting enough to make up for leaving Virginia behind with Chrissy. At least he didn’t have to spend all day worrying about her-much-as Littlebit was there to watch out for his mate when he wasn’t around.

More likely, Virginia would be looking out for Littlebit. What happened to her? She was always the weakest, but she used to have some spirit. What happened when we were parted? And why won’t she tell me anything? He’d gotten bits and fragments of her most recent past-how his story was told, her journey to the Fourth Kingdom and what it was like to be pardoned-but nothing about how his family broke up or how she had come to take the collar. Nothing about what had happened to her precious tail.

She hadn’t even meant to ever tell him about that; he’d only discovered it by accident. They’d been playing, the three of them fooling around like silly cubs, wrestling and pushing and ganging up on each other. Littlebit had pulled him down off the sofa and climbed up in his place, and when he’d gone to tug her tail to drag her down in turn, there was just a stub and… nothing. Poor Littlebit only said that she was afraid he’d be ashamed of her-as if he hadn’t done just as much in his life that she should be ashamed of him! But no matter how he reassured her, how much he hugged her, she refused to say how it had happened, not to him, not to Virginia, not even to Dr. Horovitz, whom Littlebit refused to go see at all.

He had a sick feeling he already knew. Wolves hated any wolf that worked for the queen, but could barely take open action. Queen Red protected her own, even the “least of her servants.” But there was no need for an attacker to openly face the queen’s wrath; a quick snatch-and-chop and the servant would have been murdered by her own queen for the crime of tail removal.

Before he could dwell once again on that sorrow, the bus swung onto the fairgrounds, and Wolf gasped in delight. “I’ve come home!”

“Yeah, I feel the same way every summer,” Joe said next to him.

It was a little village. A whole little village off in the woods, with winding paths and singled, tiny, two-story houses with a booth in the bottom and a little room above. Squinting his eyes and breathing deeply, Wolf could almost imagine himself back in Wolfton.

The scent of burning wood curled on the breeze and Wolf’s hair rose. The humans! They’ve come, they’re back to burn us all… His eyes flew open to see one of the men shaking out a match as he took a long drag on a freshly-lit cigarette.

The clash between memory and reality made Wolf shiver. His smoking companion, oblivious, nodded. “Yeah, it’s kinda nippy here under the trees, innit? But you’re gonna love the shade come summer.”

The bad old memories finally faded in the familiar routine. When he’d been a mere cub himself, he’d helped his father just as he was helping the team now. Oh, back in Wolfton they didn’t have to worry about saplings taking over the streets, as there was no off season. But reshingling roofs, raking mulch over the paths, nailing down loose boards, and repainting was soothingly familiar. He found the little hut where the onsite kitchen was for the performers and took particular pains over it. It wouldn’t be as nice as the penthouse in town, but it was the den he was building for his pack, and that made it terribly important.

The hard work made something in his soul happy. He liked the city-it was exciting and always changing-but a part of him had longed for home. Now he would once again be able to live in the woods but not far away from Virginia’s beloved home.

Still, there were many little things that reminded him that he was still the eternal outsider, not quite a full member of this pack. Oh, everyone was kind to him, just as they were being kind to his mate and his sister. But the other men knew their way around, while Wolf got embarrassingly lost on the outlying paths. While they worked, they traded stories of past years and people Wolf didn’t know. And at the end of a long, exhausting day, Wolf’s hidden tail stuck uncomfortably to the sweat on the back of his thigh, an itchy reminder that he would never be one of this pack.

On the way back, many of the men were boisterous while Wolf sat quietly in the back of the bus. To his surprise, Joe and Ralph sought him out.

“Hey, got you a present,” Joe said, handing over some tickets. “My wife-you know her, she plays Beauty-anyway, she’s finishing up a run as Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof over at the dinner theater. She wanted you and Elizabeth and Virginia to have these, and asked me to bring them to you if you want to see tomorrow night’s show. It’s the last in the run.”

“I’ve got something for you too,” Ralph said, digging in his pocket to drop something heavy and silvery in Wolf’s wondering hand. On close inspection it was large pewter pin.

“This is a Rogue pin,” Wolf said blankly. The Rogues, he had learned, were the male counterparts to the wenches, and many of the performers and staff were members. Their main functions seemed to be flirting madly with women and showing off to each other; activities that Wolf heartily approved of and had joined in with.

Wolf tried to give it back to Ralph. “Did someone lose this? You’re the leader, you know who it goes to.”

Ralph and Joe-and, Wolf suddenly realized, every other Rogue on the bus as well-were grinning at him. “It goes to you,” Ralph said. “It was a unanimous vote. You’re one of us.”

If the pin touched his heart, the play broke it. Virginia was casually familiar with the story and the ring liked anything with singing; they merely had a pleasant evening out. But Wolf and Littlebit, who had lived as outcasts in a small, poor village overrun by enemies, were profoundly moved.

It’s us! It’s a story about us! All along he’d been thinking that Virginia’s world was so very different than his-softer, kinder. What was terrible here that wasn’t so much worse in his world? Here, they chose their rulers, who were not allowed to make up laws on a whim or execute their citizens on a personal vendetta. Here, there were “affirmative action” and “hate crime” laws that kept one group of people from trying to wipe out all the others. Even Virginia’s idea of grinding poverty meant living freely in a high-rise apartment with a boring job. Wolf hurt for her pain-but a private part of him felt that she would never understand him. Never understand what real hardship had been like, the constant fear of living in a world with torches, mobs, shoot-on-sight laws.

Yet here, in Virginia’s perfect, beloved world, here was a story about people who were hated, hunted, chased away. People just like him and Littlebit. He should have been sad. He should have been sorry to know that hatred was as universal as love.

Instead, he felt relieved. Someone out there had been through the same things. Someone understood. He wasn’t alone anymore.