Return to the Nine Kingdoms

5

Virginia & Wolf
Virginia cleared her throat. "Mirror Mirror, on the tree, take me to what I wish to see..."
"I don't think that's going to cut it, honeybunch," Wolf told her.
"Well, it's a good thing I'm just practicing!" She had snapped at him and sounded more wolffish than either her husband or her daughter were in even their worst moments.
Wolf whined and Virginia gave him a half-smile in apology.
"What did Wendy say it was? It's been so long!"
Wolf thought for a moment, back to the last time either of them had spoken to King Wendell of the Fourth Kingdom. They'd agreed, then, that, while it shouldn't ever be necessary, they would keep the Mirror closed and only use a spell given to them by the Dwarves if they needed to summon the Mirror.
"He said...Wolfie, make something up and make it rhyme. But be specific, or the Mirror won't appear."
"Wish we'd had that little diddy the first time around," Virginia mumbled.
"Ah, yes. But then, it doesn't summon the actual Mirror."
Virginia rolled her eyes and focused on her driving. She'd been driving them east all night, chasing the wind after their only daughter and, after all day in the cafe, sleep was tugging at her eyelids despite her anxiety. Wolf was never the driver, if Virginia could help it, not only because he didn't have a legal Driver's License in any state, but because the man was as erratic on the road as he was just speaking.
"We're only an hour...maybe two...behind her," Virginia said through a yawn. "If she makes it to that Mirror and uses the summoning spell..."
She'd only meant it to be a part of one of Wolf's bedtime stories for Rose. They spoke, often candidly when Rose was a toddler, about returning to the Nine Kingdoms, seeing Tony again—if he hadn't done something ridiculous and gotten himself turned into a toad, in debt to a Dwarf, or married to a Sleeping citizen of the Sixth Kingdom. Rose had only seen her Grandfather a handful of times and only because he would sneak away from his life in service to King Wendell and travel the nauseating distance through the Magic Mirror.
"Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, get that poor girl to the ball," she'd teased when reading, or rather reciting, the tale of Cinderella.
"Mom, that's the wrong story," Rose had said.
Virginia had chuckled and squeezed her daughter close. "Oh, I know, honey. That's just a funny thing we might say to open up the Mirror. You know, if we went and saw Grandpa and Uncle Wendy."
Wolf had been the one to reel Virginia back in—it wasn't fair to get Rose's hopes up. After the first and only time they'd taken Rose, barely a month past her birth, they would never take that risk again with their only child. Rose had gotten violently ill from the travel and Virginia was not satisfied with the Wendell's old wet-nurse's barbaric understanding of childcare. Rose had recovered well enough after a few days, but word that Virginia and Wolf had returned to the realm had reached the ears of their only remaining enemy. They fled before the Troll Trio could do anything to jeopardize their daughter's safety.
"But that's just fairy tales, my princess," Wolf had cooed to her. "Getting back to the Nine Kingdoms, well...that would be impossible."
Virginia had snapped herself from the memory of her first and last visits to the Nine Kingdoms and nodded along with her husband. "That's right! And who wants to go there, anyway?"
"I do!" Rose had said immediately.
Nervous, Virginia had shaken her head, her brown hair having grown into locks that curled around her face in a textured bob, and made a silly face. "No! That's not...you silly girl!"
The road ahead of them now was starting to fill with more and more cars as the day was just beginning for many. The sun hadn't yet risen, but the clock on her Prius's display panel showed that it was getting close to the time when it would.
Three hours later, they finally got the call they'd been waiting for. When Rose's voice came through the car's speakers through the Bluetooth, Virginia could barely keep her hands on the wheel—she wanted to reach through the speaker and either hug or strangle the girl.
Rose had acted like her parents wouldn't have known where she would go—they knew their daughter and they both, for different reasons, knew the pull of that other realm. Wolf put an unsteady hand on the wheel when Virginia's tears began to cloud her sight and the car began to merge into the other lanes.
He was about to say something about pulling over to stop when the dreadful noise of their daughter in immediate distress filtered through the speakers. Rose hadn't screamed, hadn't made barely any sound, but the clatter the phone made as it fell to the pavement popped and clicked through the speakers like small boulders dropping on top of the terrified parents.
"Rose?" Virginia called out, screaming into the microphone on the dash.
"Pull over," Wolf said in a breathy gasp.
"No-no...we have....Rose? Rose, can you hear...?" The car was still drifting in and out of the lane and at least one other driver that nearly made contact with the passenger side honked with fury. "She's not...she's not answering. Why, why wouldn't she be answering, I mean, there's a connection, I can see the call is still connected, Rose! Answer....answer me..."
Virginia's voice grew loud in frenzy and then tapered off as she reluctantly pulled over to the shoulder after cutting off two lanes of traffic and stopped.
"Roselyn?" Wolf used the three-syllable pronunciation of her name, which Rose loved, compared to when her Mother used two.
There was another scuffle through the speakers and a scratchy sound—like static or the scrape of a needle on an old record. Someone, who, by the sounds they were making, sounded feminine, cleared her throat and ticked off a string of numbers through the speakers.
"Wha-what? Who are you? Where is our daughter?" Virginia had stopped her crying at once and turned back to her anger.
"Four-thousand, eight-hundred, and sixty-two." The voice was clear but accented with a unfamiliar dialect to Virginia. Wolf's face twitched as if he knew exactly who the voice belonged to.
"What does that mean?" Wolf asked before Virginia could, but the same question was on her tongue.
"It's the number of Trolls either killed in the Queen's war or who have died in the years since," the woman's voice said plainly.
"What do you care about Trolls, Wolf?" Wolf spat.
"She's a wolf?" Virginia tried to whisper. The car's microphone picked up everything and the woman on the other end, speaking through Rose's phone, laughed. Virginia mouthed, How can you tell?
Wolf's face hardened and the woman on the other end continued to cackle.
"Have you not told her, brother-wolf?"
Virginia turned in her seat so that she was facing her husband and jutted her chin forward while throwing up her hands.
"This woman has our child and there's something you haven't told me?"
"Your child is a grown woman, Virginia, my dear," the woman responded for her. "Or may I call you sister?"
"Sister?" Virginia grimaced and looked to Wolf for answers.
He nodded and rolled his eyes.
"Sister?" Virginia repeated, still not understanding. "I thought you said your family was dead!"
Wolf sighed and shook his head. He had, of course, told her something to that effect, never calling it a lie, and well before he had promised never to lie to her. He'd kept that promise, merely allowing her to believe that since he didn't mention them, his siblings were, in fact, dead.
"Wolf," he said, into the dash and trying to ignore his wife's glare.
"You call your sister Wolf?" Virginia's biting skepticism returned in a moment and the arch of her eyebrow told of a certain doghouse where Wolf would likely spend the rest of his days.
"Our parents weren't very optimistic. It's like Rose's goldfish that we just called Goldie. And then the next one was Goldie. And the next after that and that and that."
"How many goldfish did you buy her?"
"Off subject! Wolf, what do you want with Rose and why would you have anything to do with those Trolls?"
Virginia's husband-Wolf stared into the display as if it were his sister's face while he waited for a response.
"I have promised the Trolls to capture the thing that caused them such great pain in exchange for a favor," Sister-Wolf replied in a droll voice.
"What favor?" Virginia's voice had lost all its sweetness.
"That is none of your business, Sister," the she-Wolf went on. "I'm merely calling you on your pretty little daughter's phone...and really, you should stop treating the poor thing like she's an infant, it's embarrassing, brother, really."
"Enough! What can we do? She's got nothing to do with this. They want the thing that caused them such great pain? Well, come and get me," Virginia shouted into the display.
"But I went through all of this trouble, you see. Getting the girl to follow instructions without actually telling her they were instructions was exhausting," the she-Wolf whined. "I can't let that go to waste. Besides, it's more fun to hear you cry and whine and beg for her life."
"Her life?" Virginia and Wolf said together. There was a mournfulness there in each of their voices that neither of them wanted to hear again.
"Oh, you don't think the Trolls will just flog her or make her walk in red-hot slippers, do you? No, it's the gallows for this girl. Oh, that's right. In the Troll Kingdom, they've taken to hanging their criminals from the palace walls. For all to see."
Virginia's hand flew to her mouth and she stifled a scream. Wolf pounded a fist through the display panel and it went black.
"Wait, wait...wait, no!" Virginia screamed at the dash and then at Wolf. She frantically retrieved her phone from the center console and found that the call was still connected. Rose's face filled the screen and the seconds ticked by on the timer. Virginia unlocked it and pressed the speaker button.
They could hear the she-Wolf snickering and the sound of a car door opening and closing. "If you want to sacrifice yourself for your daughter, your chances are slimming. See you soon, Brother."
Still the better driver despite her tears and raw, jagged nerves, it took Virginia only a moment to re-fasten her seatbelt and get the car back out on the road after the she-Wolf ended the call.
Her husband, Wolf, attempted to say something but Virginia had raised a hand from the wheel and pointed her index finger at the roof. Wolf looked up and out of the moonroof and tilted his head to one side in question.
"I will shove you, face-first, out of this car through that if you say one word to me right now," Virginia threatened.
Aware of his wife's capabilities when she was upset, Wolf did as he was told and kept his mouth shut. He reached forward to the dash after a few minutes and tried to piece together the broken display, but it was no use.
"A Sister?" Virginia snapped suddenly. "Do you have others?"
Wolf opened his mouth but Virginia cut him off again.
"Never mind. Never mind! I don't want to know." She began mumbling to herself, snippets of words like she-Wolf, heinous, and bitch, all tumbled out in a frenzy. "Do you have other siblings?"
Wolf nodded but Virginia huffed through her nose at him. "Yes! Well, I used to. My brother is dead. He was with my parents when they were...well, you know that story."
Virginia deflated a bit and gripped both hands onto the wheel until her knuckles turned white. Her long brown hair, streaked with a few lighter strands that weren't quite white but were more golden, shined through visible, messy tangles. The natural red glow of her cheeks was more visible now that the sun was up above them. The fire in her blue eyes made them stand out stark against her pale skin.
"I'm sorry, I'm...sorry," she offered. "It's not your fault...well, it is your sister, but..."
"It is my fault, I should have made sure I at least knew."
Virginia glanced over at him. "You didn't know? Truly?"
"I have never lied to you, and I never will. I only...avoided the truth. I never looked for Wolf. She was the oldest. She wasn't even part of our litter, Wolf and mine."
Virginia looked on down the highway with a puzzled look.
"Oh, sorry. Brother-Wolf and my litter. We were the only two. And Sister-Wolf," Wolf said with a struggle, "was a part of an earlier litter. She was the only one to survive that one."
"I am so glad we only had one at a time," Virginia admitted with a level of disgust in her tone.
Wolf growled a laugh, "No, only she-wolves can have multiples. You're safe. Unless you wanted to..."
"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. Right now? You want to have that talk again, right now?"
"No," Wolf answered quickly.
"Good. So we're still three hours out of New York, even with the pedal of this little car all the way down. We just have to get there, find the mirror, speak the spell, go back...there...and..."
"Rescue our daughter."
Virginia laughed in the way Wolf knew all too well. She was barely keeping it together. He reached out a hand and placed it on the top of her thigh, giving it a little squeeze.
"Could you have imagined, all those years ago, that you would one day have to say such a strange thing? Rescue our daughter. From a Troll. Rescue anyone from a Troll...again?"
"Virginia..."
"If Dad was here, he'd...well, I'll tell you one thing, he would be going just as crazy as I am right now. He'd be..."
A word caught in her throat and that little pang of mournfulness bubbled up into a quiver on her chin.
"Tony would make things worse," Wolf said confidently.
Virginia burst out with a laugh, instead of a sob, and she smiled while nodding fervently.
"This is just insane. Insane! But you...you're right. He would definitely make things worse. God, I miss him though."
Her laughter died into a short sigh and the two distraught parents sat in the silence while the morning rush hour began to mob around them while their daughter was worlds away.