CHAPTER FOUR

Father and Daughter

Lord Anthony Lewis, Inventor to the King, had a workshop outside at the back of Wendell's castle. It was a hut really, with only one small fireplace to give it warmth. Considering the time of the year, it was more than just a bit chilly. But no one inside seemed to notice. When Wolf and Virginia walked in, they found his lordship looking very unlordly in a pair of dirty overalls and a heavy workshirt. He looked more like the janitor he'd once been in New York City. Only he was in charge now and the position seemed to suit him.

"No, no, no!" Lord Lewis explained for the millionth time to the two workmen standing at his desk. "There's lots of banging in the pipes because there's air on the line. Not because of gremlins. Believe me. We need to go in and fix it here." Tony pointed to the smudged plans on his paper-cluttered desk. A month ago his workshop had been filled with cannon pieces and cannon balls. Now there were endless piles of metal pipe in every corner with an occasional radiator here and there.

"I don't know, Milord," the older worker said. He had white hair that stood out indiscriminately in various tufts over his head. And his lower lip seemed to have an extraordinary ability to stick out almost to the tip of his nose. He and his partner were both dressed similarly to Tony, in overalls and heavy workshirts. "What you say makes sense. But if there ARE gremlins in there. I don't think we should go in till we have the right charm to fight 'em off."

Tony closed his brown eyes as he tried hard to find the strength. He still hadn't heard his daughter and son-in-law come in. A sigh of exasperation escaped him and he said, "Look. We'll go there together and I'll show you. I'll fix it this time. Then you can do it if it happens again. It probably will because we haven't worked out all the kinks in the system yet."

"Well, I don't know if I should," the workman said.

"Look. It'll be fine. Trust me."

"Daddy?" Virginia said.

Tony looked up. As soon as he saw his little girl, a smile filled his face. Everything else in the room just disappeared. "Oh, honey! You're back!" He raced to his daughter's side and gave her a hug bigger than any Virginia could remember. "You look wonderful," he said, pulling back. "But I shouldn't be touching you. I've been mucking around with the castle's new boiler all day. Wendell wants it done before the wedding guests start arriving tonight. But I don't know. It's asking a lot. There's some steam engine technology here already, but nothing's ever been tried on this vast a scale before. I can't do it all by myself and a lot of the locals feel uncertain about the work." Tony reached past his daughter and patted Wolf warmly on the back. "How ya doing?" he said jovially. "Did you feel how warm it was in the castle when you came through?"

"Fine," Wolf said with a nervous smile.

"It was more comfortable than any of the other places we've been in so far," Virginia agreed.

"Good. I'm glad to hear that. Since you've been gone, I've done very little else but work on this and the plans for the hydroelectric power for the dwarves at Dragon Mountain. King Eranthis is coming to the wedding and I want to be able to give him the plans before he leaves."

"Milord?" the older workman said, his lower lip coming dangerously close to his nose again.

"Oh. You're right," Tony said. "We've got to get back to the boiler. You go on ahead and I'll catch up with you."

"But I don't think as we should do anything unless we have a charm against gremlins. Just in case we need it. Now…" The older worker put his hand on his hip and looked as if he were about to settle into a long story. "Maybe you don't know gremlins like I do. They're a kind of gnome. Only they don't live in the ground like good decent gnomes do. They like to live inside the walls of old buildings where they steal food and an array of little trinkets. Any time you do work like we're doing, you disturb them. Then they do their best to mess up all your hard work so you'll go away and leave everything as it was. Now, my wife has an aunt who knows all about charms. She's done them ever since she was a girl. Comes from living on the edge of the Disenchanted Forest. If I was to send her word tonight, I'm sure she'd have a charm here for us in about two weeks."

"Two weeks?" Tony exclaimed. "No, no, no. We've only got a couple of hours."

"But I don't see how we can go in there without a charm. You don't know them gremlins maybe, but I do. They can be real nasty buggers when they get ornery. Why my brother met one once while putting a new roof on a barn and..."

"Look!" Tony said, holding up his hand. "If I go and ask Queen Matilde to make us a charm, will you come back and help me work on the boiler?"

"Yep. Don't care who makes the charm. Just so long as we got one. You just don't know them gremlins like I do."

"O.K. Why don't you go take a coffee break and I'll go and talk to her." Tony scratched his face with his right hand and left a dark smudge near his nose. "I think she's in King Wendell's office."

"Coffee? No, Milord. Coffee's for heathens. Not genteel folk like we got here in the Fourth Kingdom."

"Forgive me. I should have known better. All right. Go drink whatever you want as long as it's not alcoholic. We've got lots of work to do before dinner tonight."

"Sure thing, Milord. We'll be in the kitchen."

"Fine."

As soon as the workmen were gone, Tony said, "It's been like this all the way along. Superstition just crops up everywhere."

"But gremlins really can be nasty," Wolf said seriously. "Especially in an old castle like this."

"Look, I know how crazy this place is," Tony said. "But there isn't anything magical about this noise. It's just air on the line. That's all it is. After all my years as a janitor, I know what air on the line sounds like. I hate bothering Matilde about this. But getting them a charm is the only thing that will get them back to work."

"So..." Virginia said. "Matilde is still here?"

Wolf took a step backward. This was the discussion he was hoping to avoid. "I think I'll go and see if they brought our luggage to the right room," he said, heading for the door.

Tony looked at Wolf strangely, but said nothing. He was pretty used to his son-in-law's impulsive style by now. Virginia didn't even glance around as Wolf threw open the door and quickly escaped. The words, "Excuse me" drifted back weakly as the door closed again.

"So, Matilde is still here?" Virginia repeated.

Tony moved to get a cloth from a corner of his desk so he could wipe his hands. "Yeah. She's been handling most of the Council's business from here. She's just made a couple of short trips to the Third and Second Kingdoms."

"Are you still involved with her?" Virginia's tone was slightly disapproving, like a parent who was objecting to its child's new playmate.

Tony threw aside his cloth and leaned against his desk. "I told you before you left that things were getting serious. But you didn't seem to believe me."

Virginia cleared her throat and adjusted her stance slightly. "I didn't. I mean. How could I? You hardly know each other. And there you were being..." Virginia wanted to say intimate, but couldn't quite bring herself to it. She had as much trouble dealing with the idea of her father having a sex life, as he had had with the idea of her having one. "Being...more than just friends. I mean she's a five hundred year old fairy queen, from a kingdom entirely encased in ice. And there you are a recently widowed man who used to be a janitor. And…how could you? With mother just dead?"

"Virginia," Tony said patiently, "your mother ran out on us a long time ago. And my relationship with her had basically ended well before that."

"But you still loved her and hoped she'd come back."

"For a while maybe. But the longer she was gone, the more I realized that it was for the best. Her trying to drown you was the absolute last straw. Like I told you when we met her here again at Wendell's castle, whoever that woman was, she was no longer your mother. Not to me. Maybe some of her dying words were a comfort to you. But all these years later, all I could see was that she tried to kill you again."

"Maybe she's in a better place now."

"Maybe." Tony turned away and started shuffling papers on his desk.

"I just think it's too soon for you to get involved again."

Tony sighed deeply. "Haven't you been listening to me?"

"Yes, but..."

"I haven't been involved with anybody in a very long while. And it's time I got some happiness." Tony turned around to face his daughter. "For years you put your mother on some kind of pedestal and didn't want to hear anything bad about her. Now you want to put me on a pedestal too, a romantic symbol of lost love, pining on into eternity for your mother. But the truth is I haven't loved your mother for a very long time. She wasn't my one true love like Wolf says you are. I thought I loved her at first. I mean, she was certainly beautiful and exciting. And I liked having all the other men envy me. But there was never any real closeness between us, not like there is with Matilde. I need real intimacy. I've come to realize that your mother and I were a mistake from the beginning. You're the one precious thing I got out of that whole mess. I'd do it all again if it still got me you. But I won't live on top of a cold pedestal for you. That's where I draw the line."

"I just don't want you to get hurt. You and Matilde are both so different."

"Yeah well, you and Wolf aren't exactly from the same world either. Matilde and I deserve our chance for happiness, just like you two do. In fact, we're planning to be married in a couple of weeks. We didn't make any formal announcement yet because we didn't want to take any thunder away from Rose and Wendell. But I think everybody pretty much knows. We're planning a very small wedding. Just family. It'll break poor Rupert's heart, I know. But we've both been married before and we don't want a whole lotta hoopla."

Virginia looked down at her feet.

"I just hope you can find it in your heart to be happy for us. Now, I'd better get on and get that charm. Or we'll never get the boiler ready in time for dinner." And with that, Tony walked past his daughter and out.

The little workshop got very quiet after he'd gone. Suddenly, Virginia felt very cold.