The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Twenty-Eight Comfort Me with Apples

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge Kubla Khan (1798)

 

“Well,” Gefjon said calmly, “that will certainly simplify the order of battle at Ragnarök, since you seem to be decimating the ranks of those who were foretold either to be arrayed against us or to fail at their appointed tasks.”

“You’ll have to admit that I played a relatively minor rôle,” he said, “at least in this. Selene and Rhea had pretty much scotched his little plot — whatever it was — by the time I put the cherry on top.” He spoke offhandedly, since he was inspecting the remnants of the cloak, which was grey, evidently woven of spider silk, and whatever spell had been used to make the wearer invisible had been disrupted by the many holes poked through it by his wives.

“ ‘Cherry on top?’ ” Gefjon asked.

“A decorative but non-essential bit of fruit placed on top of a sweet desert to make it look pretty,” he said. It was some sort of Tarnkappe, he thought, but he wasn’t familiar enough with Norse stories to identify its provenance, just off hand.

“We’re just a little sorry about the mess,” Rhea and Selene declared, “but no one talks about our sister wife with such contempt while we’re around.”

“Think nothing of it, dears,” Phil assured them. “He was a spy in our midst, as Gefjon observed, and undoubtedly plotting to harm us in some way.” He turned to Gefjon and asked, “Do you have any idea where this cloak might have come from?” he asked Gefjon.

“I’d assume that it’s the work of the Dvergar,” she said, “but I’m not sure who or why, other than that someone probably either paid them or forced them to make it through trickery or threats. They’re quite ingenious, so if you want something made, all you have to do is tell them what you want and they somehow manage to do it. Loki is, or was, a notorious thief, so it could really have come from anywhere, but the fact that he was killed during his use of this thing makes me suspect that he’d either threatened the dwarf who made it or cheated him, since his death is likely to be at least indirectly the result of a curse put upon it by its maker. I myself have a dwarf-made feather cloak that enables one to fly, but have no head for heights, so I very rarely use it, but it works, and seems quite safe, but then I never tried to cheat the artisan who made it for me. I have a dwarf-made necklace as well, which is very helpful to me, because it has a minor curse on it, so it simply comes undone and falls off when I’m angry.”

“Why would that be helpful?” Phil asked her, puzzled.

“Ready anger,” she said, “while sometimes necessary, rarely becomes a Queen. The necklace Brisingamen reminds me to act like a Queen as well as be one. The necklace was given to me as a gift, so I presume that the donor had made the maker angry, but not angry enough to really annoy me, an innocent third party.”

Phil smiled. “I noticed how kind and patient you were among your own people, so it must have had something to work with, if it’s truly changed your behavior at all.”

The Queen smiled back at him and said, “And let me assure you that the least of your gifts is far more precious to me, and much more beautiful, than that old necklace. I do wear it, though, because it’s part of my formal regalia, and my people expect it.”

“But what about the fact that the Dark Gods know where we are,” Akcuanrut said angrily, interrupting their increasingly personal interaction, while the Empress merely raised an eyebrow to suggest that she had some concerns as well.

“Sir, Ma’am, it’s been obvious from the beginning, even before I became involved, that they had some method of keeping track of you, since they were able to intervene at a crucial moment when it looked like you were winning in the fight with Na-Noc. Their powers are obviously limited, though, at least through whatever means they used to open a portal back to Earth, which you were all sucked through, including the Heart of Virtue, which was and is apparently very important to their plans. The fact that it slipped out of their hands not once, but twice — or three times if you count the Heart’s capture of Na-Noc, who seems to have had his own agenda — implies that their powers are limited in ways we have still to explore, but at very least they don’t have the same level of control over portals that the ancient centaurs did, for only one example.”

“Couldn’t they do that again, though?”

“Possibly, but we’ve made great strides in understanding portals since then, and have studied the centaur texts to very good effect, in some areas, I think, even going beyond what the ancient centaurs were capable of. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were now able to trace their meddling back to its point of origin — if they tried to do it again — in which case they’d already have lost, because we’d then have direct access to the center of their power.”

The Empress asked, “Is that why they sent a spy, do you think, instead of eavesdropping through magic as they had before?”

“I do. In fact, my guess is that they opened a portal somewhere near here — but not too near —to deliver their spy, so it might be worth looking for any traces left behind. I daresay you, Sir, would be able to detect a recent portal anywhere within a few miles, at least.”

“I suppose I could, now that you mention it. I’ll get right on it.” He turned….

…only to be met with the Empress’s frosty stare. “Not so fast, Wizard!” she said imperiously. “You have a few duties to perform first, I think. I require an official Court Witness, and Sir Phillip is involved, so he won’t do.”

“Yes, yes,” the wizard said in haste. “Do get on with it!” he said impatiently.

She arched a brow and frowned at him, then began to speak, “I, the Empress Larona, do hereby renounce and dissolve my marriage to the former Emperor Elvi of Myriad, on the grounds of long-standing impotence hitherto utterly resistant to cure or amelioration over the course of seven years, the which debility renders him unfit to rule, according to our ancient law and customs, or to serve any further purpose as Emperor of Myriad. Do you hear me and bear witness?”

He bowed slightly and said, “I do, Empress.”

“That said,” she continued, “I do hereby take Sir Phillip, Master Wizard of the Imperial College of Wizards, as my husband and Imperial Consort according to the law and customs of Myriad, and also announce my intention to follow the general customs of his own people in regard to certain specifics of our marriage. Do you hear me and bear witness?”

The wizard bowed again, this time lower, and said formally, “I do, Empress D’Larona-Cohn, and so must it be at once and ever onward.”

“Thank you, Master Wizard,” she said with equal formality. “You have my gratitude and a trebled benefice, as suits your new status in my esteem, the which I’m given to understand you’ll soon have need of, together with certain properties in homage.”

The wizard instantly knelt before her and said, “I am your liege man, my Empress, both myself and my heirs in perpetuity.”

“Well, that’s done, then,” she said brightly. “We’ll discuss exactly which properties and titles you’ll require if and when we survive. No sense bothering about tedious paperwork if we don’t need it, but do send on a formal notice to my Court at your earliest convenience, and please arrange for some sort of respectable pension for my dear Elvi.”

“I will, my Empress.”

At once, she turned to Phillip and said, “Will tomorrow be too soon for our formal ceremony, Dear? I’m not terribly familiar with your customs, but would like it to be as soon as possible for… deeply personal reasons.”

Phil looked toward his wives, who evidently knew all about this, and they nodded, although Selene also had the gall to wink at him. “It’s the sort of thing that I can accomplish whilst standing on one foot, and will perform right now, but considering your stature and Imperial office, I do think we should hold a more formal ceremony tomorrow. It will take that long, I think, for Master Wizard Akcuanrut to draw up the necessary documents, and possibly arrange for guests.”

She smiled, very pleased. “The members of our company will suffice, I think, since I can think of no more honorable or august entourage, and we should also arrange for the marriages of the Lord Akcuanrut and his new brides.” Then she reached out and took his hand in hers….

…to which gesture he replied, reaching into his sporran to grasp the ring he’d conjured earlier in preparation for this moment. “With this ring, I, Philip Avraham Cohn, consecrate and sanctify you, Larona, to me as my wife according to ancient Jewish tradition and betroth you to me in everlasting faithfulness forever. I shall treasure you, nourish you, and respect you as have all those husbands who have devoted themselves to their wives with love and integrity throughout the generations. ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart, like this seal upon your hand, for love is stronger than death.’ Let our home be built on truth and loving-kindness, rich in wisdom and reverence. May we always keep these words from the Song of Songs in our hearts as a symbol of our eternal commitment to each other: ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’ I joyfully enter into this covenant and solemnly accept its obligations forever and for all time. My promises to you, in the presence of our loving friends, are valid and binding under the laws of this and every world.” He then broke off and added, “We can actually just as well do the rest tomorrow, in the presence of more formal witnesses, when we have your ketubah prepared.”

“Oh, good,” she said, then she lowered her voice and said, “While it hasn’t exactly been seven years — one has to be so discreet at Court — it’s been a good long time.” Then she made a wry face.

Once more, Phil was astounded by the shrewd perceptions of Rhea and Selene, who’d intuited the Empress’s ‘secret’ life after simply glancing at her Orrery. “I’ll do my best to make it up to you,” he said.

Selene and Rhea laughed. “Oh, Honey! We promise that you won’t be sorry! Our Phil is quite the man. It’s something to do with the bris, we think.”

“Bris?” the Empress said.

“I’ll explain later,” Phil said, more than slightly embarrassed.

“I can hardly wait,” she said, one imperious eyebrow raised, and with an air of intrigue.

“Please don’t be shy about expressing your personal desires, either,” Gefjon said confidentially. “Our Phil is very versatile, and quite inventive.”

Rhea and Selene laughed in pure delight. “We’re all going to be such good friends!”

“Wake up, Phil,” two familiar voices whispered into his ears. “It’s the big day already, so we have to get you ready.” Phil was surprisingly comfortable, because they’d all moved into the Empress’s pavilion, so the mattress was much larger, and the tent was huge, as befits an Empress, he imagined. Four wives wasn’t as difficult as three, he’d decided, because the whole arrangement was a little more symmetrical, from his perspective at least, so he’d wound up in the very center of the bed and was warm and toasty, despite being a little tired. He didn’t feel at all crowded, either, which was, he supposed, another perquisite that came with marrying an Empress who traveled in relative luxury.

“I’m awake,” he said, “and it’s a brand new day, although it’s a little difficult trying not to descend into cliché.”

“How’s this, then?” Gefjon said, “You’re going to be a daddy!”

“Unh, again?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Twins again.”

He turned to Larona and asked, “Is that okay with you, Sweetheart?”

Larona laughed and leaned over Rhea to kiss him. “Of course it is, Phil! One of the side-effects of having the local Goddess of love and fertility as one’s sister wife seems to be that I’ve somehow mislaid thirty years, so I feel lots better than I have in simply ages. The only problem I can foresee is convincing all the people who stayed home that I’m still me!”

Phil laughed with her and said, “Not to worry, Honey! I’ll bedazzle them with the theory of relativity and differing space-time coördinate systems until their heads spin right around and they’ll believe anything we say.”

“It will be much easier than that,” Gefjon said smugly. “I didn’t want my two favorite daughters saddled with an old man, so I set the wizard’s clock back to his late teens, so he has a slightly better chance of keeping up with Hnoss and Gersemi, so to speak.” She winked and grinned and Phil instantly revised his opinion of her powers as a Goddess radically upwards.

“I can see that being married to you three women is going to be a constant source of amusement and surprise,” Larona said, “but we’ll have to be up soon and about our day if we’re to accomplish everything in good order.”

“Do we have to?” Selene and Rhea said in plaintive chorus.

“I’m afraid so, dears, we have at least two Court weddings to arrange, one today, and one tomorrow, and if you’ll look in those chests over in that corner, I’ve conjured up a selection of courtly gowns for all of us, so we’ll have fittings to do, and last-minute adjustments to make before we’re quite ready.”

“Oooh!” Rhea said for both of them, “new clothes!‘ and bounced out of bed, followed closely by Selene, and they ran to the corner where they began opening the leather coffers and examining the contents, exclaiming over the array of lovely garments there neatly folded.

“Say,” the Empress said suspiciously, addressing Gefjon in particular “does this mean I’m going to have my monthly flow again?”

Gefjon laughed and said, “Well, not for nine or ten months from now, I can promise you that!” She lowered her voice then and added, “On the other hand, you’ll find yourself much more comfortable in other ways, if you know what I mean.”

Her eyes grew wide and she realized, then said, “So that’s the reason! I thought that it was just the excitement!”

“No, I do good work,” she said, “so now let’s look at these gowns of yours. It’s been ages since I’ve worn anything I didn’t make myself!”

They were both getting up with slightly more dignity than had Selene and Rhea when there was a sudden rush of hooves — at least two horses by the sound — and a shouted, “Hej! Are you in there, Mama?” from an alto female voice outside the pavilion.

“Halló, Sweetie! We’re in here,” Gefjon called out cheerily as a very tall blonde woman in a diaphanous yellow gown strode through the door, followed closely by two men-at-arms who looked both upset and unsure of themselves.

“That will do, men!” said the Empress instantly. “She’s our honored guest.”

“Yes, your Imperial Highness,” they said and backed promptly out the door, bowing as they left posthaste.

“Larona, everyone, let me introduce my other favorite daughter, Eir Menglöð, who will be a very valuable addition to our company, but she does present us with a tiny problem.”

“Which is?” Larona asked.

“Like me, she’s a sworn virgin, and not that fond of men in general, a predilection that I myself didn’t share with her, but as I understand it, being married is an important criterion for the members of our company.”

“So I’m given to understand,” Larona said. “All the men-at-arms have wives at home, and the very many sisters of Rhea and Selene here are married — as a formality, at least — to our Phil, whilst the centaur mares are all married to Thundercloud. The Lord Akcuanrut was the last detail to attend to, as far as I know, and now that’s taken care of, thanks to your lovely daughters.‘ She turned to face Rhea and Selene, who were happily trying on clothes, exclaiming over the thoughtfulness of Larona, who’d managed to create courtly gowns with concealed side slits and sheaths for their usual knives tidily tucked beneath their skirts. As warriors in their own right, they were entitled to carry their swords ready-to-hand in hangers at their side, of course, but their complement of other weapons was an issue, in a strictly formal sense. “Rhea, Selene, what do you say? He was your husband first, after all.”

They looked up and said in unison, “She’ll have to marry Phil, of course, first because we promise that she’ll just love him, because he’s not like other men, as you well know, Gefjon and Larona, and you will learn, Eir Menglöð, but also because both of us are very flexible in that regard, so you’ll have the best of both worlds!” They both winked, and Menglöð blushed.

Phil felt slightly aggrieved, since he was being discussed and parcelled out as if he were a stallion at stud. “Hey! Don’t I….”

“Don’t be silly, Darling,” they said in chorus, glaring at him pointedly. “You already know that you’re the right man for the job, and we all have to compromise from time to time, so be nice and introduce yourself. In fact, why don’t you both take a little walk outside? There’s a beautiful woodland right outside the door, and lots to see. Once you get to know one another, things will all work out, you’ll see.” They then turned back to the trunks of clothes, critiquing each item and assigning it to its intended wearer with practiced eyes. “Larona, Sweetie,” they called out to her, “if we ever get back to Earth, you have a fabulous career waiting for you as a fashion designer! You have an excellent eye for what makes a woman feel attractive and powerful, both at once! We never saw anything as wonderful as these, even at the very best couturiers in the Garment District in midtown Manhattan.”

“Thank you, girls,” she said. “That’s obviously high praise indeed, since your everyday outfits show excellent taste. I tried to accommodate your own sense of style, as well as your peculiar needs.” Then she turned to Phil and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? We have a lot to do today, and little time for dawdling.”

Phil turned to Menglöð and said politely, “It seems we’re in the way right now. Would you care to step outside? There’s a lovely view of Bifröst to the southeast, and the woods of your homeland are lovely, as they said.”

At first she seemed reluctant, but then said, “I would…, Phil? did they say?”

“It’s short for Phillip,” he said, “Phillip Cohn. ‘Phillip’ means ‘a lover of horses,’ in an ancient language back on Earth, where I was born.”

“Well, you’ll simply have to meet my horse, then. Sleipner is his name.” She escorted him through the entrance to the pavilion and showed him to a magnificent stallion standing patiently outside, idly munching on a stack of hay and barley in a manger off to the side, and being watched warily by both of the guards, because the beast had eight legs, four each at front and back, and was bigger even than Thundercloud, twenty-eight hands at least. “It means, ‘Slippery,’ or something like that.” She looked at him. “Would you like to take a ride?”

“Of course!” he said, but slightly daunted by the prospect of somehow climbing onto the back of an animal more than nine feet high at the shoulders.

She lightly vaulted up to his back, despite the fact that it was bare of either saddle or stirrups, although he had a halter, bit, and reins on his proud head. She then reached down to help him up behind her, which he managed to do without embarrassing himself unduly, so he put his arms around her waist and they were off as the horse sprang into the air and kept on going, up and up until he could see the whole long road behind them, and the complex outline of the island world of Alfheimr became clear. “Quite the view, don’t you think?” She laughed out loud in pure joy as they flew through the air. “Feeling a little nervous? I know some people aren’t comfortable on Sleipnir when he runs at speed.”

“Not at all!” he raised his voice slightly, to overcome the rush of wind, and tightened his grip on her waist as she reined her strange steed into a tight turn, headed back the way they came and to the edge of the impossible cliff above the cloudy chasm below.

“Hang tight!” she said as she spurred Sleipnir down with well-placed nudges of her heels and they plunged down and down, faster than gravity could keep up, so they were weightless, held to Sleipnir’s back only by the strength of her hands in his mane and the grip of their heels around the thick barrel of his body.

“Whoohoo!” he shouted as they more than fell, the wind of their passage snatching his excited exclamation away almost before he could hear his own voice.

“Nice, isn’t it?” she shouted as they plummeted through the highest clouds, and he instantly felt the moist chill of something very much like fog as they flew blindly through the mist.

Then, below them, he saw what looked like an enormous branch, the bark rough with chasms that reminded Phil of pictures of the Grand Canyon back on Earth, except that there were hundreds of them, all roughly parallel, lined up along the length of what looked like a tubular planet which twisted off into the mist in both directions. “Yggdrasil?” he shouted in her ear.

“Yes!” she shouted back. “Would you like to stop off for a closer look?”

“Of course!” he yelled in her ear.

With that, she pulled up on the reins and Sleipnir slowed, then rushed toward the… ‘ground,’ where they settled at the edge of a barky plain, just at the edge of an odd chasm that looked toward a wooden cliff off in the misty distance.

“It’s beautiful,” he whispered in the sudden silence, which was broken only by the sound of the stallion’s heavy breathing. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He looked up and down, then back toward the the craggy plain, but saw nothing living. “Does anything actually live here, besides the tree itself?”

“A few creatures,” she said quietly, “three or four near the roots, and a few deer who feed on the bark, plus eagles, of course, though what they eat I don’t exactly know. I’ve never seen any other birds, and fish seem unlikely up this high, although there are enormous rivers down below.”

“Do you come here often?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “It’s very peaceful here, so I come to restore myself when I’m feeling downhearted.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Are you feeling sad now?”

“A little. My mother seems to think that I should be married, which I’ve never wanted to do, meaning no offence, of course.”

“None taken,” he said. “I’m not a ravisher of unwilling women, and am very happily married, all in all, although I never expected to be married to quite so many women. I was quite happy with one, but then… things just happened.” He shrugged and looked off into the distance, where he thought one tiny speck might be an eagle.

“So I see. What do your many wives see in you that makes them so willing to share your attentions?”

“I don’t exactly know,” he admitted. “Rhea and Selene grew up together, and were best friends almost from birth, as far as I can tell. They tell stories of being toddlers, then young girls, and growing up together, almost like twins, although they have very different parents.”

“They do look almost like twins, with the exception of their hair and eyes, of course. How did you choose between them? Or did you choose both at once?”

“Not at all!” he said. “I fell in love with Selene, she’s the more thoughtful of the two, and then a situation arose which required me to marry Rhea, although I was unwilling, at first. I couldn’t live without the both of them in my life now, of course, but it was a slightly awkward transition precipitated by Selene’s insistence, not mine.”

She looked at him curiously. “You’re an odd man, Phil.” She said nothing more.

“I suppose I am,” he said, after a long silence, during which they both stared toward the distant other side of the vast rift in the bark of Yggdrasil.

“Is it true, what they implied, that Rhea and Selene are lovers of women?”

“Well, yes and no. They seem to like me just fine, but they were both virgins when we married, I think, and I know that they were intimate with each other before we’d even met.”

She smiled. “So you were reaching for the stars, I see?”

“I suppose I was, but Selene was the most fascinating woman I’d ever met, and we just seemed to hit it off when we were thrown together by happenstance.”

“How exactly did my mother come into the picture?”

Phil blushed. “She drugged me, actually. It wasn’t my idea at all.”

Menglöð whooped, laughing, “That’s my mom, alright! She was never one to let mere reluctance stand in the way of a good shag!”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I got that impression, but she fell instantly pregnant, so there you go. We had a few rough spots, but she’s quite loveable, once you get to know her.” He laughed. “I’d say that we got off on the wrong foot at first, but our feet weren’t exactly involved.”

Menglöð laughed at that, then said, “I’m glad to see that you have a nice sense of humor about all this, but what’s your interest in me?”

“Quite frankly, none at all, except that you seem to be a lovely woman with a wonderful personality, and your mother and the Empress, both prophets, seem to feel that we were made for each other, not to mention that Selene and Rhea apparently take their side. If anything, this is an ‘arranged’ marriage, but only if you want it. I’m certainly not going to force myself on you, nor even allow my other wives to do the same, especially your mother and the Empress. They may have a say in our lives, but they’re neither one of them my owners, with any inherent right to tell me what to do.”

“So, you like me?” she asked, as bold as brass.

“I do, very much so. You have a sense of fun and adventure that I admire, and I’m quite sure that we can be good friends, no matter what we decide to do on other fronts.”

“And Rhea and Selene find me attractive as well?”

“They said so, or implied it, and they wouldn’t have said it if they didn’t mean it. Like you, they’re neither one of them either shy or retiring.”

She nodded. “Okay. Take off your clothes.”

“What?” he said, surprised.

“You heard me. If we’re to be married, I want to know what I’m getting myself into, and the bark here, though moderately soft, is itchy, and I’m not lying down on it without something like a blanket beneath me. That skirt you’re wearing looks perfect, once you’re out of it, and the little cape will suffice for a pillow.” She looked him up and down. “You look very fit, and I like that, but I want to see that cock of yours before I do anything else.”

Phil blushed again, but he complied. “Well,” he said, when he stood naked before her, ”it’s actually what we call a ‘kilt.’ “

“Whatever. Call it what you like, it looks just like a skirt to me, although it seems a little short for practicality in a chilly climate.” She looked him carefully up and down, paying special attention to his private parts, which swelled a bit under her piercing gaze, to his chagrin, and then she said, “Say! You’re the guy who killed Ásagrimmr!”

“That was me,” he admitted. “He tried to kill your mother, which I couldn’t stand by and allow.”

She nodded, then said, “He complained about you when I interviewed him, and had evidently caught a glimpse of your private parts during your wrestling match, because he thought you freakish, maimed in some strange way.” She made a little moue. “I think it’s quite pretty, though, much nicer than those sloppy things most men sport, and they usually stink besides.”

“Interviewed him? What is it, exactly, that you do? And how were you seemingly able to talk to him after he was dead?”

“Because I’m the chooser of the slain for my mother, of course, who has first pick of all those who die.”

“Like the Valkyries?” he asked.

“Those slags!” she exclaimed, indignant. “Not likely. They scavenge my leavings, taking only the worst and most malignant ruffians, the ones old Ásagrimmr preferred — before I sent him straight to Hel, of course, since he wasn’t even qualified for the slut Valkyries, because he was slain in the midst of committing an act of vile cowardice.”

Phil blinked. “So you’re like… the angel of death?”

She smiled. “Well, a Goddess, to be precise, and my first name actually means ‘Mercy.’ I prefer to think of what I do as a kindness, since I deliver the best and most noble to their eternal reward in my mother’s domain, both men and women, but especially unmarried women, because it takes a special kind of courage and resolve to remain a maiden in our world.” She looked at him carefully. “Didn’t you recognize my horse, Sleipnir? I thought you uncommonly brave to climb onto his back, since most people already know that it’s usually a one-way trip from this world to the next. Much more often than not, my reception carries some taint either of resentment or fear.”

“I thought I recognized the name, but had vaguely thought that it was some guy named Óðinn’s horse.”

“Bah!” she said scornfully, none-the-less amused. “I let the old fool borrow him for a few errands, when he was still banging my mother, but he hasn’t touched my Sleipnir for a thousand years. He’s Loki’s get, you know, when Loki had shape-changed himself into a mare in heat and was up to his usual trickery. The trick was on him, though, because the stallion he was trying to lure away from his appointed task caught up with him in the woods and taught him a good lesson in how to handle a pizzle.” She grinned. “Have you ever seen a stallion’s virile member? Sleipnir’s is four feet long if it’s an inch, and I can hardly imagine having that sort of weapon up inside me! It’d be coming out my nose before he was finished, so I figure Loki got some proper rogering before he was thoroughly knocked up and got his year’s membership in the ‘bun in the oven’ society.”

Phil liked this brash young woman, and she reminded him a little of both Rhea and Selene, although a bit rougher around the edges. “I hope he doesn’t mind,” he said, “but Rhea and Selene and I polished off his ‘mother’ while he was chanting seiðer at us.”

“You’ve killed Loki too?” she said, laughing. “I didn’t actually see him, but I suppose that I wouldn’t, since he’s — was — actually a Jötunn, despite his pretensions of being an Æsa, and they have a separate destiny to the rest of us.”

“Well, Selene and Rhea did the hard part,” he said modestly, “puncturing his inflated ego with their knives while he was invisible. I merely lopped off his head when he started working evil magic, but he was quite visible by then.”

“Well, Sleipnir won’t mind about it, in any case,” she assured him. “He’s a lovely beast, but he is just a horse, after all.”

“One never knows, with magical beasts and such. I know quite a few people who look quite a bit like horses, but they’re as human as anyone.”

“Do you mean those half-human, half-horse things hanging about your campsite?” she asked, perceptively.

“I do, but most people can’t see them that way.”

She considered that for a moment before replying, “I did notice a little fuzziness around them, as if they were blurry somehow, but of course in my profession I concentrate mainly on the souls of the people I encounter.” She paused again, then said, “Yours is quite nice, you know.”

He grinned. “So my other wives keep telling me; I do the best I can.”

She grinned back, but didn’t actually say anything for quite a while, but stood alternately gazing off toward the distant other side of the chasm they were perched at the edge of, and then again at his face, studying it with a peculiar intensity.

Phil began to feel a little chilly. “Look, should I put my clothes back on? It feels a little awkward being the only naked one around, not that you’ve been anything less than charming, of course.”

“Don’t you really like me, Phil? I know you said that you did, but men lie about these things all the time.”

“Of course I like you, Menglöð,” he said truthfully. “You remind me quite a lot of Rhea and Selene, and you’re quite lovely to boot, but you don’t have to do anything just because your mother thinks that it would be a good idea.”

That seemed to change something between them, because she got a look of grim determination on her face and she said, “I don’t particularly care what my mother wants for me, but I want to shag you in any case, just to try it out, and I think I like you too.” She began taking off her clothes.

Phil blinked in surprise. “Unh… I….”

She glanced up and said, “Don’t say anything, or I might lose my nerve!”

He shut up. She was, he thought, magnificent, in her own way. Her breasts were simultaneously the largest and the… perkiest… he’d ever seen, not that he had that much experience, and both Larona and Gefjon thought that she was crucial to their plan. ‘Ours is not to reason why,’ he thought, and resolved to soldier on.

She took some time arranging his clothes carefully on the ground beneath her, then added her own over them before she sat down, then reclined and said, suddenly unsure of herself, “What do we do next?” with an expression of anxiety apparent on her face, and in the tension in her shoulders and arms.

That’s all it took to melt his heart, and he walked to her side, then sat down behind her and wrapped his arms around her with the lightest touch he could manage, just barely skating over the surface of her skin with feathery strokes of his fingertips before he laid the inner surface of his forearms around her shoulders, his hands skimming down her arms until he was pressed against her back like a silken shawl, covering her, lending her his warmth, but with no sense of urgency at all. “Nothing you don’t want to do,” he said. “We’re in no hurry at all, and we’re meant to be dear friends, I think, and friends watch out for each other. I’ve got your back, and there’s nothing at all to worry about.” He kissed her gently on the neck, then raised his hands to her shoulders and began to soothe her, then to gently massage the tension from her body, starting at the nape of her slender neck, then proceeding to her shoulders, feeling out each point of blockage and teasing out the pain.

She sighed. “That feels nice. Is that all there is?”

He drew her in slightly, a little more intimate as his chest pressed into her back, letting her feel him, demanding nothing. “That’s all there is,” he murmured, his breath on her neck teasing her with his nearness. “Don’t worry, sweet friend. We have all the time in the world, with nothing to prove, and no place to be, suspended between the worlds in a place entirely our own.”

She sighed again and said, “You’re almost as nice as a woman, you know, so gentle and easy, like a warm breeze against my back. All you really lack are breasts.”

He didn’t laugh, although he was tempted, but merely said, “I’ve been told that before as well, or words to that effect.” He began to tease the tendrils of her hair, as soft it was as silk, and twice as fair.

He was petting her, still soothing, when she suddenly turned in his arms and laid her head upon his chest, and then giggled. “You have hair on your chest; it tickled my back, and now it’s tickling my ear and cheek.”

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said, her voice muffled slightly as her lips pressed against his skin, “it’s nice, and reminds me that you’re not a woman at all, which is nice too, for a change at least.”

“We can’t all be perfect,” he said, meaning what he said.

“No, you’re perfect too, in your own way. I don’t think I’d like you at all if you weren’t exactly who and what you are.” She had her head pressed against his chest, evidently listening to his heartbeat, because she said, “Your pulse is very slow. Are you sure that you’re alright?”

“That’s actually fairly normal for athletes, especially male athletes,” he said. “I usually average about forty to forty-five beats per minute at rest, and much more, of course, when I’m running or exercising energetically.”

“Really?” she said. “I’ve never paid that much attention to my own.” She kept her head against his chest and said, “It’s very soothing, the sound of it, don’t you think?”

He thought about that for a moment, than said, “I don’t really know, since I usually can’t actually hear it beating, except sometimes very late at night, when it’s very quiet, and I can hear the flow of blood through my own ears as a kind of rushing throbbing.”

“Here,” she said, scrambling up on his lap, “listen to mine!” and pulled his head toward her chest.

Her heart was beating, sure enough, and the feel of her breast against his cheek was delightful, but he held very still, afraid lest he startle her, and said, “It does sound nice.”

Then she shifted her weight again, and bent her head down toward his chest, then listened for a moment. “It’s beating faster,” she said, and then added, “And your… thing seems to be growing.”

“I think it is,” he admitted.

“Did I do that?” she asked.

“Yes, I think you did, but your own heart seems to be beating slightly faster as well.” She was wriggling slightly as she shifted around, which had… consequences, at least for him.

“I feel different as well,” she said. “I can feel it swelling!” She allowed her hand to drift down his cheek, then to his belly, and finally further down as she shifted again to make room for her to wrap her fingers around his shaft. “Oooh! It is growing, especially now,” she said.

“It is,” he said, “but it’s at a sort of awkward angle, so it’s a little uncomfortable just now.”

“Oh! you poor boy,” she said, and shifted around again so she could get a better look at it. “There! It’s perfectly straight now; does that feel better?” She had her hand on it, her fingers wrapped lightly around it as she looked down at it between their bodies, and was wiggling it up and down to be sure it had plenty of room between her legs, which by now were wrapped partially around his waist.

“It feels really nice, right now,” he admitted.

As it enlarged, it grew harder for her to keep moving it without it slipping between her thighs, and then her nether lips, but she kept stroking it, then said, “I quite like it like this.” She was panting. “In fact, I think,” she shifted again and settled herself on him, gradually working it further inside her, until she said, “Oooh! that’s even better! Oh!” she said, “Something’s happening!” and it suddenly slipped past a barrier and was buried deep inside her and she gasped. “That hurt a bit,” she said, “but it’s getting better now.” She was rocking herself against his crotch, grinding herself down on the top of his cock, and he realized two things, that she’d been a virgin, and that neither of his two first wives had been, so evidently they’d had a dating history that they’d neglected to mention. ‘Oh, well,’ he thought. ‘It’s nice that one of us was a virgin, at least the once.’

“Ummm,” she said, “would you mind if I laid down now? I think I’d like you on top of me. For some reason I want to feel your weight pressing down on me.”

“Your wish is my command,” he said, and lifted her up by her thighs, then carefully arranged her on top of their clothes until she seemed perfectly centered and comfortable before he leaned her back to the ground and began to make love to her in earnest, and she began to pant as he plunged inside her, gradually becoming more excited as their mutual passion mounted, and then she screamed, “Phil!” and bit her lower lip between her teeth as she shuddered into orgasm, and he came inside her, both of them panting after their strenuous exertions.

She lifted her head up to his chest and listened carefully, then said, “It’s really beating now! Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump!” She looked up at him and smiled.

He smiled back, relaxed and satisfied, but said nothing in words, just held her close.

After a few more minutes she said, “That was really nice; can we do it again?”

“Of course; as much as you like,” he said indulgently. “We’re much better friends now, I think, and this is still our special spot between the worlds, all by ourselves.”

“I’m still thinking about this marriage stuff,” she said, “but I’m thinking that it might not be as awkward as I’d thought at first.”

“Take all the time in the world,” he said. “When and if it ever sounds like a good idea to you, just say so and I’ll ask you for your hand in marriage quite formally, but you’re perfectly free to refuse me, and we’ll still be friends. I’ll never pressure you to do anything that you don’t want to do.”

“That’s kind of a magic phrase, I think. It makes me feel… good somewhere deep inside my heart.”

“Maybe. I don’t mean it to conjure you, though; it’s simply the truth.”

“Right now,” she said, “I want you to make love to me again, and please take all the time in the world.”

He smiled at her, “That’s what being married actually means, you know. It’s our promise to each other that we’ll always take all the time there is in all the worlds.”

“You’re trying to persuade me, aren’t you?”

He laughed in surprise and looked at her with an intense awareness that he loved her. “Of course I am. If I valued you so little that I didn’t care one way or another, what sort of man would I be? For me at least, this isn’t some sort of casual dalliance in which I walk away after taking some sort of unfair advantage of you, then laugh about while drinking toasts with ‘the guys’ at the local public house. In all my life, I’ve never kissed a woman whom I didn’t love, and with whom I didn’t see the possibility of a life together. I’ve never made love to a woman with whom begetting a child together would be unwelcome, and with whom I wouldn’t willingly spend a lifetime fulfilling my responsibilities to her, and to our child, with an ongoing sense of pure joy. I love you, Eir Menglöð, sweet angel of mercy, and I always will, because you’ve touched my heart with your courage and your compassion, and I hope that you can love me too.”

Tears trembled at the bottoms of her eyes as she said, “You don’t mind that I’d like to… make love… to Selene? Rhea too, I think. They’re both very beautiful, and I like women, as a general rule.”

“How could I? Their happiness is essential to my own, as is yours, now that I’ve realized that I love you, and I’m quite fond of making love to both of them, so I could hardly complain if we share the same passions in life. I know that they’re attracted to you, or they wouldn’t have suggested that we ‘take a walk outside’ in the first place, since they’re both very clever, smarter than I am, probably, and definitely not at all shy about telling people what they want.”

She looked at him, searching in his eyes for something, then said, “You should ask me now, before we make love again.”

He smiled in acquiescence, then said, “Eir Menglöð”, beloved, would you do me the honor of being my wife, of sharing my life, for all the time there is in the world?

“I will,” she said, “Phillip Cohn, will you be my husband, will you share my life, for all the time there is in the world?”

“I will,” he said, “with all my heart and soul.”

“Now make love to me,” she said, “and make it very sweet indeed, because I’m feeling lucky, and I want to remember this time especially.”

He leaned toward her with a kiss upon his lips that he wanted to give her, and she reached up to him with one of her own, and then he said, “I will, both now and always.”

“Phillip Avraham Cohn!” Rhea scolded him as they walked into the pavilion. “Just where have you been for all this time?”

He blinked, “We went for a walk, or something like it, just as you’d suggested.”

“But it’s tomorrow! You’ve missed your own wedding, so you are getting married today for sure!”

“Tomorrow?” he said, confused.

“Tomorrow!” she declared. “I certainly hope that you’ve asked her, and that she said ‘yes,’ because we took the liberty of having Akcuanrut draw up her ketubah, nice and proper, and Larona made a lovely gown for her, together with an ample trousseau for court appearances and everyday, and we’ll have to have a triple wedding, since you stood up our sweet Larona yesterday! not to mention mucking up Gefjon’s plans, who was supposed to have today clear for all her guests.”

“I did?” he said, still bewildered.

“And, boy, was she pissed off!” Rhea added helpfully. “You’re lucky this isn’t Alice in Wonderland, or you’d be minus a head, or possibly two.”

“Now, Rhea,” Larona chided her from the other side of the pavilion, where she was fussing with another outfit, trying to manage just the right amount of fullness in the skirts. “I was really only irritated for a while, but once I’d realized that it was Gefjon’s other daughter, I assumed that something had simply come up. No harm done, and it allowed Hnoss and Gersemi to have plenty of time for a lovely private ceremony with Akcuanrut and we were all able to attend without any possible impact on our own preparations, although I think he might have liked to see you there, since he was the only man involved at all.”

“Tomorrow?” he said again.

“Never mind, Phil,” Menglöð said gently, then turned to Rhea and explained, “We were down on a limb of Yggdrasil, the World Tree that supports all the Nine Worlds, and time runs at a different rate down there. We’re sorry if we’ve spoilt your plans in any way, but he did, in fact, ask me to marry him and you, and I both accepted and asked him to marry me.”

Selene laughed, just coming into the pavilion with a stack of clothing in her arms, “Oooh, Phil! Another modern girl who knows her mind and won’t take crap from anyone! Our favorite kind of woman! Now that you’ve delivered both bride and bridegroom, though, it’s time to make yourself scarce, so we can whisper naughty secrets to each other without any nasty boys around.” He promptly grinned at her and left with a cheery wave as she turned to Menglöð and said, “You go, girl! He’s obviously head over heels for you!” Then she reached out to hug her, then kissed her thoroughly, with more than a little tongue in play, before she released her and handed her a strikingly red gown with a bodice embroidered with gold and diamonds from the stack of alternates in her arms. “Here’s the one we thought would look best on you, but we have several others if you don’t like it. Larona made them, and she’s just a wonder! You’ll love being married to her, if you have any fashion sense at all! There’s dainties here as well, if you like them, but I see…” she said, looking at her appraisingly, “…that you like to go commando, which saves a lot of time when you’re in a rush. Has he had you up against a wall yet? It’s just delicious being screwed like that, surrendering to his manly strength, but riding him at the same time, controlling him, milking him, subduing him with your infinite feminine power as the kundalini energy rises through your spine and flowers into bliss!”

“Uh, no, not yet,” she said, more than slightly confused, “but it does sound fascinating. I’ve had very little experience with men at all. In fact, Phil’s the first man I’ve ever been with, so I’m afraid that I must seem terribly naïve to you and Rhea.”

“Don’t worry about it at all, Darling Menglöð, we’ll teach you everything we know, and we know lots about boys and men.” She held up a second gown against her body before shaking her head, and then tried a third, this one in traditional white with a plunging neckline and pearled bodice that she thought would look trés haute mode with her fabulous boobs. With a cocked eyebrow, she enquired….

…and was refused with eyes wide with shock at the very idea. “You can call me ‘Eir,’ if you like, It’s a little easier to say, and seems more intimate, since most people use my longer name.”

“Alright, Eir,” Rhea said, kissing her soundly, “What a strange coïncidence, though, since my name is yours said backwards! It’s like fate, or something. In any case, welcome to our growing family.” She indicated her swelling baby bump, “As you can see, we’re growing in more ways than just the one. Our Phil’s so virile that we sometimes think that he could make you pregnant just by shaking hands.”

“But aren’t you two jealous at all? We’ve just come back from an intimate ‘walk,’ during which he made love to me, and I made love to him, several times in fact. Most women would be jealous, I think.”

Selene and Rhea both took her hands and kissed her soundly. “Darling Eir, Sweetheart,” they said in unison, “our Phil’s a national treasure. It would be selfish of us to keep him just for ourselves, and what a waste it would be to deny other women their fair share of his love when there’s so much love and passion in him to go around.”

“It’s true, daughter,” Gefjon said, sorting through her own preparations, which included a regal gown in green tapestry with hoop skirts and a veil, a little anachronistic for her culture, but Larona had made it especially for her and she loved it. “Look how jealous I was over that turd I’d married, but he wasn’t half the man that Phil is, not even a tiny fraction, because he never loved any woman more than he loved his dog, much less himself, while Phil thinks only of others, as far as I can tell, and I ought to know. Every woman deserves to be loved like Phil loves, with absolute dedication, but very few actually get the opportunity. I don’t mind sharing him with any of my sister wives at all, much less you, because I know that he will never abandon any of us, even if I schemed to make him try, and you, of all women, would know that there’s no other woman  —in all modesty — who could possibly wield the sexual power that I can. Even with drugs and magic, I couldn’t do more than render him unconscious, but when he’d recovered from his stupor he was instantly himself again, inviolate and immovable, like a mountain that had been struck by a moth, despite my strategems. The whole sordid episode made me feel ashamed of myself, and as many of you know, I’m widely known for being utterly shameless.” Then she began to weep.

Rhea and Selene were instantly by her side with their arms around her, kissing her and smoothing her hair. “It’s okay, Sweetie. After so long without any real love worth having, a straight shot of Phil is like whiskey to an alcoholic, so you were undoubtedly desperate, and only acted out of panic. We’ve long ago forgiven you, and love you with all our hearts.”

She looked up at them and said tearfully, “Thank you both so very much, my darling girls. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve such love and happiness.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Dearest,” they said to her, “it’s a gift, not a reward for services rendered, and our Phil is not now, nor ever has been, the petty autocrat so many men seem desperately to want to be, but is our loving fiend and servant. He’s our shared lover, to be sure, but a lover we control.”

“That’s the way I felt about him almost instantly,” Eir said, realizing the truth of it as she slipped into the red gown she’d chosen whilst they talked. It was perfect, she thought, as she looked herself over in a handy looking glass. “I’d never been with any man, but Phil gave me not only his love, but actually enhanced my sense of autonomy and… self. It was something like riding a horse so finely attuned to my desires that we move almost as one through the worlds. It was as if I were piloting his body through the maze of my own conflicting emotions and desires until I made him bring me to a peak of pleasure I’d never known before, almost like masturbation, but a hundred times more satisfying, because it wasn’t masturbation, but an ingenious man dedicated to my pleasure, not his at all. I like to think that I gave him pleasure, but it was only what I gave him, and nothing at all that he took away from me. The whole experience astonished me, because I’d never known, or even heard of, any man — or woman — capable of anything of even half his… utter…” she struggled to find the right words, “…renunciation of selfishness and ego.”

“Exactly!” Selene exclaimed. “It’s like he’s so attentive to your slightest shift in mood or desire that he instinctively supplies your needs as if they were his own.”

“Yes!” Eir said in awe and wonder. “He instantly intuited my deepest heart’s desire and gave it to me with not the slightest hint of anything like calculation, but with honest love and nothing at all that was either false or base.”

Gefjon added, after a slight hesitation whilst she put on her shoes, “Whatever else he’s given you, my darling daughter, he’s also supplied a deeper need, the inmost desire of almost every woman’s heart: life itself, and an immortality beyond mere divinity.”

Eir glanced at her, at once aware of her implication. “I’m pregnant now,” she said, strangely pleased, although she’d never contemplated pregnancy before.

“You are,” her mother said with a shrewd glance at her daughter’s still-flat belly, ”and about time you made me a grandmother too.” She grinned in both pleasure and sympathy.

“Mother!”, she said with outrage, scandalized, as daughters always are, by the notion that her mother knows as much about sex as she does.

“Oh, it’s much worse than that, my darling daughter, since the very same man’s gone and knocked up the two of us, so they’ll be sisters as well as aunt and niece to each other. My head is spinning already!”

Eir looked at her with shrewd calculation. “For that matter, Mother dear, we’re sisters now, as well as mother and daughter, so we’ll need a whole new vocabulary just to keep track of our interlocking relationships and social rôles.”

“Oooh! a touch, a palpable touch!” Selene said laughing.

Rhea riposted instantly, “Are we really keeping score?”

Selene rolled her eyes while simultaneously arranging Eir’s hair in an attractive thick single braid that roped down her back and almost to the tops of her thighs. Then she added two ruby-encrusted combs that picked up the color of her gown. “No, of course not. If it’s true that we’re all sisters, it’s also true that we’re all each other’s wives, so you might easily say that we have the same obligation to care for each other as Phil does for us.”

“Or shareholders in a feminist coöperative,” Rhea said, “in which case we’re all members of the governing board.”

“Perhaps,” Eir said thoughtfully, “We’re more like explorers on an undiscovered island, and we’re creating our own new nation, freed from oppression by either Kings or Fatherlands, a place of our own in which only women rule.”

“Hear, hear!” Larona said, well over her anger, now that Phil’s temporary absence had been explained. “I’ll second that motion. We’re at a crossroads I think, where we have a choice between many paths before us, and the freedom to shape our own future, whether it be a mindless recapitulation of what’s happened before, or something entirely new, grounded in our present reality rather than the bad habits of a bunch of men long dead.”

“I myself,” Selene commented offhandedly, while selecting appropriate ornaments for Eir’s braid, “am awed by the multitasking power of women’s brains, since we seem to be fomenting a feminist revolution and making cogent plans for its implementation in the midst of mundane wedding preparations.”

Rhea paused in her own preparations to briefly comment, “You know well, Dear, that women’s brains are designed to handle many tasks, since the survival of our children — and our species as a whole — depends on our ability to go about our daily business while keeping an ear out for bears and marauding brigands, not to mention crying babies who need either feeding or changing, and instantly knowing which is which.”

“True,” she admitted. “Men tend to be more single-minded, which can be lovely when their focus is on you, but not so much when they’re watching a football game and would barely notice if their pants caught fire.”

All the women giggled at the image she’d conjured up, which seemed so perfectly apposite, although almost all of them had entirely different notions of what a football game actually was.

“I can hardly believe that this is all happening so fast! I just met Phil yesterday, and suddenly I’m getting married with a cast of thousands.”

“Well, that’s mostly Larona’s doing, because she decided to divorce her old husband and marry Phil, but there’s some arcane law in her Empire that requires an Emperor, although Larona herself holds all the actual political power.”

Larona took the time to offer a slightly more cogent explanation. “It’s the result of societal habits of thought that come down from the history of our people, the same archaic attitudes that require me to instantly change my name from D’Larona-Elvi, to indicate the theoretical position of my former husband as the ‘head’ of our family, to D’Larona-Cohn, to likewise honor Phil, when I have a perfectly serviceable family name of my own.” She shrugged. “It’s no big deal, really, because even that name has nothing to do with my mother, from whom my title and office actually descend, and Phil himself was just as willing to take my family name if it proved necessary — or make no changes at all — as I was to take his. In the end, we decided to follow ancient custom, so as to officially pretend that Phil was the real Emperor, and I was his ‘assistant,’ when in fact he’s just my paramour, while I hold the reins of power.”

“How does this affect our separate sphere’s of authority?” Gefjon asked, since she was a regent in her own right.

“As little as possible, I think. Once the Dark is finally defeated, I’ve already requested that Master Wizard Akcuanrut arrange to construct permanent portals between our three worlds, so we can come and go as easily as stepping into the next room. We’ve already ascertained that there are innate ‘time differentials’ between our worlds — although I can’t pretend to understand exactly why or how these operate, even though we’ve seen these effects quite recently, when Phil disappeared for what he thought of as an hour or so, but then came back after having somehow missed an entire day — so we’ll have to select one world — at least temporarily — as a central meeting place that causes the least disruption to our respective schedules. Phil, however, is very hopeful that he’ll be able to construct a ‘mechanism’ whereby these…slippages can be counteracted through what he calls ‘technology,’ so that the act of stepping through the portal carries one back to the very instant from which one left, no matter what’s transpired between those times, and no matter what the ‘differentials’ might be between our separate worlds. I’ll take his word on that, because I already know that he’s extremely clever, and if it can be done, he’ll manage it.” She smiled at that and said, “I do love a man who’s clever with his hands….”

…at which witticism all the women laughed in easy familiarity with the feeling.

“Waddaya wanna bet,” Rhea said to Eir, “that a month from now, heck, a week from now, you’ll look back on this day and think it was the best day you’ve ever had in your entire life?”

“Not much, I think, because I’m pretty sure already that I’d lose my stake. I truly believe that I’ve longed to meet you all, somehow, or someone like you, and it was Phil who made that possible, and has generously offered to share you all with me.”

Both Rhea and Selene laughed at that, then Selene said, “We think you’re pretty hot stuff yourself, Eir honey, but there are a few highly flexible rules that govern our informal ménage: While ‘private times’ like you just had with Phil are perfectly fine when warranted by circumstance or urgent predilection, as a general rule, we like to sleep together, because that way we know two things, that anyone we might be jealous of is enjoying a wonderful experience, and that there’s no favoritism developing. At the same time, we’re free to instantly demand a turn ourselves through mutual negotiation, so if watching another woman getting laid has turned you on — and you might be surprised how utterly randy watching your lovers make love can make you — you can easily say, ‘It’s my turn now,’ and the woman who just made you incredibly hot with her screams of ecstasy will now get equally hot whilst listening to yours, and then you can both have each other for dessert while Phil gets randy watching you, which is fabulously arousing on its own because almost every woman we know is a natural narcissist who can feel the rapture another woman feels just by looking at her face and listening to her moans of pleasure. We all wind up getting more great sex than you could possibly imagine — especially if you’ve ever listened to most married women complaining that ‘the thrill is gone,’ — and women, unlike men, never ‘peter out.’ Not that Phil has any trouble in that regard that I’ve ever actually seen, but there’s a first time for everything, and he seems to be collecting a lot more wives.”

“I think,” Rhea mused, “that it’s because we’re getting close to succeeding, and we’re recruiting more ‘vessels’ of burgeoning life as we go along, so the opposite of death is exactly what we are, the Dark Gods’ natural enemies and life’s fiercest partisans.”

“That’s an interesting observation, Rhea. There’s a curious paradox in this,” Gefjon added, “that my daughter and I are both embodiments of love — in different forms — but also intimately associated with death, because we’re the Goddesses who turn death on its head, who create new life in the midst of death, and turn the so-called cycle of life into practical immortality through the perpetual fecundity of human minds and bodies.”

“There’s a huge difference, though,” Eir responded, “between the natural cycle of life and death which is our domain — in which life slips relatively comfortably into death and then back again into glorious rebirth — and the vicious cruelty of the Fire Jötnar, whose perverted notion of death is overlaid with horrific torture, grim despair, and utter nihilism. Where we work through creative mortality to build our common future, they seek to destroy not only the future, but even the memories of the past.”

There was a long and uncomfortable silence before Rhea said brusquely, “On that happy note, why don’t we adjourn to the meadow outside? We have three weddings now to carry on with before we can set off properly to save the world, so we might as well get started.”

“Absolutely!” Larona said smiling. “Our Bridegroom’s already had his three brief honeymoons, and he’s managed to find some sort of time warp to hide in once, which worked very well to delay the responsibilities of high office for one more day. Goddess knows what contortions signing all those proclamations will put him through, though, much less his formal investiture as Emperor of Myriad. I do like that dashing ‘kilt’ outfit on him, though, since it shows off those muscular legs of his to their very best advantage.” She looked around the room. “What do you think, girls? Should we let him skip the traditional knee britches and bulging codpiece?”

Selene rolled her eyes toward the invisible sky, since they were still inside the pavilion, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Larona, but I think the padded prick thingie looks like a bawdy clown suit. I’m sure it has a long and distinguished history on your world, but I can’t guarantee that those of us from Earth won’t burst out laughing if he walks down the aisle with that grotesque thing bouncing along in front of his crotch.”

“I have my own misgivings about it,” she admitted, “since the last time I saw a similar ensemble it was being worn by my former husband, and the incongruity of a giant faux-erection on a man who couldn’t get it up if he had a string tied to his pecker was horribly depressing.”

Rhea touched her arm in sympathy. “Well then, I think it’s time for a new tradition! If what’s essentially a symbolic dildo can be a stand-in for true virility, surely the bold reality of a garment that allows a man to ‘whip it out’ in a heartbeat would be even better. The one’s mere braggadocio, while the other is more in the nature of an offer to demonstrate.”

“I haven’t actually known him for that long, but can he really do that? Perform on command, I mean.” she said, eyes wide.

“Oh, honey! He can do that and more! Didn’t you hear me asking Eir about whether he’d had her against a wall? Ask Gefjon about her last little ‘trip to the woods,’ if you know what I mean. He can do you hard and fast, or he can take his sweet slow time, anytime and anywhere, but it’s always guaranteed to be really, really great sex.”

“I’ve never been disappointed,” Selene chimed in, “although I was a tiny bit worried when we married Rhea. My fears were completely groundless, though, and I’ve never been happier. I’ve got my high school sweetheart and my best friend all in one package, and now the Goddess of love, an Angel, and the Empress of an entire world to make an even larger and more resiliant family. In our world, families have gotten smaller over time, and far less stable, succumbing to various forms of loss almost at random, so for the three of us, this is a return to something more like the human family as it existed for a million years before our modern ‘scientific’ civilization came along.”

“A million years?” Gefjon was puzzled. “Our world’s not nearly that old.”

“Nor ours that we know of,” Larona said, “but I’m persuaded by Phil, with the assent of Akcuanrut, that much more than this age can be proved on his world, and that humans came along well after entire populations of distinct animal groups had flourished and then died off. It’s a radical change from our own thinking, but Phil was able to point to a few odd rocks in the Imperial Archives which represented, he said, the ‘fossilized’ skeletons of marine creatures which no longer existed in our world. Through the use of magic, Akcuanrut himself was able to demonstrate that this was undoubtedly true. I’m not quite persuaded about the totality of Phil’s claims, but the existence of the ‘time differentials’ we’ve observed so recently convinces me that our worlds are very strange places in which almost anything might be possible.”

Some sort of business goes here, perhaps... Skip the wedding itself, since we’ve seen the same ceremony three times now, more or less. -->

When Phil walked out through the entrance to the pavilion, which had an embroidered awning staked out to make a shady transition between the great outdoors and the interior, he was surprised by the difference between the temperature of the interior, that under the awning, and the warmer outside air, now heated by what appeared almost to be the noonday sun. He hadn’t noticed it last night… or the night before last, when they’d moved in, and he’d been busy since, and distracted when Eir and he had sauntered in a short time before, but it was obvious now. ‘It must be some sort of magic,’ he thought to himself, and started picking at the threads of it with his mind. “Holy crap!” he almost yelped, as the twisted threads of the fabric almost caught his questing thought in a painful binding. ‘It’s a type of portal! a magical “heat exchanger” that drains excess heat from this world to the interstellar void!’ Suddenly, he felt a frisson of physical danger, since this ‘primitive’ technology could, if uncontrolled, pose a very real danger. Abandoning his inspection, he trotted off to find Akcuanrut.

He wasn’t difficult to find. He’d barely started searching for his distinctive cart, reasoning that his tent would be located somewhere near, when he saw it, and then the great man himself, who was standing outside his tent in a brand new set of clothes, and as he approached more closely, he was astonished to see that the portly old wizard had been metamorphosed into a somewhat lanky young man of about Phil’s age, as skinny as a rail. “Acky!” he exclaimed in surprise, before he remembered that Master Wizard Akcuanrut hated the ‘cutesy’ nickname his wives had given him.

The slim youth glared at him in anger. “Phillip Cohn! Where were you when I needed you!?”

“Sorry, Sir, but I’d fallen into a sort of time warp that Gefjon’s daughter Eir was kind enough to show me. I didn’t realize that time had slowed for me until I just recently discovered that an entire day had gone by in the space of what felt like an hour or two.”

“Do you see what’s been done to me!?”

“I do, Sir, and I admit that it’s a surprise, but it looks like you’ve been given a new lease on life.”

He sputtered in rage. “New lease! New lease! One of my own men-at-arms ordered me to fetch a pail of water for the horses just this morning, and actually threatened to cuff me when I didn’t move fast enough to suit him!”

“You set him straight, of course.” Phil tried not to smile.

The wizard scowled. “I did. I set his pants on fire.” He smiled before he added, “I put them out immediately, of course. The poor man can’t help being stupid.”

Phil smiled back at him. “I’m sure he’ll tell his fellows, so you shouldn’t have to endure the vicissitudes of boyhood in the lower classes in future.”

“Well, perhaps not,” he admitted, grudgingly, to be sure.

“How are you finding life with Hnoss and Gersemi? I’d imagine that they’d be pleased, at least.”

He blushed immediately. “Well… yes…. It has been a… a change….”

“I understand that our presence is required for the formal ceremonies this afternoon.”

He frowned, but not as fiercely as he had been, and answered, “Yes. I have to be there as a witness as well as a participant, I’m told.”

Phil tried not to grin, without much success. “By different women, I’d guess.”

This time, Akcuanrut managed a proper scowl. “Yes, the Queen’s two daughters, who seem to have taken over my life with the help and approval of Empress D’Larona-Cohn. It’s quite the shake-up in Court politics, and I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing or not, although it seems like progress, since her… dalliances… with paramours were bound to cause a scandal eventually.”

“I think it will be, in the long run,” he said, “but I have a question for you before we put on our fancy outfits and make our scheduled appearances. What do you know about the fabric used in the pavilion of the Empress herself. I notice that it’s not common.”

He was instantly dismissive. “It’s a folk art, and a minor magic indigenous to the nomads of the high deserts of the deep north, where it makes their tents more habitable during the hottest months of summer. It’s been used in the Imperial pavilions as a sort of affectation for hundreds of years that I know of, but why would anyone care? It’s very rarely warm enough in Myriad proper — at least in or around the City and the surrounding countryside — to truly require its use, so its primary benefit is the conspicuous luxury of using a fabric that costs half its weight in gold.”

“Have you ever inspected it closely?”

“No, why would I?”

“Because it’s actually a very sophisticated use of tiny portals woven into and through the cloth, and I’ll leave it to your fecund imagination to deduce the clear dangers inherent in the nasty stuff.”

Akcuanrut blanched and blurted out, “Portals!? Portals here?” he gathered up his staff and began running toward the pavilion.

“I thought he might be alarmed,” Phil said aloud as he ran after him, back toward the pavilion. He himself wasn’t quite so worried, at least partly because he was confident of his wives’ ability to handle any surprises, but also because, in his opinion, the devices would be difficult to subvert.

The wizard was shouting now, “Empress! Get out! Get out! Everybody out of the pavilion at once!” and he flourished his staff and began chanting as the four guards at the entrance looked up in surprise, then looked around wondering what they were supposed to do.

As Phil had surmised, his wives reacted instantly, and had everyone bundled out of the tent before the guards had quite figured out whether to help or salute. “What’s up, Phil?” Rhea asked, completely unflustered as he ran up to where they stood, a good distance away from the now-empty pavilion. Akcuanrut followed close behind. The wizard might be younger, but he didn’t have Phil’s advantage of having systematically strengthened his body and honed his running speed and agility since childhood, always focused on sports as his personal key to future success.

The wizard was breathing heavily when he ran up behind Phil, but managed to say, “Danger, from the fabric used in the pavilion!” before he had to stop and breathe deeply.

Phil took up the narrative, “There is a danger, but I’m not sure that it’s imminent. I discovered just a few minutes ago that the fabric used in the pavilion itself and its awning has a large number of very tiny portals woven into its fabric. They appear to be used to ‘leech’ heat from their surroundings and radiate it into extra-solar space, which of course makes the fabric into a perpetual heat sink which cools the surrounding air.”

The wizard interrupted, “That’s what it’s been used as for hundreds of years that I know of, although I don’t know exactly when they were introduced. As Phil said, they have what seems to be an innocuous use, but we now know that any portal can be enlarged, so there’s a clear danger to the person of the Empress if they’re anywhere nearby.”

“Exactly,” Phil said. “Akcuanrut told me that this is a ‘folk art’ that originated among the nomads of the northern desserts, but of course that’s centaur country, so I imagine that the true origins are somewhat further back in time. So far, it seems unlikely that our enemies have access to portal technology with quite that versatility, to judge from our recent experiences with them, but things do change in any war, because everyone is desperate to survive their encounters with the enemy, so devotes enormous wealth and resources to research and spying.”

“And these tiny portals,” the wizard interrupted, “could be easily subverted for constructing nearly-undetectable listening posts, and then transformed, with much more effort, into sally ports from which to launch surprise assaults.”

“True,” Phil conceded, “but there’s another danger; since they currently open into interstellar space, merely enlarging them could open a hole directly into an enormous vacuum. Although it would take a very long time for the entire atmosphere to be vented into the void, they’d probably cause local low pressure cells that could feed enormous storms and make life very difficult for anyone within many miles who wasn’t sucked immediately through the holes.”

“Like flushing a toilet,” Selene said, which of course no one present understood except for Phil and Rhea.

“And I think how the dwarves who attacked you on that mountain trail sprang their trap,” Phil said. “There was no actual mechanism left behind, so I believe they simply opened a portal that gobbled up the intervening rock, allowing you to fall into their hands.”

“But why didn’t they drop us right into their stronghold in Svartálfheimr?” Rhea insisted. “They could have brought more troops to bear on us if we’d been transported out of those stupid tunnels of theirs entirely. As it was, their own dead bodies formed a wonderful defensive fortress for us, and they couldn’t really flank our position effectively, and of course once you dropped down your little flashlight so we could see properly, they were doomed, even without the wizard’s spectacular waterfall.”

Phil smiled at the remembrance of that day, very glad to have been of service to his lady loves. “Cowardice? Lack of fine control? Perhaps even a cautious wisdom? It’s certain that if they’d left their portal behind, even for an instant, Akcuanrut and I could have held it open, easily brought our entire force to bear upon them, and then had a permanent entry into their supposed fortress which they couldn’t close, even if they’d tried.”

“So, Master Wizards,” said the Empress in her official persona, “what’s your official advice for me?”

“I believe,” Phil said, “that Akcuanrut and I should spend an hour or two figuring out how to close down many thousands of portals in wholesale quantities, rather than one at a time, and then we should continue with the official wedding ceremonies, which ought to leave you all plenty of time for your necessary preparations, even with this little interruption.”

She looked toward Akcuanrut and asked, “Do you agree?”

“I do. On sober reflection, now that any immediate danger has been safely contained, I think an hour might be enough, although two will allow a bit of time for in-depth exploration of this new technique.”

“Let it be so, then. Can we have servants in to remove our clothing and other personal items from the pavilion?”

“Yes, with nearly perfect safety,” Phil said. “Akcuanrut was very much concerned about even the remote possibility of danger to your person, but I believe he may have been unduly alarmed, although of course he has much longer experience in statecraft than I do. Then too, I’m taking into account the overall danger inherent in your being part of an armed expedition against our existential enemy, whose plans to kill us all are well-developed, then weighing that against the relative unlikelihood of them discovering a brand new avenue of assault which seems vastly superior to anything they’ve demonstrated heretofore. On the other hand, I have a hunch that we may well be able to fashion this ‘new’ discovery of an ancient centaur technology into a potent new weapon against the Dark.”

Larona nodded her assent, her visage grim, then said, “That’s why I accompanied our forces. There comes a time when Emperors must take the field, because the hazard of our very lives is the coin with which empires are purchased. When my beloved subjects are in danger, it’s both my duty and my noble privilege to place my body between my people and the cruel suffering of war.”

Closing the many almost infinitesimal portals was a little more difficult than they’d imagined, but the effort paid off handsomely, since they also discovered how to create them in large numbers at will, all of which had the very properties that Akcuanrut had seen as dangers. As Phil had discovered almost immediately, they could be created in pairs, each of which maintained a durable connection to its mate, which is how, they imagined, the centaurs had first managed to use them as radiative heat sinks, although they were still at a loss as to how half of those original pairs had been hurled into space, but they were still there, and available for their own use, should they be needed, since they had the remaining closed portals that matched them ready to hand in the form of very many yards of the fabric used in the pavilion and awning.

Closing that connection, on the other hand, was a difficult task, since the closed portal had to retain its linkage to its twin somewhere out in the void without being open to it. It took three hours, plus a bit, and stretched the limits of everyone’s patience, since the guests were milling around, as guests do, eating and drinking, then drinking and eating, and chatting. Their company grew quite garrulous.

“Are we ready?” the Empress said when they finally reported their success.

“Except for changing our clothes, yes,” Phil reported, a little tired, and still game.

She smiled, then said, “Hold very still!” and conjured identical outfits directly on their bodies, leaving Phil, at least, mystified over what had become of their old outfits.

“Uhmm…. Larona, Sweetie, what happened to my old sporran?”

“That purse thing? I replaced it with the new version, of course. It was getting a little dingy, and it didn’t match the shade of your new ‘plaid,’ I think you called it.”

“Yes, well….” he was checking the contents of the new sporran, and was visibly relieved to discover that all his stuff was still there, if rather more neatly arranged. “It’s an interesting color scheme. However did you manage it?”

“It’s just a lighter shade of Eir’s gown, and mine, since I thought it would be lovely if you matched. Do you like it?”

Phil smiled manfully and said, “It’s perfect, and certainly unique, since I’ve never seen a pink plaid before. Please believe me, I’m honored by your kind attentions.”

“Oh, good,” she said smiling, “Eir had said that your old one was far too short for practicality, so I added a little length, and here come the girls.”

“Phil!” Selene cooed, smiling, “Great new look! It does wonders for your hair and eyes! The whole outfit just pops, as they say, and really pulls the whole wedding party theme together.”

“Thank you, Selene,” he said with quiet dignity.

“I like it too, Phil,” Eir said, “Having the stripes on the diagonal is much less formal, as befits a day of celebration and joy.”

“Thank you, Eir,” he said with equal dignity. “I’m at your service.”

Rhea, on the other hand, just laughed out loud, which briefly mystified everyone except Selene and Phil. She very wisely didn’t explain her outburst, not then nor ever, which was unusual for her. “Shall we be off, then?” she said. “The wedding feat… pardon, the wedding feast, awaits!”

And off they went, in very good order.

The camp had been altered slightly, since the last time he’d been this way. Where the old arrangement had a clear lane flanked by tents leading straight toward the pavilion, plus a mess tent for the soldiers set well off to one side, the new arrangement had what amounted to a central meadow with the pavilion at the head of it, then what could only be described as a stage raised almost seven feet high, with wide stairs on either side placed at the other end, with rough tables and serving counters spread across the slightly muddy sward.

Gefjon was already standing on the stage, looking regal in an elaborate gown fashioned from some sort of green tapestry, with wide hoop skirts and a shimmery veil, none of which had Phil ever seen before. It was very attractive, despite looking a bit like the outfit he’d seen the Queen of the Kingdom of the East wear at a Society for Creative Anachronism shindig one summer during his Junior year at school, not that he’d been all that interested at the time, since he was already focused on his physics studies and sports. In retrospect, he regretted not paying more attention, since they’d seemed to have medieval technology down pat, although he had noticed that the Queen of the East had also worn wireless stereo earpieces in her ears back then, and what looked like the very top of a smartphone nestled discreetly in her décolletage.

Gefjon, on the other hand, was wearing gold and emerald earrings — a pair he’d made for her, he was very pleased to see — a rather gaudy gold necklace which he presumed was Brisingamen, and their present surroundings were medieval, with no smartphones or car keys either hidden away or tossed negligently on a table.

Larona and Eir stood beside her, one on either side, and their gowns, while not as elaborate as that of Gefjon, were obviously designed to complement hers, both in a striking bright red, Eir’s with a bodice intricately embroidered with gold and diamonds, while Larona’s was similarly decorated with emeralds, what looked like blue sapphires, and some sort of symbolic pectoral in beaded pearls both black and white. He could easily see that his own outfit was perfectly matched to those of his brides, or at least fit into the overall color scheme, because the gowns of Hnoss and Gersemi, who were also marching along with them, were also red, and also distinguished by unique decorative elements which Phil had not the vocabulary to fully explain, although he was quite sure that either Rhea or Selene could do so in detail and with exactitude, featuring style references to eras in both ancient and recent history on Earth. He’d heard them do it, and it was an almost constant source of surprise and bemusement. He’d heard them discussing ‘dirndls’ once, and still had not the slightest idea what a dirndl was, much less how they differed from anything else, or what similarities allowed one to treat them as a distinguishable class of logical predicates.

There were three canopies erected on the stage as well, so he instantly presumed that he was going to be going through the ceremonies of ketubah, kiddushin and nissuin with Gefjon again, as well as with the Empress Larona and Eir. That made sense, since they hadn’t had a ketubah ready for their first hasty marriage before they’d left her fantastic ship behind, and it was probably important for dynastic reasons to have a wider public available to witness the ceremony. The others would be for Larona and Eir, since many brides liked to save their individual wedding canopies, because the cloth of the chuppah was often embroidered and decorated by friends of the bride and groom, and the totality of it, including the four poles that held it up, symbolically represented both their first home and their mutual intention to generously extend the hospitality of their family to all, because the wedding canopy is always open on every side. He knew for a fact that both Selene and Rhea had their chuppahs saved back on Earth, assuming that there would still be an Earth to go back to at the end of all this.

As he approached the stage, the sheer weight of the many responsibilities he was undertaking almost overwhelmed him, the stage itself seemed almost a scaffold, the setting both of an ancient ceremony celebrating joy and burgeoning life, and the metaphorical ‘sticking point’ of life’s desperate struggle to survive the many forms of death that beset it on every side. In one sense, he was taking on the personal responsibility to care and provide for three individual women, but in the other, he was taking on the burden of responsibility for every life there was, all the people looking on, the people who didn’t even know that this small pageant was going on, and those for whom the future was simply vague possibilities. This moment, this very instant, mattered just as much to him as if he were walking up not to be married, but to face the hangman’s noose. ‘It matters!’ he thought. ‘Everything matters! No one is a mere spectator! We all of us are standing on one foot, precariously balanced between stepping off into the future, and life, or stepping through the trap, and into death.’

He looked around him, at the women who accompanied him toward the stage, Larona, a woman who’d lived a life of incredible luxury, surrounded by servants to fulfil her every whim, yet had abandoned that life in a heartbeat, was facing death even as she approached her formal wedding, for the sake of her people and perhaps her own pride; and then Gefjon, a Goddess with incredible powers, the divine ruler of an entire ‘world,’ a woman who might well survive the coming struggle if she simply stood aside and waited to see what happened, but had rather joined Larona on her path toward the dangerous front lines, where true death was always a possibility, even for a Goddess; and then Eir, the Guide between life and death, the final judge, no stranger to battle, a witness to individual courage — and cowardice — on a scale he could scarcely comprehend, and yet she’d cast her lot with all the rest, humans, even birds and trees, life itself. He felt humbled by them all, profoundly unworthy, even as they carried his children, his own hope for the future — whatever happened to him — sheltered deep within their bodies, a level of personal responsibility that he could barely comprehend. Larona had talked about her obligation to place her body between her people and the cruel suffering of war, but every woman since the human race began did exactly the same thing with every pregnancy, placing her body and her life between her child and any harm. In human terms, this level of devotion was a commonplace of daily life, either heroic and typically unacknowledged, or part of the bargain we all made when we were born, to take the good with the bad, and to create the future through the limitations and powers inherent in one’s own self.

“I like the outfit, Phil,” Rhea whispered as they approached the stage. “It’s very slimming, and it makes you look taller somehow.”

He glanced down at his new kilt, which looked rather more like a woman’s maxi-skirt in this new incarnation. “It is rather nice, isn’t it?” he said, also whispering. “Eir was right; it’s a lot warmer than my old one. Maybe I should adopt this as my new look, as long as we’re at war, since it’s always important to look one’s best.”

She frowned slightly in his direction. “It’s not going to be any fun teasing you, Phil, if you’re going to be so darned nice about everything.”

“What? I should be rude to Larona, who made it for me with the best of intentions, or Eir, who thoughtfully suggested the new length because it seemed to her more practical? Or should I be irritated with you and Selene, who didn’t bother to inform either of them of the subtle distinctions between the styles normally worn on Earth by men and women? How many bridegrooms back on Earth have wound up in lavender tuxedos because they fit into an overall color scheme? I’m lucky that it’s only pink, because it could easily have included delicate lace ruffles, or the grotesque codpiece that I was almost saddled with, as I understand it. In fact, I blame no one, and am grateful for every kindness, and also every opportunity to amuse my cheeky wives.” He grinned at her. “If you’d like to see me dance en pointe in a frothy pink tutu and body stocking, or put on whiteface and perform an ‘invisible box’ mime routine, just let me know, why don’t you? I always aim to please, and I’m sure that it would be good exercise.

“Oh, no!” cried Selene very, very quietly. “Not the invisible box! Anything, anything but that! I’ll talk, I swear I’ll talk! What do you want to know?”

Eir Halló, tall blonde woman in a strikingly red gown with a bodice embroidered with gold and diamonds

Gefjon regal gown in green tapestry with hoop skirts and a veil

Larona a red gown in exactly Eir’s shade, but with a bodice covered with at least a thousand emeralds and a pectoral of pearls.

-->

“Me?” he said, still whispering, “Not much, just what did I ever do to deserve you two in my life.”

Both Selene and Rhea smiled broadly. “Oh, that’s no secret, Dearest,” they whispered in chorus, “It’s because you’ve been a very good boy, and that warrants a little treat from time to time.”

“Well, then,” he said, “I’m satisfied.”

“We are too,” Selene said. “Believe me.”

Akcuanrut made the first speech, introducing Queen Gefjon, in whose world they were guests, praising her hospitality, and explaining that they were here to celebrate her marriage to Phil, a member of the Imperial College of Wizards in Myriad, and a man whose origins lay in yet another world, a place called ‘Earth,’ where many wonders existed, and so three worlds would be brought together. He went on at some length, because the wizard was a loquacious man of words, but at length he yielded his place to Phil, who had a few words of his own to say.

“In the journey,” he said, “which brought me to this place and time, I’ve learned many things, not least being that many things I thought were only fantasy are very real. In my world, my people have a sort of law which requires men to marry and support at least one wife, a law which I never really understood until just a few moments ago. I thought it odd, perhaps unfair, that women had no similar obligation, but then I realized that I’d been stupid. Women, I think, have an inherent stake in the future, because only they can bring new life into the world. The laws of this world recognize this by defining the life of a woman as being worth three times that of a man, because a man has no similar commitment to the future, nor extraordinary value to the larger community, unless he chooses to do so.”

“Our law requires a man to choose, to cast his lot with those who create the world anew, who carry babies, nurture children, and build families so that we all survive.”

“This woman,” he indicated Gefjon, “the Queen and sovereign of this world, is such a woman, and this woman, her daughter, with powers so far beyond me that I’m awed, in her own right exercises sovereign power within her personal sphere of authority, as does the Empress Larona standing by me, yet each of them have freely chosen to accompany me on this quest, placing their own bodies between their loved ones and the desolation of war, choosing life, protecting life, nurturing life within their own bodies, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

“These women also here beside me,” he indicated Rhea and Selene, have freely chosen to accompany me on life’s journey, to create our small portion of the human family, and to serve life. I choose to cast my lot with them, to be a man within the context of my people, and pledge to do my part to help reconstitute and preserve the worlds, to protect them from any harm, to serve them with my body and my life, a sacred duty which the ceremonies you’re about to witness symbolize. So here I pledge also my friendship to all my wives’ extended families,” here he indicated especially Vili and Vé, who’d shown up with a small retinue of servants and armed supporters, but who seemed content to enjoy the general hospitality, and who both promptly raised their ample horns of ale in a toast to signify their benevolence and general bonhomie with friendly smiles. No matter what or exactly how, they had a connection to his larger family that he couldn’t simply ignore, and they all of them would just have to get along with each other, regardless of any discomfort or resentment they might ordinarily have felt.

Akcuanrut cleared his throat, now that Phil seemed to have finished his heartfelt outpouring of sentiment, and said, “I thought, to save time, we might sign all these documents at once, since no one but us will be able to see or really understand what’s going on.”

That sounded like a good idea to Phil, so he promptly signed all three ketubot, then stood back while his new wives signed their own marriage contracts, and then Akcuanrut and a few more prominent witnesses, including Eiður Goðrúnarson — the Lögmaður, signed them all as well. Although he couldn’t arrange for Jewish witnesses perforce, he did the best he could, and the local Reform Rabbi back home had been perfectly happy with the ketubot of Selene and Rhea — if a little bemused until he’d explained that they weren’t actually on Earth at the time, which intrigued her even more than the magically-protected parchment on which they were written, and the glowing sigil of Akcuanrut — although of course she couldn’t speak for the Orthodox or Conservative communities.

Phil hadn’t cared, since they were living in America at the time, and the Orthodox Rabbinate had neither impact on his life nor weight in his mind, because the principle of consecration they depended upon preceded the modern Rabbinates of any particular movement by a thousand years or more. Absent a functional Temple and a Kohen Gadol, the LOR had no more weight in any possible dispute than would the Man in the Moon.

Their actual vows went very well, and proved popular with their audience, who shouted and clapped during the more flamboyant theatrical portions of the services, especially when Phillip and his new wives made their conspicuous exit to a private space — the pavilion, in fact — which sparked uproarious laughter, loud comments on the groom’s virility, and offers to assist if he had any difficulties. There was a smallish brawl at the table of Vili and Vé, but it had been expected, and there were enough disinterested men-at-arms handy to break it up with no fatalities, nor even hard feelings, as far as anyone could tell, because they were all singing what appeared to be bawdy songs together within a very few minutes, proposing toasts, and eventually fell asleep on their benches.

When Phil finally noticed, after he and his new wives had emerged from their symbolic cohabitation, he commented favorably on how well they’d behaved, and how surprised he’d been.

“You needn’t have worried,” Gefjon told him carelessly. “I had Rhea and Selene watching out for them, and of course I’d also drugged their beer…,” at which revelation all his wives had laughed.

Later that evening, the party was winding down and people were either going home to either tents or nearby halls or arranging cloaks and spare clothes to bed down on benches, as had Vili and Vé much earlier, when a small delegation of women walked up, a dozen of Selene’s many twins. “Could we have a word with you?” they said to the wedding party in general, but they were pointedly looking at Phil.

“Of course,” he said, blinking in surprise, since they generally kept to themselves, having an intimate camaraderie and sororal relationship between them that tolerated few intrusions.

“We were all very moved by your speech,” one said. “I was Bluebell, one of the first you saved, and I’ve gotten quite used to my new body, although it was something of a shock to wake up from my deathly stupor so much shorter, and pregnant besides.”

“I imagine it must have been,” Phil said sympathetically, “but we couldn’t stand by and let you either suffer in the spell imposed upon you by the Heart of Virtue or die, since to do that we would have had to deliberately kill you.”

“Don’t get us wrong!” she said fiercely, “We’re not at all complaining about that! Far from it! All of us are very glad to be alive, but we’re all of us facing our lying in without the support and love you’ve publicly shown and proclaimed for your other wives. Since we’re all having your babies, we thought that we should be able to have some of the fun stuff that usually precedes pregnancy and birth. We simply want our fair share.”

There was a long silence before Phil managed to say, “Uhm….”

…and the five wives arrayed behind him all began to giggle, then to laugh in hysterical amusement.

“Oh, Phil!” one said, he couldn’t tell which, because his head was spinning, and his vision growing dim around the edges, and then the grassy meadow was rushing toward his face.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved