The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Thirty-Three Into the West

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

Plus ça change,
plus c’est la même chose.

The more things change,
the more they stay the same.

 — Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Les Guêpes, January 1849

 

 

“So, Phil, should we call you Phyllis now?” Rhea was more-or-less reconciled to her husband’s new form after two nights of becoming ‘better acquainted,’ and they were lounging on their bed in the pavilion with their usual ever-changing cast of fellow wives, except that Larona, Gefjon, and Eir were off somewhere, taking care of affairs of state that held no interest for anyone else.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” she said, “but it’s probably appropriate since, in Greek legend, Phyllis died for love. Philippa sounds like I might be my own grandmother, so I’d have to veto that particular variation on my name. ‘Phil,’ or ‘Phyl’ with a ‘Y,’ makes a perfectly nice nickname for Phyllis, though, so it’s really up to all of you. I’m easy. Whatever you feel comfortable with is fine by me.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so comfortable with yourself, though,” said Selene.

“Well, I’ve had plenty of time to get used to things, since I was trapped inside the Sun for more than fifteen years, I think, through several sunspot cycles, I know. It may have been longer, since my brain wasn’t working properly for quite a while.”

“It took Eir Menglöð that long to find you?” Rhea was surprised, though why, she didn’t know, since she shouldn’t have been able to do it at all.

She shook her head. “She didn’t find me at all; I found myself. In fact, I don’t think that Eir could have found me, since my consciousness was very quickly diluted and expanded to fill the entire volume of the Sun. It just took me a while to figure out how to get off the merry-go-round.”

“Merry-go-round?” Selene asked.

She nodded. “My thoughts kept getting torn apart and scattered by magnetic currents within the Sun,” she explained, “especially during periods of intense solar activity, but it was a constant problem, more or less. I finally broke free during a solar minimum, when the pace of these disruptions slowed and left me just enough free time to think things through. I still had to choose my moments carefully, though.” She grinned with her characteristic cheery expression, but a little softer, perhaps more wise. “As a blonde, with a brain composed entirely of ionised gas, I suppose,” she said laughing, “that I was the ultimate ‘airhead.’ ” Then she laughed loudly, with her familiar ability to make a merry joke at her own expense as both Rhea and Selene rolled their eyes. Whatever else Phyl was, she was still a bit of a wildcard and a natural clown.

“It’s just so weird,” Rhea said, “talking to you like this, because I know that you’re my husband, but it also feels like I’m talking to a best girlfriend that I’ve known forever.”

She smiled again, then reached out and took her hand. “It’s because, I think, that I came into being with a ‘backstory,’ just like you two. I remember being Phil, of course, but with a curious sort of detachment and unreality, and I also remember every minute detail of my life as a young girl, playing with my dolls, long and intimate talks with my mother, becoming a young woman, dating — not much of that, of course, since arranged marriages were the fashion then — and finally getting married; I have two children, you know, a girl, Bil, and a boy, Hjúki, as well as a sister and a brother.”

“You’re married to a man!?” Selene exclaimed, both shocked and disappointed.

“Well,” she said, “that’s the usual manner in which one becomes pregnant and has children, isn’t it? Or have things changed so much from when I was a young girl? His name was Glenr, or Glaur, depending on whatever rôle he was playing at the time, and he was a Vane, so of course he didn’t stick around for long. I have no idea where he is these days, so you needn’t worry about him showing up to claim his ‘conjugal rights’ at any time in the near future. I never liked him all that much in any case, since he was a bit of a pig, although of course he was a Vane, and so awfully good in the sack.” She rolled her eyes expressively and grinned again, which was either cute or scandalous, Rhea couldn’t quite decide which.

Phyl picked up on her uncertainty immediately, of course. “Oh, come on, Rhea! You and Selene both had boyfriends before me, didn’t you? And girlfriends too. Did I ever sulk about it?”

She blushed, since she hadn’t ever known that Phil had ever realized this, but then remembered that she wasn’t exactly ‘Phil,’ but rather ‘Phyl,’ and much more sensitive to nuance and body language. “No, you’re right, of course. It’s just taking a little time to get used to the new you.”

“Sweetheart, Sweetie, my darling girls, I’m still the old me inside here too, and I still love you both as much as — or perhaps even more than — I did before, because our hearts truly beat as one now. It’s complicated, I know, but when have our lives together ever been simple?”

Rhea rolled her eyes and said, “Never, of course.”

“And you’ll have to admit that I’ll be a much better Lamaze partner now, since I’ve had two children of my own, and know exactly how it feels and what you’ll be going through.”

Rhea made a face and shook her head. “This is a totally weird conversation again, you know.”

She smiled impishly. “Of course. I’ve always liked surprises, and there’s no better surprise than vicarious déjà vu.”

Selene interrupted to ask, “Where are your children now, though? Do they still live at home?”

“Oh, no. They’re long grown up,” she said, “and out on their own. They usually hang out with my brother Máni, the Moon God, because the Moon is a much more restful place than is the Sun. We can visit them, if you like, some day soon, since I’d love to have you meet them. Now that I’m free of the Sun, though, I don’t plan on going back to visit anytime soon, although at least I do know how to escape, which is a comfort.”

“I still don’t understand exactly how you survived, though, Phyl,” Rhea said. “I’m pretty sure that no one else could possibly have done so.”

“It was all down to Eir Menglöð, of course. When she put me up to her uncle as the interim sovereign of Álfheimr, she had her brother promote all of us into the ranks of the Ljósálfar, either angels or Gods, depending on how you look at it. When my Ljósálfr ‘soul’ was engulfed by the Sun, I took on the Sun’s attributes and connotations in this culture, among which was my present form and history. If we’d been in ancient Greece, that history would have incorporated a male Sun God, I suppose, but that’s not where we were, so here I am as you see me now, the inevitable product of the local Zeitgeist, and I can’t say as how I’m at all disappointed.”

“But aren’t you angry about having your manhood stolen from you?” Selene asked.

“No, why would I be?” She seemed surprised that anyone could possibly think that. “We had a conversation about this same issue long ago, as I recall, in which I said that I believed that we had our bodies on loan, and that someday we might want to rejuvenate our lives and love by taking the Jekyll formula again, and thereby swapping sexes. We had a big laugh about it, didn’t we? We joked about imagining me as the wife to you two brothers, and you both promised to ‘keep me very busy.’ Well, here I am, ready and willing, perhaps even eager, because I know exactly how sweet our love could be, no matter what forms you choose for yourselves in the long years ahead of us. As an immortal Goddess, I have the impression that I’m not perfectly free to change my essential nature, but you’re both still free, I think, to do as you please, if you’d prefer a heterosexual marriage, although of course we’d have to wait until you come to term and give birth to our children before we could really contemplate any drastic changes, and even then you might consider waiting until the children are grown. There are few things more fulfilling than nursing your babies, then helping them through their toddler years, guiding them through their childhoods, and finally seeing them happily married with children of their own. I’d be reluctant to give up a single minute of my own experience of motherhood, I know, although I have to admit that I’ve never really known what fatherhood is like, so my judgement in this may not be perfectly dispassionate. My own experience as a mom was a blessing beyond compare, though, and was and is a source of continuing joy, so I may be prejudiced by my past intimate involvement on the maternal side of things.” Here she grinned again. “The sex was pretty good as well. I’m not at all sure that I’d be willing to give that up for any length of time either, especially after fifteen years or so of enforced celibacy, but of course that’s just me. Your own mileage may vary.”

Selene stared into her eyes, trying to figure something out. “Would you want to have sex with men?”

She grinned. “I wouldn’t mind, of course, but we’d have to work out some arrangement to ensure that we were all happy with the details of our intimate lives. Just knowing that you’re both pregnant, with twins no less, is making me feel a little broody in sympathy, and you yourself might not want to stop at two, so I think that we should keep our options open. In a very long life, there should be ample room for a lot of detours and bypaths, I think, and I know that I wouldn’t stand in the way of either of you if you wanted another child or two.” She smiled again. “It’s not as if I could possibly be jealous of any man; no more than I’d be jealous of someone who owned a lovely screwdriver. Screwdrivers are a dime a dozen, and very handy on the odd occasion, but I’d hate to have to lug one around all the time on the off chance that I might want to have something or another screwed by one.” She winked at the two of them lasciviously. “You know that they say, don’t you? ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd, but four makes a perfect vice ring.’ Of course, we have rather a large number of wives on hand, so the possibilities for interesting combinations are really almost endless.”

“Dang! Phyl, you are a dirty girl!” they both said in chorus.

“Yeah, well,” she said, “just you try going without any sex at all for fifteen years or so in the craziest sensory deprivation tank that you could ever imagine and see how you feel after the ordeal. I was never meant to be a nun, so by the time I got out of stir, I would have gladly fucked a camel! Hell, I didn’t even have hands, much less a physical body, so being reïncarnated in the incredibly beautiful and responsive body you see before you and finally finding my way back to you is like dancing in the rain after fifteen years in the arid Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Sahara desert, like first tasting chocolate after decades of starvation, like falling in love again, for the very first time. You’re both so incredibly beautiful, the scent of you so exotic, your touch so delightful, that I could easily spend the next twenty years just tracing the well-remembered, longed-for, surfaces and intimate depths of your bodies, touching you, tasting you, smelling you, plunging back into the sweet fecundity of your precious bodies, of life, immersing myself in the intimate carnality of sexual desire, of love, of hunger, and of orgasmic ecstasy.” She laughed aloud in exquisite delight. “Just the idea of touching your skin with my fingertips fills my heart with joy. Do I want another child? Damned straight I want a child in my womb again! I’d love to have you put it there, or be there when it’s done. I want to be filled with precious life, to fill the world with life from my body! Sweet life! Delicious life! Warm and breathing life! Life more infinitely precious than all the dead gold and jewels there are in all the worlds!” Her voice had risen to a ecstatic cry of exultation by the time she finished speaking, and she sealed her joyful proclamation with very many kisses, both deep and small.

Selene laughed in pure rapture. “Oh, Phyl, my darling Phyl, you always were the master of subtle understatement.”

She smiled and said modestly, slyly, “It’s a gift.”

“How are we going to handle the issue of Myriad and the Imperial succession, Phyl?” Rhea had asked the question, but it had been in all their thoughts for several days while their army and the loyal Dvergar who’d accompanied King Alvís cleared out the buried citadel of the rebel Dwarves as a start on their new home.

Larona herself was fairly happy with Phyl as she was, but when she got back down from the mountains to her regular business as the Empress of Myriad, people would notice if the mandatory male went missing for any length of time.

Eir Menglöð immediately replied, “I don’t think that it will be any problem at all, since Phil and Larona had a long honeymoon outside the normal timestream. If we swap out Larona for her time-shifted ‘twin’ at any crucial moment, we can have the old Phil impregnate her if she wants more children, and the rest is just a bit of legerdemain, teaching Phyl how to alter her appearance, which really isn’t any trick at all. Even that dolt Þórr was able to transform himself into a convincing replica of my mother, enough to convince the Jötunn Þrymr that he was a she and a suitable marriage partner. In fact, the lovely Þorgerðr could have gone blushing to her marriage bed and Þrymr wouldn’t have been any the wiser, since the disguises of the Æsir and the Vanes leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. Loki managed, if you’ll recall, to bear my lovely Sleipnir when ‘disguised’ as a mare, which was a neater trick than merely holding court from time to time — or issuing solemn public proclamations — and Loki was only a Jötunn, a rather inferior grade of supernatural beings.”

“But if that’s the case,” Selene asked reasonably, “why couldn’t Phyl simply knock her up directly, without fooling around with slipping in and out of Vanaheimr at crucial moments.”

“No trouble at all,” she said, surprised, “except that I’d understood that Phyllis had no desire to function as a man again, and I’d certainly never force her to, nor imply that it was necessary. The only limitation would be that if she wants to have another child — as she’s clearly said she might — she’d be ‘stuck’ in woman’s form throughout her pregnancy until she was delivered of her child, and for as long as she continued to nurse her baby. Loki, for example, was out of circulation for the best part of two years while she was in heat, then pregnant, until she came to foaling and then nursing my darling Sleipnir, at least until he could take up solid food. I don’t imagine that Loki was happy about it, but those who dance the piper’s tune must pay the piper’s fee, as we say. As far as I’m concerned, becoming a mother for my Sleipnir was the best and noblest thing that Loki ever did, and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for him, despite his many faults.

“I’m sorry then, Eir, that he perished by my hand,” Phyl assured her. “I had no idea that you cared for him.”

“Oh, please!” she said, amused. “He was a wicked, evil man. His only good moments came when he was a mare, which was only a couple of years out of a long and nasty life. I only said that I had a certain measure of sentimental attachment to him as the natural dam of my horse Sleipnir, not that he was my dearest sister, or anything even close. I’m the Chooser of the Slain, you know, and well-accustomed to judging souls and assigning them to their proper fates. Loki’s soul is numbered amongst the vile Dökkálfar, the Dark Elves in Hel, where I’m sure it remains, despite the absence of the Witch Queen, Sinmœra. Some other Dark Power will arise to take her place eventually, perhaps Loki, since she’s had ample experience as a female and is nasty enough to hold the position against her rivals. Perhaps she’d make a better Queen than the old one, perhaps not. I shan’t lose any sleep over it, either way.”

Phyllis was laughing helplessly, temporarily disguised as Phil. “I can’t help it,” she managed to gasp out, “that thing!” she pointed at it as if it had been especially imported from Mars, “is just so ridiculous! The way it flops about is just too funny for words! And how in all the worlds did I ever manage to walk with those other things drooping from my quim?”

The experiments in disguise, even with Eir’s assistance and advice, weren’t going terribly well. Phyl was having trouble with the actuality of Eir’s scheme to disguise her, although she’d picked up the basics with ease.

Phyl’s experiences in sensory deprivation had evidently broken the link between her homunculus — her own internal mental image of her body — and her physical form so drastically that she couldn’t take her disguise seriously at all, and kept breaking out in helpless giggles — which quickly progressed to outright laughter — whenever the strange sensations inherent in her manly form impinged upon her consciousness.

Even Eir Menglöð rolled her eyes, and Rhea and Selene were openly irritated as Selene said, “But you simply have to be able to carry this off well enough to perform your duties as the supposed head of state!”

“But why?” she said reasonably. “If it’s all pretence, why should I have to prance about like a puppet in a pantomime? Let’s just hire an actor who knows how all this… stuff… actually works, and who won’t be overwhelmed by strange sensations every time he moves?”

“Because,” Rhea said with surprising patience, “this is a State Secret of incredible sensitivity.”

Phyllis giggled at the word ‘sensitivity,’ and then she was off again, laughing as she clutched with exaggerated deference toward her faux ‘sensitive parts.’

Both Rhea and Selene glared at her, and Rhea said in anger, “Look! You simply have to take this seriously! Larona’s entire Empire is at stake here, and who knows how many innocent people would die if any sign of weakness or contempt for the laws of the Empire cast doubts on her ability to rule? There are always jackals hanging around waiting for a chance to promote themselves over the needs of the Empire and its people!”

“Well, then, if you think it’s so darned simple, why don’t you do it?” she said defensively, almost pouting, which didn’t look entirely manly when performed by a reasonably realistic Phil lookalike.

“Because we’re both pregnant, you ditz! All your wives are pregnant! You’re the only one of us who’s even potentially capable of pulling it off!”

Her face fell. “Oh,” she said, disheartened. Then she had a brilliant idea. “Look! What if I just eliminated the junk between my legs and disguised myself as my former self in all the other ways? Surely, there aren’t going to be spies lurking in the bedroom when I take off my clothes. Even if there were, I think I could manage it as long as I didn’t have to walk around.” She thought quickly. “I’ve got it, surely there’s a bath attendant when I bathe, isn’t there? As long as I’m sitting still, I think I could pull it off…” she started to giggle, then recovered, “I could simply arrange to be seen as visibly ‘intact’ in obvious ways without straining my own sense of incongruity through feeling those disconcerting, often painful, sensations down there when I move. In fact,” she sat and stared down between her splayed legs, concentrating slightly, as her penis swelled to impressive proportions. “How’s that for an Emperor’s cock!” She smiled up at them, proud of both her accomplishment and her ingenuity. “I’ll be the talk of the town, unless I mistake the power of rumor and innuendo, and I rarely do.”

The Empress Larona, who had kept her peace until then, said, “Enough! Let me talk to her for a moment or two, alone!” She raised one eyebrow and gestured eloquently toward the pavilion entrance with a proud toss of her head.

Taking the hint, exeunt omnes.

“Now, my girl, let’s talk about this ‘disguise’ of yours…,” the Empress said as she walked toward her supposed husband, her eyes glinting as she stared down at her crotch….

About an hour later, the Empress walked out of the pavilion and said that the problem was solved. “We’ve agreed to her conditions,” she said simply. “She’s free to maintain her natural gender when she’s walking around, other than her breasts of course, as long as she maintains Phil’s outward appearance otherwise, but has agreed to alter her external genitalia when in her bath, lying down, or otherwise relaxed. That should handle the inevitable interruptions and accidental discoveries of nudity when surrounded by privy servants in a large palace, and we’ve further agreed that her latest ‘trick’ will make the very public reasons for my divorce more believable, especially by comparison, so we’ll make an actual effort to arrange for these kinds of ‘accidental’ exposures with fair regularity, and encourage both rumors and gossip, possibly with the assistance of my own secret service. In short, or perhaps I should say long, I’m satisfied.”

To her credit as a stateswoman and sovereign, the Empress Larona never cracked a smile.

Empress D’Larona-Cohn was thoroughly ticked off. They were still high up in the mountains several days later, after Rhea had thoughtfully pointed out that they had a slight logistical problem left, as well as a security problem, in that far too many people — including the remaining hostile Dvergar — had seen Phyllis, as Sól, play a key role in the capture of the dwarvish rebels, and Álfröðull, her chariot, together with her magical horses, Árvakr and Alsviðr, were part of her defining regalia, so could neither be left behind nor ignored. They had a similar problem in Eir Menglöð and Sleipnir, of course, but she wouldn’t have to lead a double life. Unlike Sleipnir, Árvakr and Alsviðr were one-woman horses, and would tolerate no other touch, nor were they fond at all of the Philip disguise, so Sól in all her glory would have to arrive at the Capital in order to drive them, and she’d have to make daily appearances thereafter in order to see to their care. This meant, of course, that they’d need to provide apartments and plausible living arrangements for both, and hope that no one would notice that Sól and Emperor Phillip Cohn never appeared in the same room together. Of course, the former Emperor Elvi hadn’t been much out in the public view, all in all, so it wouldn’t be glaringly obvious, but they’d have to think of hobbies or magical investigations that would keep him out of the way of servants, who were both numerous and ubiquitous, since the business of providing food, picking up soiled clothing and replacing it with laundered equivalents, not to mention polishing the brass and many other such tasks, went on almost around the clock.

“I do wish that you’d left well enough alone, Phyl. We could have handled the Dvergar on our own, I think.”

“Possibly,” Phyllis agreed cheerfully, “but then they had a projector ready of what we called on Earth ‘Greek Fire,’ a clinging semi-liquid substance that can be hurled to great distances by means of a diabolical engine of war and burns whatever it touches, creating terrible wounds which rarely heal. How many of your army would be dead now, or horribly wounded, scarred for life and maimed, if I hadn’t intervened with force majeure? It’s even possible that you yourself, or Rhea, or Selene, would have been amongst the victims of the foul stuff, since it would have been completely unexpected and impossible to defend against without the sort of supernatural intervention that I provided. We play the parts we’re handed in life, and there are no ‘do-overs,’ so we’re stuck with our present reality, not a fantasy of perfection.” She paused to reach out and hug her close, saying, “Let’s not quarrel, dear heart. I know the situation is awkward, and that I’m not at all what I was when we married. My only excuse is that I’d set out on my very small expedition to Hel expecting to find the portal connecting Niflheimr with the world of Myriad, and didn’t at all imagine that I’d stumble across the Heart of Virtue itself, together with the witch Sinmœra who’d forged the evil thing and knew full well its uses as a weapon of ultimate destruction. Most importantly, I didn’t expect to die. Taking all in all,” she said ruefully, going for the joke, if Larona could be persuaded to see it, “I’d much rather be alive and present a serious problem that I have some small hope of solving, eventually, than be dead and be someone else’s problem.”

Larona had smiled, very slightly, and said, “That’s so like you, Dearest. I can always count on you to put a ‘sunny’ face on things,” and then they both laughed together. “You’re completely crazy, I hope you know,” the Empress said.

“I do. As a heterosexual woman, I find myself blessed with hundreds of wives — including you, dear love — to whom I’m obligated to provide sexual satisfaction on a regular basis — and I hasten to assure you that I love you dearly, and truly want to do this for you — but I’d also like, at least once in a while, to be made love to as I’m made to be loved, and as I truly desire.”

“Say no more, my darling girl. I have just the man in mind, a young Captain in my personal bodyguard who is very discreet, very talented, and will keep his mouth firmly shut, since I am the support of his entire family, and he’s very grateful. I had planned to let him go as an early pensioner, since I thought that I had you to supply my needs, but I’m sure that he’ll be very pleased to find full employment in his future. Of course, we should talk to Rhea and Selene especially about this, but I’m sure the others will understand, as long as you don’t flaunt your intimate relationship with him in their faces. I know my former husband did, but this sort of arrangement is fairly common in the ranks of the nobility, much less royalty, since marriages are almost always made for reasons of statecraft, and very rarely made for love.”

“I already have talked to them, actually, and will again. I appreciate your foresight and prior experience though, as I’m sure I would have botched it if left to my own devices. My own implanted ‘memories’ of my ‘marriage’ are from another culture entirely, in which marital fidelity wasn’t really expected, since — as seems to be the case here — marriages were arranged for purposes of inheritance and political convenience, not love, so your local customs seem strangely familiar to me.”

Larona looked closely into her eyes and asked, “If you’ll pardon my curiosity, what’s it like, having the memories of a woman’s entire life simply poured into your brain, as if you were an empty pitcher that had formerly held beer being refilled with wine?”

She thought about this for a second or two before answering. “Well, in the first place, it’s not quite like that at all. I still remember being Phil in great detail, and his emotions are fully present in my new body, so it’s really more like the ‘pitcher of beer’ has been poured into a barrel of wine. I know in my heart that I’m still Philip, sort of, but everything tastes like wine, albeit with quite a few ‘bubbles.’ ” She smiled. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“It does, actually, which is a little scary. So you actually remember this other life of yours, in which you were a wife and mother, and are more comfortable in your ‘wine barrel,’ your current body, even though you also remember being ‘beer?’ ”

“Sort of, as I said. I can’t actually remember ever having had a man’s body, although I realize that I must have had one, but without that physical referent, a lot of my memories are somewhat disjointed and have a sense of unreality, as if they happened in a dream.”

“Like flying,” Larona said promptly. “I have that dream quite often, but when I wake up, I’ve never once discovered that I suddenly had wings.”

“Exactly!” she said, then frowned slightly, “although of course I can fly, at least in Álfröðull, with my horses to help me.” Then she thought about the problem more carefully and said, “Unh, actually, I can fly, now that I think about it, even without my chariot. It’s an inherent power of the Goddess tradition that I represent, particularly those who embody objects in the heavens, like the Sun and Moon. Certainly I ‘flew’ from inside the Sun of Earth through the space-time dimensions to the Nine Worlds, wherever they are in relation to Earth’s solar system, but then came here using something close to — but not synonymous with — portal technology.”

“Oh, great!” Larona said, rolling her eyes, “Make me jealous!” but then she laughed to show that she didn’t really mean it.

“Sorry! Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful! as that advertisement says. That comes with the territory too, right along with the power to grant good harvests to farmers and calm seas for mariners.”

Larona stared at her, slightly uncomfortable with her instant realization that her sometime husband and lover really was divine in some sense other than mere beauty. “It’s certainly very strange. I’m fairly sure that I’ve never talked to a Goddess before, much less made love to one, although I have to admit that you were totally wonderful, more exciting, I must confess, than even my lovely young Captain of the Guard, but of course you were much more thrilling than him when you were only Phil as well.” Larona stared at her intently, then added. “I wonder if you were always more or less divine. When I think about it, it doesn’t really make sense that you can be an ordinary human being one minute and a Goddess the next.”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s a common notion in human culture, enough so that the Greeks had a special word for it, ‘apotheosis,’ deification. Some scholars believe that all Gods and Goddesses arise from social interactions, so that particular leaders, or even poets and sports figures, pass from fame, through heroic status, adulation, and eventually to divinity.”

“But that’s obviously not what happened to you,” the Empress argued. “Quite a few people admired you, sure, but they admired you as a man, so how does that translate into supernatural powers and essential femininity?”

“I don’t exactly know,” she confessed again. “It’s certainly not what I would have chosen, but in some sense it was handed to me through the intervention of a family of what we might call hereditary Gods and Goddesses. Evidently there was an ‘opening’ available, and I came along at the right time to fill it. I have no idea what happened to the original Sól, but I know that there must have been one, because I have her memories, including having had sex with her husband, taking several lovers along the way, and having borne her children. I’d think that this is the sort of thing I would have noticed, even when I was a clueless male, so the whole thing’s a complete mystery to me, since these things evidently happened long before Philip Cohn, the guy I thought I was, and intellectually, if not physically, remember being, was born. It plays the very hell with my understanding of causality, of the arrow of time, and with half of modern physics.”

Larona was mystified by her words and shrugged. “Then it’s even more of a mystery to me, Dearest. Why don’t we rest for a bit and you can try to explain while we recline in comfort, and perhaps you could show me that special trick of yours again. Although I love you dearly in your new form, I share your fondness for men, but don’t dare retain the services of my Captain after so public a repudiation of my former husband and marriage to one who must be widely seen and known to be — ironically — a real man.”

Phyllis, seeing perfectly the humor in their situation, laughed gleefully before kissing her and saying, “I’m at your service, Dear, as always. Can I keep my boobs? I love it when you pay attention to them, as you well know.”

“Of course, my dear. Rules, I always say, are meant to be broken, or where’s the fun in being an absolute monarch?” She languidly laid herself down upon their bed in the pavilion, drawing Phyllis after, losing herself in their shared kisses, and in the sensuous masses of Phyllis’s blonde hair draped over her body as they kissed, and a familiar heat began to build between them.

“Okay, troops, are we ready?” said Rhea, as their party assembled in rough order for their formal progress down the mountain, meant as much to allow time for the Palace staff to finish preparing their complicated arrangements for apartments and common rooms as it was to allow the people to see their Empress and their new Emperor publicly entering their walled City and fastness after two notable military victories. There were artisans even now preparing two new friezes at the top of the twin stone pillars at the entrance to the City, to commemorate their victories over the Giants at Bilröst and the Dwarves in the mountain pass. They’d had an artist, in fact, prepare likenesses of all the major players in the campaign to guide the sculptors as they worked, paying special attention, of course, to the Empress and to ‘Philip.’ In the business of Empire, it pays to advertise, so their rendering of Surtr, in particular, and the Giants in general, was perhaps a bit exaggerated in size and overall ugliness, and the parts played by the Empress and her new Emperor were definitely confabulated. Neither Rhea nor Selene were bothered, and Eir Menglöð could hardly care less, although both she and Sól were featured flying high above their respective battlefields, since they made for an exciting sculptural dynamic in a vertical dimension.

Phyl laughed as she rode through the gates as Sól in her chariot, the wheels safely on the ground so as not to frighten the throng of cheering onlookers, her male part being played by Eir — the most skilled in altering her seeming without having to make substantial changes to her gravid female body in any way harmful to her baby — who was riding with the Empress near the front of the stately column of troops. With a bulky padded suit of completely anachronistic armor conjured up at the last minute by Phyllis, who hadn’t — oddly enough — lost any of her skill in working metals and gems, Eir was tall enough that the masquerade was flawless, and presented an additional option for confusing public perceptions, and would allow — until her pregnancy became considerably more advanced — for at least some of ‘Philip’s’ public appearances to be handled by Eir. Her part in the parade, on the other hand, was played by Selene, since Sleipnir liked and trusted her, and the difference in their heights wasn’t terribly noticeable on horseback, especially when the horse had eight legs which were fairly certain to draw more attention than his rider. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave,’ Phyl thought idly, ‘when first we practise to deceive.’

It had been decided to present the centaurs as themselves, so there was a large party of the centaur mares spaced through the column of soldiers and about half of King Alvis’ Dvergar army, as well as King Alvis himself on horseback, both as an additional distraction and to emphasize the fact that both the centaurs and the Dwarves were citizens in the new Empire, and were well-armed at that, the centaurs with longbows and swords, and the Dwarves with sturdy bucklers and heavy axes.

The notion of marching around in broad daylight had made the Dwarves nervous until Eir had pointed out the fact that the Sun hadn’t bothered them during their assault upon the rebels, and then explained that she had made very certain that their alignment with the Ljósálfar had been strengthened when they’d chosen to defy the Dark, and that they need no longer fear the Sun, nor full daylight, so the Dwarves especially were looking around in wonder as they marched, seeing a whole new world unfold before their eyes, and new possibilities, like farming, growing their own food instead of being forced to barter, of fishing in the streams and lakes of their mountain fastness, and of having ordinary people, such as those who lined the road and leaned out of the windows in the villages they passed through, not only show them a modicum of respect, but cheer them as they marched past, fully armed. Eir Menglöð smiled as she looked back at them, her special charges. They were all of them growing taller, bit by little bit.

Guard Captain Holt-Asar was in Heaven. He’d feared, when he’d heard about the divorce and remarriage of the Empress Larona, that he’d be out of a ‘job’ and his family reduced to poverty once more, but as it had turned out, the new Emperor Philip Cohn, although impressively endowed — the young Captain knew this because the Emperor had interviewed him while he was in his bath, so evidently personal modesty wasn’t one of his guiding principles — had many demands upon his time, and had brought some sort of personal harem with literally hundreds of wives along with him as well, so could hardly be expected to keep up with the ‘demand,’ as it were, and had actually negotiated with him privately for a continuation of his personal attentions for those of his wives who were ‘inconvenienced’ for any reason. The Emperor had actually laughed when he said this, so Holt-Asar could only imagine what life and marriage must be like on the ‘Earth’ he’d claimed as his native world. He’d had to submit to a very thorough medical examination, of course, and swear to avoid any sexual contact outside the harem, which wasn’t at all difficult to contemplate, since there were already seven of the Emperor’s wives who’d indicated, with lascivious winks, lickings of lips, and wriggling of hips, that they’d be amongst the first in line, once he was declared ‘fit for duty.’ All the Emperor’s wives were pregnant, he’d been told quite frankly, so he needn’t worry about assassination if he chanced to ‘plant an heir,’ since it was impossible for him to do so. That in itself was a huge load off his mind, since the Empress, when he’d first been drafted for this sort of personal service, had been conspicuously childless, and he’d been in almost constant terror lest their dalliances be disclosed in the worst of all possible ways. The new Emperor had evidently remedied her former infertility, since the Empress Larona was already ‘showing’ slightly, and rumors of the former Emperor’s alleged impotence were already flying through the Court, although the Empress and her train hadn’t been back from their campaign against otherworldly enemies for more than a few days. Best of all, though, was that the new Emperor had quietly handed him a large purse of gold, sufficient to support his parents and his remaining sisters — his brother Baldric having died tragically in the campaign against the Eastern Empire these three years past — for an entire year, quite a bit more than the relatively modest monthly stipend he’d received from the Empress. It wasn’t enough to make him financially independent, of course, so he had to admire the new Emperor’s sagacity. Young Captain Holt-Asar would be trusted, and comfortable, but not too much, and he himself knew well enough to be very discreet. Scandalous gossip about the former Emperor was all very well, since he was obviously out of favor at Court — and had in fact ‘retired’ to a villa near the coast — but gossip about the current Emperor and his Empress might well be treason.

Captain Holt-Asar was extremely nervous, despite his earlier pleasant experiences with the Empress Larona, since he’d fondly imagined at the time that the then Emperor had had no idea what he’d been up to, but with Sól, evidently first on the list of ‘inconvenienced’ wives, not only did the new Emperor know what was happening, but there were five of his other wives there to observe. He could only hope that they didn’t feel the need to make ribald comments, since they all seemed to be in very good humor and were lounging around an enormous bed in the center of the room just waiting for him to disrobe. He’d never felt less aroused, despite having six women in various states of déshabillée in the room, all of them obviously interested in what he had on offer. This ‘Earth’ of theirs was obviously a very crazy place.

“Oh! You poor dear,” one said, reaching out to touch his private parts. “What’s the matter, cat got your… tongue…?” and then she laughed, which wasn’t exactly inspiring.

Then another, Sól herself, he thought, he’d seen her toward the front of the stately processional of the Empress, her Emperor, and other notables into the Palace, though he was still having trouble with their names, whispered in his ear, tickling it with the very tip of her tongue as well as her breath as she said, “Don’t worry, dear, these women are my friends, and they want to be sure that you can show me a good time. You do want to show me a good time, don’t you?”

He nodded mutely, caught between performance anxiety and fear of poverty.

“Then come lie here beside me,” she said, and patted the bed on her left side.

He complied, by now terrified of proving himself unequal to the task at hand.

“Now, tell me all about yourself,” she said companionably. “How did you get started in military service?”

“No particular reason,” he said, somewhat surprised at her matronly interest, but also relieved that he wasn’t being called upon for instant service. “We needed the money, my family did, so I enlisted for the signing bonus and salary.”

“That’s it? You needed the money? So you enlisted? Did you send money back to your family?”

“I did, whatever I could spare. We had to buy our own food, though, or steal it, so there was never much to send home.”

“You said ‘we.’ Did you join up together with someone else? A friend, perhaps? Someone to share your grand adventure?”

His eyes shifted to one side. “Not really,” he said.

“When you say, ‘Not really?’ does that mean ‘no’ or ‘yes?’ or maybe something in between?”

He hesitated before he answered. “It was my brother, but I told him not to, to stay safe at home, so I ran off by myself, but the damned fool followed me anyway.”

“And he found you, right?”

He nodded. “He did,” he said, laconic almost to the point of rudeness. As gigolos went, his conversational style wasn’t exactly top-notch, so it was fairly evident that the Empress Larona’s priorities had been rather more physical than philosophical, and he was rather impressive, though not nearly as much as Phyllis’s fantasy Phil simulacrum, of course.

“How’d you feel about that, Holt-Asar?” She slowly stroked his thigh.

“What!” He almost jumped, then said, “I was furious, of course. He was supposed to be taking care of things at home, and he just walked out on them! What was I supposed to feel like?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. Proud? Disconcerted? Relieved?”

“Just angry. It was completely irresponsible, since he had their safety in his care, and was in a position to respond quickly if any trouble arose while I was half a world away.”

“But that was typical of him, wasn’t it? As a younger son, he would always have been slightly in the shadow of his ‘big brother,’ and would have seen you to be the level-headed and responsible one. Perhaps he may have even been resentful of you, always being praised for your manly skills, your willing assumption of family debts and obligations, married, with a child on the way, and finally your heroism, risking your own life to save your family.” She paused. “Do you think, perhaps, that he was jealous of you, maybe even angry?”

Somehow, that question was the trigger that caused the floodgates of his carefully-hidden grief to be opened, and he began telling her about his parents, the loss of their family business, his marriage, and then his enlistment, and his brother Baldric came after him later, completely unlooked-for, just as the war in the East began in earnest. “I was supposed to take good care of them all,” he said, “because he was my younger brother, so I told him to stay home so he could take care of my mother and father, and my young wife, and be safe, but I suppose we really needed more money than I made as a raw recruit, so he thought that he could ‘fix things’ by joining up himself, and he thought he was immortal, as young men do. He caught up with me, of course, and at first I was mad, because now I had two people to look after, not just me, and then later I was even madder, because he confessed one night that he’d fucked my wife one night when she got ‘lonely.’ I think that it was probably more than just the once, though, since she’d been something of a party girl after I left, according to my brother, but he clammed up about it almost as soon as he’d said it, and even denied it the next day, telling me that he’d been ‘joking’ about it all just to make himself seem tougher than he was.

“Oh, dear! You poor man. That must have been a terrible blow.”

“I got over it” he said, shrugging, as if it were almost nothing. “A lot of other guys were getting ‘news from home’ letters that gutted them, so I wasn’t the first soldier who found himself abandoned and betrayed.”

“But it was your brother who betrayed you, wasn’t it? Surely there were two betrayals there, not just one, even if your brother’s stories are true. Did you ever consider that they might not be true? That — perhaps — your wife was not at fault at all? You really didn’t know who was the one at fault, did you? Did your wife seduce your brother? Did your brother seduce your wife? It makes a difference, or should have done. What did she tell you when you returned?”

“She wasn’t there. She’d killed herself shortly after my brother left,” he said, his eyes haunted by bad memories, “and her unborn child died with her. I didn’t even know if the child was mine!”

“If you ask me, dear, that kind of grief, or shame, doesn’t fit the picture of the ‘party girl’ your bother told you about, or wouldn’t you agree?”

The thought had never occurred to him, it seemed, because he furrowed his brows as he thought about it. “No, it doesn’t,” he admitted.

“In fact, her actions don’t fit that picture at all, do they? Have you asked your parents about it? Presumably, they were there, and could see what was going on.”

“They won’t talk about it at all,” he said. “They just change the subject. My father says, ‘Let dead dogs lie,’ or something equally opaque.”

“Baldric was your parent’s favorite child, wasn’t he?”

“How did you know that?” he asked.

“Oh, just a lucky guess,” she answered blithely. “And your brother was something of a rogue, was he not?”

“Well, he got into a few scrapes, here and there. Not much more than many young men, I think.”

“Really?” She raised an eyebrow imperiously. “Perhaps you simply never noticed, because I think he must have been. He abandoned your parents to their fate, didn’t he? What if one of them had become ill, or needed special care? Instead of staying put, as any responsible man would have done in that situation, after taking on a duty and a solemn obligation, he either wandered off as careless as a gypsy rover, or felt he that he had to leave, for whatever reason.”

“I never thought of that” he said, unsure of what he imagined as the truth for all this time, and all these women were making him nervous again, because they were all looking at each other with that vaguely amused look that women had when they knew something that the men around them didn’t. “It does seem curious, when you spell it out,” he said, suspicious for the first time.

“Sometimes things seem clearer when one steps back and looks at the whole picture,” she replied. “Now tell me how he died.”

He seemed startled by the sudden change of focus, but said, “I only looked away for a second, just as they made the first charge at us, but when I looked back he had an arrow through his heart, and he was dead before he or I could say a word.” Then he broke down crying, ashamed in front of all these women to be weeping like a child. “He trusted me! And then I let him down!”

“It’s not your fault, dear,” another of them said, the tallest. “It was just his time to die, and he faced it bravely enough. I know, because I was there.”

“You?” he said wonderingly. “In the far East? But how?”

“I get around,” she said. “I saw him die, and I know that he was transported to the blessed afterlife you’ve heard of. While his body may be mortal, his soul is still alive, just as his memory is alive in you. You know that this is true,” she said. “There is no cause for lingering grief. He’s happy, and he loves you.”

He looked up at Eir in wonder. “What about my wife and child? Do you know of them?”

“I do. As a suicide, and a soul unborn, they’re still in a state of what you might call limbo, not yet gone on to their full reward, since they had no opportunity to prove themselves, but not yet damned either, just waiting for a second chance.”

He didn’t speak, caught up in truly mixed emotions.

“Eir Menglöð,” Sól said, “bring him to me; I have need of him just now.”

Eir looked at her and asked, “Now? So soon?”

She nodded. “Now.”

“As you wish, my Lady,” she said and vanished.

“Now face me, Holt,” she said. “I have need of you as well. I’m going to give you a choice, to reconcile yourself with your wife and child, and/or to forgive your brother.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’m a Sorceress and Scryer of enormous power, and I’m going to make things clear to you that have previously seemed muddled, but it’s up to you to choose.”

“Me?”

Eir Menglöð arrived with a shade in custody. “Here he is,” she said.

“Baldric!” Holt-Asar cried, “You’re alive!”

“No,” Sól said. “He’s not. Just listen! Do not speak until I ask questions of you.”

“Baldric-Asar,” she said, “Why did you follow your brother off to war?”

“I had to leave the City, because the Guards were after me.”

“Why?”

“They suspected me of raping a young woman.”

“Really, and what young woman was that?” she asked.

“It was d’Nanna-Asar, my brother’s wife.”

With a strangled cry, Holt-Assar tried to struggle up from where he lay, only to be stopped cold with a slight gesture of Sól’s hand. “Be at peace,” she said kindly, “You can’t touch him, since he’s only a shade. The possibility of life exists in him, but nothing more.”

“Why are you showing me this?” he cried. “My own brother betrayed me! And then he lied about it!”

“True,” she said with serene authority. “He did all those things, and more, but he’s not irredeemably evil, just jealous and spiteful. Be patient, please. All will be well.”

Then she turned to Baldric and asked, “What have you learned, Baldric-Asar?”

Baldric threw himself on the floor and wailed, “Mercy, Lady! I was angry and spiteful, just as you say! I hated my brother because he was everything that I was not, and everything seemed so easy for him! I should have seen that everything that he achieved came with a price, a price I never reckoned with, since he’d shielded me from our true situation. He risked his very life so that I could be comfortable safe at home, and I scorned the gift. He won the heart of a young woman that I’d lusted for, and to my shame I cruelly assaulted her, then taunted her with my arrogant assurance that my brother would trust me when I told him that she’d lured me into her bed, and she was young and foolish enough to believe me. Her death, and the death of her child, is on my head.”

“Well,” she turned to Holt-Asar, “what shall we do with him? Shall we give him another chance at life? Or shall I send him down to Hel to wait for a new world? In other words, do you forgive him and move on, or do you allow hatred and resentment to poison the rest of your life, as it did his?”

His features worked bewteen stunned disbelief, rage, and pity before he said, “I forgive him. My father was in no position to control him, and I ignored the problems I saw developing, so bear some of the responsibility for his fecklessness and hateful actions.”

“Well said, Captain Holt-Asar, your wish is granted.” She nodded at Eir Menglöð, who promptly vanished with his brother’s shade.

“But what about my wife and child?” he asked. “Is there anything that you can do for them?”

“There is, but it’s not quite so simple. My cousin Eir Menglöð and I can reïncarnate your wife much as she was at the time of her death, allowing her another chance at life and happiness with you, but it will take a bit of time, and you will be able to have other children, but the child she carried, a son, is lost to you without my direct intervention, and yours, because his soul was not yet fully-formed.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” he said, puzzled. “It sounds like you can work miracles, so why not for an innocent child?”

“Because such miracles require a much more personal investment,” she said, “and I can do what my cousin cannot, incorporate an existing soul currently unformed, but I’ll need your help.”

“Why do you need my help?”

“Because making babies requires old-fashioned baby-making, not magic. We’ll both be busy for around two years, since I’m the only one, by chance, of…my husband’s… wives,” she smiled, “not pregnant right now, and then of course the newborn will require nursing. In the meantime, you’ll fulfil your contract with the Emperor, and your wife will have time to recover her equilibrium.”

“So that’s it?”

“Not entirely. At the end of your service here, I plan to offer you new employment. We have, my… husband… and I, what might be termed a country estate, we call it Breiðablik, in a place called the Splendid Plain, Iðavöllr in the local language. I think you’ll like it, although there’ll be a lot of work involved, since there will be new settlers coming in eventually, so you’ll have to manage allocations for their villages and farms, but there’s ample room for children to play safely, good neighbors soon, and a more lovely setting you’d find difficult to imagine.”

“You’re going to carry my child? What will the Emperor say? He’d led me to believe….”

“Just let me worry about the Emperor. An injustice has been perpetrated upon you, and you’ve responded nobly, with a mature forbearance that does you credit. The Emperor and I will see eye-to-eye on this, I guarantee it, so you needn’t worry in that regard.”

“Thank you, my Lady. I’ll be forever in your debt.”

“Of course you will,” she said smiling. Then she touched him casually with one hand and he sprang instantly to rampant life, harder than he’d ever been, and she drew him into her core with a strength that seemed astounding, and then he was plunging into her, powerless to stop himself, filled with the power of his infinite lust for the fecund and pulsing heart of her body, and longing for the potential life within her. He somehow felt his soul leave his body for a moment, rising up to the heavens, and all the blessed souls were there, approving, and the bright Gods and Goddesses welcomed him, then gently shooed him back to his proper place again, just as he reached his climax, filled with raw power and life!

“That’s it!” she cried, rejoicing. “Eir, just now!” and she came shuddering just as he did, came for him, and came for all the worlds.

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

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved