The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Twenty-Three Words on Paper

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

Though they are only breath,
words that I speak are immortal.

 — Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630 BCE)

 

The Library was just the first of many treasures hidden behind portals. At the bottom of the well shaft was another camouflaged entrance to a secret cavern, this one a museum, or at least a storehouse, of sculpture and other plastic arts, with an annex filled with paintings  — carefully wrapped and stored away for posterity, many of which had decayed past saving, or even deciphering, like the tapestries in the throne room above — but including one panoramic carved stone tableau on the wall of the first cavern depicting the systematic destruction of centaur civilization by several races, including dwarves, giants, and humans. It was colored and gilded in the same fashion as the bas-relief centaurs that flanked the gates of the Temple above them, with inset blocks of what appeared to be centaur writing, the same strange hieroglyphics as those above the gates. “Those guys,” Rhea had said, when she saw them, “those dwarves, are the same sort of crew who attacked us in the mountain pass when we were headed south with the Heart of Virtue. ”

“And this,” the Wizard said, pointing to an object held high by one of the dwarves, from which the stone centaurs fled in silent frozen panic, “appears to be an image of the Heart itself.”

“And this,” said the Empress D’Larona-Elvi, “is their last will and testament, or so I believe.” She pointed to two figures who held between them the engraved representation of a book, the lettering on the cover clearly visible. “Unfortunately, I don’t know this writing, but what one mind can create, other minds can comprehend.”

“But where is this book?” Rhea asked in irritation.

The Empress arched an eyebrow. “In the Library, of course, right where you’d least expect it.”

Rhea snorted in a manner most unladylike. “Well, why can’t we ask some of the centaurs if they can read it?”

“We’ll ask some of our sisters who used to be centaurs as well,” Selene added helpfully. “I don’t know how far back their memories go, but almost certainly around the time in which the Temple was abandoned by the centaurs, or at least taken over by those the Heart held in thrall. At least some of the captives may have been literate in their language still, despite everything.”

“Ask everyone,” the Empress said. “All the captives shared at least a common enemy, and we won’t know what else they shared unless we ask.”

As it turned out, the centaurs made the best librarians, since the shelves were sized for very tall browsers, and as tall as the many Selene/Rhea clones were in the human woman scheme of things, they were midgets from a centaur perspective. One of them, once a centaur herself, turned out to be the key to their unique alphabet, since she was just out of school at the time she’d been captured by the minions of the Dark, but the rest were useful mainly as messengers, or charwomen with dust mops and brooms. Eventually, the book depicted on the sculpted mural was discovered, along with well over fifty copies that they’d also found, each hidden away in a different location, some behind secret panels, others inside hollowed-out books, and almost a dozen that had simply been bound in different covers than the one depicted in the mural. The ancient centaurs had obviously taken some care to make certain that their book would eventually be found, just as the Empress D’Larona-Elvi had instantly intuited.

Akcuanrut had immediately seized upon the first copy found, and had started learning the alphabet as soon as the woman with the key was found.

Phil asked about that, since it seemed to be working backwards from what he knew of famous historical translations on Earth. “I don’t get it,” he’d said, “How does knowing the alphabet help in deciphering an ancient text?”

“It’s quite simple, really, and dates back to the first Emperor, Emperor Padwan of Myriad, and his Empress, D’Sigorni-Padwan. Together, they cast the Great Spell of Reconciliation which made all spoken languages existentially identical to each other, at least in our understanding, although the alphabets and symbols by which they were written down retained their former character, if you’ll pardon the small witticism. Once you’ve learned a new alphabet, you can simply sound out the words and hear them with perfect understanding, although it takes much longer to be able to create a written text in a language you don’t know.”

“But how does that work? On Earth, we have hundreds of languages, most of which are written in one of two or three alphabets that are more-or-less identical for most languages, but knowing the alphabet doesn’t make much difference, because foreign words written down in any alphabet are still written in a foreign language.

“That’s not very useful, is it?” said the Wizard. “I much prefer the Emperor’s system, and of course the universal simplicity of it is why the Empire exists to this day. The centaur alphabet, for example, looks like it has far too many letters, because it’s a special form of alphabet called a syllabary, which has one symbol for every consonant vowel combination found in the language itself. There’s an added complication, of course, in that some of the centauran characters represent whole words, which have to be learned by rote rather than sounded out, but these characters are few and far between, so we’ve been able to decipher most of them through context and through the aid of our best informant, the former centaur, and now young woman Daphne.” The wizard scribbled out a series of odd characters*: 𐀐𐀚𐀲𐁂𐀫𐁒. “Here, for example, is the centauran name for their own race. The first syllable is ‘Ke,’ the second ‘Ne,’ the third ‘Ta,’ the fourth ‘Au,’ the fifth ‘Ro,’ and the last a special ‘syllable’ used to represent ‘a final sibilant,’ what you would call in your language ‘Ess.’” Put them all together — with the addition of a little ‘creative license’ — and you have a nonsense ‘word’ that sounds like ‘Centaur’ as soon as you hear it spoken.” He beamed. “See how simple that is?”

“But that’s Greek!” Phil said excitedly. “Kentauros is the Greek word for Centaur, which is distantly related to the language I’m speaking now, if you go back far enough in time. It doesn’t look like Greek writing, though….” He felt suddenly doubtful.

Akcuanrut was nonplused, but only for an instant. “Well, writing systems change over time, if you give them long enough, and it would probably mean that the centaurs visited your Earth in the distant past, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” he admitted, “but why were we able to understand each other on Earth?” Phil was still confused. “It sounded like you were speaking English, and you understood us when we were speaking English. Why would the Emperor’s spell affect us?”

“Because the portal had been opened, of course, so my language spilled out through it, as did yours to me.”

“So everyone on Earth now knows your language, whatever it is, and you know every language? That’s impossible!”

“Adjust yourself to magical reality, Apprentice!” the Wizard said. “Any more impossible than stepping across dimensions? More difficult than your own feat of raising an entire army  — although I confess that it was a very small one — more than twelve feet off the ground with the mere power of your mind?”

“Uhm….”

“Exactly! You admit, I hope, that your own nascent magical powers — which would never have been developed on Earth before the portal opened — were enhanced in the twinkling of an eye, once you were exposed to the magical field of our world. Just so, the leakage of our world’s enchantment into yours changed everything, although it’s very likely that no one there will ever realize it, because they’ll never actually hear any language from this world spoken in their entire future lives, and there are limitations to the spell, because it was designed for the needs of this world, and so treated the languages of your world as extraneous to its central purpose.”

“But I don’t quite understand how a relatively tiny door poked through space-time, or whatever it is, could change so much so quickly.”

Akcuanrut smiled as serenely as a friendly Buddha. “When I was on your world, I saw with my own eyes what you call a ‘refrigerator.’ It was a box with a door that kept the cold inside. Since everyone knows that cold is the absence of heat, it stands to reason that, when the door was opened, the heat rushed in to fill the box. You could actually hear the heat whooshing through the small crack as the door began to open! The Great Spell of Reconciliation is like that heat; since your world was empty of it, the Emperor’s spell filled it almost instantaneously as soon as your father’s TSP device opened the door. Since our world was empty of your language patterns, which the Emperor’s spell requires to perform its magic, these rushed through the open portal in the opposite direction, and so the system came to a new equilibrium, with balance restored through the dissemination of the missing magical qualities on either side through the same open door, just as the cold inside the refrigerator became warmer, while the warm room outside the refrigerator door became a little cooler.”

With his brow furrowed, Phil thought about the wizard’s words. While the wizard might be a little fuzzy on the Laws of Thermodynamics, not to mention Classical Physics, the general metaphor sounded close enough to what he’d experienced as magical reality to be somewhat truthy, if not the entire metaphysical truth. “Okay…. So if magic is inherently superluminal, outside the ordinary framework of Einsteinian space-time, I’ll grant you that the propagation of a magical wave might appear instantaneous from within that 4-Space. That would explain how I was able to ignore the warp in 4-Space caused by the planetary mass of this world and levitate all those centaurs and people without expending any physical effort, although the mental effort was considerable.”

Akcuanrut stared at him in utter incomprehension…. “I have no idea what you just said, which I suppose goes to show that even the Great Spell of Reconciliation has its limitations.”

Phil smiled. “In my language, it means ‘I’m very impressed.’ ”

“Well, you could have simply said so,” the wizard said indignantly.

“It’s true. I tend to over-think at times,” he said and grinned.

“By now,” the Empress said to the assembled crowd in the throne room — all the centaurs, the rescued women, and the men at arms who’d accompanied the Empress and Akcuanrut — “all of you have had the opportunity to visit the secret hiding places of the great treasures of the ancient Centaur civilization, or those left of them which have survived the passage of thousands of years and destruction at the hands of their enemies.”

They were gathered together in the Throne Room, although the throne itself  — an artifact of the Dark Gods’ cohort — had been removed and burned, so the Empress D’Larona-Elvi stood upon the dias, as had centaur leaders in past ages.

“This place has been consecrated to victims of the Dark Gods, who include, I think, the entire race of centaurs, wherever they may be, as well as those human women here reborn from the vile constraint of the Dark Gods’ minions, whoever they were before. It’s fitting, therefore, that we dedicate ourselves here to the utter destruction of the so-called ‘Heart of Virtue,’ and to the ruin of the Dark Gods who created it.”

There was a rising murmur of assent, punctuated by sharp oaths and cries of implacable hostility.

“The ancient Centaurs, the first victims of the Dark Gods, had ample time to study them, and have left us in their writings several clues as to their origins and the true location of their covert lair, even hidden as it was amongst the countless dimensions of the extended universe, of which this world is only a tiny portion. Centaur Metaphysicians deduced not only their location, but their weaknesses, but had not the specific powers necessary to defeat them, since Centaur magic is primarily defensive, and resists efforts to inflict harm. Human thaumaturges, as we know, have no such limitations, although we lack many of the specific strengths and powers possessed by every centaur.”

Windflyer asked, “Is that why our ancient ancestors were defeated?”

The Empress answered, “We believe so, yes, and there were two other problems, the first being that the human study of magic was in its beginning stages, so that they could not have effectively come to the centaur’s aid at the time, even had they then possessed the best good will in the world. The second was that this all happened well before the first human Emperor, Emperor Padwan of Myriad, and his Empress, D’Sigorni-Padwan, had formulated and cast the Great Spell of Reconciliation which renders all our languages mutually comprehensible, so we humans could not have helped to the degree we can now, because we were unable at the time to coördinate our efforts, even amongst ourselves, although humans were also numbered among the Dark Gods’ victims, as most of you here gathered know, since there were as many or more humans murdered and tortured by these wicked villains as there were centaurs, even within these very walls. Indeed, our own records show that the Spell of Reconciliation itself was developed and executed under the hot spur of oppression by the Dark Gods’ minions, and it’s that spell that finally allowed us to turn the tide in their battle against us.”

One of the older mares made a sour face and said, “How can you say that you’ve ‘turned the tide’ when our expedition to the Capital was attacked just over a mountain pass from the very heart of the Empire?”

“It’s a fair question,” the Empress admitted, “but you’ll remember, I’m sure, that by all reports that sneaking ambush was completely ineffective — easily repelled by two rather extraordinary young human women, — and then the enemy force was utterly destroyed by the Master Wizard Akcuanrut and his Apprentice Phillip.”

“How do you know that?” the old centaur mare asked suspiciously.

“Because we sent troops and a Wizard or two back to see, of course,” the Empress said, completely without rancor, or even impatience, “and diverted Akcuanrut’s rather spectacular waterfall to make the caves accessible again, then subsequently found that no one remained alive in any portion of the extensive subterranean caverns and caves that lay under the original pitfall. After extensive interviews with Master Wizard Akcuanrut and his Apprentice Phillip, we’ve agreed in council that his presence in our world has altered the existential ground within which evil formerly flourished side by side with good.”

“How so?” the centauress asked.

“Because when the portal was opened between our two worlds,” the Empress said, “a new balance was struck between the magical underpinnings of this world and that one. Their world was suffused with a portion of our magical reality, and in the same way our world took on some qualities that resemble theirs. Apprentice Phillip’s Spell of Consecration, for example, never existed in this world, yet is now accessible to almost anyone, whether trained in magic or not. Likewise, our own Great Spell of Reconciliation has so thoroughly insinuated itself into their world that even children there were instantly able to understand and converse with our Master Wizard here — at a level suitable to their age, of course.”

“But why would that matter to us?” another centaur mare asked. “As we understood the plan, we were meant to attack the Dark God world, wherever that is.”

“Because it means that we can easily pass as natives. For magical reasons that I won’t go into now, we have tasks that we must accomplish on Thundercloud’s world, before we can proceed against the Dark Gods, and it would be helpful to have all of us gathered together in one place.”

She was astonished. “You mean we’re all going to travel to a different planet?”

The Empress laughed with unconcealed delight, her eyes shining in excitement, “Yes! Isn’t it just wonderful?”

They say an army marches on its stomach, well, Napoleon Bonaparte said so, anyway, so it didn’t surprise Phil at all that the details of moving even a small army through a portal into an upstate New York suburb were somewhat daunting. In the first place, there would be no way to hide three hundred or so centaurs in the Lanyon’s family home, much less hundreds of Selene’s more-or-less identical twins, so the first thing that came to mind was to buy a small farm — or even a large farm — and that meant money, lots of it, which in turn meant gold.

“Krugerrands, I think,” he said.

“What’s that, Apprentice Phil?” They were in private but desultory conversation, ambling through one of the empty corridors of the Temple toward a distant source of light, talking from time to time about the purely magical logistics of their journey between the worlds. The most prominent sticking point was Earth, and the necessity of planning ahead for a scarcity of magical power, which Phil thought could be largely compensated for with money, since pretty much everything had a price on Earth, where here the vast majority of property belonged in some sense to the Emperor and his Empress, feudal overlords from whom all temporary titles were held at the Sovereign’s pleasure. A special dispensation had been made for the centaur temple and the traditional centaur lands, as compensation for past injustice at human hands, but even then they’d had to swear fealty to the Empire.

“I said, ‘Krugerrands,’ a type of gold coin that’s widely traded. There are others, of course, and it wouldn’t hurt to diversify slightly, since that’s what gold traders do, or so I understand it. There’s a law against making unauthorized copies, of course, but I suspect that even I could make them impossible to detect as counterfeits. They’d be a trivial exercise for you, if we can access the same source of magic that Na-Noc did.”

“Of course,” the wizard said, “although I’d like you to try as well. The prospect of imminent danger is a wonderful spur to magical progress.‘

Phil smiled. “There’s a saying on Earth, ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ I suppose the same principle generally applies to being clapped in irons.”

“Just so. When we intervened in the quarrel between the centaurs and the humans, for example, the danger this posed to your lady wives spurred you to a feat of mass levitation that might have daunted even a seasoned wizard of great power and long experience.”

Phil didn’t know exactly what to say. “Uhm….”

Akcuanrut frowned in his direction, his face indistinct in the dim light, then said pointedly, “There’s no place for false modesty in wizardry, Apprentice Phil. Would you entrust your life to a surgeon or apothecary who minimized his skills, or to a bridge whose engineer didn’t exactly know whether it would fall down or not? If you fail, it will quickly become apparent, and the Imperial College of Wizards may well intervene, but you owe it to those who will depend upon you to project an air of quiet confidence, because any fear on their part will infect the magical æther which pervades the world, thus causing the failure you ‘modestly’ predict in order to spare yourself the uncomfortable burden of having people entrust their safety and health to your care.”

Chastened, he said, “Okay, Sir. I’ll try….”

Instantly, the wizard cast a withering glare at him directly, catching his eye. “There is no ‘trying’ in magic,” he said forcefully, “only to do or not to do.”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied.

“That’s better,” he said, somewhat mollified, but still suspicious.

“Look, I apologize for my lack of certainty, but you’ve got to realize that I’d never thought that magic was real before, where the people on this world have grown up with magic as a background to their daily lives. On my world, the things that your world accomplishes with magic are done with ‘science,’ and you find that almost as mysterious as I do magic, despite the evidence of my own senses. In fact, on Earth we have a sort of witticism called Clarke’s Third Law, which says, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ It refers to the fact that what we might think is completely mysterious, almost like ‘magic,’ can almost certainly be accomplished through ‘science,’ the application of physical devices and/or forces just as straightforward as the rolling wheel of a cart, so that the merest child might accomplish it by simply flicking a switch, like the cordless power tools you so admired on Earth, which are powered by ‘electricity,’ the same force that makes a little spark when you scuff your shoes on a woolen carpet.”

Akcuanrut thought about this for a few seconds, then said, “Perhaps your ‘Clark’s Third Law’ has it backwards,” my dear Apprentice. “Perhaps the inevitable corollary to this so-called ‘Third Law’ is a fourth law, to wit: ‘Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.’ Wildflower tells us that she created a magical portal between our separate worlds using this ‘science’ of yours, but isn’t that almost a contradiction in terms? If a magical effect ensues, doesn’t that imply that magic was used? Just because Wildflower doesn’t realize that it was magic, or fails to see the magical principles involved, is it any less magical because she simply doesn’t understand?”

Phil’s jaw dropped slightly as he suddenly saw the wizard’s point; the original Dr. Jeckyll had used what he’d thought of as ‘science’ to achieve a ‘magical’ transformation, the exact same sort of transformation that he’d recently witnessed on a grander scale, performed right before his eyes using the unaided power of a human mind. “Of course!” he said in dawning awareness. “My world must have a ‘damping field’ of some sort, a general suppression of magic caused by a general disbelief in — or even hostility toward — ‘magical phenomena’ in daily life! Inside that church, the situation was somewhat different, because religious sanctuaries are amongst the few places left on Earth — or at least our part of it — where most people allow themselves to believe in miracles, or the reality of supernatural forces which might as well be magic.”

The wizard nodded sagely. “I see. So your current theory is that there’s a tension in your society between your so-called ‘science’ and magic, and that the conflict plays out on religious grounds?”

“At least to some extent, yes, although there are cultures on Earth with more innate religiosity, but these serve partially to confirm my rough theory — at least anecdotally — because many of these same sorts of cultures tend to experience more reported sightings of magical creatures, or support a widely-held corpus of legends and stories founded either upon the existence of magic in the present, or at some point in the recent past, like leprechauns and the Fairy Folk in Ireland, or La Llorona in Mexico.”

“I do not know these things, but what do you mean by ‘religiosity’ exactly?” Akcuanrut asked.

“Well, it’s an editorial meta-comment, I suppose. ‘Excessively religious’ is what the word means literally, although of course what seems excessive to one person may seem entirely reasonable to another. Most people in our local area are pragmatic about such things, so if they feel a little peckish, they go out to the kitchen and make a sandwich, or whatever they feel like having, rather than offer up heartfelt prayers for some sort of God or Goddess to order in a catered luncheon, and then pick up the tab.”

The wizard laughed, just as they entered a large room at the end of the corridor. “Very good! Speaking of which, isn’t it time for lunch?”

Phil didn’t answer at first, drawn to a large opening on one wall of the room, where he could see a broad balcony, a stone balustrade, and a range of mountains in the near distance. As he approached, he could see that the balusters were carved in a floral motif that reminded him of something, “Lotus flowers!” he said, and he realized that he was looking at the Himalayas, although which mountain was which was beyond him. He’d had a screensaver, back on Earth, which had featured random mountain images from that central Asian range, and he recognized the profile of the craggy mountain that he saw before him, with one face so sheer that it was free of snow and ice. “That’s Earth!” he cried.

“Stop! Don’t touch that!” the wizard shouted, almost before Phil realized that he was reaching out toward the opening.

Bewildered, he turned to stare at Akcuanrut, whose countenance was very stern. “But that’s Earth!” he said.

“And undoubtedly a deadly trap,” the wizard said. “Look around you. Do you see any signs of animals or birds, taking advantage of a nice warm nesting place or den? Look outside the portal; does it look like a friendly place in which to spend the night? For that matter, look down, without poking your fool head out. Do you see any hint of a safe place where one might safely stroll about?”

Phil looked down, gingerly staying well away from the opening itself, and saw nothing but air, and what looked like an alpine lake, thousands of feet below. “Oh!” he said.

“Exactly. The most important rule of magic is to avoid getting yourself into a situation where your last thought is, ‘Ooops! That was really stupid.’ The key to avoiding this sort of fatal dénouement is to use your head for something other than to keep your ears apart.”

“But….”

“But nothing! When dealing with magic, mysterious circumstances are quite often dangerous ones. You already know that some centaur portals only work in one direction, or do other strange things, and since there are no signs of anything living having visited this lovely vista point in many thousands of years, despite what appears to be an open balcony, it would seem that this may well be one of them. Further, the room is warm. Does this seem reasonable, given the frigid appearance of the world outside? This is further evidence supporting my instant hypothesis. If this is a one-way portal, as it increasingly appears, once you’d thoughtlessly poked your fool hand through, the only way you’d get out of the trap would be to cut off said hand at the wrist, and you wouldn’t have much time for larking about, because the blood that flows through your veins wouldn’t be able to return and would begin to clot within your arm. An instant spent in careful observation would have told you this, thereby preventing you from making a fatal mistake.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not as sorry as you would have been” the wizard said succinctly. On the other hand, you can reassure Wildflower that her portal would not have destroyed your Earth if this world had been destroyed, since this open portal would have been perfectly sufficient.

Phil rolled his eye toward the heavens. “I’m sure that will be a great comfort to her. It’s always nice to have someone to point your finger at when things go to Hell in a handbasket.”

Akcuanrut looked mildly affronted. “Well, it’s nicer than thinking, ‘This is all my fault!’ isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” he admitted, “but in the larger scheme of things, I doubt that a few milliseconds of self-loathing over one’s actions can be readily-distinguished from the same few milliseconds spent hating one’s self for not doing more to prevent it.” He shrugged. “I’m not even sure that the human brain is capable of processing a thought that quickly, so by the time the occasion for the thought arose, it would already be too late to think it.”

“But thoughts are instantaneous, aren’t they?”

“Not at all, recognizing a familiar situation, something one has thought about before, takes from three to four tenths of a second. So if you hear a man say, ‘Oh, no! I’m pregnant!’ you recognize the incongruity right away, but even then it takes some time for the sounds to register on your brain. Add in the time for your brain to respond, ‘That’s odd!’ takes a few more tenths of a second, and that’s about something that everyone already knows, that only women become pregnant. Ask an average person how long it takes for the Sun’s heat to reach their skin and they’ll probably take quite a while to figure it out, if they can answer the question correctly at all.”

“This is that ‘science’ of yours, isn’t it?” he said accusingly.

“I’m afraid so, Sir,” he said, completely unchagrined. “People become easily confused about time, because we maintain an internal illusion of simultaneity that allows us to move about in the world without stumbling over things. Our brains make very rapid predictions about where objects are going to be, and place them in our sensorium where they’re not, so we’re constantly amazed by the tricks of sleight-of-hand artists, who take great pains to act as if they’re doing one predictable thing while actually doing something completely different. This is Selene’s particular skill, and you can see it in her sword and knife work. Rhea, of course, probably inherited some of her gift through the mechanism of her own transformation, plus ample practice with Selene herself. They’re both very quick studies, as you know, and constantly teach each other new tricks as quickly as they discover them.”

“But….”

“Master Wizard, dear friend, our next stop is Earth, where science rules, and we’re likely to have to scrounge to find the magic we need. Better forewarned than taken aback.”

The wizard lowered his brows like thunderclouds in a clear sky and scowled most fiercely, but “Hmmph!” was all he said.

The next two full days were spent arranging the supplies for their expedition and preparing various documents, just in case they turned out to be handy. The first, of course, was the provision of sufficient grain to tide the centaurs over for a few days, in case it were a weekend or bank holiday and they couldn’t arrange for delivery. The second was human provisions for the trip back up north, which they calculated at five days, allowing for distractions. They assumed that the house would still be there, since their lawyers would have been notified when they turned up missing, since the firm was on both of their emergency contact forms at work, and likewise for at least Hastie. They were unsure about the Utterson home and their affairs, so one of the documents was a power of attorney pre-signed by both Alice and Sarah, since they’d never be able to pull off an impersonation. The last, of course, was a large quantity of gold, which they’d decided to supply as nuggets, so they could look about to find some Federal land still open to mining claims and ‘discover’ a rich deposit of alluvial gold. Whatever they did, it was sure to burn money, since one of the first things they’d have to do was buy a largish farm. “Is there anything we’ve forgotten?” Selene asked, having taken on the rôle of expedition military leader.

“Changes of clothes?” Rhea suggested.

“Good point! We’ll have to arrange some sort of covering if it turns out to be winter already, and to disguise the fact that a band of over three hundred buxom babes in scanty outfits has arrived in town. Halloween was a fluke; it’ll be Christmas at least by now. Do you think we should all practice dancing so we could pretend to be the Rockettes?”

Rhea smirked. “Not likely, although I do think we’d look swell in those little top hat and tail numbers they turn out in so often, we’ve sure got the legs for it, and our coördination beats theirs six ways from Sunday. We’re too tall, though. Their maximum height for dancers is only five foot ten and a half inches. Shrimps, the lot of them,”

Selene stared at her in amazement. “How do you know that?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I probably read it in the program when we went to see them perform three years ago. I think it was the Christmas Spectacular. They didn’t do The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, though, so I was a little disappointed. Their minimum height is five six, I remember that too. Does it matter? I remembered about great-great-granddaddy’s formula from when I was just a kid. I just remember stuff is all, and I’ve always liked numbers.”

Selene sighed. “I just wish you could remember the formula itself.”

She raised one lovely eyebrow. “Oh, I can remember the formula numbers just fine. I just can’t remember exactly which chemicals it used. They were mostly stuff with twenty-five syllable names ’n stuff. Not the sort of stuff they’d have on hand locally anyhow, since they don’t have biochemical reactors and mass spectrometers and stuff to formulate and test them. In other words, we’ve got to go back to where we can order the stuff from our friendly biochem supply house, not the local grocery store. It won’t be a problem once we get there, trust me. Dad has a charge account at the place, and he has a copy of the formula itself in his safe deposit box, even if the Library copy is lost.”

“But the original Jekyll guy didn’t have any of those things either!”

“Yeah… so?” She looked at her twin askance. “He went crazy and died, remember?”

Selene just shut her eyes. “You’re right, Rhea. I apologize. I’m just frustrated is all.”

Rhea reached out and gave her a hug. “It’s okay, Sweetie. I still love you, and Phil still loves you best.”

Selene burst into tears and wept on her shoulder. “Oh, Rhea! I’m so sorry you feel that way!”

“It’s okay, Sweetheart. I didn’t exactly fall head over heels for him either. It was a bargain, and well worth it, I think. If he ever wants out, all he has to do is tell me so.”

“Don’t you dare! Rhea! I don’t know what I’d do without you… most days .” She smiled and kissed her. “You’ve been my very best friend ever since grammar school, and even before, so we were practically sisters even before we were twins. Almost minute of every day, I love you dearly, and you drive me crazy only once in a very great while, but the good times more than make up for the occasional irritation. Heck, Phil gets on my nerves from time to time as well….”

“Uhm, dears,” he ventured, “I’m right here, you know…”

Both women turned to him and scowled in wrath. “Who invited you into our private conversation?” they both snapped in unison.

“Uhm…”

“Just mind your own business, is all,” they said in chorus again.

“Yes, Ma’ams!” he said smartly and bowed his way out of their little tête-à-tête

Selene petted her almost-sister’s hair and said, “See, Sweetie. He’s very biddable. Give it a year or two, especially after our babies are born, and he’d cut off his arm before he let either of us go.”

“Meh, that’s not so much. He’d do that already.” Rhea replied.

“I heard that!” he called from the other side of the room.

“So? Is it true?” Selene asked demurely.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” he said, a little miffed.

“Then come over here and convince poor Rhea that you love her just as much as me,” she said. “She’s feeling a little down.”

“So you want me to feel her up?” He smirked, but not obnoxiously so.

They both laughed. “That would be a very good start!” Selene said.

“Then why don’t we all three of us retire to a more private chamber, and I’ll fill you both in on my latest plans where you two can be more comfortable. You’re both looking a little flushed, and I do think you should rest a bit.”

“Phil, Darling,” Rhea cooed, “you wouldn’t believe exactly how randy being pregnant makes you feel.”

“Rhea, honey, you wouldn’t believe exactly how randy your being pregnant with my babies makes me feel.” He picked her up easily, and held her cradled in his arms as he carried her through the doorway and into the gloom of the interior, since no one had picked up a light of any sort. “Beloved Rhea, Selene and I talked about this before we both agreed that you had a right to both our loves, and that it would be forever. We’re neither of us going to leave you, not ever, and never going to stop loving you either. We’re very serious about your marriage to both of us, dear heart, just as serious as we all are about each other. We’re a family, the three of us, soon to be seven, because of the new babies you both carry within you. We could no more cut you out of our lives than we could cut out our own hearts.” He leaned his head down to kiss her tenderly, and then Selene tousled her hair and kissed her as well.

“Silly girl,” she said tenderly, “all in a fret over nothing.”

“It’s the hormones, and the babies,” she groused. “I’m either moody, horny, hungry, or I have to pee….”

At which bon mot Selene burst into laughter. “I’ve got an idea!” she said brightly. “Let’s both of us blame Mr. Wonderful here!, since it’s really all his fault that we’re in this particular pickle.”

“Good idea, Sis! He has a guilty look about him already!” And with that, she began to tickle him under the arms, where she knew he was vulnerable.

“Stop!” he said laughing. “You’ll make me drop you!” he turned and squatted low, then fell carefully backward on their bed, still cradling her from harm. “You’re going to wear me out!”

“Think of this as a wind sprint, Dear….” Selene whispered in his ear. “It will be good for you…,” she breathed in his ear as she started pulling off his clothes.

Phil sighed, trying not to laugh again. “I know, I know, just lie back and think of England.”

“Not yet, Dear,” one of them whispered in his other ear; it was difficult to sort them out by voice alone, especially in the darkness, so he’d given up trying. “Next we have pushups on the menu, and who knows what else?”

Phil was confused when he woke up in the dark, because they always left a candle burning as a nightlight, in case one of them had to use the chamber pot at night. But then he remembered how they’d got here. with a huge yawn, he began trying to extricate himself from a tangle of very feminine limbs, although he took some extra time to gently trace the inward curve of one woman’s waist, now thickening slightly, and the exquisite curve of her hip. ‘This,’ he thought, ‘is the very essence of beauty. Even invisible, here in the dark, that particular fecund curve was alluring. He held it in his mind as well as his hand and realized that it was everywhere: The very pillars of the Parthenon held the subtle outward curve of a woman’s hip, an entire Temple dedicated to the beautiful Goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law, and justice, everything that was truly good about humanity; the legs of Victorian tables and chairs; the country French equivalent; even famous valleys. Was Half Dome in Yosemite notable because it was made of granite? Or was it because the eye was drawn to it like to a woman’s breast, a human shape in a vast wilderness, because the human hand reached out to it, the human heart yearned to encompass it?’

“You talk in your sleep, you know.” It was Rhea. She had a ready challenge to almost every situation. “Why is it so dark? It’s like the bottom of a well in here.”

“I somehow forgot to light a candle, and I guess the torch in the outer room burned out while we were sleeping. Hang on a minute while I go find a candle and a flint and steel to light it.” He still didn’t quite trust his fire spell. The last time he’d tried it, he’d almost set his pants on fire in a general conflagration. His glowing ball spell was first rate, though, so he started setting it up and said, “Cover your eyes for a bit, and Selene’s if she’s still asleep.”

With a brilliant flare of pure white light, the room lit up as bright as day, which was a pleasant change from the usual flickering torch and candlelight, almost like being back in civilization.

Thoughtfully, he shepherded the glowing orb over to the doorway, poking it magically just around the corner so the light was dimmer inside their bedroom. “Okay,” he said, “all settled now.” He started climbing over the prone body nearest the door, which must be Selene, because she didn’t seem to be awake yet, moving carefully so as to disturb her as little as possible. His pants and shirt were on opposite sides of the room, and for about the thousandth time felt especially blessed that he had no need for glasses. When he was finished dressing, he turned toward the bed to say something, but saw instantly that Rhea had curled up with Selene and gone straight back to sleep, so he just tiptoed out into the main room, where he sat down and started working on his lists again.

About an hour later, Akcuanrut popped his head in and said, “Working late, I see. Very diligent. We’ll have a meeting tomorrow morning after breakfast to gauge our progress. I think we’re about ready, though. The wagons are loaded, the young women are all packed, and I have sufficient supplies — magical and otherwise — ready to see me through almost any emergency on your strange world.” With that pronouncement, he popped right back out again, leaving Phil wondering if he should have said something, but then he shrugged and went back to work.

“Hi, Phil!” Selene and Rhea said together as they came out from their bedchamber hand-in-hand. “What did Acky want so early?”

“We have an after-breakfast meeting scheduled to decide whether we’re ready to leave or not” He rolled his eyes to let them know that he personally thought Acky a little obsessive, but then he shrugged, as if to say, ‘Since it’s really his expedition, he has a right to be.’

“Well, somebody has to be, and since you’re so obviously lackadaisical and devil-may-care, he probably worries that all those lists of yours are your tout sheets for the races up at Saratoga.”

He blushed. “Okay, so I’m a little OCDish as well. I do worry about possible contingencies, though.”

Rhea came over and kissed him good morning. “That’s your job, Phil, exactly as it should be. You handle the boring logistics, and we’ll handle the exciting rough stuff.”

Selene said nothing, but kissed him thoroughly before she mouthed, ‘Thank you.’ then turned to help Rhea in setting out new torches in their sconces. “Do you think we’ll need to light any of these?”

“Well, the magic will last another hour or two, but we’ll have to make sure to light a few before anyone else might drop in. Some of the new girls are a little creeped out by magic, not that I blame them. A lot of them have bad memories of evil sorcerers, and I guess it might be a ‘trigger’ for them.”

“Good point. I say let’s turn it off soonish, and go back to the long-ago days of yesteryear.”

“You’re the boss. As soon as you manage to kindle a taper, I’ll douse the glim.” He smiled at them both. “You’re both so much better at lighting fires with flint and steel than I am. With a propane firestarter, mind you, I’m a wonder, and as long as I have a good-size bag of charcoal briquettes handy, and a nice brick barbecue, I can turn out steaks to make any girl’s heart go pittapat.”

“And exactly who’s going to catch those steaks for you, Mister Man?”

“You are, of course,” he said with aplomb. “Aside from the odd feat of wizardly derring do, I’m pretty much useless at stabbing either animals or people. My sort of magic doesn’t hurt living things, and neither does that of Master Wizard Akcuanrut, I notice. Unlike the skills of a warrior, which can be exercised with dispassion and justice, magic springs from the heart, and working bad magic will eventually corrupt your soul, maybe sooner than later. It didn’t take long to infect D’lon-ra’s soul with evil, even standing on the sidelines, as he must have been. Perhaps once he was horrified, then inured, then envious, and so by degrees led toward coveting the same evil power he’d once despised.”

“I’m sorry I teased, you, Phil,” Rhea said.

“It’s okay. I knew that it was just teasing, but I want you both to promise me something….”

“What?” they both said with deep suspicion.

“I want you to promise me, that if you see what happened to D’lon-ra happening to me, you’ll put a stop to it, and do it quickly, because you won’t have much time. I’m really quite powerful, and would be a very dangerous opponent if I once drifted across that line.”

“But….” Rhea started to say something, which Selene cut off unsaid.

“We’ll do that for you, beloved husband, rest assured,” and both women started weeping.

“Don’t cry, my Darlings. You’ll be doing me a favor, because I, the man you love, would already be dead or dying, hating what I was becoming, and would much rather die a little early than hurt either of you. We’ve seen how dangerous it is, this thing we’re fighting. D’lon-ra was a little rough around the edges, but was a good man once, as was Na-Noc I’m sure.”

“But couldn’t we save you, like the Wizards College is trying to save Na-Noc, and D’lon-ra too, if he’s still in there?”

“Well, quite frankly, I think that they’re doddering old fools who can’t make up their minds what do do, because what sane person could live with himself if he’d murdered a small child, let’s say, and then eaten her, but was eventually miraculously ‘cured,’ but only after killing many more children, remembering everything, but now having no new desire to kill and eat small children? How does such a man live with himself after all that? Wouldn’t it be a life of anguish and shame? And if not, why not? Doesn’t this so-called ‘cure’ presuppose that on some level it’s completely ineffective?”

“Oh!” they said.

“What they’re really talking about is creating some sort of deliberate dissociative disorder, in which an individual can miraculously isolate himself from past wickedness. If you think about it, that’s almost exactly what the late Dr. Jekyll tried to do, and we see exactly how successful that little experiment was. How many innocents died while Jekyll was dithering around?”

“I understand, Beloved.” Selene said, and Rhea just nodded her head, by now crying again.

“The buck stops here,” he said decisively. “If I catch it quick enough, I’ll handle the job myself, and with dispatch, but I’m afraid that the process may be very quick, so that I can’t outrun it.” And then he gathered them into his arms. “We’re all of us standing unto danger, my Darlings, so we must treasure each moment as if it were our last. If I wind up laying down my life in this quest, then I lay it down with a right good will, with neither hesitation nor regret, but I fully expect us to succeed, because you two together are almost invincible against any direct assault.”

“But wait a minute,” Rhea said, “your glowing light killed a lot of dwarves when they captured us in that mine of theirs.”

“Not really, although it’s a slippery slope, I admit, with vague pitfalls and traps scattered at random. In a sense — a strong moral sense, I think — the dwarves killed themselves, when they trapped you in the dark, although you were doing an excellent job against what seemed to be thousands of them even then. Because you were in my care, and trapped in the dark, I was bound to give you light; the fact that my light might be fatal to them is something that they should have taken into account, not I, since they knew, or should have known, that I was capable of magic, as was Akcuanrut of course. I was simply helping you, which was and is my clear duty. If dwarves died by happenstance, my conscience bothers me not at all, because that was not my intention, while their clear intention was to harm you both. The same thing goes for Akcuanrut. As far as we knew at the time, the cave was either filled with dead things, or things which were caught in the act of a lethal assault and only temporarily dissuaded, so Acky simply helped to wash it clean and/or dissuade pursuit, thereby preventing either pestilence or murder. Neither of us actually knew whether any of these putative dwarves would be harmed by the water at all, although their noise did leave that impression, and they could have taken steps to preserve themselves from harm by not showing up with murder in their hearts to begin with.”

“But that seems like a legal quibble,” she said.

“Not really,” he explained patiently. “It’s the exact distinction which differentiates murder, which is always wicked, and manslaughter, which may be either entirely justified, or only potentially culpable.” He paused. “Now if Akcuanrut and I had bored a hole in the ground, looking for dwarves, and I then dropped in a ball or two of light, knowing that it was poisonous to them, and for no other reason but to kill them, and then he later poured a river down our murder hole, knowing full well that it would drown any remaining dwarves, both our actions would be deliberate murder, and that’s the exact point at which we’d start sliding down toward our own merry road to the Dark side.”

“But what about us?” Selene asked. “Aren’t we in danger too?”

“I don’t think so. You both talk a good murder, but in reality everything I’ve seen you do is classic self-defense. When you’re under attack by thousands, there’s nothing for it but to use as much force to resist their attempted homicide as possible, which usually winds up being fatal for your assailants. Not your fault at all. As soon as a reasonable escape was offered, you took it. Neither of you said, ‘Hang on a minute, while I go off and slaughter all the non-combatants, if any.’ You’re both inherently good, I believe, and there doesn’t seem to be a hateful bone in your bodies. In the fight with the centaurs and the townspeople, for another example, you managed to prevent them from hurting each other and didn’t harm a single one of the combatants, even though they too were doing their apparent best to kill you.”

“Don’t tell anyone, Phil,” Selene whispered. “You’ll spoil our ‘street cred,’ and we’ll wind up having to fight more.”

“I won’t, Sweeties. Just sayin’ is all. The difference between our powers, though, is that mine are more like a machine gun or heavy field artillery than a knife, so it’s like that ‘who drew their gun first?’ argument that goes on in the old Westerns. In my own case, I can shoot’em in the back, or from half a mile away, or from the day before yesterday, all without breaking a nail, and by the tens of thousands, so the moral hazard is much greater.”

“Then you must simply not do anything!” Rhea said firmly.

“That doesn’t work either, my dearest darlings. I’m part of the team, and an army needs both heavy cavalry — That’s our centaurs, and you and your sisters — and artillery — that’s Akcuanrut and me. — we were a belated but essential part of your final victory in the dwarf mines, even though our rôle was only ancillary. If either of us had deserted our clear duty, many more innocent lives may have been lost — although we don’t know exactly what other surprises the dwarves had in store for us — not least of which may have been yours, which in itself might be enough of a blow to start me slipping down that slippery slope.”

“Oh,” they said.

“Exactly. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. We just have to try to be careful.”

“It isn’t fair!” Rhea said.

“No, it isn’t,” he admitted, but it’s the same choice faced by an artillery commander who can see from miles away that enemy tanks are hiding behind a church, let’s say, in which they’ve gathered all the innocent children in town as human shields. The Laws of War are clear upon this issue; hiding a military force among a non-combatant population is a war crime, for which the just punishment is death, but the immediate choice for the artillery commander is dire in any case — attack the tanks, kill the hostages. Or spare the tanks, allowing your own troops, who depend upon you, and who are even now approaching the ambush, to die? Possibly the hostages will be killed anyway, out of malice and spite, but your sworn duty requires you to first protect those who depend upon you, even though it can twist your soul in two.”

“Crap!” Selene said.

“Exactly,” he said.

After breakfast, and after the group had decided to start just after an early lunch — Akcuanrut’s suggestion — they were back in their rooms, gathering together last-minute stuff, and eliminating things that at first they’d thought they couldn’t live without. Both Selene and Rhea had decided to take their dowries and other gifts, which got Phil thinking. “Remind me to conjure up a couple of hundred pounds of gold to take with us for personal use as well, and maybe some platinum, so when we arrive on Earth, we’ll have enough cash available to extricate ourselves from emergencies. I can rent a safe deposit box to stash some of it in, so we don’t have to lug it about, and one of my papers here — in quadruplicate — is a codicil to both your Ketubahs, adding the sums to your doweries, and a will in favor of you both, so you’ll be well-provided for if anything goes amiss.”

“Can you do diamonds?” Rhea enquired.

He blinked. “I suppose I could. It’s just a matter of visualization. Do you and Selene want engagement rings for when we visit Earth? I know they’re important for most women.”

Selene said, “Of course we do, Phil, whenever you’d like before we go, and if you could match our rings it would be nice. That way we’d all three of us have two rings on our ring fingers, which would make a nice statement.”

“Plus, a nice fat diamond makes a wicked glass cutter and tool for general mayhem,” Rhea added practically.

“More to the point, though,” added Selene even more practically, “is that diamonds might be more portable than gold.”

Phil shook his head. “There’s a problem, however, with the so-called ‘conflict diamond’ laws that require documentation of origin and a chain of custody. It’s a good idea, but it runs into problems in the USA and Canada, probably most of Europe as well. There was a time when it was a great idea, because diamonds are easily concealed and smuggled across borders, but that’s all spy stuff that we don’t want to get involved in, I think, especially until we have unassailable documentation. For your personal rings, and any other jewelry you’d like to have on hand, we can let that slide, I think, and claim that they’re family heirlooms, but a stash of loose diamonds would raise too many eyebrows.”

They glanced at each other very briefly before saying in chorus, “We’ll put together a list of things we’d like to have, and have complete faith in your wonderful artistic talents to come up with the actual designs. You know the sorts of things we’d like to wear, so we both trust your judgement on that.”

“Pierced?”

“Of course. Came with the territory, although we haven’t really had any earrings to wear since we came to this world. Heck, forget the list, just make a bunch of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces that we can put in a box, but be sure that at least some of the necklaces hang low enough to make men want to stare at our boobs. It makes the lechers easier to kill, if necessary.”

“And it so often is,” Rhea added happily.

Phil resisted the urge either to grin or to roll his eyes toward the heavens. “As you wish, my lady wives,” he said.

“And at your pleasure, our lord husband.”

Phil didn’t let the ‘lord husband’ quip go to his head, at least in any medieval sense.

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

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

Note: Many or all of the characters Akcuanrut talks about may display improperly in your browser as they appear in the running text, but they’re duplicated — probably in a somewhat larger size — as an image directly below. If you’d like to see them properly inline, many or most of them appear in the Unicode fonts, Aegean, ALPHABETUM Unicode, Code2001, EversonMono, Free Idg Serif, MPH 2B Damase, Penuturesu, and others. Some of these, such as Code2001 and Aegean, are free for personal use and can be readily found on the Internet.