The rest of the week was back to normal. I worked, and each woman was summoned to, among other things, fill out the journal entries for our respective wedding days. I summoned Aries on Friday, December 1. She was to be the go-between, to travel between the worlds to confirm with Mona and both Nancys that all the final plans for the other weddings the following day were set, and she was happy with that role. In the evening she confirmed that Mona and Nancy had handled everything and we were ready to go for the big day.

That night I had a weird dream. In the dream, I was Victoria, and we were back at the weddings of the previous week, but it was Victoria who got married to Nancy, to Mona, and to Aries in consecutive ceremonies. Of course, my parents weren’t there, like in all my dreams, but we went to what should have been their apartment afterward. Aries wanted to consummate our marriages, and her ovipositor was fully out, though I had no idea when she had had time to have sex with a man during the day. Then it turned out that Nancy and Mona were Pasthru emales, and I was worried that the group was going to impregnate me somehow. We got as far as the four of us nesting our organs when all of that evaporated and Victoria was there alone, and then I woke up.

A nightmare. A dream that suggested a scenario with dreadful consequences that should have been impossible, even for the weirdness of the dream worlds. The real Aries wouldn’t have requested “consummating our wedding” because they didn’t even have weddings like that in her world, and what they did have was a promise to have children eventually, not immediately after the wedding.

I had such nightmares occasionally, a few times a year, though I had not had one for a long time, since before I discovered this power several months ago. Fortunately, nothing went wrong with the summoning and on Saturday, December 2 I awoke in bed with Victoria the way I had intended.

There was a lot to do in order for me to participate in three weddings today. The first wedding was in Mona’s world. Victoria and I showered quickly. I dressed in my tux, while Victoria put on ordinary clothes and went and retrieved my Nancy, who was also in plain clothes. Mona had both of their dresses, so we went through the doorway to her realm and Mona led Victoria and Nancy to get dressed. Cecilia was there, too, and she showed me the wedding venue.

We were getting married on the grounds outside the castle, but within an area they had fenced off. Hundreds of chairs were set up in rows facing away from the castle, divided in two by a long aisle. Most of these seats were still empty. The main external entrance to the castle opened right into the aisle dividing the seating area in two. At the opposite end of the aisle was a small stage about a foot off the ground that ensured all the attendees would be able to see what was happening.

Some distance beyond this, the fence enclosing the area was easily 8 feet tall, and there were several turnstiles in it. Not the kind of turnstiles at most subway entrances, where you could cheat and hop over or under them if nobody was there to stop you. These were more like revolving doors, but with two quadrants open and two closed. Each person had to enter separately and it looked like they were being scanned or something as they entered.

Cecilia explained, “Mona sent out individual passes coded to each guest and each of their family members or plus-ones that unlock the turnstiles, but only for the person matching each pass. This way we don’t have to have someone out there manning each turnstile.”

“I should have expected nothing less from Mona.”

“Also look over this way.”

Cecilia pointed out for me another area off to the right, separated by a low fence from the seating area. It was empty, but there were some spots outlined on the ground.

“When the ceremony ends, you’ll walk back up the aisle, then along the castle wall to a gate in this fence, through this area to the long outlined space at the front. Once the wedding party is all there, Mona will summon all the food tables and chairs into the outlined areas and remove the intervening fence, allowing the guests through. When it’s over, the guests leave through the turnstiles and you head back into the castle to your next appointment.”

We still had a while before the wedding, but clearly some of the guests had wanted to make sure they were not late. A couple dozen were already seated, and a few more were walking toward the seats from the turnstiles, but there were not yet lines waiting to get through the turnstiles.

I waited in the castle by this window overlooking the wedding site as Cecilia explained more things to me, but after about 20 minutes, Cecilia left briefly. She soon returned with Victoria and Nancy. Cecilia was also carrying a crown, an actual crown like a king would wear, and told me I was expected to wear this during the ceremony. She helped clip it to my hair in several places so that there was no chance it would fall off. I had never personally thought about bobby pins being used to hold on headgear, but I sensed from Victoria that it was something familiar to her, something she’d learned, somehow, and I might have known if I had only had any reason to ever think about it. Cecilia also provided me with the ring to put on Mona’s finger when we reached that part in the ceremony.

Cecilia then lined us up in the order we would enter, but told us to wait as she left us there again. While she was gone, we saw musicians, a full orchestra, exit from the door below us and go off to the left of the audience for the wedding. Cecilia must have gone to cue them to head out. I saw Aries go out with them. She was apparently not marching in the procession, but went up the left aisle and sat in one of the reserved seats in the front row. Aries wore the dress she wore for the other weddings in which she was not getting married, but without the hat.

Cecilia returned about the time the musicians were set up and some were tuning or testing their instruments, but that only lasted a couple minutes before they started playing. I didn’t recognize the song. When they switched to a second song, Cecilia told us to follow her and we went downstairs, to the door going out to the wedding site, maintaining our order. A man was already waiting at the door and Cecilia introduced him.

“This is Hubert, the wedding officiant. When the next song begins, you’ll start marching out, slowly, one at a time,” she explained, demonstrating the marching pace matching the slow beat of the music, which we all practiced. “Hubert will go first, then Jody, but I’ll cue each one of you to start.”

After a brief break, the band started the next song, and it was not the wedding march I knew, but it had the same tempo as the music that had been playing before. She sent Hubert out, and waited until he reached his position in front of the audience before sending me out. I tried to match the pace I had seen him march and the one I had briefly practiced. It was a little slower than the pace I’d just followed in the weddings in my world. When I got to the front, the officiant pointed to an X that was taped on the stage. There was an X for each person.

As I assumed my position, Nancy began marching out. She was assigned the spot beside me, what would normally have been my best man. Well, I didn’t have any men I knew in this world. She worked if gender wasn’t an issue. Victoria was next, and she was placed in the maid of honor position, as I knew was intended.

The band paused and changed music again. But it was not “Here Comes the Bride.” It sounded more like “My Country, Tis of Thee,” though a couple notes were different. When I whispered that to Nancy, she responded by saying that the song has the same melody as “God Save the Queen,” though again, a couple notes were different. Maybe it was this world’s version of that song.

It might as well have been “God Save the Queen” because Mona came out of the castle wearing a crown, as I fully expected, given the one I was wearing. Mona’s dress somewhat resembled the one she got married in in my world, but with many little jewels, outlining the shapes of her breasts and trailing in several lines below them, nearly to the floor. She took her place opposite me at the front.

The vows were very long, and clearly either customized for our wedding or special because a magic user was being married. They included that we were gathered here “upon this site of magical power” and that we were to be wedded “in the presence of magic.” There was a long bit that I had to uphold my vow to support and love her to retain my right to inherit this magic, and if I acted to prevent the succession of a child or other heir, that would also void my right to the magic. But Mona had said the magic itself chooses the heir, and this ceremony was a way of nominating me as the heir in a way satisfying the magic. When I thought about that, I realized that the rest of the vow was simply stating a list of conditions magical inheritance was discovered to have obeyed in the past.

Finally we got to say our “I do”s and put rings on each others’ fingers. Hubert declared us husband and wife, and I felt the magical contract as it fell upon me. I can’t explain what I felt, but there was an actual tangible feeling of something touching me all throughout my body as the wedding became official and turned me from a nobody from another world into the first heir for Mona’s magic. Mona and I kissed, the deepest and fullest kiss I had ever gotten from her, which still didn’t compare with kisses from some of the others, but it clearly was enough for our loudly cheering audience.

When the band started again, I knew it was time to start the march out, and Mona and I were first. We followed the path that Cecilia had directed for us, and while they let us march the whole aisle before the others followed, afterward one person joined the march at every fourth beat of the music, Aries joining at the tail of the line, and Cecilia following her when we passed the entrance to the castle.

When we had all arrived at the designated spot, Mona summoned all the tables and chairs and food for the reception at once, and then removed the intervening wall that we’d just walked around. The other guests then walked over casually. The people in each row walked more or less in a line, but those lines weren’t fully aligned with the tables, so there was some merging, and some groups who were attending together moved about to find a table where they could sit together. It was neither entirely orderly nor complete chaos. Some people held up hands next to empty seats to let the last few people find them.

Our officiant then spoke some sort of a blessing which was not the grace I was used to, as it honored the magic rather than the Lord, but it seemed to serve the same purpose. At its completion, Mona cast one more bit of magic to drop the seals over all the meals, and that was the signal for everyone to start eating. As we ate, I asked Mona about the vows and blessing honoring the magic.

“The blessing is the standard one in this world. But you’re right about the vows being special. Only weddings involving magic users or those involving someone within about the top ten positions in line to inherit magic go through all that detail about the magic. The regular wedding vows still satisfy the magic, but when there’s the slightest likelihood of the wedding being relevant for magical inheritance, we use those longer vows, and those weddings are held on the grounds of the magical site when possible.”

There was dancing when the meal was done, and they had traditions which were different from the ones of my world about the throwing of the bouquet and the removal of the garter. Mona had rehearsed all of these with me earlier in the week when I last summoned her. For example, I was spared ever having to stick my head under Mona’s dress, but there was a dance where we simulated sex while fully clothed.

After we had been done eating for long enough to give everyone else time to do so as well, on a signal from our officiant, we stood and marched as a group back into the castle. This signaled the end of the reception, and there were a handful of people who acted as ushers, who had been mixed into the crowd but now directed everyone out to the turnstiles to exit. I didn’t see any more, as we did not stick around.

Cecilia led me to the bedroom where I once awoke upon dreaming myself into this world, which was now designated as my room permanently, and I left the crown there, as well as the wedding band I could not take through Mona’s doorways. Then she took me back to the area with the doors out of this world, where Victoria, Nancy, and Aries were waiting. Mona joined us after a bit, having replaced her wedding dress with a less elaborate one, and having left her crown and ring behind as well.

The next wedding was in my dream world, so our group followed in a line out of my dream-house. Nancy had already loaded everything we would need in her car. She drove, and I followed in mine with the rest of the group. Mona did not use magic to take us over there this time, though she could have. It was only about a ten minute drive.

The wedding with Nancy was a normal one, with a guest count similar to the large one I had had with Victoria at Thanksgiving, normal wedding songs, and normal traditions afterward. Jeremy showed up as my best man, as I’d arranged, with his husband Arturo sitting in the family row. Mona was Nancy’s maid of honor and Aries again tried to be inconspicuous. She had picked up the headgear that helped to hide her skin at some point. I suppose the meal I ate in Mona’s world at about 10 AM my time was my breakfast, so the one at the reception from this wedding counted as lunch.

Nancy threw the bouquet intentionally to Victoria, who was a part of the wedding happening in her own dream world a few hours from now, so that was appropriate. And I had to remove Nancy’s garter; I had already removed one garter from this Nancy’s leg, but this was another world, and this version of the wedding guests had not seen it.

We drove back to our homes in this world, and Nancy stayed in hers. I left another wedding band behind in my dream bedroom as I led the rest of the group through the doorway into Victoria’s dream world. That world’s Nancy was ready to repeat what the rest of us had just done, but Victoria was part of it this time. In her dream bedroom, Victoria changed into her wedding dress that we had stashed here after the weddings a week ago.

We took another car ride, though this one was to a different wedding hall, one I could best describe as looking eclectic. The wedding was here because Nancy had found someone who performed polyamorous weddings to marry the three of us. I had initially suggested that Nancy would marry Victoria in this wedding, but after Victoria and I proposed together to Nancy, she had found somebody who performed these very nontraditional weddings who would marry the three of us, though it was going to be Victoria and Nancy signing the marriage license at the end.

Victoria and I marched together and stood in the groom’s position for this wedding, and Larry and Kimmy stood on our side as my best man and Victoria’s bridesmaid, respectively. This Nancy had Mona as her maid of honor again, but this time Aries stood as a bridesmaid.

The guest count was smaller, but besides that, the guests were just different. It wasn’t just that people in Victoria’s dreams had replaced ones from mine. Among these guests, unusual clothing, tattoos, and body piercings were common. I suppose the polyamorous wedding invitation had encouraged people to attend who might have skipped ordinary weddings, though part of it was that Victoria’s Nancy had gone out of her way to invite people like that who I hadn’t even thought to invite to my real-world weddings. Aries did not stand out as the weirdest looking person there, even when her position as a bridesmaid drew attention to her.

The vows were designed so that both Victoria and I were marrying Nancy and she was marrying both of us. Victoria and I were not asked to marry each other, not that we would have cared if we had been asked to marry each other again. Heck, it was the third time I was marrying Nancy, though the first time for Victoria’s Nancy. But this was how we had proposed, and Nancy had set up the wedding to match.

After eating what I supposed was now my dinner, at a typical dinner time, we had the dancing and other traditions. Victoria and Nancy each threw a bouquet at random into the crowd of unmarried women, and I removed a garter from Nancy followed by Nancy removing one from Victoria.

After we left, a party was held in Victoria’s and my dream bedrooms so that both Nancys could participate. Everybody was naked, and each couple married today had sex so that the others could see, as much as possible; Mona and I went into both rooms during our act so that both Nancys could see us.

Being involved in seven weddings in ten days was a lot, and the three in one day had tired me out, so as soon as we were done with this I sent everybody to their various homes. Victoria was the one summoned today, and came to my bed for just the minimal joining to let me bring someone else into the real world.