Having just married both Nancys, she was the focal point of my dream the next night, though I kept seeing Nancy change between my Nancy and a version of Victoria’s Nancy who had the most outrageous of the tattoos and piercings of the guests at her wedding. On Sunday, December 3, it was my Nancy who I found in bed with me.

“Did we really just do all that?” I asked her as we woke up together.

“Yes,” Nancy replied. “The six of us, that is you, me, Victoria, Victoria’s version of me, Mona, and Aries, did just marry in various combinations in seven weddings since Thanksgiving Day, in four different worlds. And since the proposal in Aries’ world counted as a marriage as far as they are concerned, you can say you got married eight times, though that one was a while ago.”

We ate a normal breakfast and then made the rounds into all the different worlds, starting in my dream world.

“You know, now that we are married, I shouldn’t have to come get you in order to allow you into the other worlds. I should give you a key to my dream house so you can come and go as you please.”

“That would be wonderful, Jody!”

“I just have to make a duplicate, because this is the only one I have. Do you know where such a place in your world is staffed by someone we know, so that we can interact with him?”

“There’s a key duplicating vending machine at the grocery store.”

“That’ll work.”

Pretty soon Nancy had her key.

“I’m going to make one for Victoria’s Nancy, too. Or rather, Victoria should do that the next time she’s here, because I shouldn’t presume. You two just be careful not to block each other, because I know the doorways don’t let you be in the same world at the same time.”

“Sure, we’ll figure out some way to deal with that.”

I briefly went into Victoria’s dream world, found the Nancy there, and told her about the thing with the key. She agreed it was for the best not to do that while Victoria wasn’t around.

After I rejoined my Nancy, we went into Mona’s world.

“I’m very happy to see you, husband.”

I kissed her in response to that.

Mona continued, “Now that you’re first in line to inherit my magic, the people of this world are going to want to see you more.”

“More? As in, ever? Apart from those at the wedding, I think the number of residents of your world I’ve seen can be counted on one hand.”

“Right. But they know. That we married was worldwide news.”

“We aren’t actually king and queen of anything, are we?”

“Not like in the old days. The magic users of ancient times were treated like kings and queens of their domains, regions stretching well beyond the actual magical property, though it varied depending on how much of their power they were willing to spend to control it. Today, the domain extends only to the edge of the magic-generating property, but I am the ruler of it, and you could say I am a queen in that way. One of the old compromises that is still in effect is that the magical properties are outside of any country, effectively tiny countries of our own. They cannot tax us, nor enforce their laws on us. While we may no longer be able to turn our enemies into newts, we can still do quite unpleasant things to people within the magical property itself.”

“Like what, exactly?”

“One of my wards causes anyone entering the property with hostile intent to be stricken with intense itchiness.”

“Ha ha! And you can only cast this type of ward within the property itself?”

“It depends on what the ward does. Some effects are allowed by covenant anywhere, but others only within the property. Besides that, there is also a limit based on magical power. Within the property, the magic drawn to maintain it is negligible, while keeping such a ward up outside the property draws an amount of magic proportional to the distance from the property and the size of the ward. Even extending an area-effect ward to twice the radius of the property would represent a significant drain on my magic. It’s because the spells are practically free here that I can keep such magic going indefinitely.”

“That makes sense.”

“It’s why even in the days of unrestrained magic, there were still free people outside the scope of the magic users. Performing powerful magic on people outside the realm was expensive in proportion to the distance from the realm, so the magic users had their dominions and the rest of the world was free.”

“How exactly did that change? You said there was a magical covenant imposed, but how did that happen?”

“One of the magic users died without a direct heir, but the magic finds someone. Eventually the heir was found to be a strong supporter of the non-magical people. He spent years studying magic in order to figure out how to impose permanent limits on it. He finally did, casting a temporary spell that prevented anyone from making money with magic for one day, and that led to a complicated negotiation. The magic users agreed to the rules in the covenant, and not to use their magic to try to gain control of lands outside their domains, and the non-magical countries agreed to treat each magical domain as a small separate country of its own, among other things.”

“And what happened to the guy who gained control of that realm, in the end? Was he an outcast among the magic users?”

“The one who gained control of that realm sacrificed its power and his own life to impose the covenant. That was the cost to cast a spell of that strength which affected the entire world and was irrevocable, even by his heirs: The entire output of power from that property, indefinitely, and his own soul, which became a part of the spell itself. Magical scholars never figured out whether his heir never inherited the magic because there was nothing left to inherit or because he never actually died, also being permanently kept alive within the spell itself. There was literally no way to tell the difference. The property still exists, but it’s a wasteland, a desert within which nothing will grow and it gives anyone who enters such an eerie feeling that nobody is willing to stay there long.”

“How big is the magical property? Are they all the same size?”

“They vary somewhat, but they aren’t much different from mine. Remember where the turnstiles were at the wedding? The boundary is about the width of this room beyond them. It’s marked with survey markers installed way back then because when the governments agreed they were not claiming this land they wanted to understand exactly what they were not claiming.”

“That sounds like a government to me! And yes, I guess that’s not very much land if it extends beyond the castle that far all the way around. You could walk the whole border in an hour. You couldn’t even pretend to be a country and wouldn’t have any power to stand as one if it wasn’t for the magic.”

“Certainly.”

“So how are the people going to see more of me? Do you do public addresses where you invite the people to come up outside the gate and you speak to them?”

“No. We do television appearances.”

“Oh, of course.”

“They’re coming here on Saturday the 16th for one and I’d love it if you could be here for it.”

“I’ll put it on my calendar. If you do those when I’m working, I won’t be able to join, but I’ll try to attend if they happen while I’m not.” As a second thought, I added, “Actually, I’ve been wondering about that.”

“About working?”

“Yes. I’m trying to figure out why I still work. I guess I need to maintain a connection to the real world somewhere, and it’s the only way to visit my parents, but assuming I get a place to keep a doorway, I wonder if I could simply live in the other worlds full time.”

“Does your power work here?”

“Well, one day I transported myself here with the power, and I slept here that night and activated the power to get back to my world. So it works here at least that much.”

“Yes, I remember where you appeared, and I wasn’t sure why it was in that particular room, but I decided to mark that one as yours.”

“How many bedrooms are there in the castle?”

“About 20.”

“Does that make a lot of work for Cecilia to clean?”

“Actually, no, because of the standing magic. One of the standing spells on the castle keeps any unused rooms from getting dirty and keeps the contents from aging. Even though nobody may have used most of those rooms in any real way for more than a century, they’re ready for use at any time.”

“Is there a lot of standing magic on the castle?”

“Yes, quite a lot. There are wards that let me know when anybody enters or leaves, by any means. There is a spell that regulates the temperature. There are several different spells that defend the castle itself; one protects it from eroding, one deflects impacts, and one, which has specific holes where needed, prevents it from being set on fire.”

“And you can modify them when you need to, like putting a hole in the fire suppression ward when you want to light candles on a birthday cake or something?”

“Right. Those modifications cost magical power, but the standing spell draws so little I can’t measure it. All the standing spells together draw about as much power as it would take for me to make enough food to feed myself.”

“What about the doorways?”

“The doorways with one end here are as cheap as other standing magic. The ones connecting your two dream worlds together and to your real world seem to be a special case. Because neither end is anchored here, they should be drawing a steady level of power based on their distance, but that distance isn’t measurable in any conventional sense. I know they are drawing power, but it’s coming from another source, or a different dimension, or something. When stuff goes through the doorways, it draws actual power comparable to teleporting the stuff, or in some cases comparable to creating it. I think if you buy something in your dream worlds with dream world money and bring it through, it counts as creating it.”

“Right. I can’t bring some kinds of things from the dream world through at all, and what you classified as wealth can’t go through the doorways in either direction. I’ve mostly only been doing that for food. So that’s roughly equivalent to you creating that food with your magic, and in ordinary amounts like me and my current summoned wife each day would eat, it’s not much.”

“Correct.”

“Well, I think what I’ll do is next weekend I’ll try bringing myself here both days, and if I am able to do that, bringing myself with one wife in my special bedroom Saturday and another wife Sunday, then I can probably live here indefinitely. But I don’t know about the other mes. My Sea Man version also works in Alaska, as does alt-Victoria. I’m not sure how changing my routine affects them, though so far, nothing at all seems to affect alt-Victoria. And alt-Victoria even has a Sea Man version, though the two versions don’t know about each other, nor that a version of me with the power exists, as far as I can tell.”

“I’m afraid that is beyond me. That’s your magic, not mine.”

“Well I thought of some stuff I want to talk to Aries about.”

“She’s not here now, but I can let you into her world through her doorway to go look for her.”

“Speaking of these doorways, I was wondering if it was possible to give me and the other women keys to them? I gave Nancy a key to my house so she can reach the doorway into the real world.”

“Hmm, it would take some work. There aren’t any sort of standard locking mechanisms on these doors; they’re locked magically. I’m casting magic, a very tiny bit of magic, every time I open one of the doors, and it resets after the door is closed again. But I might be able to imbue an artifact with the ability to unlock them. There’s one thing, though. They’re all locked the same way. If I made a key like that it would open all the doors from here, unless I modify the spells to be different.”

“Well that’s fine for me. I think it would be fine to give the other women as well. I think the ability of any of us to get anywhere outweighs the potential problem of Aries visiting one of the worlds to pull a prank. If the others all feel that’s OK, go ahead and make them.”

Mona let me and Nancy through the door into Aries’ world, and we found Aries lying on the beach. She wasn’t even having sex; she was just relaxing, alone, with her head propped up on one arm, staring out at the water. The way she was lying there, with her breasts against the sand and her legs together with feet crossed, combined with her blue skin and small fins, made me think of a mermaid, and with the aquatic nature of this species, that’s not too far off.

“Hi, Aries.”

“Hey, Jody! What brings you here?”

I noticed that she ignored Nancy. Aries also raised her butt slightly and wiggled it as if to invite me for sex.

“I wanted to talk to you a little about your species.”

“Come on, you can talk from behind me.”

That confirmed I wasn’t imagining the first invitation. I was going to decline, but Nancy said, “Go ahead. It’s her domain.”

She started stripping to match Aries, so I did as well, folding my clothes neatly on top of my shoes, and straddled the blue woman’s body. I was already hard from seeing her naked body and easily slid into her. Nancy lay down at right angles to Aries where the two of them could kiss. This was perhaps why Nancy so readily agreed; getting to kiss Aries was no small thing.

Once we established a good rhythm, I explained, “I was trying to figure out why certain people in the Sea Man Alaska oil well work camp are female when their counterparts in my world are male.”

Aries pulled away from the kiss with Nancy to answer, though she went back into it after every answer.

“Are these people who were always female, or have you only known them to be female on specific days when you went there?”

“Um, I’ve only seen the Sea Man version of the camp on a few days when my summonings took me there.”

“Sea Men can change.”

I froze in place. “Like change sex?”

“Yes. I have only seen it once, here, but it’s part of what we all learn. Two Sea Women fell in love and one of them changed to male so that they could have a child together. We rarely form monogamous relationships, but we don’t have children willy-nilly either. Couples form who love each other, and that love is often life-long even if one or both members also have children with other people. If two of my people of the same sex feel they want to have a child together, one of them will change. Which one depends on details of their relationship. That’s the most common way we change.”

Resuming my motion, I continued, “OK. That would explain some of them. Some of the guys in the human work camp are gay and formed gay couples. Those couples were together in the Sea Man version of the camp but one person in each couple was female. But among the other guys, the ones who are single, about a fourth of them were female in the Sea Man camp and they were out on the beach in separate groups each with 2 to 4 men.”

“We’re taught that if a group of us living together are wildly out of gender balance, then some of them will spontaneously change. We try to mix genders in work groups so that that doesn’t happen. Consider the child care team. They have to be able to breast-feed the infants. Any women can do that after they lay their first egg, but the men only gain that ability when they become pregnant, so once they do, they usually join that team for a couple years.”

“Ah, right. On my second visit there to see the records a man with breasts helped me.”

I thought some more.

“The reason why my human camp was all male was... well, several reasons. It was partly because men are more likely to pursue engineering degrees, partly because the other jobs there include physical labor men are better suited for, and partly because men are more willing to go out into such an extreme environment. Alt-Victoria has a Sea Woman version in the camp also, and in her version, the singles who turned to women were different. If it’s random who changes, or affected by subtle things, that could explain why different people changed.”

“That’s possible, Jody. Supposedly, when people change to equalize the groups, certain people who would be happier as the other sex are more likely to change, but if there aren’t people like that, it could be random, and that’s what the mixed work groups are meant to avoid, people changing randomly who don’t want to change.”

“Do you think it’s possible that my Sea Man form or alt-Victoria’s would change?”

“You, with how gender-confused you were growing up because of the dreams with you as Victoria? Certainly.”

“They both did. Sea Man Jody and Sea Woman alt-Victoria both changed after they started working in the camp. They both have messages from when they first started working there referring to them by the opposite names. I thought I’d broken history with my complicated summonings when I saw the wrong names in both of their message histories, but what you said today explains it. Since they both dreamed of their opposite-sex self with the other name, it’s natural they took that name after changing.”

“Wait, alt-Victoria changed too? Wasn’t her human version the only woman working on the wells in the camp?”

“Yes. And yes.”

“That doesn’t seem right that the only woman there would change, even if others also changed to become women.”

“What if she couldn’t stand having sex with any of the guys?”

“Uh, maybe?”

“Alt-Victoria made her doll because she has the same sexual inclination as my Victoria, but even stronger. She can only enjoy sex if she chooses the guy, and is put off by any guys coming on to her. I’m assuming her Sea Woman version is the same way. What if they all came on to her, making all of them undesirable, before she had a chance to choose one?”

Aries closed her eyes and shook her head while thinking.

“That is pretty far off from the typical Sea Woman mindset, but if she did feel that way, I could imagine her changing, even if it went against the gender ratio.”

“I bet that’s what happened. Sea Men usually are pretty open with sex. It’s implanting eggs that’s serious business because it leads to real pregnancy.”

“Right. You have learned something about us, even if you missed one important thing.”

“Thanks for the lesson, Aries.”

At that moment I came inside Aries, ensuring she would have to lay an egg later tonight.

“And thank you both for visiting, for the sex, and for the kisses.”

I learned a lot in one day. Also, I made note of the idea I had with Mona for future plans.

For the time being, though, I was thinking about Christmas travel. I had arranged the vacation time, and before it got too late in the day today, I called my parents to basically let them know when I would be there. We would do it the way we did at Thanksgiving, sleeping in my world but the group of us coming through and visiting during the day.