I succeeded, and awoke Tuesday, December 19 with Mona in bed with me. She was indeed wearing Victoria’s gift, except in red instead of green.

“Wow, where did you get this little number?” Mona asked when she saw how she was dressed in bed.

“It was my mother’s gift for Victoria.”

“Well she must know that you and Victoria are having sex now.”

“Well, she did see us get married, so she might assume that.”

“Oh, of course. I remember that you had dozens of guests there.”

“I know, nothing like the wedding in your world. I had no idea it was going to be like that when I agreed to marry you there. I learned a lot about you.”

We got ourselves ready and went over to my parents’ apartment, where unlike Aries, Mona ate the same food as the rest of us.

Mona was the primary storyteller today. Although some of her stories covered things I already knew, many of them recently learned, there was still new stuff for me in it, too.

“My world is like yours in many ways, but the geography is totally different. There are different cities, different countries, different continents, and most importantly, there are a couple dozen sources of magic. Each of these is controlled by a single person at any time, passed on to heirs by marriage and blood relation. I am the current owner of one of these which has historically been called Galbreath and the owners of this magic have always used that surname even if they used another name before coming into possession of it.”

“Yes, we understood that you can do magic, with some limitations. You, after all, have made this doorway into our home,” Mom replied.

“Yes. One of the primary restrictions is that I cannot manipulate or steal other people’s property without their permission. Making a permanent doorway like this, even if I intend to take it down afterward, falls into this category. Even doing it on public property is blocked unless there’s literally a law that says it’s permitted in places, but I can do a one-time teleport there. Another restriction is that I cannot create money, or things seen as equivalents for money, like gold and jewels.”

“Does that also apply to manipulating people’s bodies?” Dad asked.

“Not entirely. If they are on my property, I still can’t kill them or enslave them or turn them into newts or force them to do things, but I can torment them in a number of ways. It’s part of an exception that lets magic users protect their property.”

“Are you limited in how much magic you can do?” Mom asked.

“There are limits, but as long as I stay within my domain those limits are pretty large. This isn’t covered by the covenant, but is just the way magic works. The farther from the source I am doing something, the more it costs. Cheap stuff is practically free on the property, and conversely, expensive stuff is prohibitively expensive away from the property.”

“Tell us about the covenant,” Dad suggested.

“Today, as it has been for lifetimes, the parts of my world outside the magical realms are divided into about 40 large countries, and a number of smaller ones on islands and such, away from magical realms. But a long time ago, there were many, smaller non-magical realms. The owners of the magic became tyrant-kings who often fought to hold on to significantly larger realms than they have today, using various means to subdue or attack people near but outside the source to exert control there. Inside the source they could outright enslave people, so people avoided getting too close. However, natural resources of various types located in the no-man’s-lands outside but close to the magical realms encouraged people to dare to enter these areas. The losers of those dares often ended up as slaves in the magical realms.”

Mona used a little magic to create a globe in the air, showing her world and the current areas of its magical realms glowing in gold, the no-man’s-lands in red, and the non-magical realms in natural colors for the terrain, divided by black lines.

“People banded together against the tyrants, and this began the consolidation of non-magical realms into the large countries we have today. The non-magical realms began to fight back, attacking the magic users in the ways that they could.”

The map updated to show many of the black boundaries vanishing, and most magical realms to lie entirely within single non-magical realms or on the boundary between only two, in either case the neighbors being hundreds of times larger.

“Occasionally they managed to kill one of the magic users, but that did not necessarily mean the end because the inheritance was automatic, determined by laws of the magic. Usually close family members of the magic users lived within the magical realms and were trained in magic to take over when needed. But one attack on a magical realm managed to kill all of the immediate family living within, and when no heir showed up, the people in the neighboring realms assumed the heir was a more distant family member among them, and it became a regular thing for people living gradually greater distances away to visit to determine if they could feel the magic.”

Lines on the map showed the migrations took place from up to hundreds of times the diameter of the realm away from it, some of them by sailing in over water.

“Eventually, a man named Gilbert who was a great opponent of the magic users discovered he was the heir. No other magic users would train him, but basic magic is straightforward and discoverable, and he had access to a library of materials inside the castle on the property. He focused on learning how to set up a self-reinforcing spell to block magic. A temporary version of the spell blocked the use of magic worldwide to make money for a day. It was successful, however, in encouraging people to talk and try to agree on a treaty to limit magic.”

“For one day?” I asked.

“Yes. That was a minor inconvenience to magic users, since they could still do many other things with magic, but it was seen as a warning shot. Gilbert sought peace in the world, and this was a way to say, magic users, come negotiate with us or I’ll shut off all the magic for a day. It worked. The people met and settled things. Conditions like magic users cannot create wealth were tempered by compromises such as that they can also not be taxed or be subject to the laws of the non-magical countries, apart from the terms of the treaty. It established that each magical realm is a country of its own ruled by the owner of the magic. And it led to drawing actual boundaries for those countries in the real world for the first time.”

“How did that work?” Dad asked.

“The terms of the treaty were that each magic user would rule within the region in which magic is produced. Magical and non-magical people alike understood roughly how large this was, but not the exact borders. This is about the size of one of them, compared to your own world.”

Mona changed her displayed image to a map of the area we were now in, and circled a region of several city blocks.

“Both the magic users and the non-magical countries alike wanted to learn exactly where these boundaries were. Surveyors hired by the non-magical countries worked with the magic users and nearby residents, using the conditions about what magic could or could not do to people based on these boundaries. The magic users would find some spell that was relatively harmless but could be cast inside but not outside the magical realm, like binding someone in ropes or levitating him into the air, and used these to map out the exact boundaries, marked every 10 to 20 feet by permanent markers embedded in the ground.”

“I can imagine that was chaotic, but I can also imagine the residents wanting to know which country they lived in,” Dad commented.

“Records from the time explain that the magic users had to keep varying their spells because they had to be things the people didn’t consent to. Once they had been, say, levitated or they had seen others nearby levitated, they had to move to other positions to continue mapping out the boundary, but those interested in learning the boundaries unconsciously acquiesced to having that spell cast on them. A second cast in the area would typically affect everyone on both sides of the boundary, so the magic users had to keep coming up with different spells that would do things the people didn’t want, but were easily reversible.”

“What happened afterward?”

“It took time for the magic users to learn to adapt to the new rules, and figure out all the things they could and could not do. The full transition to the kind of service-oriented economy we have today took generations, and was aided by the magical realms being inherited by others who had never lived in the old system. Now magic users perform magic for other people for a price varying depending on the complexity of the spell and its magical cost. “

Mona cast another spell and created animated images in the air of people performing various feats of magic.

“These prices and the services offered changed over time as the magic users came to better understand both the limits of the new treaty and the ways in which it did not limit them. In particular, there was almost no limit to what could be done to a person who consented to have it done, though some of those spells required great magical power and huge fortunes could be paid for them, or a period of service for those who could not afford the fee.”

“I noticed you said almost,” Mom commented.

“Mostly they could not grant other people superhuman powers. Making super-soldiers might have been deemed to violate the rule about not attacking the non-magical countries. Granting magical abilities to others was never within the scope of what they could do in the first place, though it was possible to create artifacts that invoke standing spells of some types. These doorways, and magical keys I have given Jody and his group to unlock the doors to my realm are such artifacts. They don’t include weapons, though. Magical rods of fire and the like were blocked by the treaty.”

I added an example to illustrate Mona’s point about service. “Mona’s maid Cecilia is transgendered. In exchange for giving her a real female body, Cecilia is serving as Mona’s maid for a period of time. Will you take another when that time’s through?”

“Sure, if I find one. Though if I have all of your wives around helping all the time I may not need one.”

“Does it happen that they all go to Mona’s world?” Mom asked.

“Usually not all at once, not like they did that time right after Jody proposed to all of us,” Mona replied.

Everybody laughed, remembering what happened then. But I took advantage of the comment to bring up another subject I wanted to discuss.

“I have been thinking about spending more time in Mona’s world. As her magically married husband I am the first in line to inherit her magic until we have adult children, and the magic users in her world are celebrities, Mona maybe more than some because of her habit of using her magic to save people in trouble. So people are going to expect to see me sometimes, and it’s pretty nice over there.”

“Does that mean you aren’t going to see us?” Dad asked.

“I have confirmed I can put myself into Mona’s world with my power on consecutive days, so I think I could stay there indefinitely. But I should be able to still come visit you as long as I keep a doorway to the real world somewhere.”

“Are you thinking of quitting your job?” Mom asked, seeing where this was going.

“The company recently informed me my time in Alaska will be ending soon. They’ll relocate me to Oklahoma where I will initially be doing similar work to what I do up there.”

“You’ll be a lot closer, though I guess that doesn’t matter anymore,” Dad commented.

“What’s more important is that I will be in a place where I can buy a real house, and it’s cheap to live there. It would not take me long to build up enough funds to buy the house outright and pay taxes and bills indefinitely. So if I do want to quit and live in Mona’s world most of the time, occasionally coming here to see you, I can.”

After lunch, during another conversation, I asked Mona, “You said magic costs energy related to how far you are from the source. So why isn’t magic here prohibitively expensive?”

“It’s weird. I can feel the magic here drawing on the source, but I can’t measure the drain. It seems to measure no drain, by the way I measure it.”

“How is it that you measure it?”

“A standing spell. It’s actually an ancient one that exists in each magical realm, one that provides a sort of meter of the current level of magical power, the total capacity, and the rate of drain. I can monitor it to study the costs of specific spells; another aspect of it gives me the inventory of all the standing spells in my realm.”

“And what would the distance be between here and your source?” Dad asked.

Mona looked flummoxed. “I don’t even know how I would measure the distance. I’m not sure it’s meaningful. This is sort of another dimension from my world.”

I asked, “Could you cast the meter spell here? Maybe there are other dimensions to the magic as well.”

Mona responded, “Intriguing. Yes, maybe that would help. I need to go research it.”

She left, and came back a couple hours later.

“I need to embed some designs in matter from this dimension. But I don’t want to permanently mar the floor of the apartment you are only renting.”

“Would a bedsheet work?” Mom asked.

“Yes, if we have something to hold it taut. Manuel did that once when Jody summoned him.”

An hour and a half later, we had a bedsheet stapled around a narrow wooden frame, with some taped-together cardboard boxes under it to protect the floor from any bleed-through. That had happened when we did this in the dream world and it was only because of my ability to change things by just wanting it to be clean that I got rid of it there. Mona set up her magic with an elaborate ritual, and another hour later got it cast and working.

“You were right, Jody. There’s another dimension to the magical energy that feeds spells cast here. I’m not sure where the distance is measured from, but it at least explains how things are powered.”

It was time for dinner, but fortunately, this close to Christmas, stores were open late and we could go out to get Mona’s gift afterward. Mona was happy with the way Victoria’s gift turned out when she was summoned, but she wanted something she could wear the rest of the time, and she opted for something that actually had more coverage so it showed her red color more.

We went home, Mona took her gift through and stored it in her world, and we went to bed.

Wednesday, December 20 was Nancy’s turn. Victoria’s gift was green on her again, green and equally as much see-through as it had been on the others.

As with the others, we spent most of the day with my parents. Nancy went back to the very beginning in her story, which was exactly as far back as I remembered it.

“The earliest I can remember I was 4, and Jody was playing in front of his house. There were some other kids I don’t remember clearly, and one open spot in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Jody explained how to play, though that game is really simple; you just try to maneuver your hippo to grab marbles while everybody else is also doing that, and I played several games until the group was tired of it. There were several other times I met Jody after that for similar play sessions before we started school. But there was definitely something weird when we started school.”

“What was weird?” Mom asked.

“Well, I know I had a mother who took me to school when I was young, but I can’t remember her actually doing it. I can’t remember her at all.”

I explained, “Mom, her house is like mine in the dreamworld. There’s no trace of her parents within it. It’s even worse because there’s not even an empty room. It’s like the house is too small on the inside. But then again, it doesn’t fit where it is on the outside. It’s in a weird little glitch in geometry. Our side of the block where I grew up is one house longer than the other side or any of the other blocks, the space her house occupies.”

Dad suggested, “Maybe her parents have the power, like I do.”

“But wouldn’t I have it?” Nancy protested.

“Did you ever try summoning someone with a doll like I do?” I asked.

Mom responded, “If she had the power, you wouldn’t be able to summon her, either, right?”

But then Nancy added, “Actually, I did try. After you started summoning me, after I started living life at least some of the time on days I wasn’t summoned, I made a doll out of some clothes with a dildo as a penis and I slept with it in me several times, dreaming of Aries, men from Aries’ world, Victoria, Nathan, Mona, Manuel, famous characters from fiction, famous people who are dead. I tried enough characters that it really should have worked if I had the power.”

“OK, it sounds like you really don’t have the power,” I said.

Nancy continued, “The next new thing was when I met Victoria. I understand now that was a different me who met her, but it takes effort distinguishing her memories from mine. Does that make sense?”

Mom said, “Jody explained it before. Victoria has her own dream world and the version of you who was in the dreams when Jody was Victoria lives in that world.”

“That’s right. Anyway, I arrived at Victoria’s birthday party and I wasn’t even sure who Victoria was but then I saw it was you in a dress.”

I replied, “Right. When I first started having Victoria dreams, Victoria and I looked practically identical, except that she wore girls’ clothes. She had a fancy dress at her birthday party, but sometimes when she wore pants you would have had trouble telling us apart.”

Nancy added, “But I didn’t, because I was two different people, though I didn’t understand that yet. Victoria’s Nancy knew that person was Victoria even when she wasn’t wearing anything a boy wouldn’t wear. And so your appearances got tagged as Jody or Victoria in my memory and I use that to distinguish the memories that you appear in, even since the memories got old and mine got mixed up with hers.”

Nancy went on to describe how she started appearing in dreams in strange places sometimes, the other worlds she now routinely travels into, and how she met Mona and Aries, among others. How she came onto me sexually when we were too young to do anything for real yet, but we were both curious. How in later years she became my first girlfriend, in dreams, and Victoria’s also.

“By that age, on the days we were in the normal world, I often walked to school with Jody or Victoria. As I remember it, I walked to school with one of them on every day that there was school. But it wasn’t really that often, was it?”

“No, it wasn’t. At least, not in my dreams. It was once, perhaps twice a week.”

“As your girlfriend and Victoria’s, we advanced to the stage of having sex, but later I stopped doing that with Jody and instead helped advise him and prepare him for dates with other girls, while I had my own dates.”

“We never completely stopped, though. But we cut it down to maybe once every one or two months.”

“Right. But nobody knew about those times except us.”

We didn’t figure any more out about Nancy, so we went out shopping, and Nancy picked out some lingerie also.