The Year 57 After the Founding
It was early summer when Raven crawled back into town. It was late enough that, even though dusk lingered in that season, it was fully dark. The guards neither saw nor heard her as her concealment spell was at full force. After a laborious hour, she reached her home. She tried to stand up to open the door, but all she could do was get up on her knees. From there she fell against the door with a loud thud.
It was, perhaps, sheer chance that Lily and Johann were still up. The twins had been rather fractious as they were recovering from colds, and it had taken until only 20 minutes earlier to get them to bed and asleep. Thus it passed that they were still sitting in the kitchen sipping tea when they heard the noise from Raven falling against the door. They rushed over, and Johann flung the door open, while Lily stood behind him holding the iron rod they used to stir the coals in the fireplace. To their shock, what they beheld was Raven's crumpled body.
She raised her head and croaked, "I'm sorry. I know that I didn't need to knock, but I somehow couldn't get the latch to work."
Johann scooped her up in his arms. As he hurried toward the bath, Lily carefully set down the rod and latched the door. Then she slowly walked toward the bath. It wouldn't do for her to panic and run. If she tripped and fell on the way, they might have two patients to deal with. She found Raven sitting on a stool, with her hands braced on the wall in front of her to keep from falling. Johann was using a large pair of shears to cut her clothes off of her. Lily nodded to herself. They were so tangled and torn that it was the fastest way, and off they needed to be.
Lily lit two lanterns besides the one they always had going in case a patient showed up at night with an emergency.
Raven was taking deep, gasping breaths, though her lungs didn't have the coarse rattle that would indicate pneumonia. She was however shivering almost violently.
Johann kept working on her clothes, while Lily began to examine her. What she found shocked her. She was covered with bruises, as she had been when they'd first met, only this time they looked like ones one would get after having been severely beaten. From their color, Lily deduced that whatever had happened had occurred around a week earlier.
Even more frightening was that Raven was covered with dried blood. Lily didn't see any obvious wounds, so she looked at the floor where the remnants of Raven's clothes were. Her answer lay there. There were blood spatters covering the entire front of her shirt and her trousers. Even her boots had dried blood on them and her hair.... It was so matted with blood that Lily was afraid that she'd have to cut it off in order to properly inspect her scalp for wounds.
She peered at Raven's eyes. The pupils were the same size and seemed to be working. Considering how long ago whatever it was had happened, it was likely that she didn't have any lingering effects from a head injury.
Johann looked a question at her and she nodded. He kicked off his slippers, picked up Raven and walked into the bath. Having to wash it out later was a small price to pay in exchange for getting her into it as quickly as possible. Lily hurriedly stripped off her nightgown and, to Johann's surprise, carefully folded it and put it on a shelf. She waded into the bath and took over supporting Raven, while Johann got out, stripped off the rest of his clothes, and then rejoined the ladies.
He held Raven while Lily professionally ran her hands over first Raven's legs, then her arms, and finally her abdomen, torso and back. When she finished she gave Johann a wan smile. No fractures or signs of major internal injuries. She'd have to check for strained ligaments and such another time.
After about 15 minutes Raven had stopped shaking and seemed to be somewhat more alert. They were sitting in their usual positions, Raven in the middle, Johann to her left and Lily to her right. That was when Raven moved. She raised her head and looked around. Lily noticed that Raven's eyes were oddly blank, and she didn't really seem to be seeing anything, at least nothing that was visible to Lily.
What she did next shocked both Johann and Lily. She pivoted toward Lily then slid herself backwards so that she was sitting on Johann's lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and began to speak in the same hoarse voice they'd heard when she fell through the door.
"It's all right darling. They didn't do that to me. I didn't let them. It was late and I was heading back to my inn after delivering the message to that ship captain. You know, the one the Duke sent me to. I had my concealment up, I really did. I promise you I did! Lily and Rachel were right you know. Sometimes depending on magic doesn't help at all. I was about to pass by a tavern when they came out. They were almost staggering drunk, but there were 11 of them. I did count them properly my love....
"Before I knew it they were all around me. The ones closest to me saw me. You can see me even when I'm shielding if you're that close you know. They grabbed me and started pawing at me. Then one of the ones behind me grabbed my shirt and pulled it up. Then he started groping my breasts.
"I couldn't keep my shield up then. I tried, but I couldn't. That's when all the others noticed me and surrounded me. I knew what they were going to do, and I knew that I couldn't let them. You're the only man I'd ever let do that to me, so when one of them tried to untie my trousers, I pulled one of my daggers out and killed him.
"The rest were really, really drunk, but those sailors, they've seen knife fights before, so they reached for their knives too."
Raven stopped talking and took some more gasping breaths. At the same time she was squeezing Johann's neck tightly enough to cut off his wind.
When he was almost to the point of passing out, Raven dropped her arms into her lap and began to shake. "I promised myself that I'd never let a man touch me unless it was Johann." She continued, obviously still not aware of her surroundings, "I'd do anything to keep my promise. He's the only man I've ever loved, so I couldn't let them do it. I COULDN'T!"
Then she sighed sadly. "Not that it really matters. I love Lily far too much to let Johann know how I feel about him."
She paused for a few seconds and took one more, great, shuddering breath. When next she spoke it was in an almost conversational tone, though her voice was still very hoarse. "I'd killed six of them before the other five ran away shouting something about being attacked by a demon. By the time they'd come back with the Guard, I'd climbed up into a tiny opening between some crates and the eaves of a building and I'd put up my shield again. I made it as strong as I could, and I waited and waited and waited. I guess it was an hour before they hauled off the bodies and the last of the onlookers who'd come out of the tavern left. I waited a long while more, then I crept off the dock and came home.
She turned and looked at Johann. Both he and Lily could see that her eyes were still wild and not focusing. "I kept my promise darling. All that one did was touch my breasts. I promise you, that's all. Please, don't send me away. Don't tell me you don't love me!"
Raven took Johann's right hand with both of hers and squeezed it so tightly that it was almost crushed, and moaned, "Love me darling. Love me and make me forget what they tried to do to me. You know that I've never let any other man touch me. Please?" Then she started sobbing, while still holding Johann's hand against her.
Johann was more than a little wild-eyed himself at that point. He looked over at Lily, desperately. It had been one thing with them bathing together off and on over the past 10 years, but this was another thing entirely and he was in terror of Lily's reaction.
If anything his shock increased when he saw her expression. It wasn't anger or disgust. Not at all. It was one of extreme compassion and love. In that moment he totally forgot Raven and lost himself in Lily.
She smiled at him, and murmured, "I've loved you ever since I was six years old. That's 16 years. In all that time, you've never so much as looked at another woman in a lustful way, and, even now, with Raven like this, you're still only looking at me. How could I be angry? That poor child is bent to the point where she's almost broken. She WILL be broken if we can't bring her mind back, and if that doesn't happen, any time in the future she's near a man who startles her, there's a good chance she'll kill him before she even has time to think.
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"There's one other thing you need to know and that's this: I love Raven too, just as much as I love you, though as a sister rather than a lover. Now, there's a logical conclusion that can be drawn here if we want to save her. And this once, my logic and my heart are in the same place."
Lily got out of the bath and motioned Johann to do likewise. He pointed his chin at Raven and mouthed, "What do I do with her?"
Lily waved at him a bit more urgently, with mounting frustration on her face, so he picked Raven up and climbed out too, with Raven once more holding him about the neck so as to keep from falling. Lily bustled around, drying them as best she could with Raven still glued to his chest. When she was reasonably satisfied, she made a shooing motion at Johann.
His mind and his expression matched perfectly. He was absolutely, totally confused, so he did the intelligent thing and uttered an erudite, "Huh?"
She smiled back. "That's my husband. When it comes to matters of the heart you're as dense as the rest of them. Now stop asking questions and do what I tell you. Take her upstairs and give her what she needs."
Lily canted her head to the side and smiled again. "And I guess you could also say that it's what she's wanted for a long time. Naturally, given my ability, I've known all along, but it's obvious that she'd never have said a word about how she felt if her mind weren't near the breaking point."
She made a shooing motion again and grinned widely. "Get up there and make love to her you idiot! If you don't I'll never speak to you again, assuming that she doesn't accidentally kill you before morning."
Johann smiled at her softly and warmly. "You really mean it, don't you?"
Lily nodded. He nodded back and gently carried Raven out of the room and up the stairs.
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The morning light on Raven's face woke her. She tried to sit up and stretch, but she found her left arm caught under something. She knuckled the sleep out of her eyes with her right hand and blinked several times. As her eyes cleared, she saw that the reason she couldn't sit up was because Johann was lying on her arm. She must have gotten in really late to have forgotten coming home. The three of them had rarely slept together after that first time, but she had to admit that those were the happiest memories she had.
She tried to lever herself up with her right arm so as to free her left without awakening Johann. As she pulled back she noticed that he wasn't wearing a nightshirt. How odd. He always wore one. Then she glanced down at her chest. She wasn't wearing one either. What the hell? As she struggled to figure out what exactly was going on, she noticed a suspicious dampness between her legs. Oh my God! NO! Lily was going kill her, or maybe both of them.
While she was frozen by her momentary indecision, she noticed that there was a small arm wrapped around her waist from behind and that something nearby was purring. Somehow she managed to extract her arm from under Johann then turned around to see Lily's face a few inches from her own. Unlike herself, Lily was wearing a nightgown.
Before she could say anything, Lily reached up and laid her palm on Raven's cheek. There was a smile in her voice when she said, "Welcome home Raven. You are well come."
A mischievous grin pasted itself on Lily's face. "And welcome to the family, sister. I gave you a couple of hours after Johann carried you up here, seeing as it was your first time with a man. I peeked in then, just in case, but you were both asleep. By then I was beyond tired myself so I got changed, and here we are."
Raven sputtered, "How...how can you be so calm about this and what happened and....oh...."
Her memories of the past week rushed in on her and she collapsed, weeping, against Lily's chest. She was still crying when Johann awoke. He realized that he was most definitely not needed...immediately after Lily scowled at him and waved in the directions of the stairs. He got dressed, went downstairs, and fed the twins what Lily had left out before she had come to bed the night before.
When Raven was through crying, Lily brushed the remnants of her tears off her cheeks. Raven stiffened. "Lily. I'm so, so sorry. I don't know what to say. There's no excuse for what I did. I..."
Lily silenced her by laying a finger across her lips. "You silly, silly girl. Though you are partially right. There is no excuse, because you don't need one. I should think that you'd know by now that what you and Johann did last night is entirely normal for a married couple."
"Married couple? But.... I don't understand."
Lily cocked her head to the side again and momentarily looked puzzled. "Frankly, I'm not sure I understand entirely myself. But, somehow, I know that if we were to look at the records in the church we'd see that Johann is married to both of us." She was confused, but, even more than that, she felt joyful. "I wonder if I'm deluding myself here."
Raven shook her head, as if trying to clear her mind. "If you are, so am I, because, when you said that, I had the same feeling you did. What in the world is going on?"
"Frankly my dear, I have no more idea than you do, so let's start with something that we can both understand. First, let's get you cleaned up, get the bed changed, and then get ourselves downstairs. I love Johann dearly, but his cooking is barely edible, and even then only if your other choice is to starve to death."
Lily looked at Raven critically. "You're much too thin. If you don't take better care of yourself, you might have some trouble with your pregnancy."
Raven glared at her. Lily's sense of humor had always been rather on the strange side, but this was odd even for her.
Lily held her gaze for a few seconds, then both of them laughed and got to work. One thing Raven definitely agreed with Lily about. Johann was a terrible cook.
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Lady Blue stopped the "replay" and slipped into "No-Time." She was irritated. Irritated and, maybe, a little bit frightened. The irritation was because she had replayed this hundreds of times, and each time she had been unable to spot the instant where what she had originally intended to happen had split off and become what did happen.
What she'd planned to happen was for Lily, Johann, and Rachel to petition the Duke to make a special exception and allow Johann to marry Raven. Their explanation would have been that it was the only way to preserve her sanity. They would have pointed to several sets of twins who were already cohabitating in trios due to their inability to be separated from each other. That would have eventually led to "today" where such twin trios, to coin a phrase, while not incredibly frequent, were not that rare either and were accepted as the way things had to work out sometimes.
Instead the situation had unfolded mostly as the reverse of what she'd planned. Johann's marriage to Lily and Raven was suddenly a matter of public record. Not only that, when he'd gone to work that morning the first thing he heard when a customer walked into the shop was, "How're the wives?" That was the most galling thing of all.
Within a week it had become clear that everyone in the town knew about Johann's expanded family and, to some extent, the reason why the Duke had approved the marriage. There were even comments along the line of, "Is she really back to stay this time?" or, "It's about time. Going off alone like that is dangerous for a woman, even her." That would be followed by a wink and a nudge. "So, how soon do you think he'll get her pregnant?"
The end result of all this was petitions to the Duke from a number of twins and their concerned families asking him to approve other trio marriages, their reason being the preservation of their sanity, their health, and even the lives of the twins involved. They practically threw the example of Johann and Raven being married to preserve her mind in the Duke's face.
Precedent is a powerful thing. He had no recourse but to approve the petitions, adding the single stipulation that such families were not allowed to leave the lands under the Duke's control...ever. The first such marriages took place within two weeks of Raven's return.
Within a decade it became clear to now Duchess Abigail that that particular codicil had not been necessary. There was undeniable evidence that the further those particular kinds of twins and their spouses went from town, the sicker they all became. They were inextricably bound to the land.
Once again, as happened every time she reviewed the situation, Lady Blue felt a little trickle of fear. She had missed something. Somehow her original plan, where there had been a three week delay between Raven coming home and the Duke's approval of the first twin/trio marriage, had been flawed. The only change that had resulted from the "revised" situation was that three births occurred six to eight weeks sooner than they would have otherwise. This had in no way caused any adverse consequences in the ensuing centuries.
No, let's be honest, that wasn't what she was afraid of. Her mind was powerful enough to see the potential ramifications of those earlier births, and in retrospect it was clear that over the next two centuries things played out somewhat smoother that way than if things had followed her original plan.
The problem was implicit in what had happened to the townsfolk. She was an incredibly powerful being, and it had been ingrained in her since her consciousness began to form that one NEVER EVER manipulated the minds of other beings unless there was no other choice. They were to be left to make their own decisions. Oh, yes, one could hint and aid them, or as she had done with Paolo subtly encourage them to ask for help, but one did not change them without their consent.
But here she was, presented with a fait accompli. And it had not been one or two memories that had been changed, but nearly 3,000. Having seen the results, she knew that it had benefited The City in the long run, so there couldn't have been any malicious intent.
Whoever had changed things had managed to permanently implant false memories into every single one of the townsfolk simultaneously. Lady Blue could do that too, but only to one or two people at a time. She knew, or at least suspected, that there were a few of the most senior Elders who could have managed it, but she had completely hidden this 'verse, hadn't she?
Being who she was, she realized that she had to look at her honest feelings about the matter. The real cause of her fear was the realization that she had missed something of great importance. If one were not allowed to change the memories of even a single person unless there would be a disastrous outcome otherwise, what potentially horrific event required manipulating the memories of almost 3,000?!
She shook her head. She was wasting her time, again. Dwelling on an unchangeable past was futile. Regardless of the cause, things were what they were. There was nothing to be done but to go on about her business.