‘In marrying all of you, am I not marrying Lazarus, too?’
Not necessarily. Both Hamadryad and Ira were members of our founding family group.
But it took several years before Ira admitted that there was no reason for him not
to marry his own daughter – Hamadryad just smiled and outwaited him. Then we held a
special wedding ceremony just for them and what a luau that was! Honest, Mama
Maureen, our arrangements are flexible; the only invariant is that everybody
guarantees the future of any babies you pretty little broads give us. We don’t even
ask where you got them… since some of you tend to be vague about such things.’
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Tamara interrupted to tell me that Ishtar watches such matters. (Galahad tends to
joke. Tamara doesn’t know how to joke. But she loves everybody.) So later that day I
said my vows with all of them, standing in the middle of their beautiful atrium
garden (our garden!) – crying and smiling and all of them touching me and Ira
sniffling and Tamara smiling while tears ran down her face, and we all said ‘I do!’
together and they all kissed me, and I knew they were mine and I was theirs, forever
and ever, amen.
I got pregnant at once because Ishtar had timed it so that our wedding and my
ovulation matched – Ira and Ishtar had planned the whole thing. (When I had that
baby girl, after the usual cow-or-countess gestation period, I asked Ishtar about
the baby’s paternity. She said, ‘Mama Maureen, that one is from all your husbands;
you don’t need to know. After you’ve had four or five more, if you are still
curious, I’ll sort them out for you.’ I never asked again.)
So I was pregnant when Theodore returned, which suited me just fine… as I was sure
from past experience that he would greet me more heartily and with less restraint if
he knew that it was certain that copulation with me would be solely for love – and
sweet pleasure – and sheer, sweaty fun. Not for progeny.
And so it was. But at a party that started out with Theodore fainting dead away.
Hilda Mae, the head of the task force that rescued me, had rigged a surprise party
for Theodore, in which she had presented me to him, dressed in a costume of high
symbology to him – heeled slippers, long sheer hose, green garters – at a time when
he thought that I was still in Albuquerque mo millennia earlier and still in need of
rescue.
Hilda did not intend to shock Theodore so sharply that he fainted – she loves him,
and later she married Theodore and all of us, along with her husband and family –
Hilda does not have a mean bone in her little elfin body. She caught Theodore as he
fainted, or tried to. He wasn’t hurt and the party developed into one of the best
since Rome burned. Hilda Mae has many other talents, in and out of bed, but she is
the best party arranger in the world.
A couple of years later Hilda was Director-General of the biggest party ever held
anywhere, bigger than the Field of the Cloth of Gold: the First Centennial
Convention of the Interuniversal Society for Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple-Ego
Solipsism, with guests from dozens of universes. It was a wonderful party and the
few people killed in the games went straight to Valhalla – I saw them go. From that
party our family gained several more husbands and wives – eventually, not all in one
day – especially Hazel Stone a.k.a. Gwen Novak who is as dear to me as Tamara, and
Dr Jubal Harshaw, the one of my husbands to whom I turn when I truly need advice.
It was to Jubal that I turned many years later when I found that despite all the
wonders of Boondock and Tertius, all the loving happiness of being a cherished
member of the Long Family, despite the satisfaction of studying the truly advanced
therapy of Tertius and Secundus, and at last being apprenticed to the best