The Four Queens
Copyright© 2026 by Uncle Jim
Chapter 17
The following new characters appear in this chapter:
Titiksha
Deirdre’s Dragon name, it means Forgiveness, she is a light blue Dragon
George
Law student, Botum’s husband, 5’-10’’ tall (178 cm), 165 pounds (75 kg), 27 years old, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, he is a new Dragon
Thomas
Engineer and ROTC student, Daeva’s husband, 5’11’’ tall (180 cm), 172 pounds (78 kg), 28 years old, black hair, blue eyes, also a newly made Dragon
Samuel
Music student, Maly’s husband, 5’-9’’ tall (175 cm), 162 pounds (73 kg), 26 years old, dark blond hair, brown eyes, he has been a Dragon for over a year
Botum has the Narrative
Deirdre and Morgan were married on Valentine’s Day during our Junior year in college. Daeva, Maly, and I went with them to the county building. We had all skipped classes that day. Eilene and Evelyn, Doreen’s Daughters, went with us. They had been married after graduating from college last summer along with Carry and Casey, Dallas’s Daughters. They had all married near-Dragons that they had met in college, and they knew where to go for the license. None of them were currently pregnant, as they all had careers they were pursuing.
There were none of the problems this time that we had heard about when others in the clan had gone to get their marriage license. The secretary had just asked for their names and other information for the license. Deirdre and Morgan were married that afternoon by one of the judges there. The party following that had been set up by Carry and Casey while the happy couple had been getting married. It lasted about four hours before everyone went home.
When we had returned to college following the New Year, Morgan had begun attending a new special medical course for those with strong Magic and Talents. This course had been arranged for by the Queen of the West with the help of a couple of Medical Organizations to increase the use of Magic in the treatment of various diseases and conditions. It appeared that this was a part of what the two of them had discussed while he was staying at her house for a time after returning.
It seems that Morgan surprised those running the program with his huge knowledge of medical spells and his ability to treat patients. He was quickly advanced several semesters when he proved that he could already do all of the work that they covered. At least, that is what Deirdre told us about his progress.
Morgan graduated in two years. He was then qualified as something between a Physician’s Assistant and a full-fledged Doctor. He couldn’t do surgery, but he didn’t need to, as he could cure problems with his Magic. He didn’t need to use needles for injections of any kind, as again he could solve their problems with the use of Magic. After graduating, he went to work as a part-time instructor helping the other Magic students with their lessons, especially those with smaller Talents who would have problems with some of the lessons. Because of him, several other Dragons and near-Dragons enrolled in the program.
After a few years, there were a number of Magic-using medical personnel available in Atlanta and several other cities because of this program. They were now known as Medmages. Morgan remained at the school for nearly four years.
There was no vacation for the three of us the summer between our Junior and Senior years in college. Our Mother, Jorani, the Queen of the East took us to Tibet to help her govern the huge territory that she now rules. We had gone with her and our dad when we were younger to see the Nest there and the old work area inside of Red Hill in Lhasa, but we had never been more than occasional visitors, as we were too young.
Now, she started introducing us to the various Dragon clan leaders in first Tibet and then China in the Dragon Reality. From there we visited the clans in the surrounding countries: India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Korea.
Following that, we moved to the more widespread areas of her territory. There was Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Iran. There weren’t many Dragon clans or strong Magic users in the Muslim areas of the Middle East, and her territory didn’t extend into Europe proper, but that still left parts of Russia, and the various Stan States like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and several others plus the area around the Caspian Sea. It also included the areas around the Black Sea with Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia.
Everywhere we went there were quarrels and bickering between the clans, though the clans in Russia and around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea were rather small at that time. Mother also assigned each of us a specific area to be in charge of. Daeva got the Stans, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Maly received South and Southeast Asia, and I received Tibet and China along with Mongolia, Nepal and Bhutan. Of course, all of these places were in the Dragon Reality. We didn’t venture into the Human Reality or the Demon Reality in those areas, as there were too many different governments in the one to deal with, at least for now, and no one in the other.
We were just glad when Fall came, and we were able to return to college. As soon as we got back home, we learned that Deirdre had also been assisting her Mother, the Queen of the West, in the areas that she ruled which included North, South, and Central America. According to her, the Dragon Reality in many of those areas was usually sparsely settled, but there was still much disagreement and bickering among the various clans there.
Fortunately, there were fewer of the interruptions during our Senior year in college than there had been during the first part of our Junior year. One exception was learning at Christmas time that Deirdre was pregnant. The Queens in the Jewel were very disappointed to learn that she was only having a single daughter instead of the twins that Female Dragons had come to expect in the last several decades. Dr. Graham confirmed this when Deirdre saw her after the New Year.
Meanwhile, the three of us had been getting more involved with the guys that we were interested in during our Senior year, and we all got married on the day before Valentines Day, as the 14th of February this year was on a Saturday. The party following that was monumental and lasted until well after midnight before we all managed to leave the Nest for our homes. We all still needed to be in school on Monday, so there was no real honeymoon then. While our guys had already become full Dragons, they hadn’t learned to fly yet. That was taken care of during Spring break, as were our honeymoons, such as they were.
The four of us and our husbands graduated from Georgia State on the third weekend of May that year. Deirdre was very pregnant, and the three of us were pregnant also, just not as far along as she was. The Queens of Old were also disappointed when they learned that each of us would only be having a single child during this pregnancy. However, they were quite happy that all three of us would be having children. Again, Dr. Graham confirmed these diagnoses.
As a graduation present, the two Queens had purchased a forty-acre site (16.2 hectares) not too far from where we had all lived. They would have houses built on it for the four of us. The houses would have a more modern floor plan than their houses and would be large enough for families with numerous children. We all took this to be a hint that they were interested in having a lot of grandchildren.
Previously, the land had been the site of an abandoned data center. Many of the data centers on the planet had been consolidated when the new larger orbital data centers were built in space around the planet but inside the space shield that now protected them and the myriad other satellites circling the planet from harmful radiation and other space-born dangers. The new centers ran on the power collected by their large solar electric panels. Many of the old data center locations had been abandoned or sold off cheaply, the owners not wanting the expense of clearing and restoring the land.
While we would be getting the houses for free, WE would need to furnish them ourselves. While our husbands all had good paying jobs, we didn’t have a lot of money saved up yet. To furnish our homes, even minimally, would require the outlay of a considerable amount of money. After looking at the prices of fairly decent furniture, but not antiques, we knew that we would need help to pay for it.
After some discussions, we decided that it was time to tap our Trust Funds for this and to get a bit of extra money each month to help with caring for the babies we would each be having shortly. I called our Trust Fund’s office and arranged for a meeting with our Fund Manager. We would all go together to see him. The arrival of eight of us together at their office created a bit of a stir. We had needed to bring our husbands and our marriage licenses to prove that we were married and could legally begin drawing funds from our accounts Deirdre and Morgan also came with us to draw on her account. While she is technically our aunt, in reality, she is more like a fourth sister to us.
Walter Pickering, our Fund Manager, was more than a little surprised to see so many of us there at the same time, just as their secretary had been. He took all of us to a large conference room, and needed to verify that each of us was indeed married and to the individual accompanying us. Before we started our discussions, Deirdre cast a ward around us and the table where we were sitting. Maly added a Silence spell to the ward, as we had all detected the listening devices in the room. We left after arranging for the money that we each wanted and informing him that we were all pregnant and would need to start funds for our children in five or six years.
Six weeks or so later in the middle of the night, Morgan transferred Deirdre to the Women’s Pavilion at our local hospital to have her daughter. The four of us had made sure that each of our husbands knew exactly where the Women’s Pavilion and Dr Graham’s office were located and how to transfer us there if we had any problems. Her Daughter, Airmid, was born at 6:30 A.M. that morning. She weighed seven pounds, two ounces (3.3 kg) and had her mother’s and grandmother’s black hair and violet eyes. The little bit of her skin that we could see outside of the pink blanket was red at the time.
All of the Female Dragons arrived at the hospital that day to visit them. Not just those in the clan but also Eve, Vivian, Chu, Sara, and even Yvonne, though Eve and Yvonne aren’t Dragons, they are married to Dragons. Everyone wanted to see the first member of the next generation. Airmid remained in the room with her mother and a Witch nurse just as all newborn Dragons had, since Maddy had first delivered her twins forty some years ago.
The three of us went into the hospital to deliver our babies in mid-November. Maly and I went in the same day but at different times. We each had a daughter. Maly’s daughter weighed 6 pounds and 10 ounces (3 kg) and she named her Taevy. My daughter weighed just about the same, and I named her Chanda. Daeva, being Daeva, had to be different, and she had gone into the hospital a day earlier and had a son instead of a daughter. He weighed a bit over seven pounds and two ounces (3.3 kg) and she named him Arun. All three of our children have black hair and brown eyes with red skin when born. We also kept our children in our rooms with us, and had a Witch nurse who stayed with us splitting her time between the three of us as necessary, as we were in two different rooms because of the way we had arrived.
Again, all of the Female Dragons and those married to Dragons came to visit us in the hospital, but to see three new additions to the clan and not just one. Fortunately, we had all moved into our new houses in September, as three of us trying to move in, in the middle of November with newborns would have created serious problems. We were all home well before Thanksgiving and could attend the Thanksgiving banquet in the Nest with our children and the rest of the clan and their Families. We would need to see if our children would need Familiars in the near future.
Maly has the Narrative Again
Things went along fairly well for nearly the next three years. Well, they did if you don’t count all four of us getting pregnant again. We were more spread out this time, but none of us had delivered her second child yet. Our cousins, Carry and Casey plus Eilean and Evelyn, had also had children during this period, while the four of us had been assisting our mothers with the governing of their Queendoms.
The next major event occurred during the celebration of Maddy’s seventy-fifth birthday party. About an hour or so after it had started, she made an announcement. It was definitely not what we were expecting to hear. On getting everyone’s attention, she began.
“Thank you for your attention. I have an announcement. It is my intention to resign as Queen of the West on the last day of the fiftieth year of my Reign. The following day, Deirdre will be crowned the new Queen of the West. I will remain available to assist her with any major problems, but I am retiring as Queen. I just want to go back to my gardens and teaching my grandchildren, plus spending more time with my husband Kennith,” she informed us. Everyone just stared at her in shock for some time. Following that, many turned to Deirdre to congratulate her. Deirdre, however, seemed to be as surprised as the rest of us, and she quickly approached her Mother.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Is it your health?” followed that.
“No dear. It’s not anything like that. I was never intended to be the Queen. It was the Magic in the Lines that saved me when that Demon nearly killed me. It wasn’t sent by anyone. The Magic somehow moved on its own, and that is what started me on the track to becoming Queen. No one has ever been able to discover how the Magic did that. Then there were The Books. My grandmother had left them at that used bookstore decades ago for me. How did she know I would eventually be there looking for books on Magic? Also, how did she ever obtain them? No one knows. How did Kennith manage to follow Bob to my house and through my wards? Finally, there is Al. How were my mother or my father able to obtain a Familiar like Al? Who created him? Plus, there are the two powerful Ley Lines that cross under the large parlor at my house. Were my parents and grandparents aware of them? I certainly wasn’t until I started studying Ley Line Magic, and I grew up in that house.
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