Chapter 16

The following new characters appear in this chapter:

Eryn & Ellyn Parks

Maureen and Allen’s twin Daughters, at 15 years old they are 5’-4’’ tall, 115 pounds, 34C-21-33, with long red hair, green eyes, some freckles, and they are very pretty.

The next four weeks at the Hardtrick farm were full of challenges for me. It seemed like I gained more weight every day. Shortly none of my clothes fit me, and Jill took me to obtain maternity clothing. Initially they fit me like a tent, but before long, I had filled them out. It was like I had turned into a balloon. By the time I was to go to my next appointment with Dr. O’Brien, I could no longer walk but had to shuffle. My bra was now a 34DD, and I needed a very long tape measure to check the distance around my extended belly. I hadn’t seen my feet in a couple of weeks.

All of the female cats, both mine and the Hardtricks, were anxious to visit with me, and several stayed with me all of the time. They claimed to be able to hear my twins talking to them, but neither Jill nor I could hear them. Several had wondered why I was so big and was only having two kittens, as they normally had four or more. It required a lot of explanations before they understood that even twins were unusual for humans.

We had watched the news very carefully over those four weeks, both the broadcast news and several large news sites on the internet. During that time there had been very little in the way of news about anything to do with the Paranormals. There had been no mention of either Allen or me. In fact there had been nothing about the Boston FBI in the news at all. There had been news from France about the “Equal Rights for Humans” party. There was an election scheduled there this fall, and these people were already holding demonstrations and getting attention from the media; though they were a small party, they were very vocal.

The 5th of June finally arrived, and Jill transferred with me to Dr. O’Brien’s office. The first indication that something was amiss came when Jill and I arrived in the office. The receptionist seemed to be surprised by my appearance.

“Yes?” she asked, as we approached her desk.

“Maureen O’Farrell, I have a 10:30 appointment,” I told her. She looked a bit confused before pulling my record from those that had been set out for that day.

“You’re here for your fifth month appointment, is that correct?” she asked in a questioning voice, as she looked at me somewhat confused.

“Yes, that’s correct,” I told her.

“Have a seat, the doctor will be with you shortly. We need you to fill out some additional paperwork also,” she added handing me a clipboard with some forms on it. Jill and I sat in the comfortable chairs in the waiting room, and it only required a few minutes to fill out the additional paperwork, but Jill needed to return it to the receptionist, as I had trouble getting out of the chair. I’d had this problem for almost two weeks now.

It was only a few minutes later that a nurse came from the back and called my name.

“Maureen O’Farrell,” she called, and then appeared shocked when Jill needed to help me out of the chair, and I waddled toward her.

“You’re here for your fifth month appointment?” she asked, as if unsure after looking at me.

“Yes, that’s correct,” I assured her.

“You seem to have gained quite a bit of weight since your last appointment,” she said.

“Yes, I seem to get larger every day,” I told her as she led me down the hall to a scale where she weighted me and measured my height, before continuing down the hall to the exam room. I was unable to follow her as quickly as she moved, and she stopped to return to help Jill move me to the room.

Once in the room, she lowered the table there so I could sit on it easily before taking the usual readings of blood pressure, pulse, and temperature.

“Have you had any problems since the last appointment?” she inquired.

“Just all of this weight I have gained, and a constant need to use the toilet,” I told her.

“The toilet part isn’t unusual, since there are three of you using the system now,” she said with a bit of a chuckle, as she apparently heard the same thing all of the time.

“The doctor will be in shortly. Just relax until then,” she told me before leaving. Jill had taken the only chair in the corner of the room.

“Are you okay?” she asked looking at me.

“Yes, it’s just hard to get around. It’s easier to just transfer between rooms and the toilet than it has been to try to walk. Did you have all of this trouble with your twins?” I asked.

“Yes, I had much the same problems that you are having, but they were later in my pregnancy. In fact now that I think about it, it was much later when I had gained weight like you have and had trouble walking,” she told me in a concerned voice. “Of course all women are different in how their bodies respond to being pregnant,” she added after a few seconds, not wanting to upset me I thought.

The door opened shortly after that, and Dr. O’Brien hadn’t even entered the room when she stopped, her eyes going wide in surprise on seeing me.

“You’re eight months pregnant!! she said in shocked disbelief, as she entered the exam room.

“You were four months pregnant when you were here in May. How can you be eight months pregnant now?” she asked in a shocked voice.

“I’m what?” I asked, just as shocked as she was. “Surely, you’re joking,” I finished.

“I never joke about things like that. You are in the eighth month, but that’s not possible,” she said still confused.

“Are you sure of that?” Jill asked in a worried voice.

“Yes, I’m absolutely sure of that, and your twins have huge Talents already. Can’t you feel them? It was almost like walking into a wall when I came through the door, and that was in addition to what my Talent was telling me about your condition. It’s just not physically possible for you to be eight months along,” she finished in a very positive voice.

“It may not be physically possible, but it may be Magically possible,” I told her in a very quiet voice. I had suspected for several weeks now that mine was not a normal pregnancy. I would have liked to have gone to see my Mother, but did not want to put her and her new family in danger. I hadn’t called either, as I suspected that her phone could be tapped by now. I needed to return my attention to the doctor, however, as she was still talking.

“Good grief, at this rate she could be delivering those twins in a week to ten days,” she was saying to a startled Jill when I came back to the present.

“I’ll need to get a room for you starting next week. How in the world could you advance that fast?” she demanded in a flustered voice, returning her attention to me.

“It may have something to do with the Magic Council and their Magic, or perhaps with the Magic that Allen and I shared,” I told her.

“It must have been wild Magic indeed,” she said before returning to her professional self.

“Let’s get you over to the ultrasound room and get some more pictures of your Daughters to be sure they are all right, although with the Talents I can feel they have, they should be fine,” she told us, before she and Jill helped me up and over to the other room.

I lay on the adjustable bed in the ultrasound room with goo on my large belly for some ten minutes or more while the assistant ran the wand over me, as the doctor checked the pictures that the machine was producing. Later I got to see the images. There were definitely two of them and I was assured that they were both girls, and that they were over half way through the third trimester.

“You don’t have long before those two are going to be ready to make an appearance. I want you to take it easy and to call me before you head for the hospital. I presume you will transfer there from where you are living,” she said.

“Yes, I know where the hospital is and will transfer there tomorrow to be sure everything is still the same as when I was there the last time,” Jill assured her, while the assistant cleaned me up and I got to look at the images.

“After you deliver the twins, I’ll make an appointment to see you and them about two weeks after the delivery. You should be able to get around by then,” the doctor assured me.

“That sounds fine,” I agreed, but wondered how I was supposed to cast the transfer spell with twins in my arms. Jill’d had Max to help her with that. I wouldn’t have Allen to help me. I’d have to figure out a way. A couple of baby carriers wrapped in a ward suggested itself immediately.

The next week was not pleasant. My feet hurt and my legs bothered me. I spent as much time off of them as possible. I was tired much of the time, and everything that I ate seemed to add to my weight. I couldn’t imagine feeling like this for nine months.

Just after sunrise on Thursday, the 12th of June, my water broke, and I started having contractions. Fortunately, the Hardtricks were already up, as it was after 6:00. Once the first shock had subsided, I carefully transferred to the kitchen where Jill was preparing breakfast for her family.

“Jill, my water has broken,” I told her in a frightened voice. She had explained to me what to expect.

“What? Oh dear!” she said in surprise, stopping what she had been doing and turning to me. The panic on my face startled her even more. “MAX!” she hollered, calling her Husband for help.

“We need to get you back to your room and get you into some dry clothes before we go to the hospital,” she told me just as Max appeared near us in the kitchen.

“Maureen’s water has broken. I need to get her to the hospital. You’ll need to take care of breakfast. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so you may need to take care of everything today,” she told him.

“I’ll help you get her back to her room. Do you want one of the girls to help you?” Max asked as the two of them helped me to my room.

“I might need Megan to help me,” Jill told him, as they eased me onto the bed in a sitting position.

“I’ll get her. You take care of Maureen,” Max told his Wife before vanishing to get their oldest Daughter. Last night, I had laid out the clothes to wear today, and what I would take with me was in a small suitcase. Megan soon appeared in the hall and entered the room.

“Help Maureen get out of those wet clothes and into the dry ones that she has laid out. I’m going to call the doctor and will be right back to help you,” Jill told her oldest Daughter before leaving to use the phone. Megan had me half dressed when Jill returned.

“Dr. O’Brien will meet us at the hospital in a bit,” she told me, as she helped Megan finish dressing me.

“Are we ready to leave?” she asked next.

“In a minute,” I told her as another contraction gripped me, but it soon passed.

“Help your Father with the cooking,” Jill was telling her Daughter when I could pay attention again after the contraction had passed.

“Let’s go,” I told her before another one could start.

“I’ll be back later,” Jill told her Daughter before taking my hand and casting the transfer spell. We both disappeared from my bedroom to appear a second later in the hallway of a hospital.

“I need some help with my Daughter. Her water has broken and she is having contractions,” Jill called and several nurses appeared with a gurney and helped me on to it.

“I’m going to get you admitted, Maureen, and I’ll see you in delivery,” Jill told me as the nurses wheeled me down the hall to the delivery area.

The next two hours were very painful with the contractions increasing in both frequency and strength. Dr. O’Brien appeared shortly after the nurses had prepared me for the delivery. After checking my chart, she had a few words for me.

“It will be a while yet before the girls are ready to make an appearance. Try to relax, it takes time to dilate sufficiently,” she told me. A few minutes later, Jill was allowed in to sit with me.

The contractions had increased in frequency over the next hour plus, when suddenly there was what felt like a very painful tearing in my belly, and much to my shock, a baby appeared on top of me, giving a loud squall soon after appearing. Jill was as shocked as I was, but quickly called for help.

“Nurse ... nurse, help!” she shouted and two nurses quickly appeared. They were as shocked as we had been on seeing the infant lying on my belly.

“HOW!” the one asked, as the other one grabbed a towel to clean the infant up and then wrap her in a small pink blanket. Dr. O’Brien appeared, as she was finishing.

“What?” she demanded in shock just before I felt the same tearing, but less pain, and my second Daughter appeared just as the first one had, to be followed seconds later by the placenta, creating a rather large mess on me and my second Daughter. The nurses hurriedly cleaned up both my Daughter, who was letting the world know just how unhappy she was, as well as the placenta and me.

“That is the most amazing thing that I’ve ever seen,” Dr. O’Brien said before taking up her duties as my doctor, and checking me out to ensure that I was all right after that spectacular delivery. The pain and cramps had subsided shortly after both infants had appeared, and I was feeling much better when the nurses brought my infant Daughters over to me for their first meal on the outside.

They were both howling and were ravenous, but I noticed that the first thing they did after starting to nurse was to work a hand free and grab the silver cord of the amulet that I had been wearing since Allen had thrown it to me when he was being attacked.

“They aren’t supposed to be able to do that, and we can’t allow them to have that, as it isn’t sterile,” one of the nurses said on seeing what they had done. Dr. O’Brien interrupted her.

“You won’t be able to get it away from them. You can’t feel their Talents, but I can, and they are drawing Magic from that object. What is it, Maureen?” she asked.

I had been touching their Talents also and was shocked by what I found. I had thought that Allen and I had powerful Talents, but ours were as nothing compared to the Talents of my two infant Daughters. I became aware again as the doctor asked her question.

“It’s an amulet that the Magic Council gave Allen when they removed the Black Magic spell on his Talent,” I told her.

“Put the two of them together in a large infant bed and leave the object with them. These are Magically powerful infants,” the doctor ordered, but the chief nurse wasn’t impressed with her order.

“The hospital rules do not allow infants to have anything in their beds with them,” she said in a stern voice and moved to take the amulet from them. She had no more than reached for the silver cord the amulet was attached to when there was a large flash of Magic, and she fell to the floor unconscious. A ward had also appeared around each of the infants.

“Someone help the chief nurse,” the doctor told those gathered there, as we had attracted quite a crowd. She then turned back to me.

“How can we move those two?” she asked, unwilling to try to touch them through the ward. The chief nurse had been removed on a gurney in the meantime.

“I’ll move them when you are ready,” Jill told her, solving that problem.

“All right, for now at least. We’ll see about what else we need to do later. Have you selected names for them?” she asked next. I had spent considerable time on their names and considered a number of name combinations before finally deciding on the ones that I considered correct, but I now had to wonder if they had been my choice after all.

“Yes, the first born is to be Eryn. That’s E R Y N and it is pronounced Er-en. The second born is to be named Ellyn, and that is spelled E L L Y N and is pronounced Ell-en,” I told them. A nurse had taken all of that down.

“And the last name?” she asked.

“Why Parks naturally, the same as my Husband’s,” I told them.

The two infants were asleep now, but they still held on to the silver cord to the amulet, I had thought they were going to consume every drop of milk that I was producing, but they seemed to know how much they could take.

“We’ll move you to a room now. The girls will be brought in when they are hungry again. Get some rest, you will need it,” Dr. O’Brien told me, as Jill picked up both infants through the wards they had cast after removing the cord of the amulet from around my neck, and she carried them to the nursery. I was moved to a room where I went to sleep after being left alone. I spent three days in the hospital before they would release my Daughters. They hadn’t grown much in that time.

The Hardtricks had all come to see me, and Jill was there for several hours each day to help me with my Daughters. They were cute little redheads and very thirsty. At least one of them always held the silver cord that the amulet was attached to in her hand. Even at three days old, their green eyes were open and they smiled at me. Max had also brought Uncle Thad and Aunt Grania to visit as well as Angus and Calisa. To my surprise, Steve had accompanied them also. Dr. O’Brien had also made an appointment to see the three of us for the 30th of June.

My Daughters always seemed to be hungry and grew at a prodigious rate once out of the hospital. By the 30th of June, I had also lost much of the weight that I had gained while pregnant. I was able to transfer to the doctor’s office by myself, well actually with my Daughters. Our appearance there startled the receptionist.

“Miss O’Farrell?” she asked not sure who I was, and why I was holding the hands of my two Daughters who had been walking for a week now.

“Yes, I’m here for my two week appointment,” I told her as the girls smiled up at her confusion.

“But those children are what ... two years old?” she asked in an unsure voice.

“Yes, but I had them just two weeks ago,” I told her.

“Have a seat, and I’ll let the doctor know that you are here,” the receptionist told us before handing me more paperwork to fill out. The girls just smiled at her. Eryn was the one with the amulet today. They traded it off each day, and they wouldn’t release it, even to me.

The nurse soon arrived from the back, but she didn’t appear to be shocked on seeing the girls. The receptionist having warned her.

“Come with me, Miss O’Farrell,” she said and led the way to the examination rooms in the back. I was a bit slow to follow her, as the girls didn’t take long steps yet and they disliked being carried.

“The doctor will see all of you shortly,” the nurse told me after taking the usual readings, but she wasn’t sure what to check the girls for, settling for just checking their temperatures. Dr. O’Brien arrived shortly after she left.

“More surprises!” the doctor said on entering and spent a short time gazing at the girls. “They appear to be two years old,” she said finally after shaking her head. I had felt the Magic that passed between the three of them.

“How are you feeling? You certainly look much slimmer than you were in the hospital,” she said next.

“I’ve lost a lot of the weight, but feel fine. The girls have slept through the night since a few days after we left the hospital. They started on solid food four days after leaving the hospital and have been walking, if slowly, for a week now,” I told her.

“Are you still living with Jill and her family?” she asked.

“No, we moved to a small rental house in Sneedville a week after leaving the hospital. I won ten thousand dollars in the lottery shortly after going home. I had never won any money from the lottery before, but the numbers just appeared in my mind when I awoke that morning,” I told her.

“Convenient,” was all she said, before making the usual checks for a woman who had recently delivered a baby before we left.

“You should get an appointment with a pediatrician for the girls, but I suspect it would be of little use if they are maturing at the rate that you have told me,” the doctor said before we left.

Eryn and Ellyn were impossible to keep in clothes, as they outgrew them in no time. I bought clothes way too large for them, and in a couple of weeks they had outgrown them. I had also felt them using Magic to make some of their clothes larger so they would last longer.

By the 10th of July, the girls were the size of children four years old. That morning they came into breakfast and had something to tell me.

“Mama, we’ve been to see Daddy,” Eryn stated.

“What?” I asked in shock.

“We know where he is, and we went there to see if he is all right. We’ve known where he is for several weeks now, but weren’t ready to go there yet,” Ellyn told me.

“Where is he? I’ll go there and rescue him,” I told them on recovering from what they had said.

“No mama, you can’t go there. They would only trap you. There is nothing they would like better. When we are older, we will take you there, and WE will deal with the people there and the others,” Eryn told me in a positive voice.

By the 7th of August, the twins were the size of children eight years old. They were reading books that I recognized as coming from Angus’ library. They seemed to devour the books at a fantastic rate. A few weeks later, they were reading college text books, and I had no idea where they had obtained them. They had also continued to consume huge quantities of food to support their fantastic growth rate. I had also won another ten thousand dollars in the lottery to support us.

Every couple of weeks we visited the Hardtricks or Uncle Thad. We had even visited Nick and Kaera a few times. They were all amazed by the twins rapid growth.

On Thursday, the 25th of September, the girls came into breakfast and had an announcement.

“Today we are fifteen years old, Mother,” Ellyn announced before they sat down to eat.

“We will shortly reach the end of our Magic growth cycle, and will only continue to grow and to change at the usual rate for humans. We have another week or so before we will be sixteen,” Eryn added.

“We are also now old enough and wise enough to rescue Father. We will be taking you along with us when we go to do that Mother,” they both told me. I just stared at them in shocked amazement. Did they think that I was totally incapable of doing anything, I wondered?

“You can do that at fifteen?” I asked, not knowing what else to say, and that was when I remembered what the Leader of the Magic Council had said in Dr. O’Brien’s office on my first visit.

“You will have Allen back within six months. Rest assured that your Daughters will be able to locate him, as they share his DNA as well as yours. They will be very powerful as well and will be able to deal with those opposed to us,” he had told me. I hadn’t believed him at the time.

“Certainly, we’ve been there many times and know all of the people there and where everything is. It won’t be a problem,” Ellyn assured me in a confident voice.

“Are we ready?” Eryn asked as we joined hands after cleaning up the dishes, and she cast a transfer spell, but it was one that I didn’t know. We vanished from the house in Sneedville and appeared in a jail cell where Allen was sitting on the bed. He didn’t move when we appeared, and it didn’t look like he saw us. What could be wrong, I wondered?

“Why hasn’t Allen reacted to our presence?” I asked, unsure of the problem.

“Because he can’t see us or sense that we are here, Mother. We have stopped time and are in a time bubble. No one can sense us or see us until we return to the reality of time. There is an entire reality without time. We have spent a lot of our lives there while growing up. It actually requires about a month for us to age a year. A week of that time is spent in the reality of time. The rest is spent in the timeless one. We’ve been a lot of places and done a lot of things while in the timeless reality.

“We’ve seen where all of the leaders of the ‘Equal Rights for Humans’ party live and work, where they get their backing from, and we know what they are planning to do. The same is true of those running the FBI, the CIA and other government agencies,” Ellyn told me. It was a long speech for her as Eryn was the talkative one.

“We’re going to rescue Father, and start to deal with the people who abducted him. We’ve already set a lot of things in place on our previous visits,”Eryn informed me.

“How are you going to do this?” I asked, unsure of what they were going to do.

“You see the band on Father’s head?” Ellyn asked.

“Yes.”

“It will explode if he tries to do any Magic. It will also explode if he tries to remove it. We are going to remove it,” she explained to my horror.

“But you’ll kill him!” I shrieked in shock.

“No, Mother, remember that we have stopped time. It requires time for the mechanism to work. We can move it through stopped time to return it the person who put it on him,” she continued.

“You can manipulate things through stopped time?” I asked, unsure.

“Certainly, Mother. How do you think we borrowed all of those books from Angus’ library, and all of those college text books?” Eryn asked with a smile and something occurred to me.

“How can you live three weeks out of four in the timeless reality? Is there food there?” I asked.

“That reality is full of Magic. We live on the Magic. It’s also what makes us grow. Why do you think we always have Father’s amulet with us? It feeds us Magic also. It’s also the reason that the two of you always wound up spooned up against each other at night. It was so we could draw Magic from the amulet.

“Then you wore it the remainder of the time that you were pregnant, and we continued to draw Magic from it. When we were born, it was the second thing that we needed after your milk. We still carry it all of the time,” Eryn told me.

“But back to what we are going to do,” Ellyn said to return us to the present situation. “There is a Black Magic Witch named Tisiphone who put that band on Daddy, and she has been torturing him everyday by running a current through it. We managed to short out that part of the band, but left a thought in Father’s mind that he should still react as if it were working,”Ellyn told me.

“Tisiphone is Megaera’s twin Sister. It required the two of them to cast the Black Magic spell that hid Father’s Talent. Those on the Magic Council only eliminated the part of the spell that Megaera cast. Tisiphone’s part of the spell was buried much deeper, and those on the Magic Council didn’t detect it. It was the hidden part of the spell that allowed her to hide his Talent again, and to draw him here, and imprison him,” Eryn told me.

“So we are going to transfer the band to Tisiphone’s head. If she tries to do any Magic after we restart time, it will explode killing her,” Ellyn told me before they used something to remove the band from Allen’s head. It didn’t explode!. Instead it floated through the walls and the steel gates of the prison as the girls moved it and us through the prison to a comfortable looking office where a tall, dark haired woman was reclining on a sofa. The band went easily onto her head, even with all of her black hair. There was also a man in the office sitting behind a desk, but I had no idea who he was.

“That is Assistant Director Stone of the FBI,” Eryn told me on seeing where I was looking. “We have a present for him also,” she assured me before moving us back to Allen’s cell.

“There is also a bomb attached to Father. It will go off if he tries to remove it, or if he moves more than five feet from this cell, and the blanketing field surrounding it. We are going to move it to Director Stone and attach it to him,” Ellyn told me when we reached the cell again. Once more the girls pointed their fingers at something under Allen’s shirt, and a cylinder with straps attached to it appeared, but I had no idea how they were doing this.

“How do you do that? Do you use a spell?” I asked, as I hadn’t detected the use of much Magic by them.

“Oh no, Mother. We use our Magic beams. They are very handy and are how we manipulate things. They work well in no time and also in regular time,” Eryn told me with a chuckle. Again we passed through the walls and gates with no problem at all. On arriving back at the office, the girls attached the bomb to Director Stone where he sat at his desk, before we returned to the cell where Allen was being kept.

This time on arriving back in the cell, the girls did something again, and I could feel their Magic twist time. Allen immediately leaped to his feet with a shocked look on his face.

“Maureen, don’t do any Magic in here. It will explode this band... ?” he said before he stumbled to a stop while feeling for the band around his head and was shocked to find it gone.

“It’s gone!” he said in awe, but quickly had another question. “How did you get here? They want to trap you in here also.”

“I was brought here by our Daughters,” I told him, much to his shock.

“Daughters, as in more than one, but that’s impossible. I haven’t been here long enough for you to have even delivered our child,” he said in denial.

“Allen, these are our Daughters, Eryn and Ellyn. They are now fifteen years old and will shortly be sixteen years old. I bore them in nine weeks after getting pregnant. They went from infants to fifteen years old in fifteen weeks by our time,” I told a very shocked Allen.