Chapter 22

Friday, the 20th, we drove up to my parent's for Christmas. We needed to make several extra stops along the way now, so my wives could use the ladies' room. They had to go for three now. We arrived at my parent's house in the middle of the afternoon.

"My goodness, you're even larger!!" Mom said, on opening the front door and seeing how large Katie and Margie were now.

"Yes, we're having twins!" Margie told her, excitedly.

"Which one of you is having twins?" Mom asked, confused.

"Both of us are having twins!" Katie assured her. Mom just stood there for a few seconds with her mouth hanging open in amazement.

"Who is it, Gail?" a voice called from the kitchen. I recognized Uncle Dan's voice.

"It's Mark and his wives," Mom called, recovering. Uncle Dan soon appeared with Vicky behind him.

"Hello, Mark. How are you?" Dan asked.

"They're having twins, Dan," Mom blurted out to her brother and Aunt Vic.

"TWINS!!" they both gasped.

"Yes, twins," Katie answered, and then added, "Both of us!"

"My God, you'll have an entire family in one pregnancy," Dan exclaimed in shock.

"How will you girls cope?" my usually quiet Aunt Vic asked.

"When did you find out?" Mom asked.

"We just found out this week - Tuesday actually. We have been learning to deal with the idea since then," Margie told them.

"Come in the parlor and we'll talk," Mom requested, as they turned toward the front parlor. Uncle Dan and I went back to the kitchen, where he had some beer for us to drink, while the women talked about babies.

"Will this throw a monkey wrench in your plans, Mark?" Dan asked.

"I don't know yet, Uncle Dan. We haven't gotten as far as school in the fall. We are still dealing with the birth of the children in May and what we need to do to get ready for that. Before the close of school in the spring, we'll have to deal with it, but that gives us some time. Believe me, just the logistics for four babies is daunting," I told him.

"Yes, we had four, but one at a time. I can't even imagine what four at once will be like," Dan told me. My Father was just as shocked as the others had been when he got home.

"Well, Mark, it looks like you are going to get a quick brutal lesson in parenting," Dad told me on learning about the two sets of twins.

Saturday morning, Dad and I went out to get a tree for Christmas, while Mom and my wives went grocery shopping. I found out later that Mom gave them shopping tips for a large family while they were out. Dad and I came back with a medium size tree and put it up. My wives helped decorate it that afternoon after a nap.

Sunday we went to church, but my wives didn't join the choir here either. The minister was shocked when he saw their condition, and come over to inquire how they were.

"We're fine," Katie told him. "We just don't do a lot of singing now. Twins are a lot to carry around, and we're tired a lot."

Katie and Margie helped Mom with the preparation of food for Christmas on Monday and Tuesday, but rested quite a bit. I helped her when they were tired. Christmas was on Wednesday this year, but my wives were too tired to go to midnight services. We were all worried about how things would go when all of my siblings and their families showed up on Christmas afternoon.

They and their families began arriving just after 1:30 that afternoon for Christmas dinner. There were presents under the tree, as usual, and Dad began distributing them by 2:30 after everyone had arrived.

My wives and I made our appearance at 3:00, after things had calmed down from the opening of the presents. My wives had brushed their long hair and applied a little makeup. They looked marvelous in their maternity clothes. They say that women are their most beautiful when they are pregnant, and I can definitely believe that.

My wives had informed Mom that they would explain everything today once everyone had arrived. Uncle Dan and Aunt Vic arrived just after we came downstairs, and they took all of the children into the back parlor and closed the connecting doors between the parlors.

"Will everyone please have a seat?" Katie asked after the children had been removed. Everyone crowded on to the sofas and stuffed chairs. Dad had also brought in some folding chairs so they all could be seated. I kept two chairs for my wives to sit on, as they couldn't stand long enough to tell their story.

"During Thanksgiving dinner, we told you that there was a lot about us and our family that we didn't want known. We are ready to tell you the story now. It's not just about us but Mark also. You may find parts of it hard to believe, but everything we are about to tell you is true," Margie began, and both sisters took a long breath before continuing.

"We were born on the 20th of September in the year 1834," was how Katie began their story. My parents, brothers, sisters and their spouses sat there for the next two hours while Katie, Margie, and I related the story to them. We included everything, even the trips to Boston. We didn't include the sex - well not most of it anyway. Mostly my family stared at us in stunned disbelief the entire time.

"And you really expect us to believe this bullshit, Mark?" my brother Paul asked when we had finished. My brothers-in-law also looked doubtful but allowed my blood relatives to carry the ball on this.

"Yes, I do, but some people take more convincing than others," I said, and spoke the spell that I had prepared. Instantly Fragarach appeared in my hand and the flames from my power source appeared around my wives and myself.

"The rug! You'll burn the house down!" Mom screamed in panic on seeing the flames.

"Don't worry about the flames, Mother Kent. Everything will be all right," Katie told Mom. Paul was staring at me with an amazed and shocked look on his face.

"That's a pretty neat trick," William, my other brother, said. "Is that thing for real?" he asked next, pointing at Fragarach.

"Ask Uncle Dan just how real it is. He knows from first hand experience," I told him.

"It's just a parlor trick," Paul said in a snotty manner and laughed. He shouldn't have done that, because it pissed off my wives, who were tired already. Suddenly the room was stone cold, as they changed the air for that outside. A few seconds later it was sweltering from the August heat and humidity of central Georgia.

All of my relatives gasped and screamed at these events, all but Paul that is. He only croaked. My wives had turned him into a frog - a large green and white frog. Paul's wife screamed on discovering that she was sitting next to a large green frog, and everyone else was shocked. All but my wives that is, who were giggling.

I quickly adjusted the temperature in the room to what it had been, and turned to look at my wives.

"Was that really necessary?" I asked them.

"Oh, Paul is such a stick in the mud," Katie said.

"A real stick in the mud now!" Margie said with a giggle, and changed Paul back into himself.

"Mark wouldn't do anything nasty to you, because you're his relatives. We have been at this a lot longer than he has, and have no such compunctions, although we really don't dislike any of you. Every word that we told you was true. If you choose not to believe us, that's your worry, but none of you will repeat what has been said here to anyone not in the immediate family. Is that clear to you?" Katie demanded in a threatening voice.

"But how could you prevent them from talking about it?" Mom asked.

"It's quite simple, Mom," I told her, and recited the spell as I made the glyph in the air.

"I just cast a spell on all of you. You will not be able to tell anyone else what you heard or saw in this room. You can talk among yourselves, but not to anyone else," I explained.

"But ... but how can you do that?" my youngest sister Carol asked.

"Magic, Carol!" I told her. "It really exists. If I thought it necessary, I would use a spell that removed everything you heard here this afternoon from your minds, but I don't believe I need to do that."

"No, I mean how come you can do that, and we can't," she asked.

"Because I have the Talent, as do my wives, and the rest of you don't, although you women may be carrying it. I got my Talent from Mom, but again she is just a carrier and has no real Talent of her own," I told Carol.

"This is all too hard to understand," Carol said. "Are you telling me that one of my children could be a ... a Sorcerer!?" Carol asked.

"I am saying the potential is there, but it takes a special set of circumstances to bring it out," I told her, but didn't go any further as I saw Mom go pale. There was a knock on the door then, and Uncle Dan opened the sliding doors between the two parlors.

"It's after 5:30 and these kids are hungry," he told us.

"Yes, we'll be there in a minute, Dan," Mom told him, before turning back to her family.

"I believe what your brother has told us. If you don't choose to, that's up to you, but I believe him," Mom finished before leaving for the kitchen. My sisters and sisters-in-law followed to collect their children and get them fed.

My wives and I returned to our room. They were tired, and I was distraught that my family would doubt me on this important matter. I had already returned Fragarach to his place with my power source, and the flames had long since returned there also. My male relatives sat there and stared at our backs as we left and then at each other for a time.

Much later we went back downstairs and Mom fixed us some dinner. The others had all left by then.

"Do you see why we were reluctant to tell you all of that?" Katie asked, when Mom sat down with us.

"Yes, at dinner the others all said that it was too fantastic to believe, and thought that most of it was just parlor tricks. All but Paul, that is. He was strangely silent," Mom told us and was quiet for a time.

"You really have been to all of those places and seen all of those things, haven't you?" she finally asked very quietly after a bit.

"Yes, Mother Kent. We have, and we did see all of those things. Mark fought the witch in New Orleans this past summer, and now we're just normal girls again," Margie told her.

"Well, as normal as you can be when you're a 179 year old witch who is pregnant with twins and really just going on seventeen," Katie said with a giggle. Margie and Mom joined her, laughing at the sheer ludicrousness of the statement. We all felt a little better after that.

On our way back upstairs after helping Mom cleanup, Dad called to me from the front parlor. I told my wives that I'd be up in a few minutes. When I entered the parlor, I could see that Dad was rather drunk.

"Sit down, Mark," he told me as I entered. I sat in a chair across from him.

"You're not really my son, are you?" he asked, and sounded very sad.