Chapter 13: Live and Learn

Cathy was doing better, so Mrs. Gilman went back to working full time. That left me more time with the girls, but raised interesting questions about our relationship. Now that Cathy was no longer dying, Pamela wanted to establish some rules. But she felt awkward raising the subject, so after seeing her beat around the bush for a while I decided to speak of the elephant in the room.

Of course, from my point of view, the elephant – that is having two beautiful sisters as girlfriends – was a very cute and cuddly elephant. But I could see the stress building, and I hoped to alleviate some of it by raising the issue before recriminations started. Some of it was motivated by fear – however much both girls loved me, and I believed they did, if harsh words were spoken and ultimatums issued I had little doubt that ultimately the sisterly love of many years would win out over a recent boyfriend.

Cathy wanted me to come to her room. Since it was hot and humid outside, her favorite pastimes were sex and talking about magic. Pamela preferred to sit just touching me and read, with occasional interruptions to read out a passage that she would then criticize or laud.

My relationship with Pamela was by no means chaste. Periodically one of us would escalate the touching hip or the leaning head to fondles, which then proceeded to mock complaints of interruptions, mock-combat, followed by a mock chase through the house ending in the bedroom. At which point all that foreplay resulted in passionate and exhausting lovemaking.

On this particular late August afternoon I had the girls all to myself. Cathy took my hand and pulled me towards her room. I noticed Pamela making a sour face, but as she didn't say anything I decided to start the conversation.

I tried not to show my trepidation as I resisted Cathy's pull, and said, "Let's talk. How about the living room."

I saw Cathy start to pout, but her face cleared and she lead the way to the couch. Perhaps she too was aware of the elephant. I looked at Pamela. She seemed the most reluctant, but didn't object as she followed me. I sat next to Cathy and Pamela took the armchair across from us.

I cleared my throat. "Girls, I love you both dearly, and having two such wonderful girlfriends is a dream come true." Cathy's expression was an illustration of the "Well, d'uh!" sentiment.

"But our relationship is unconventional, and we should discuss the expectations and maybe set some rules."

Pamela said, "What ... kind of rules?"

"Well, mostly related to time. Do we spend time together? In pairs? Mix it up? Do we plan to have one joint outing per week, with some pair dates?

"What do we tell others? You parents seem to be very accepting of our non-orthodox relationship, but it arose largely because of Cathy's illness. Now that she is well – I hope for a long, long time – they may start voicing concerns. We need to have our plans set to discuss with them, and probably be flexible if they want some changes.

"And what about school? Sooner or later people will see us on dates, if they haven't already. There will be questions and rumors. What should be our story?

"Finally, there are my parents. I suspect they will be easier to deal with – parents are usually more protective of girls, but there could be questions there."

Both girls started to speak, and then stopped, looking at each other. After a second, Pamela pointed to Cathy.

"Thanks, Pamela. Before I start on my ideas, I wanted to say that you don't need to privilege me as you did before. I am healthy, and I don't think I will be getting ill any time soon. I am more grateful than I can say that you shared Martin with me, and I am not planning to relinquish him. But I will, well, I will try to defer to you as the oldest sister. I don't want to abuse your goodwill, and if you continue to defer to me I suspect you'll end up resenting the arrangement."

Pamela nodded firmly. Clearly, she thought the same.

"So, since I am speaking now, I'd like to put in my proposition but I don't expect your automatic concurrence. I'd like to have some time alone with Martin, either at his home or here. I will take as many times per week as I can, but I am quite willing to accept limitations."

Pamela nodded again, this time more to acknowledge understanding the request than in agreement.

"I'd like to spend time with both of you, either outside dates or here. I've been pretty bad about those recently, but I really liked our outings in June.

"Finally, I'd like to be open that Martin is the boyfriend for both of us. Not the sexual part," she blushed but continued, "but the relationship and dating. Of course, I have fewer friends than either one of you both because I am behind in school, and because of missing so much time last year. So you may be more vulnerable to rumors and adverse reactions from your friends. I am willing to go along with a different approach, but I think sooner rather than later people will find out at least the basis of our arrangements." She ran down and waved at both Pamela and me, conceding the floor.

Pamela looked at me, so rather than go into the "you first, I insist" routine, I tried to keep my remarks brief. "I am probably least sensitive to rumors in school. I will go along with whatever the two of you find acceptable, although Cathy's point is well taken. Keeping our relationship secret will probably not work well. Okay, over to you, Pamela."

"Well, thanks for that point about no longer deferring to you, Cathy. I appreciate that you raised it first – it would have been more awkward for me.

"As for my expectations – I lent my boyfriend to you temporarily, while you were very ill and it looked like you wouldn't have much chance for a normal love life. Now that you are so much better I want him back, with no fooling around on me. Cathy, it looks like you will have plenty of time to find your own boyfriend."

I felt like somebody kicked me. Protesting Pamela's words would put me in an awkward situation. I would look like a horny boy wanting to have his cake and eat it too. I did want to have both sisters, not just for sex, but sex was definitely part of the relationship I enjoyed so well. But I couldn't figure out how to say it without sounding like a jerk.

Cathy opened her eyes wide and tried to say something, but was stuck on "But! But!"

Pamela let this go on for a few seconds, and then broke up laughing. "If you two could only see your faces! Martin, you looked like somebody just took your favorite toy! And Cathy, your eyes and your mouth were like three circles of exactly the same size!"

"You! You, stinker!!" Cathy sputtered. "I thought you were serious!"

"Well, I needed to show that I no longer considered you an untouchable fragile saint. You, sis, are open game! And Martin, I bet you were trying to figure out how to keep your little harem without quite coming out and saying you wanted two girls in your bed."

"Um, no comment!"

Cathy stopped sputtering, and poked her sister in the ribs.

"Hey!" Pamela protested.

"Well, if I am no longer untouchable, neither are you!"

"I meant using one's wit, not descending into brutish physical strife!" Pamela pronounced that last with an attempt at upper-class British accent, but also accompanied it with a poke at Cathy's ribs. They both laughed and chased each other in some version of tag. I followed slowly, not wanting to get involved with them – I feared that they could team up on me at any moment, siblings were like that.

I found them both in Pamela's room, lying crosswise on her bed. They went from poking each other to gossiping.

"And Ron has the cutest butt in tenth grade. You may want to..."

I said hastily, "I will be in the living room, reading. Come out when you are done bonding," and escaped to the sound of mocking laughter. Girlfriends! I had to consider the cons of having two of them – they could either argue, which was bad for the boyfriend, or they could team up, which could also end up being bad for the boyfriend.

I went to read, maintaining a grumpy look. Inside I was still ecstatic. It increasingly looked like Cathy was cured. I would never admit it to the girls, but I was willing to give up one of them to avoid recriminations between the sisters. Even the hottest sex – and they both provided that – wasn't worth it to risk the happiness of my girls, and I knew how much they loved each other.

It looked, however, as if they were willing to share me. I was far more fortunate than I deserved. I wondered if having two sets of memories qualified me for two girlfriends. That was a silly idea, but it had an appealing symmetry.

As I expected, the two loves of my life chose to come out when I was deep in a tense chapter of a science fiction book I had borrowed from Cathy.

"Martin, we tentatively decided that Cathy would get you alone on Monday and Wednesday. I get you on Tuesday and Friday. The last in case we have a late date. Eventually, Cathy may get Saturday for her second day; but for now, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday are for activities or dates for all three of us.

"If one of these dates doesn't work, like we are busy, or your or our parents need you, the day is lost and not rolled over. We accept that we won't actually be spending all week together. Substitutions are allowed with mutual consent, so if you and Cathy want to go out on Friday for some special occasion, she can trade me for another of her days.

"As we discussed, we won't keep our relationship secret, but we'll try to keep any sex parts quiet. I suspect that I will eventually tell my closest friends, but I would prefer that Cathy's participation stays quiet. All of this is subject to possible modification by our parents, so that's the next step."

"Okay, I am fine with all that. I think we'll find that the rules will need to be flexible, there will be plenty of reasons why this or that day will not work, but I like having at least the base framework in place. What about questions of how this started? Do we have a common story, maybe related to Cathy's illness? Or do we just say that we are all content with the relationship and refuse to answer anything else?"

"Hmm, I'll have to think about it. Let's see how the parents react first. Maybe we'll ask them for advice."

Mr. Gilman would be very late that evening, and we all decided we'd rather wait than tell the girls' parents one at a time. Pamela promised to arrange an evening when all five of us could sit down as soon as possible.

Cathy's birthday went off very well. She had a small group of friends – all girls from her grade. They giggled a lot and looked at me out of the corners of their eyes. I was "safe", being Pamela's boyfriend, but they practiced some gentle flirting on me.

All of them were attractive in the way of young just pubescent girls. Even the ones with acne and the two overly-plump ones were sexy, despite their dresses and make up, rather than because of them. It was like their bodies signaled that they were ready to mate, and their effect on me was strong.

Unfortunately, or in fact fortunately, as soon as they opened their mouth, their attractiveness faded away. It wasn't that they were stupid or offensive in any way, but they were clearly fourteen and fifteen year old girls. When not giggling, they were coy, or overly enthusiastic, or overly cool. In short, they were immature – although to their peers, only a couple of years younger than me, they probably appeared irresistible.

I could now appreciate how mature both Cathy and Pamela were. Pamela was older, but she was mature above her years due to her focus on study, as well as the years of fear for her sister's life.

Cathy, of course, had looked death in the face both closer and for a longer time than most of us who are still alive. Even my own encounters with death were brief, if intense.

I visited Cathy a few times while she was getting treated. I saw men and women, and a few kids Cathy's age and even younger, receiving their own courses of chemo. Most kids got mature really fast. They still appreciated play, and toys, and other childlike pleasures. But they dispensed with embarrassment, coy approaches and vacillation. They were quick to tell you what they wanted, whether they liked you or not, and they were not afraid to ask for help. They dealt with others politely, having learned to rely on others for the most basic, and often most critical, needs. But they did not suffer fools gladly.

It was heartbreaking looking at those kids and young adults. Many of them were facing bad prognoses. But it was also humbling to see how they – or most of them anyway – rejected despair. They prioritized what they wanted to do, and grasped whatever fun and pleasure was within their reach. Cathy was like them. She reached for what she wanted without games and subterfuge, but was also willing to accommodate others. Her friends still had years of life to get used to dealing with the world and its choices, and it showed.

I wondered if Cathy thought me immature. I actually asked that after the party. She quietly hugged me, and paid me one of my most precious compliments. "You, boyfriend, are my best friend except for Pam. You made it possible for me to be serious when I needed it, and made it possible to have fun when I could. You helped me get through fear without lying to myself, and gave me hope when you could. You are plenty mature enough for me. You'll be plenty mature enough for me when I am eighty. Don't ever change."

What could I say to that? I just hugged her tightly back, enjoying feeling the muscles and a bit of padding on Cathy. She was still skinny, but appetite and daily exercise were improving her figure.

Some time later, she crowed "Hey, I am no longer jail-bait for you! You can boink me in full compliance with the law!"

As if that ever stopped Cathy! I didn't bother to reply, as my mouth was otherwise occupied.

During our time together, Cathy wanted to explore both sex and magic. I had more experience, but Cathy, characteristically, wasn't shy about catching up. She looked things up on the Web, and had a list of things she wanted to try. I had to slow her down a few times, to savor a leisurely act rather than going through a checklist.

She was intensely curious about magic, but not so much about the culture of Kazallu. I expected that at some point I would bring in Pamela, and the historically-minded sister would be more interested about ancient Mesopotamia.

"Did you look on the Web? Does anybody else do similar magic?" Cathy asked eagerly after a brief but intense lovemaking. She told me she wanted to leave some time for "magic lessons", but was unwilling to forgo sex. I thought that was a sensible arrangement.

"Yes, I've been looking on and off. In the beginning I didn't want to leave too-clear marks of what I was looking for, in case somebody, maybe in the government, is keeping track of magic. But there is so much myth and bad information out there that I am beginning to think nobody now practices any reliable magic. Either that or they hide very, very well.

"I am sure there are sensitives like you. Sensitivity usually means you could learn sorcery, but without any instructors, any structured training, I am not sure you'd ever cast a spell. Or if the sensitives did, by trial and error, if they could then repeat it."

"So, how could you, I mean your people, learn it?"

"Well, there were more than 'my' people, we learned it mostly from the Sumerians. Eridu was considered one of the first centers of learning, but many cities had some sorcerers who'd take on students. Akkad had more than its share; its king used to be very generous to sorcerers who'd move to his city." I scowled, remembering the dozens of war sorcerers that came with Sargon's army.

"Okay, okay, there were many cities and countries. But how did the first sorcerer learn?"

"I don't know, there are legends of ancient sages and gods, but I tend to doubt them. I found that magic energy is a lot more diffuse now; it was a lot easier to use in my time – that is my 'Leshada' time. I sound like an old-timer walking to school in the snow, don't I?"

"Yep, you do! I wasn't planning to get an older man as boyfriend. Bet my parents wouldn't be happy with you being so much older. They might consider you a dirty old man!" she teased.

"We may want to keep my original date of birth out of the conversation, then." We still hadn't had "the talk" with the Gilman parents, but it was tentatively scheduled for next evening. I had some trepidations about it, but didn't want to procrastinate.

"Anyway, Grasshopper, the student should listen and not talk."

She giggled, and mimed zipping her lips. It was good to see a child poke through some times. I couldn't help but grin at her.

"It would have been much easier to cast – once you achieved trance – back in Kazallu. If I extrapolate back, the magic flows may have been even denser in the past – I mean a couple of thousand years before Kazallu was even settled. It's possible that some of the early priests or healers, we might call them shamans now, achieved a light trance accidentally through fasting or drugs, or repeated prayers, and started performing 'magic'. Anyway, we will probably never know for sure."

Cathy raised her hand and was waving it, like a first-grader eager to answer a teacher's question. I looked at her questioningly, and she elaborately pointed to her lips.

"Okay, you little brat. You can speak."

"Little brat? That's no way to speak to your girlfriend. I'd threaten to cut you off, except my dear sister would just grab all of your free time for herself.

"And, you would be climbing the walls with horniness in two days," I added, returning tease for tease.

"Harrumph! Anyway, as I've been waiting patiently to ask, does this mean that magic is weaker now? Is it all going to fade away and leave us to mundane means? That's a common theme in fantasy novels."

"Well, I've wondered that myself. Without precise measurements I cannot tell for sure, but I don't think so. There might actually be a little more magic overall. But gathering it requires much more care, as you have to get it from a 'wider area'. The distances in trance are not exactly equivalent to physical ones, but that's the closest I can come.

"Back in Kazallu, okay, stop with the old man jokes, you had to find a concentration of energy for the stronger spells. Some places had more flows, and others were 'dry' and so were lousy for any decent work. In fact, that may have lead to the concept of mystical places. They were locations where, for some unknown reason, you could find more and stronger flows than average.

"Today, what I sense are weaker flows, almost everywhere. Once I had gotten some practice in gathering and holding this diffuse energy, I was able to perform some pretty demanding spells. In fact, I am not sure I could have done the Spell of Drawing that I performed on you back in Kazallu. Of course, it could have been motivation."

I fell silent for a few seconds, remembering the fear, and at the end, the pain and weakness of that spell. Cathy was silent as well.

"Anyway, besides the basics, I was never taught much theory at all. It would have come later, but I triggered the Spell of Disembodiment when I was sixteen, and barely past my practitioner's examination. It's unfortunate.

"So, I will teach you the practical steps to cast a spell. The theory we'll have to speculate on – later."

She chuckled at my use of that word.

"First, you have to control your breathing. Then, I will teach you to control your dreams. If you can master that, I will teach you the relaxation techniques and the chants to enter the spell-casting trance."

"Okay. But, eventually, when I learn all that, what will be the first spell I do?"

"Most likely scrying. Some people have a hard time with that, but it requires little magical energy and therefore is suitable for beginners. You may also learn to channel the energy without casting it – one of the things apprentices did was make it easier for the masters to cast more powerful spells by feeding them more energy."