Enchantress

As for Gaspode, there was no telling if he was there because he wanted to be there, or if he was along for a free ride out of the XXXX desert. As they waited for Octavia to return, Nick tried to broach the subject with his boyhood friend. "Gaspode buddy, we want to know what you are planning to do."

The Wonder Dog opened one eye and said, "Plan? You know me chum, keep the treats coming and I'm yours for the next five hours. That's my only plan in life."

Nick needed to explain human courtship to a dog, and he thinks he found a way. "You know how when you find that perfect bitch and everything clicks and next thing you know you're tied to her?"

"Uh huh," agreed Gaspode. It was the greatest five minutes of his life.

"Well with humans it's different, it's more emotional than physical and it last a long time... and I was wondering if you would be there for me."

"With a bucket of ice water?" asked Gaspode.

"If it comes to that, but there's a few differences. For one, human girls don't like to be called bitches."

"NO?" Gaspode was shocked, it was a title of high honor in the canine world. Every dog's mom was a real bitch, and any dog would fight to the death anyone who called his mother something derogatory.

"Yeah, they're funny that way, but I hear that human pups are really cute."

Gaspode placed a reassuring paw on Nick's resting hand. "If it means that much to you, I'm here for you."

After about fifteen minutes Octavia returned and crouched down and gave Nick a little buss on the lips. "You ready to go?"

"Too right!" grinned Nick hoping that she meant more kissing.

"Let's go to Pseudopolis and get the last section of the spell, then our work begins." As she rose, she pulled on an over robe, and it was then that Nick realized that the robe she wore as a joke going through the library was perfectly transparent.

"Work? Like what?" he gasped. In the dim light of the library, he was enjoying the view until she covered up.

"First, we figure out which piece goes first, which piece goes second, draw them up as one spell. Then we create a test universe and try the spell there, if it works, we go to Krull and set it off for real."

They entered the library of the Brazeneck College in Pseudopolis shortly before midnight, and Octavia pulled an arcane lamp from her little pink and purple backpack. Nick still had the huge backpack, but the size and weight didn't bother him at all, Mesquite had taught Nick the art of levitating objects and he was levitating that big pack. He was not carrying the pack; now the pack was carrying him.

Using her lamp that emitted the octarine glow, Octavia began to search for the third and final tome that she needed, Aleister Gardner and the Thaumaturgical Prestidigitation of Time and Space, a Primer. She looked it up in the card catalogue and had to memorize the Dewy Decimal address because there were no pencils. "This place is a disaster," hissed Octavia as they searched the shelves for what's commonly called AG's TP of T&S. The books were terrified, they fluttered nervously in their shelving and the more powerful tomes were straining at their chains. "Sshhh! Calm down guys, it's ok... it's ok... I'm here." She folded over her lapel showing her badge of rank, Senior Master Librarian of the Librarians of Time and Space. The books fluttered with relief, the word spread through the books, and the feeling of immanent salvation spread through treatises tomes and monographs, from folio to quarto the books realized that a TRUE librarian is in the house!

Nick was not a certified librarian, but he was learning everything that Octavia knew so he began to help calm down the books. "It's ok guys, I'm her apprentice... who here needs work?" The books all looked in bad shape, but to a copy they all indicated one old primer at the end of the bottom most shelf. An ancient tome limped forward and coughed up a huge cloud of dust and Nick carefully picked up the sorry specimen. "It's ok old fellow, my woman is a Senior Master Librarian who is training me extensively. We will help you; I promise." He examined the book and was shocked at the condition it was in, he couldn't read a single word or character of the ancient text, but it was apparent that this book was dying from neglect. He looked at Octavia and mouthed "Broken spine" and she nodded in response and Nick whisked the book off to the operating theater.

Nick placed the book in the bookbinders clamp and began to operate, removing the end cap carefully with scalpel and magnifying glass using the knowledge he gained from Octavia through Mesquite. Octavia continued to soothe the books and search for Aleister Gardner and the Thaumaturgical Prestidigitation of Time and Space, a Primer. As she searched a yellow light started to move through the library and the books went into a full panic again, shuddering and flapping in terror. Some actually took to flight to escape the yellow light. Yellow light means a flame, the mortal enemy to anything made of paper.

Poco Curante moved through his library in his nightshirt and his fuzzy slippers holding a candle trying to identify the source of the noise that woke him. {The noise was Gula and Gaspode playing while Nick and Octavia worked} As usual the books were fluttering and flapping but sod them, this is a library, not a day care center. Poco had been librarian since the founding of Brazeneck College and he ran an orderly library. None of those late night shenanigans where students sat up all night in the library "studying." Library hours are nine am to four pm with an hour off for lunch, no excuses.

He turned the corner and there, in the dim light of the candle, was a XXXX Bush Witch, slouch hat with huge fangs from some unknown beast tucked in the crocklegator hat band, short beard, eye patch, and robes that made him look like a slim pile of leaves. The Bush Witch snarled at Poco, "Feel lucky punk?" and blew out the candle. A muffled cry let Octavia know that Nick followed her directions.

When the pillowcase was pulled off of his head, Poco Curante found himself tied to a chair in his own break room, a bright light was shining in his eyes. He could see the Bush Witch repairing the spine of a leather bound book and a very shapely but very angry looking woman was glaring at him. Long flowing dark hair splashed over her shoulders, a very cute face with dimpled cheeks and a narrow chin, tiny nose, big brown eyes, and breasts! Her figure took his breath away. At any other time, he would try to charm her with his personality, but at this point in time he didn't think it was a good idea. {Especially considering that he didn't have a personality} Also because he was tied to a chair and gagged.

"An open flame in a magical library?" she demanded as she pulled his gag out of his mouth, "How stupid are you?"

"I-I-I uh um, ah..."

"Have you heard of the Mystic library of Far Überwald?" demanded Octavia as Nick continued to sew the spine of the ancient book back together.

"Me? I... er... uh... No."

"That's because now it's known as the von Hornung Crater. Seventeen point five cubic acres of solid rock were turned into gravel and blown four miles into the ocean because some moron walked into a very nervous library on a dark and stormy night with a lit candle. Thousands of illuminated single editions were lost because of a single candle." She shuddered and closed her eyes at the thought of the loss.

Not only ignorant, Poco Curante was mind numbingly stupid, and that combination is dangerous. "Who are you?" he demanded. Reading a room was another skill he lacked.

"I'm your worst nightmare pal," Octavia flipped the lapel on her coat showing her badge of rank, "a Senior Master Librarian with a clipboard and a dog."

"A dog? I don't see a dog."

At the same time over in the faculty apartments, the Dean's door burst open, and an odd voice called, "Hey Dean! Check it out! Poco Curante has the hottest chick over in the library! Woo-woo!" The Dean got out of bed and ran to his door and looked out into the hallway hoping to find the source of his agitation but all he saw was senior members of the faculty all looking into the hallway wondering who rousted them.

"Dean! I demand to know what is going on here!" called the Speaker of the Buttery. Angry wizards agreed and instead of returning to a nice warm bed the Dean pulled on his robe and slippers and led a dozen angry wizards decked out in bathrobes and carpet shoes across the rainy campus to the library.

"Poco!" called the Dean but there was no answer as the faculty stormed into the library, all dressed in their bathrobes and fuzzy slippers.

"I knew it was a mistake to hire your brother-in-law," grumbled the Seer of Past Events to the Dean.

A light was on in the side office and in there they found a very beautiful, very angry woman chastising the head librarian while what appeared to be a Bush Witch was taking a book out of the book binders' clamp. Watching him was a small gargoyle seated on a windowsill, a small wire haired dog, and a walking stick that paced nervously behind him.

"And finally, finding number twenty seven, you stored the magical codex's with the grimoires. You can NOT store those tracts on the same aisle let alone the same shelf! There is a warning in Library Manual 127-1-1-301 Periodical Display and Checkout that clearly states how these publications are to be handled." Then she looked up and saw the senior staff members of the college. "You're here gentlemen. You, with the fluffy bunny slippers, you're the Dean?"

"I..."

Not giving the Dean the time to finish his sentence, she thrust her clipboard into his hands and showed him her badge. "I am Senior Master Librarian Façade Incognito and this is my apprentice, Porter Strongback, we came through L-Space to complete an arduous spell and I found your library in a total nervous breakdown and your librarian stumbling around with an open flame!

The Dean, the only person close enough to be considered a leader at this college completely ignored her list of complaints against the Librarian of Brazeneck College and shouted, "Who do you think you are?"

"I told you who I am, Senior Master Librarian Façade..."

"YOUNG LADY!" shrieked the Dean, "This is an institution of higher learning, not some bawdy house where a loosely dressed bint can simply waltz in here and..."

Nick didn't hear the rest of what the pudgy, pink excuse for a man said because the whole world slowed to a crawl the moment he grabbed Octavia. She turned in the little man's grasp and looked back at Nick with terror in her eyes. What can a short, skinny, injured street urchin from the streets of Ankh-Morpork do when a senior wizard grabs the only person that ever cared for him? Everything he can.

Nick's hand was still on the book he calmed down and saved with emergency surgery, Vanemate Rasside Jõud, The Power of the Elder Races, a long forgotten book, a book thought lost by most, and a book unreadable to all. Written in the language of the Mountain Ergonians, the last Elven race on discworld. The book wasn't about the power of the elder races, the book contained the power of the elder races, and its feelings of gratitude to Nick showed no bounds, and it gladly gave Nick a hand. It doesn't always matter if you can read a book, because a book this powerful can read you.

As the Dean started to shake Octavia, he didn't realize how close to death he came. Octavia's father wanted her to be able to protect herself, so he taught her to fight, but he never taught her how to fight clean but in her panic she forgot all that. What saved her was the energy and knowledge that was flowing from the Vanemate Rasside Jõud into Nick. As the wizards concentrated on Octavia {actually on Octavia's breasts} a sound filled the room, a sound that defied description on the discworld, but other men on other worlds would say that it sounded like the cries of tens of thousands of teenage girls shrieking in excitement at the opening set of the current favorite boy band. The high pitched, multi hue shriek filled the minds of the men there with terror.

Where Nick once stood now stood a seven foot tall, white fluffy bunny... but the more intelligent of the men realized that this was not a large version of the sweet, cute bunnies that hopped about the garden and was the darling of children, because sticking out of the giant bunny's marsupial pouch extended the bloody ends of several disembodied human limbs. Snacks for later.

The "bunny" grinned and a maw filled with six inch long razor sharp teeth greeted the shrieking academics. It was a bull dingaroo, the most dangerous predator on the Four Ecks continent. As the dingaroo roared its challenge, the academics wet themselves and ran.

Poco fought against the ties that bound him and shrieked, "For the love of the Gods! Let me go!"

The dean was no longer holding Octavia, instead she was holding him, keeping him from escaping. Out of the nightmare vision of the dingaroo stepped Nick who snarled at the head of the college. "Send us one dozen underclassmen by sunrise so we can start to clean up this trash heap that you call a library, and find a new librarian, this one is being placed under review."

The way that Nick said under review caused Poco Curante to whimper in fear and faint, but Nick wasn't done. He glared at the dean. "Send those twelve students and provide the resources we require for the clean-up and the condition of this heap will be forgiven. But the sin of touching my woman has consequences." His proclamation was accompanied by a flash of lightning and a blast of thunder so loud that it almost drown out the cheering and applause of the books.

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"My man!" sighed Octavia as she settled her shapely ass into Nick's lap. "Did I tell you that when you said, "My Woman" that I almost came?"

"Yes," said Nick as he set his quill down and put his arms around Octavia. "But you never told me where you went."

Octavia looked at him in shock, "You don't know what cum means?"

"Of course, it means to move closer, to arrive at a destination, to approach..." he was stifled by her lips and as they kissed their souls melded, their hearts beat in unison, and further down, their bodies ached for each other.

"You silly," then she whispered in his ear, "I almost had an orgasm!"

"Is that dangerous?"

Octavia's jaw actually dropped, "You don't know that that is?"

"Sorry honey," came a voice from under Nick's chair, "he ain't never had a bitch."

"Gaspode! We talked about this," warned Nick.

"You've never had... sex?" asked Octavia, utterly astonished that someone who spent their life on the streets of Ankh-Morpork has never had sex.

"Yes, I do. I'm a boy."

"You've never made love to somebody?"

Nick looked utterly confused. "Love is an emotion, a feeling. How do you make a feeling?"

"I tried to warn ya babe."

"Gaspode!"

"Boink? Screw? Hump? Frigg? Shag? Score? Get a blow job? Give a girl an Ecksian kiss?..." To each of her questions Nick shook his head in confusion.

"He's a babe in the woods, dear."

"Gaspode!"

"That's ok sweetheart," said Octavia, "I love being your woman and I want to feel this way forever. We have time..." and with one more heart stopping kiss she got up. "I'm going to check on the children, you continue with your calligraphy." She rose reluctantly and stepped out into the main library where "their children," the underclassmen who have been cleaning up Poco Curante's mess, were trying to repair decades of neglect in a desperate attempt to locate Aleister Gardner and the Thaumaturgical Prestidigitation of Time and Space, a Primer.

Since being trained and taught by Mesquite almost constantly Nick was able to read but he had to learn to write. He knew how the letters and numbers are shaped, but he's never written anything in his life, he's got to train his hands to write because right now he's discovering what the term "Chicken Scratches" means. At first he had to use quill and ink because there were no pencils in the library; Poco Curante claimed that pencils and scratch paper encouraged students to write in the books. Happily, one of the students located a slate and some chalk and Nick now had the proper tools to practice his penmanship.

Octavia came back to the office and watched Nick through the office door as he slaved away at his calligraphy, "practicing penmanship" was a term she avoided, it made him uncomfortable and never having any formal education he felt diminished in this setting, but his skills at reading and comprehension were now far beyond those of the students of this and the other two universities they had visited. It was heart breaking watching him try to "catch up" with students he was so far ahead of. And he seems to be a bit shaken from what is now called The Night of the Dingaroo, he has said that he knows he has powers, he's just afraid to test them in such a ramshackle excuse for a college.

Brazeneck College was a collection of buildings that a syndicate of mobsters wrested control of and the first Dean of Wizardry was able to convince the mobsters to donate to the college fund. {the image of scorpions flooding the mobster's bedrooms disappeared shortly after the donation.} The buildings were rickety wood frame buildings that had a habit of swaying when the wind blew and that made Nick nervous about conjuring beasts.

However, when he saw the Dean grab Octavia, he heard Vanemate Rasside Jõud call to him in a whisper telling him to think of the scariest beast he could imagine and the dingaroo suddenly appeared in that very room. He wanted to try more, safer beasts. He heard that an olliphont was nice, he was thinking of that, or possibly a hipporanimus, or possibly a rok. Luckily Octavia was able to convince him to wait until they found a nice open field to train in, because Nick had no way of knowing that an olliphont was bigger than most homes in Pseudopolis. And a rok? It's a long legged long neck bird whose back is as high as a camel's hump. "Good thing they don't fly," chuckled Nick, sure that Octavia and Gaspode were teasing him.

"Uhmm..." said Gaspode.

"Actually..." started Octavia slowly, "it's their smaller cousin the emu that can't fly, the rok has been known to carry off cows."

"What time is it when a rok lands on your roof?" said Gaspode with a canine style grin.

Nick thought and shrugged, then Octavia, Gaspode, Mesquite, and Gula {in a fashion} said in unison, "Time to buy a new house!"

"I don't get it."

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Finally, after several weeks of camping out in the library and rejuvenating the entire stock of books, Aleister Gardner and the Thaumaturgical Prestidigitation of Time and Space, a Primer still wasn't located in the library, and it wasn't shown as being signed out. "Of course, it's the only remaining copy," sighed Octavia, depressed that the rite of Prose Mino may never happen and the calamity that will ensue.

As Nick practiced long division using the Dewey Decimal system on a slate and chalk she reviewed the last bookshelf before calling it a loss. Just as she finished the inspection and the students waited nervously for her assessment of their work, she heard a familiar voice. "G'day mate! How's my favorite Sheila?" Two men dressed like Ecksas Bush Wizards stepped out of the stacks, and the one that called out was librarian Bruce Dinkum.

"G'day Bruce!" cried Octavia as she hugged her friend. "Who's your mate?"