Enchantress 8 - It's About Time

"IVO IS A DISTRACTION, DO NOT LET HIM WORRY YOU."

"I have children!" Octavia cried cuddling Gwendolyn closer. "If he comes in contact with Catrin again he will..."

"YOUR HUSBAND WILL NOT ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN," said Death.

"What he's trying to say is that Pommeraie and Ivo must work it out between themselves," said Space.

"You have too many people around you to allow anything to happen to the children, or anyone else under your protection like Catrin Stein, or Princess Esmirelda of Lancre," said Time. "But come, that is not why you're here."

They led Octavia through a huge room that was filled with shelves reaching twenty feet high, the shelves contained hour glasses and each ornate base had a name in different languages. All of these life timers sat in silence, their last grain of sand had run out. The only sound in this room was the occasional muffled sound of a life timer being placed in the room as the last grain of sand ran out, and the almost happy ding of a life timer disappearing to reappear elsewhere with a new name and a full load of sand. Octavia never believed in reincarnation before, but here she could see it happen.

"THESE ARE THE LIFE TIMERS OF THOSE THAT HAVE GONE BEFORE, WHAT WE WANT YOU TO SEE IS HERE..." and Death led them into the warehouse full of life timers for the living.

So many timers! So many names! Occasionally there would be a pop and the timers shift to the side to make room for a new birth, a timer with a full load of sand. "So why am I here?" Octavia was suddenly terrified that they were going to show her that King Verence had no time left, or worse, Nick or one of her children were unknowingly near death.

"For this," said Time as she indicated a shelf with three life timers that were fused together to make one. The upper bulb was three quarters filled with sand, it fed three lower bulbs and each bulb had a small pile of sand. On the wooden frame under a lower bulb was a golden plaque with the name CORINA ALDANA. Underneath her name was the inscription The Enchantress. The plaque under the next lower bulb said CHUNG HAU NING underneath her name was the inscription, Ambassador to the Court of Lancre. The other said POMMERAIE DE LA MONTESQUIEU STEIN, in small letters underneath it read King Verence III.

"THE SAND IN THIS TIMER DOES NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND GRAVITY."

The sand in the upper bulb fed all three lower bulbs and they looked exactly alike, the rate of the sand falling was exactly the same in each lower bulb, one grain of sand dropping so slowly every few seconds creating a slow-moving stream made of individual grains of sand. The realization of what this represented washed over Octavia like an emotional tsunami. Her free hand covered her mouth, and she began to weep with relief... she's going to be ok! Seven times she watched Nick and Ning grow old and die in pain leaving her behind, still madly in love with them while she still remained twenty-five years old.

But it's over! She no longer has to watch her loved ones leave her behind, she's not going to be abandoned by the death of her lovers, they're going to stay with her! And when it's done, they'll all go at the same time... It's over! the constant replay of her life, over and over hoping the heartbreak at the end never happens but every time it gets worse... no matter how much she loved every moment of replaying her life, it was over. "Thank you!" she wailed as she clutched at Time. "You have no idea..." Her tears of relief set Gwendolyn crying too.

"You can thank your children, they sacrificed so much," said Time.

"My children?" Octavia gasped, trying to stop the tears.

"After the passing of your husband they applied the magic of the ancient elves and all eight of them gave their lives to fuse your lives and save you."

"Eight? I thought Gwendolyn was last."

Time smiled, "She is the last one you will carry. Cholly and Finella are... different."

"Who?"

"You will meet them, they're orphans like you and Nick, so, you will know how much love they will need the moment you meet them."

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Nick and Octavia were there to help train Emperor Jia and the young emperor realized that Nick and Octavia were more than friends and when Nick became King Verence III, Emperor Jia assigned Ning to be the Agatean Ambassador to the Throne of Lancre. Ning eventually joined their enchantment, and they became the "Royal Thruple" as the newspaper called them, and Marlon, Hollie, Lou, Loo-Loo, Exie and Gwen saw her as a close aunty, and eventually as a stepmom, and then mom. Jutta and Catrin never really approved, but they understood the love that bound them. Nick and Octavia's hearts soared when Ning demanded a wedding and became their wife.

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In the sixth year of the reign of King Pommeraie I {Marlon Worblehat Stein} and Queen Annette of Lancre, the retired King Verence III and his second wife Ning Hau Chung, Ambassador of the Agatean Empire to the throne of Lancre took sick. His first wife, the retired Queen Octavia nursed them as best as she could, but she soon took ill and collapsed and was placed in bed with them. Their children and grandchildren gathered to say 'I love you' one last time.

Soon Death appeared in the room and the grandchildren and spouses magical enough to see him cried out in terror and they were escorted out as one by one Nick, Ning and Octavia let out one last breath. Soon it was just Marlon, Hollie, Lou, Loo-Loo, Exie, Finella, Gwendolyn, and Cholly, and Death, who sipped at a tumbler of gin.

"AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?" Death asked.

"You did fine," said Octavia as she sat up and stretched. "It's what we needed."

"I COULD RECITE SOME POETRY," Death offered.

"No, please, but thank you for the offer," said Nick as he sat up and nudged Ning who had started to softly snore and almost ruined the whole subterfuge.

"Wha?" asked Ning who suddenly was roused. "You kept me up all night."

"It was the two of you who kept ME up all night," said Nick which caused Ning to blush and put a grin on Octavia's face.

"IF THAT IS ALL YOU NEED ME FOR," said Death and he handed the empty tumbler to Ning and he faded away.

"I don't understand any of this," said Marlon.

"Here's the problem," said Nick as he worked his way out of bed. "I'm not going to die anytime soon, none of us are, and you are a wonderful ruler, your people need you. I need to step out of the way so you can step forward and be the king we know you can be."

"Don't go!" cried Hollie. And she hugged her mother tight.

"We're not going far," said Octavia as they all clustered around her. "We'll be at Lake A'Tuin for a while, then we'll be spending time with Axemir and Eryri exploring their keep, we have already rented a townhouse for Hogswatch."

"We want to see the discworld, and now we have the time," said Nick.

"I wanted to write your book," sniffed Cholly.

Nick could never bring himself to disappoint the guy, he still remembers Cholly, trembling, tiny, near death from starvation. "I'm sorry, I..."

"You already wrote it Cholly," said Octavia and she retrieved a stack of parchment from her desk. "You did this in the previous iteration and stored it in our secure vault." She handed it to Cholly who struggled with his tears. Then she whispered to Virga, "Meet us at the castle on bear mountain," and her walking stick walked over to the King's Library were it could take L-Space to Bear Mountain.

"Thank you," Cholly whispered, leafing through the pages. They were all his neat, precise handwriting, but he doesn't remember writing a single word on these.

"Previous iteration?" asked Exie, but Marlon had figured it out and he gestured to Exie to drop it for now.

Cholly looked up from the pages and he noticed that Nick, Octavia and Ning looked so much younger than him. Nick lost his beard and with a pass of Octavia's hand the scar on his face was gone. He took off the crockelgator eyepatch and she placed her hand over his golden eye, and when she removed her hand it looked real, well, like a real glass eye, not a magical gold eye. Ning looked like a happy teenage girl and Octavia looked like a sexy girl in her twenties.

"What about the grandchildren? Loo-Loo demanded. "What about them? Don't they deserve grandparents?"

"They've had grandparents," said Nick, trying not to be stern. "You know as well as all of your brothers and sisters the pain of losing your grandparents, and you had the very best grandparents for a long time. Let us step out on a high note, we'll be available if Lancre needs us and we'll take a peek from time to time to see how you are doing, but we need to step aside so you can become your own people."

With that he silently led Octavia and Ning out onto the patio. The eight "children" who now look twice as old as Nick, Ning, and Octavia appear followed in silence.

"It was so dark and stormy every time you died," said Octavia as she looked up at the blue, cloudless sky.

"It's so creepy when you say that" said Nick, but Octavia explained it over and over and Nick was heartbroken for Octavia's sorrow and loneliness. Then with one last round of kisses and hugs, Nick, Octavia, and Ning became eagles.

"Wait! Please! DADDY!" shrieked Cholly. "Take me with you!"

Nick remembered begging his mother as she crawled off into the night to die as they all thought. He turned around and landed and hugged Cholly. "You've never called me daddy before."

"You've never left me before."

"Cholly, I love you, but you have work to do." He gestured to the thick wad of paper in Cholly's hand. "You need to edit that. By the time you have it ready for the publisher we will be back with stories for volume two."

Cholly couldn't hold back the tears and he tried desperately to do that, but it was nearly impossible. Finally, he said, "Yes dad."

"Marlon will give you advance pay and an office in the castle on Bear Mountain to work in," said Nick as Octavia and Ning each gave him one last goodbye kiss. "Do your best and that's going to be a great book," said Nick and then the three of them were flying off into the distance.

Cholly watched them for a long time, the three eagles circled Lancre Town twice then headed off hubward to Bear Mountain and he watched until they faded from sight and he sighed sadly. His brothers and sisters went back inside but Cholly looked off toward Bear Mountain until the light started to fade from the sky and he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked, expecting to see his wife Melissa, but it wasn't, it was Nick and Octavia's other 'foundling,' Finella.

Together they wordlessly watched the stars come out and they stayed on the patio until it got chilly as they wished and prayed that the first people to ever love them would come back.

The discworld will never see their likes again.