Enchantress 2 - Warrior Duchess

That must have did it because the baby tensed up and began to howl that high squeaky cry of a newborn baby. Death straightened up and said, "THAT'S ONE TO YOU. CONGRATULATIONS," he patted the young man on the shoulder and faded from Nanny's sight.

Nanny and the young man worked quickly to tie and cut the umbilical then he called out, "What's her name Uther? She wants her name!"

The stunned father grinned and cried out "Guendolen!" Nick handed Guendolen to the exhausted young mother who laughed and cried as she counted all of Guendolen's fingers and toes.

"Nanny, can you take care of momma? I need to give Guendolen a warm bath, she's freezing."

"Aye! I can do that youngster, what's your name?"

"Everyone calls me Nick," said Nick as he and Uther headed down to the kitchen with the twin girls, both showing that they had their mother's bright red hair. They rushed the twins to a pan of warm water and two pairs of grandparents that awaited them in the kitchen.

Nanny cleaned up the shocked young mother and bubbled merrily about the babies. "Oi've delivered more babies than you can shake a weasel at," cried Nanny, "and Oi've never seen such a thing, 'e snatched that little girl right back out o' Death's own grasp 'e did. T'was a good thing 'e was 'ere. Wos name of your witch again?" Nanny was of a mind to have a talk with the local witch and find out why a man had to fill in for her.

"Nick," smiled the exhausted Desdemona, the young mother.

"Yes dearie, 'e was wonderful, but I was meanin' to ask you the name of the local witch here in Creel Springs wot took over for Nana Partridge."

"Nick is 'is name, 'e an' 'is wife just moved into Nana Partridge's cottage just weeks ago."

"A witch 'as a wife?" asked Nanny Ogg, shocked that someone would imply such a thing.

"Yes," said Nick coming into the room behind Nanny Ogg, "her name is Octavia. And just so you hear it from me, she's a wizard."

"Oh! Heh, pahdon, oi didn't mean to disparage on ya, it's just..."

"We wouldn't give our Nick up for any witch, 'e saved our Guendolen," said Desdemona as she finally got to cuddle her two daughters at the same time.

"We had our doubts," said Uther, "but he's our witch and we're not going to lose him."

Nick smiled and examined Mother and daughters. "Look here," he said pointing at the squirming baby's neck, "Guendolen has a strawberry shaped birthmark here on her neck, her sister doesn't. That's how to tell them apart." He finished examining mom then said, "Ok, it's going to be uncomfortable but you need to get on your feet as soon as possible, because you're going to spend the rest of your life chasing these two," smiled Nick. "They have fire in their eyes!"

"What do we owe you?" asked a nervous Uther.

"Owe me? You owe me two beautiful daughters, so keep them fit and happy, because when I have two sons, they're going to come calling for them."

Uther suddenly panicked but Desdemona calmed him, "'e's kidding, relax. Octavia warned me about 'im. Said 'e's a bit of a jester wannabe." She turned to Nick and said, "how about two lambs, one for each of our lambs wot you gave us."

"Done and done," grinned Nick. "And bring these two redhead lambs to me in one month so I can check them out, and I'm going to leave this candle here until then." He blew out the dark purple candle that was burning on the dresser. "Just light it if you need me and I'll be here for you." And with that he turned and left.

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Octavia looked up and saw the dark purple on the end table in the living room go out. Nick always blows out the messenger candle when he's done, which causes the candle in their house to go out. "Oh, my goodness!" gasped Octavia, "he's on his way home."

"Just in time," said Sorcha Brighid. She and her husband Tiernan have been working with Octavia teaching her the ways of country living. "You said you didn't ever want to feed your husband scraps, so if you follow the few simple steps we showed you, you never will. Let's start something new, we're going to make gravy..."

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"Coo-ee!" called Nanny Ogg, "would you like a ride with us Nick?"

"Oh, I'm usually so stressed after a delivery I like to walk with my dog afterward to burn off the energy."

Nanny shouted something to her daughter-in-law and the wagon she was sitting on the tailgate of slowed to match Nick's pace. Gaspode hopped up and curled up next to Nanny and she began scratching and petting him. "Is this your dog, the one wot likes to walk with you or is 'e some other dog who happened to be going in the same direction?"

"That's my boy, as faithful as the day is long."

"That was quite amazing wot you did with that little girl, wot made you think of that?"

Nick looked like he didn't want to answer that question at all but he need to answer it truthfully. The true answer is that for some reason a medical dictionary will appear in his mind and open to the page he needs, it's a gift from working with so many powerful books. He finally said, "I read a lot and after I became a witch I read an article from... some foreign place that said if a baby's heart isn't beating to do that. I figure there's a lot of foreigners, it must work, and I gave it a try."

Nanny was merciless, when she wants information she will get it, ask any one of her 15 children. "If you don't moind moy askin'... 'oo said that you were a witch?"

"Death. He was pretty adamant about it."

Granny took that in stride as if he had said, "I graduated from witching school." She pressed on like nothing he said phased her and said "Oy suppose if Death says you're a witch, you're a witch. And you told Death "not two in a week," did you lose another baby? oy didn't 'ear of one."

Now Nick looked like he wanted to run away. His eyes filled with tears and finally with a sigh he said, "Octavia and I lost our first two days ago. She... we were a month along, but..."

"Oh my! You shouldn't have been out there today! Not after losing your baby! Somebody else should have taken this delivery for you!"

"Who?" demanded Nick angrily. "Are you going to ride out to Creel Springs to help with a farm girl in her in-law's house? Is that nosey Mrs. Weatherwax going to come all the way from BadAss? Would either of you have been able to save that baby? Could you have made it in time?"

"You need to calm down luv, we just discovered you were here!"

"Well, ya could have come over and said hi instead of sitting in a tree and spying on me."

"Wot? oy never!"

"Not you, I'm talking about Mrs. Weatherwax, I'm surprised she didn't tell you about Gaspode and me running in the neighbor's meadow the other day. We just lost the baby and I had to burn off the anger before I told Octavia, and there's a witch sitting in a tree spying on me without so much as a how do you do."

Nanny was confused, "MISS Weatherwax didn't mention you, she said she saw a hart with a golden eye..." That's when Nick flipped up his eyepatch and Nanny could see his left eye of solid gold. "Oh moi," whispered Nanny. "Where did you get that?"

"The Agatean empire gave me that to keep me from eating their emperor."

"It's very pretty, it's a shame to hide it under that scary patch."

"It scares people but it works fine under the patch and the kids think the patch makes me look like a pirate... yarrrr."

"You can see through that shiny metal eyecover?"

"It's not an eyecover, it's a replacement."

"He got his eyeball stepped on by a sheep," said Gaspode as he rolled onto his back so Granny would scratch his tummy.

"Wot did you say?" a shocked witch asked Gaspode.

"I didn't say anything, everyone knows that dogs can't talk," Gaspode replied.

"Turn here, this is our driveway," said Nick then he ducked into the trees.

"Where did 'e go little doggy?"

Gaspode flipped over onto his feet and sniffed. "I think he turned into his father-in-law," and leapt off the wagon. Soon Gaspode was dashing through the trees, yelling "Bark, bark, bark!" at a simian wearing a backpack as it swung through the trees.

"Catch that monkey!" shouted Nanny Ogg as her daughter-in-law tried to get their old plow mule to pull the cart faster.

Nick howled like a prime male orangutan defending his harem as he swung through the trees, he could see why his father-in-law resisted all efforts to return him to a sub-orangutan human. This was just too much fun! His father-in-law The Librarian needs to come over and swing through these trees, they can swing together. He covered the distance between Main Street and the cottage in a half of the time it normally took him to walk and he was wondering if anyone noticed him beside Gaspode when Gula bellowed "IIIIIIK!" then he heard from inside the cottage "Thank you Gula, darn it! I still have a half hour before dinner is ready."

Nick tried to avoid bellowing a war cry because he saw Tiernan Brighid's wagon still outside of the cottage, so he popped out of the forest, climbed the outside of the cottage and rolled into the bedroom window and reluctantly changed back to human. "Oh, it's you," said Octavia as she stepped into the bedroom as a naked Nick stood up.

"Oh, it's you?" asked Nick, a little confused and probably more than a little upset.

"I thought it was daddy, but this is much better," said Octavia with a saucy grin as she reached for Nick's...

"Coo-ee!" called Nanny from below.

"We have more guests," sighed Nick, "it's Nanny Ogg." He slipped on a kilt and shirt and followed Octavia down the steep staircase {the only thing keeping it from being called a ladder is tradition} "she's probably the most powerful witch in Lancre."

"Aww no sweetie, that would be you!" gushed Nanny as she hugged Nick with a loud, "Darling!"

"Nanny, this is Sorcha and Tiernan Brighid my first grandparents, and this is the love of my life, Octavia Worblehat-Stein."

"Oi used to know a wizard named 'orace Worblehat," gushed Nanny as she hugged Octavia. "Quite the wild one 'e was! 'e taught me the song "A Hedgehog Will Never Get Buggered."

"I'll have to bring it up to him when I see him next," said Octavia with a look of sheer delight. Her dad is in for a tough time ahead.

"Oh, you shoulda seen your man!" gasped Nanny. "'e stared Death right in the oie and said, "You're not taking this child!" And when that baby began to squall, Death said, "You win Nick!"

Octavia looked at Nick and he just nodded agreeing with Nanny, it was close enough to the truth. Octavia was shocked, she's only seen Death once, and that was when he was standing over Nick in the Ecksian bush and Gula just "fell" on the dingaroo that was preparing to attack and eat Nick as he lay horribly injured in the dirt. Octavia has been a trained wizard from the age of 17 and she earned her doctorate in the mystic arts at 22 and in all of the other sections of the multiverse there is an anthropomorphic representation of death, but she's never seen that specter until he tried to collect the man she fell in love with.

"How many times have you seen Death in the past six months?" Octavia asked Nick.

He counted on his fingers and finally said, "Five." He was not happy talking about Death and he vowed to steal as many people from the grim reaper as he could. Death's loss today was his own fault, he was the one who called Nick a witch and Nick found that he liked the idea.

"It's been a long time since we last saw you Nanny, you delivered our Davey," said Sorcha.

"That oi did! Oi ne'er seen such a happy lad, most don't like birthin' but your Davey couldn't wait to see his momma," said Nanny as she dug her flask out of her expansive cleavage and took a nip.

"Nick just delivered Davey's daughter last week," said Tiernan. "Things have sure changed since our day," he continued as he squeezed his wife Sorcha's shoulder. "Back then you'd never hear of the father helping with the delivery."

"Th' father 'elpin'?" asked Nanny, her eyes huge in surprise. She thought that Uther being in the room with Desdemona was to hold one baby while Nick took care of the other. That was the case but not the whole reason.

"Helping as he should be!" insisted Sorcha. "He was there to place the order; he should be there to take delivery!" After the laughter died down, she continued, "I remember the whole time our Davey was being born, all of our sons in fact, that I wanted my Tiernan there with me but we didn't do it that way back then."

"Oh, Granny will never take kindly to this!" and Nanny took another swig from her flask.

"Then if she ever has a child, she can have someone else help her," said Nick. "I let all my girls and their men know that I expect the father to help."

Just then a magical chime that Nick hadn't heard since he was living in the gutter in Ankh-Morpork filled the air and Octavia's magical hourglass appeared in front of her. "Fifteen minutes!" she announced, then headed over to the stove that was filling the air with some alien (to Nick) fragrances.

Sorcha looked in the oven with Octavia and smiled, "You did it! Now remember the little lost boy, and good luck. We'll see you tomorrow."

As Sorcha hustled Tiernan and Nanny out of the house Nick explored the mysteries of the kitchen.

"Sorcha helped me decipher Nana Partridges recipes," said Octavia as she eased the roasted, golden brown chicken out of the oven. "I wanted to make you a real home cooked dinner but I've never cooked anything. I didn't know how this stove works and I did not want to make bread and cheese sandwiches again." The bread and cheese sandwiches were made from welcoming gifts, slices of stale bread and dry, possibly moldy cheese. Nick ate them like they were mana from heaven because compared to his previous diet, they were mana from heaven, but more important, the woman he loves made them for him. With every bite Octavia felt guilty that she couldn't make better.

Their little table was soon covered with the most incredible smelling food Nick had ever been near. Even the fancy restaurants he and Gaspode used to dine at {meaning they ate the scraps that they picked out of the rubbish bin} smelled nothing like this. Gaspode was underfoot as much as Nick was while Octavia finished dinner preparations. "Boys! Relax!" said Octavia as she chuckled at their antics.

"It smells incredible," said Nick as he came up behind Octavia and hugged her, his hands roaming over her lush, curvaceous body.

"Stop!" she warned. "I'm almost done here," she said as she stirred a marvelous smelling concoction on the stove.

"I can't believe that you made all this."

"And I can't believe you saved that baby," said Octavia. "When a senior witch like Nanny Ogg says that you're the most powerful witch in the kingdom, you're the most powerful witch in the kingdom."

"I got lucky," said Nick as his hands got near her breasts only to be swatted down. "What is that you're making?"

"It's a special treat for the other man of the house," she said as she poured some gravy over a mixture of items that didn't make it to Nick's feast and set the dish on the floor for Gaspode.

"Finally! Some food around this joint!" and Gaspode was muzzle deep in doggy nirvana.

"What was the lost boy Sorcha told you about?" asked Nick as Octavia placed dish after dish of delicious smelling concoctions on the table.

"A little lost boy in the woods was eating dead animals and roots to stay alive for a long time," said Octavia as she sat next to Nick and made up his plate for him. "When he finally got home his mother made him a wonderful meal that tasted so good he ate it all as fast as he could and he ate it so fast that he ended up throwing up, but that left him hungry again but now the food was all gone."

"Poor kid, who was he?" asked Nick.

"It's a parable that will hopefully help." She loaded up a fork with some chicken and gravy and fed him a bite. Nicks eyes lit up in surprise, he tried to grab the fork out of her hand, but she said, "No... chew every bit... now swallow... now kiss the cook." After a very passionate kiss she moved around the plate feeding him bits of potato, yam, and brussels sprout, each requiring the kiss for the cook after each bite.

So delicious! So exquisite! Every bite was a culinary symphony compared to anything he's ever eaten before. He saw why Octavia enforced the chew each bite rule, because if she wasn't monitoring his intake, he would have eaten himself sick. "Sorcha says I'll probably end up being the baker and you will be the better cook."

"What's the difference?" asked Nick around a mouthful of a flavor explosion that Octavia called a 'brownie.' {These were not made out of real brownies which are closely related to pixies, that would be murder}

"According to Sorcha, cooking involves meats and veggies and stuff like that, mostly on top of the stove. Baking is the cakes, cookies, pies, and brownies."

"Why?"

"Because baking is based on science, which is my specialty, cooking is an art which is yours."

"How can I pay you back for such a feast?" he was finally able to say as he swallowed the most delicious thing he's ever eaten in his life.

"This is for you, what you did today was incredible," she didn't want him to know that the hardest part of the meal was killing, plucking, and gutting the chicken. When she figured out what the units of measure were in the cookbook, it was easy, but there's feathers everywhere out behind the coops. "That baby you saved... her folks must be so amazed."

"Babies are born every day..." he said softly as he gave his wizard a kiss.

"Chickens are roasted every day..." as she kissed her witch.

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The next morning it looked like the entire village of Creel Springs turned up, in fact they began showing up before Nick and Octavia woke up. "COME OUT WITCH! WE NEED TO TALK!" boomed a voice as big as the nearby mountains.

"Oh damn!" groaned Nick. He and Octavia had planned to wake up with a naked dip in the pond then some morning love making on the shore before heading down to the bookstore.

"What's the matter dear?" asked Octavia.

"Sounds like the torch and pitchfork crowd wants a word with the witch," groaned Nick and he pulled on a robe and his sandals then rifled down the stairs and strode up to his front door. As he unlatched the door Nick reached for Mesquite who was still in the olliphant foot umbrella holder by the door and said, "Come on stick, I need you." Suddenly Mesquite became immobile and Nick couldn't lift it out of the umbrella stand.

"You promised a new name!" demanded the sapient pearwood walking stick. "And give me back to Octavia. She's a wizard, she needs a staff."

"She got plenty of staff last night."

"NAME," demanded Mesquite.

Nick sighed. Of all the times... "I hereby name thee Virga! Staff of Destiny!"

"Virga, I like it," said the smug stick. "What about Octavia?"

"We're married, you are community property. Let's go." He stepped out on the porch and saw the small multitude filling his lawn while Gaspode sat on the porch watching with an amused expression on his face. "I thought you were a watch dog."

"I'm watching."

"There is an element of calling out a warning involved with the job."

"You said you wanted to sleep in."

Here we go, thought Nick and he stood as tall as he could and said in a loud, masculine voice, "I AM POMMERAIE DE LA MONTESQUIEU STEIN, WITCH. AND THIS IS MY FAMILIAR GASPODE."

"I'm more of a conscience than a familiar."

"Shush, he's on a roll," said Octavia to Gaspode as she stepped out on to the porch with a hot mug of tea in her hands.