Unchained Melody

by S. K Munt

  Callie was touched. ‘What else do you have?’ She asked, trying not to reach out and snatch the hat back.

  ‘Um… Ryan’s first sheet music… it was a song about his old dog Berkley.’

  ‘Right.’ Callie laughed, moving down the hall. She saw a guitar pick and went to touch it, but Hunter caught her hand.

  ‘That one we keep safe- it was Trent Reznor’s.’

  ‘Sweet!’ Callie glanced at him. ‘Concert souvenir?’

  He smiled winningly. ‘Yep- Big Day Out Two Thousand. That was technically my ‘schoolies’ because Ryan had been working in real time so he shouted me tickets to celebrate the fact that at least one of us graduate. Trent tossed that during the Nails set. It was awesome.’

  Callie smiled wishing she had been there. But she’d been on a mountain then, with Ardos, passing years like days then. Her eyes continued to travel over the items that were significant to her best friends; a framed picture of the three of them at the gorge when they had been about eleven; Callie in the hat, Ryan with his guitar… Hunter turning to moon the camera but not getting his pants down fast enough. There was a stuffed rabbit she did not recognize, another framed photo of Ryan with Jimmy Barnes, another framed photo of Ryan and Hunter, looking only a year or so old surrounded by a bunch of girls in sexy nurse uniforms. And at the very end, much to her surprise- a Lyre.

  ‘Oh my gosh.’ Callie hurried to the final shelf and touched the ancient-looking instrument with her fingertips. ‘How do you have one of these?’

  ‘That’s a souvenir of Ryan and mine’s first criminal activity.’ Hunter joked. ‘He only meant to borrow it, to show it to you. And then you had one of your freak-outs and we walked you down to your parents car out the front of the school and he handed it to me and I sort of… took it home. Totally by accident.’ Hunter looked equal measures ashamed and embarrassed. ‘It belonged to that bird Patrick Banks was seeing remember?’

  Callie shook her head. Not because she didn’t remember her sister ‘the bird’ but because she didn’t remember her having a Lyre that day in the classroom when Callie had blacked out, checked onto Helicon for a fraction of a second and then had checked out again. The last day of her ‘normal’ life. ‘No.’

  ‘Well she had heaps of things. They were antiques and Ryan was hoping that that odd-looking thing would snap you out of your panic attack. When I found it in my car, I was going to return it. But I forgot with all that happened and it’s just moved around with me since.’

  ‘Is it an actual antique?’ Callie’s fingers were itching to hold it. In fact she wanted to snatch it, and get it to a museum where it could be cared for properly.

  ‘Yeah but it can’t be too valuable right? Or she wouldn’t have just moseyed off without it.’

  Callie had no idea, but it looked like it pre-dated being merely an ‘antique.’ She turned to Hunter. ‘And we’re calling our teachers by their first names now? How adult of us.’

  But Hunter cocked his head. ‘He’s not a chum, Callie. I call him Patrick Banks, because when I tell people that Patrick Banks was a teacher at my high school, the panties come flying off.’

  Callie blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ Hunter pointed across the room to a movie poster. ‘He’s like, renowned now Callie. He published that book in two thousand and one and they made it a movie last year. Now he’s filthy rich and living in L. A. How could you not know that? Given that your mother is a writer as well?’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Callie exclaimed, star-struck even though the notion of such a state should technically have been lost to her five platinum-label singers ago. She’d seen the movie Hunter was talking about, and it was an incredible one about an Australian soldier who had been in the thick of the Darwin bombings. ‘How cool!’

  ‘He’s not the only one either.’ Hunter pointed over to a bookshelf in the living room. ‘I’ve got all of his and your mum’s books over there. But Marnie Winters is a published writer as well now you know. She writes that young adult series about the Olympian girl. I’ve only read one, ‘cos they’re kind of childish. But there are about forty now. She’s doing awesome and is about to start something new.’

  ‘Marnie really became a writer?’ Callie blinked, wondering how she had not been told all of this. ‘But she was so athletic!’

  ‘Exactly. Athletic and smart- M. C Winters now writes about a smart athletic girl trying to find her place in the world. Three guesses what the heroine will end up doing in the end, right?’ He pulled her into his arms and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘I have all of the books. I’ve collected them to you know, show my support or whatever. Marnie still comes back from time to time for our bigger gigs. I don’t think she ever got over Ryan.’ He smiled at her. ‘Your mum helped her out I think with the publishing thing. You should ask her for the specifics.’

  ‘I will.’ Callie’s head was swimming for all the new information but the glimpses of the lives of the people she’d once known and their prospective successes were clearly orbiting around one person; Imogen. She’d been hanging off Mr Banks, after all, posing as an antiquities dealer. And Marnie had never mentioned writing until a few weeks after she’d encountered Imogen at the disco, then again in Mr Bank’s classroom. Callie did not know how much time her sister had spent with either of them, but it couldn’t have been much. So exactly how powerful was her spiteful sister? And if she’d been second to Callie and the elusive Raina, what on earth was Callie capable of when she was in her true form?

  ‘Anyway I was kind of hoping to impress you by smelling great and all of that today but I haven’t showered yet and I feel gross.’ Hunter looked so content to be holding her that Callie’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Want to join me?’

  Callie raised an eyebrow. ‘While Ryan’s still in the house?’ She shook her head. ‘No way. In fact, I have to unpack yet and look at my class schedule for next week and everything, so I might just go get dressed and head home for a few hours.’

  Hunter’s face fell. ‘Oh no way. I wanted to spend the whole day with you!’

  Callie shook a finger in his face. ‘My body cannot handle spending a whole day with you just yet, Hunter. I need a rest. And later tonight I have to go orient myself with the studio I have, maybe even try to put my joints back into place with a stretch session.’

  He pouted. ‘We don’t have to, you know...’ he slid his arms down and squeezed her gently on the backside. And then his eyes dilated and he shifted in closer. ‘Or maybe we absolutely must…’

  ‘No! No, no no!’ But Callie was laughing and blushing as she shoved him away. ‘Make it a cold shower fella. If I get my stuff done, maybe we could hang out tonight after I’m finished working out. In fact…’ she winked. ‘Finish that song and if you do, I’ll come over just to hear you play it.’

  He bit his lip and grinned devilishly. ‘Just to hear me play it? For no other reason?’

  Callie giggled, pushing him away by the backside and drooling slightly at the way the drawstring band of his slacks hung low enough to display the hard curves of the muscle on his upper buttocks. Her insides tightened appreciatively. ‘We’ll see how good the song is.’

  Hunter laughed, winked back at her as he ambled off. ‘It’s going to change the world.’

  ‘I know.’ She said, pulling her sheet around her and smiling as she whispered: ‘It has to.’

  23.

  When the door shut behind Hunter, Callie leaned against the wall and sighed, feeling weary. She was still tired from the night before, a little hungover and dehydrated, shocked over the revelations about her old friends and their career successes and worried about Ryan. And leading to worrying about Ryan led to worrying about Hunter. He was so… up. So affectionate and needy and excitable. It made her feel even more evil and sorry for herself because she hated the idea of spending a minute away from him too. She knew she wasn’t allowed to love a human man, but she needed Hunter to know that she felt as much for him as she was capable of without, well, d
ying for her love before she left him forever.

  Callie was wondering if maybe she’d be able to say: ‘I love you’ or if the words were as off-limits as the sentiment was, when the Lyre on the wall caught her attention again. She took it in her hands, feeling its weight and sighing happily. She could remember the first time she’d seen someone use one- in Central Park in New York City when she’d visited as a little girl. The woman had been a street performer, caked in white clay paint- hair and all, a living and breathing statue. Callie had been transfixed by the sight. Now, she supposed she knew why. Even at six, Callie had known the power of music- it had stopped the city that never stopped, for her.

  Callie sat down in the hallway, and gingerly plucked a string with one finger, feeling her heart soar at the delicate noise it created. She strummed again, her finger sliding along the strings, and then noticed the tiny wooden pick slotted into the ornately carved frame. She removed it and ran it across the strings, feeling happiness swell within her. This was an old Lyre all right; the one the girl had had in New York had had thirty-nine strings, but this one had only seven and was shaped like a horseshoe. She began to pluck out the tune Greensleeves which Callie the human could do on a harp, but she wondered if Calliope the Muse had ever been able to do it on a Lyre and if Callie Clay would remember. When the first few notes resonated the way she’d intended them to, she used her other hand to gently cup and silence the chords while her first continued on- and then suddenly, she was playing her song. Nothing had ever felt so right in her hands or to her ears and she swooned for the joy.

  ‘Callie?’ Ryan’s voice floated towards her. Floated. It sounded disembodied and when she looked up, the image of him in fresh jeans and a fresh Sabbath T-shirt blurred. ‘Since when do you know how to play a Lyre?’

  ‘I… I don’t know.’ Callie mumbled. She wanted to look down at the Lyre, to see if that was really her hands working across the alien instrument so expertly, an instrument she’d never held before, but it was like the Zither between her fingertips had a mind of its own. Greensleeves played on and her heart kept the time.

  And then there was someone else in the room. Someone kneeling across from her. A handsome middle-aged man she did not recognize but knew. She knew him like a drunken memory. He was bare-chested, breathing so heavily that the sound filled the room. He blurred too, but she could see the tear tracks on his face as he leaned across and grasped her wrist.

  ‘You can’t leave me Chora!’ The man was weeping the fattest, wettest tears Callie had ever seen. He pressed his wet face into her bare knee and shook with the sobs. ‘I can’t live without you! I can’t! We just found each other!’

  ‘I have to,’ she whispered, leaning over to cup his face, raising his green eyes to hers. Fond amusement drifted past her heart like a cloud shooting across the sun. ‘You’ll be okay. You have your path in life, and I have mine. Let’s just be happy that they intersected, and then leave it at that, okay?’ The man’s sobs grow louder, but it was Ryan’s voice that breached her focus.

  ‘Callie our paths haven’t just intercepted. They’ve been running parallel to one another since we were eight! And why won’t you look at me? Cal? Callie!’

  But though Callie could feel Ryan’s presence only feet away, and even caught the scent of beer and ash in the air again, she could not look at him. Because the man sobbing on his knees (Harley, was it? That was the name coming to her lips) had stumbled backwards, reached into his desk drawer and now had pulled out a pistol.

  ‘You. Can’t. Leave. Me.’ He lifted the gun to the underside of his jaw and she saw it press into the soft flesh there through widening eyes. ‘If you can’t love me, I have nothing.’

  ‘Harley! No!’ His name yelped from her throat but as she stepped back, fearful and uncertain, she felt the wall hit her back just as she saw his finger squeeze the trigger.

  The shot ringing in her ears was deafening but the blood, the blood was so much more visceral! It sprayed the wall behind him, shimmering as it crossed the firelight radiating from the hearth. The Lyre fell from Callie’s hands and she screamed, blocking her ears, shutting her eyes. She knew she shouldn’t react like this. It wasn’t right. She didn’t feel- not like this!

  But I do! Callie’s sub-conscious was screaming just as loudly. I do feel it! I’m human! We’re human! We can’t see this!

  ‘Callie?! Oh my God! Hunter! She’s having another-’ But every word coming out of Ryan’s mouth seemed further away than the last. She pulled the sheet around herself, turned and fled for the open door. The open door of the modern house, with the darkening sky outside indicating the storm brewing above the soccer fields in the distance.

  *

  Callie landed in the waterfall too close to the edge and inertia carried her over until she was falling towards the shallow stream below. She screeched, blocked her arms across her face and landed with a stinging slap- but there was no impact after that. She continued to sink, feeling like that little girl again, sinking into deep green and ice cold nothingness.

  The Gorge. I’m at the gorge! Callie curled into a ball and slowed her descent then flung out her limbs and stroked towards the light. When she broke through, she was in pain and freezing cold and the sky above her was thunderous as the one she had just run out to had been, and it would have been easy to surmise that she’d been so out of her mind that she’d gone past the city limits and up to Horizon.

  But she felt the weight of the white dress hanging from her, trying to sink her anew, and the sky above wasn’t quite grey; streaks of angry pink and peach clouds threaded through the darkest ones and she knew that those streaks represented the thoughts of everyone on Helicon as they struggled to keep them all within their imaginations. She spun about in a wild circle, picking up all sorts of details that didn’t belong- the cherry blossom tree near the stairs blinking in and out of the scenery, a garden of violets nestled between a clump of rocks and being carried down the rapids. Her sisters were trying to keep things how they were meant to be, but Callie’s need for her gorge was too strong to be overwhelmed, and so the rocks remained, and the sky surrendered blue to grey.

  And then she felt them, heard the whispers. She whirled again, back to the waterfall and looked up to the diving ledge, shuddering when she saw some of the Muses there, clumped together and looking slightly nervous to be standing so close to a precipice. Renee, her long red hair dry and gleaming, Hendra, a ghostly flash with dark eyes hovering beside her and Clio, already scuttling down the rock towards Callie, her wheat colored hair thick and full and bouncing with excitement as she hurried over to ransack Callie’s memories.

  Callie opened her mouth to ask how much of what she was seeing and feeling was real, but then she shut it because she knew the answer; The Lyre. The Lyre had been a trigger! Imogen must have suspected that it could have been and had planted it years ago. And it wasn’t just a Lyre. It was her Lyre- it had been hers since the fourteenth century B. C, when she’d first become a Muse, since her father had first pressed it into her hands and told her to create what she would. She could still see him but he was not the Zeus of her imagination, but of her memory; Striking eyes of no color, golden hair which he’d worn trimmed short then, a beard that had been just as manicured, and nothing like the Santa-ish representations of him that the modern artists had come up with.

  Father! Calliope’s chest tightened and she stroked to the edge of the water, pulling herself up onto a rock and weeping as she remembered how he’d faded. How surprised he’d been; the mightiest of all beings blinked from imaginations all over the world while one of his many, lesser known offspring looked on, growing stronger every minute.

  And that was how they’d been created; not by birth but imagination. Zeus first and then his many wives and then Mnemosyne who became Memoria. (Nirvana! That was me! Memoria! ) As the humans willed them into being, so had they become. Corporeal, present, mystical, powerful. And then they’d bred. (Gods, Demigods, everywhere! )

  Zeus had not intend
ed for them to be as they were but the girls (so many girls! ) had done as they’d pleased and what they’d done had pleased others. It had provoked Zeus’s vanity and so he had enchanted them, every one of them, to continue singing and writing and creating and building forevermore; hiding the ugliness of the world, granting the men reasons to go on working and fighting- just so they might enjoy the pleasure of a Muse’s inspiration at the end of the day.

  But Zeus was too gratified by his daughters. The world he had been credited with helping to create was a hard place, but his daughters made it tolerable, even beautiful; and he jealously guarded them for himself. They could dance as they wanted, make love, enchant… bring glory to his name. But if one dared love a human, when their hearts belonged to him, they would perish for their ingratitude and would not be reborn until the beauty they’d already created faded from the world and required rejuvenating.

  Calliope could remember being saddened at first- angry with him. But then time had passed, and she’d learned to throw all of that passion into her music, and after a while, she did not need the promise of a marriage or children, she needed only to sing and dance. But then… her heart had darkened, and so did her gift, and the gifts of her sisters. Zeus realized that without love, their souls were doomed to be incomplete and that their various gifts would suffer and become just as dark, and so, he’d selected a mate for each and gifted them like so many boring socks. A mortal man perfected by immortality but commanded to remain there on Helicon so his daughters would never stray far.

  But it was too late. The girls had no heart to love a mere mortal, or even to love their father as a daughter ought to. They had just enough affection to unite them, but not enough to turn away from their true passions. They returned to Helicon to brag to one another and celebrate one another’s triumphs- but not to love. Not to linger.

  And now Callie was amongst them again but it was not to brag. Images were beginning to bombard her, breaking off from the story within her head and flying off in different directions creating more images, more memories. And then she saw the pistol again, saw the blood splatter. And heard the scream. But it was not her scream, but her sister’s.