by S. K Munt
The hand was warm, but heavier than lead, and it did not squeeze back. Hunter did not check for a pulse. He already knew, as grief chugged through his veins like concrete and pooled in his stomach cold, consuming- that he’d never been so alone in the world as he was right then, and that was how he would always be. In the eerily silent night, on the cold locker room floor, clutching Callie’s faded red hat, the fragments of Hunter’s broken heart shattered to dust.
*
Calliope couldn’t tolerate the fear threading through her heart so she tried to burn it away with passion. She crushed Ryan’s face to hers, twining her fingers through his choppy black hair and prayed with everything she had, that she was able to stay like that forever. But his lips grew saltier with their tears and his clutch on her became desperate rather than passionate. After a moment, or forever, he wrenched his face away only to scoop it under her neck and sob brokenly.
‘Oh Callie…’ his breaths were fast and shallow against her neck. ‘My Goddess, my light… never, ever forget that I existed for this moment okay? That a hundred human lives or a million eternal ones without your kiss wouldn’t have been a better trade.’
Callie tried not to notice how he was beginning to tremble. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation but then her body seized up and the world spun. She rolled off Ryan, catching herself on the ground and gasping, seeing light shoot from her fingertips and streak the fog, feeling stars explode inside her and her blood cool and ripple like the freshest mountain water. Ecstasy swept through her very soul, like she was listening to a million instruments play a million tunes and interlacing in the most breathtaking complex harmonies. ‘What’s happening?’ she cried once the crescendo of perfection within her began to ebb away, leaving room to breathe around it.
‘You’re back.’ Ryan’s voice was tight, but when she rolled back to face him, to reach for him, the adoration on his face was brilliant. ‘He’s reached his potential, Callie. Hunter is exactly where he needs to be…’ he smiled slowly, sorrowfully. ‘But no heart has ever broken quite like his just did, I fear.’ His face contorted. ‘God… I hate myself so much for not being there to see him through this...’
Callie wriggled into Ryan’s arms, touched his cheeks, trying to ignore the exquisite pleasure streaming through her warring with her grief for domination. ‘How can you know that? What’s going on?’ She pressed her palms to her ears as Melody, in Hunter’s voice began to resonate through her being like a physical memory. The silence was breaking and so was she. ‘I can hear him!’
‘You can?’ Ryan’s face was pale, his smile rueful. ‘I’d give anything to hear that again. He sounded wonderful, didn’t he?’
Callie began to cry. ‘I don’t want to hear if you can’t! I’m scared Ry! It feels so strange...’ She cringed, the beauty of Hunter’s voice in her memory burned.
‘Don’t be scared, my love.’ Ryan whispered. ‘Music is something you should always feel like you’re hearing for the first time, remember?’
Callie remembered Ryan saying that. She remembered it was after they played together, and she began to tremble. ‘I said that, didn’t I? You were quoting me?’
‘I was. I just didn’t know it.’ He smiled fondly. ‘I hung onto every word you said on Helicon. I was never far away from you, even if you couldn’t sense me.’ Ryan looked down at her collarbone, stroked the flesh with the back of his knuckle reverently. ‘I hope that is how it will be forever. But hopefully… hopefully you’ll feel me near this time.’ Callie began to shake with silent tears, kissing his knuckles, pleading with her eyes for Ryan to answer the question she couldn’t ask. Ryan sighed in resignation. ‘Hunter just found my body, Cal. Enough time has passed for it to be…’ he swallowed hard. ‘Fading. Discovered.’
‘Your body?’ Callie whispered, instantly reaching out to cup his face. ‘Your body is here, against mine.’
‘No Cal,’ Ryan’s lips quirked jerkily. ‘My human body is still backstage, and I’m slowly being poisoned,’ he grunted and rose, bringing her with him. ‘It’s my spiritual body that is here with you. And soon enough, it will fade into Oblivion, and you will return to Helicon without me.’
Callie felt her insides turn to ash. ‘Why?’
‘I had to keep my end of the deal.’ Ryan caught her hands in both of his, bowed to them, kissed her icy skin with icier lips. ‘Returning to the world as a half-human, half-immortal is a big ask Callie. The Harmony had to be kept in balance. When your sisters left and your mother asked me what I was willing to exchange for your heart, I pledged my life. And nothing less would have sufficed.’ He sighed, his eyes scanning her face with a dreamy smile. ‘There was a chance that if I stayed, you’d give your heart to Hunter and be cast into Oblivion. Or if you failed to find yourself or fulfill your obligations, that I would have to endure you existing on another plane without me, as a human, never glimpsing you, never hearing you sing…’ He swallowed. ‘Year after year, without you. I couldn’t take it anymore.’
Calliope’s eyes widened in shock. ‘But a year only takes a day to pass here!’
‘For you.’ Ryan said softly. ‘For me, it’s an expanse of nothingness between sunset and sunrise. Which was wonderful, that one night you slept in my arms.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘But torture for the first half-day without you. And it would have been eternal torture, to never have known your touch. Your kiss…’ His voice broke and he yanked her against him, panting with the effort and rasped his next words into her hair. ‘I couldn’t live without you. I’ve loved you since the first day I laid eyes on you in that meadow, and heard you sing. But you were never going to let me get close enough- I was a soul missing its other half, with no purpose to serve but love you. So I pledged to Memoria, and to The Harmony, that if your heart stopped for love of me, if I got to bask in that glory for just one moment- I’d take your Oblivion, so you could live on, doing what you truly love, and keeping the music alive.’
Callie collapsed onto his chest. ‘Oh my God no!’ She was soaking his shirt, tearing in half. ‘Tell me how to bring you back! Or fix it!’ She raised her gaze to his but his beautiful face was blurred by her burning tears. ‘I can’t live a day without you now!’
‘That’s music to my ears.’ Ryan buried his face into her hair. ‘But you can. I can’t come back from Oblivion Calliope. I was never meant to get one shot at this existence, let alone another chance at a human life. The Harmony couldn’t balance out without me making an ultimate sacrifice in return for theirs. And Callie…darling…’ He wrapped himself around her. ‘I got more than a moment. I got to be with you for seventeen years and dream of eternity. And then I got these last few weeks…’ He touched her lips, like she was made of brittle china. ‘I have experienced more ecstasy than any man who has ever lived. And tonight, what you did for me… no man has ever been more fulfilled.’ He pulled her face to his and grinned. ‘Not even Hunter. How wrong is it that I wanted to flip that cocky son of a bitch off when you told me you loved me?’
Callie spluttered a laugh despite her anguish. ‘I dare say you earned one moment of glory,’ she joked, and then began to cry when she saw how blue his eyes had become, in contrast to his paling skin.
‘I did.’ He nuzzled her nose again. ‘Though I don’t envy him now.’ He winced. ‘I knew what was going to happen when you said those words. Maybe even when you first looked into my eyes and I saw…’ he pressed his heart against her chest. ‘What I felt, reflected there at last.’ He smiled. ‘It took me by surprise though- the human version of myself was too overcome to process things fast enough to ask you to wait. In fact, it felt too perfect, too wonderful to be possible at all. I’d thought you were on the cusp of leaving us to avoid your feelings for him, for good.’
‘What would have happened to you if I had?’ She whispered.
He shrugged. ‘I would have lived out my human life. And when I died, I’d be gone.’
‘Then why are you…?’ Callie was so lost. ‘What did you do?’
‘A lot of pills. The lead singer of TFITR gave me a baggie of these little tablets so I acted all cool, like I knew what they were.’ He shrugged. ‘And when I knew you were gone, I walked backstage, locked the door, took them all and wrote a note to Hunter.’
Callie felt like a rope was being tightened around her neck. ‘If you were going to die anyway, why speed it up?’
‘To keep you from suffering in Oblivion.’ He shuddered. ‘For me it would have been like falling asleep, right here, and letting the fog swirl around me. But for you, it would have been like being lost in the fog without anyone left to pull you out.’ He touched her face. ‘But there are other reasons… pushing Hunter over the edge, guaranteeing that his heart will open in a way that will never close now. And it’s all very rock star isn’t it?’ He smiled weakly.
‘You better be kidding…’ Calliope growled.
‘I am. I died because I had somewhere else to be.’ He smiled timidly. ‘Overdosing is taking longer to kill my body than any other means, and as soon as I began to fade, I came here. And as long as my body holds out, we’re in limbo- together. Don’t you see? This was my way of steal just a few more moments with you from under The Harmony’s nose. When my human body dies, the exchange will be made, and you’ll end up in your sisters arms instead- and you’ll be magnificent. Calliope’s glory- with Callie Clay’s heart.’
His explanation didn’t take a cell of her pain away. ‘But it’s your arms I want, Ryan! I died because I couldn’t face life without you!’
‘You did.’ He pulled her face closer. ‘And I’m so grateful for that, that I can’t even-’ he smiled tearfully at her, looking like the darkest of angels, his thick black lashes fluttering against the choppy lengths of his black hair. ‘But the world needs you more than you need me. I didn’t have many alternatives, baby, so I chose the only one that had a chance of connecting us.’
Callie’s face contorted in pain. She kissed him, messily, passionately, mournfully, soaking up the last of the heat draining from his body. He moaned, she sobbed and Callie didn’t know what she was going to do when his lips faded away and so she kissed him harder, wanting to make love, wanting to fly, wanting to die and guilt-stricken to know that if she had made better choices, looked at him more clearly eons ago, that they might have had forever together! Or even if she’d only given him one more day back when she’d first returned to Helicon- maybe she would have chosen him, and let music take the fall for once.
‘Don’t torture yourself about the what ifs,’ Ryan rasped against her lips, reading her mind. ‘You don’t know what our child’s potential for music might have been Callie. There could have been a world without The Temptations, and National Anthems, a world without The Beatles, or Neil Diamond, or John Farnham, ACDC…’ his kisses were losing their fire, his body growing colder. ‘Without Christmas Carols…’ he whispered… and Calliope began to sob when his hands began to slide from her face. She eased him down into the fog, her lips following his, her tears falling onto his cheeks. ‘Without rowing boats, without …’ his eyes fluttered shut. ‘Without Melody…’
‘I love you Ryan.’ Calliope wept through the words, kissing the last of his tears from his lips as gently as fluttering butterfly wings. ‘Ardos… my angel…’ Her heart constricted in her chest as she bawled onto his ivory cheeks. Her throat was so tight that each word felt and sounded strangled. ‘My soul mate.’
‘Can you sing to me?’ His voice was paper. ‘Just for a little while?’
Callie began to laugh through her tears, hysterical with love for this man. ‘You and me... used to be-’ she croaked, her lyrical tears choking her, preventing Don’t Speak from being spoken. Imogen had been right- human’s didn’t know what it was to love if they could survive after it. Maybe she was being broken, but no one had ever been so complete before breaking before as she was then. ‘Always…’
Ryan’s head rolled to the side and when the final tear slid off his cheekbone and touched the fog, it vanished and suddenly, Calliope was kneeling on the summery-sweet grasses of Helicon surrounded by her sisters, and sobbing like she’d never stop. She felt Imogen kneel before her, enfold Callie into a suffocating and mournful embrace.
‘I’m sorry Calliope!’ Her sister brayed, coming apart as easily as everything else in Calliope’s life. ‘If I could take it back-’
‘I couldn’t,’ Callie kissed her sister’s wet cheek, allowed her own face to contort and then fell into Imogen’s lap and croaked: ‘That would take back everything wonderful in my life.’
*
Dear Hunter
I am so sorry for doing this to you. For any ounce of pain I’ve ever caused you. But I am not a rock star. I learned to play the guitar to impress a girl and for all the times she’s run from us, this is probably my one chance to follow her, to catch her somewhere between life and death and then take her memory with me into oblivion where I can stay with her forever.
Callie Clay wasn’t the only love of my life. You are the best friend a guy could ever have. Your smile made my life bright when it should have been dark. I didn’t need a mother and father to be my family- because I had a brother like you.
Please Hunter, I know this is selfish and making your life that much harder, but I also know that it’s your job to survive us and make that music- to write those songs, to give everyone else a reason to get up in the morning. Always let the music in to fill the darkest voids and feel us with you when you do, front and centre, screaming your name. She’ll be wearing your hat in her dreams. You will be dominating the world in mine.
And Hunter, keep your eye out for your Melody. She’ll need a soul mate in time, she’s just got a bit of work to do first. That might sound weird but trust me one day, you’ll be standing by a waterfall in a meadow with a goddess in your arms, and you’ll understand exactly what I mean. And when you know what I do, you’ll know you’ll have my complete blessing in giving your heart away to someone other than me.
Love always,
Your biggest fan,
Ry.
February, 2008.
34.
When the bell over the diner door rang at precisely four p. m. Calliope almost spilled the latte she was taking to table three in her rush to greet the newest customers.
‘Here you go sir,’ she said, hastily putting the cup down on his table with an unceremonious splash, hoping he wouldn’t complain. This was the third waitressing job she’d had in two years, and she was sick of having to re-learn the ropes somewhere else every time she was fired for, well, sucking. She darted a glance over to the table in the corner, reminding herself that she needed to hold this job, to stick close to her protégé. But still she hurried over to the large table on the opposite side of the room where a bevy of beautiful creatures were sliding into chairs and muttering about the tacky, cotton-candy pink walls. Though every pair of eyes in the room had already swerved over to check out the ten women, they were careful to keep their own gazes rooted to the décor, or one another.
Calliope’s heart fluttered when she spotted the two faces she was the most anxious to see, the eldest and the youngest members of the party.
‘Hello!’ She chirped, removing her pencil from behind her ear and holding it poised above the pad in her hand. ‘Welcome to The Saloon. I’ll be your waitress for the day. Our specials are-’
‘Oh shut the fuck up.’ Imogen drawled, resting her arm behind Renee’s headrest and smiling at Calliope with merry blue. ‘I got your specials right here.’
Calliope laughed and bent to kiss Memoria’s crown of black hair, and then Rya’s. ‘Hello darling,’ she knelt before her daughter, swiping at a streak of ketchup staining Rya’s perfect little cheek. ‘Did you have fun with Nanny and your aunties at Disneyland?’
Rya nodded eagerly, her midnight ringlets bobbing. ‘But mommy- Aunt Renee almost threw up in the spinning cups!’ She giggled musically and her striking blue eyes, Ryan’s eyes, were gleeful. ‘It was so funny! Grandma and I didn’t even get sick!’
>
‘Hey those things were fast,’ Renee muttered, sticking her tongue out at her niece. ‘Just wait until you feel three thousand years old.’
‘Or four,’ Calliope’s gaze shifted to her mother, concerned that she had attempted one of the rides at the amusement park. Memoria was still so weak given that only three years had lapsed since she’d returned from Oblivion. But her mother smiled at her, a rare flush staining her cheeks. Her skin was almost vibrant compared to the last time Calliope had seen her, and her dark hair was regaining some of its former lustre, though it would take decades yet to get her close to where she had once been. Unless of course, Jesus fell out of fashion and Mythology became the new cool religion to follow. Which wasn’t likely, though Clio and Imogen were working on it. ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
Memoria smiled. ‘It was lovely… and crowded.’ She inclined her head towards Hendra. ‘And there were a few scuffles...’
‘It wasn’t quite the happiest place in the world...’ Raina drawled from across the table and everyone laughed as Hendra flushed.
‘If you don’t want to stimulate a war Muse… then don’t tease the war Muse.’ Hendra winked at Calliope. ‘How are you hon? I’m not allowed to do anything exciting so I’m living vicariously through the sisterhood.’
Calliope smiled, inclining her head towards the furthest corner of the room, where her current protégé was sitting in front of her MacBook and typing furiously. Blythe was a wisp of a thing with a velveteen voice, a shock of hot-pink hair and to Calliope’s delight, ever-present Doc Martens. ‘It’s not that exciting. She’s living off the fumes of my sparkle, mixing away on that... that thing.’
‘D. J?’
Calliope rolled her eyes. ‘They prefer to be called Mix-Masters now.’
Renee giggled. ‘Music is so vain! You don’t see sculptors trying to call themselves flesh-rockers or something.’