“So it’s the Solstice for you here as well?” Nora asked Phoebe as they walked. “The Winter Solstice.”
“Indeed. It’s our most sacred festival,” said Phoebe.
“But it’s not winter,” said Nora. Her feet were bare and the grass was luscious against her toes. “It’s warm.”
Phoebe laughed. “Well, it can be winter around here when we want it to be. We all like snow, of course. The council decides when it should snow, and then it does. But for festival nights like this, everyone usually agrees on warm weather.”
“You control the temperature?”
“Well, of course,” said Phoebe. “Helicon is a place where the muses must have the perfect conditions for creativity at all times. It’s important that we’re always inventing and designing. The mundane world depends on us.” She touched Nora’s shoulder and pointed. “It must all be so strange for you. But I think tonight is a night for laughter and joy, not long-winded explanations. There’s still quite a bit of food, if you’re hungry.”
Phoebe was pointing at a long wooden table which was groaning under the weight of overflowing platters of strangely shaped fruits, hunks of cheeses, and piles of roasted meat. Nora’s mouth watered. Before getting here, she’d drunk an entire bottle of wine. Food seemed like the best idea in the world suddenly.
Later, her stomach full, she sat cross-legged next to the fire, music swelling around her and Owen. There were so many instruments, and they all worked together to create melodies too sweet to imagine. The muses sang too, their voices in perfect ethereal harmony. Nora watched Phoebe Rain across the fire, her head thrown back, belting out words in a deep, velvety voice. Scattered in the field around the fire pit, she saw muses with round glowing circles, twining them around their necks and torsos. They were like hula hoops, she thought to herself, only they glowed with an otherworldly light, and they left rainbow-colored paths of light everywhere they were thrown. She watched the lights, mesmerized by the intricate and beautiful colors.
But at some point, it was too much to simply sit, and she found herself on her feet, whirling amongst other dancing muses, moving in ways she’d never been able to. Her own voice joined the singing, though she knew neither the words nor the tune. And, as if in a trance, she was buoyed up into all of it, her heart beating with the drums, every ecstatic movement pulling her deeper into a sense that Phoebe was right. This was where she belonged. She had finally come home.
Still later, Nora collapsed onto the ground, pleasantly exhausted. She thought she might just sleep right here on the grass as the music continued around her, even though she’d begun to notice that the circle around the fire was becoming smaller, and that less people were here than had been when she and Owen arrived.
Phoebe knelt next to her. “I have a hammock in my tent you can use if you’re tired,” she said.
Hammocks? Cool. Nora had never gotten to sleep in a hammock. She got up and followed Phoebe away from the fire to a tall tent made of thick burgundy fabric, swirling patterns woven into the cloth. Phoebe brushed aside tasseled edges to lead her into the tent. There were compartments inside, doorways leading to other rooms, but Phoebe led her into the first one where a hammock smothered in blankets and pillows waited.
Gratefully, Nora climbed into it.
“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” said Phoebe, “but given your shyness with Owen earlier, I can assume the two of you are not expecting to share sleeping arrangements?”
Nora blushed, pulling covers up to her chin. “No. We don’t—We haven’t—”
Phoebe held up a hand. “Well, that’s good, I think. At your age, I think it’s usually a bit too soon. Most people tend to regret it when they’re too young. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with regrets. The best lessons are usually learned that way. And I’m not so foolish as to think that young people take older people’s word for anything. They’ve always got to try things for themselves.” She strode across the small room to the doorway of the tent. Then she turned. “About Owen.”
Nora looked at her expectantly.
“He’s never...hurt you, has he?”
“No, definitely not,” said Nora. But that made the second time that night someone had asked her a similar sort of question about Owen. And this woman apparently knew Owen, or at least had known him when he was younger. “Why would you ask something like that?”
Phoebe sighed. “He was an odd child.” And then she slipped out of the room, leaving Nora alone.
Nora tried to puzzle over what she’d just said, or even to take stock in everything that had happened to her, but she was too tired, and sleep claimed her almost immediately.
Sometime later, the cold light of dawn seeping under the cracks in the tent, voices woke her. It was Phoebe Rain and a man. They spoke quietly.
“This is the only home he ever knew. Of course he’d come back here,” Phoebe said.
“I’m not sure he’s trustworthy,” said the man’s voice. “His mother—”
“Is not him,” Phoebe interrupted. “And besides, Owen claims he left her anyway, years ago.”
“And you believe him?”
“I don’t believe any child would want her for a mother,” said Phoebe. “She’s not exactly a nurturing type. And I don’t believe she’s the one who’s been creating these holes in Helicon. I don’t think she’s trying to let in the Influence. At any rate, I think we need to give Owen the benefit of the doubt.”
“And the girl?”
“Nora? She’s a complete innocent. There’s not a malicious bone in her body.”
The voices drifted away, and Nora found herself sleeping again. When she woke later, she wondered if hearing them had only been a dream.
CHAPTER THREE
It was late morning when Nora emerged from Phoebe Rain’s tent. She thought about wandering through it to see if Owen was sleeping in the tent somewhere as well, but thought she might encounter Phoebe asleep somewhere, and that seemed a little impolite.
The sun was high in the sky outside. In the daylight, Nora could see her surroundings better. The fire pit was nothing more than smoking embers now, but around it, she could see tents, clustered together in small groups, stretching as far as she could see. They weren’t the kind of tents you bought at a camping supply store, made of synthetic grays and blues, but instead were like Indian teepees, except crafted from the every color of the rainbow. Some had flags extending from their main poles, making them look like medieval pavilions or something.
The tents appeared to be grouped around smaller fire pits. Between them, Nora could see fields of lush, green grass. Far to her left, a sparkling stream wound through Helicon, complete with a bridge to get back and forth. On the other side of the stream, she could see greenhouses glinting in the sunlight. But everything seemed quiet and still, as opposed to the frenzied crowd of revelers the night before. The world was pristine and bright. She drew fresh air deep into her lungs, savoring the scents of summer.
She wondered where Owen was. If he was inside Phoebe’s tent, then she supposed he’d wake up eventually. Despite her euphoria the night before, dancing and feeling at home, in the morning light, she felt like a stranger in a foreign land. No one seemed to be awake yet. At least, she couldn’t see anyone. Maybe everyone slept late here in Helicon.
Truthfully, she could hardly believe she was here. It was one thing for Owen to tell her stories about this place, it was another thing to actually be there. As a little girl, she’d believed Owen when he said that coming here would solve all their problems, that it was a magical land of constant happiness and perfection. She wanted to believe that now. But she had no idea where Owen was. She didn’t see any other people—not that she was sure she wanted to talk to anyone she didn’t know right now anyway. And she was hungry.
Her stomach rumbled at her as if to punctuate her thought.
The table of food from the night before was still sitting next to the fire pit, and though it had been picked over, there was still food sitting o
n it. Nora thought that some of the prepared dishes might not be good after sitting out all night, but there was fruit left, and certainly that would be okay to eat. She made her way over and selected a few round, greenish fruits. They were fuzzy on the outside like peaches, and sweet and juicy inside. She also put some apples in one of the pockets in the skirt she was wearing. She sat down on one of the benches around the fire pit and ate, wiping away fruit juice as best she could. Her fingers were going to get sticky. Was there any way to wash her hands besides going to the baths she’d been in last night? And how clean could those things really be if all of the muses used them? There were hundreds of people here. The water hadn’t been stagnant, and it came from natural hot springs, so she supposed it was less likely to be growing the sorts of disgusting funguses you might find in a pond, but it certainly wasn’t treated, was it? Was there bacteria in Helicon? Parasites?
There was a clunking sound, and Nora looked up to see a pudgy man making his way down to the food table. The clunking was coming from four wooden buckets that he was carrying, which were knocking against each other as he walked.
She stood up. “Hello.”
The man gave her a confused look.
Oh. Right. Muse language. She had to remember to speak that. “Hello,” she said again, this time in the language of Helicon.
The man smiled. He was wearing a loose white tunic, and his hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. “You’re one of the ones they pulled out of the fire last night, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Nora Sparrow.”
“Mack River,” he said. “Sorry to say I don’t remember all the hullaboo about why you left us in the first place. I tend to skip council meetings or sleep through them when I actually do show up.”
“Well, I was just a kid. I don’t remember it,” Nora said. She felt awkward. She’d been excited to see someone else, but she had no idea how to conduct a conversation in this place. Was it customary to remark on the weather? She remembered that Owen had explained to her, long ago, that the muses organized themselves in various enclaves devoted to different creative enterprises. Owen said there were enclaves for story and dance and even math. There were too many to keep straight. Owen said some of the muses spend all their time in one enclave, while others flitted about from one to the other. “Um, do you belong to a certain enclave here?”
The man chuckled. “Sort of, I guess. I’m the only member, though. I breed chimeras. I was actually up here to gather up the leftover feast food to take back to feed the animals.”
“Chimeras?” Nora had heard the word before, but she wasn’t sure what it meant.
The man nodded. “Oh yeah. You take different animals and sort of squish them together. Some come out better than others, of course. The winged horses are always popular. You see those everywhere. But right now I’m working on duck-cats.”
Nora furrowed her brow, trying to picture it. “A mixture of a duck and cat?”
“Yeah. They’re very cute. Eat just about anything too. These feast leftovers will be a real treat for them.”
Nora still couldn’t picture it. “Do you need any help taking the food back to them?”
The man handed her a bucket. “Sure thing, if you don’t might. Just scoop whatever you can into here.”
A few minutes later, Nora set out after Mack carrying two buckets full of feast leftovers. They wound through the colored tents, over a footbridge that spanned a wide stream, and into a wooded area. If Nora turned, she couldn’t see the fire pit anymore, but she thought she’d be able to make her way back.
Mack’s tent was squat and brown. It had seven or eight poles holding it up, so that it spanned the area of a small cottage. All around it, within the tree trunks, were strange and wonderful animals. There were two white horses with silvery wings, grazing beyond the tent. A dog with the hind legs of a kangaroo hopped forward to greet them, its long tongue hanging out of its mouth as it panted and grinned. Three or four rooster-headed snakes slithered near the entrance of Mack’s tent. One made a sort of hissing crowing noise.
“This isn’t all of them,” said Mack. “Sometimes, if they’re useful, they get sent off to other enclaves to help out. Some of them are just shy.”
Nora wasn’t sure what she thought about the mixed-up animals. “Where are the duck cats?”
“Oh, they’re still kitten-ducklings,” said Mack. “They’re inside. Come on.” He led her into his tent. Inside it was dimly lit. The floor was covered with swaths of soft fabric. There were a few overstuffed easy chairs sitting against the tent walls. Immediately, six kitten-ducklings came bobbing out. They had cat heads, but long duck necks, bodies, and feet. They were completely covered in fur, however, not feathers, except for their webbed feet. They were all different colors. One was the yellow of a baby duck, another pure white, two striped orange and white, and the final one was black with a white spot over one eye. They began rubbing against Mack’s feet, making sounds that were half quacks and half meows.
Nora was charmed. She set down her bucket and sat down on the ground, reaching out to pet them. The kitten-ducklings purred as she scratched them under their chins. The little black one hopped into her lap and curled up on her thigh. “They’re so tiny!”
“Yeah,” said Mack. “I can’t decide whether to let them mature into grown-ups or keep them like this.”
“You can stop them from growing?”
“Sure thing. Every muse can do that, even to ourselves. Most muses stop aging at some point or another. I was twenty-five for nearly fifty years. I aged normally for another fifteen, but I’ve been forty for quite some time now. It’s a good age.”
“So I could do that too?”
“Absolutely.”
How strange. But how would she decide what age to stop at? Should she stop now? But maybe her boobs would get bigger if she waited. Of course, maybe she’d get fat. Nora chewed on her lip, absently stroking the little black kitten-duckling in her lap.
Mack spooned some of the feast leftovers into little dishes for the kitten-ducklings, who rushed over to begin eating. “So, you were born a muse, but you got stuck in the mundane world for over ten years, huh?”
Nora nodded.
“Must be strange coming here now,” said Mack. “You must feel like you don’t know where you belong.”
Nora had been contemplating how different Helicon was, how she didn’t feel comfortable.
“Thing is,” said Mack, “Helicon’s a good place for most anyone, no matter what your fancy is. When I started wanting to breed these chimeras, most people thought I was crazy. They said there was no call for inspiration threads about mismatched animals. But they let me do it anyway, and some of them even like the chimeras. We’re all freaks at heart, you know? Everyone’s different.”
Nora smiled. What he’d said had been comforting, she had to admit. “I like your chimeras.”
She helped Mack feed his animals, but afterwards, she started to feel uncomfortable again, like she didn’t really belong up here with him. She also wanted to find Owen. He had to be around here somewhere, didn’t he? She’d go back to the fire pit. Owen would probably look for her there. Besides, Phoebe Rain’s tent was right next to it, and Phoebe was the only other person she knew in Helicon. So, she said goodbye to Mack and made her way out of his tent. He followed her, waving from the opening. But as she began to walk away, she noticed that the little black kitten-duckling was coming after her. She stopped and picked it up. She was going to take it back to Mack.
Mack shook his head. “I think she likes you. Why don’t you keep her? They’re easy to take care of. Got a very independent cat temperament. And they eat most anything.”
A pet? She’d never had one, not of her own. There had been one foster family that had owned a bunch of hunting dogs, but they’d been penned up in the back yard and had always barked and growled at her. Nora stroked the head of the kitten-duckling, who purred in contentment. “Thanks,” she said to Mack. She went back to
the fire pit with it curled up in one arm.
As she walked, she noticed that there was more activity in Helicon than there had been before she went to Mack’s tent. Muses were standing outside their tents stretching. Some were milling about. In the distance, she could hear faint strains of music carrying on the wind. Owen had always said that the muses created all day long. Their purpose was to create things that sent inspiration for creativity to the mundane world. She guessed that meant that musically inclined muses made music pretty much as soon as they woke up.
She hoped it was okay to have this kitten-duckling as a pet. She realized maybe she should have left it with Mack. After all, she didn’t really have anywhere to keep it now. Was she going to be sleeping in Phoebe’s tent for a long time? Would Phoebe object to the cat-duck being around? If so, Nora would simply have to take it back to Mack. For now, she stroked its head as she walked.
When she arrived at the fire pit, no one was there. There were other muses standing around their tents nearby, but they paid no attention to Nora. She sat down on one of the benches around the fire pit as she’d done earlier. The kitten-duckling hopped out of her arms and began furiously rubbing against her, purring like a fire engine. She giggled at it, scratching behind its ears. She should have asked Mack whether it was a boy or a girl. She couldn’t really check, as its nether regions were duck, not cat, and it didn’t seem to be displaying its gender between its legs. Then she remembered that Mack had called the little animal a “she” as Nora had been leaving. So, it was a girl. And perhaps it needed a name. “What would you like to be called?” she crooned. It was half-cat, half-duckling... “How about Catling?”
Catling emitted a squawking meow. Nora took it as acceptance of the name. She absently pet Catling and looked around for signs of Owen. He had to be somewhere, didn’t he?
The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4 Page 4