The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

  “Helicon is powered by human creativity,” said Maddie. “The muses send inspiration to the mundane world, and the mundane world creates. That sends energy back to Helicon. We can use that energy to make things that we need to be creative if we want. My mother used to do it sometimes. If we didn’t have any basil in the gardens or we hadn’t planted any eggplants or something, she’d use a little muse magic and make some. But every time we use the energy for ourselves, we can’t use it in the inspiration threads, so it’s less energy we can send back to the mundane world.”

  “So it’s like a cycle?” said Nora. “Like the water cycle or something? Energy flows back and forth between the humans and the muses?”

  “Yeah,” said Maddie. “And Phoebe says it’s important for the muses to give back more energy to the mundane world than we use.”

  “But could the muses really stop world hunger or something?” Nora asked.

  Maddie shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think that if the muses used the energy for something like that, instead of to inspire people, they’d get less energy back from the mundane world, because people would be less creative, you know? So, in the end, it would hurt everyone.”

  Nora supposed that made sense. But she could also see Alexander’s point. It didn’t seem right that the muses got to spend all their time having fun and being creative when people were in pain. On the other hand, Phoebe was right. People got themselves out of jams all the time with creative problem-solving. If the muses could help people help themselves, then the muses needed to create more, not less.

  Owen sauntered through the archway into the enclave. He sat down next to Nora. “I’m going to stay with the security enclave,” he said. “I think, after what people said about me at the meeting this evening, it would be best if I do whatever I can to show everyone I’m committed to helping Helicon.”

  Nora nodded. “I can see why you’d say that.”

  “You’re going to stay here, aren’t you?” said Owen.

  Nora scratched Catling on the head. “I want to.”

  “Okay,” said Owen. He didn’t sound particularly enthused about it.

  “I’m sorry, Owen, I just—”

  “It’s fine,” he said. He smiled at her. “As long as you’re happy. And you promise that we’ll still see each other.”

  “Of course we’ll see each other!” She couldn’t imagine life without Owen.

  “Good.” He got up and began to gather up the pieces of his tent, which hadn’t been put up yet.

  “Owen?” said Nora. “Why did they say stuff about you when you were a little kid? What did you do?”

  Owen looked at her, a blank expression on his face. “I really don’t know, Nora. It’s like Phoebe says, I don’t remember.” He hiked the tent pole over his shoulder. “I was probably a brat, though. My parents sort of tossed me around between them, and whenever one of them got bored with me, they’d dump me here in Helicon.” He turned back to Nora, and she didn’t think she’d ever seen him look quite so vulnerable. “You’re the only person who’s never abandoned me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Several weeks later, Nora awoke shivering in her blankets on her hammock. Catling was snuggled up in the crook of her arm, but the little cat-duck was hardly big enough to provide much in the way of body heat. Squinting in the morning light, she pulled them around her to go to the opening of her tent. Catling quacked at her from the hammock, annoyed at the loss of warmth. Nora pushed aside the flaps of the opening to see that the ground outside was covered in a blanket of snow and that more was falling from the sky. It was beautiful. Every surface of the tweens and rebels enclave was covered in glittering white. But it was cold. She wrinkled her nose and yanked her blankets tight around her. How were people supposed to camp out in the snow? It was ridiculous.

  “Nora!”

  She peaked around the edge of her tent to see Maddie coming through the archway. Maddie was dressed in a big coat with a furry hood tied tight around her face. Her arms were full of fabric and fur. She traipsed through the snow to Nora’s tent and began handing her things.

  “I just got back from the clothing and fabric enclave,” she said. “We should have gone to the council meeting last night. They announced it was going to snow.”

  Nora felt a little guilty. After Phoebe’s comments at the first council meeting, she’d fully intended to go from now on. But the assessment of the complaining muses had been pretty much correct. Council meetings rarely amounted to more than enclaves moaning about how no one helped them out with one thing or another, and all the enclaves seemed to be convinced that they were more important than everyone else. She took a pair of boots from Maddie’s outstretched hand. They were made of some kind of soft, thick fabric that resembled suede. However, the snow that had fallen on them, though melted, had beaded up and refused to penetrate the fabric. Interesting.

  “I think those will fit you,” said Maddie. “I was going to wake you up and ask your shoe size, but you looked all snuggly.”

  “I was cold,” said Nora.

  “Here’s a coat and some snow pants.” Maddie handed them over. They seemed to be made out of the same water resistance fabric that the boots were made from. “Oh, and I got these little heaters from the engineering enclave for our tents.” She fished several small black rectangles from her pocket and gave them to Nora as well. “They’re solar powered, so make sure to leave them outside for at least a few hours every day.”

  “Every day?” said Nora. “How long is this snow going to last?”

  “A week!” said Maddie, grinning widely. “Get dressed. We have tons of things to do. Snow is the best.”

  Nora ducked back in her tent. She fingered one of the little heaters. There was a notch on one end, so she slid it over. Immediately, the heater grew so hot she had to drop it. Warm air poured out of it, filling up her tent right away. Well. That was something anyway. Using the edge of a blanket, she took the heater and placed it close to Catling, so her pet wouldn’t get cold. It was too hot to touch with her bare hands. She pulled on the clothes Maddie had brought her, laced up the boots, and joined Maddie outside in the snow.

  The clothes and boots were warm and dry, and Nora began to feel better already. Her fingers were a little nippy though. “If only they gave us gloves too.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Maddie, pulling two pairs of gloves out of another pocket. She gave one pair to Nora, who pulled them on.

  Nora’s fingers began to warm up. She looked around at the shimmering white surfaces that surrounded her. The air was crisp and fresh in her lungs. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  “Let’s go to the food enclave for hot cocoa and French toast,” said Maddie. “I could smell it when I was walking up here.”

  Nora had to grin. Maddie’s enthusiasm was infectious. She followed Maddie out of the tweens and rebels enclave. The food enclave was right next to the tweens and rebels enclave. (Maddie said the original founders had put it there on purpose.) Just outside of the woods surrounding their enclave (oddly, Nora noticed, all the trees were leafless, when they’d been full of green leaves yesterday), the terrain changed to fields of growing crops. Now that the snow had come, though, all the fields had been covered with massive greenhouses. Nora cocked her head to the side. “When did they do that?”

  “Probably last night,” said Maddie.

  “They put up those huge greenhouses in one night?”

  “Yeah,” said Maddie, as if it were the most normal thing on earth.

  She’d been here almost a month, but Helicon never ceased to amaze Nora. “How often does it snow usually?”

  “Just once,” said Maddie. “One week of every year in January. Very possibly the most awesome week in Helicon.” She was giddy.

  Nora considered. One week of snow a year? And immediately afterward, back to summer? She could deal with that, she supposed.

  She and Maddie ate breakfast in the main kitchen at the food enclave, which had a big dining are
a. The only meal that all the muses usually ate together was the evening one before the drum circle, and not all the muses ate there either. Some muses cooked in their own campsites for all meals. Others came to the food enclave for most meals, where one could usually find some food muse working on his or her latest masterpiece and more than willing to share the outcome of the experimentation with others. If no one was around, there was a community pantry of food that anyone was allowed to use to make their own food. Thus far, however, Nora hadn’t had to cook for herself once. The hot cocoa was delicious and chocolate-y, and Nora drenched her French toast in maple syrup, which was dark and sugary and wonderful.

  With a full stomach, she let Maddie drag her off over the bridge (the stream was frozen now) and to a wide open area between the story and science enclaves, where a large number of muses had already gathered. They were huddled in groups of two or three, some packing snow into mounds, others rolling balls of snow along the ground.

  “Are they making snowmen?” asked Nora.

  “Snowmen, snowwomen, snowmermaids, snowhorses—anything you can think of,” said Maddie. “What do you want to make?”

  Nora balked at the possibilities. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, come on, Nora,” said Maddie. “You’re the visual art person.”

  Which wasn’t exactly true. At least, Nora wasn’t sure yet. She’d spent probably half of her time at Helicon so far in the visual art enclave, where there were paints and clay and charcoal and chalk and an unlimited amount of surfaces to work on. She liked to draw. She always had. But there were other places that were fun to hang out. Nora like the story enclave too, where you could spend time spinning yarns around their big fire pit or take your drawings and make them characters in epic stories. The dance enclave was fun as well. They had the shimmering hula hoop type things and also ribbons. Plus, one of the dance muses was teaching her ballet dancing, which was a little hard on her toes, but absolutely entrancing.

  “We’re making something awesome,” said Maddie. “They do this every year. There’s a big inspiration thread that all of the snow sculptures contribute to. And at the end of the week, they pick the best sculptures and move them over to the main fire pit for a dance and feast, and you get to spend the whole night dancing in and out of the snow sculptures. They’ve never picked one that I made, but they’ll pick yours, I just know it. So tell me what you want to do, and let’s get cracking.”

  Nora laughed. “Well, no pressure then.”

  “Oh, come on, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Nora chewed on her lip, gazing around at the other groups of muses. It was still too early to tell what each of them was making, although one of the sculptures was starting to look a lot like a unicorn.

  Right next to her and Maddie stood two of the guys from tweens and rebels enclave, including Alexander Night’s son, whose name was Dirk. Dirk shot Nora a dirty look.

  “Hey,” he said. “You’re not trying to steal our idea, are you?”

  “No,” said Nora.

  “You better not,” he said. “Because if we see that you’ve made the same thing as us, we’re going to know you copied.”

  “Maybe you should tell us what you’re making then,” said Maddie, “so we can be sure to make something else.”

  Dirk’s eyes narrowed. “We’re making a giant hand flipping the bird.”

  “You’re making a sculpture giving everyone the middle finger?” said Nora.

  “Yeah. Cool, huh?”

  Nora turned away to hide her snickering. It seemed that teenage boys in Helicon were just as immature as boys in the mundane world. She grabbed Maddie’s arm and led her away from Dirk and his friends, so that they wouldn’t see she was laughing at their idea. “That’s not going to end up being picked to be around the fire pit, is it?”

  Maddie shrugged. “You never know. Last year, some of the boys made a giant penis, and they picked that.”

  Nora giggled. “How giant?”

  “It was like eight feet tall.” Maddie laughed too.

  “Maybe we should make a giant vagina.”

  “Eew,” said Maddie.

  “Kidding,” said Nora. She kicked at the snow with her boot, trying to think. What could they make? She turned to Maddie. “I’ve got it.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll make Catling,” said Nora. “Don’t you think that would be adorable? And Mack would love it.”

  Maddie grinned. “I think it’s excellent.”

  “We’ll have to go get her so that she can be a model,” said Nora. It was going to be hilarious watching Catling in the snow.

  The two hurried back to their tents. Nora’s was very warm, since she’d left the heater on for Catling. Once inside, she and Maddie shed their coats so they wouldn’t start sweating. Nora expected to find Catling where she usually was, snuggled up in her little bed of blankets on the floor, but she wasn’t inside the blankets.

  That was odd. Nora checked in her hammock. Considering Catling didn’t have a cat body, she wasn’t really able to climb, so she hardly expected Catling to have climbed into the hammock herself, and indeed, there was no Catling in the hammock.

  Nora was getting worried now. She and Maddie turned over all the blankets in the tent, looking everywhere, crooning Catling’s name. She was nowhere to be found.

  They left Nora’s tent, putting their coats back on.

  “Do you think she walked out into the snow by herself?” Nora asked. “She’s just a kitten, Mack said so. I don’t think she’s ever seen snow. Wouldn’t it have scared her?”

  “Maybe not,” said Maddie. “But if she did, she would have left prints, wouldn’t she?”

  They both began searching the area around Nora’s tent for tiny webbed footprints in the snow. They couldn’t find anything. They began to call for Catling loudly and to make little kissing noises. It wasn’t like Catling ever really came when called or when they made those noises, but they had to try something.

  “Hey,” yelled a voice in a tent. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

  A blond head poked out from one of the tents on the other side of the fire pit. It was Sawyer Snow. Nora didn’t know him very well. He mostly kept to himself and hung out in the clothing and fabric enclave. He was easy to remember, however, because he was always wearing skirts—glittery, sequined skirts in bold, bright colors. Though Nora hadn’t really asked, she sort of assumed Sawyer was gay, given his choice of attire. Sawyer took in his surroundings and his eyes got really wide. “Holy shit. It snowed.”

  “You didn’t go to the council meeting either, did you?” said Maddie.

  “It’s freezing,” said Sawyer. “I’m going to have to go to the clothing and fabric enclave barefoot.” He cringed.

  Nora felt bad for him. After all, Maddie had brought her warm stuff this morning. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, walking through the snow without boots. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll go get you snow clothes if you help us look for my cat-duck.”

  “Your what?”

  “Catling,” said Nora. “She’s half kitten-half duckling. Mack made her. And she’s gone. We were going to make a snow sculpture of her, but now we don’t know where she is.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sawyer. “I hope she’s okay. Do you think she wandered off in the snow?”

  Maddie and Nora shrugged at each other helplessly.

  Sawyer nodded. “Your deal’s a good one. I’ll help you find your pet.”

  “Thanks,” said Nora. “I guess you should tell me what size boot you wear.”

  * * *

  When Nora returned from the enclave with a bundle of snow clothes for Sawyer, he was standing right in the opening to his tent, wrapped in a blanket. Maddie was at the edge of the circle of tents.

  “I found Catling prints,” said Maddie.

  “You did?” Nora handed all of the stuff over to Sawyer and hurried to where Maddie was standing. Sure enough, there were tiny webbed
footprints headed off into the snow. It was so deep now that Nora was nearly sure that Catling would be buried in it. Why would she wander off like this? And the prints were leading in the direction away from the main fire pit, further away from the enclaves of Helicon. Nora peered through the trees into the distance. “What’s out there?”

  “Nothing,” said Maddie. She pointed to her left. “Wine and spirits is that way, and the clothing enclave is that way.” She pointed to her right. “The tweens and rebels enclave is right on the edge.”

  “Nothing?” said Nora. She felt cold suddenly, even though the clothes that Maddie had given her this morning were keeping her quite warm.

  Sawyer appeared behind them, shrugging into his new coat. “Sometimes, people go out hunting there for feast days, I think. There’s probably animals and stuff. Maybe your pet wanted to return to the wild.”

  “She’s a chimera,” said Nora. “She’s not wild. Mack made her.”

  “Besides,” said Maddie. “It’s all cold and snowy. Why would she want to go out into it?”

  “Does Helicon go on forever?” Nora asked. Was it another planet, like earth?

  “No,” said Sawyer. “There’s an edge. I’ve never been there, but it doesn’t go on indefinitely.”

  Maddie shivered. “I used to think my mother only told me that as a little girl to scare me. She used to say, ‘Don’t go too far, or you might fall off the edge of Helicon.’ But then one day we wandered out far enough to find it. It’s real.”

  “Then Catling could...” Nora gulped.

  “I’m sure she can’t have gone that far,” said Sawyer. “These tracks aren’t covered over yet, and it’s still snowing. If we follow them, I bet we’ll catch up to her right away.”

  The three took off into the snow, flanking the tiny footprints. The dark shapes of the woods surrounded them, and they wound through the trunks, following the path that Catling had taken.

  “I didn’t even know you had one of the chimeras,” said Sawyer. “Which is weird, because usually everybody knows everything about people around here.”