The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

  She tore her gaze from him, turned, and walked back towards the main fire pit on shaky legs.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Nora, wait,” Owen was calling after her.

  Nora willed her legs to move faster. She had this funny idea that if she could get back to the fire and the dancing and the celebration that everything would be okay. She could only focus on her destination. She felt like something inside her head, something that had governed the way the world worked, had cracked open. She felt broken.

  “Nora!” Owen’s hands on her shoulders, turning her around.

  She gazed into his blue eyes. His dark hair was tousled. She thought of the times she’d touched his face, run her fingers through his hair, kissed his lips. He was supposed to belong to her. Owen didn’t have the right to go and share himself with someone else. She felt tears slipping out of her eyes, but she hadn’t meant to start crying. She didn’t even really feel sad. She was only shocked. Appalled. This couldn’t be true.

  “What were you doing out there?” said Owen. “I thought you were with your friends.”

  “They left,” said Nora. What did this matter, anyway? “I was looking for you. I thought maybe we could talk about earlier.” Did she need to explain herself?

  “Earlier.” Owen fidgeted. His jaw twitched. “You shouldn’t have been walking out in this field anyway. Didn’t you know what people were doing out here?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Nora.

  “Sure you did,” said Owen, and he was starting to sound angry. “You were probably meeting Agler out here.”

  “I wasn’t.” Nora wasn’t entirely sure how this conversation had suddenly shifted to her defending herself.

  “If you’d never been out here, you’d never have seen that,” said Owen.

  Nora’s head hurt. “But you still would have done it.”

  “You were probably doing the same thing.”

  Nora was shaking all over. “No. I was looking for you. I was going to apologize for earlier.” Which actually wasn’t strictly true, was it? She’d wanted him to apologize. Like that was going to happen.

  “Well, you did make it tough for me,” said Owen. “I was so angry and so freaked out, and you just ran off. You left me all by myself. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe if you hadn’t been such a bitch to me, none of this would have happened.”

  He was calling her names now? Nora took a step backward.

  “I mean, what am I supposed to do, anyway?” Owen said. “You keep holding out on me, and you act like you’re never going to want to have sex at all. I have needs.”

  Nora took another step backward.

  Owen grabbed her again, pulling her close. His voice was low and rumbling. “But it’s okay, Nora. We can make this better. Let me make love to you now, and I won’t hold any of this against you. And nothing like this will happen ever again.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Nora said. She felt cold all over. Her thoughts were catching up to her, breaking through whatever spell Owen usually cast over her. He was making this her fault. She’d caught him with another woman, and he was somehow twisting it so that it was her fault.

  This was what Owen always did. He was angry because she did something wrong. She pushed him, and he couldn’t help himself. But Nora didn’t think it was true. She hadn’t pushed Owen to do this. She wasn’t to blame. Owen had done it because he didn’t have any regard for Nora whatsoever.

  “It was only because I thought you hated me,” Owen was saying, his voice silky. “I’m better now. You make me better, Nora.”

  Nora put her hands against Owen’s shoulders and shoved him away from her.

  He wasn’t expecting it, so he stumbled backwards. His eyes lit up with rage as he got his footing. He came for her.

  Nora stepped to the side. “I don’t think I make you better. If I make you so angry all the time, maybe I make you worse.”

  “So stop making me angry,” said Owen, reaching for her.

  Nora evaded his grasp again. “I don’t think I can.” She started to walk again.

  Owen’s fingers dug into her arm, yanking her around to face him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She tried to pull away, but he was too strong. Fear trilled through Nora. This had been getting worse for a while, hadn’t it? She’d been blind. She’d believed everything that Owen said. But now she was frightened of him, frightened he might really hurt her.

  Owen looked anguished. “Why are you so different here in Helicon, Nora? Why don’t you want me anymore?”

  “I’m not the one who’s different,” she said. “Please let go of me, Owen.”

  “You’re always trying to get away from me.”

  Any other time, she might have felt sorry for him, but the fear inside her overrode any capacity she had for sympathy. She struggled. “Let me go.”

  “I love you,” said Owen.

  Nora cast a look over her shoulder at the nearby throng of muses dancing around the fire pit. “If you don’t let go, I’m going to scream.”

  Owen’s expression went blank and hard. He tugged her against him again. “No one’s going to hear you over the music. They won’t be able to tell what’s happening. I could do anything I wanted to you right now.”

  The fear blossomed, spreading and brightening. What did that mean? “You’re hurting me, Owen. You don’t want to hurt me.”

  “I want to do whatever I have to do to keep from letting you get away from me. Whatever it takes.”

  “Owen—”

  He cut her off by putting his mouth on hers and kissing her roughly. “Maybe if you felt me inside you, you’d see how much you needed me.”

  He didn’t mean— Nora did scream then.

  The music was loud, and the muses by the fire didn’t hear it. But the muses in the field, the couples, did. Nora saw shadowed heads lifting from the grass, heard mumbles. “Did you hear that?” “What was that?”

  Owen let go of her. “Fine. Be like that about it. Go.”

  Nora didn’t hesitate. She took off at a run.

  “You’ll be back, Nora!” Owen yelled after her. “You’ll be begging me to take you back.”

  Not likely. Nora ran as fast as she could back to the safety of the bonfire. She didn’t want to be alone, so she sat down on a bench near the fire and stared into its orange-red depths. She was safe here.

  What had just happened? She was trembling all over, and she tried to calm herself. She took deep breaths. None of this made any sense. Owen was the person who protected her. He was the person she trusted. He used to be the only person she trusted, when they’d been alone together in the mundane world. But now, she was frightened of him.

  How did he go from her everything to a man who hurt her? How had he become so irrational and angry? He hadn’t always been this way. Had he?

  No. Maybe the signs had always been there. Certainly, he’d never been jealous of the way Nora spent her time in the mundane world, but she’d always been solitary then. Owen had been her only friend. He’d had nothing to be jealous of. But he had always manipulated everything to his liking, hadn’t he? She’d always thought Owen could charm anyone into doing what he wanted. And if he couldn’t charm them, he’d use his eyes on them. One look deep into Owen’s eyes and people became very compliant.

  In fact, Nora remembered wondering if Owen ever used his eye trick on her back in the mundane world. Back then, she’d concluded it didn’t matter.

  A memory swam back to her. They’d just gotten to Helicon, and she’d set up her tent in the tweens and rebels enclave. Owen had tried to convince her to take it down and come with him to the security enclave. She remembered the way he’d forced her to look into his eyes. When she’d still disagreed with him, he’d seemed alarmed.

  Her breath caught in her throat. He had been using his eye trick on her. For some reason, it didn’t work on her in Helicon. And after that incident, Owen had started getting angry and controlling all the time. She was starting to feel sick. How many
of the decisions that she’d made in the mundane world had been her own? How much had Owen controlled her?

  Because it was becoming clear that the only thing that he wanted to do was control her. And she wasn’t going to let him. Not anymore.

  The May Day celebration didn’t wind down, so Nora stayed awake, sitting next to the fire until dawn splintered the sky. In the morning light, she felt safer, so she went back to her tent. She tied her tent closed behind her, worried that Owen would try to get in. Picking up Catling, she curled up in her hammock and slept.

  She slept a long time. When she woke up, it was early afternoon, but the tweens and rebels enclave was still and quiet. Everyone else must have stayed up late too. Nora went to the food enclave and had a breakfast of fruits and yogurt. Dionysus was there, eating grapes.

  “You,” he said. “You’re my son’s girl, aren’t you?”

  Nora wasn’t sure how to answer. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not anymore.”

  Dionysus raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Young love on the rocks.” He popped a grape in his mouth. “Well, that’s too bad, because I was hoping you could tell Noah goodbye for me. I’m leaving Helicon today, and I haven’t seen him.”

  “It’s Owen,” said Nora.

  “That’s what I said.” Dionysus stretched. “Why the falling out? Did he sleep with another woman?”

  Nora furrowed her brow. “How did you guess?”

  He shrugged. “That’s generally why women get angry with me. I can’t be tied down, though. Maybe Owen can’t either.”

  Nora didn’t want to continue this conversation. She hadn’t processed this. She didn’t know if she could. She wasn’t even sure if she had any idea who Owen was anymore. She couldn’t forget how flat and toneless his voice had gotten at the end, how inhuman he’d seemed.

  “Nice girl like you should probably date someone besides him anyway,” said Dionysus. He smiled and got up, heading out of the food enclave.

  “Why?” Nora found herself asking. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Dionysus paused in the doorway, looking serious for once. “I don’t know what his mother did to him when he was a baby, but he’s always been a little...off.”

  “Off?”

  “I’m not saying that anyone in Helicon is exactly normal, of course. And being the son of a god probably doesn’t do him any favors either. But there’s a vicious streak in him. Something underneath...” Dionysus turned away from Nora, thoughtfully gazing into the distance. Then he brightened. “If you do see him, tell him I meant to find him and say my goodbyes, won’t you?” Dionysus walked off, whistling.

  Nora took a bite of an apple and concentrated on chewing. She didn’t want to think about Owen. Thinking about him made her feel soiled somehow. He had manipulated her mind in the mundane world, made her his puppet. And in Helicon, he’d tried to do the exact same thing by constantly making her feel guilty. She’d done whatever she could to keep him from getting angry. She felt betrayed and destroyed. She didn’t want to feel it, so she’d distract herself. She’d think about something else. Anything else.

  The kitchen in the food enclave was empty, however. She went to the door and peered outside. There were some muses up and about, but not as many as usual. What was she going to do to distract herself?

  “Hey Nora,” said a male voice.

  She whirled, her heart thudding. Was it Owen?

  It was Agler. “How’d your night go?”

  She swallowed. “It went.” But she was trying to distract herself, wasn’t she? “You know, something’s been bothering me for a while. Where the heck do gods like Dionysus come from, anyway? I mean, aren’t the Greek gods supposed to live on Mount Olympus or something? Is that a real place? Could we go there?”

  Agler, who looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, rubbed a hand over his face. “Whoa, that’s a lot of questions.”

  “Do other gods show up in Helicon?”

  “Uh, I think Loki was here once when I was younger,” said Agler. “They chased him off pretty quick.”

  “Loki? From Norse mythology?” said Nora. “Well, that doesn’t even make any sense. I mean, the muses are Greek, and Dionysus is Greek, so at least those go together. Are all the gods in all the mythologies real? What about God? Like, the regular God?”

  Sawyer appeared behind Agler. “Is there food?”

  “There’s fruit,” said Nora.

  Sawyer made a face. “I was hoping for something more substantial. Like bacon and eggs.”

  “You want to cook it?” Agler asked.

  “Not really,” said Sawyer. His shoulders drooped. “Fruit it is.” He selected a banana from the fruit basket that was sitting on the table, and began peeling it.

  Agler got himself some fruit as well. “Nora’s asking tough questions.”

  Sawyer had just taken a large bite of his banana. He raised his eyebrows. “Like what?” he said, his voice muffled.

  “Like about God,” said Agler.

  “I just want to know if he’s real or not,” said Nora.

  Agler and Sawyer both laughed.

  “Why is that funny?” said Nora.

  “Isn’t that the essential question that people have been asking since the dawn of time?” said Agler.

  “Well, you guys would know, though,” said Nora. “Wouldn’t you? We all know that Dionysus is real. And that fairies are real. Because we’ve seen them. So does God come to Helicon?”

  Agler stuffed some fruit in his pockets. “Come on, Nora. We’re going to the philosophy enclave.”

  “What’s philosophy got to do with it?” asked Nora.

  Agler and Sawyer both laughed again.

  That frustrated Nora. But she was glad to be thinking about something else besides Owen. This distraction thing seemed to be working.

  * * *

  “There’s a great deal of thought about this very question,” said Themis Branch, head of the philosophy enclave. He was sitting outside the enclave’s fire pit, still wearing his pajamas. He had a steaming mug of coffee in one hand, and there was a percolator full of hot coffee sitting next to the fire, but he hadn’t offered them any.

  Agler strode into one of the philosophy tents, gesturing to Sawyer and Nora to sit down across from Themis. “Yeah, I remembered hearing a conversation here a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t remember everything that was said.” He reappeared with some mugs and began pouring coffee into them.

  “I don’t want to have a conversation,” said Nora. “I just want to know which gods are real and which ones aren’t.”

  “Real?” said Themis. “Well, how do we determine if anything is real?”

  Agler handed Nora a mug. It was hot. She set it down on the bench next to her. “Well, I guess if you see it, you know it’s real.”

  “You assume it is, at any rate,” said Themis. “But haven’t you ever seen things that weren’t real? Has a trick of the light ever convinced you that a pile of clothes was a dog or have you ever looked out of the corner of your eye and seen something that couldn’t possibly be there?”

  “I guess so,” said Nora. “But what’s that got to do with anything? You aren’t trying to tell me that Dionysus isn’t real even though I’ve seen him, are you?”

  “I’m merely trying to illustrate that seeing something does not always mean that it is real. In those instances in which you have seen something that wasn’t there, how did you know it was indeed not real?”

  Nora took a drink of her coffee. This was already starting to be a little confusing. Maybe she needed caffeine. “Well, I guess I knew that it wasn’t right. That I wouldn’t have seen that. I looked again and realized I was wrong. I saw what it really was.”

  “Aha!” said Themis. “So you have an expectation of what reality should be.”

  “Yeah,” said Nora. She turned to Sawyer, to see if he was as confused as she was. Sawyer was snickering into his coffee, clearly enjoying her discomfort.

  “I suppose so,” said Nora. “But this
isn’t really answering my question. If Dionysus is real, and Loki is real, are all the gods real? Every single god ever? Because that would be crazy. They contradict each other.”

  “Did you have an expectation of what Dionysus should be before you met him?” asked Themis.

  Nora thought about it. “Maybe. And he wasn’t much like what I thought.”

  “Yet you still think he’s real.”

  “Because I talked to him!” said Nora. “He exists. Are you trying to tell me he doesn’t?”

  “I’m not trying to tell you anything,” said Themis. “I only enjoy pointing out patterns and thought-processes we have. Let’s try a different tack, shall we? You know Dionysus exists because you have interacted with him. If you haven’t interacted with someone, does it mean it doesn’t exist?”

  “No,” said Nora. “There’s lots of things I’ve never seen before that exist. Like England, for example. I’ve never been there, but I’m sure it’s real.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Themis. “But you don’t necessarily feel that way about God.”

  Nora shrugged. “I’m not sure God is real the way I’m sure about England. God doesn’t make television shows like Doctor Who, you know? There’s no tangible evidence.”

  “But if God didn’t exist,” said Themis, “then how would we have any concept of him?”

  That was hard. Nora looked at Sawyer for assistance, but he was stifling a grin and avoiding her gaze. She glanced at Agler, but he was listening to Themis with open-mouthed awe, as if everything coming out of the man’s mouth was a revelation. Nora gulped at her coffee. “I guess if God didn’t exist, then we’d only have heard of him because people made him up.”

  “Absolutely,” said Themis. “So, there’s one school of thought that argues that we can’t have made something so perfect and intense and otherworldly up in that detail. It claims that if we can conceive of an idea, the idea must exist.”

  Nora drank more coffee, running that through her head. “So, it’s kind of like ‘I think, therefore I am’? If I think of God, therefore he exists?”

  “Essentially,” said Themis. “The theory posits that humans couldn’t have created an idea so alien to themselves. That God must have revealed himself to people for them to be able to think of it at all.”