The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

  “It’s not so much that it’s boring,” said Sawyer. “It’s that... I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable in the security enclave.” He turned to Daryl. “You remember what those guys said to me at May Day, right?”

  Daryl became very interested in his bowl. “I’m really sorry about those guys.”

  “I just keep thinking that I’m going to run into them.” Sawyer agitated his liquid furiously. “I don’t want to see them. They make me feel...”

  “What guys?” Coeus asked. “What happened?”

  “They thought they were being funny,” said Daryl. “They were drunk.”

  “That’s not an excuse!” Nora said.

  “They aren’t bad people,” said Daryl.

  “I think I understand,” said Coeus. “Some guys from the security enclave didn’t take too well to your being the May Queen, huh?”

  No one said anything.

  Coeus laughed. “Well, that’s kind of ironic.”

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” said Nora.

  “Not funny,” said Coeus. “Ironic. You see, a very long time ago, the security enclave used to be the war enclave.”

  “War enclave?” Maddie said. “Why would there be a war enclave?”

  “And why is that ironic?” Nora said.

  “It was before Phoebe was head of the council,” said Coeus. “Before my time, in fact. Phoebe remembers it, though. You may have noticed that Phoebe is a good bit older than me.” He paused mid agitation, as if thinking. “As for why it was here, at the time, it was considered another form of creative expression. War strategy can be quite creative you know.”

  “So it was muses in the war enclave?” Daryl asked. “It wasn’t noncreative people like it is now?”

  “Yes, it was muses,” said Coeus. “I don’t know what happened to the noncreative people born to muses at that time. Maybe they shipped them off to the mundane world. Things were different back then. The muses today are a kinder, gentler breed. At some point, the muses realized that war was destructive, and that it was the very enemy of creativity. They downgraded the war enclave to the security enclave, whose only job was to keep Helicon safe. Most of the war muses jumped ship. Eventually, as we learned about the threat of the Influence, the security enclave morphed into what it is today.”

  “I still don’t get why it’s ironic,” said Nora.

  “Do you know much about soldiers in ancient Greece or Rome?” Coeus asked. “I’m told they teach history in mundane world schools.”

  “A little bit,” said Nora. “But not enough to understand what you’re talking about.”

  “The muses of the war enclave believed quite similarly to those soldiers that the truest, most passionate love was between men.” Coeus grinned.

  “Wait,” said Sawyer. “You mean they were all gay?”

  “Well, sort of,” said Coeus. “I guess we would call them bisexual. They had wives and female partners. But they also slept with each other. And they believed they couldn’t have nearly the kind of bond with a woman that they could have with a man. The men they fought with were their best friends, their comrades in arms, and their lovers. They worked, played, and fucked together. They didn’t think a woman could compete with that. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have sex with women or that they weren’t attracted to women.”

  Nora smiled. “I guess that is ironic.”

  “Not really,” said Sawyer. “They didn’t make fun of me because I was gay. They made fun of me because I was wearing a dress.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true,” said Coeus. “And they were being jerks. I’d like their names. I’d like to talk to them.” He looked at Daryl. “Actually, I have a good idea who we’re talking about. Am I right?”

  Daryl nodded slowly.

  “Can we go back for a second?” Maddie asked. “You’re trying to tell me that every single one of the war muses and the Roman and Greek soldiers were bisexual?”

  Coeus nodded.

  “How can that be? I mean, there are a lot of straight people in Helicon. There aren’t as many gay people in Helicon as there are straight people, but I think there are probably more gay people here than in other places. But I can’t think of one bisexual person. So how could there have been so many?”

  Coeus picked up a rock out of his bowl and began rubbing it between his fingers. It was clear that it was already smaller. “Oh Maddie. You’re steering me into a can of worms. Let’s say that I don’t know why that is and leave it at that.”

  Maddie shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why is it a can of worms?”

  Coeus sighed. “Well, most people in Helicon assume that people do not choose their sexual orientation. They are born the way that they are. I suppose that’s mostly because if people believe it’s a choice, they can put pressure on gay people to ‘choose’ to be straight. So by bringing up historical evidence that certain people seemed to choose those behaviors, well, I could unintentionally offend.”

  “I’m not offended,” said Sawyer. “I’m intrigued, actually. I was just talking to someone the other day about categorizations. You know, maybe what those soldiers prove is only that it’s not as simple as we want to make it. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to put people into categories.”

  Coeus shrugged. “Well, it does seem that the idea of exclusively preferring one sex or the other is a somewhat modern idea. However, I don’t doubt that there are people who in fact do only want to be intimate with one gender.” He grinned. “I’m one of them. I’m straight.”

  Sawyer looked thoughtful.

  Daryl fished something up out of his bowl. It was a small glowing orange ball. “Is this what they’re supposed to look like?”

  “Yes,” said Coeus. “Excellent job, Daryl.”

  * * *

  Daryl was the only one of them to the able to get a rock down to its glowing orange center that day. Most of the rocks were quite stubborn. They had to work on it for several days. It became a bit of a routine. They would get up, Daryl would bring them breakfast from the food enclave, and then they would go to the engineering enclave tent. There they would pour new liquid over the rocks and agitate and scrub until lunchtime. They could have gone back in the afternoon, but Coeus said that all morning, every morning was enough and told them to find something else to do with themselves in the afternoons. After about four days, they were making progress. Coeus figured it would only take a few more days to get all of the rocks down to their glowing centers.

  In the afternoons, Maddie and Daryl usually disappeared someplace. Sawyer and Nora were left to fend for themselves. They spent their days hanging out in front of their tents. At first they talked. When they ran out of things to say, they started playing tic-tac-toe and connect-the-dots, using a stick to draw on the ground.

  Sawyer was right. It was boring.

  One afternoon, Nora had just finished connecting all of the dots that Sawyer had made. She rubbed the dirt over with her hands, erasing their game. “We need another game to play.”

  Sawyer wrapped his hands around his knees. “You’re the one who came up with the connect-the-dots game. I don’t know any other things to do when I’m bored. I haven’t spent a lot of time being bored in my life.”

  “Lucky you.” She was trying to think. She knew there had been more games that she used to play in the mundane world.

  “Actually, that’s not true. I remember being bored in the babies and toddlers enclave. A lot.”

  Nora thought of the awesome castle playground and all the kids. “Really?”

  Sawyer nodded. “It was when I was an older kid. Like eight.”

  “You were still in the babies and toddlers enclave when you were eight?”

  “Well what did you think happened to the kids who didn’t have parents? There’s a babies and toddlers enclave. There’s the tweens and rebels enclave. There’s not a kid’s enclave.”

  Nora chewed on her lip. “But I never see any older kids there.”

  “Well,” he
said, “that’s probably because most of the kids you see in there have parents. See, Helicon uses that place like a babysitting service. Whenever there’s a big event, or whenever parents feel like it, they’ll leave their kids there. Their small kids. But older kids can kind of fend for themselves. So there’s no need for them to come to the babies and toddlers enclave. Which means, if you’re stuck there because you don’t have any parents, there are a lot less people to play with as you get older.”

  “That sounds like it kind of sucks.”

  Sawyer nodded. “It was probably worse for me, because by that age, people could tell there was something weird about me. A lot of kids didn’t want to hang out with me.”

  “You were already wearing skirts then?”

  “No way. I didn’t get to wear skirts until I could sew them myself.”

  “So why did they think you were weird?”

  Sawyer was quiet for a long time. “You know, now that I think about it, I think it must have been the other way around. I think maybe I knew I was weird, and because I didn’t fit in with them, I avoided them. I hung out alone.”

  “You’re not weird, Sawyer.”

  He grinned. “Sure I am.”

  “Everyone’s weird in Helicon.”

  “Right.” Sawyer laughed. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I felt really alone.”

  Nora nodded. “I know what it’s like to feel alone.” Her time in the mundane world had been nothing if not lonely. “When I was in the mundane world, I was surrounded by humans. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but I knew I was different. I wasn’t the same as they were.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt.”

  “But why?” She leaned forward. “I mean, I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t have or anything. It just that I immediately felt like I belonged once I got here.”

  Sawyer sighed. “It’s difficult to explain. I guess the first time I realized it, I was pretty young. Like four or five. We were playing a big game of Red Rover or something. Well, we were getting ready to play. And someone said that we should play girls against boys. Everyone agreed. They all started organizing themselves, girls on one side, boys on the other. And I guess...” Sawyer looked down at the ground. “I guess it was the first time that I ever really thought about it. And it was scary. Because, Nora, I didn’t know which side to pick.”

  Nora was thunderstruck. “You were four years old?”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous. But I’d never thought about it before. Because they didn’t really make a big deal about anything like that in the enclave. I mean amongst the little kids, they don’t really have separate sleeping arrangements. So I stood there like an idiot. And I had to think back. I had to remember if anyone had ever told me I was a good boy or a good girl. And I did. I remembered. I was a boy. I ran over and joined the boys’ side. But I realized then that something that was inherent and obvious to everybody else just didn’t really register with me. I was weird. There was something wrong with me.”

  Nora reached for her friend. “Sawyer, that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.”

  Sawyer let her touch him. He even smiled at her. “Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever met anyone else that felt that way?”

  Nora looked away. “That’s not the point.”

  “You haven’t, have you?”

  “No, but...” Nora tried to gather her thoughts and figure out what it was she wanted to say. “I like you the way you are. I wouldn’t want you to be ‘normal.’ Not that I even think that that really even exists. You’re Sawyer. You’re my best friend.”

  Sawyer’s grin broadened. “You’re my best friend too. And, hey, it’s not like I’m saying I’m all broken up over this stuff. It doesn’t bug me nearly as much now as it used to. I do feel like I belong. When I’m with you and Maddie, I feel completely at home.”

  “Good.” Nora gave him a hug. “Maybe that’s why things didn’t end up working out between you and Jack. Maybe he didn’t make you feel at home.”

  Sawyer shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Nora immediately felt as if maybe she should have kept her mouth shut. She and Sawyer hadn’t done much discussing of Agler or Jack since the two of them had disappeared into the fairy world. Sawyer probably didn’t want to be reminded of it. “Sorry I said anything.”

  “No, don’t be sorry.” Sawyer picked up a stick they’d been using to draw on the ground. He began using it to dig grooves in the dirt. “I don’t even know if I’m really gay.”

  Nora sat back, stunned. She’d heard about people who seemed heterosexual questioning their sexuality. But she always figured that once someone identified as homosexual, they pretty much knew what they were talking about. “You mean, you don’t find guys attractive?”

  Sawyer’s groove was getting deeper. “No, I do. I think I do. What does finding someone attractive mean, anyway? When you see a guy who’s attractive, how do you feel?”

  Nora didn’t answer for a while. She’d never thought about this before, and she realized it was sort of difficult to explain. “I guess I just like the way he looks. When I see a guy I think is attractive, it’s because I wouldn’t mind looking at him. Or I enjoy looking at him. I don’t know.”

  “But you can see a girl you think is attractive and not actually be attracted to her.”

  “Sure.”

  “So, what is the difference?”

  Now Nora was even more confused. There was a difference. She knew there was. But how did she describe it? “Girls are... girls. When I see a girl who I think is pretty, I either feel jealous of her or I might have a thought that she’s nice to look at. But I don’t want to... you know... touch her or kiss her or anything.”

  “So when you’re attracted to a guy, you want to do things with him. But you don’t feel that towards the same sex.”

  “Not always. I don’t feel the need to jump the bones of every single guy I see. But yeah. I guess that’s as good a way as any to describe the difference.” She peered at Sawyer. “It’s not like that for you?”

  Sawyer’s groove was becoming a hole. He dug at it furiously. “It’s... confusing. Because when I see attractive people, it doesn’t matter what their gender is, I feel that same kind of jealousy thing you’re talking about. Except... I wouldn’t always call it jealousy. Just that I wish I looked like that.”

  “Yeah,” said Nora. “That’s a good way to put it. That’s how I feel when I see girls.”

  “Well I feel that for both girls and guys. As for the wanting to do things to people thing...” He threw down his stick. “I only ever felt like that once.”

  “Did you feel like that about a girl or a guy?” Nora was sincerely curious.

  Sawyer looked at her in disbelief. “Well, when I felt like that, I acted on it.”

  “Acted on it how?”

  Now Sawyer was starting to look a little bit pissed off. “I kissed—”

  But at that moment, Daryl rushed up to where they were sitting. “She’s not with you?” He was out of breath.

  Sawyer stood up. He looked flustered and still a little annoyed. “We were in the middle of a conversation here.”

  Daryl leaned over, panting. “Sorry, but I’m starting to get worried about Maddie.”

  Nora stood up too. “Why are you worried about Maddie?”

  “She never showed up. I was supposed to meet her a half hour ago. At first I thought she was just running late, but when she didn’t show up, I started wondering where she was. I’ve looked all over. I hoped she was with you guys.”

  Sawyer’s expression had changed. Now he looked afraid. “We haven’t seen her since this morning. She was supposed to be with you. She’s always with you.”

  “I thought she spent every afternoon with you,” said Nora.

  Daryl’s breath was starting to even out. “Usually, yeah. But I ended up having a thing to do. We were repairing this fence thing in the architecture enclave. It was only going to take me an hour or two, and Maddie said she want
ed to practice her dance moves. We said we’d meet up afterwards. But I can’t find her.”

  Nora swallowed. “So she was alone?”

  “She was in the security enclave,” said Daryl.

  “You don’t think...?” Sawyer trailed off.

  But Nora said it out loud. Said the words they were all thinking. “Owen got her. He made good on his threat.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sawyer felt numb all over. His first instinct was to deny it. “No. Owen can’t have gotten into Helicon. Didn’t Phoebe say she would feel it if he had?” He didn’t want any of this to be true. Things were confusing enough as it was. “We’ll split up. We’ll search the entire security enclave. We’ll find her.”

  Nora’s eyes were filled with terror. Sawyer didn’t like it. He didn’t want her to feel that way. He wanted to go back to a few minutes ago when they were sitting together and talking. He’d been nervous then, agitated even. Completely confused. But that was better than this. That was better, because he felt as if the terror that Nora was feeling might be showing on his face as well.

  “No,” said Nora. “We can’t split up. If it is Owen, then we don’t want to be alone.”

  “I’ve looked everywhere anyway,” said Daryl. “I combed the entire place before I came to you guys. I thought maybe I was confused about where she said she was going to practice dancing. I thought maybe some of the guys saw her, and she felt uncomfortable, so she moved to someplace else. I looked all over the place.”

  Daryl was scared too. Sawyer could tell. He was babbling, and his eyes were wide. Sawyer knew it wasn’t fair, but he was afraid of feeling this terror, so he funneled it into anger and he turned on Daryl. “This is all your fault. You should never have let her be by herself. You knew about the threat. Why weren’t you with her?”

  Daryl’s face fell. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Sawyer,” said Nora. “It’s not going to help to yell at Daryl.” She turned to him. “It’s not your fault. It’s Owen’s fault. Everything bad that happens is Owen’s fault.” It looked like she was getting angry too.