The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

  By the time the project with the illustrations was over, it was well into June, and Nora felt a little antsy. Though she loved to draw and paint and sculpt, sometimes she grew bored with it, and she wanted something else. She wandered around different enclaves for a few days, visiting first music, then dance, then popping in on math—just to make sure she didn’t like numbers. She didn’t.

  She kind of liked moving around like that. It was fun when every day was a brand new adventure of sorts, and it gave her something to look forward to, which she needed. She wasn’t sad or depressed, not exactly. But she wasn’t completely whole either.

  So, one fine June morning, Nora decided to go to the philosophy enclave. She’d been in the architecture enclave the day before, assisting some muses in their design plans for a new brewery for wine and spirits. Philosophy was right next door to architecture, so she figured she’d pop over. Sure, the last two times she’d been in the philosophy enclave, she’d concluded that it was just a bunch of people talking themselves in circles, but maybe things would be different today.

  She didn’t get there vastly early in the morning, but the enclave wasn’t bustling full of activity when she got there. It was midmorning, sometime after breakfast. Half of the tweens and rebels enclave was still asleep. Nora had figured the philosophy guys for early risers, but it didn’t so much seem so.

  The philosophy enclave was not visually appealing. It was a sort of dingy, messy place. The tents were all put up haphazardly, and there weren’t any benches around the enclave’s fire pit. There were a few mismatched chairs around it, but the fire wasn’t lit. The wind blew ashes out of it all over the ground.

  Hmm. Well, maybe there wasn’t any good reason to be in the philosophy enclave after all. She turned, intending to head back out.

  But she ended up nearly smacking into a muse that she didn’t know. It was a woman with short-cropped curls. She looked young, no older than twenty-five, but that didn’t mean anything, since the muses all halted their aging. She appeared to be wearing her nightgown. She had big, fluffy bunny slippers on her feet.

  She saw Nora and sidestepped.

  At the same moment as Nora also sidestepped in the same direction.

  Realizing they were about to collide again, they both course corrected. In the same direction again.

  Nora giggled.

  The other muse laughed too. She had a rich, hearty laugh. She paused, gesturing. “You go ahead.”

  Nora nodded. “Thank you.” She stepped past the other muse.

  “You don’t know if there’s coffee, do you?”

  “Um, no. I actually was just coming by to…” To what? Philosophize?

  The woman ran her hand through her curls. “Damn it. I’ve been up all night, and I really think I’ve got it this time, but if I don’t get some coffee, I’m going to fall asleep and forget everything.”

  “If you’ve been up all night, shouldn’t you get some sleep anyway?” Nora occasionally knew of muses pulling all nighters in the visual arts enclave, especially if they got really drawn into whatever project they were working on, but she didn’t think that people did the same thing in philosophy. She didn’t think they actually had projects here.

  “Can’t,” said the woman. “If I go to sleep I’ll lose it.” She pulled aside the flap of one of the tents and ducked inside.

  Now, Nora was curious. “Lose what?” She peered inside the tent after the woman.

  It was dark inside, but Nora could make out an empty French press and some coffee mugs.

  The woman picked them up and came back out of the tent. “What are you doing right now?”

  “Um… nothing, I guess.”

  “Will you build the fire if I wash these out? I’ll make enough coffee for you too.”

  “All right,” said Nora. She really wasn’t doing anything, after all. She didn’t know if she needed more coffee after the cup she’d had at breakfast, but that wasn’t any reason not to help.

  There was a stack of wood next to the fire pit. Nora began transferring logs into the circle of stones. “So, what are you doing?”

  “Making coffee.” The woman looked up from pouring water all over the mugs and the French press. She had soap and a rag to wash them up.

  “No, I know,” said Nora. “But before that.”

  “Oh, I’m trying to figure something out.” The woman rubbed soapy water furiously over the mugs. “I’m probably being ridiculous. I mean, no one’s figured this out. Never. Not in the history of the universe. But I think I might have it. I feel like there’s just one piece missing, and if I could get that, well, then I’d have it.”

  Nora had enough logs. She looked around for kindling and found a wooden box marked Tinder. There were lots of wrinkled, crumpled pieces of paper inside. She placed that in the middle of her logs. “Do people really figure things out in philosophy? It always seemed to me like people just talk in circles.”

  “Oh, you’ve been talking to Themis too much.” The woman set the mugs down on the seat of one of the empty chairs. They were quite clean now. “He’s always so egalitarian, you know, trying to get everyone’s viewpoint.”

  “No, he’s not,” said Nora. “He never sees the viewpoint of the engineering enclave.”

  The woman was taken aback for a moment, and then she barked out a laugh. “What’s your name anyway? You’re funny.”

  “Nora.” She hadn’t thought it was a particularly funny thing to say, but what did she know?

  “I’m Dionne,” said the woman. “Anyway, Themis refuses to take sides. He’s been head of the enclave too long, and he wants to be on everyone’s side. So, he just likes to pose questions, never to make any stances. I don’t think you can find the truth that way. I think you have to risk being wrong to find the truth. But you know, I tell Themis that, and he just says, ‘And which truth would that be? Mine or yours?’” She rolled her eyes.

  “That sounds like Themis,” Nora agreed.

  “Anyway, Themis doesn’t think there’s any actual answer to the question I’m wrestling with, but I think he’s wrong. I think there’s an answer, and that I’m going to find it. That’s why I need coffee.” She was scooping dark grounds into the French press as she spoke. “You have the fire going yet? We’ll need to boil water.”

  “Um, I need to start it,” said Nora.

  “Of course.” Dionne fished some matches out of her pocket and handed them to Nora.

  Nora lit the kindling. “So, what’s the question?” She poked at the logs, trying to get them catch flame.

  “Oh, that,” said Dionne. “Well, basically, it’s the question of free will.”

  “Free will?” Nora put more kindling on the fire. “Well, we obviously have free will. We all make decisions for ourselves.”

  “That’s what I think,” said Dionne, peering down at the fire.

  Nora poked at it.

  Dionne held out her hand for the poker.

  Nora handed it over. “On the other hand, I guess there’s some things you don’t choose.”

  Dionne raised her eyebrows. “Like what?”

  “Well, your sexual orientation for one. And your gender. And the color of your hair. All of that stuff is just hardwired into you.”

  “Obviously,” said Dionne. “Some things are biological.”

  “Right,” said Nora. “And sometimes biology makes choices for you. Like, you can’t help being attracted to someone.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Dionne who had now managed to turn the fire into a raging pillar of flame. She hooked a pot of water over the fire and sat back. “But you can decide whether or not to act on that attraction.”

  “Well, not if you’re really attracted,” said Nora, thinking of the way she’d seen Sawyer looking at Lute just the evening before. “You can try to fight it all you want, but in the end, you have to surrender to it. It’s like fate or something.”

  “No,” said Dionne, “that’s exactly what I’m saying. There can’t be fate. It’s an im
possibility. So, there must be free will.”

  “Why is fate impossible?”

  “Because it’s predestination. It implies that there’s someone out there who’s got all the answers to every question that was ever asked or that ever will be asked, and there’s no evidence of such a person or any agent of fate.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be that kind of fate. It could just be biology, like we said.”

  Dionne nodded. “Ah, I see what you’re saying. But you’re wrong. It’s not any different. In practice, whether it’s a mystical force, or the principals of nature, it works out just the same.”

  “No, it is different. You’re talking about fate like it’s a mystical force. I’m just talking about nature. There are natural laws, you know. We’re all bound by them. We can’t just go flying off into space whenever we want. We’re stuck to the ground. That’s not fate, it’s just nature.”

  “That limits the physical. But it doesn’t limit our will,” said Dionne. “We might not be able to physically fly, but nothing in nature stops us from wanting to fly. Our desires are our own. That example’s completely different than the one you gave before. Before you were saying that a person must give in to her physical attraction—”

  “Wait a second,” said Nora. “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “What’s true?” said Dionne.

  “That our desires are our own.”

  “Oh?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “No,” said Nora. “Because where do desires come from anyway? It’s not like there are catalogs of desires that you get to choose from. They just come to you. You see something, or you get an idea, and you want it. That’s not free will at all.”

  “But it’s not determined,” said Dionne. “It’s random, just something that happens. So, it’s not fate. It doesn’t mean anything. And besides, you can choose not to give in to a desire. If you want something, but later find out it will be unpleasant or difficult, you can change your mind.”

  “No,” said Nora. “You can’t.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “You can try,” said Nora. “But that desire will keep bubbling up within you, keep appearing in your thoughts. It will haunt you if you deny it.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “Yes, it will.”

  The two of them glared at each other, eyes narrowed.

  The water was boiling. Dionne got up to get the pot and poured the water into the French press.

  “I suppose this is what Themis was saying about different people having different truths,” said Nora.

  “No, I don’t accept that. There’s either truth or there isn’t. If two people have different truths, then it’s not the truth, now is it?”

  Nora chewed on her lip. That had confused her a bit. But she supposed she could see Dionne’s logic. Truth wasn’t meant to have contradictions. If two people held contradictory ideas, they couldn’t both be true. “Maybe… maybe there isn’t a such thing as truth.”

  Dionne groaned. “Oh, you really do sound like Themis now.”

  “Well, maybe because he’s right. Maybe you and I aren’t ever going to agree about this.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t see into the future.”

  “Look,” said Nora. “My boyfriend fell in love with me, but he wasn’t… attracted to me. He’s attracted to men, not women. He can’t help that. He doesn’t choose it. And so, when he broke up with me, I couldn’t be angry with him for that, because he didn’t have any free will.”

  Dionne sucked in breath thoughtfully. She turned to the French press and pushed the plunger down onto the coffee. She picked up one of the mugs. “Coffee?”

  “That’s all you have to say to that?”

  “Do you want the coffee or not?”

  “Fine.” Nora sighed.

  Dionne handed her the steaming cup. “There’s sugar and creamer in the tent if you want.”

  Nora got up and went into the tent to doctor up her coffee. When she got back, Dionne was sipping hers black.

  Dionne stared into the fire. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Your boyfriend made a choice. He had free will.”

  “No, he didn’t. He would never have chosen to hurt me.”

  Dionne turned to her, and her expression was full of sympathy. “Oh, Nora. That’s exactly why it does hurt. Because he did exactly that. He chose to hurt you.”

  “No.” Nora got up. Her coffee sloshed in her mug, a little falling onto the ground. She intended to stalk off, but she wasn’t sure what to do with her coffee. It was too hot to gulp down, and she didn’t want to walk off with it or abandon it. Both seemed rude. She settled for turning her back.

  “You’ll never be able to forgive him until you acknowledge what he did.”

  “Oh, what do you know? You’re some crazy lady in the philosophy enclave. You probably don’t even date.”

  Dionne laughed. “Well, some men do find me a bit difficult to deal with. I don’t bend, you know? I have ideas, and I state them and stand by them. Some men don’t like that about me. But I don’t care. I am what I am. And for what it’s worth, I’ve very much enjoyed talking with you this morning. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  Nora sat down again. “But you’ve shot down everything that came out of my mouth.”

  “Like I said, I don’t bend.” She took a sip of coffee. “But if I find I’m wrong, I change my mind.”

  “Well, you are wrong. Sawyer didn’t have a choice. He had to break up with me. Staying with me wouldn’t have been true to himself.”

  “It may be true that it wouldn’t have been true to himself. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a choice. He most certainly did. He had the choice between his happiness and yours. He chose his own.”

  Nora’s jaw twitched. “That isn’t true. He and I wouldn’t have been happy together if he stayed with me, because he could never have been attracted to me in the same way.”

  “Were you happy before he broke up with you?”

  “Well, yeah, but I didn’t notice the stuff he was saying until he pointed it out.”

  “He pointed it out to make himself feel better. You might never have noticed it. You might have been happy with him for years and years.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have.” And suddenly, she was crying.

  “Oh.” Dionne patted her on the head. “It’s okay, though, Nora. It’s okay. He hurt you, and he did it on purpose.”

  “No, he didn’t. He’s not like that. If he was like that, I’d have to hate him, and I don’t want to hate him. He’s my best friend.”

  “You don’t have to hate him.” Dionne smiled. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We have free will. He chose to hurt you. You can choose to forgive him.”

  Nora’s tears stopped. That was an interesting way to put it.

  “You have to blame him first, though,” said Dionne. “That’s how forgiveness works.”

  Nora took a thoughtful drink of her coffee. “Maybe,” she murmured. “Maybe he really did choose it.”

  * * *

  After that, it was easier somehow. She still wasn’t sure if she agreed with Dionne about free will. But she felt empowered after their conversation, and before she’d felt trapped and controlled. It was nicer to feel in control, she decided. She wondered if perhaps people settled on a truth that made them feel good, not the one that made them feel bad.

  For the first time, she realized how philosophy could be useful. She hadn’t ever really given it thought before, but when the engineering enclave had ridiculed philosophy, claiming it was pointless, she’d almost agreed. Now, she realized that philosophy had a tangible application that was more immediate than even the visual arts enclave. Looking at art might make people feel good, but philosophy helped people sort out how they fit into the world, and how everyone else fit into it as well. Its ideas could seem abstract and without any purpose, but they were actually relevant to every aspect of her life. She had a newfound respect for the ph
ilosophy enclave.

  And it wasn’t nearly as painful to watch Sawyer with Lute anymore. When she felt the pain, she’d tell herself that Sawyer had hurt her, but that she forgave him for it. It made her feel better. It made her feel in control again. She realized that one of the reasons she’d been in so much pain before was because she’d felt so out of control.

  It was the time of year for the Summer Solstice, which was another festival and celebration in Helicon. Every year, there was a big play put on, and there was a huge bazaar set up in the center of everything. People from all the different enclaves set up booths with their various wares—clothes and paintings and soaps and jewelry. The day was spent bartering and trading with the other muses, a big swap of possessions. The night was spent watching the play.

  Afterward… well, afterward there was feasting and drinking. But that was practically every day at Helicon.

  When the day came, Nora spent it wandering around in the sunshine. She and Maddie traded some of their old skirts for some circles that resembled hula hoops. They were made of light-weight material that shimmered rainbow colors. They danced with them in the afternoon. There was music playing, of course. There was always music playing at a Helicon festival. But they knew that the hoops would look the best at full dark, when they would glow and leave trails of bright colors in the air. They were both looking forward to that.

  Nora hadn’t seen much of Maddie lately. He friend was always dashing away from meals because she had things to work on. She made sure that everyone saw her eat a few bites of food, but then she would wrap the rest up to take with her. Nora thought that was suspicious, especially since Maddie didn’t look like she’d gained an ounce of weight, and she’d been supposedly eating normally since May Day. If anything, she might have looked thinner.