by S. K Munt
After the longest time, Leigh turned and walked into the kitchen. ‘You can talk and slice fruit, yeah?’
Ryan smiled and followed her. ‘I can, if you believe I can.’
She responded by flinging a tea towel in his face. ‘That, remains to be seen.’
Twenty
‘I don’t remember much about my first mortal life,’ Ryan began, taking the knife from her and turning to appraise the watermelon on the counter behind her. He’d put his board shorts back on but was still shirtless and barefoot, and the way his muscles across his shoulders worked as he began to carve into the melon had Honey reaching for her beer and finishing the entire thing in one desperate gulp. He’d made her sweat and then dehydrated her mind, and though the beer hit some spot, it only made her already fuzzy head, fuzzier. ‘I grew up on a farm outside of Athens, raised as a slave to a man who bred and traded goats. I don’t recall what parents I had, or anything really, before I was about eight. Time fades memories under normal circumstances after all, but this was like… let’s say we partied like it was A.D, but I’m not certain that it was...’
Leigh made a face at his back as he chuckled at his own joke. Was he really going to try and be all witty now? Her eyes shifted to the rolling pin that she kept on her wall as a decoration.
One good whack and...
‘Mmm-hmm…’ she eyed the tattoo on his hand, knowing that it was pretty damning evidence if his body was found with her rolling pin buried with it.
Ryan shrugged. ‘Anyway… I had a boring, normal peasant life. I worked, I drank wine and ate whatever was going… I was treated well and respected by my owner and the other slaves, but I was no one special.’ He paused; ‘Actually no, I was quite popular with the owner’s eldest daughter, I think, and that brought a bit of grief my way. Lots of warnings and what not because she hung around…’ he glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘I was a virgin, though- I know that.’
‘Okay…’
Seriously, one good whack and I can call the cops and...
Ryan smiled sadly at her. ‘That’s irrelevant, I guess. But I was about eighteen when Zeus took me, so I ended up staying a virgin for a very, very long time.’
‘As you do,’ Leigh said nonchalantly, moving to the fridge to grab another beer to dull the edges of her mind long enough to get through his recondite tale. How was she supposed to make gravy with shaking hands? How was she supposed to treat her parents to a nice Christmas when she ended up asking them to hide a body? How could she be expected to turn away from such a brilliant damn body?!
‘Oh boy, she thinks I’m nuts…’ Ryan put down the knife and turned, watching her. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Innocent until proven certifiable,’ Leigh twisted the bottle top in her fluffy skirt and leaned against the fridge to close it. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve been known to ride out the weirdest books until the end.’
Ryan laughed and pulled her into his arms, and she judged herself for how right it still felt. ‘I’m going to preface the rest of my ‘story’ by pointing out that I can prove all of this to you. I’d rather not involve any third parties because I’m going to have enough issues with The Harmony as it is but…’ he kissed her nose. ‘I’ve been known to risk a lot on love before, and you’re a safe bet.’
An easy lay and mark is more like it!
Ryan pulled away from her. ‘I’ll keep it simple for now, all right? One day I was working in one of the fields and I heard beautiful music. I went around this giant stack of hay and saw a beautiful older girl with dark hair playing a Lyre, and a little blonde girl, one of the kids from a neighboring farm, was dancing to the music. I though both girls were a mirage, so beautiful they were, and the music…’ he closed his eyes and smiled dreamily before opening them. ‘There wasn’t much to live for back then, but that music was heavenly.’ He wet his lips. ‘I ended up watching them for longer than I ought to have- until the older girl left, after gifting the little one her lyre. I knew the instrument because the youngest daughter of my employer had one too, but she couldn’t play it like Calliope could.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Adria… that was my boss’s daughter’s name. Can’t remember the older one though they were both very plain…’
Calliope? LYRE? Oh he is NOT going there!!!
‘... I heard that lyre playing all day and night, and it made me so happy!’ And then Ryan dropped his gaze. ‘But it didn’t last long- the next day I heard screaming and yelling instead and I ran to the field and that little girl was being pushed around by some of the guards from my farm. Apparently, Adria’s Lyre had gone missing, and the little girl was alone and being accused of theft. I ran over, intending just to stand up with her, but times were different then, you know? She couldn’t afford an instrument like that, and just possessing it was grounds for severe punishment. They could have flogged her or raped her or sold her into slavery and she couldn’t have been older than maybe nine… so I ran forward and said it was mine- that it had been given to me by the older girl, and that I’d loaned it to the little girl and that my master’s lyre was probably down by the pond on their grounds, where she usually played it, lost in the long grasses.’
Leigh cocked her head to the side, intrigued. If Ryan was making this story up, then she had to introduce him to Lachlan the agent properly before she called D-Ward on him so at least that way, someone would benefit from her broken wings. ‘What happened?’
‘They believed it was mine- but only because I’d stolen it. They released the girl and she tried to plea with them- to explain that there really was a dark-haired beauty that had taught her how to play it, but they didn’t care or listen. They put me in irons and marched me all the way to Athens, and the little girl followed me until her legs gave out, and they just left her there.’ Ryan lifted his eyes to her and they were deeply troubled. ‘The magistrate system wasn’t quite as thorough then as now, and because my master’s daughter’s lyre had not been returned, I was found guilty and sentenced to be stoned to death at sunset.’ His eyes drifted over her shoulder, looking somewhere she’d never be able to see. ‘They lined me up in the square and began to throw the rocks.’ His face creased. ‘It fucking hurt, and I think two big ones hit me and instantly broke something. I was in agony, and terrified to be losing my life before I’d fallen in love with a girl like Calliope, or born a child like that little girl, which was all I’d ever really wanted.’ He released Leigh and rubbed his chest, and Leigh wondered if he’d imagined phantom pains from his public stoning too. ‘I… I saw her then- the brunette. She was on the other side of the square with some street performers- laughing and dancing with an Aoul and completely unaware of what was happening to the boy she’d never met, whose life was in her hands. I was tempted to call out to her, or to alert my executioners to her presence, thinking maybe she’d speak for me- but there was no point. If they’d switched her with me, it would have killed me all the same, and I’d already been mortally wounded, so I watched her dance as I died, taking comfort from her grace…praying that the frightened little girl had gotten home okay...’
Leigh felt tears well in her eyes and once again it occurred to her that Ryan was either a fantastic actor, or batshit crazy to tell his tale so convincingly. ‘My god…’
Ryan wiped at his eyes and straightened, smiling tightly. ‘But Zeus showed up right then- he’d seen everything, and he turned the flying rocks into lumps of horse hair and hay. He came right up to me, and told me that I was a hero, not only for dying for someone else, but for something else- some romantic ideal, like music. He said that Calliope was the muse of music, and that I was the only man in Greece worthy of her. He said that I could choose to come with him and live at his side in Helicon to be her soul-mate and win her heart, or he could make me a demi-god- a superhuman among the mortals.’ He blushed. ‘And, um…’
Leigh’s heart sank. ‘You chose her?’
Ryan nodded and then turned away, and the fact that he couldn’t look at her then made her heart ache. ‘I was young and rom
antic and he seemed to want me to choose that option, so I did.’ He began to slice watermelon again. ‘Only there was nothing romantic about the consequences of that choice. Calliope and all of her sisters loathed the matches their father had made for them and ignored all of us completely, preferring to spend most of their time on earth while I was trapped there, waiting for her to look my way. And she didn’t- not for one hundred years, not for one thousand years, or a thousand more, I’m certain… I lived every day in Helicon, which is a place only the gods can go, and exists only within the imagination. And as muses, they had the power to imagine anything up there into being, or away. I mean, we all did, but my power had nothing on Calliope’s. I’d approach her with roses, and she’d put a waterfall between us. I’d throw myself at her, and she’d imagine me invisible and mute. And as time went on, I began to fade, and she began to forget me completely.’
Did she not see you in the first place?!
Ryan smiled, understanding the dumb expression on her face as he slammed the knife through the watermelon again. ‘I didn’t look like this to her- she never really acknowledged my true face and if she did, she forgot that too, over time, and painted me as some golden, green-eyed cherubic dude- someone not to her liking, more like a statue of a Greek man than an actual Greek man, and that was the face I wore for all of them.’
Leigh was finding it hard to follow him, so she put her beer down and began to pick up the watermelon slices and line them up on a serving plate. ‘A man named Ardos?’
‘Yes.’ Ryan suckled watermelon juice off his wrist and then reached for honeydew. ‘Mmm, yum. Anyway…’ he resumed cutting. ‘I stayed in Helicon while she and her sisters competed for dominance on earth. For years, Calliope was of little consequence to the world, but things changed after America was settled and all of those different cultures started pouring in, bringing their different kinds of music and sharing it. She began to gather steam and by the nineteen-sixties, she was a golden god, if ever there was one. By then, Greek mythology had become all but obsolete and some of the muses and gods were blinking out like stars- Zeus and Calliope’s mother included, but Calliope and her sister, the muse of the written word, became the most powerful entities on the planet and then, Calliope pulled into the lead. They sort of feed off their arts, understand? The better they inspire, the more glorious they become, and Calliope was… a force of nature.’ He sighed, and Leigh felt that ache again. ‘Only she didn’t handle the power well, and music began to change- it became better, but rougher, darker and more sexual, as did she. She stopped caring about what she was creating and just kept creating more, becoming more beautiful and cruel and making her sisters furious with her lack of compassion, and envious of her power. Imogen, the muse of the written word, couldn’t stand her as it was and even I was finding it hard to accept the things she was doing and the men she was bedding and the humans she was hurting then abandoning in the name of her righteousness, but Calliope didn’t heed any of us until one day she went too far and pursued a man who was destined to become a writer, rather than a musician.’ He glanced at her, looking forlorn. ‘Imogen was in love with him, but Calliope won his heart and then broke it- and one awful night, he shot himself in front of them both.’
Leigh frowned, for the story was beginning to get awful. ‘The woman you were destined to be with was a witch? And hang on… IMOGEN?’
‘Yes, Imogen… I’ll get to that.’ Ryan chuckled. ‘But yes, though Calliope had been born with a pure soul, she corrupted herself and everyone was suffering. Not just the gods and goddesses and muses and artists… but The Harmony, which is sort of another word for Karma-’
‘I know about that whole Harmony thing,’ she said softly. ‘A girl from the next town over, Marnie Winters, wrote a series about... what?’ she asked, when Ryan smirked.
‘Once again, I’ll get to that.’ He’d done the honeydew and now reached for a punnet of strawberries. ‘So… Calliope had pissed off the cosmic balance, and Imogen demanded that she pay for her evil-doings. No one wanted such extreme lengths to be taken but The Harmony agreed, and Memoria cast her daughter back onto earth as an infant girl without her powers, to be raised human and without any comprehension of what she meant to the world, but with a debt to repay.’ He glanced at her. ‘To grow up with a boy she would come to care for deeply, to nurture his God-given gifts and his shiny new soul so that he could grow to be the greatest musician of all time.’ He wet his lips, then began to chop madly. ‘If she could do that without her powers, she’d get them back and her memories. But if she fell in love with him- with any mortal man- her heart would fail and she’d be cast into Oblivion.’
Calliope frowned. ‘That’s a big mission…’
‘It was an awful one, and I didn’t think it was fair. But it was done in a heartbeat and because I could not undo it, I threw myself at Memoria’s feet and told her that I couldn’t wait for her there any longer, watching and helpless, and I meant it too. I just wanted to love her, and was willing to take death as opposed to going without it any longer, and as a mortal, she’d have no way of returning to Helicon until she’d fulfilled her awful task. I begged Memoria to make me mortal, and to see if I couldn’t prove that she had a heart after all, by finding Calliope and making her fall for me instead.’
There were those jealous pangs again. ‘And she agreed?’
‘She did, but with a pretty shitty condition, for The Harmony, you know?’ He was going through strawberries like slicing was a nervous tick. ‘She’d grant my wish, but she’d take my memories too, and because Calliope wasn’t allowed to give her heart to a mortal man, if I succeeded- I would die, both on earth and in Helicon, and be cast into Oblivion.’
‘And you accepted?!’ Leigh demanded, incredulous not only because of the sacrifice Ryan had made, but because suddenly- Leigh knew that she believed him.
‘I had no choice, really. It was an eternity of loneliness, or a second chance at a human life and a blank slate with my soul-mate if only for a little while, and I would have died if she had anyway, so yeah, I accepted.’ He shook his head. ‘I blanked after that- Ardos Karalis ceased to exist while on earth, a baby boy named Ryan was adopted by the Weavers and raised in a fancy house in a small town with two best friends- a little boy named Hunter Marks, and a little girl named Callie Clay.’
‘Hunter Marks…’ Leigh gulped as something incredible occurred to her. ‘You’re really from Horizon?’ She moved to the window and pointed to the mauve mountain range in the distance beyond Arulen Valley. When he nodded, her heart skipped a beat. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you grew up one post code away from me?’
Ryan stared at her. ‘And you mentioned the name of your hometown when…?’ He pointed to his head. ‘To the dude with no recollection of where he was from?’
That sobered her. ‘Oh. Okay I…’ she looked back out the window, still beside herself. Horizon was a blink of a town where nothing happened, but when she’d been a little girl, three locals had been discovered from within it- two writers and one musician who came to be so big that people started to wonder if he’d come from Australia at all, or if the locals had just adopted his name for bragging rights. ‘You grew up THERE? With Hunter bloody Marks?’
Well if Ryan attracted a bunch of muses there, then I guess a stroke of stardom isn’t so far-fetched but sheesh...
Ryan nodded solemnly. ‘I did. Not only was he and I attached at the hip but in high school… Marnie Winters had a huge crush on me.’ He sighed and turned away, leaving her to digest that alone and using rapid blinking to do so. ‘But I lived for Callie, my musically-gifted friend who danced like the wind and had a voice like water… and as the years went on, Hunter and I stopped seeing her as the third member of our crappy band, and started seeing her as, well, a bit of a goddess.’ He made a face. ‘Then shit got awkward, and there was this cyclone and she was afraid of storms so she ran and…’ he swallowed, looking uncomfortable. ‘We kind of almost um, shared her?’ He looked at her, wincing like the
clever boy he was once he’d dropped that on her. ‘And she freaked, ran and vanished. But before she did- I looked into her eyes and I saw… I saw it all- our whole history, who she was, what I’d done to be with her… and what I’d just almost done in that shitty shed during that awful storm as a simple-minded teenage boy.’ He pushed the strawberries to the side and stared at the side of Leigh’s fridge, his face a mask of regret. ‘She went to Helicon via the storm, the same way she’d come, and once I knew, I followed her. I approached her as she sobbed in the stream, terrified and lost and still clueless, and I told her as much as I could without telling her what she’d done to Imogen- THAT was a memory Imogen wanted her to recall firsthand as a human with a bleeding heart, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell an innocent seventeen year old girl that she’d killed the written word… I guess I kind of hoped she’d stay with me there, and let the whole thing go.’
‘What do you mean?’ Leigh asked, confused on more levels than she could count.
Another sigh. ‘The only thing I had going for me, was the fact that she didn’t recall Ardos, or her resentment over the whole soul-mate thing. As a muse, she was too wrapped up in her art to sacrifice a moment of her time with me, and too scared of having a child with me who would grow to replace her… so she avoided me like the plague. But as a human girl lost in a strange place, she took to me and we had a wonderful day together while I explained what I could without breaching any deals I’d made with The Harmony. If she’d fallen in love with me, as Ardos, she would have stayed and we would have had her father’s destiny and a child of ours would have been available to replace her, solving everything…That way, she would have been safe from falling for a human, and dying as a result, like Imogen wanted her to.’ His profile hardened. ‘But while I was sleeping next to her, something made her go back. I don’t know if one of the other muses told her that I was intentionally trying to keep her there, or if her soul simply could not walk away from Hunter’s destiny and her chance to bring it to pass even as a human girl, or if she just loved either Hunter or Ryan too much too stay away, but she left me, and I woke up in the gorge as a mortal again alone, after a year had passed and she had vanished.’ He shook his head. ‘Things got dark after that, and I was forced to resume my mortal life with a much broader consciousness and yes, that was when I became the brooding, rock star version of myself that Kathryn re-created. I explained my absence to Hunter by saying I’d had a job at the mines for a year, and then he and I enrolled at the conservatorium here in Araulen Falls and got back to the whole band thing. Four years passed before I saw her again, and I began to grow disheartened, convinced that she’d gone off to live as a human and forget us all but in a way, that was sort of okay because so long as she wasn’t falling in love with us, she was safe.’ His expression was pinched. ‘So I gave up a little. I figured this was the only life I had so I tried to live it. I dated, I worked on my music… I spent every waking moment with Hunter, who I loved and resented in equal measures.’ He reached for a tea towel and then began to wipe off his hands, and Leigh knew he was trying to keep himself busy so he wouldn’t have to look at her, so she handed him a beer from the fridge. He stared at it for a moment, and then put it down on the counter, un-opened. ‘But then she came back and…’ he sighed, threw down the towel and turned to regard her with a frank expression on his handsome face. ‘The muse within her had won out, and she’d spent time with one of the other sisters, honing her talents- dancing and singing with a company… and on her return, she started working us- playing us against each other, making the rivalry so intense that I began to hate him, and he me. As talented as he was, he got a bit of stage-fright, being human and a new soul and emotionally immature and-’