Calliope the Muse

by Joan Holub

  Calliope gulped. “Well, it’s kind of hard to explain right now,” she said. Then, hoping to fool him into thinking she had a solid start on her project, she waved her hands around enthusiastically while describing a temple-like structure. “It’ll have all kinds of ornate columns with flowered vines wound around them, gold statues of various gods and goddesses, amazing fountains that spray fifty feet into the air, and . . . just about anything you could ever want, really.”

  Mr. Libon cocked his head. “And what’s your building’s purpose going to be?” he asked. “What and who is it intended for?”

  “For . . . for anyone who likes awesome buildings!” Calliope answered, smiling brightly.

  “I don’t suppose you have a planscroll for this awesome building, do you?” Mr. Libon asked. He gestured at her schoolbag.

  Calliope thought about lying. She could have said that she’d left the planscroll in her dorm room or her locker. But somehow she just couldn’t do it. “Uh, not yet,” she told Mr. Libon truthfully. “The ideas part is easy for me. I’ve always got a ton of ideas, but choosing between them is hard,” she admitted. “I’m always worried that some better idea will come along. So I hate to narrow it down, you know?”

  “I do understand,” Mr. Libon said sympathetically. “But as you know, your project is due on Wednesday, and it’s worth eighty percent of your grade. You haven’t got that much time. So my advice to you is to choose the idea or ideas that appeal to you most right now and go with them. That’s what architects do in the end. A bunch of amazing ideas that aren’t ever put to paper will never a building make.” He paused and scribbled down the words he’d just said, probably planning to make another handwritten sign for his wall.

  When he’d finished writing, he glanced at her again. “Muse Urania is your older sister, isn’t that right?” he asked.

  Calliope nodded. “I’ve got eight older sisters. But she’s the oldest.”

  Mr. Libon’s brow furrowed. “Do you think it might help if the three of us got together to talk about the trouble you’re having getting going on this project?”

  “What? No!” Calliope exclaimed, shaking her head so hard that her ponytail almost came undone. The last thing she needed was to have her sister nosing around in her life. She loved Urania, and her other sisters too. But despite the fact that Calliope was twelve years old now, they still treated her like she was five most of the time. In other words, they were a little too into her business.

  “She’s superbusy right now with, um, stuff. I wouldn’t want to bother her about this. Anyway, I’ve got it under control,” she added by way of explanation. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Libon said after a moment’s hesitation. “But if you change your mind and feel like you need some help, just tell me. I’m sure your sister would be happy to find time to meet with us.”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah. I will,” Calliope assured him, starting to ease toward the doorway. But all the while she was thinking, Not a chance!

  At last she reached the exit. “Okay, well, thanks, Mr. Libon.” She ducked out fast. Once through the doorway, she breathed a sigh of relief. Out in the hallway a sense of determination filled her. The very minute she got to her dorm room, she was going to sit down at her desk. She’d let nothing stop her from getting this project going. For real this time. She was going to narrow down her ideas to the very best one and get started on a design for a house or a temple or whatever.

  She didn’t really care if her design was the one chosen to be built, she thought as she started down the hall. Her goal at this point was simply to get the project done so she could pass Architecture-ology with a decent grade. Because if her sisters ever found out that she was struggling in a class, they’d forever be checking up on her. And more than anything else, she wanted to stand on her own two feet, to have them see her as the almost-teenager she was!

  2

  Pros and Cons

  BEFORE CALLIOPE COULD START UP the marble staircase to the girls’ dorm on the fourth floor, she heard shouts coming from outside. Curious as to what was going on, she veered toward MOA’s bronze front doors instead. What could it hurt if I began my project a few minutes later than planned? Calliope thought as she pushed out through the doors.

  A ring of godboys and mortal boys that included Heracles, Ares, and Hades was gathered in the courtyard below. In the middle of the ring stood the godboy Apollo and a satyr named Marsyas, who was half boy and half goat, with pointy ears, two small horns on his head, goat legs, and a goat tail. As she paused at the top of the steps and looked down, she overheard Marsyas challenge Apollo to a battle.

  “Yes!” Ares, the godboy of war, cheered upon hearing this.

  “Not the kind with spears and weapons,” Marsyas informed him. “The kind with notes. Specifically, a musical battle.”

  “Huh?” said Ares. He wasn’t the only one who looked confused. Calliope was too. What did Marsyas have in mind?

  “We’ll battle it out at the music festival. You know, down on Earth in Greece tomorrow at the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens,” Marsyas told Apollo. “Sort of like a battle of the bands, only with just us two musicians.”

  While he spoke, the satyr ran a hand over the sleek black-and-white goat-hair vest he always wore. It was common knowledge that this vest was his prize possession, made from his very own hair by the nymph Echo, a skilled clothing designer. He was as proud of it as the phenomenally strong mortal boy Heracles was of the lion-skin cape he wore everywhere. Did Marsyas hope it would bring him luck against Apollo?

  Like most everyone, Calliope already knew about the upcoming festival. In fact, she was going to be singing in it with her eight sister Muses. She loved singing—any type of artistic expression, really—but she dreaded the questions her sisters were sure to ask when they got together. How are your classes going? Need any help with them or with anything else? Are you making friends at MOA? Got a roommate yet? Have you been invited to sit with Aphrodite and her friends at lunch?

  Duh, right. Not. Because goddessgirls like Aphrodite already had a million friends! Sure, that popular goddessgirl was nice to Calliope and had already made a point of welcoming her to MOA. Same went for Aphrodite’s equally popular BFFs, Athena, Persephone, and Artemis.

  But Calliope was looking for a special friend with lots of time to hang out with her. There was an art to making friends, in her humble opinion. You didn’t just push yourself onto random people. You first got acquainted with them, got to know them bit by bit, and then made your move. However, in the meantime her room was feeling very lonely. She had even started talking to her pillows at times!

  Dark-haired Apollo eyed Marsyas. “You? Against me? In a music battle? Are you sure you want to do this?” Apollo was godboy of music, as well as the godboy of truth and prophecy. Everyone knew he was awesome at playing a stringed instrument called the lyre.

  For his part, Marsyas was an awesome player of the aulos. It was a double-piped reed instrument that had been invented by Principal Zeus’s daughter, the superbrainy goddessgirl Athena. Rumor had it that Marsyas’s favorite aulos was one Athena had tossed out after several students at MOA had remarked on how her cheeks bulged when she played. Calliope found the rumor hard to believe, though. Athena didn’t seem that vain about her appearance. More likely Marsyas had come by the aulos some other way. Maybe Athena had even given it to him.

  “Sure I’m sure,” Marsyas said. Grinning big, he did a little impromptu jig, his hooves stamping against the courtyard’s marble tiles. “So prepare to get beat, lyre-boy. You are going down!”

  Ye gods, thought Calliope. That was no way to talk to a godboy. Immortals were supposed to be treated with respect. Otherwise they might become angry and vengeful. If Marsyas weren’t careful, he could wind up in serious hot water. Of course that particular situation would be most likely to happen if he made Poseidon, the godboy of the sea, mad. With Apollo, he’d wind up in seriously note-able trouble, though!

  Luckily for Mars
yas, Apollo kept a cool head now and only grinned, saying, “You wish! You are sooo doomed, satyr.”

  “What’s the prize going to be? For the winner, I mean,” asked Ares.

  “The satisfaction of being proved best,” Marsyas said smugly. “Plus, the loser has to fork over whatever prize the winner wants, no complaints.”

  At this, Apollo seemed to hesitate, which surprised Calliope. Because why would the godboy of music care what would happen to the loser in this battle? No way could Apollo lose!

  When Ares nudged him, Apollo quickly grinned. “All right, Marsyas. You’re on. And you’d better watch out!”

  The group of boys broke up and began to move in different directions, all excitedly discussing what had just happened. Remembering her project, Calliope determinedly went back inside the Academy.

  “Hey, wait up! Yoo-hoo!” someone called to her as she started upstairs to her room. A girl with spiky orange hair and small orange wings at her back fluttered over. It was Pheme, the goddessgirl of gossip.

  “Could you help me?” Pheme asked after she’d caught up to Calliope on the stairs. As usual, her words puffed from her orange-glossed lips to rise above her head in little cloud-letters, before fading away. Those cloud-letters were a useful gift that guaranteed her words would spread swiftly whenever others were around to see them.

  “The deadline for my next gossip column in Teen Scrollazine is tomorrow,” Pheme went on. She sounded a little frantic. “And right now I only have one solid item. I need at least one more idea—fast! Two, if possible. Can you help? Got a little inspiration to spare maybe?”

  Calliope shrugged uncertainly as Pheme climbed the stairs with her. “I don’t really know much about the gossip . . . er . . . news around here.” At times like this Calliope almost wished her fellow students didn’t know she was a Muse. She really needed to get going on her Architecture-ology project! But then she realized that she did have something she could share. So she told Pheme about tomorrow’s festival.

  “Oh, thanks. I’d forgotten about that,” said Pheme. “I need details, though. You and your sisters will be singing in it, right?”

  Calliope nodded as they reached the second floor. “Yes, and I just heard that Marsyas and Apollo are going to have a musical battle at the festival.”

  “Ooh! Really?” Pheme licked her lips, her eyes shining with excitement now. “That’s perfect! Tell me more,” she pleaded. So as they continued up to the fourth floor, Calliope told her everything she’d overheard just minutes before.

  “Thanks mega-much,” Pheme said at last. “That’s a real scoop!”

  “You’re welcome,” said Calliope. “So what was the news you already had?” she asked, curious.

  “Oh, it’s one-and-a-half-week-old news, really,” Pheme said. “About the stolen Hero-ology classroom game pieces.”

  In the act of pushing through the door into the girls’ dorm hall, Calliope froze to look back at Pheme. “Stolen? For real? I mean, I thought they were just missing, as in misplaced.”

  “Nope. Stolen,” Pheme affirmed as they entered the hall. “I was in the office this morning and overheard Mr. Cyclops tell Principal Zeus that at first he thought someone at MOA had hidden the game pieces as a prank. He felt sure they’d be returned in a day or two. But since they haven’t been, now he thinks they were kidnapped!”

  After saying this, she reached above her head and quickly brushed away her cloud-letters, even though no one else was around in the dorm right then to read them.

  “Whoa!” Calliope exclaimed. She turned the knob on the door to her room and nudged the door open with one shoulder. “So, nobody has any idea who took them?”

  Pheme shook her head. “Nuh-uh. But keep this conversation to yourself till the scrollazine is out, okay?” she said before brushing away her cloud-words again. “I want to be the one to spread the news.”

  “Sure,” said Calliope.

  Distracted by the sound of another door opening, Pheme turned her head to look down the hall. Her eyes lit up at what she’d spotted. Calliope leaned back from the doorway to see Aphrodite coming toward them, holding her sweet black-and-white kitten, Adonis. The kitten was wearing an adorable little tunic edged in gold that matched the one Aphrodite was wearing.

  “Wow. I have got to ask her about those matching outfits—might be another good item for my column,” Pheme murmured. With a quick wave, she dashed off to intercept Aphrodite, calling over her shoulder to Calliope, “Thanks a bunch for the help! And good luck in the festival!”

  Hmm. Aphrodite rooms alone, Calliope thought as she shut herself inside her room. So did Pheme, for that matter. Roommate possibilities? She’d have to think about it.

  Once inside, Calliope found a note that had been slipped under her door. It was from her sister Urania. Don’t forget to practice our new song, the note said. Calliope frowned in annoyance. Her sisters were always giving her little prods, “helpful” tips, and gentle reminders like this one. As if she weren’t old enough to figure out for herself what she needed to do!

  It didn’t help that within their chosen areas of expertise, her eight older sisters were all mega-high-achieving and successful. Urania was not only an inspiring teacher but a well-respected amateur astronomer. Clio was a historian. Melpomene wrote tragedies, and Thalia, comedies. Euterpe played flute in an orchestra in Olympia, and also wrote lyric poetry. Erato wrote poems about love, while Polyhymnia’s poems were of a more spiritual nature. And Terpsichore, who was Calliope’s favorite sister because she was kind and gentle and hardly ever nagged, was a fabulous dancer who performed all over Greece.

  Having such amazingly accomplished sisters meant that Calliope had a lot to live up to. But did their successes give them the right to try to run her life too?

  “Anyway, I can’t practice my song right now because I’ve got something else to do,” she informed the note, as if it were actually her sister. “Namely, stop myself from flunking Architecture-ology!” Not that she’d ever really voice that last thing to her sister, mind you.

  She wadded up Urania’s note and tossed it into a high arc. Thunk! It landed in her trash can to join several others sent to her just yesterday by various sisters.

  Settling at her desk, she took out a sheet of papyrus and a feather pen. Calliope had at least a dozen pens scattered around her room—attached to the door, on shelves above her bed, even inside her closet—so that she’d always have one close at hand whenever inspiration struck. If she didn’t write ideas down, she often forgot them when they were crowded out by other, newer ideas that came into her mind.

  The first thing she needed to do, of course, was to decide what kind of building she wanted to design for her project. Mr. Libon was right about one thing. Until she made up her mind about that, she couldn’t really get started.

  She began by scribbling a list of ideas. Then beside each she wrote the pros and cons of choosing that particular idea. Her list included temples, houses, coliseums, gymnasiums, and more. Unfortunately, she wasn’t all that excited about any of the possibilities she’d come up with so far. Her mind wandered and she started to imagine more unusual project ideas.

  While staring at her feather pen, an image of a building made of feathers shaped like a nest popped into her head. Possibly a birdbrained idea, but you never knew. She jotted the idea down.

  Or maybe she could design a house sort of like her childhood home on the slopes of Mount Helicon, which stood in a meadow with freshwater springs. Only, this new house would have a turf roof seeded with flowers. It could be built up on stilts and have a spring flowing under it.

  Before she knew it, she was off and running with new ideas, completely abandoning her pros and cons list. Soon she had jotted down twenty-five all-new project possibilities. These included a tall building shaped like a thunderbolt, a mobile chariot-racing arena that could move from city to city on a cloud, and a store selling winged sandals that was shaped like a giant foot. Godsamighty! Every time she tried to rein in her mi
nd, it reacted like a wild horse, breaking free from restraints and racing away. It was like her mind had a mind of its own!

  She tossed aside her pen in frustration and got up from her desk. Movement often helped to clear her head, so she began to pace the narrow aisle that divided her room in two. Each side had a bed, a closet, and a desk, but Calliope was only using the left half of the room since she had no roommate—yet.

  Until she’d come to MOA, she’d always thought she’d like not having to share sleeping space the way she had with her sisters back home. There she’d shared with different sisters at different times, rotating around over the years as they were growing up.

  Here in the dorm she’d quickly discovered that she didn’t like rooming alone. Recently she’d invited a girl named Aglaia from her first-period Music-ology class to spend the night with her. They’d had a great time together chatting and laughing. Calliope had kind of been hoping they might become roommates, but then she’d found out that Aglaia already had a roommate—the goddessgirl of the hearth, Hestia.

  Too bad! Not the end of the world, though. There were other girls without roommates, such as Medusa and Aphrodite. Pheme, too.

  Calliope plopped onto her bed, picked up her flower-shaped pillow, and spoke to the smiley face in its yellow center. “But to tell you the truth, as much as I like that goddessgirl of gossip, I don’t think we’d want to room with her, do you?”

  She turned the pillow back and forth in her hands so that it seemed to be shaking its head. “Yeah, exactly. I’d feel like I’d need to take care in everything I said so it wouldn’t get repeated in cloud-letters to everyone at MOA,” she told it.

  Hugging the pillow, Calliope gazed at the right half of her room. She had made up the extra bed with some of the school’s linens when Aglaia had come to spend the night. The plain white comforter, which was still on the bed, was stamped with an MOA logo and a thunderbolt—Principal Zeus’s symbol. Otherwise, she’d left that side of her room empty and bare, including the walls. When she did find a roommate (and she kept telling herself it was only a matter of time), her roomie would want to decorate to her own taste.