Calliope the Muse

by Joan Holub

  She would know, thought Calliope. Artemis must’ve had plenty of practice aiming at both in archery matches. Although it seemed clear that Amphitrite had ringed Nectar by accident, it had still been an amazing feat.

  “Twenty points, then,” Iris announced cheerfully. “Who wants to go next?”

  “Me?” asked Pandora reaching for the rainbow ring. Even when something wasn’t a question, Pandora made it sound like one. Her blue-and-gold bangs were a mark of her super-curious nature, often taking the shape of question marks.

  Iris handed Pandora the rainbow ring. Right away the curious girl accidentally flung it straight up in the air. “Oops,” said Pandora as the ring hit the ceiling directly above the group of girls. It ricocheted off, then plummeted down to land squarely (or rather, circlel-y) around the dozen snakes atop Medusa’s head, looking like a colorful crown.

  “Sorry!” said Pandora. “I guess my aim isn’t very good?”

  “Ya think?” Medusa remarked wryly.

  But there was no real harm done. Since the rainbow ring was made of actual rays of colored light, it weighed nothing at all. Medusa’s snakes wriggled out from under it in no time, and the ring flew back to Iris.

  Artemis went next. Using her archer’s eye, she took careful aim before flinging the rainbow circlet. It shot down the hall all the way to Calliope’s door and neatly ringed her doorknob.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Calliope congratulated her as everyone cheered. This wasn’t exactly the same thing as an arrow hitting the center of the target, but it seemed close enough, and Artemis seemed to understand what she’d meant.

  “Score! That’s worth fifty points and puts Artemis is the lead,” Iris announced.

  Several more girls took turns. Two of them scored zero and two ringed doorknobs halfway down the hall, for twenty points each.

  Finally Calliope volunteered to try her luck. As she drew the ring back, preparing to fling it, it slipped from her hand and plopped to the floor behind her. “Ye gods, I flubbed that one!” she exclaimed in dismay. But then she glanced over at Iris and grinned. “Do you give negative points?”

  The girls all laughed. “That one doesn’t count,” Iris said generously. “Try again.”

  So she did. This time she managed to ring a doorknob that was three quarters of the way down the hall. “Woo-hoo!” Calliope shouted when Iris awarded her a respectable thirty points. This was fun! She felt like one of the group, fitting in with everyone and laughing and hanging out. It was the same kind of feeling she’d had growing up with her sisters back home.

  After three rounds the game finally broke up. Since hurling rainbows with great accuracy was second nature to Iris, she had taken herself out of the competition. Therefore, to nobody’s surprise, Artemis was declared the winner. Her potential roommate truly was quite an athlete, Calliope thought admiringly. She herself had placed somewhere in the middle of the group’s scores, which was totally cool with her.

  When the two girls returned to Artemis’s room, her dogs slunk away with their tails tucked, instead of running to the door to greet them. “Uh-oh,” said Artemis. “They only act like that if they’re expecting to be scolded. What did you do, guys?” Both girls glanced around the room.

  Then Calliope gasped, spotting the now empty bowls for the chips and dip. They licked those bowls clean. And my design! Oh no!” Not only had the dogs polished off the snacks, but they’d also chewed her library design for Architecture-ology class to shreds.

  “I’m sooo sorry!” Artemis exclaimed. “It’s probably because your paper had dip on it. It smelled like food.” Meanwhile, her dogs guiltily avoided looking either girl in the eye, as if they realized that Artemis had been apologizing on their behalf.

  “It’s okay,” Calliope said lightly. “I can make a new sketch tomorrow.”

  Sensing that she wasn’t too mad, the dogs began to tentatively wag their tails. And when she knelt on the floor at their level and smiled at them, they went wild with relief. They leaped upon her and licked her hands and face. She patted Suez’s head, rubbed Nectar behind his ears, and scratched Amby’s stomach. “Yeah, I forgive you,” she murmured to them.

  Although these guys were sweeties, she could clearly see now that rooming with three rambunctious dogs would be a greater challenge than she was up for. Even if Artemis had been willing to consider becoming roommates, Calliope wasn’t going to ask. Nope. Sharing a room with Artemis—and her dogs—was out.

  Which meant she was back to square one on the roommate search. Plus, she’d have to redraw her design. Still, thanks to Artemis, she at least had an idea for a project now. She wished she felt wildly excited about it, but already her original enthusiasm had dimmed. Maybe that was okay. A library was a more practical idea than a cloud-based chariot-racing arena, for sure!

  After petting each of the dogs one last time, she said “Night” to Artemis and went up the hall to her lonely room.

  9

  A Fresh Look

  ON MONDAY MORNING THE ACADEMY was abuzz with the news of the mysterious return of the Hero-ology classroom game pieces. Apparently Mr. Cyclops had found them on his desk first thing when he’d come in before the start of classes. Though Calliope was bursting to tell someone the part she’d played in the figures’ reappearance, she held back. She’d begun to wonder if there was something more to Homer’s story about finding the game pieces, and if he might actually know the real thief’s identity. Who could he be covering for? Someone at MOA? A student? A teacher?

  When she entered Architecture-ology class at the end of the day, she went straight up to Mr. Libon at his desk. “I’ve decided to design a library for my project,” she told him.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Glad to hear you have a direction now.” She cringed when he added, “Especially since the project is due in two more days.”

  “I have a rough sketch,” she said quickly. She’d redrawn it on Sunday. As she took it from her schoolbag and handed it to him, she told him how Artemis’s dogs had chewed up her first sketch.

  He laughed. “So you’re saying that a dog ate your homework? For real?”

  She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, thanks for this,” Mr. Libon said. “I’ll look it over. You can have it back at the end of the period.”

  “Okay. Thanks,” said Calliope. Just then the lyrebell chimed, so she went to take her seat.

  When Mr. Libon stood up to address the class, a few random building model parts tumbled from his desktop to the floor, but he paid no attention to them as he began to speak. “Over the weekend I had a chance to think more about the project ideas you’ve all been working on and discussing. They’re all generally good as far as they go. . . .” He paused to look around the room. “But many don’t go far enough.”

  The class seemed to heave a collective sigh, and they all looked around at each other in surprise and concern. What did he mean by that? Calliope wondered anxiously.

  Mr. Libon leaned forward. “While it’s fine to repeat elements of a building design already in existence, I want you to strive to add something new or different. As an example, think about how Doric columns evolved into Ionic columns and then Corinthian columns. They went from simple to complex, right? Each change added something fresh.”

  Uh-oh, thought Calliope. Could she honestly say there was anything particularly fresh about her library design so far? Not really. Yes, she’d made her library look like a temple, but lots of buildings resembled temples. And the shelves inside her temple were just what you’d expect to see in any old library.

  “To get a fresh look at something, sometimes two or more heads are better than one,” Mr. Libon went on.

  “Then Ms. Hydra must be really good at taking a fresh look at stuff, since she’s got nine heads,” joked Poseidon.

  Mr. Libon gave him a tolerant smile as numerous students laughed. Then the teacher had the students count off to randomly form five groups of four or five students each. “Within your group you are to take turns asking qu
estions about each other’s designs in order to generate ideas to help make those designs more distinctive,” he instructed them. “Get creative. Set your minds free. Think, ‘What if . . . ?’ ”

  Yeah, like what if Mr. Libon hadn’t decided to make this project even more complex, thought Calliope. It turned out she was a number three, so she moved her chair to the back of the room to work with her team. Poseidon, Amphitrite, and Dionysus were also threes.

  In typical fashion Calliope was able to come up with all sorts of good ideas for the others in her group. They spent a lot of time talking about Amphitrite’s undersea garden, the theater Dionysus was designing, and Poseidon’s plan for a new water park. But the end-of-class lyrebell rang before Calliope could even share her library design.

  “I’m so sorry we used up all the time,” Amphitrite told her. “It wasn’t fair that you didn’t get any feedback on your project. Though, you probably don’t need anyone’s help, being a Muse. I bet you’ve got more great ideas than you can even use.”

  More ideas than she could use? Amphitrite didn’t seem to realize that having lots of ideas wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Thank godness Artemis had suggested an idea that Calliope felt she could run with. Even if it wasn’t a fresh idea like Mr. Libon wanted.

  “S’okay,” said Calliope as the four threes grabbed their chairs to move them back to their desks.

  “No, it’s not,” Amphitrite insisted, dragging her chair alongside Calliope’s.

  Suddenly it occurred to Calliope that she was passing up a golden opportunity to check out Amphitrite as possible roommate material—to see how they got along when it was just the two of them.

  “Well, it would be nice to discuss what I’m working on with someone,” she said. “I mean, if you aren’t busy tonight, maybe we could get together after dinner?”

  The girls reached their desks and shoved their chairs under them. “Oh, sorry,” said Amphitrite. “I’m busy tonight. Poseidon’s giving me a tour of some of his water parks. I’m hoping to get ideas from him for building myself a fountain here at MOA, where I can sleep at night.” She paused. “But I have time to talk about your project now if—”

  Calliope interrupted her with a shake of her head. “I’m meeting one of my sisters at the IM this afternoon to go shopping.” So much for choosing this girl as a roommate candidate. Calliope was not up for sharing a fountain! Amphitrite could breathe underwater, but Calliope definitely could not.

  “Sounds fun,” Amphitrite said brightly. “I still feel bad that we didn’t get to talk about your—”

  “You ready?” Poseidon called to her from the doorway just then.

  “Oh, sorry, gotta go,” Amphitrite said to Calliope quickly. “We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay?” With that, she grabbed her pearl-beaded schoolbag and took off.

  Calliope stopped by Mr. Libon’s desk on her way out of class to pick up her library design sketch. “It’s a start,” he said with a small smile as he handed it back.

  “Yeah, I know I still have a lot of work to do,” she replied as she slipped the sketch into her bag. She probably should remain at school to work on her project in her dorm room instead of going off to the Immortal Marketplace, she thought as she left Architecture-ology and went by her locker to stash her bag. Still, she was really looking forward to spending time with Terpsichore. And a girl couldn’t be expected to do homework all the time! She’d get a “fresh” start on work later tonight.

  At the entrance to the Academy, she shucked off her regular sandals and grabbed a pair of winged ones from the communal basket inside the doors. Outside, at the top of the granite steps that led down to the marble courtyard below, she slipped the sandals onto her feet. Immediately their straps twined around her ankles and the silver wings at her heels began to flap. In a burst of speed she skimmed down the steps and across the courtyard, moving mere inches above the ground.

  The wind whistled in her ears as she whipped down Mount Olympus to the Immortal Marketplace, which had been built beneath the cloud line halfway between the heavens and Earth. Within minutes she was skidding to a stop at the IM’s entrance. After loosening the straps around her ankles, she looped them to hold the silver wings in place, allowing her to walk at a normal speed.

  The IM was a lavish indoor mall topped by a beautiful high-ceilinged crystal roof. Rows and rows of columns separated the marketplace shops, which sold everything from the newest Greek fashions to tridents and thunderbolts.

  When Calliope reached the central atrium, she spied her sister right away. Dressed in a filmy pink dance chiton and dance slippers—her preferred attire even when she wasn’t performing at a recital—Terpsichore was pirouetting around the atrium fountain. She squealed with joy when she saw Calliope, and danced over to give her a hug.

  “So how did yesterday’s recital go?” Calliope asked as they left the atrium to begin their shopping.

  “Fine,” Terpsichore said. Grinning, she added, “I didn’t trip and fall, anyway.”

  “Ha!” Calliope said. Terpsichore never tripped or fell during performances. Her dancing was always flawless and won high praise from reviewers for the Greekly Weekly News and other news-scrolls.

  “Let’s stop here at Cleo’s,” Terpsichore said when they came to the makeup shop. “I could use a new lip gloss.”

  “Good idea. Pheme said Cleo’s is having a sale,” Calliope informed her.

  The purple-haired, three-eyed owner of Cleo’s Cosmetics wasn’t around when they went in. So they walked up to a sculpted bust of a beautiful goddess that sat on the glass-topped counter. The head statue was surrounded by tubes of lip gloss and bottles and boxes of eye powders and liner, creams, and blushes.

  “May I help you?” the head asked in a rather snooty voice.

  Terpsichore pointed to a tube of pale pink lip gloss. “I’d like that one, please.”

  “Certainly,” the statue replied. “Anything else?”

  An idea popped into Calliope’s brain. “Yes, please. My sister and I would like you to do our makeup,” she announced.

  Terpsichore stared at her in surprise. Then a knowing twinkle came into her eye. “Hoping to impress someone?”

  No wonder her sister was surprised. Calliope had never shown much interest in makeup. “Yeah, I’m hoping to impress upon my sisters that I’ve grown up,” she replied cheekily. In other words, makeup might help her look more like the grown-up goddessgirl she was trying to be, and less like a baby sister!

  “Mm-hm,” said Terpsichore. It was a half-amused, half-suspicious sound.

  What was her older sister thinking? Calliope had only made her makeover suggestion on the spur of the moment. As both girls took seats on cushioned stools at the counter, numerous boxes and bottles in front of them popped open on their own. A half dozen makeup brushes of varying sizes jumped from one of the boxes. Three flew to Calliope, and the other three to Terpsichore. The brushes hovered in the air before each girl for long seconds, as if considering what shades and techniques to try on them.

  Then Calliope’s brushes abruptly swooped to dip themselves in the various containers of makeup on the counter. One flew back to her and began to dust sparkly gold powder onto her eyelids, while another dusted pale powder over her nose. Its bristles tickled a little, and Calliope sneezed.

  “Sorry!” she said when the brush reared back in alarm.

  Terpsichore laughed. “So . . . from what I saw at the music festival, you seem to have made several new friends at MOA,” she said as a makeup brush swished blue powder onto her eyelids.

  “Yeah, the girls are pretty cool,” Calliope said as another of the brushes swept a pinky-red blusher across her cheeks. She knew Terpsichore was proud of her for getting accepted at the Academy, so Calliope didn’t admit that she missed her sisters horribly and was longing for a roommate.

  “And how are your classes?” Terpsichore prodded.

  “I’m designing a library for my Architecture-ology project,” she blurted. She hadn’t meant to bring
that up. The words had slipped out only because it was worrying her. “A special library for serious scholars,” she added, having just decided on this. “With scrollbooks about all the newest discoveries in science, history, and the arts.”

  “Oh, kind of like the Museum in Alexandria, Egypt?” Terpsichore said.

  Calliope blinked. “Yes, kind of like that,” she conceded. She hadn’t really been thinking about that place, but her idea was kind of similar. Too similar? Her heart sank.

  Terspchore laughed. “Remember how the guys who built it told us it would make a perfect home for us Muses? And that’s why they named their library a museum?”

  Calliope remembered and shot her sister a smile. An orangey-red lip gloss that had flown over and begun to dash color onto her lips patiently backed away as she spoke. “Yeah. As if we would have wanted to grow up anywhere besides the springs and meadows of beautiful Mount Helicon. I mean, we already had a home!”

  “Please!” the snooty head on the counter commanded. “Let the artists do their work!” The sisters grinned at each other but remained still and silent for the final minutes of their makeovers.

  Before leaving Cleo’s, Terpsichore insisted on buying Calliope all the makeup she’d tried on, which included the orangey-red lip gloss. It really looked great with her red hair.

  Just outside the shop the sisters ran into Aphrodite. She was holding two large shopping bags that appeared to be full of new clothes.

  “Love your makeup!” she exclaimed to Calliope.

  “Thanks,” Calliope said, pleased. After all, Aphrodite knew what she was talking about when it came to fashion and makeup. As the goddessgirl of love and beauty, she must also know a lot about crushes. Which would be useful knowledge for a roommate to have. Quickly Calliope introduced Aphrodite to her sister, then asked, “Need some help with those bags?”

  Aphrodite’s blue eyes sparkled as the three of them began walking down the mall, side by side. “No need. My bag-carrying muscles are in good shape. Lots of practice. Shopping’s my passion, what can I say?”