Agler grinned. “The Freya year was my personal favorite. It was the one with the nudity, right?”
Maddie shoved him. “Seriously. I felt so bad for the main character. You could tell that he didn’t really want to kill his uncle.”
“Are you kidding?” Lute said. “He had to kill his uncle. His uncle killed his dad and took his throne away from him.”
“Yeah,” said Maddie. “But if he’d really wanted to do it, he would have just done it, you know? Instead he played that game pretending like he was crazy.”
“I actually thought he was crazy by the end of it,” Sawyer said. “Like it was an act for so long that it overtook him, and that he couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.”
Maddie shivered. “That would be horrible.”
Lute leaned close to Sawyer. “Well, I thought it was nice getting to relax and be entertained. Overall, I had a good time today.”
Sawyer grinned at him. “Me too. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good time.”
And it was quiet, because that reminded everybody of why good times were not to be had these days.
“It was nice to see Nora in the play,” Maddie said.
“Yeah,” Agler said. “I didn’t even know she was doing it.”
“And,” Lute said. “Owen was helping out with the play as well. Did you see him moving some of the sets during the scene changes?”
“That was Owen?” Sawyer said. “That’s odd. Doesn’t seem like something he would want to do.”
“Maybe we’ve got it all backwards,” Lute said. “It’s not that Nora’s under a spell, but that Owen is.”
Sawyer laughed. “What do you mean?”
Lute shrugged. “Maybe that’s why Nora and Phoebe are so certain that Owen isn’t doing anything that horrible. Because they are, you know, controlling him. Like with a spell.”
Agler shook his head. “Nora wouldn’t do that.”
“Phoebe wouldn’t do that,” Maddie said.
And then they all looked at each other, as if they weren’t quite sure.
* * *
Sawyer spent all his time trying to figure out what the connection between Owen and the gods might be. He considered some various options. He thought that perhaps, because Owen was half-god, he could access the gods’ power. Maybe that was why Phoebe had felt the power disturbance and associated it with Owen.
After all, Owen had channeled the power of Helicon before. And he’d done that by using the power of Dionysus. So, if he could do that, then maybe he could also do this thing.
Then he thought that maybe Owen was just taking the gods’ power by brute force, using some kind of powerful magic to absorb as much power as he possibly could. If that were the case, then Owen might be quite dangerous.
He set about trying to figure out ways to prove these things. He wanted something that would allow him to trace the power that Owen had. He knew that Phoebe could sense it, and if that was so, it must be measurable.
That must mean that there was a way of discovering it.
But he got nowhere in his inquiries. He went to the muses in the story enclave, because they had books, and he looked for information. The books were no help, however. They were all fiction—none had any information about power and magic.
Tweens weren’t allowed to use muse magic anyway. They contributed to inspiration threads just by being creative, but they couldn’t create inspiration threads or anything like that. Sawyer wouldn’t be able to do that until he came of age at twenty-five.
But his attempts to question muses who were already of age about power came to nothing as well. They didn’t know how they did what they did. They only knew the steps that they took to get it done. They didn’t understand the inner workings, and—what was more—they didn’t seem interested in understanding them. They were far more interested in just being creative.
Even the science enclave, which purported to do experiments and figure things out, wasn’t much interested in this. The muse he asked said, “Magic isn’t really all that scientific, you know. It doesn’t follow the same kinds of properties as the physical world.”
Sawyer felt like he wasn’t making any headway. He didn’t know what to do.
At night, he would lie awake, consumed by his own thoughts, listening to Lute snore gently in the hammock next to him. He was grateful that he seemed to have patched things up with Lute—at least, Lute wasn’t overtly angry with him anymore. He hadn’t much changed his ways, but Lute seemed to have accepted his distracted behavior. Things had been sweet between them lately. Sawyer didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have Lute. The few brief moments that they spent together at the end of the evening, being intimate, were some of the few times when he could really clear his mind and think of nothing but the passing pleasure that he and Lute created together.
Sawyer appreciated it more than he could say. He knew that he needed to do something for Lute. He didn’t think that he would make it if hadn’t been for his boyfriend. And he knew that he hadn’t been showing his gratitude.
But every time that he would try to think through what he could do for Lute, he would become distracted by some errant thought about Owen, or Nora, or the gods. He couldn’t get that out of his head.
One night, as he was trying to go to sleep, he was trying to think of everything that he knew about the gods in the first place. He remembered the story that Ned Willow had told them years ago. Phoebe Rain had been seduced by Dionysus, who had convinced her to link the power of Helicon to the power of the gods, because they were losing their own power. Phoebe had done so, funneling all of the power of creativity into the gods.
But it hadn’t mattered. The gods had fallen, anyway. And when they’d done so, they done massive damage to Helicon. The message of that story was that Helicon could not be used for any other purpose besides the purpose to create.
But now he realized that Ned Willow hadn’t been abundantly clear about what happened to the gods.
And that was when it dawned on him. If he wanted to know about the gods, if he wanted to know about the gods’ power, there was one person he needed to talk to.
Ned Willow.
The next morning at breakfast, he told the others what he thought. They were all in agreement that a trip up to see Ned Willow seemed like a good idea. So, after breakfast they gathered up some things, then they headed north into the woods above Helicon. That was where Ned Willow lived. He was an older muse, and he claimed he didn’t like all the noise in Helicon. Once, he’d come out at the Summer Solstice to tell them a story. But generally, he kept to himself.
After walking for quite some time, they came to Ned’s tent. Ned had set up out in a clearing in the woods. They found him whistling as he soaked several articles of clothing in a big tub of soapy water. He even had a washboard, which he was using to scrub his clothes.
But when he heard their approach, he stood up, eyes alert. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Sawyer Snow,” Sawyer called back. He presented himself, moving forward into Ned’s vision.
Ned squinted. “Oh, you. The boy who wears skirts.”
Sawyer smiled. “That’s me, all right.” He held up the basket that they’d taken from the food enclave. “We brought you some marmalade. Also some biscuits and butter.”
Ned’s eyes lit up. “Marmalade! Well, that’s wonderful. One of the things I miss the most about being back in Helicon is marmalade. How did you know?”
“You’ve mentioned it,” Sawyer said.
“Have I really?” Ned smiled at Sawyer.
Sawyer gestured. “These are my friends. You remember Maddie?”
Ned scrutinized her for a minute. Then he shook his head. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Maddie said. “It was years ago, and I weighed a lot more back then.”
“Where’s the other girl?” Ned looked around. “What was her name? Nora?”
Sawyer sighed. “Nora is… well, it’s a long story.”
N
ed smiled. “Stories are what I do,” he said.
“I know,” Sawyer said. “That’s why we’re here. We wondered if you could tell us a story.”
“Any old story? Or a specific story?” Ned asked.
“A specific one,” Sawyer said. “The story of what happened to the gods.”
Ned nodded slowly. “Ah, yes. That is quite a story. Well, I’ll tell you what. How about a trade? You tell me the story of Nora, and I’ll tell you the story of the gods.”
* * *
“And so we came back from the fairy world, and eventually I thought of you,” Sawyer said, finishing up.
Ned Willow looked delighted. “What a story,” he said breathlessly. “There’s only one thing that’s wrong with it. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of ending.”
“Well it’s not just a story,” Sawyer said. “It really happened. It’s really happening right now.”
Ned chuckled. “Yes, well, all stories—at least good stories—have a good bit of truth in them. And all truths have a good bit of story in them.”
Sawyer wasn’t really sure what he meant by that. If he had hoped that Ned would jump in with some sort of good advice about what to do about the Nora situation, he was sadly mistaken. Ned didn’t seem to care at all about any of it. He was only concerned with stories. He was just like most of the muses in Helicon. Concerned more with creating than with possible danger. Sawyer sighed.
Ned was sitting up in a tall chair that was covered in rugs. The four of them were sitting below him, reclining on other comfortable rugs and soft blankets.
Ned pointed to the basket. “Someone should make up some biscuits and marmalade for us all while I tell the story of the gods.”
Maddie shook her head. “Oh, no, Ned. That marmalade is for you.”
Ned chuckled. “You put four jars of it in there. There’s no way I’ll be able to eat it all before it goes bad. Besides, the joy of eating marmalade is eating marmalade with friends.”
So, there was marmalade and biscuits.
Ned Willow took a biscuit from Maddie when she handed it to him, and smiled. He took a bite, his eyes closed. “This is wonderful.” Then he opened his eyes. “Are you all comfortable?”
They all nodded.
He smiled. “Well, then. I shall begin. Imagine then, that you are a young person living in Rome in the last days of the Roman Empire. You, of course, do not know that this is Rome’s last days. You have no conception of that. You think that life will go on just the way that is now, forever. Because that is what young people think.” He looked out over them as if he expected them to disagree.
Sawyer did, but he didn’t say anything.
“What kind of relationship do you, a young person in Rome, have with the gods?” Ned paused, but not for long. “Not much of one. If you happen to be a slave or a peasant in the fields or a very young woman or perhaps a rare zealot, you fervently worship them and think them to be holy.
“And if you are anyone else? Well, you are inclined to think them mostly nice stories to illustrate certain lessons about life. But you don’t seriously think they are real. And therein lies the problem, you see.
“Because gods who are rather universally considered to be nothing more than nice stories are gods that quickly lose any power at all. And so, the gods began to fade away. Simple as that.” Ned chuckled a bit.
Sawyer was afraid that Ned was going to stop. That was the end of the story? That was it?
But he needed have worried, because Ned held up a finger. “Where did the gods go, though? That’s what we want to know. It’s perhaps a misnomer to worry about such things. After all, in a manner of speaking, the gods have gone nowhere. The gods are still around. The way that the gods are being interacted with, well, that’s changed.
“I can see in your expressions that you’re confused by what I said. It seems in some ways to be a paradox. But I assure you, it is not. For a way to perhaps understand what it is I’m talking about, we should turn to the muses themselves.
“Now what is a muse? A muse is creativity. That is what muses exist to do, that is what they are consumed with, and so that is what they are. So, when a muse dies, the muse’s spirit goes back to the collective spirit of creativity.
“And when a god dies, the god’s spirit goes back to the Influence.”
Sawyer leaned forward. The Influence? But the Influence was the opposite of the muses. Its powers destroyed them. The Influence was the reason that they couldn’t be creative in the mundane world. Doing something creative there was a beacon to the Influence, which then came and destroyed the muse. And that first year that Nora had come to Helicon, the Influence had been bursting through, because Dirk had been making holes in Helicon, letting it in. The Influence was dangerous. How could the gods be part of the Influence?
“Maybe I’m putting it badly,” Ned said. “It is the Influence itself that gives a god his power. Just as creativity gives a muse her power, her life. If one were to take the creativity from a muse, she would die. If one were to take the Influence from a god, he would die as well.
“And, indeed, that is what happened to the gods. One day, the gods were imbued with massive amounts of power, and the next day they found their power was waning. You all remember the story I told you of what they did when they found their power was waning. They came to Phoebe Rain, and she gave them the power of Helicon. And the results were disastrous.
“But why would the gods be dying in the first place? What was it that was making the gods need to steal the power of creativity?
“Well, it’s quite simple. Gods derive their power from those who believe in them. It’s a symbiotic relationship, just as the relationship between the muses and humans is symbiotic. The muses inspire by sending out inspiration threads. And then the people are creative and that creative power comes back to the muses. It’s really quite beautiful. The same is true of the gods. The gods give people comfort, give them rules, give them hope, and the people worship them, and that worship comes back to nourish the gods.
“So, again, imagine that you are a young person in ancient Rome. Perhaps, when you were quite small, your nursemaid told you stories of Jupiter and Hercules. You thought the stories were wonderful, and you truly thought that the gods were living on Mount Olympus, that Apollo was pulling the sun across the sky in his chariot.
“And then you grew older and you began to listen to the philosophers, to the sages, and it became clear to you that there was no chariot—indeed, that the sun was very probably not even moving. And so you resolved to yourself that when your children heard these same stories, you would be sure to tell them that they were completely made up. That they weren’t true at all.
“Within a few generations, you see, the number of people who truly believed in the gods dwindled rather radically. And then there were invaders, and they tore down Rome, and they brought their own gods. So, less and less people believed in the gods. Less belief meant less power.
“But the power didn’t simply disappear. It just shifted from the gods to other institutions and beliefs, which are all governed by the Influence, as the gods were.
“The gods are in the Influence, then. They fought long and hard not to go, but in the end, that was that. They were used up. Their time on the earth had come and gone. They had to leave.
“Most gods go gracefully. It was only those of the Greek pantheon that begged Phoebe for power. They were the gods who could not bear to leave the world, to let their stranglehold on civilization fade. And perhaps it’s because of that tenacious desire to hang on that they still remain some of the most popular gods. Many people have heard of Cupid or Venus. But far fewer have heard of Osiris or Odin.
“The Norse gods, they were most graceful of all… They had always known they were fighting a losing battle. They thought it would be the frost giants that did them in at Ragnarok, but…” Ned shook his head, chuckling to himself. “No, eventually there, it was invaders as well. They were supplanted by other beliefs, by other—
”
Sawyer broke in. “What about Loki?”
Ned made a face. “You’re interrupting the story. That’s quite rude.”
“I’m sorry,” Sawyer said.
“Yes, well, as I was saying—”
“But really, what about Loki?” Sawyer said. He couldn’t help it. It didn’t make any sense.
Ned made a face. “What about him?”
“Well, why is he around still? Most people don’t believe in Loki anymore, do they? And what about his daughter, Hel? She was still running the entire underworld.”
“It’s just a story,” Ned said.
Sawyer narrowed his eyes. “Just a story? Then it’s not true?”
Ned sighed. “I believe I covered this when we started, didn’t I?”
“So you’re saying we can’t believe anything you just told us?” Sawyer said.
“I’m not saying that at all,” Ned said. “The story of Loki, the story of Hel, the story of any number of gods and goddesses that you may come across are not the stories that I’m telling right now. Now, are they?”
“I guess not,” Sawyer said.
Ned took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve completely forgotten where I was.” He looked around at everyone else. “Anyone remember the last thing I said?”
Everyone was quiet, looking at each other, hoping that someone would speak up.
Ned sighed again. “Oh, well. At least we have more marmalade.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Owen wasn’t able to get his group of loyals together until high summer. He set the time for the meeting to be sometime in the morning, because most people thought he slept all morning—Nora included. That was the only way that he would be able to get out undetected.
They met in the forest, sometime around midmorning. The air was mild. A bit of dew still clung to the grass and birds called to each other from the branches on the surrounding trees.
The beginning of the meeting with little more than a review of everything that he had talked of before. He spoke of the desperate need in Helicon for better security and for a more serious governing body. And as he spoke, the muses who had come all nodded their support. They were with him.
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