Dancing Days

by Val St. Crowe

  Chapter Fourteen

  But it wasn’t so easy to start creating again. Nora hadn’t really made anything since May Day, and now it was midsummer. She dutifully did as Phoebe asked and tried to make decorations for the science and math gala. But she had trouble coming up with ideas. She went to the math enclave, asking them what they wanted, and they told her to do what she liked, to let the inspiration take her. But try as Nora might, she couldn’t find the inspiration.

  She met Sawyer and Maddie that evening at the main fire pit for dinner, and she wasn’t in a particularly good mood. “Something’s wrong with me,” she told them as she dipped some curry onto the bed of rice on her plate.

  “Oh,” said Sawyer, “you mean the way you’re always chewing on your lip? I think it actually makes you look sort of cute, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

  Nora chewed on her lip. “Do I really do that a lot?”

  Maddie put several slices of mushroom goat cheese pizza on her plate. “You should try this pizza. My mom made it, and it’s excellent.”

  “Curry and pizza?” Nora shook her head. “I’m serious, though. Something’s wrong. When I went to see Phoebe today, she told me I should volunteer to help with making decorations for the science and math gala—”

  “Oh yeah.” Maddie sat down on a bench next to the fire. “Why did you have to go see Phoebe anyway?”

  “Oh, it was weird,” said Nora, sitting down next to her. “You know how Agler punched Owen, right?”

  Sawyer sat down. “Agler punched Owen? You left this out. Why?”

  “Because Owen was being an ass,” said Nora. “Anyway, Owen had two black eyes and apparently he went crying to Phoebe about it.”

  “Black eyes?” said Maddie. “You’re kidding me. Agler wouldn’t do that.”

  “It was Owen’s fault,” said Nora. “Even Phoebe agrees. She said that Owen’s a bad seed or something, but she’s sure he’s not making the portals, and she told me I should focus on creating instead of spying on people.”

  “Paint me a picture here,” said Sawyer. “What did Owen look like when Agler punched him? Did he cry?” He snickered.

  “Sawyer!” said Maddie. “It’s disturbing to think Agler’s giving people black eyes.”

  “Owen laughed,” said Nora. “Because he wanted Agler to do it. It was seriously screwed up. Owen was bleeding all over the place, laughing, and telling Agler to hit him again. But that’s not the point. The point is that I did what Phoebe said, and I started trying to make decorations for the gala.”

  “Did you say that Phoebe doesn’t think Owen’s making the portals?” Maddie took a bite of her pizza.

  “She knows he’s not,” said Nora. “She said that she can tell the portals are being made from the inside, because she’s head of the council, and Owen couldn’t have done it, because he wasn’t inside Helicon when all of them were made.”

  “Maybe he was able to get in and wasn’t telling you,” said Sawyer. “When you were in the mundane world?”

  “No,” said Nora. “I don’t think so. Phoebe set me straight anyway. She said that we’re muses, and we’re supposed to be creating all the time, not doing detective work. And she’s right. We need to create.”

  “But it was your idea to launch an investigation in the first place,” said Sawyer.

  “Actually, it was yours,” said Nora. “And we haven’t figured one single thing out the whole time we’ve been ‘investigating.’ So, we’re just going to drop the whole thing. We’re going to let the council handle it. We’re not going to worry about the portals.”

  “But what about Dionysus?” said Maddie.

  Nora stirred her curry with a fork. “Well, she did get really touchy about that. But she admitted they had an affair a hundred years ago.”

  “So maybe she’s covering for him,” said Maddie.

  “This isn’t important,” said Nora. “What’s important is I can’t create anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” said Sawyer.

  “I’ve been trying to make decorations all afternoon,” said Nora. “I can’t get an idea. I tried to ask the science and math people what they wanted, and they said to let the inspiration take me. Do whatever I wanted. But I don’t know what I want. I have no ideas at all.”

  “Probably because you’re still worried about the portals and stuff,” said Maddie. “It might be easy for Phoebe to tell you to switch it off, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually easy.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Nora. “Something is really wrong. Eventually, I decided I’d just cut out a bunch of numbers from poster board and paint them.”

  “See, you did get an idea,” said Sawyer. “Maybe you’re worrying too much.”

  Nora shook her head. “I can’t draw anymore.”

  “Nora, don’t be ridiculous,” said Maddie.

  “They look like a two-year-old did them,” said Nora. “My fingers won’t do straight lines. I can’t make the scissors work without making mistakes. They’re bad.”

  “You’re being hard on yourself,” said Sawyer.

  “I’m not,” said Nora. “Theia Spring came by and looked at it, and she told me that I should go back to my tent and get some rest. And then she took them away and threw them on the scrap pile.”

  Maddie patted Nora’s hand. “You still aren’t over Owen,” she said.

  “That’s just it,” said Nora. “Phoebe told me that wasn’t a good excuse. She said to use my pain to spur my creativity.”

  “Well,” said Sawyer, “maybe you shouldn’t be making decorations then. Maybe you should be writing sappy poetry or singing angry songs while accompanying yourself on the guitar.”

  Maddie nodded. “He’s got a point.” She popped the last bite of pizza into her mouth.