Unchained Melody (25 page)

‘He was mine.’ Imogen said calmly, and then smiled the most bitter, most saddened smile Callie had ever seen. ‘It has been twenty-four years Calliope, and now that you’ve had some time, and a bit of humanity to ponder the bigger picture- I hope you can finally see that.’

Callie shivered. She was soaking wet and the rock beneath her skin was abrasive against her flesh. ‘Who was he? It’s all so hazy still...’

Imogen’s eyelids lowered protectively. ‘Harley Crofton.’ She said softly, twisting a silver ring on her finger. ‘My charge, I was his friend, and then his lover on earth for three years from nineteen seventy-seven.’ She raised a finger to her face and swiped a single tear from beneath her lower lashes. ‘He was going to be a prolific writer, but unlike your friend Hunter, Harley was an old soul. He had many talents, many passions, and for a while there, I was one of them.’ Imogen pulled her knees to her chest, hugging herself. ‘I began to fall in love with him.’

As soon as she said it, Callie saw it. She remembered gathering with her sisters and discussing Imogen’s fixation on the confused human. She remembered now that the wood-pannelled library in her memory had been a small part of an expansive mansion. Harley had been blessed with everything like Ryan had been: looks, money, talent… so much talent.

One night, Callie had been in San Francisco to meet up with Imogen, and that was when she had first met Harley- not knowing who he was, she’d struck up a conversation at the piano bar he was playing at on one of his breaks, and Callie could remember how he’d looked at her, how he’d clung to her every word. She remembered luring him out of there, unaware that Imogen was coming to meet him. Unaware that was, until the day later when she’d seen a framed photo of Harley and Imogen on his mantel.

By then it had been too late. Muses were not supposed to get in the way of one another’s charges. That was why Thespia hadn’t met Ryan and Hunter’s eyes yet- it was forbidden to influence one artist with an opposing art form until they’d reached their potential. It led to mayhem. It often led to the human ending up penniless and unfulfilled. If a human’s path was clear enough, the Muse could look into their eyes and see it- see them in their future. The briefest of glimpses, before they had to look away.

And then Callie’s heart seized again; she could remember looking into Harley’s eyes, and seeing his destiny. That destiny had not been behind a piano, but a desk. She’d known it was wrong, but she’d also been well aware that she was stronger than Imogen at that point. Callie could encourage his musicality, and writing would be something he would return to after, if ever.

‘I was jealous,’ Callie remembered. ‘When I saw you the next day, you were so happy…’ Callie swallowed. ‘I wanted to feel like that, so I kept seeing him…’

‘Behind my back.’ Imogen said sadly. ‘And when it didn’t make you feel the way you’d hoped, you were just going to walk away and leave me with the scraps.’ She twisted her blonde curls, turning her profile to Callie. ‘I knew something was wrong, because he stopped talking to me about the novel, stopped calling me every day, and there were secrets in his eyes. And then I came to his house that night, hoping to revive us, terrified that I had grown too weak to do my job right- and there you were. And there he was; dead.’ Imogen pressed her face into the palms of her hands and began to weep.

Callie was beside herself. In fact, she felt as close to literally being beside herself as someone could. She had barely known Harley, had not been aware of how intense he was, how deep his rivers ran. She had been a strong Muse, more beautiful than any of the others at that point, and he was powerless against her thrall. He’d convinced himself that he was in love with her, and when she’d responded by trying to leave- to move on to bigger and brighter things- that was when he’d fallen apart. ‘It all happened so fast!’ she whispered. ‘I thought he was insane for making that declaration so quickly!’

‘You thought everyone was unbalanced Callie,’ Imogen said bitterly, then sniffled. ‘They were all just pawns that you wanted to move around to a beat. No one mattered, unless they changed the world and you abandoned so many charges halfway through because you’d sensed another, stronger talent elsewhere. When you flittered off, you left misery in your wake; you left entertainers half-fulfilled, unfinished music in drawers, dust-covered instruments were shoved into cellars while your underwear, or a pillow you’d lain on or a photograph of you became more precious to the artist than their art.’ She scowled at Callie. ‘A lot of them didn’t matter, we both know that if a soul is strong enough it will find its destiny, but Harley wasn’t some slacker. He wasn’t meant to be a starving artist.’ Imogen took Callie’s wrist and looked deeply into her eyes. They were black again. ‘His manuscript was going to out-sell The Bible.’

Callie winced. She wasn’t as obsessed with literature as Imogen was but she knew that out-selling the bible was a big deal, or had been back in the seventies anyway.

Imogen nodded and went on. ‘Every book he was going to write was. He was brilliant, and he had a dark sense of humor. But he was unappreciated at first- I could not talk him out of applying to the biggest publishing houses, and so he was turned down, time and time again.’ She glared at Callie. ‘But a small publishing house was going to take him; and they were going to become the biggest of all, on his sales alone. He was going to stick with them, and books were going to come back-big time because his craft would not only enchant readers, but inspire new writers to dig deep.’ She swallowed. ‘But without Harley’s writing, book sales dragged on through the eighties and nineties until recently, when Harry Potter revived reading again. I worked my ass off to get us here! But it’s too late, a global financial crisis is imminent. Companies, bookstores… they’re closing down already and a handful of popular writers aren’t enough to save them. So... doors will shut, and books will close.’ She scowled. ‘Do you even hear what I’m saying Callie?’ She poked Callie in the chest. ‘You’d convinced yourself that Music was the only thing that mattered in the world. And that egotism, that drive to overpower us all? It is single-handedly killing the written word.’

24.

Callie’s stomach lurched. What Imogen was saying couldn’t be true, could it? But it was- she knew it was. Everyone had their person, that special soul who cropped up every couple of years with the potential to monopolize their market, and if Raina (who Callie now saw in her memory as Calliope though she’d never crossed paths with her during her human life) had swept in and tried to make John Lennon a scientist instead of a musician, blood would have been spilled! Even if he had been good with chemistry, that was no excuse for veering someone off their path!

And then Calliope’s palm cupped her open mouth, as it registered with her that time was unaccounted for- conspicuous time. She dropped her hand, balled it, gazed hard up at her sister. ‘How much time lapsed between Harley’s death and my re-birth?’

Imogen frowned. ‘A few earth years, a few days on Helicon where you had been banished to, to await the decision.’

Callie narrowed her eyes as memories of being stripped of her powers and locked away in Helicon began to filter back through her grief and confusion. ‘So which human date did I vanish on?’

A look of comprehension crossed Imogen’s features. ‘Harley died on December sixth, nineteen-eighty. You were stripped of your powers two days later, and in mother’s womb again the day after. The world didn’t feel your full influence again until April in eighty-two.’

Callie felt rage boil her blood. ‘John Lennon?! I vanished on the day John Lennon was killed by an impassioned reader?!’ The flush of Imogen’s cheeks infuriated her. ‘Bill Haley? Bob Marley?’ She got to her feet, recalling now the deaths that had rocked the music world while she’d been huddled under the waterfall on Helicon, trying not to snap necks. ‘Sandra Tilley?! Harry Chapin?! They were all your fault?!’

It was Imogen’s turn to blanch. She looked away. ‘Not all of them died because of your absence or my grief, Callie. Some were unlucky. Others were weak… like Harley.’

‘But Stephen King and Dean Koontz, they benefited from your rage, didn’t they?’

Imogen rolled her eyes. ‘They barely needed my help, Calliope. Unlike Hunter- unlike Harley.’ She smiled slyly. ‘But yes, I had a few good years while you were bound by your own arrogance.’

Calliope the Muse grasped at logical straws, trying to explain away her guilt, and rationalize her anger while Callie the human fell to her knees at Hunter’s name. More memories stemmed from there, not forwards but backwards as her true self struggled to get herself together and scrape the remnants of the human away like so many cobwebs. She saw herself in her glory, saw her running through a field, turning back to a strange man, kissing him passionately and then darting off towards the horizon. Over the edge of the hill, she’d skipped into the air, right into the storm, feeling it catch and buffet her, then diving headfirst back onto another landscape. It was night, a different time zone and Jimmy, Jimmy was asleep. She breathed in and when she exhaled, the mass of her body dissolved and she ascended the darkened bedroom window as a spirit self, curling herself around Jimmy’s head while he slept, whispering to him, humming softly. Jimmy bolted upright calling out her name: Chora which she recalled was a shortened version of Terpsichore- and once she remembered that she vanished from the room and blinked, finding herself standing in an older memory… possibly one of her first as it was much hazier? A little girl, crying in a field, barely clothed, and heartsick. Callie knelt, extended her Lyre to the girl, patted her hand and whispered ‘Listen to how prettily it sings,’ in Greek, and then the smile on the little girl’s face when she thrummed all seven strings made Callie; the real Callie grin.

And then everything flickered and she was on a stage in red leather, and then somewhere else- turning pirouettes across a floor that smelled like no ballet stage Callie had ever experienced but like wool and sweat, and then throwing things at a man’s head, having a wonderful time as she feigned heartbreak and insanity. She was in an office window in a suit with puffed sleeves, and it felt strange to be somewhere so quiet. She came to the window, she smiled at the man across the street from her and then with the grace of the ballerina in her core, Callie as ‘Harmony’ stepped off the sill and swan dove to the street below. A beat later she was in a car, it was skidding out of control on a snowy road and Callie jerked in fear because she had not yet learned how to drive but her memory kept her hands on the wheel and tightened them, feeling gleeful. The man who loved her beside her screamed out: No! But Callie swung the wheel, putting her side in line with the semi-trailer sliding towards them. Then she was in the storm and running again but not even the thunder could mute him still screaming her name as the body she’d left behind bled out in his arms.

Everything was coming to her too fast for her to thread through the memories but that last one made Callie’s heart lurch for real and she buried her face into her hands and sobbed as it led to replay after replay of Harley blowing his brains out right in front of her. She’d done ninety five percent of what she’d done in the past to better the world and she was good at it-but the five percent that she did for self-satisfaction? It was disgusting, Bob Marley and John Lennon had suffered for it and she wanted to shrivel and die. She clutched her chest. ‘Oh… Hunter!’

‘That’s right Calliope- cry.’ Imogen hissed. ‘I was going to give Harley my heart, you know. I thought one kiss, one true kiss with someone I loved would be worth a few decades of Oblivion, but you stole his heart for yourself and it imploded from your neglect.’

Callie collapsed onto her elbows and sobbed into the rocks, feeling herself falling apart all over again. No wonder her mother and Ardos had wanted to spare her this, and no wonder Imogen had wanted her to feel it! How would Callie feel if Hunter had blown his head off for Imogen after three days? She shook, she coughed and hiccuped, she felt her tears stream as swiftly into the rapids as the gorge did and she was aware that there were more people around her now, a hand on her shoulder, one gently threading through her hair.

‘Come on Calliope breathe,’ a musical voice whispered. Ardos’s voice. ‘We’ve all done things we cannot stand to recall.’

‘Don’t make this a pity party for her!’ Imogen snapped. ‘Don’t you remember how she shrugged when I sobbed? She doesn’t deserve our sympathy!’

‘Then why are you yourself close to tears?’ Callie felt herself lifted from the rock and cradled in supportive arms. ‘As a human she is one thousand times more sensitive than you are! She is feeling your pain, that is clear. If you desire her suffering to make your love for your human feel valid, then perhaps you do not miss Harley as much as you miss the promise of his triumph.’

‘You don’t know a thing about me!’ Imogen screeched. ‘Or what I’ve felt! You do not matter Andre or whatever the hell your name is! Why don’t you crawl back into your hole with the others and let Calliope and I handle this alone?’

‘With the others?’ Ardos’s fingers swept Callie’s face out of her hair letting light in on her tightly closed eyelids. ‘You mean, the other noble, faultless human men who exist only to adore you all? Like your match, who you’ve not spoken a word to in three thousand years?’ He sounded disgusted. ‘What of his pain, Imogen? What of his torture? Are you not as dismissive of it, as Callie was of Harley. Perhaps worse?’

Silence followed that statement and Calliope felt her stomach concave again as guilt replaced worse guilt. She opened her eyes and drank in Ardos’s beautiful face. His sleek jaw, his golden hair and fir-green eyes, his tawny skin… he was so beautiful; so sweet! But instead of his words making her feel better, they only made her feel worse. Because she’d just experienced about fifty thousand flickering memories and Ardos’s face had not been in any of them. When she tried to dredge one out, she remembered only a flash of golden hair, a feeling of annoyance.

‘Who were you Ardos?’ She whispered, not only because she needed to know, but because she needed to do something right. ‘What makes you my soul mate? Why did Father choose you? Why can’t I remember any of it?’

Ardos sighed. ‘There’s nothing to come back to you Calliope. I am probably a shadow lurking on the edge of some of your memories here on Helicon.’ He sank down to the rock, propped her up so that her head could lay against his shoulder. ‘I was no one as a human. A farm-hand, to a wealthier goat herder. I was little more than a slave.’

Across from them, Calliope saw Hendra shift and perch on the edge of a rock, her head inclined as though interested in Ardos’s story. Suddenly, a man materialized behind her, an Asian man, wearing a surprised expression. He sank as well, not touching Hendra, but her sister’s hand inched across the rock beneath both of their hands and rested her pinkie against his. The responding smile on the man’s face was enchanting.

‘There was a little girl who lived on the next farm across. It was smaller, poorer. I didn’t know her name but one day, some of us workers heard the prettiest sound in the air, and when I went to investigate, I saw you there, teaching her to play a Lyre.’ He paused, wetting his lips. ‘You were a goddess. Even before you’d developed any of your powers, and I fell in love with you at first glance.’

Calliope’s tears were beginning to slow. Despite everything, it was nice to know that someone had valued her before she’d had any value. ‘So father chose you for me then?’

But Ardos shook his head. ‘No. The next day, I was feeding the sheep in the barn, when I heard a scream. I ran across the field and saw the little girl, still with your Lyre- and she was being chased by some of the guards from my owner’s farm. My owner’s daughter had a Lyre that was missing. They were going to take the girl to be stoned for stealing, and my heart broke. I knew she was innocent, for I’d seen you leave there with it, and Adria’s was not as lovely as the one you had gifted. I didn’t know where you were, or if you’d ever return, so I spoke for the girl; I said that I’d given it to her.’ He swallowed hard. ‘They released her, but took me instead. The only chance I had to have my name cleared, was if you stepped forward, or if Adria found her own Lyre.’ He let out a shaky breath. ‘It was crowded there in the markets but I saw you Calliope- you were playing an Aoul on the other side of the square, and you were so lost in your song, that you did not look up to inquire about the boy about to be punished. And they-’ Ardos turned his face away.

‘No!’ Callie was stricken. ‘I was right there?’

He nodded, and a tear slipped down his cheek and ran under his jaw. ‘Yes.’ He swallowed. ‘In fact, while I was waiting to be executed, you danced away with another man. But they only got to throw two rocks before Zeus appeared and turned the stones in their hands to horse hair. He turned to me and said that I would be rewarded for my kind gesture- he would clear my name and make me a hero, one of his favored sons, or… or I could be taken to Helicon, enchanted with immortality to exist as your soul mate. He was convinced that you’d love a man, who had been willing to die for music.’ He paused, smiled gently. ‘There was no hesitation. I accepted the latter and he brought me here, to win your favor. Just as he brought all of us.’ He looked over at the water and Calliope wondered if all of their ‘mates’ were gathered there, waiting to be acknowledged into flesh and blood as she had acknowledged Ardos in her initial confusion seven years before. ‘I might have vanished thousands of years ago, if you were not so cruel in your dismissal,’ he smirked down at her, ‘but your belief that I am a thorn in your side, rather than nothing at all, is the only reason why you can see me. Some of the others, as I’m sure you can tell, have not been so, er, lucky.’ He chuckled. ‘In fact I annoy you so much that I have outlived Zeus and Memoria.’

Callie didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing and the wry smile on his face told her that he wasn’t sure either. She touched her fingertips to his perfect pink lips and said: ‘I am sorry, Ardos. Once I get through this business on earth… I will try and linger here more often. ’

‘Oh Calliope… I would love to believe that but, history repeats. You were once almost useless for nine hundred years and yet you still charged after the music. When your senses and power are restored, you will forget me again, like humans forget to walk their dogs.’

Calliope opened her mouth to protest but what did she know? She’d had a dog once and she’d walked it so rarely that her mother and father had given it to another family. She looked into his eyes, wondering why he bothered to be so kind to her at all if he had no faith that it was sustainable? ‘So what would you have me do?’

His green eyes shone with hope as he pressed his lips against her forehead and whispered. ‘Stay. Forget this plan. Let Hunter and Ryan be their own champions, and stay with me.’

She stiffened, sitting up. ‘Stay now? You mean, never see them again?’

‘That’s crazy!’ Imogen cried out, reminding Calliope that she and Ardos were not actually alone. ‘If she fails this mission, she must start another! As a human again!’

‘Not if she unites with me.’ Ardos’s eyes didn’t leave hers as he responded to Imogen. He took her hands, squeezing them. ‘If you could love me Calliope, if you could stay here, have a child with me and let it pursue your destiny- we could exist together, happily forever.’

Stay with Ardos? There was some merit in the plan. They could exist together in the created world of their imagination or on earth. They could become lovers and parents, and Callie could stop having to do the awful things she did for the music.

But… if she stayed, would she be happy? Or would she forever feel like she’d made the ultimate sacrifice for a stranger? Neither side of the coin held enough weight to sway either Callie Clay or Calliope the Muse. If she stayed, she would never see Hunter again. He might not fulfill his purpose. She would have done all of this, and put herself through twenty-four years of humanity, just to get a decent fella who literally couldn’t break her heart. She pulled her hands from Ardos’s, shaking her head sorrowfully. ‘I am sorry Ardos, but I am not ready to make that decision.’