by Amanda Marin
We stand in front of the ropes now. My fingertips graze along the top of one as I lean a little closer to see inside the case. Beside me, Sebastian does the same.
“And that’s the document, I suppose?” he asks, nodding toward the display.
“Exactly. The Lost Scroll of Clio.”
For a moment, the two of us stare at the fragile, faded pages preserved beneath the glass. The parchment looks so dry and brittle that a light sneeze would probably cause it to crumble. Tiny handwriting, in a language and an alphabet I’m not quite sure how to read, stretch across the paper. And beneath the pins that secure the document in place, its edges are still slightly curled, a lingering reminder that it was once rolled tight.
“If this is so rare and important, why is it here at Brightling instead of with the Board?” Sebastian asks after a moment. His question is hushed, carried on a puff of his breath. Like he knows as well as I do that the answers we’re seeking are written out right in front of us. They’ve been so close this entire time.
“Because the translator was a member of the Board for a while—and a former headmistress here,” I tell him. “This auditorium is named after her, with the original Scroll on display in her honor.”
Squinting, I look up at him, half-wanting and half-afraid to see his reaction.
“Harper Auditorium,” he repeats, mulling over the name.
I can see the change in him—the exact moment he connects the dots. A muscle in his jaw twitches, and his eyes dart back to mine like raging waters lashing at the shore.
“Harper. Of the Bianca Harper family line?” he asks.
I nod. “That would be the one. Daphne Harper, the Muse who cracked Clio’s code, is my grandma.”
“Holy shit,” Sebastian whispers. He gapes at me like I’m something even more unusual than what I am. As though I’m not just a Muse—I’m one of the strange creatures in Aurelia Ketterling’s encyclopedia of mythic beings. A dryad, maybe—or a mermaid. And those choices would be kind.
Sighing, I wrap my arms around myself. Partly to make sure I’m still me: a human body, with twenty-four ribs to my cage and a heart trapped inside. And partly because I’m trying to hold myself together—to keep myself from splintering into a thousand pieces under the pressure everyone puts on me. I don’t think I can bear it if Sebastian starts expecting too much of me, as well.
But then, just as quickly as his expression changed, it returns to normal. He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly and looks back at the display.
“So what do you think this says?”
I let my arms slip to my sides. Slowly. But I do. The pressure I’ve had pent up inside for the last hour subsides, a tea kettle letting off steam in my chest. I’ve misjudged Sebastian. Again.
“Let’s find out,” I tell him.
We may not be able to read the original document—neither of us has the training, resources, and experience my grandmother had when she worked on the translation, after all. But that doesn’t matter. A plaque is suspended on the wall above the display case. I’ve never really bothered to read the inscription before. It didn’t seem all that important. Just another reminder of the Harper family legacy hovering in the background. But now, as I point it out to Sebastian, I linger over every word written on it.
The Lost Scroll of Clio.
Translated by Daphne Harper.
Once thought to be a forgery, this document predicts a series of nine events that mark the decline of the arts in the Mundane realm. According to Clio, once these events have transpired, the Well of Imagination will be dry and Muses will be powerless to inspire the Mundane. The world we share will then sink into a new, darker era—one devoid of creativity and pureness of deed. Although many dismiss the warning as a fable intended to illustrate the importance of Muse-kind, the Board of Nine has deemed Clio’s final work to be authentic.
“So it’s not that Muses are being attacked,” Sebastian murmurs. “It’s that art is dying.”
My shoulders sag, and I feel breathless again, my lungs unable to keep up with the panicked thoughts rapidly firing through my brain.
“The Well of Imagination is going dry,” I agree, nodding. “This is so much worse than we thought.”
Shaking, I lower myself to sit down. The floor is hard and cold, and the layers of my gown fold and crunch unevenly beneath me. A pose unworthy of a Muse, I’m sure. Ms. Dashwood would scold, but I don’t care. Even the closest row of chairs still seems too far for me to reach. I stare, dazed, at my hands in my lap. Still trying to process the truth.
“We should try to figure out how many of the nine events have happened,” Sebastian suggests. He drops to the floor beside me, taking his cell phone out of an interior pocket in his tuxedo jacket. “Maybe there’s still time—maybe there’s something we can do to stop all this.”
My heart beats hopefully, even as a small voice in the back of my head whispers caution against optimism. I watch quietly as Sebastian’s fingertips move over the tiny screen in his hands, searching for answers just like we did together last night. After a moment, he glances up.
“I think I found something,” he says. “Someone posted a full translation of the Scroll.”
I scoot closer to him on the floor. So close that our shoulders touch. So close that I can feel the warmth of his body radiating out around him. Then he tilts the screen toward me so I can read it, too.
“It looks like the closure of the opera house is the sixth warning,” he tells me.
I read the words over and over again, piecing together everything we know so far. “The first omen,” I murmur. “It says, ‘Our wombs will grow weary of carrying fruit.’ That has to be the declining birthrate among Muses, don’t you think?”
Sebastian nods and points to another line. “And there—‘The fountain of poetry will become arid as a desert’—that could be the repetitive songs and movies the headmistress mentioned.”
We continue making our way through the predictions. The third sign references a “silence of strings.” That’s the musician Kash and I saw on the street the day Sebastian came to Brightling—the day the man with the green handkerchief stole the violin. An uneasy feeling gnaws inside me as I tell Sebastian about the incident. I should ask him about the man. I know I should, but I can’t bring myself to. So I gloss over the details and let us move on. The fourth mentions the disappearance of canvases brushed with beauty: the missing Laffitte. And the fifth talks about flames consuming havens for the creative: Brambleton.
“Everything fits together,” Sebastian says.
“It’s moving so quickly. A new sign every couple of days now. It’s like someone else has figured it out and is rushing the prediction along.” I fidget uncomfortably—not just because of my dress but also because of our discovery. “What’s the next one?”
Sebastian scrolls lower on his screen. “It says, ‘They will smash the creations of our hands with their own.’ … Then there’s something about Muses being harnessed with ‘a weight so heavy that even the lightest feather will be crushed beneath its burden.’ And the last talks about ‘bright halls turning dark.’”
The clues seem so cryptic. Strange riddles that only make sense in retrospect. Sebastian and I could spend a decade trying to puzzle everything out and still be wrong. Maybe that’s what happened to the Board of Nine. Maybe they’re just as confused and unsure as we are. We sit together for hours, tossing out ideas … only to talk ourselves out of the suggestion again a moment later.
“Creations of hand … That must refer to a type of art, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but isn’t almost anything made with your hands?”
“Paintings, sculptures, pottery … Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Sighing, I lie back and stare at the ceiling. It seems too big for us to manage. Maybe Kash is right, and we should let the headmistress and the Board solve whatever’s happening around us. But then I remember Sebastian’s confidence last night in my dorm room before Kash barged in. The way he ass
ured me there’s a solution—and how we may even be the ones to find it—and I remember to keep trying.
We have to keep trying.
10
It’s late by the time Sebastian and I decide to leave the auditorium. The sky outside the windows is dark. There’s no chattering in the hallways beyond the double door. And despite the small pile of butterscotch wrappers mounded on the floor between us, our stomachs are growling with hunger. We’ve missed dinner entirely.
We may not have figured out the rest of the omens—or how to stop Clio’s prediction from coming true—but at least the box of granola bars my mom sent me in a care package last week won’t go to waste.
“Better to miss dinner than to miss Poise and Charm class,” I mumble under my breath as Sebastian takes my hands and helps me to my feet. I wobble a moment on my high heels, teetering like I’m standing on a house of cards about to fold.
“I keep meaning to ask you about that,” he says, gripping my arms to help steady me. “What’s with your and Kash’s obsession with that class?”
I’ve already told Sebastian so much about myself today. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to share a little more. He took the news about my grandmother well. Maybe this won’t matter either. Plus, it’ll be nice not to have to suppress my urge to strangle Kash any time she brings up the thin ice I’m on.
“I’m sort of flunking it … and Ms. Dashwood and Headmistress Fothergill won’t let me graduate if I do.” I let out a miserable sigh. “Now you know the truth: the great Daphne Harper’s granddaughter is this close to being a Brightling Academy drop-out.”
Sebastian’s face changes again, the haughty lines melting into something I haven’t seen in him before. Sympathy, I think. His eyes soften, too. They’re no longer a vision of stormy seas. They’re more like clover fields. As I look up at him, I get lost in their feathery greens.
“You didn’t want me to know, did you?” he asks. “Not just about Poise and Charm, but about your grandmother, too.”
I shake my head. “I was embarrassed, and I thought it would change things. It always does.”
Sebastian shakes his head. “Look, I know what it’s like to have an important family expect great things of you,” he says softly. “The way you always worry you’ll disappoint them—but you sort of want to anyway, just to prove that you’re different … to show them that you’re your own person, despite what they say.”
“Exactly,” I whisper, mystified, as I gape at him.
He clears his throat, and his demeanor changes—it becomes more intense and formal. Snobbish, even. And his tone deepens, heavy as a rock. “‘You must try harder, Sebastian,’” he says, straightening the knot of the tie at his throat as he talks. Imitating a relative, I’m sure. Maybe even his father. “‘There are legacies to consider.’”
I laugh bitterly. His words sound all too familiar. They could be the echo of the tutors my parents hired so I wouldn’t enter Brightling Academy completely untrained. So I could go to the top of the class immediately and stay there all four years. So I could make my grandmother—and all our ancestors—proud.
“Try being the last of the Harper family—the only heir for them to mold,” I scoff, agreeing. “My grandma can trace our family tree all the way back to Clio.” Pausing, I shake my head. “I wonder if Clio would’ve passed Poise and Charm.”
Sebastian grins. “Probably not if Ms. Dashwood was teaching it,” he teases.
Not funny. Not knowing how close I am to failing myself, anyway. I shake my head and roll my eyes, and his smile fades. But he doesn’t give up on making me feel better. Instead, he raises his hand to my face, brushing his knuckles against my cheek with a gentleness that surprises me.
For a moment, my breath hitches in my chest. I’m unsure what surprises me more—the fact that he’s trying to comfort me again, or how much I like that he is. We’re more alike than I ever thought possible that first day I saw him in Poise and Charm. Sebastian seems to know this already; maybe I should accept it, too.
“At least your legacy is something good—something you can feel proud about living up to,” he murmurs.
“Your family’s isn’t?”
His hand drops away from my face, leaving a ripple of disappointment behind on my skin. He shrugs. “Depends on your point of view, I guess.”
He glances away, his stare hovering someplace behind me, over my shoulder. He doesn’t want to talk about the legacy he’s charged with upholding. That much is obvious, even if his family’s secret isn’t. So I won’t make him say more. I don’t want to wreck this moment any more than I already have.
“You don’t have to, but if you ever want to … you know … I’m here,” I say.
His eyes dart back to mine, alive and playful again. The sun dancing on the sea. “If I want to talk about it, you mean?” he says, a crooked half-grin tilting his expression. “Isn’t that a little cliché for the free-spirited Bianca Harper?”
Finally, I smile. “Clichés aren’t always a bad thing,” I say, “even if they are the exact opposite of everything we’re supposed to represent as Muses—inspiration and creativity.”
He inches closer, and his fingertips find my arm, gently tracing tiny loops—infinity signs—against my bare skin. The tip of his tongue rolls between his lips as he presses them against one another, and I swallow hard. My mind goes blank except for one thought: what it might be like to have those lips against mine.
“And if I kissed you right now, would that be an example of a good cliché or a bad one?” he whispers.
“A good one,” I squeak.
Sebastian’s fingers entwine with mine, and he brings his other hand back to my face, to tilt my chin up toward his, then curl around my jaw. As I close my eyes, my imagination surrenders control to my body. I don’t have to wonder anymore if his bottom lip is as soft as it looks—or if our mouths will align like constellations through Urania’s telescope. I don’t have to guess that he tastes sweet, like butterscotch candy. And I don’t have to speculate that the skin of his neck smells fresh, like soap and cedar. I know it all firsthand. My senses swim in the sea of him. There’s no need for sight when I have his touch, taste, scent, and sound.
Then, before I really want it to be, the kiss is over. I step back, butterscotch still on my tongue, my hand still folded in his, and my cheeks flushed. As I stare up at Sebastian, I’m every bit as dazed—even if it’s for a completely different reason—as I was earlier when we read from Clio’s Scroll.
“You’re not … you’re who not I thought you were …” I murmur.
It must not be the usual reaction he gets from girls he kisses. For a moment, he seems startled. Unsure what to think or say or do. He just grows pale and gapes at me. Then, clearing his throat, he forces a half-grin. A partial smirk. The corner of his mouth tilts up, brightening his whole face like a curtain drawn back to let in the sun.
“Is that so? And just who did you think I was?” he asks.
I feel my cheeks heat up again. “Just … different.” I shrug. “Arrogant. Prideful.”
He chuckles, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his neck, and he tests the words like they’re something from Exotic Languages class. “Arrogant and prideful, hmm?”
I nod and playfully punch him in the arm. “You insulted me the first time we met!” I remind him. “Not to mention a couple of times after.”
Sebastian just chuckles again.
And I raise my eyebrows. An unspoken—and completely empty—threat to repeat my first strike.
Point taken, he clears his throat and quiets down. “Should I assume it’s a good thing I’m not who you thought I was, then?” he asks.
I nod and lean closer to kiss him again. “A very good thing,” I say as I press my lips to his.
I don’t want to tell Sebastian this. He can’t know this, actually—I’ll never get over the humiliation of it. But he’s only the second boy I’ve ever kissed. Going to an all-girls academy—even if it is unofficially so—makes those kinds of adven
tures with guys a little challenging for most of us. Harmony Dillard’s track record is an exception to the norm, of course. But then again, she has Erato on her side. Romance comes naturally to her.
My only other kiss was with one of Kash’s cousins. Alec. He drove Kash down from Connecticut to stay with me in Westchester County for a week during the summer between our sophomore and junior year. He was older and interesting—a recent graduate from a different kind of academy, one for normal humans, not ones with ancient magical powers like us. I liked that about him—how I could be myself around him, without him expecting anything from me. I liked that he liked me as I am.
It seems Sebastian does, too.
I think about kissing Sebastian the entire way up to my dorm room later. Through our hand-in-hand walk to the elevator. Through the peck on the cheek he gives me when we reach my floor. Even through kicking off my high heels and walking barefoot to my door. It’s nice to have something good to outweigh some of the bad of everything we’ve discovered today. As I turn the key in the lock, I almost forget about Kash being mad at me.
And then, immediately, I’m greeted with a reminder.
“Bee, where have you been?!”
The moment I step inside the room, Kash descends upon me. She’s in her pajamas, bouncing anxiously on her heels, and the way she glares—paired with the glow of the cucumber mask on her face in the lamplight—makes her resemble some sort of alien life form. My shoes clatter to the floor as I startle at the sight of her.
“I’ve been texting you all night, and you didn’t show up at dinner,” she adds accusatorily. “I got worried.”
“Well, you can relax. I’m here now. And I’ve been here the whole time,” I tell her. My words come out slow and stilted as I try to puzzle out why she’s so upset. “I haven’t left the building all day.”
“You were with Sebastian, I suppose?” she lashes. She emphasizes the “s” sounds in his name, as if to imply he’s a snake.
