by S. K Munt
Thunder boomed outside and Hunter’s hair stood on end. Without thinking, he wrapped his arm around Callie’s waist and jerked her so that her bare breasts were crushed to his chest. He glared at Ryan. ‘What do you mean you’re going to be gentle?’ He demanded, incensed. ‘She wants me to be her first. She always has. Right Cal?’
Callie stiffened and briefly, Hunter wondered if the thunder had done it, but then Callie seemed to look down at herself, at the hands on her, at her exposed body and in a beat, she was on her feet. She spun, crossed her arms across her chest, tilted her knees together and slammed back into the tractor, her eyes wild, her hair in disarray, her lips so puffy that Hunter wondered if their kisses had been causing her actual physical pain rather than pleasure. She looked like a spooked horse, and Hunter was overcome with remorse for having broken the sexual tension with actual tension.
She was going to back out and Hunter could not blame her.
‘Oh... my... YOU GUYS!’ Callie jerked her jeans up. She looked from Hunter to Ryan and back again with eyes so wide and desolate that they could have been the golden plains of some scorched desert. ‘What are we doing?’ Her fingertips curled around her bottom teeth. ‘What are you doing? How did this even… Oh my...!’
Hunter waited for the onslaught of tears and was wondering how he was going to calm her down this time when a single finger on her shoulder was bound to snap her mental state like a twig. But Callie did not cry. She dragged her gaze from Ryan and down to the hat at her feet.
‘This isn’t me.’ She whispered, shaking her head, covering her chest with her hands. ‘I’m not this girl.’ And then, she curled her ankle, catching his hat with her toe, kicking it straight at Hunter’s chest. It hit him like a brick, but that was his inner pain, not the hat causing it. ‘This is not me! We are not an us! I am not some fucking toy for little boys to play with and manipulate and- and-’ her slitted eyes widened again as though something had dawned on her. She looked at the door, which was still shuddering though Ryan had dropped the latch, and when she looked back at them, her posture sagged. ‘I have to go.’ She whispered. ‘I’ve ruined everything.’
Hunter was stricken. ‘Go?! Go where Cal?!’
Ryan was on his feet. ‘Callie no! We don’t have to do this! We still-’ But his voice died when Callie jerked her face back to them. For the briefest moment, she seemed to shimmer like a mirage, then her eyes flashed but not in the poetic sense; the color swirled, brightened, dulled. A star-scape flitted across them and Hunter would have fallen to his knees to see something that beautiful, that magical again. Beside him, Ryan audibly sucked in a breath.
‘Cal-?’ Ryan’s voice was bewildered, dazed. ‘Your eyes- ’
Callie pivoted on her heel and instead of stopping to fuss with the lock, pushed the door with an outstretched hand and dashed into the bleak grey mist beyond. Lightning cracked, lighting up every nook within the dilapidated shed, and Hunter’s heart leapt into his throat.
‘Callie!’ Hunter screamed. ‘You can’t-’ he caught the door open as it swung back and staggered out into the blinding blue light and saw... nothing. Just a moonscape of sodden fields under a sky turning from neon blue, to black once more. He looked back in at Ryan and was shocked to see his friend had collapsed onto his knees and was gazing vacantly past him. Hunter turned back to the field and screamed Callie’s name, lunging after footprints that weren’t there- following intuition which had been snapped like a useless thread.
Because Callie was gone.
Part Two
To Her Song She Spins Alone
13.
Callie knew that she should have been surprised to wake up almost naked in a stream with several angelic faces gazing down at her in open curiosity, but after the month she’d had, she decided that it was preferable to waking up in the gorge with Meredith and her crew doing the same thing. A quick scan of their hands assured Callie that they were unarmed, which Meredith certainly would not have been.
‘I want to ask if you’re angels…’ Callie wet her lips, looking from a not-quite brunette to a not-quite blonde, noting that they’re eyes were in constant motion, the hue shifting from lilac to magenta to green to brown so rapidly that they could not be relegated to one end of the color spectrum, let alone one shade. It would have been disconcerting if it wasn’t so spectacular. ‘But that seems sort of trite...’
The one whose hair was more cream than ice, twitched her lips in response to Callie’s words. ‘Well…’ her voice was sugar-water. ‘You were always so obsessed with being original.’ She paused. ‘What would you like to ask instead?’
Callie groaned and sat up, feeling half of the stream and possibly the North Pacific slosh from her hair. The other girls moved back, flinching somewhat at her sudden movement as though broken from a trance. But they did not move back far.
Callie glanced down at herself, chewing on the inside of her cheek when she saw that she was suddenly wearing a white dress like the other girls, only they were dry and so perfectly coiffed that Callie wanted to sink back under the water. She’d run from a nightmare and woken up in someone else’s fantasy- so how was she supposed to get home? She gazed around her and saw no sign of home. Snow-capped mountains rose in the distance, glimpsed between large cherry blossom trees, and the air carried traces of both coconuts and pine and somewhere nearby, she could hear waves gently lapping at the shore, despite the nearby waterfall. Callie didn’t bother wracking her brain to think of somewhere she had been that shared those qualities, because no place like that existed.
‘I guess I’d like to ask if getting back to where I just came from is possible.’ Callie eventually said, pressing off some rocks in the stream and getting to her feet, plucking a slimy leaf out of the gathered bust of her dress. The riverbed, or whatever it was, was silty, not sandy or rocky. It felt familiar to Callie, and at once she realized why.
The dream on Monday! She remembered crumpling in Mr Banks English room and had briefly imagined herself to be in a body of water instead of on carpet. I’m back in that dream again! But it didn’t feel like a dream. The air felt humid, the water pleasant but cool enough to rouse her from sleep, not weigh her down in slumber.
‘Is that your creative way of asking if you are dead?’
Callie looked up at the girl who had spoken, a striking redhead with fiery hues in her eyes though her expression was serene. There were five of them all up, no two were alike and yet there was sameness about them, probably the eyes, that told Callie that they were a set.
‘Is that a question you can answer?’ Callie asked. And then, she covered her mouth, because her voice sounded different to her now that she’d shaken the water from her ears, almost flinty.
‘That is your real voice.’ The creamy blonde supplied, stepping forward. ‘And this is your real home, Calliope. You just do not remember it yet. As your mind adjusts to the difference in atmosphere, your body will follow.’ But then the girl paused, frowning. ‘I think. That depends on whether you are asleep, awakened or descending into Oblivion.’
Callie shook her head. ‘I’m not Calliope and I don’t know anyone by that name.’
The girl smirked. ‘Then what is Callie short for?’
Callie sighed, thinking of how that question had plagued her for weeks, thinking about the Superman thing and how she’d die if anyone else found out the origin of her name. ‘It’s short for: Callie Clay.’
There was a smattering of laughter. The girls exchanged a five way look as if to say: ‘What a confused little sass-mouth.’
‘Ahh Kal El. We have missed your humor, if nothing else.’ The creamy girl said. And then she grinned. ‘I can tell you have not missed us though, judging by the incredibly handsome half-naked men in your last memory.’
Callie’s mouth fell open.
‘Clio, be kind.’ An olive-skinned girl admonished her, stepping out of the stream and wringing the water from the length of her skirt. Callie watched, amazed when after one squeeze, the girl released th
e hem and the skirt fluttered back into place, bone-dry. ‘We have missed her in many ways. But if she does not recall us, do not dig through her brain like that- it is impolite.’’
Callie looked from the skirt, and then back to the one who had been called: ‘Clio.’ ‘Did you read my mind?’
Clio’s curved up in a smile. ‘Not your mind- your memory darling. I cannot tell what thoughts you are going to have, only see what you have thought, or have done.’ She wriggled her eyebrows. ‘Or what you almost did with those dashing boys in your ‘today’.’
The boys. Her boys. A sudden stab of anguish penetrated Callie’s stomach and sent red-hot pain shooting right through her. She clutched at her stomach as though holding her insides in and staggered back a few feet. ‘Don’t talk about that!’ She tried to stave off the rush of memories that she’d run from. ‘If this is my dream then that’s my rule! I don’t want to think about them!’
But it was too late. Callie was an hourglass of dormant pain and Clio had just twisted it, end over end, so that the grains of regret could begin to filter from the back of her mind and settle into the hollow pit of her stomach again.
‘Did they kill her?’ Someone asked, their tone as casual as if they were inquiring about the weather.
‘It would not be the first time,’ the redhead muttered, ‘though this is the first time that she has seemed to care. Interesting.’
‘I cannot tell,’ Clio said softly, ‘she’s blocking herself from her own thoughts.’
‘They must be unpleasant then.’
‘There was nudity.’
‘That could be awful- or it could have been wonderful.’
‘Does she look wonderful to you?’
‘No she looks like human shit.’
The curse word uttered amongst so much formal speech snapped Callie out of it. She pressed her hands against her ears. ‘Stop it! Shut up! I want to go! I want to wake up now!’ The sense of peace which had settled upon her, numbing her like novocaine when she’d awoken in the stream was fading fast and the hard edges of hurt were beginning to crush her anew. Hunter, Ryan… the wooden shed, the screaming skies, the feelings of lips on her, reducing her status from ‘best friend’ to ‘town bike’.
‘Ahhh...’ Clio’s voice sounded far away. ‘They tried to share her!’
‘So? Once again- wouldn’t be the first time!’
‘No I am getting the feeling that Callie at eighteen and suffering from humanity would not have enjoyed it as much as the Calliope we know and love might have. Can you not feel her anguish? The sky is darkening.’
‘She’s back?’ A shrill voice screeched. ‘When did she get back?!’
Callie turned and felt her insides crumble like a trodden can when she saw Imogen storming towards her, her dress as white as her own, her eyes swirling like stormy-skies on the sea. Instinctively, Callie’s feet tried to shuffle back and yet something inside her flared angrily in a natural reflex to the golden goddess stampeding the flowers on the riverbank in her haste to apparently rip Callie from limb to limb.
I really don’t like her. Callie thought, tensing to fight back this time. She had the feeling that everything that sucked about her life was in some way, Imogen’s fault.
‘Yes it is.’ Clio whispered, retreating. ‘And when you remember why Calliope, you are going to wish you that you did not.’ Calliope looked at Clio, surprised that the girl had threaded such a deeply woven sub-conscious thought from her wearied mind, but the girl smiled and said: ‘It is not as impressive as your gifts are, sister.’ Then she grinned and skipped back, as though happily clearing the path for Imogen. ‘But it has its uses.’
A hand latched around Callie’s wrist but then dropped it like it was the limp tail of a dead rat. ‘Ugh! She’s corporeal?!’ Imogen’s shrill voice demanded. ‘Where’s the justice?’
Callie looked at the woman and despite herself, a wry smile twisted her lips. ‘Well, I’ve been called some names in my time but…’
Imogen’s stormy eyes narrowed. ‘Oh ha ha, little sister, hilarious as always.’ She stepped into Callie’s face, hands on hips and sneered. ‘You should hear what they’re calling you now.’
That hit home. Callie’s breath caught in her throat. ‘People know?!’
‘Hmm well let’s see; girl goes missing in the middle of a cyclone, and the last guys to see her have her shirt and bra? Um yeah… people know. Things were leaked during the investigation, Calliope. Humans do that, you know!’
Callie’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Hunter and Ryan were investigated? When?!’
Imogen waved her hand as though that was inconsequential. ‘I don’t know- three minutes ago for me, longer for them.’ Her eyes flew over Callie. ‘Not that I want to ease your conscience or anything, but it was dropped pretty quickly. The police came to a rather accurate conclusion; that you and your friends got carried away, you changed your mind and fled. So you’re a runaway whore, not a missing person.’ She paused and added. ‘Your mother is blaming herself. They all think you’re off searching for your birth mother.’
Callie sank to the riverbank, fist in her teeth, and let the full weight of what Imogen was saying hit her, which was hard to do given how fractured Imogen’s revelations were.
‘So she’s not dead?’ Another voice asked.
‘No, not dead. Just self-salvaged.’
‘She’ll go back.’ Clio whispered, as though reading Callie’s thoughts again. ‘If she wasn’t in such shock, she’d be trying to get back right now and fix the mess she’s made.’
Callie’s head snapped up. ‘I can go back?’ She was on her feet in an instant, stepping onto the riverbank, headed right for Clio once more. ‘How?!’
‘Whoa!’ Clio held up her hands. ‘Calm down Calliope! When did you get so dramatic? You’re acting just like Thespia!’
‘I don’t know who the fuck Thespia is and I do not care!’ Callie took Clio’s narrow shoulders in her hands and squeezed her as though she could squeeze logic out of the cryptic girl. ‘I don’t belong here! I have to get back to- ’ her voice broke. ‘To the people I’ve hurt! The people I love!’
Clio’s features smoothed out. ‘Calliope…’ she said softly, pityingly. ‘Don’t you see? You don’t have people you love waiting for you because if you loved them… you would be dead.’
Hurt flashed through Callie’s very being. ‘Why would you say that? My heart is breaking with every second I stand here talking to you instead of being with them!’
‘It’s not your heart aching you foolish girl, it’s your soul.’
Calliope released Clio and slowly turned to Imogen, who was staring at her with a mixture of disgust and exasperation. ‘What’s the difference?’
Imogen smiled snidely. ‘We Muses don’t get both. Your soul is hurting, because the music has stopped. Your conscience is bothering you, because mother erased your memories and your ability to deal with useless human emotions eighteen years ago when she banished you to the mortal coil, your stomach feels hollow because you have not eaten a meal in about a week- but your heart?’ She shook her head. ‘Your heart is beating to the rhythm it surrendered itself to a few millennia ago, Calliope.’ Imogen smiled again, and it was a glorious smile. ‘Just. Like. Mine.’
Callie’s body had been exhausted by her life, and now, her mind was exhausted by the dream which was far too complex for someone used to them would have been able to cope with. She dropped to the ground again, closing her eyes against her tears and willing consciousness to abandon her.
*
Callie awoke to iridescent silvery-green eyes that were shimmering mournfully in the face of a man so resplendent that her heart actually thumped in appreciation. ‘I already like this dream better,’ she whispered, reaching up to brush one of the man’s blonde locks out of his eyes. The sky behind him was streaked with pinks and golds that were reflected in his cheeks and hair.
The man’s eyes swelled to gigantic proportions. ‘Calliope?’
Callie immediat
ely sensed that she was probably being too forward with the dream-god guy and she flushed. ‘Sorry.’ She lowered her hand back to her chest and smiled in embarrassment. ‘I was almost in a three-way recently. Guess I’m more of a slut than I realized...’
The green eyes narrowed. ‘Calliope…’ he sighed in resignation and then rested his forehead against hers. ‘Why must your first words in kindness towards me be followed with such hurtful ones?’
Callie felt a flush of shame. She didn’t know who this guy was supposed to be, but he seemed nice. She didn’t want her candor to kick him in the balls and clear out of her dream. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘I don’t know what the code of conduct is for dreams yet.’
‘Dream?’ He eyed her intently. ‘So your memory... it’s still gone, as they say?’
‘They?’ Callie repeated.
‘Your sisters.’
‘Those horrible supermodel looking she-devils really are my sisters in this place?’ Callie sat up, trying to recall everything about the ‘Muses’.
‘They are your sisters in every place, on every level of being,’ the man said. ‘But you should know that… you’ve left your earthly life to return to this one, so I don’t see how you could have managed that unless you knew how to get home?’ He paused. ‘Clio said that you knew how to get home, just before you ran-’
Callie half-rolled out of the oneirec man’s lap, landing on grass, which was spongy like the grass by the riverbank, but cool from being beneath the shade of the little shack she’d awoken in. ‘If by ‘left my earthly life’, you mean; abandoned my friends in the middle of a cyclone and then woke up heavily medicated in an institution of some kind then yeah, I did that. But I don’t know how.’ Callie pushed to her hands and knees and then stood, looking around and trying to get her bearings. She was beneath a marble awning of some sort held aloft by pillars at each corner. Marble benches with carved feet flanked the edges, and the grasses grew across the floor from the surrounding garden as seamlessly as lain carpet would have. She rapped on the marble with her knuckles. It hurt. Okay, so that was real enough. ‘How long was I out of it for?’
