Liron's Melody

by Brieanna Robertson

  At the same exact moment, Samantha spoke. “What can I do for you?”

  They both stopped at the same time and Liron smiled softly, some of his apprehension dissipating. This was not days gone by. This was a different time, a different place, a different life. All that had once been had long since vanished. “Samantha, I need your help with something.”

  A small, worried frown creased her alabaster brow and she stepped aside. “With what? Please, come in.”

  “Thank you.” Liron entered the parlor and looked around. Nothing was the same as he remembered, but why should it be? The estate had gone to Samantha and her husband long ago. It was her home now, not her parents’. Sometimes, memories remained so pristine and untouched in the vaults of one’s mind that regardless of the logical fact that life went on, it seemed strange that those memories should be altered over time.

  He took a brief glance around at all the polished wood furniture and gleaming marble floors, then faced Samantha, who still looked at him rather strangely. She was dressed in a flowing, elegant blue gown with diamonds glistening at her throat and her earlobes, not to mention the small planet she had on her ring finger. It seemed surreal that he had once been part of this grandeur, this…fluff.

  His family had never been impoverished by any means, but they had never been this well off either. It had all seemed so remarkable back then, like an amazing dream. Now, it all just seemed like gold plating on something that was empty inside. Once, maybe, he had desired the finery and the riches, the social gatherings, the parties. It had all seemed like a grand adventure.

  Status was not of great importance amongst muses, not when so much time was spent indulging in creativity. But for the ones who were extremely successful in their craft, extravagance was not unusual.

  Liron had been intrigued by that lifestyle, for it had differed from his own. Born to a logic muse and a science muse, his parents had spent their time dissecting things, inventing things, and debating with one another. He’d felt relatively out of place for most of his life. But to be introduced to a family full of nothing but music muses, theatre muses, art muses, and writing muses…well, it had all seemed like some kind of fairy tale at the time. He had been hopelessly enamored.

  Now, give him a stroll on the beach at sunset and a night spent by the fire with his Melody in his arms. That was all he desired, and all he needed to keep him happy.

  He took a deep breath, stopped his meandering thoughts, and faced Samantha again. “Samantha, I need to know how Elizabeth managed to traverse the continuum and get to the human world.”

  Samantha paled and her expression became slightly pained. “Liron…it’s been a very long time. Elizabeth is gone now, both in this world and that one. Don’t you think it’s time to let the past go?”

  “I’m not trying to hang onto the past,” he snapped. “I just want to find my wife.”

  If it was possible, Samantha’s concerned expression became even more so, and she approached him to put a consoling hand on his arm. “Liron, she isn’t your wife anymore. She hasn’t been for….many, many years.”

  Liron rolled his eyes and shook her hand off of his arm as he paced a few agitated lines. “I’m not talking about Elizabeth! I’m talking about Melody! My wife!”

  Poor Samantha recoiled as if someone had slapped her. Liron instantly felt remorse for being so scathing to such a gentle woman, and for barking at her things that she would have no way of knowing. He stopped pacing, drew in a calming breath, and faced her.

  “O-Oh,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you had remarried, Liron. Forgive me.”

  He bestowed her with a small smile. “Of course you wouldn’t know that, Samantha. I apologize for snapping at you. I just….” He felt very weary all of a sudden. “I need your help. Melody is human. She somehow managed to end up here, but now she’s stuck back in the human world and can’t get home. I need to know how to get to her. I know muses have, on occasion, been able to travel to the human world, but Elizabeth is the only one I have ever known personally who actually did it. Please, you’re her sister. She told you everything. I know she would have told you about what she was planning. I need to know how she did it so I can find my wife.” He met her eyes and knew he looked pleading.

  Samantha studied him for a few heartbeats before her eyes softened and she sighed. “Come sit down, Liron. Let me get you something to drink. We’ll have a conversation.”

  He started to follow her down the main corridor when she stopped suddenly and turned back to face him. He raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.

  She chewed on her bottom lip and seemed to debate internally for a moment before she met his gaze. “Look, Liron, this probably doesn’t mean much, but I need to say it anyway. I never agreed with what Elizabeth did. She was my sister, and I loved her, but what she did to you was deplorable and unacceptable. And not only did she hurt you, she hurt everyone in her family by running off to live a life that had her gone in the blink of an eye. You were always such a kind, gentle man. You didn’t deserve the way she treated you.”

  Liron’s heart somersaulted in his chest, and he looked down. He swallowed hard in an attempt to get rid of the lump of emotion that rose in his throat at her validation. He nodded solemnly, then forced himself to meet her eyes again. “Thank you,” he rasped. “But none of that matters now. Please, just help me find Melody.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Melody stared at the closed door, had been staring at it for the past twenty minutes. She knew she had to open it, but apprehension at what would swamp her once she did held her back.

  It hadn’t been opened since her parents had died. Not since she’d put all of their music equipment, as well as her own—minus the piano—in there the day after the funeral and turned the key in the lock. It was bad enough that she had to walk by it every day, knowing that everything was in there. Everything that had belonged to her parents, everything that had made them happy, everything that had, at one time, given Melody’s life color. She knew it was all in there, but she couldn’t bear to go in. Not only was it full of memories, but the ghosts were locked in there too. And she knew the ghosts were what would turn her into an emotional wreck.

  She took a deep breath and expelled it forcefully, knowing she didn’t have a choice. Not after what had been revealed to her over the last twenty-four hours.

  She recalled the conversation she’d had with Liron last night.

  He had found her in her dreams, once again, on the beach like the last time. She’d been dismal, for though he had given her his music score in her mind, it had failed to open the portal. It had actually failed to do anything except torment her for the entirety of the day, for she played it over and over again until her fingers were sore.

  She could hear Liron sigh. “It must have been the actual score that was the key to the portal,” he said. “It was something physical that originated from this world and was still somehow attached to it.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense!” she cried in frustration. “I was able to go back to my world every time something reminded me of it, or something interrupted me. Why can’t it go both ways?”

  “Because that is your world, Melody. You originate from there. There is nothing here to pull you back. If I was with you, perhaps it would be different.”

  “Nothing to pull me back? Liron, you should be able to pull me back!” She was aggravated and exhausted, and just wanted to go back home. The longer she was forced to remain in her world, the more depressed she became, and the more she realized how stifled she was here.

  “Melody, you were never supposed to actually be in my world. It was a strange phenomenon that you were. Now that the key to opening the portal is destroyed, we are stuck communicating with one another in traditional muse/human fashion. There is only one way to rectify this.”

  He was silent for so long that Melody’s stomach did a back flip. “What is it?” she finally murmured.

  “The only way for a muse to enter into the
human world is if the human he or she connected to brings them over.”

  She frowned and waved her hands in impatience. “Okay, fine. So how do I do that?”

  “The connection between muse and human has to be incredibly strong.”

  Why was he stalling? She wished he’d spit it out already. “All right….”

  “A muse can only cross over to the human world if his or her human creates something extremely powerful that was inspired by the muse.”

  She blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand exactly. You mean, I have to create something in order to open the portal back up?”

  “Yes. The creative connection is what opens the portal. I don’t know why and I don’t know how. I’m no physicist either. My mother is a scientist. I am not. It has something to do with the energy, I imagine. When and if this works, I will contact her and we can speak with her. I am anxious for you to meet my parents anyway.”

  Melody smiled, feeling warm all over at the thought of meeting Liron’s family and learning more about his life.

  “At any rate, my source is very reliable and I trust her.”

  “Her?” She couldn’t keep the note of jealousy out of her voice if she tried.

  Liron chuckled. “Yes, I went to the only person who could possibly know anything about this…Elizabeth’s sister.”

  Melody raised her eyebrows in surprise. Liron had tracked down his ex-wife’s sister in what had to have been an awkward situation to find a way for them to be reunited? Her heart tripped over itself at the thought that she meant that much to him. “So…what exactly am I supposed to create?” She wasn’t quite sure she was grasping this concept completely.

  He was quiet for a long moment before finally saying, “I can’t help you with that, Melody. I can’t tell you what to create. You have to create something that I have inspired within you. If I don’t inspire anything inside of you, our connection will not be strong enough to open the portal. Not to mention, I will be a large failure as a muse.”

  She knew he was trying to be funny to lighten the enormity of what he’d said. It didn’t work. Melody’s heart plummeted into her stomach. It was all up to her. The only way she would be able to bring Liron to her was through her love and her creation. She understood why he had been reluctant to tell her. He was afraid her love for him wasn’t strong enough. Of course he would think that. He was hell bent on believing that she was going to desert him too.

  What disturbed her more than anything was the fact that she was afraid it wouldn’t work either. Not because her love wasn’t strong enough, but because she knew, in order to open the portal, she had to venture back to a place she really had no desire to go.

  Which brought her back to the locked door.

  Melody thought she had been doing good with playing the piano again. Now, she had to take a trip back into her past and try to reconnect with a part of her she had forced into being dormant. She’d never wanted to write music again. Not after what had happened. Why would she when all it did was remind her of what she had lost?

  But now….

  Now, it was different. Her parents had been taken from her by unforeseen circumstance. If she chose to keep the door locked because she was too afraid of the pain she would have to go through, she was making a deliberate, conscious choice to lose Liron. Because that’s what would happen. She would lose him forever.

  He had confronted his past, which was just as painful as hers in a different way, in order to find the key to enable them to be together again. If she refused to do the same because of her own cowardice, then she was no better than his ex-wife. She would have turned her back on him too.

  And despite the sorrow of her parents being gone, the pain of dealing with those bottled up memories would be small in comparison to losing Liron for all time.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped forward, turned the key in the lock, and flung the door open.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected. Ghosts and skeletons and wispy things like in the horror movies? It was definitely not that dramatic. Real ghosts didn’t exist. Only ones that the mind conjured up out of fear, doubt, and regret. In some ways, she imagined those were worse. She would have preferred the paranormal to the cold, dusty, cluttered room chock full of everything she had been trying to block out of her mind.

  Maybe trying to avoid it for all this time had been a stupid idea. A person couldn’t run from their issues. She knew that. Everyone said it. She had said it in the past also. It was different when the shoe was on the other foot. Easy to say, difficult to do.

  Resigning herself to the fact that there was really no easy way to go about this, and that she was just going to have to barrel on in there, Melody went into the room and turned the light on. Her eyes scanned over her father’s cello, propped up against the wall in its case, and her mother’s violins—she had about four, two electric, one old, beat up antique-looking thing, and her regular one—laid out next to it. Over in the far corner were Melody’s old viola, guitar, flute, and some other random things. A tambourine. A clarinet she had never learned to play. Some maracas.

  All of her parents’ clothes were hanging in the closet. She hadn’t been able to get rid of them. Stacks of photo albums were piled around, along with boxes of her parents’ possessions that had been too painful to keep in the main part of the house, but she couldn’t bear to part with.

  With a sigh, she allowed the memories to flow through her, agonizing as they were, and headed over to the far end of the room where a box full of her old sheet music was. She sat down cross-legged on the floor and began to sift through it, looking for the lost pages of the concerto she had been attempting to write.

  She didn’t know how long she was in there. She lost track of time. There was a memory attached to each piece of music, and after she’d gone through that, she’d moved on to pictures, clothing, things. She revisited what she had been avoiding for so long, laughed and cried, allowing her grief to work through her in its entirety and accepting the loss instead of pretending like it wasn’t there.

  By the time she had finished, she’d located the few poorly-written pages of her concerto and was beyond exhausted. She ate a meager dinner, vowed to start on her music the next morning, and practically fell into bed. She felt like she was on a runaway train of emotion that showed no signs of stopping. She was drained and worn out, and felt the enormity of the task she was about to undertake weighing on her shoulders.

  She hadn’t composed anything in so long. What if she couldn’t do it? What if she failed? If she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t talented enough to create a masterpiece worthy of Liron, she would lose him. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him also. It would be too much. She would never recover.

  The future she wanted so desperately and whether or not she was able to attain it was all up to her. That should have been comforting, but it wasn’t. It was overwhelming. Far worse than having to pass chemistry in order to graduate high school. Far worse than her audition to get into Juilliard. Far worse than graduating Juilliard, and even worse still than her audition for a place in the orchestra.

  This was a test beyond all tests. She was trying to bend the laws of the universe. How could she even hope to accomplish something like that? She was just one woman. Just an ordinary, human woman who played the piano and who, at one time, had dabbled at composition. She was no one special at all….

  With her exhausted mind unable to continue freaking out, Melody slowly dropped into sleep, and right before she conked out into the deep sleep where dreams are not found, she heard Liron’s voice like a whispering caress.

  “You are special to me. Not only special, lovely. You are everything.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two Weeks Later

  The knocking on her door sounded distant, and she ignored it for a long while so that she could add the last few notes to the score she had been poring over like a madwoman. She stared at it when it was finished. Pages and pages of hand-written music—a symphon
y, a concerto, a masterpiece maybe. A score for her life. It was raw and painful. She had cried through most of it. She had never been more honest with herself.

  It was her, and her parents, and Liron all in one.

  Was it good enough? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had never put more of her own person into anything in her life.

  The knocking continued to the point that she heaved a sigh, stood from where everything was strewn on her living room floor, and went to the door. If it was Rob, so help her, she was going to—

  It wasn’t Rob. It was Nikki, looking extremely concerned, and even more so now that Melody had opened the door.

  She couldn’t blame her. She must look horrendous. She’d been showering at least, but she’d been living in a tracksuit with her hair piled on top of her head in a haphazard knot for who knew how long.

  Nikki raised an eyebrow. “Mel?” she questioned. “Are you okay?”

  She sighed and stepped aside, opening the door to let her friend in. “I’m okay. I’ve just been…kinda busy.”

  Nikki frowned as she walked in and observed all the pages of music flung every which direction. “It looks like Beethoven blew up in here,” she muttered. She knelt and picked up a page, examined it, and her eyes widened. She drew in a soft breath. “Mel…did you write this?”

  Melody put her hands on her hips and shrugged.

  Nikki stared at her with the oddest expression. “What made you decide to do this? I didn’t even know when you got home from your rendezvous with Mr. Hottie on the coast. How long have you been doing this?”

  “Two weeks.” She ran her fingers through the loose strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “He helped me decide to do it, actually. It’s just….” She heaved a sigh. “It’s hard to explain. But I had to do it. I’m going to take it to the conductor of the orchestra I used to play in and see what he thinks.” Over the last several conversations she had had with Liron, it had come to her attention that creating something wasn’t enough. That art had to be put into practice. It had to be displayed. She only hoped that her old conductor would think the score worthy.