by S. K Munt
‘Dafaq man?’ Lachlan snapped. ‘ZEUS? Did you just use the word Zeus at this table?’
‘He did.’ Jules sounded disturbed. ‘He really and truly did.’
‘Oh my god…’ Leigh’s oneiric eyes spilled over. ‘Ry… no. Don’t say that!’
‘Why not?’ He kissed her fiercely, overjoyed to think that maybe their connection dwarfed his bond with Callie in more ways than one, but she moaned, then sobbed. Alarmed, he pulled back just as the song began to play and as Leigh’s father had promised, it sounded even better than any other recording Ryan had ever heard. ‘It’s fate, sweetheart. I went over the falls for you and you slipped and almost hurt yourself and-’ Ryan was beside himself as he compared the lyrics of the song, to his love. The girl who cried over silly things on the TV alone. The girl who brushed snow off a dying tree. The girl he’d just brought a puppy to, on Christmas Eve...
Leigh began to cry. She wrenched herself out of her hands and went into the kitchen, waving off her mother’s concerned questions before coming back and handing Ryan a piece of paper. It was official looking, with a bunch of numbers that Ryan didn’t understand. He looked up at her while his heart pounded in his throat. ‘What is this?’
Leigh wiped at her eyes. ‘Results from the blood tests they did on me at the hospital in Vegas while they were checking me over. I… I have low something and it’s got people concerned I…’ she hugged herself, her face pleading with him to understand so he wouldn’t have to say it.
‘What?’ Ryan asked, rising to his feet and putting the paper on the table. Something sick and dark slithered around his brain, but he refused to acknowledge the approaching doom.
‘I have to see an oncologist. I thought it was jet-lag, until a week passed. I told myself I was pregnant, until my period came and I’ve been trying to convince myself that everyone’s feeling the heat like me but… but I’m faint all the time and…’ she bit her lip. ‘I didn’t want to tell my parents but...you played the song, Ryan- and in the end- Honey dies.’ Her eyes spilled over and she caught her face in her hands and began to sob. ‘No matter how much he loves her, the tree grows but she dies…’
And then she fainted, and Ryan’s heart hit the floor even after his arms caught her and in the background, her song continued to play, blaring in the otherwise startled silence.
Twenty-Two
Ryan was carrying her, and apparently she’d put on a lot of weight instead of losing the two kilograms that the scales had informed her of, because he was panting hard. She closed her eyes, feeling a little nauseous to be bounced around so, and then flinched when something scraped against her ankle.
‘Ryan…’ she rolled her head into his chest and reached up to touch his face, finding stubble and parted lips. ‘Ryan…’ she tried to remember what had made her faint, and when she did, her eyes fluttered open. ‘Oh my gosh! Ry… mum… dad…’
‘I told them that I’m taking you to a doctor friend,’ he panted, kissing her fingertips before bouncing her again. ‘We’ll celebrate Christmas tomorrow.’
‘They’ll be worried!’
‘They were a lot more worried before I said I knew someone who could check you over, without you needing to wait in a hospital for six hours…’
Leigh let her fingers fall back to shield her eyes from a streak of lightning in the sky, inhaling the scent of forest leaves and ripe soil once more, like back in the Thousands Islands region only here, the air was thick and hot like soup, and there wasn’t a trace of pine, only mud. ‘This doesn’t feel like a doctor’s driveway…’
And I don’t think a doctor has a chance in hell of curing something that fate has ordained…
Just thinking the words made Leigh feel even more motion-sick, and she groaned, pressing her other hand to her tummy, wincing when she heard a loud thunderous rattle from the heavens above. She didn’t want to think about the ‘C’ word, but she felt it crawling through her blood cells and taking all that was good and strong and leaving her weak. She could tell herself that it was a new thing- something she’d easily get on top of, but when Leigh forced herself to think about her body, she knew that it had been a while since she’d last felt like herself. She’d stopped dancing, and had taken to long baths instead. She’d stopped going to book-club meetings and had opted to stay in, nice and cozy in front of her laptop. She’d started her trip in America feeling full of life, but as the tour had gone on, she’d stopped blogging, started taking less photos and had begun to sleep in more, when a year ago, she’d found it hard to sleep in past six a.m.
And since the accident… she wanted to believe that one round of crappy blood tests had depressed her into wilting, along with the hurt that Ryan’s absence had inflicted upon her, but in the past, she’d been the kind of girl who turned to books in times of distress, losing herself in someone else’s story. But she hadn’t cracked one since Niagara- not only because she was sad, but because her eyelids were getting heavy awfully quickly of late.
And wasn’t she tired right now? Wasn’t she exhausted? Ryan had dropped a literal bombshell on her that day, and had been doing so over and over again since they’d first met, and yet she’d reacted with sighs and the urge to hide in the dark. That wasn’t her- she was the kind of girl who leapt onto the bed at ‘a good part’ but it seemed like she’d only had the energy lately to make love, cry and widen her fucking already wide eyes.
And even the love-making… Ryan was a fantastic kisser, but was she feeling light-headed from his touches because of all that was right with him, or all that was right with her? She wanted to believe in the first, but that fucking song… even as a five year old girl, she’d understood that as far as heroines went, ‘Honey’ was a pretty depressing story to adopt as her own. Like Ryan, her parents had only seen the lovable side of the character, seemingly forgetting the poor bitch’s fate.
And now I know… that’s my fate. I’ll be loved like no other- then mourned. There’s no fan-fiction to change the end of that song and even if you could, what would be left? A bit of a ditz, that’s what…
Leigh rolled up the anxiety like a ruined rug and sent it sliding towards the gods. What point was there in ruing what she couldn’t change, when someone like Ryan Weaver was coming to her rescue? She needed to enjoy the gesture and stop sweating the result.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, opening her eyes when she heard the boom of thunder again, noticing now that in addition to the crickets, thunder, Ryan’s panting and the fall of his feet, she could also hear a gentle, ‘thump thump’ every few paces.
‘To somewhere I know they’ll come to…’ Ryan kissed her forehead and moaned. ‘You’re so warm. Don’t worry baby, we’re almost there and I swear to you that I can fix this.’ There was the sound of rustling leaves and then Ryan’s footfalls went from scrapes to thuds.
‘And that would be…?’ She sat up a little and forced her heavy eyes open, drawing in a breath when she saw that they were practically hurtling down a set of timber stairs and into a blackish-grey void below. She gasped and clutched at his shoulders as the temperature dropped considerably, but even as Ryan ran out of steps and began leaping from one cluster of boulders to another, his pace remained the same. ‘I know this place! I’ve been here once before-’
‘Only once?’ Ryan came to a stop and crouched, sitting her on a cool, dry rock by the edge of a black pool- a pool she now knew lay at the bottom of the gorge up in the range surrounding Horizon. She reached out and stroked the water to check that it was real, and her fingertips came back wet and colder than ice. She moaned gently again and slid her fingertips down her fevered brow, enjoying the contrast in sensation after having been nothing but hot all day. ‘I used to spend most of my Spring and Summer afternoons here with Hunter and...’
Calliope! Buh! Well excuse me if we aren’t all wild, cliff-diving rock goddesses!
‘My parents didn’t like the idea of their fragile Honey jumping into water you couldn’t see to the bottom of,’ Leigh said, som
ewhat haughtily as she sat up and gazed around at the sheer rock walls, like slabs of iron in the gloom. It was beautiful in an eerie way- everything was the darkest shades of green and grey where the moon touched it, and black where it did not penetrate through the rainforest canopy above, and she imagined witches and forest sprites scattering at the unlikely arrival of humans in their special place after sunset. The waterfall flowed gently compared to Niagara, gently enough for her to hear the thunder roll again just fine. ‘Besides, we must have driven for an hour to get here.’
‘A little under that…’ Ryan said in a way that suggested that he hadn’t been too concerned about traffic infringements for the duration of the trip. He lifted her face to the moonlight and stared into her intently. ‘And we’re not leaving here until I know that you’re going to live for a very long time, sweetheart.’
Then we’re not leaving.
Leigh swallowed and kissed him. ‘You carried me up a mountain to… what?’
‘Phone a friend in one of the few places she’ll get a signal.’ Ryan turned from her, rising as liquid as the falls in reverse and turned his own face to the sky. He reached over his shoulder, and then pulled his guitar over to his front, and it made a hollow thump as it rested against his equally hard body. He strummed, and Leigh swallowed- with his face turned up to the moonlight and the guitar in his arms, he looked like a minstrel from one of her ultimate fantasies.
‘Please work…’ he muttered, and then began to strum out a tune that brought to mind memories of medieval cartoons and ice cream trucks. He didn’t so much as glance down at the strings, but focused on the waterfall as his fingers deftly plucked out ‘Greensleeves’ while Leigh watched him, captivated.
‘You’re so beautiful…’ she whispered, and Ryan turned his profile to her, a half-mask in the moonlight, and smiled a lopsided smile. He opened his mouth to say something, but a voice from behind him spoke first, rising from the water like a flume.
‘As are you…’ water streamed from Calliope’s hair and down her body, making her simple white gown cling to the kind of places that had probably driven Ryan out of his damned mind for centuries. Eyes that whirled like pastel fire locked on Leigh’s. ‘I sort of hate that…’
Leigh buried her fingers into the rock beneath her and gaped as the muse of music leaned over on the edge of her rock and stared into her eyes with eyes that swirled like pastel fire.
Oh and my big green eyes are impressive, hey Ry?
‘Damn,’ Calliope whispered, pulling back. ‘No musical ability in there at all- but still lovely.’
Well Merry Christmas to you too, bitch. And hey, I can SING.
‘She is,’ Ryan said, his voice hoarse, turning to look down at Leigh. ‘Inside and out. Which is why you’re going to die for her.’
Leigh groaned as Calliope whirled away from her to stare daggers at her former lover. ‘Was that a joke?’
No laughter followed, only silence.
Ryan
‘She’s sick, Calliope. She was born for me to find her, but something went wrong on the night you two met and I think The Harmony is going to balance the scales by taking something from her.’ The words hurt Ryan to say, especially when Leigh looked up at him with a scared and wounded and slightly accusatory expression, but he knew it was the truth and had to be said.
‘You can’t know that,’ Calliope said, standing to stare Ryan down, but he did not blink.
‘Then how come I do?’ Ryan sighed, feeling some of Leigh’s lethargy seep from her energy and into his. ‘She’s more than just a girl, okay? She’s the one with the lyre- the one I saved back in the beginning, and won Zeus’s approval over. Look at her and tell me I’m wrong- look at her and tell me that her soul isn’t almost as old as time.’
Calliope’s eyes shifted quickly to Leigh, and she frowned. ‘That girl was a lot younger, Ryan. Maybe time has muddled your-’
‘It’s her. I’ve been dreaming of her, but only since I met Leigh. I saved her life and yours and your precious Lyre, while you flitted about, completely unaware of the impact you’d had on such unimportant mortals. That was a test for me- and I passed it, and now we’re being tested again, and if I could save her I would. If I could lay down my life- ow!’ He looked down to see that Honey had punched him in the thigh, and his muscle cramped up from where she had corked it.
‘You’ll do no such freaking thing,’ Leigh grumbled, struggling to rise beside him and he helped her up.
‘I know. I wouldn’t be able to- I couldn’t leave you, I don’t think, and I know you’d see it coming or-’
‘Go right after you!’ Honey slipped her arms around his waist and leaned against his chest, looking up at him with those green eyes. ‘So don’t even try it because you have to get up pretty early to get in a plot twist once I’ve worked out how the story goes…’
‘I’ve plot twisted circles around you,’ he teased her. ‘If your eyes were any wider, you wouldn’t be able to find contacts to fit.’
‘An easy thing to do when you start in one genre and flip through eight! Oh, it’s a boy on a farm oh! Now he’s in a jungle and a dinosaur is chasing him into an AA meeting in New York City…’ Leigh tugged on his shirt. ‘But I’ve got this Ryan now, and I know how it’s going to end.’ Some of the merriment faded from her eyes and she reached up and touched his lips. ‘In the early spring.. flowers, robins… angels will come…’ she kissed him, stretching up on her tip toes. ‘And you’ll write a song about me, won’t you?’
Tears coated Ryan’s throat. ‘I already have.’ He swung his guitar over his shoulder and bent to scoop her up, before turning to face Calliope again. ‘And she lives, okay? She fucking lives only this time, you’re the one who’s going to take the test for us, okay?’ Tears welled in his eyes, and he stared into his ex’s lovely ones imploringly, hating himself for asking so much of her because part of him would always live for Calliope and the music and love her as eternally as he’d resent her. ‘Give up the music, Cal. Either leave Hunter to finish his human life alone, or take him with you…’ that proposition hurt him even more but nothing would compare to losing Honey. ‘But you need to join the chorus now and give Rya the centre stage.’
‘Ryan, no! That’s not fair!’ Leigh protested, but he shushed her by pressing a salty kiss to her sweet little mouth.
‘Actually, it is fair,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the whole point.’
‘Oh god…’ Calliope sounded astonished. ‘Ryan you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, but you’re asking me to choose between your mortal happiness and his!’ Calliope began to weep, and even that sound was melodic. ‘He’s so happy! I love him so much that I can’t stand it, and so does Rya. We’re a family, Ryan and I know I can’t keep him forever as the man he is now, but are you really asking me to deprive him of the spotlight, and the world of his gift?’
‘It’s not me asking!’ Ryan snapped. ‘We’re being pushed to the end of this cliff Calliope! Don’t act like I’m a monster for hanging on for an innocent girls’ sake. There’s no replacement for her and if she dies, that will be that! But for you, it’ll be a blink and an eternity of freedom and Hunter will get to share that with you!’
Calliope turned away. ‘Rya’s so young!’
‘Rya’s my daughter too, and I heard that voice the other night- it called to me in the dark! She’s powerful Calliope, and she can do this. You just don’t want to lose ground to your sisters by handing the reins over to a novice, and I understand that that’s scary but look what happened when I gave Hunter that song! We both know I was a better performer all around until that moment- but without shadows falling from larger trees, little ones can bloom!’ He began to cry earnestly, stepping forward and making her look at Leigh. ‘She brought me back to life, Calliope, and me, her. You taught me to play Honey twenty-three years ago, and I played it outside mum’s hospital remember? Well, she was born that day and her parents could hear me… and because I loved that song so much and played it until it matter
ed, she’s going to die. You were the original Honey, but you faked what she is: precious and adored for just existing. Please…’ He fell to his knees at Calliope’s feet. ‘You can balance this. The Harmony knows what your craft means to you, and if you give it up for me…’
‘She’ll live,’ a tiny voice said sweetly, and Ryan’s heart ached. He looked up to see Rya melt from the darkness, not fast enough yet to keep up with her mother, but still close. Rya’s fingers were white in the moonlight as she laced them around her mother’s, but her eyes remained on her father’s and they were so like his own that it was akin to looking in a mirror. ‘Mummy… you know she’ll live.’
Calliope began to weep in earnest, falling to her backside on the rock and hugging her knees to sob into her sodden skirt. ‘I’m not ready…’ she moaned. ‘I’m not ready!’
‘You’ll never be ready,’ a third voice interrupted, its tone venomous but still light, like poison spritzed from a diffuser. Ryan looked over his shoulder, feeling a multitude of rattling emotions when Imogen stepped out of the rapids below him, her face the delicate one he’d known in Helicon, not the glamorous one she often used on earth, and not even close to the wrinkled mask she’d worn as his savior. ‘But maybe…’ her eyes fell to Honey’s shivering, limp form. ‘Maybe I am.’
‘What?’ Calliope demanded brokenly, getting to her feet.
‘Where did she come from?’ Honey asked, sounding more alert. He felt her fight to get out of his arms again so he helped her to her unsteady feet. ‘That’s Imogen, right? The muse of the written word?’
‘It is,’ he said, pleased by how Leigh had re-animated like the ultimate fangirl she was, and Imogen’s crooked smile came straight from the ego. ‘She’s also the woman who nursed me back to health, left me a life to fill, and talked me into chasing you as Isabelle the other day.’
