Dancing Days

by Val St. Crowe

  Chapter Ten

  Over the next week or so, the three were consumed with preparations for May Day. In the mornings, they practiced the Maypole dance. Then Sawyer went off to sew dresses and was gone for the rest of the day. Maddie did more work in the dance enclave. Nora spent her afternoons working in the engineering enclave on a tracker for Catling, in case another portal happened and Catling knew about it before they did. Coeus was helping her. The committee that had been formed would be able to use the tracker as well, so Nora felt like she was doing her best to help Helicon out.

  She went to visit Mack one day and spent some time with the chimeras. She asked Mack if any of the other animals seemed to sense when the portals were opening. He said he hadn’t noticed, but now that she mentioned it, they had all gotten a little excitable before each incident. None of them had struck out on their own like Catling, trying to find the portal, however. Mack said that made sense, though. He told her that Catling was always the most independent of the cat-ducks. She’d gone after Nora, hadn’t she? Catling was fearless, according to Mack.

  Dionysus stayed in Helicon, in the wine and spirits enclave, and there were some muses who were there every night, drinking with him. If Dionysus knew that the muses suspected him of ripping holes in the fabric of Helicon, he certainly didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed quite oblivious to anything that didn’t have to do with himself. The only time he spoke to Nora, he’d forgotten her name and didn’t seem the least bit apologetic about it.

  She and Owen didn’t discuss the topic of his father again. Owen was helping Alexander with the committee, and he seemed preoccupied. He did tell Nora that he’d suggested they begin interrogating all the muses. “You know, act like real police?” he’d said. However, his idea had been shut down as too invasive and rude. “I’ve asked some of the others in the security enclave what they think, though, and they agree with me. This is serious and dangerous, and we’ve got to do what we can to find the culprit.”

  Nora didn’t have the heart to tell him that a lot of people still suspected him. She especially didn’t want to say that she’d even considered it herself for a few moments. But listening to him talk, she was convinced that there was no way Owen was making the tears in Helicon. She did ask him if he thought Phoebe was behaving strangely, though. She didn’t really think that Phoebe could be responsible, but she had noticed that Phoebe seemed annoyed at the council meetings. Maybe the stress of the position was getting to her.

  Owen didn’t have much to offer on that front. He hadn’t seen or talked to Phoebe recently. And, in fact, Nora didn’t see much of Phoebe either. While she was working with Coeus on the tracker one afternoon, she decided to get up her courage enough to ask Coeus about it.

  Nora was taking apart walkie-talkies that had been brought back from the mundane world. Coeus was going to use them to make the tracker somehow. Nora wasn’t clear on the details. She worked on unscrewing some screws from the back of one of them, but her screwdriver kept slipping off the screw head.

  “Let me see that,” said Coeus, who was doing something with little green circuit boards on the opposite side of the table.

  Nora handed it to him. “How long has Phoebe been the head of the council?” she asked, hoping she sounded casual.

  “How long?” Coeus scrutinized the walkie-talkie. “You need a Philips head screwdriver.”

  “A what?” Nora had never really used a screwdriver in her life, although she’d observed people doing it a few times.

  Coeus drew in the air. “Got a little cross shape on it. It’ll fit in the screw.” He handed it back to her. “See?”

  Nora did see. She thought.

  Coeus gestured with his head. “Tools are back there.”

  She started in the direction he’d indicated.

  “Take the walkie-talkie so you can see how big of one you need,” said Coeus.

  Nora grabbed it off the table.

  “I really don’t know how long she’s been the head of the council,” said Coeus. “Couple hundred years, I guess.”

  Nora was always forgetting that muses lived for so long. The thought startled her. She knelt down next to an open tool box. Screwdrivers of various sizes and lengths were laid out in compartments. “Does she like doing it?” She began picking up screwdrivers and trying them in the screws on the walkie-talkie.

  “Make sure you put those screwdrivers back in the same place you found them,” said Coeus. “A disorganized tool box is a useless toolbox.”

  Nora carefully put the screwdriver in her hand right back where she’d found it and picked up another one.

  “I don’t know if ‘like’ is exactly the right word for how Phoebe feels about it,” said Coeus. “It’s a pretty thankless job, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But somebody’s got to do it, and Phoebe’s one of the oldest muses around these days. People respect her.”

  Really? Nora stood up, holding a screwdriver that she thought would fit. She went back to the table. “Is it really such a terrible job?”

  Coeus shrugged. “Well, you haven’t been here too long, Nora, so maybe you haven’t noticed, but most muses are not particularly into responsibility. They’d rather focus on their own little creations and not think about anything else.”

  Nora tried the new screwdriver on the walkie-talkie. Much easier. She was actually able to unscrew it.

  “Usually, that works out just fine, actually,” said Coeus. “They’re responsible for themselves, and they’re happy, and we don’t have a lot of problems here. When we do have problems, though, Phoebe gets the brunt of it. She’s strong, though. She can handle it.”

  Nora had managed to remove two of the screws. She went to work on the third and final one. “So I guess it’s really more of a burden than a privilege, being head of the council.”

  “Being on the council’s the same way,” said Coeus. “It’s a big headache.”

  Nora had never really thought about government that way. She remembered being a kid in middle school and really wishing she could run for student body president. Of course, she guessed class government was not the same thing. “So, if Phoebe doesn’t want to do it, why doesn’t she just stop?”

  “Not that easy,” said Coeus. “If no one else steps up to take over the council, it’s a disaster. Enclaves tend to get a little angry with each other, as you may have noticed. If there isn’t anyone around to moderate that, it’ll get real bad, real fast. Phoebe wouldn’t let that happen. She cares too much.”

  Nora took out the final screw, and began trying to get the back off the walkie-talkie. It was loose, but still attached somewhere. She turned it over in her hands. “You and Phoebe are different than other muses. You embrace responsibility.” She was thinking of the things Agler had said around the fire that night. How he’d argued that people needed to endure a little bit of discomfort not only to grow, but to help out the community. Phoebe and Coeus certainly seemed to subscribe to that way of thinking.

  “Look, somebody’s got to be responsible,” said Coeus. “We can’t all be little children, running after the next game.”

  Aha! There was a little plastic latch. If Nora pushed it in very carefully... Yep. The back of the walkie-talkie came right off. “Do you ever think the other muses should be more responsible? Does Phoebe?”

  Coeus sighed. He put down the green circuit board he’d been working on. “Now, that question goes right to the heart of things, Nora.”

  “Sorry,” she said. She didn’t want to let on about her suspicions.

  “No,” said Coeus. “It’s fine to ask. And I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes, I do. But Phoebe knows better. She’s focused. The purpose of Helicon is to inspire. So whatever we do here, we have to have an environment where muses are constantly creating. And responsibility sometimes kills creativity.”

  “But the engineering enclave is responsible for keeping everything running around here,” said Nora.

  “That hasn’t always been true,” said Coeus. “En
gineering used to be an enclave a lot like science. Just a bunch of guys making things that worked for different purposes. When I took over engineering, I was inspired to do things that mattered, though. I thought it would be more meaningful to create things that I knew people would actually use.”

  “Is it?”

  Coeus nodded, grinning. “Yes. Knowing what I create makes a difference is definitely more meaningful than creating for my own ego. But it does mean giving up a little bit of freedom. I can’t engineer anything I want any time I want. For me, it’s worth it. I sometimes wonder if other muses might feel the same way if they gave it a shot, but I’m not going to force anyone to do anything.”

  Nora now had the walkie-talkie open. And there was a little green circuit board inside which looked very similar to the one that Coeus was holding. She pointed at it. “Is this what you need?”

  “That’s the ticket,” he said.

  Nora tried to pull it out, but realized it was attached somewhere. Carefully, she looked for the attachment and tried to think of how to put the next thing she was going to say. “You won’t force anyone. But Phoebe insists that we don’t use muse energy to make things that we could make the old-fashioned way. Doesn’t that force us to be more responsible in some ways?”

  Coeus laughed. “Nora, you haven’t been here very long, but you really seem to have your finger on the pulse of the central conflict here.” He looked thoughtful. “I guess in some ways, Phoebe does try to act in ways that force the muses to do what’s best for everyone, even if they don’t like it. But it’s best for Helicon and especially for the mundane world if we can give them as much energy as possible. She knows that, even if other people don’t.”

  Nora managed to free the circuit board. She felt triumphant. If what Coeus was saying was true, it didn’t seem like Phoebe would want to drain magic from the muse world. But what if she felt so strongly about it that she thought she needed to teach everyone a lesson? She supposed they couldn’t rule Phoebe out as a possibility. Maybe she was opening holes in Helicon. But Nora had to admit she thought it was unlikely.

  A muse poked his head inside the room where they were working. “Hey, Coeus, we were wondering if you could help out with putting up the Maypole.”

  He set down his circuit board. “Architecture’s supposed to be doing that. How hard is it? It’s a big pole with ribbons on it.”

  The muse shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  Coeus sighed. “Nora, if you can get two or three more of those out, that should be enough. Thanks.” He strode off after the muse.