* * *
It was after midnight on the night of the Summer Solstice celebration, and Nora was sitting in a rocking chair in the babies and toddlers enclave. A tiny muse baby was asleep on her lap, his small mouth open and his little eyes squeezed shut. Over an hour ago, she’d shooed Sawyer and Maddie off, sending them to the revels, claiming she had everything under control. All of the children were asleep by then, exhausted by Sawyer’s rousing game of hide and seek. It was quiet, and Nora didn’t need their help anymore. They’d protested but not very much and had eventually agreed. When they were gone, Nora had drunk in the silence, feeling peaceful, until this little guy had started crying, and she’d gone to get him and rock him back to sleep.
Now she felt relaxed and calm, the warmth and weight of the child in her lap grounding her and connecting her to the world. She hadn’t felt this serene in quite a long time, certainly not since sometime before breaking up with Owen.
She softly caressed the baby’s forehead. His skin was so soft under her fingertips. She smiled, feeling at peace.
“Nora?” It was a male voice, and she couldn’t quite place it until Agler walked into view.
“Hi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I asked Maddie where you were, and she said you were here,” said Agler. “I wondered if you wanted any company.”
Nora really didn’t. She was enjoying the tranquility of being alone with sleeping children, but she didn’t see how she could tell Agler to go away without sounding rude, so she shrugged. “Sure.”
Agler pulled over another rocking chair and sat down. “You haven’t been back to the music enclave.”
“I haven’t been much of anywhere.”
Agler nodded, rocking on his chair. It was quiet for a few minutes. “Yeah, I’ve been hanging out in the philosophy enclave more and more these days. You should come by some time. Themis thought you asked some really good questions when we had the conversation about gods last month.”
Nora touched the baby’s forehead again. “I just, um, I haven’t much felt like doing anything lately.” She sounded pathetic, she supposed. She was engulfed in a little bubble of her pain, and she didn’t seem to feel like leaving. At least not yet.
“Yeah,” said Agler again. “I heard about you and Owen.”
It was quiet again. Nora didn’t feel the need to acknowledge what he’d said. Knowing what she did about Helicon, she was sure the news was far and wide at this point.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Agler asked.
Nora shook her head. “Not really.”
More awkward silence. Nora began to wonder if Agler might just leave if she didn’t say anything. But that was rude too, wasn’t it? She chewed on her lip, wondering what she could talk about. She remembered that she’d found Agler attractive once and felt guilty about it. He hadn’t changed. He was still tanned and strong and freckled. But Nora didn’t feel anything from looking at him anymore. She didn’t feel like she had the energy.
“It’s your first breakup, huh?” said Agler.
Nora narrowed her eyes. “Like you’re a breakup expert or something? How many could you have possibly gone through?”
Agler looked embarrassed. “One,” he said.
“I guess we’re kind of even, then, aren’t we?” said Nora, smiling. She felt good again for a second, as if teasing him lifted some of the sadness in her.
“I guess so,” said Agler. He smiled back. “But I do know that it’s no fun.”
“It doesn’t feel like a breakup,” Nora said. “It feels worse than that. I feel like I lost my family and my support system. I feel like everything I ever loved was a lie. I feel broken.”
Agler nodded. He took a deep breath and looked at his shoes. “You and Owen were close. You grew up together.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Nora said. “Why do everything he did? Why take care of me and make sure I got back to Helicon if he only ever wanted to use me?”
“Maybe I need you to fill me in a little bit,” said Agler. “What do you mean, ‘use you?’”
Nora explained about Owen’s eye trick. She explained about the way he’d been manipulating her when he got back to Helicon. She didn’t say anything about Owen’s pressuring her to have sex with him though. She didn’t feel like she could say that out loud to Agler. “Now, whenever I look back on anything we did together, all I see is the way he was coercing me to act the way he wanted me to act. It makes me sick.”
Agler studied his hands. “Owen’s been like that ever since I’ve known him.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” said Nora. “I guess I should have listened. You know, he told me that you were a bully. That you made his and my life miserable when we were kids. But he said whatever he could say to keep me under his thumb.”
“He said that about me?” Agler looked annoyed.
Nora nodded. “I don’t believe it, of course.”
Agler got out of his rocking chair. “That was how he spun it back then. I guess there wouldn’t be any reason for him to tell the truth now.”
“Back then?”
“When I was a kid, sometimes my mom would leave me in the kiddie playground while she went to play music or something,” said Agler. “And before you and Owen got taken away, you guys would be there too. You were always with Owen. He’d lead you around everywhere, holding onto your hand really tight. And if anyone tried to talk to you, he’d answer for you. It was like you were Owen’s shadow. But one day, you were by yourself. You were all alone, sitting on the swings. And you were crying. So I went over to ask you what was wrong, but when I tried to talk to you, you started crying harder.”
“Why was I crying?” Nora said. She had no memory of this whatsoever.
“I don’t know,” said Agler. “You wouldn’t tell me. You would only say Owen’s name. So I went looking for him. I asked some of the other kids if they knew where he was, and they said he’d gone off in the woods. I went into the woods after him. I found him. He was doing something really...”
“What?” said Nora.
“He had this squirrel,” said Agler, making a face. “I don’t know if it was dead when he found it or if he killed it, or what, but he was like...dissecting it or something. He’d pulled its guts out, and he was squatted over it, really looking intently at it.”
“Oh,” said Nora, feeling a fresh wave of horror crash over her. “How old was he then?”
“Maybe five?” said Agler. “Anyway, he saw me. And we kind of got into a fight. I said I was going to tell everyone what he was doing, and that he’d get in big trouble. I was a kid, and the dead thing freaked me out, so I was kind of posturing or something. Trying to save face since I was so disgusted by what he was doing. He just grinned at me. He picked up the squirrel and ran straight back to the playground. Once he got there, he showed it to one of the muses watching us, and he said that I’d found it in the woods, and that I’d been scaring you with it. Since you were over there crying still, they believed him, and I got in all kinds of trouble. The next time I saw him he said I needed to stay away from him and stay away from you, or he’d make me sorry.”
Nora felt sick. “He was torturing a squirrel?”
“And he blamed me for it,” said Agler.
Nora’s mouth was dry. “Do you know anything about psychology, Agler?”
He shrugged. “Um, not really. Isn’t that some kind of mundane world thing?”
“I took a psychology class,” said Nora. “I was okay in classes where I just had to memorize things for tests. As long as I wasn’t creative, you know? So I liked that class. But I remember the lesson on sociopaths, and one of the things they do is kill animals when they’re children.”
“What’s a sociopath?”
Nora swallowed, trying to keep her tongue from sticking to the roof of her mouth. “They’re people who don’t have empathy. They don’t care about other people’s feelings. Sometimes they end up killing lots of people. And they usually s
tart with animals.” She clutched the baby close. “And the way he treated me, like I was just something to use to keep him happy, it fits. He even told me once that he didn’t care about me the way I cared about him, but I didn’t listen.”
The baby in her arms woke up and began to squall loudly. She must have squeezed him too tight. Immediately, Nora put him over her shoulder and began rocking and rubbing his back, making soothing noises.
As the baby quieted, Agler said, “Wait a second, Nora. Are you saying you think Owen might be dangerous?”
She turned horrified eyes on him. “I don’t know. If he really doesn’t care about anything but himself, maybe.” She chewed on her lip. “Did you know another portal opened?”
“When?” said Agler.
“Yesterday,” said Nora. “But they got to it and closed it before the Influence found it. Owen said that the excitement was cut off.”
“You think Owen’s making those portals?”
“You think it, don’t you?” Nora asked. “You’ve said it to me before. Sawyer thinks it.”
“It doesn’t matter if I do or not,” said Agler. “I can’t prove anything.”
“How could we prove it?”
Dancing Days Page 37
