* * *
It was noon, and the main fire pit was empty except for Phoebe. She was standing inside the circle with her arms crossed over her chest. She did not look happy. Nora had received a summons to come here, and on her way, she’d run into Agler, who’d gotten one as well. They didn’t know what it was about, and they’d been trading theories as they walked.
But it all became clear when Owen skulked out from behind one of the tents and took a seat next to Phoebe. His face was swollen, marred by a purplish bruise that extended to both his eyes. He looked terrible. Nora’s heart sank. So this was what Owen was up to.
Phoebe gestured to the bench next to Owen. “Sit down, both of you.”
Hanging her head, Nora sat down. Agler followed suit. They both stared at the ground.
Phoebe began to pace in front of them. Her voice was quiet and controlled, but Nora could tell she was angry. “We don’t usually have problems like this in Helicon,” she said. “I can count on one hand the times that there’s been any kind of violence while I’ve been head of the council. This is simply not a place where people hit each other.”
Agler closed his eyes. Nora could see him swallow.
Phoebe spread her hands. “Agler, Owen tells me that you began hitting him repeatedly, and that he didn’t retaliate. Is this true?”
Agler bobbed his head.
“Answer me,” said Phoebe.
“It’s true,” said Agler in a small voice.
This wasn’t fair. Owen had engineered this entire thing. Nora looked up. “It’s not Agler’s fault. Owen egged him on. He was calling him names and—”
“Name calling?” Phoebe repeated. “That’s why you hit him?”
Agler nodded again, looking miserable.
“It wasn’t like that,” said Nora. “Owen provoked him.”
“Oh,” said Phoebe, “I think I understand the situation perfectly. You came to Helicon dating Owen. Now, you’re with Agler, and—”
“I’m not,” said Nora. “I’m not with anyone.”
Phoebe paused for a moment. Her brow furrowed. “Aren’t you?”
Nora shook her head.
Phoebe shook herself, rolling her eyes. “Heaven spare me from tween love. The point is you’ve got boys fighting over you.”
Nora made a face. It wasn’t like that. Not exactly.
Phoebe put a finger in her face. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, Nora. Alone.”
Nora shrank into the bench. Phoebe was blaming her?
Phoebe sighed. “Owen doesn’t want to tell me the nitty gritty details either. I wouldn’t know a thing about this if his face wasn’t completely mangled, and I haven’t sent him to the healers yet because I wanted Agler to see what it was he’d done.” She pointed at Owen. “Look.”
Agler raised his head to stare at him.
“You already stole my girlfriend,” said Owen. “You don’t have to hit me too.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” muttered Agler.
“Like hell she’s not,” said Owen.
Phoebe held up a hand to stop Owen from talking. She looked thoughtfully from Owen to Agler. “It really isn’t important. The important thing is that we don’t solve conflicts with violence. You know this, Agler Thorn.”
His shame was all over him.
“Don’t do it again,” Phoebe said. “Whatever he says to you. I don’t care what it is. If you can’t control yourself, walk away. Do you understand?”
Agler nodded.
“I don’t hear you,” said Phoebe.
“I understand,” he said.
“Good,” said Phoebe. “Owen, off to the healers with you. Nora, I want to talk to you in my tent. Agler, think about what you’ve done.”
Owen stood up. “That’s it?”
Phoebe raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Think about what you’ve done?” Owen echoed in a disbelieving voice.
Phoebe folded her arms over her chest again. “I realize that you grew up in the mundane world where violence was commonplace, Owen. I know there it’s quite typical to punish violence with violence. But you won’t find that in Helicon. Now get yourself to the healing enclave. It makes my face hurt just looking at you.”
Owen’s jaw twitched. He took a breath as if he was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Turning on his heel, he stalked off.
Agler stood up, but he wouldn’t look at Nora or Phoebe. “I’m sorry.”
Phoebe patted him on the shoulder. “I meant what I said. Don’t listen to what he says.” She beckoned to Nora. “Come along, then.”
Once they were inside Phoebe’s tent, Phoebe pulled the opening shut after them. “Now,” she said, “I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”
Nora chewed on her lip. She couldn’t tell Phoebe all of it, could she? “Agler and I were in the woods, and we saw Owen. Well, he saw us, and—”
“And what were you and Agler doing in the woods, seeing as you aren’t romantically entangled?”
Nora fidgeted. “Walking?”
Phoebe fixed her with a no-nonsense glare. “You can’t have this both ways, Nora. Now either Owen stumbled on the two of you in some kind of adolescent tryst, which is what he claims, or something else is going on. I’ve given Owen the benefit of the doubt since he arrived back here in Helicon, but I must say I find it a bit odd that if there’s violence, he’s involved, and then his story doesn’t match yours. So what happened?”
“What did Owen say Agler and I were doing?” Nora didn’t like the idea of untrue rumors being spread about her.
“Never mind that,” said Phoebe. “What were you actually doing?”
Nora felt deflated. Would it hurt to tell Phoebe? “We were spying on Owen.”
“Spying?”
“We think that he might be ripping open the portals in Helicon. We were trying to catch him in the act,” said Nora.
Phoebe looked surprised. She sat down in a chair. “What makes you think Owen might be responsible? Do you have any evidence?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Nora. She was beginning to feel a little silly about the whole thing. “I’m not sure Owen is exactly normal.”
Phoebe laughed. “No one in Helicon is normal.”
“I mean in a bad way,” said Nora. “When we were in the mundane world, he could do this thing with his eyes. He’d just get someone to look at him, and it was like he could control them after that. Make them do whatever he wanted. He did it to me.”
Phoebe drew in a breath, looking thoughtful. “Go on.”
“When we got to Helicon, it stopped working,” said Nora. “So, he started to do other things to try to get me to do what he wanted. He made me feel bad about myself all the time. He accused me of things.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “He kept trying to make me sleep with him.”
“That doesn’t sound pleasant.” Phoebe had a reassuring look in her eyes.
Nora plowed on. “And then Agler told me that when Owen was a kid here, he tortured animals and killed them or at least he did disgusting things with dead animals, and I thought that maybe Owen was a sociopath, because he doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself, and I thought maybe he’d turn into a serial killer or something. That he’d be capable of making the portals. So, we started watching him.”
“A serial killer?” Phoebe shook her head. “You spent so much time in the mundane world. Let’s be a little rational here, shall we? To your knowledge, Owen’s never killed anyone, has he?”
“No,” said Nora.
“Or even threatened to kill someone?”
“No,” said Nora. She was beginning to feel like she’d gotten a little hysterical.
“Owen is and always has been a strange boy,” said Phoebe. “And perhaps he’s not particularly mature enough to handle a relationship with you, and he’s taking it out in rather unhealthy ways. I don’t think we should leap to the conclusion that he’s some kind of maniac killer. He’s clearly jealous of you and Agler
.”
“There’s nothing going on between us,” said Nora. “We’re friends.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No,” said Nora. “I can’t even think about being with someone. Not yet. After Owen, it all seems... I want to be alone. I want to be free.”
Phoebe got up out of her chair, sighing. “Well, it’s unfortunate, really. I wanted to be wrong about him. I really hoped he’d grown out of it.” She gazed over Nora’s head. “He had issues when he was a child, it’s true. I noticed them. Others did as well. And he always had the ability to be quite charming. Like his father. When the two of you left us all those years ago, the community was divided about him. Some of them thought he was an innocent, wronged child. Others thought he was a devil’s spawn. I was one of the latter.” She turned to Nora. “When you got back here, I thought perhaps I’d been hasty. Perhaps I’d judged him too harshly.”
“Was it because you had a relationship with Dionysus?” Nora couldn’t help but asking.
“Who told you that?” said Phoebe, looking perturbed.
“Jolie in the babies and toddlers enclave.”
“Jolie needs to keep her mouth shut,” said Phoebe. “Yes, several hundred years ago, when I was young and stupid, I had an incredibly idiotic dalliance with Dionysus. But that wasn’t why I was suspicious of Owen. Really. It wasn’t.”
Nora felt bad for bringing it up. “I’m sorry.”
Phoebe waved it away. “The boy’s always sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I’d look into his eyes, and it was like...like there was nothing behind them.” She crossed the tent, clasping her hands together. Then she turned sharply to Nora. “Well, I can’t exactly throw him out because another boy hit him, can I?”
Nora was astonished. “I don’t want you to throw him out.”
“Don’t you?”
Nora realized she hadn’t really thought this far ahead. “Well, this is the only home he’s ever known. And if we can get him to stop opening the portals, then he won’t be hurting anyone—”
“He’s not opening the portals,” Phoebe said with a kind of certainty that didn’t leave room for arguments.
“It is Dionysus then,” said Nora.
“What would give you an idea like that?” said Phoebe, looking confused.
Nora looked at the ground. She didn’t want to admit that she’d been spying on Phoebe as well. “Maybe, during May Day, I happened to overhear that he was doing something that drained energy from Helicon.”
Phoebe shook her head. “You are quite the little spy, aren’t you? Well, that’s got nothing to do with the portals, Nora. Trust me.”
“What does it have to do with?”
“None of your business,” said Phoebe. She tapped her chin with her forefinger. “You see, as head of the council, I’m connected to Helicon in a way that others aren’t. I don’t feel it when the portals open, not exactly, but I feel it when energy it being taken away from Helicon. If the portals were being punched into Helicon from the outside, the energy would seep out. But they aren’t, they’re being made from the inside, because they’re sucking energy away. So Owen has been right all along. Someone inside Helicon is making the portals. And it can’t be Owen, because he wasn’t here when the first ones were made. It can’t be Dionysus either, because he hasn’t been here when any of them were made.”
Nora tried to digest this. “It’s really not Owen?”
“It’s not,” said Phoebe.
“And it isn’t Dionysus. You’re sure?”
“Let’s drop the subject of Dionysus, please,” said Phoebe, looking pained.
Nora nodded, but she wasn’t entirely satisfied. Why didn’t Phoebe want to talk about Dionysus?
Phoebe sat back down in her chair. “Has Owen ever spoken to you about his mother?”
Nora shook her head. “He never talks about her. He used to talk about his father, but after meeting Dionysus again, I think he was a little disillusioned.”
“You don’t get the impression he’s in contact with her then? In any way?”
“No,” said Nora. “Why? What’s his mother got to do with anything?”
“Nimue hates the muses,” said Phoebe. “She hates everything, in fact. She’s really a horrible person. Well, she’s not exactly a person, I don’t suppose. Not after she managed to steal immortality from Merlin along with all his powers.”
“Merlin? You mean Merlin’s real? What’s next? Are the Smurfs going to show up in Helicon? Or maybe leprechauns?”
Phoebe shuddered. “Oh, don’t joke about the leprechauns. The last time they found their way into Helicon, it was a disaster.”
Seriously?
“We’re getting off topic here,” said Phoebe. “You and Agler followed Owen into the woods because you thought he was opening a portal. He obviously wasn’t. So what was he doing?”
Nora had nearly forgotten about that part, the most damning part of all. “He wants to take over Helicon. He thinks that the council doesn’t do a good enough job, and that he and certain members of the muse police would do better.”
Phoebe burst out in laughter. “Well, that’s ridiculous. Owen could never do anything like that.” She considered. “Unless he was working with Nimue, which you’re sure he isn’t doing, right?”
“I’m not sure about anything with Owen anymore,” said Nora.
Phoebe nodded. She twisted her hands in her lap. “Well, I’ll just watch him,” she said to herself. “I’ll watch him. If he does anything...” She looked up at Nora. “If he ever hurts you or anyone and you see it, come to me immediately.”
Nora nodded.
“And stop trying to figure out who’s ripping the holes in Helicon,” said Phoebe. “Coeus and I are taking care of that. We have a committee. It’s not your concern. You’re a muse. You need to be creating. I haven’t seen you out and about lately. I seem to remember you used to spend time in the visual arts enclave. Didn’t you make that adorable snow sculpture this winter?”
Nora shrugged. “I haven’t felt up to it since I broke up with Owen.”
“You’re a muse, Nora,” said Phoebe. “Your one mission in life is to create. If we aren’t creating, we aren’t contributing to inspiration threads. And that is our reason for existing. You realize this, yes?”
Nora suddenly felt guilty for not doing anything. “I guess it just hurt too much to try to do anything. I mean, all the muses are always so happy, and I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like being around that.”
“Happiness is not a prerequisite for creation,” said Phoebe. “Some of the best pieces of art have been born out of extreme pain. Pain can be a powerful form of inspiration. It hurts? Good. Use it.”
Nora guessed that could be true. She couldn’t count the number of songs she’d heard about breakups. Maybe she did need to be creating again.
“In fact,” said Phoebe, “the science and math gala is in a week. I want to see you helping out. I know they were looking for visual arts people to work on decorations. You leave me, scurry over there, and volunteer, okay?”
Dancing Days Page 39
