* * *
Sawyer, Maddie, and Nora sat on one of the lower platforms of the tree house. Above them, some of the older tweens were playing music and laughing. Nora was pretty sure they’d gotten their hands on some of the spiked coffee, judging from their level of raucousness.
“If it’s true, what Owen said, that the hole in Helicon was made from the inside, then wouldn’t that mean that someone inside Helicon is doing it?” asked Nora.
“Maybe.” Maddie shrugged.
“Well, then, are they going to launch a big investigation to find out who it is?” said Nora.
Sawyer and Maddie exchanged a confused look.
“What do you mean, an investigation?” said Sawyer.
Nora thought she’d been pretty clear. “Well, I don’t know, like are they going to round up suspects and question them, look for evidence, that kind of stuff?”
“Phoebe said they’re going to work on strengthening Helicon to make it harder to rip holes in it,” said Maddie.
“But shouldn’t we figure out who’s doing it?” said Nora.
“If we can prevent them from doing it, that’s just as good, isn’t it?” said Sawyer.
“Not really,” said Nora. “Because if there’s someone out there trying to hurt Helicon, then we have to stop them completely. What do they usually do here when something like this happens?”
Sawyer and Maddie were quiet. They both looked like they were concentrating very hard.
“Well, nothing like this usually happens,” said Maddie.
“And when the portals opened before, we had a big council meeting, and we discussed it, and...” Sawyer raised his eyebrows. “And then nothing really changed, I guess, because someone’s still ripping holes in the fabric of Helicon.”
Nora was astonished. “You mean, they haven’t tried to catch this person?”
“Who would have time to do that?” said Maddie. “We’re busy creating and making inspiration threads all the time. That’s the most important thing.”
“What do the muse police do? They’re here to keep everyone secure, aren’t they?” said Nora.
“They, um, go pick up new muses in the mundane world when they feel them,” said Maddie. “And they work with the engineering enclave a lot to fix things. And they...” She turned to Sawyer for help.
Sawyer looked troubled. “We need to investigate, don’t we? Because if no one else is going to do it, how are we going to figure out who’s ripping these portals open and stop them?”
“Us?” said Nora. She hadn’t meant for it to be their job, exactly. “Well, I guess, if no one else is going to do it, then we should.”
“So how do we investigate?” said Maddie, looking excited.
Nora tried to remember all the detective shows she’d watched on TV. “First we need a suspect. Who could be doing this?”
“It’s someone who knows about the muse police weapons,” said Maddie. “Because Alexander said the portals were all similar, with the stuff woven into them to repel the police’s weapons.”
“Well, Alexander said that we couldn’t be sure it was coming from inside,” said Nora.
“Yeah,” said Sawyer. “That was kind of suspicious, wasn’t it?”
“You don’t think Alexander is making the holes?” said Maddie.
Sawyer shrugged. “Let’s think about it. He would know how to make things that repel the police’s weapons, wouldn’t he? He’s the head of the security enclave. He’d be really familiar with their weapons.”
“Maybe,” said Nora. “But why would he do that?”
“He was pretty pissed off when Phoebe shut down his idea to use muse energy to help starving people,” said Maddie. “Maybe it’s revenge or something.”
Nora thought about it. “He did seem a little bitter towards the muses at that council meeting we went to right after our portal was open. He said muses don’t do anything but lie around and have fun. Maybe he’s angry about all of it. He’s not creative, and neither is his wife, right?”
“Right,” said Sawyer.
“How does that work anyway?” Nora asked. “Muses occasionally have babies that aren’t creative?”
“Pretty much,” said Maddie. “It’s rare, but it happens.”
“Usually, it’s pretty obvious by the time the kid’s three or four,” said Sawyer. “Muse kids create stuff. Uncreative kids don’t.” Sawyer tapped his chin with one finger. “I never really thought about it, but maybe someone like Alexander could get kind of bitter about it. I don’t think anyone means to be deliberately cruel to people who aren’t creative, but they get excluded from things in Helicon naturally. They can’t do the things we do. So, he’s our suspect, then, right?”
That made Nora think of Owen. He wasn’t a muse. Did he feel excluded? She remembered that earlier he’d said something about the two of them drifting apart. She stood up and started for the spiral staircase.
“Where are you going?” Maddie asked. “If it really is Alexander, then we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
“I’m going to find Owen,” said Nora, heading down the steps. “This got me thinking about how he probably feels excluded too.”
“Seriously?” said Sawyer. “Why are you even with that guy anyway?”
Nora stopped on the steps, looking up at Sawyer. “What’s your deal with Owen? You seemed pissed at him when we ran into him while we were looking for Catling.”
Sawyer shrugged again. “He just...he rubs me the wrong way is all. I don’t know. It’s like an intuition or something. Besides, I remember him from when he was here before. He was a bratty kid.”
“Aren’t lots of kids bratty?” said Nora.
“Maybe,” said Sawyer. “You know him better than I do. If you think he’s okay, then I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t seem to like me very much either, though, I might point out.”
“That’s probably my fault,” said Nora. “Like I said, I think he’s feeling left out. I think he was jealous or something.”
“Of me?” Sawyer laughed.
Nora had to giggle too. “I’m going to set him straight. Don’t worry.”
“Ask him about Alexander,” said Maddie. “Maybe he’d know if Alexander secretly hated all the muses.”
It was a good idea. “Okay,” said Nora. She skipped down the rest of the steps. It was dark outside now, so Nora picked up one of the torches that was sitting next to the fire and lit it. She traipsed under the archway, out of the tweens and rebels enclave, the fire of her torch reflecting against the white blanket of snow as she walked. The security enclave was camped near the main fire pit, so she had to walk across the stream to get there. Since it was snowy and cold, most of the muses were tight inside their tents, using the heaters they’d gotten from the engineering enclave or gathered around the fire pits in their enclaves. In the security enclave, it was the same thing. Nora hadn’t spent a lot of time here, since Owen usually sought her out, but she knew which tent was Owen’s.
She pulled the opening aside a little. “Owen?”
“Nora?” Owen was sitting inside on his hammock, reading a book that it looked like he might have gotten from the writing and poetry enclave. Looking excited to see her, he leapt up to open his tent the rest of the way and let her inside.
Owen’s tent was blazing hot, so she shed her coat and gloves right away. He pulled her into an embrace and kissed her. She hugged him tight, thinking that she really had been spending a lot of time away from him.
Owen planted another kiss on her forehead. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“I guess I’ve been a little preoccupied since we got to Helicon,” Nora said. “I’m sorry if I haven’t been around enough.”
“You have been kind of distant,” said Owen. He looked at his shoes. “I was starting to wonder if maybe you weren’t interested anymore.”
“In you?” said Nora. “Don’t be silly. You’re Owen.”
“Yeah,” sai
d Owen. “And I’m not a muse.”
Nora’s heart went out to him. “Don’t worry about that stuff, Owen. Really. It’s not important to me. You’re important to me. You always have been, and you always will be.”
He looked back at her, a wry smile on his face. “Maybe I was being a little insecure. I guess back in the mundane world you needed me a lot more than you do now. I wasn’t expecting to...miss that.”
“I should have come to find you earlier,” she said. “When you said that stuff at the council meeting earlier, about your mother... “ She put her hand on his cheek. “You’ve never talked about her before.”
Owen moved away from her. He went back to his hammock and began rearranging the blankets on it. “There’s not much to say, really.”
“Owen, what does she have to do with all of this? What did she do?”
He gave her a sharp look. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“She stole us from Helicon,” said Owen. “That’s how we ended up in the mundane world.”
Nora sat down on the floor of Owen’s tent. “I remember...” It was all sort of blurry. She’d been so young. “I remember you and me in the abandoned house in the winter. I remember the people finding us and putting us in foster care.”
“Nothing before that?” he asked.
She tried, digging deep into her memory for anything. But she couldn’t remember. “No. You know I never remembered Helicon.”
Owen fiddled with his blankets some more. “She left me in Helicon the first time when I was three, I guess. I don’t really remember that. Anyway, I must have only been here for a year or so before my father showed up.”
“Dionysus,” said Nora.
“Yeah,” said Owen. “They weren’t together or anything. My father told me that they had a fling in Helicon during one of the big festivals. She got pregnant and never told him. Anyway, my dad took me after that, but he didn’t keep me for very long either. He brought me back to Helicon when I was five years old. I got to stay here for another year before my mother showed up again. She wanted to take me again, but by then, I didn’t want anything to do with her. I liked it in Helicon. She took me anyway. She took both of us.”
“Why did she take me?” Nora asked.
Owen sighed. He came and sat down next to her. “Maybe that was my fault. She took you because you and I were inseparable, and I took you with me everywhere I went. She couldn’t get you away from me, so she took us both. But once we were out of Helicon, I took care of her, and we ran away. I thought it would be easy to get back here. But...it wasn’t.”
Nora thought this sounded pretty horrible. Owen’s mother—what was her name? Nimue?—sounded like a terrible person. But something else was bothering her. Something she couldn’t believe she’d never thought of before. “What about my mother, Owen?” She guessed that she’d spent so much of her life assuming that mothers were things that other people had that she’d never given it much thought. Owen never talked about his mother when they were small children. In some ways, she’d kind of assumed, with childlike logic, that whatever made them different from everyone else also meant they didn’t have parents. She’d never thought to question it.
“You didn’t have one,” said Owen.
“What do you mean? She’s dead?”
“You were a baby in the babies and toddlers enclave,” said Owen. “Sometimes muses feel like taking care of babies would damage their creativity. So they leave them in the enclave. Everyone takes care of the babies. It’s not like they’re neglected or anything, but muses don’t always raise their own children.”
“You’re saying my mother dumped me in the enclave because she thought I’d get in the way of her creativity?” Nora felt angry suddenly. Something about that offended all her sensibilities about the idea of motherhood. “I guess neither of us had very good mothers.”
“It happens all the time,” said Owen. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’ve been in Helicon for a while. You know the most important thing for a muse is to be creative. If a baby isn’t going to make you more creative, then you aren’t serving your purpose as a muse. So you do what’s best for everyone and leave the baby in the enclave. It all works out.”
Nora thought it sounded like a big deal. “Well, if the babies are being taken care of by the whole community, aren’t they just a big drain on everyone’s creativity?” She hadn’t realized she’d be so bitter about this. She’d never given a second thought to her mother, but suddenly, she felt as if she’d been simultaneously given the possibility of one and had it ripped away from her.
“No,” said Owen. “Some people are more creative because of babies. It all depends on where a muse’s strengths lie. Don’t be mad at your mother. You were happy in Helicon. She did the right thing for both of you. The people who took care of you loved taking care of babies.”
Nora didn’t know if she accepted that. “So she could be anyone in Helicon, you’re saying? She left me, and no one knows who I really belong to?”
“You belong to Helicon,” said Owen. “You belong to me.” He tried to kiss her again.
Nora pulled away. “I notice you aren’t saying the same kind of stuff about your own mother.”
“Nora, I’m not angry with my mother for abandoning me,” said Owen. “I’m angry with her for leaving me in Helicon and then taking me away. I wanted to stay here. You understand that, right?”
Nora took a deep breath. She guessed that was true as far as it went. She chewed on her lip. “You say it happens in Helicon a lot?”
“Not a lot maybe,” said Owen. “But it’s common, sure. It doesn’t make you weird or anything. The muses set up a way to take care of babies. Truthfully, I guess it doesn’t happen very often because muses can stop themselves from aging. So, if a muse finds out she’s pregnant, she usually just stops aging until she’s ready for it, you know?”
Maddie had actually explained to her how beneficial this whole halting aging could be. Even though most of the tweens were still aging normally, Maddie had explained to her that it was really useful when it came to menstruating. All Nora had to do was halt her aging for one week a month. Then she could go into the showers and catch that week up. It made her period last two minutes. It kind of made the showers resemble a slaughterhouse, though.
“Muses also use it as birth control,” said Owen. “If you aren’t aging, you aren’t fertile, you know.”
And Nora guessed that if you could save up a week for your period, if you had nine months saved up, you could move through a pregnancy pretty fast too, making it easy to hide the fact you’d ever had a baby, if you wanted to dump it the babies and toddlers enclave and be rid of it. “Yeah,” she said, “Maddie and I talked about that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you doing that?”
“Not really,” said Nora. The concept was relatively simple, apparently. If you halted your aging for five days after you had sex, the sperm would die or something, and you could resume your regular cycle. So, technically, she guessed she could do it at any time. But all of this stuff wasn’t something she particularly felt comfortable talking with Owen about. “I mean, I guess I could start doing it if I needed to, but I don’t, so... Can we talk about something else?”
“I was just thinking...” He reached out to caress her chin. “Maybe you could stay here tonight.”
Nora stood up. “Owen, I don’t think we should...” When they’d been in the mundane world, Owen had never once tried to get her to have sex with him. She’d thought about it before, sure, but, even though she loved Owen, it seemed like a big step.
Owen grabbed one of her hands and tugged her back down so that she was sitting next to him again. “I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything. But I thought it might help.”
“Help?”
“Well, because you said you noticed that you were pulling away, and I thought if we, you know, took the next step, it might make us closer.”
“I wa
sn’t pulling away,” said Nora. “I’m not pulling away. That’s why I came to see you.”
“Come on, Nora, you admitted it when you came into the tent,” said Owen. “You can’t take it back now.”
“That’s not what I said.” What had she said? “I think I said I was preoccupied, and that’s not really the same thing.”
“Well, that’s what I meant,” said Owen. “If you’re preoccupied, it’s because we aren’t close enough. So maybe you’d be thinking about me more often if we were—”
“Having sex?” Nora felt terrified. She couldn’t look at Owen. Were they really talking about this? And why was it scaring her so much more than it was scaring Owen?
Owen kissed her. “Don’t you want to?” His voice was a smooth whisper. He kissed her again, drawing her tight against his body. His arms encircled her, and it felt nice. Owen felt nice. She liked his kisses and his closeness.
“Well, someday.” She was whispering too. It made it easier to talk about it somehow. “But it seems sort of fast. We don’t have to rush into it, do we?”
“Rush into it? Nora, we’ve been together for years now.”
Was it years? When had she and Owen started kissing, anyway? Owen had always been older than her. He’d made it all seem so natural and right, and he was everything to her, so she’d never questioned it, just accepted. “We’ve always been together, Owen. But it hasn’t always been, um, romantic.”
“I love you,” he said. His hands were roving over her skin, fingers pushing inside her shirt. She gasped at the feel of his touch on her stomach. His lips found hers again, and she felt adrift in all the sensation, bewildered by his presence, his touch, his lips.
“I love you too, Owen,” she said. But she pulled away. “And I want to. I mean, at some point, yes, I want to make love to you, but not yet.”
Owen leaned back. “Why not?”
Why not? Why was he being like this about it? “It’s a little scary is all. I don’t want to feel afraid of it before I do it. I want to feel, you know, like excited about it. Ready for it.”
“Hey,” said Owen, “it scares me too. It’s not like I’ve ever done it either. But you don’t scare me, Nora. Do I scare you?”
“No...” She felt so disoriented, like she was being a big baby about the whole thing. Everything Owen did threw her off-balance right now. Maybe Owen had always had that affect on her. She wasn’t sure. She knew it had been tough to ever stay mad at Owen, no matter what he did. She loved him. But she wasn’t giving in on this, even if it was what Owen wanted. This wasn’t the right moment, or the right time. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain why. But I don’t want to. Let’s change the subject.”
Owen’s face turned stormy for a second. He looked away from her.
“We were talking about what you said at the council tonight,” she said, trying to distract him, “about how the holes in Helicon were made from the inside. That means someone in Helicon made them, right?”
He still wasn’t looking at her. “Yeah, that’s what it means.”
“Why do you think Alexander said that you were wrong?”
Owen looked back at her. “I don’t think he could see it. Alexander might live in Helicon, but he’s really just a regular human, you know. I have abilities he doesn’t have.”
“You don’t think he’s hiding something?”
Owen looked confused. “What could he be hiding?”
“Maybe he’s making the holes himself, because he’s jealous of the muse powers,” said Nora.
Owen laughed. “Get serious, Nora. There’s no way Alexander could have done that. This place is his home too, no matter whether he’s a muse or not.”