* * *
The clothes were made of the softest fabric Nora had ever felt. The shirt hugged her torso, somehow strong enough to support her breasts, but airy enough not to feel constricting. It had long bell-shaped sleeves. She wore a skirt too, long and flowing like Phoebe’s. The fabric felt divine against her legs as they walked back from the baths to the fire. The clothes made her feel free and comfortable. They were like a second skin.
“So it’s the Solstice for you here as well?” Nora asked Phoebe as they walked. “The Winter Solstice.”
“Indeed. It’s our most sacred festival,” said Phoebe.
“But it’s not winter,” said Nora. Her feet were bare and the grass was luscious against her toes. “It’s warm.”
Phoebe laughed. “Well, it can be winter around here when we want it to be. We all like snow, of course. The council decides when it should snow, and then it does. But for festival nights like this, everyone usually agrees on warm weather.”
“You control the temperature?”
“Well, of course,” said Phoebe. “Helicon is a place where the muses must have the perfect conditions for creativity at all times. It’s important that we’re always inventing and designing. The mundane world depends on us.” She touched Nora’s shoulder and pointed. “It must all be so strange for you. But I think tonight is a night for laughter and joy, not long-winded explanations. There’s still quite a bit of food, if you’re hungry.”
Phoebe was pointing at a long wooden table which was groaning under the weight of overflowing platters of strangely shaped fruits, hunks of cheeses, and piles of roasted meat. Nora’s mouth watered. Before getting here, she’d drunk an entire bottle of wine. Food seemed like the best idea in the world suddenly.
Later, her stomach full, she sat cross-legged next to the fire, music swelling around her and Owen. There were so many instruments, and they all worked together to create melodies too sweet to imagine. The muses sang too, their voices in perfect ethereal harmony. Nora watched Phoebe Rain across the fire, her head thrown back, belting out words in a deep, velvety voice. Scattered in the field around the fire pit, she saw muses with round glowing circles, twining them around their necks and torsos. They were like hula hoops, she thought to herself, only they glowed with an otherworldly light, and they left rainbow-colored paths of light everywhere they were thrown. She watched the lights, mesmerized by the intricate and beautiful colors.
But at some point, it was too much to simply sit, and she found herself on her feet, whirling amongst other dancing muses, moving in ways she’d never been able to. Her own voice joined the singing, though she knew neither the words nor the tune. And, as if in a trance, she was buoyed up into all of it, her heart beating with the drums, every ecstatic movement pulling her deeper into a sense that Phoebe was right. This was where she belonged. She had finally come home.
Still later, Nora collapsed onto the ground, pleasantly exhausted. She thought she might just sleep right here on the grass as the music continued around her, even though she’d begun to notice that the circle around the fire was becoming smaller, and that less people were here than had been when she and Owen arrived.
Phoebe knelt next to her. “I have a hammock in my tent you can use if you’re tired,” she said.
Hammocks? Cool. Nora had never gotten to sleep in a hammock. She got up and followed Phoebe away from the fire to a tall tent made of thick burgundy fabric, swirling patterns woven into the cloth. Phoebe brushed aside tasseled edges to lead her into the tent. There were compartments inside, doorways leading to other rooms, but Phoebe led her into the first one where a hammock smothered in blankets and pillows waited.
Gratefully, Nora climbed into it.
“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” said Phoebe, “but given your shyness with Owen earlier, I can assume the two of you are not expecting to share sleeping arrangements?”
Nora blushed, pulling covers up to her chin. “No. We don’t—We haven’t—”
Phoebe held up a hand. “Well, that’s good, I think. At your age, I think it’s usually a bit too soon. Most people tend to regret it when they’re too young. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with regrets. The best lessons are usually learned that way. And I’m not so foolish as to think that young people take older people’s word for anything. They’ve always got to try things for themselves.” She strode across the small room to the doorway of the tent. Then she turned. “About Owen.”
Nora looked at her expectantly.
“He’s never...hurt you, has he?”
“No, definitely not,” said Nora. But that made the second time that night someone had asked her a similar sort of question about Owen. And this woman apparently knew Owen, or at least had known him when he was younger. “Why would you ask something like that?”
Phoebe sighed. “He was an odd child.” And then she slipped out of the room, leaving Nora alone.
Nora tried to puzzle over what she’d just said, or even to take stock in everything that had happened to her, but she was too tired, and sleep claimed her almost immediately.
Sometime later, the cold light of dawn seeping under the cracks in the tent, voices woke her. It was Phoebe Rain and a man. They spoke quietly.
“This is the only home he ever knew. Of course he’d come back here,” Phoebe said.
“I’m not sure he’s trustworthy,” said the man’s voice. “His mother—”
“Is not him,” Phoebe interrupted. “And besides, Owen claims he left her anyway, years ago.”
“And you believe him?”
“I don’t believe any child would want her for a mother,” said Phoebe. “She’s not exactly a nurturing type. And I don’t believe she’s the one who’s been creating these holes in Helicon. I don’t think she’s trying to let in the Influence. At any rate, I think we need to give Owen the benefit of the doubt.”
“And the girl?”
“Nora? She’s a complete innocent. There’s not a malicious bone in her body.”
The voices drifted away, and Nora found herself sleeping again. When she woke later, she wondered if hearing them had only been a dream.