Liron gave her a small smile. “Hello, Samantha.”
The surprise didn’t fade from her delicate features. “Liron,”
she murmured. “Hello. How are you? It’s been…so long.”
He dipped his head in a slight nod. “It has….” There was a
moment of awkward silence before he sucked in a breath and continued. “The
reason I’m here—”
At the same exact moment, Samantha spoke. “What can I do for
you?”
They both stopped at the same time and Liron smiled softly,
some of his apprehension dissipating. This was not days gone by. This was a
different time, a different place, a different life. All that had once been had
long since vanished. “Samantha, I need your help with something.”
A small, worried frown creased her alabaster brow and she
stepped aside. “With what? Please, come in.”
“Thank you.” Liron entered the parlor and looked around.
Nothing was the same as he remembered, but why should it be? The estate had
gone to Samantha and her husband long ago. It was her home now, not her
parents’. Sometimes, memories remained so pristine and untouched in the vaults
of one’s mind that regardless of the logical fact that life went on, it seemed
strange that those memories should be altered over time.
He took a brief glance around at all the polished wood
furniture and gleaming marble floors, then faced Samantha, who still looked at
him rather strangely. She was dressed in a flowing, elegant blue gown with
diamonds glistening at her throat and her earlobes, not to mention the small
planet she had on her ring finger. It seemed surreal that he had once been part
of this grandeur, this…fluff.
His family had never been impoverished by any means, but they
had never been this well off either. It had all seemed so remarkable back then,
like an amazing dream. Now, it all just seemed like gold plating on something
that was empty inside. Once, maybe, he had desired the finery and the riches,
the social gatherings, the parties. It had all seemed like a grand adventure.
Status was not of great importance amongst muses, not when so
much time was spent indulging in creativity. But for the ones who were
extremely successful in their craft, extravagance was not unusual.
Liron had been intrigued by that lifestyle, for it had
differed from his own. Born to a logic muse and a science muse, his parents had
spent their time dissecting things, inventing things, and debating with one
another. He’d felt relatively out of place for most of his life. But to be
introduced to a family full of nothing but music muses, theatre muses, art
muses, and writing muses…well, it had all seemed like some kind of fairy tale
at the time. He had been hopelessly enamored.
Now, give him a stroll on the beach at sunset and a night
spent by the fire with his Melody in his arms. That was all he desired, and all
he needed to keep him happy.
He took a deep breath, stopped his meandering thoughts, and
faced Samantha again. “Samantha, I need to know how Elizabeth managed to
traverse the continuum and get to the human world.”
Samantha paled and her expression became slightly pained.
“Liron…it’s been a very long time. Elizabeth is gone now, both in this world
and that one. Don’t you think it’s time to let the past go?”
“I’m not trying to hang onto the past,” he snapped. “I just
want to find my wife.”
If it was possible, Samantha’s concerned expression became
even more so, and she approached him to put a consoling hand on his arm.
“Liron, she isn’t your wife anymore. She hasn’t been for….many, many years.”
Liron rolled his eyes and shook her hand off of his arm as he
paced a few agitated lines. “I’m not talking about Elizabeth! I’m talking about
Melody! My wife!”
Poor Samantha recoiled as if someone had slapped her. Liron
instantly felt remorse for being so scathing to such a gentle woman, and for
barking at her things that she would have no way of knowing. He stopped pacing,
drew in a calming breath, and faced her.
“O-Oh,” she said softly. “I didn’t know you had remarried,
Liron. Forgive me.”
He bestowed her with a small smile. “Of course you wouldn’t
know that, Samantha. I apologize for snapping at you. I just….” He felt very
weary all of a sudden. “I need your help. Melody is human. She somehow managed
to end up here, but now she’s stuck back in the human world and can’t get home.
I need to know how to get to her. I know muses have, on occasion, been able to
travel to the human world, but Elizabeth is the only one I have ever known
personally who actually did it. Please, you’re her sister. She told you
everything. I know she would have told you about what she was planning. I need
to know how she did it so I can find my wife.” He met her eyes and knew he
looked pleading.
Samantha studied him for a few heartbeats before her eyes
softened and she sighed. “Come sit down, Liron. Let me get you something to
drink. We’ll have a conversation.”
He started to follow her down the main corridor when she
stopped suddenly and turned back to face him. He raised an eyebrow in mild
surprise.
She chewed on her bottom lip and seemed to debate internally
for a moment before she met his gaze. “Look, Liron, this probably doesn’t mean
much, but I need to say it anyway. I never agreed with what Elizabeth did. She
was my sister, and I loved her, but what she did to you was deplorable and
unacceptable. And not only did she hurt you, she hurt everyone in her family by
running off to live a life that had her gone in the blink of an eye. You were
always such a kind, gentle man. You didn’t deserve the way she treated you.”
Liron’s heart somersaulted in his chest, and he looked down.
He swallowed hard in an attempt to get rid of the lump of emotion that rose in
his throat at her validation. He nodded solemnly, then forced himself to meet
her eyes again. “Thank you,” he rasped. “But none of that matters now. Please,
just help me find Melody.”
Chapter Seventeen
Melody stared at the closed door, had been staring at it for
the past twenty minutes. She knew she had to open it, but apprehension at what
would swamp her once she did held her back.
It hadn’t been opened since her parents had died. Not since
she’d put all of their music equipment, as well as her own—minus the piano—in
there the day after the funeral and turned the key in the lock. It was bad
enough that she had to walk by it every day, knowing that everything was in
there. Everything that had belonged to her parents, everything that had made
them happy, everything that had, at one time, given Melody’s life color. She
knew it was all in there, but she couldn’t bear to go in. Not only was it full
of memories, but the ghosts were locked in there too. And she knew the ghosts
were what would turn her into an emotional wreck.
She took a deep breath and expelled it forcefully, knowing
she didn’t have a choice. Not after what had been revealed to her over the last
twenty-four hours.
She recalled the conversation she’d had with Liron last
night.
He had found her in her dreams, once again, on the beach like
the last time. She’d been dismal, for though he had given her his music score
in her mind, it had failed to open the portal. It had actually failed to do
anything except torment her for the entirety of the day, for she played it over
and over again until her fingers were sore.
She could hear Liron sigh.
“It must have been the actual
score that was the key to the portal,”
he said.
“It was something
physical that originated from this world and was still somehow attached to it.”
“But that doesn’t make sense!” she cried in frustration. “I
was able to go back to my world every time something reminded me of it, or
something interrupted me. Why can’t it go both ways?”
“Because that is your world, Melody. You originate from
there. There is nothing here to pull you back. If I was with you, perhaps it
would be different.”
“Nothing to pull me back? Liron,
you
should be able to
pull me back!” She was aggravated and exhausted, and just wanted to go back
home. The longer she was forced to remain in her world, the more depressed she
became, and the more she realized how stifled she was here.
“Melody, you were never supposed to actually be in my
world. It was a strange phenomenon that you were. Now that the key to opening
the portal is destroyed, we are stuck communicating with one another in
traditional muse/human fashion. There is only one way to rectify this.”
He was silent for so long that Melody’s stomach did a back
flip. “What is it?” she finally murmured.
“The only way for a muse to enter into the human world is
if the human he or she connected to brings them over.”
She frowned and waved her hands in impatience. “Okay, fine.
So how do I do that?”
“The connection between muse and human has to be incredibly
strong.”
Why was he stalling? She wished he’d spit it out already.
“All right….”
“A muse can only cross over to the human world if his or
her human creates something extremely powerful that was inspired by the muse.”
She blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand exactly. You
mean, I have to create something in order to open the portal back up?”
“Yes. The creative connection is what opens the portal. I
don’t know why and I don’t know how. I’m no physicist either. My mother is a
scientist. I am not. It has something to do with the energy, I imagine. When
and if this works, I will contact her and we can speak with her. I am anxious
for you to meet my parents anyway.”
Melody smiled, feeling warm all over at the thought of
meeting Liron’s family and learning more about his life.
“At any rate, my source is very reliable and I trust her.”
“Her?” She couldn’t keep the note of jealousy out of her
voice if she tried.
Liron chuckled.
“Yes, I went to the only person who could
possibly know anything about this…Elizabeth’s sister.”
Melody raised her eyebrows in surprise. Liron had tracked
down his ex-wife’s sister in what had to have been an awkward situation to find
a way for them to be reunited? Her heart tripped over itself at the thought
that she meant that much to him. “So…what exactly am I supposed to create?” She
wasn’t quite sure she was grasping this concept completely.
He was quiet for a long moment before finally saying,
“I
can’t help you with that, Melody. I can’t tell you what to create. You have to create
something that I have inspired within you. If I don’t inspire anything inside
of you, our connection will not be strong enough to open the portal. Not to
mention, I will be a large failure as a muse.”
She knew he was trying to be funny to lighten the enormity of
what he’d said. It didn’t work. Melody’s heart plummeted into her stomach. It
was all up to her. The only way she would be able to bring Liron to her was
through her love and her creation. She understood why he had been reluctant to
tell her. He was afraid her love for him wasn’t strong enough. Of course he
would think that. He was hell bent on believing that she was going to desert
him too.
What disturbed her more than anything was the fact that she
was afraid it wouldn’t work either. Not because her love wasn’t strong enough,
but because she knew, in order to open the portal, she had to venture back to a
place she really had no desire to go.
Which brought her back to the locked door.
Melody thought she had been doing good with playing the piano
again. Now, she had to take a trip back into her past and try to reconnect with
a part of her she had forced into being dormant. She’d never wanted to write
music again. Not after what had happened. Why would she when all it did was
remind her of what she had lost?
But now….
Now, it was different. Her parents had been taken from her by
unforeseen circumstance. If she chose to keep the door locked because she was
too afraid of the pain she would have to go through, she was making a
deliberate, conscious choice to lose Liron. Because that’s what would happen.
She would lose him forever.
He had confronted his past, which was just as painful as hers
in a different way, in order to find the key to enable them to be together
again. If she refused to do the same because of her own cowardice, then she was
no better than his ex-wife. She would have turned her back on him too.
And despite the sorrow of her parents being gone, the pain of
dealing with those bottled up memories would be small in comparison to losing Liron
for all time.
Drawing in a deep breath, she stepped forward, turned the key
in the lock, and flung the door open.
She wasn’t sure what she expected. Ghosts and skeletons and
wispy things like in the horror movies? It was definitely not that dramatic.
Real ghosts didn’t exist. Only ones that the mind conjured up out of fear,
doubt, and regret. In some ways, she imagined those were worse. She would have
preferred the paranormal to the cold, dusty, cluttered room chock full of
everything she had been trying to block out of her mind.
Maybe trying to avoid it for all this time had been a stupid
idea. A person couldn’t run from their issues. She knew that. Everyone said it.
She had said it in the past also. It was different when the shoe was on the
other foot. Easy to say, difficult to do.
Resigning herself to the fact that there was really no easy
way to go about this, and that she was just going to have to barrel on in
there, Melody went into the room and turned the light on. Her eyes scanned over
her father’s cello, propped up against the wall in its case, and her mother’s
violins—she had about four, two electric, one old, beat up antique-looking
thing, and her regular one—laid out next to it. Over in the far corner were
Melody’s old viola, guitar, flute, and some other random things. A tambourine.
A clarinet she had never learned to play. Some maracas.