To Be Someone’s Muse

Look, but never touch.

That was the mantra Mimoza told herself every night as the rag she held flew over another marble bust in the hall. Every movement she made echoed through the halls of the conservatory at night. It was its own kind of music… in a way.

One of the teachers passed. With one hawk-like glare, they looked down their nose past spectacles. Mimoza lowered her eyes to continue cleaning, pretending she was scrubbing away at some speck of unsightly dust on the face of some long-forgotten composer.

She looked into the eyes of the bust. She wondered what his muse had been when he was alive. Was it a woman, a man, god? Love, life, death, or the infinite unknown? Mimoza’s face twinged. It was difficult for her to imagine what her muse would be if she had any musical talent buried in the bones of her awkward body.

“You. Girl.”

Mimoza’s eyes snapped up from the bust to meet the professor she thought had left her alone. Mimoza straightened immediately, gripping the rag in front of her as she attempted to look as awake and aware as possible. “Yes, professor?”

“Classroom 102 down the hall is in quite a state. It needs a desperate sweep.” The professor nodded. “Get to it.”

“Right away.”

Mimoza was just about to turn and head in the way of the mess, but the professor stopped her with a cold, bony, and stern hand.

“Girl. I believe I’ve brought this up before, but you must get a proper uniform. You’re swimming in whatever shapeless… thing—” The professor gestured to the entirety of Mimoza’s person. “—you’re wearing. Layers and jackets aren’t a part of the staff uniform here.”

“Yes, professor.”

“Now, go on. The room should be empty as we’ve all just cleared out for the night. Please leave everything as it is.”

And then the professor left her there as if she were an old broom, nothing more.

With a deep sigh, Mimoza dragged her feet down the hall, past gilded arches and enormous amphitheaters where the students of the conservatory would stun any who came to watch with their deft fingers and godlike voices. She took brief glances into classrooms stuffed with instruments that she would never own. In truth, the reason she had put off getting a proper uniform was twofold.

First, she simply could not afford it. The institution, despite her pleading, would not increase her hours. The second was that she became physically ill when she saw herself in the uniform. Her flat chest and lack of any features that would help her feel beautiful in such tight and revealing clothes only reinforced in her brain that she should never wear anything other than a box. Already, she had problems with her face and neck, which she hid with a cowl around her throat as much as possible.

Unlucky, she told herself. Born with the wrong face, wrong body. Wrong me.

Wandering the halls and dusting marble, she looked at photographs of pretty girls who had won competitions. They stood with their expensive instruments and million-dollar smiles while Mimoza looked through the glass of the trophy case, her reflection occasionally gazing back at her with a boy’s face that she could not afford to change. No amount of janitor’s hours would be enough.

The room she had been sent to clean was obnoxiously dirty. Even the tapestries that hung on the wall would need a good wash. On tiptoe, she leaned and stretched to take down a tapestry so it could be appropriately laundered when the chair wobbled, and she topped to the floor in a great crash. She had tried to hold on to the tapestry for support, and it ripped from the wall with a shre-e-ed!

After moaning and groaning and rubbing her bruised backside for a little while, Mimoza wondered how her day could possibly get any worse. She would certainly be fired for that. Standing resolutely, she pursed her lips, when something on the stone wall caught her eye.

In the space behind the tapestry was a door.

She knew the inside of the conservatory like an ant knew its hill, every cranny and nook and corner. She could not fathom in the slightest why someone would put a door behind a tapestry in a classroom.

Mimoza’s eyes drifted to the clock on the wall. Her shift was almost over, and the conservatory would be practically empty. It was well after two. No one would notice at all if she took just one quick peek. It could be a storage closet and nothing more.

Surprisingly, the door was unlocked. Whatever space this was had been forgotten. A tall, spiral staircase of stone headed up into a tower of some sort and it was horrendously filthy, nearly completely overtaken by spiderwebs. She batted her way through the webs to the top to see what was so unimportant that the school let it become a nest for creepy crawlies.

The room at the top was a forgotten cathedral of gears. Dust clung to brass cogs the size of dinner plates, each etched with filigree that had tarnished to green-black. A complex lattice of pulleys, levers, and bell cradles spiraled upward into the shadows, stacked in tight mathematical harmony. Beneath bells sat a large, rust-streaked switchboard, with a single lever worn smooth from use.

Mimoza instantly regretted leaving her mop bucket downstairs but wasn’t sure how she would lug it up the spiral staircase. She did what she could with her last clean rag but cursed when it snagged on the lever. With a clunk, the mechanism roared to life, gears spinning into motion. The bells began to ring with intention like a music box. Their tones folded over one another in harmony and Mimoza could do nothing but stop and stare. It was the most beautiful song she had ever heard.

And then, she found herself on the floor. Her breath felt shallow and unfamiliar in her chest as if she had just been asleep. But how had she gotten there? Her skin prickled. She thought she’d fainted, maybe cracked her head on the floor. Maybe she had inhaled dust and that’s what did it.

Then, she stood. In the curve of the largest bell, warped like a funhouse mirror, someone she did not recognize stared back. A woman. Tall. Glowing. Beautiful. Her silhouette looked to be carved from marble, hips wide and hair unbound. Most unsettlingly, though, golden eyes gleamed like a predator’s in that reflection.

Mimoza startled back from the bell, covering her mouth with her hand. When she frantically flipped her hands, just to make sure they were real, her skin glimmered with opalescence like a gemstone… something inhuman. Most importantly, she ran her claw-tipped fingers over the curves of her chest. Breasts. They were real. Her body… this… thing… was real.

She smiled. For the first time in her life, she recognized herself.

As if one thousand butterflies had burst from their cocoons inside her chest, she spun with her arms outstretched in the room no longer filled with cobwebs. She herself radiated light and she dashed down the stairs to get a better look at herself in the reflective trophy case. Her hair floated about her head like a dark mass, moving like smoke or water.

“Is this… me?” she asked, mostly to herself.

The voice that came from her mouth was a mixture of harmonies, multiple voices layered one on top of the other. The gears began turning in her head and before she could stop herself, she dashed down the hall to the nearest theater.

When she stepped onto the stage in the darkness, she didn’t need to flip on the lights in the room. She was light, and when she began to sing, it was as if the whole world stopped. Her voice, a warble of polyphonic harmony and angelic trills, bounced around the room as if the space was filled with a choir. She hugged herself, and she sang, and sang, and sang.

She had never liked her voice. Too low. Too gruff. Too hard. Not this, though. This was her own private orchestra. When she finished, she squeezed herself tightly and stood in the reverberations of what she had become.

“That was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard,” someone said.

Mimoza nearly jumped out of her skin. She froze, and a faint outline of a person stood from the front row.

“Sorry to interrupt. I heard pretty music and wanted to come see.”

As he came into her light, Mimoza got a good look at him: a boy in white linen pajamas, barefoot, his eyes half-lidded. A student, clearly. She should’ve run.

“You sound like the sea,” he said.

He didn’t flinch at her claws, her smoky hair, her eyes. Instead, he stepped closer, blinking slowly, like he was dreaming. And maybe he was.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Mimoza,” she said, her voice catching as multiple harmonic tones emerged in the form of a word. No one had ever asked her name.

He smiled. “That’s pretty.”

A shudder ran through her body. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. His fingers grazed her knuckles like he might dissolve her with touch alone. Why was he doing this? He began to hum, following the tune she had been singing. He leaned in on tiptoe to reach her at her height, brushing her lips to hers.

Mimoza stood motionless, stunned.

And yet, he kissed her again, longer this time, and pressed his body against hers. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as if speaking through a fog. “I’ve just never seen someone so beautiful in my life. It only felt right.”

Her claws curled around the back of his neck. His warmth made her feel solid, real, and feminine in a way she’d never imagined. He traced every curve of her body with his hand as if admiring a flower.

“I’m dreaming,” he slurred, dazed. “Don’t wake me.”

Then, his legs folded beneath him. Mimoza barely caught him as he collapsed, easing him to the wood of the amphitheater’s stage. His eyes fluttered shut.

*

The next day, she had returned to who she had been before: boxy, plain, and not at all feeling like herself. The feelings of discontent returned tenfold, and when she saw her square jaw and broad chest in the mirror, she wept. In her rage, she tore through her room, shattering everything in sight, until she had nothing left to do but crawl back into bed.

But, when the moon rose and she was supposed to return to work, she found that the form from the night before had returned. In giddy glee, she ran through the halls of the conservatory, warbling out any tune she could possibly manage, and then…

He came again.

Still sleepwalking, she assumed, and still lost in that same soft daze. That time, she kissed him first. They talked about nothing. Everything. Music. The stars. How hard it was to fit in.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he mumbled that night, slurring with sleep. “Scholarship kid. Not like them.”

“I don’t go here,” Mimoza admitted, and then lied, “I snuck in.”

“That’s a shame,” he sighed. “You’re more talented than any singer I’ve ever heard. You’re not like them, either.”

Mimoza held him tighter than she meant to.

He told her things… secrets, fears, little truths he probably wouldn’t admit while awake. She told him things, too. That she was a janitor, though she didn’t say she worked for the school. She hated mirrors. Once, when she was small, she tried to sing herself into a different body.

He nodded, sleepy-eyed, as if it made perfect sense.

When he kissed her the third night, it was under moonlight in the courtyard, in full view of the bell tower. She danced for him, spinning slowly through the mist, her smoke-hair flaring out behind her. She was a mirage in the moonlight, and she had never felt more alive.

For a little while, she wasn’t unlovable at all… just a girl in love.

*

Her reverie broke when rumors of a creature seen near the amphitheater spread through the students like a plague. The faculty gossiped. Mimoza was called into a back office and told to take extra care on her shifts, should she be in danger. It would not have been the first time that a banshee or a siren had somehow entered the school. Students formed “monster hunting clubs.”

On her way back from the office, Mimoza wanted nothing more than to retreat into her room. She should never have gone out at night, and she now realized what a horrible mistake it was. She retreated down the hallway, hearing only how ugly the creature must be and how terrifying it was, with its mirror-eyes and claws that could tear a man to ribbons. And then…

She saw the boy.

He stood with his friends, no longer in his pajamas. She saw him clearly: mahogany skin and obsidian-dark eyes.

“I swear, I can’t get this sleepwalking under control,” he admitted. “It’s really annoying.”

“You need to be careful, Arman,” one of his friends said. “You could be hexed. These creatures lure unsuspecting victims out of their beds to eat them.”

“I know!” his other friend suggested. “We’ll keep you up tonight so you’re not at risk. Or we can take watch, wake you when you start to sleepwalk, and then return you to bed.”

“Good idea!”

“But…” Arman sighed, his mind clearly somewhere else. “I keep having dreams of this girl, you see. They’re the best dreams I’ve ever had in my life. I need to see her again.”

“You’re dreaming, Arman,” his friend complained. “And like I said, it’s likely a hex. I’m sure the dreams will leave you as soon as the creature is dead.”

Dead.

A stone plummeted in Mimoza’s stomach. She froze still as a statue, and it was only until she realized that the other students were staring at her that she rushed off, her face beet red and her heart hammering. Arman locked eyes with her but did not recognize her. She was not beautiful enough to be the woman he dreamed about.

A warning was posted on parchment throughout the school.

Do not wander at night: a monster is among us.

*

Mimoza stood in the palace courtyard. She hoped they’d find her. Teachers were out looking for her, hoping to vanquish her. It didn’t matter anyway. She either would have perished from grief in a body she didn’t own, or she would die as a monster. Either way, both endings were the same.

When footsteps approached, the sound did not surprise her. She turned slowly, ready for whatever would come. Her golden eyes caught light like lantern glass and her silhouette rippled with beauty and danger. She would not go down without a fight.

Arman stopped cold, stared, and didn’t move.

It was clear he was awake this time, and he saw her as she was, no longer shielded by the fog of a dream. She was sure she looked terrifying. In her euphoria, she had denied the fact that she was anything other than what they said she was: a monster. Mimoza’s heart seized. She had not expected it to be him to come and kill her. She took a step back, then another, bracing for it: the flinch, the scream, the running, the attack.

But he whispered, barely audible, “It’s you. The muse from my dreams.”

She froze. Her claws trembled at her sides. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I had to see you. I thought I had made you up, that the monster couldn’t be—” he stopped himself. “That you couldn’t be real.”

When he stepped closer, she flinched again. “Don’t. You don’t understand. When the sun comes up, I go back to being no one. A monster in hiding with an ugly face in the wrong body.”

He didn’t stop. He reached for her hands, curling his fingers carefully around her claws.

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how you inspire me.”

Her throat tightened. “You wouldn’t want me in the daylight.”

“Even awake, you’re still the song stuck in my chest.”

A sob cracked through her ribs as she folded into him. He held her, and she gripped him like the world was ending. He kissed her, and this time he was certainly awake.

Suddenly, with a thunderous crack, the chimes in the bell tower began to ring. One after another they gonged out their song in harmony, startling birds from the belfry. Mimoza rested her head on his chest, listening to the quiet thud of his heart.

“When the sun comes, it’s over. They’ll know I’m the monster and I’ll lose my job. I could lose my life.”

“I’ll stay with you. This form or not, you’re like the second verse of a song I’ve never been able to finish. I don’t need to wait for the moon to rise to be compelled to compose. Your presence is enough.”

When the light broke the horizon, its rays touched her pearlescent skin, but… nothing happened. She still stood before him, her hair flowing like water and smoke and ink all at once. The gold of her eyes reflected off his cheekbones. A thunder of footsteps peeled into the courtyard and the two of them snapped their heads up to look at the army of teachers and students that had approached, alerted by the bells.

“Arman,” a teacher commanded, “step away from the monster. Now.”

Arman took a confident step in front of Mimoza, arms outstretched to protect her. “My eyes are open. I’m no longer asleep. No one is touching my muse.”