The Muse

My fingers trailed across the back of his neck, above the ragged collar of his t-shirt. The young musician was bent over his guitar, alone in the dimly lit studio. The computer screens cast a blue glow on his face.

           I would leave him with one last burst of inspiration, one final fragment of a melody. It was not a gift–he would chase this song for the rest of his life, all in vain.

           “Yes, this is it,” he muttered to himself, plucking the notes on his guitar.

           I could still feel his never-ending hunger, the greed which made him cling to me. He always wanted more of my power–and more of what it could bring him. Applause, accolades, privilege, and power. He had wanted to be a star and I had made him one.

           I let my hand fall. I would be his muse no more. I could only tolerate these humans so long. When their greed and their hunger outweighed their passion for their art, when they craved my power more than my presence, I left them behind to strive on their own. This young pop star would try to reach the heights he had once claimed under my guidance, but he would never see them again.

           He plucked a discordant note and let out a frustrated scream. “No! I’ve lost it!” He struck out blindly, knocking a glass from the desk. It shattered on the floor. I watched the glass disintegrate into shards, the purple-blue studio lights refracted in their sharp lines. An amber liquid seeped into the gray carpet.

           I turned my back on the musician as he tore the headphones from his head with an enraged scream. Another crash followed, and then the sound of hands slammed against the desk.

           “No! Come back!” he yelled. But I was already walking away.

           What would he turn to in his pursuit of inspiration? Alcohol? Drugs? Most of the artists I left descended into some form of madness, desperate to reclaim their inspiration. I always chose the greedy ones, and they always responded with rage and desperation when I left. It was my only consolation.

           I passed through the studio, through the bright hallways of the building, to the outside. I could still hear his frustrated shouts.

           I should return to my sisters. There were seven of us, although the stories liked to number us nine. Once we had been considered goddesses, but now we had been labeled with a simpler name–Muses.

           I stepped out of the building and into a warm summer evening. The air was sultry with heat and with the noise of insects. The setting sun gilded all the tree leaves and turned the sky orange and red. It was the kind of thing humans stopped to marvel at, and the artists loved to paint and write about. To me, it was commonplace.

           In the times when we did not walk about the earth my sisters and I dwelt in a house of polished moonstone, with the whirling galaxies splattered like glitter across a inky canvas outside our windows.

           Music ran in our blood, poetry danced in our whispers, and our touch brought glorious visions of color and light. We wielded power that could change the direction of cultures, and yet we had been cursed–never to be seen, never to be loved, only to be used. We could create nothing ourselves–only the humans could do that.

           We all coped with the curse in our own way. Calliope preferred weeping after her latest artist had broken her heart. Thalia liked to toy with the humans, granting them inspiration sporadically so that they begged for her attention. I just chose the greedy ones whose hunger for fame or for wealth outweighed everything else. They would always rage and scream when I left and I would feel no guilt.

           I stood beneath the drooping branches of a tree, all emptied out. I wanted to take a moment to exist in this emptiness that always followed the end.

           That was when I caught sight of the man. He was sitting on a bench with his head bowed, his hands clasped together between his knees. As I watched, he turned his face up as if to catch the glow of the setting sun, his eyes closed. He was alone. Something about him compelled me–just him sitting there in the summer evening alone, doing nothing but turning his face to the sun.

           I never picked another artist right away. I always needed time away from the human realm until my restlessness forced me to find another person through whom I could create once more. And yet…

           I approached him. As I neared the bench where he sat, he cocked his head to one side.

           “Hello?”

           I stopped in my tracks. Humans could not hear me or see me, although they sometimes could sense my presence when I was near. But only after they had felt my touch or heard my whisper in their ear. Had I chosen this man before? No. I remembered every one.

           I moved closer.

           The man opened his eyes–they were pale blue and with a white film. That was when I saw the cane resting against his leg. This man was blind.

           “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t see whoever is there.”

           “Can you…hear me?” I asked.

           He chuckled. “I’m only blind, not deaf.”

           This was…impossible. I looked at my hands. Was I losing my power? Would I also be visible to human eyes?

           “You have a lovely voice though,” he said.

           “Oh…thank you. Sorry, I’m just a little surprised. Most people…don’t hear me.”

He tilted his head again. “Why is that?”

I took a breath. “I–” I paused. “They’re usually focused on…other things, I suppose.”

“Other things?”

“Like…what I can do for them. How I can make them reach their goals.”

“You can help people reach their goals? What is it that you do, exactly?”

“I…I’m…” I laughed a little, in disbelief. “I’m a Muse.”

“A Muse?” He grimaced a bit. “Is that a euphemism for something that I shouldn’t ask about?”

“Oh. No, no. Nothing like that. I mean–like an artistic muse.”

“Like a model or something?”

“Something like that.”

He nodded. “That seems like a position where it would be easy to not feel heard. Do you feel like people never see the real you?”

A short laugh escaped me. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“It’s hard for people to see the real me as well,” he said. “They only see my blindness. That’s the hard thing about people, isn’t it. So often they can’t see past the surface and define you by what’s obvious–your occupation, your disability, your appearance, what you offer them or what you don’t. The real seeing takes much more effort–much more work.”

“Yeah.”

He patted the bench next to him. “Sit next to me, if you want. Tell me then–who are you? Really?”

“I don’t think it’s that easy to explain,” I said.

“Then tell me–what is it you want people to see. Or hear?”

I looked out at the sunset. The sun was barely clinging onto the horizon and the sky was turning deep purple. Once it let go, the spread of the universe would sprawl before our eyes, distant worlds, and burning stars turned to mere pinpricks of light. I felt the void and yawn of space and centuries in the pit of my stomach for the first time.

“I don’t even know anymore,” I said. “Somewhere along the way I think I just stopped…wanting.”

“Hmm,” the man mused. “Do we ever really stop wanting? Or do we just cover it up until we can’t feel it anymore, like a scab protecting a wound?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I shook my head. “How about you? Why don’t you tell me about yourself? Your blindness…were you born unable to see?”

He smiled a half-smile. “No, I lost my sight as a teenager…I wanted to be a painter.”

           “Oh. Well…what do you do now? Do you still paint?”

           “No, I can’t. I just work in a grocery store.”

“Oh.”

He sighed. “But I like to come out here when I can. Feeling the sun on my face is a bit like seeing color again.”

           “Ah.” There was a dropping sensation in my chest. It was a feeling I couldn’t name.

           “Speaking of which, I think the sun has gone down. I should probably head home now.”

           “Right, of course.”

He stood up from the bench, clutching his cane in one hand.

           “What was your name? I don’t think you said.”

           “Clio.”

           He smiled again, brightly this time. “It’s a name like music. Nice to meet you, Clio.”

           The sound of my name on the lips of a human made me shiver. It had been so long that I had heard it spoken.

           “And your name?” I asked.

           “Joshua.” He held out his hand. I grasped it and shook it.

           “Nice to meet you Joshua.”

           He gasped a little at my touch and took a step back. He cleared his throat. “Will you meet me again tomorrow, Clio?”

           “Yes,” I found myself agreeing, without thought.

           “Then until we meet again.” He gave me a nod and then shuffled off into the night, tapping his cane from side to side.

           And so we met again the next evening and then we agreed to meet the next day and the next after that. I found myself lingering in the human realm, sometimes returning to my errant musician during the day–he had turned to drinking almost immediately after my absence. He was only a diversion until the evening came and I sat beside Joshua on the bench, or walked through the park with him, or ate dinner at a little restaurant with outdoor seating. Sometimes I described things to him–of how the sunset looked that evening or how the string lights shone or how the pigeons bobbed along the path in front of us.

I began to notice changes in Joshua too–sometimes he showed up with white speckles on his fingertips. I asked him if he had started painting again, but he never answered, just smiled at the ground.

That was until one evening he showed up later than usual. He gripped the head of his cane so tightly that his knuckles turned pale.

“Would you mind coming with me somewhere this evening?” he asked, a tremor in his voice.

“Where to?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, uh. My apartment, actually?”

“Your apartment?”

           “I have been working on something and I…just wanted to show you. That’s all. You don’t have to stay long or anything. It’s just…a bit difficult to transport.”

“I’ll come,” I said.

We walked to his place in almost silence. He kept clearing his throat and talking about how nice the weather was, but it was nothing like his usual questions. The closer we got to his home, the more curious I was about what could have made him so nervous.

His apartment was on the first floor of a blocky apartment building. He shakily unlocked the door and pushed it open with a creak. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall and then shuffled inside.

“It’s…just in here.”

He led me into the living room and I froze. In the middle of the room was a canvas on a stand. On it a painting of a woman against an ink black background. Her skin was dark, with an almost translucent quality. Her eyes and lips and the lines of her profile were painted with a warm glowing light. Her hair was a fall of starlight, and she was draped with a cloak of shimmering galaxies.

“How…?”

“It’s you, Clio,” he said. “When you shook my hand, I saw you. The only thing I’ve seen in years–a woman of gold and starlight.”