Asphodel: The Second Volume of the Muse Chronicles Read online

  The door swung open. A blinding white light erupted from the waiting room which accented his wrinkles. His gray hair caused him to look all the more malicious. Fiona raced toward him but the hostile stare in his eyes caused her to pause.

  “How do you know what’s on the other side, Mr. Rothchild? What makes you so confident?” Fiona asked. When he turned back to them, Fiona saw something around his neck – an old key with a dandelion insignia dangling from a chain.

  “The Dandelion Sisters have shown me everything, Fiona. There is so much work to be done. Or undone, rather.” He faced the light with the violet envelope in his jacket pocket.

  “Mr. Rothchild, I beg of you . . . at least tell us a time period of where it sent you? A name! Anything!”

  None of which he supplied. Offering one final kiss into the hallway’s air, he stepped through the hallway door. He kicked the waiting room chairs aside. His lasting silhouette disappeared into the swirling brightness ahead.

  *

  This story was told by Fiona to the Nine Greatest Muses as they sat around the conference room table.

  The Chocolate Ganache cake with strawberries had long since been eaten and the plates were empty, save for a few brown crumbs. As the story was being told, Nathaniel sat and let his mind wander. He knew of how Jonas had let an inspiration go uninspired and he did not have to hear it again to refresh himself of the calamity that ensued.

  It astonished him to think how Management had placed such blind faith on the individuals that had been brought to the office after their deaths. Thinking this, Nathaniel studied each of his Greatest Muses, marveling at Management’s choices in the select few.

  There was a young man named Icarus who had been no older than eighteen when he died. He sported a chiseled jaw line and flawless supple, tanned skin. His lips were a deep pink shade. His eyes were as sparkling blue as the waters of ancient Greece where he had originated. His brown hair was full of wispy curls which extended around his sculpted ears and neck, down to his toned and muscular shoulders. He wore dark stone-washed jeans with sandals and a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The collar was casually opened to reveal a defined Adam’s apple. Icarus derived from the Greek myth of a young boy who had flown too close to the sun with makeshift wings, ultimately plummeting to his death. But there was more to Icarus’ tale that had never been collected in any anthologies; Nathaniel alone knew of the horrors that Icarus faced between the time of his death and being indoctrinated as a Third Generation muse.

  Seventh Generation muse Lucas Richardson was a man in his late twenties. He was a rather skinny fellow who wore a blue argyle sweater with a striped white and gray dress shirt underneath. The cuffs of the shirt were curled around the sleeves of the sweater and pushed up on both elbows in a relaxed, informal way. He wore tight-fitting jeans with black converse tennis shoes. His hair was a maintained crew cut with highlights and his eyes were hazel-green. He took a certain amount of pride in Lucas considering that Nathaniel had been the muse who inspired him. But Nathaniel knew that even Lucas harbored his own regrets, which centered mostly on Lucas’ lover, Gabriel, and his partner’s death during the assaults on the World Trade Center on September 11th.

  Harriet, a strict looking, middle-aged muse with her hair tightly bound in a bun securely fastened with safety pins, was of the Eighth Generation. She was one of the few who had been around since the new wave of colored pegs had fallen. There were a select number of individuals who knew of Harriet’s perils of an abusive ex-husband and, as Harriet liked to keep it that way, Nathaniel respected her wishes and spoke not a word about it.

  An assortment other muses sat at the table listening to Fiona speak. There was Anna Pavlova, of the Fourth Generation; a Russian ballerina eternally stuck at age fifty, forever stunningly attractive and poised in an off-white gown and soft feather boa, like a well-groomed swan. African American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar sat looking not a day older than thirty-four, as perpetually young as Nathaniel had remembered him from Mr. Dunbar’s days as a Fifth Generation muse. He wore a gray pants suit with a white dress shirt with a buttoned collar. Mr. Dunbar looked refined and serious, immersed in his own indiscernible thoughts. Then there was Mr. Andrews, from the Sixth Generation, who had been the architect of the Titanic. Though he looked dapper in his tuxedo, Mr. Andrews was predominantly discouraged by everything.

  “Building a stable Ship of Dreams only to have it buckle after hitting an iceberg at sea will do that to a man,” Nathaniel thought to himself.

  These were only eight of the department’s finest.

  Since the original muses had retired, Management had chosen seventy individuals total to carry on the legacy. Any one of them had their own dark sides, as all humans share. It could have been any of them that had caused this kind of series of events. Instead Management had given the inauspicious undertaking to Evangeline, and then to Jonas many generations after.

  Nathaniel looked at Annette, pondering what was happening in her mind. Here she was without any memory of who she had been, and yet the look in her eyes read something singularly dissimilar. Annette stared with complete recognition of Jonas as if she had personally met him. It was a look that offered a sense of bafflement that the perpetrator’s face was even been displayed by the projector! The only way Annette would have known him would be as if she had remembered her past life, which she claimed not to recall. This realization led Nathaniel to believe that Annette was lying to him.

  “Mr. Cauliflower, do you have anything to add?” Fiona asked him after she had finished telling of Jonas’ exit.

  Annette, while studying the continual scowl of their enemy, raised her hand and, interrupting Nathaniel, said “Do we know anything about him? Where he came from, or what may have led to him wanting to neglect an inspiration? From what you mentioned,” Annette went on, without realizing Fiona was in the process of giving an answer, “it seems that his personal life itself was troubled. Someone doesn’t wake up one morning and think poorly of the world. There has to be extenuating circumstances that led to that kind of hatred.”

  As Annette said this, Nathaniel rolled his eyes due to Annette’s audacity to interrupt his Fiona.

  Fiona discretely shook her head to Nathaniel as if to say “it’s no bother.” When Annette became silent, Fiona answered the question.

  “We know quite a bit about him,” Fiona answered. “Mr. Rothchild, whom I’ll reference as Jonas for the sake of the story, was born an only child to Thomas and Kathleen Rothchild on a frost-bitingly cold January day in 1979. His father was a prestigious prosecuting attorney; his mother was a housewife who, before conceiving her son, tried to enter the workforce herself. But Kathleen would not be employed by anyone after giving birth, as she died that same birth month. Thomas was heartbroken and buried himself in court cases and paperwork to console his grief. He hired a full-time nanny, a frail, middle-aged woman named Bethany, who raised Jonas from his infancy to the period leading up to his formative years. Jonas grew accustomed to the behaviors of his estranged father and, over time, called Bethany ‘mother.’ Bethany told Jonas not to use that word. It was the only word, save for Kathleen’s name, which Thomas forbade in his house. Jonas’ reliance on Bethany eventually ended as father and son had moved to another town that proved to have growth in Thomas’ career. Bethany did not follow them as Thomas swore it had been time for Jonas to fend for himself. ‘He’s a man now, by God,’ Jonas heard his father tell Bethany on her tear-filled last day of employment.

  “The separation between Jonas and yet another important female figure was distressing; it was the allegorical trailhead to an imminent petrification of his heart. After moving several states away, Jonas found himself isolated. He grew to despise his surroundings until . . .”

  Fiona paused for a moment. She looked around the room at the muses, thinking twice about what she was about to say.

  “. . . Until he climbed an apple tree to escape his bleak surroundings. He met a young girl, later our Ninth Gener
ation muse Mrs. Slocum, who was sitting in the shade reading a library book. Jonas made it his mission to ‘fix’ Mrs. Slocum. No one knows for sure what he saw in her. Perhaps Jonas believed that if he had to grow up, he would make that journey alone. He made it his personal objective to rid anti-social Mrs. Slocum of the library books that kept her separated from the talkative world. Little did Jonas know that someone else was out there who also made it a personal charge to rescue those very same books.”

  Fiona turned her eyes to Nathaniel as she said it. All muses, including Annette, turned their eyes to Nathaniel.

  Nathaniel’s gaze was glued to the conference room table, wishing Fiona would divert the attention back to the story. The rescuing of the library books was a sappy thing between him and Annette Slocum exclusively, acting as a critical puzzle piece to the tale.

  Fiona, as the storyteller, explained to her muses “Jonas, in his adulthood, later married a woman named Roberta and together they had two children: Ajax and Josiah. Jonas was hired as one of the local meteorologists in town. Roberta worked for the state in agricultural resources. Together, husband and wife provided a decent life for their children. For several years they lived life as a perfect family. But Roberta was not a fool. She knew that Jonas still harbored a fascination for Mrs. Slocum. It was as if Mrs. Slocum was living with them; an invisible second wife regarded in such high standards that Roberta, no matter how hard she tried, could not live up to. When Jonas heard of Mrs. Slocum’s death in 2009, he fell into grief-stricken despondency. Roberta decided her husband needed to be on his own to sort out his priorities. Jonas agreed it had been for the best that they separate, and asked for the boys to stay with their mother until he regained a sense of stability.

  “But after three years, Jonas did not seem able to shake his feelings. Divorce papers were finalized and Jonas was caught in a nasty custody battle for his two children. The courts gave sole custody to Roberta. Jonas, feeling terribly apathetic by the tragedy, carelessly walked out into a thunderstorm one afternoon. It was during that thunderstorm that he was struck by lightning and killed. He woke up here in the waiting room. He was introduced as a Tenth Generation muse, and was given an office, Lite-Brite and envelopes.”

  Fiona concluded the story with these words: “One thing is for certain: if Mr. Rothchild had not met Mrs. Slocum underneath that apple tree in their childhood, we wouldn’t be sitting here today. But Management has reasons for doing things, yes? Who are we to question ‘why’ when we should trust that things will work out in the end?”

  Silence pervaded the conference room. Nathaniel looked to his muses and, eventually, to Annette who mentally sorted the details. She didn’t appear to remember any of this from her former life but, from the look in her eyes, she sat pondering it thoroughly regardless.

  Lucas raised his hand. “How is it that we know all of that about Jonas, but we don’t know who he was destined to inspire on his twenty-second envelope? Or where he went after leaving through the waiting room door?”

  Fiona shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps the more inspirations we work, the answers will be revealed. For now, we don’t know anything helpful.”

  It was true they didn’t know anything about the client. In the process of looking up the client’s name and destiny in question, Nathaniel had carelessly been distracted by thoughts of Evangeline.

  “And what of the Dandelion Sisters who Jonas mentioned?” Annette asked. “Who are they and where do they fit in?”

  “That and where are the fallen colored pegs?” Lucas asked in conjunction with Annette’s question. “This place looks like it did when I worked here last.”

  “They’re in your offices,” Nathaniel spoke. Attention shifted to Nathaniel, who faced his muses with authority. “Each muse has a corresponding peg color. I’ll fetch a bin from each of you shortly, and reassign specific pegs back to you. Some envelopes will be white, others violet. Once the envelopes are delivered to your post boxes, we can clean up this mess and send you on your way. I’ve seen the reverse of the falling colored pegs. You’ll find that inspirations are connected. If we inspire one peg, it may cause a string of inspirations to right themselves automatically. When that happens, some colored pegs may rise and re-write themselves. Our goal is to fix as many timelines as possible by way of fixing others. I don’t know how many Lite-Brite boards will need to be filled and emptied before we’re done, but I can assure you that, eventually, all will become normal again. When that time comes, you’ll each receive a retirement party the likes of which you’ve never before imagined in Heaven or Earth. Meteor showers, approaching planets, cherry-blossoms are just the beginning to the rewards that await you at the end.”

  “That’s wonderful that you’ve answered Mr. Richardson’s question, but you never answered mine,” Annette said to Nathaniel.

  “Staff meeting adjourned,” Nathaniel said to his muses, shaking off Annette’s comment as if he hadn’t even heard it. When Annette stated once again that he had not answered her question, Nathaniel was out of the conference room, thusly ignoring Annette’s inquiry.

  *

  “I wouldn’t trust her as much as I can throw her,” Nathaniel told Fiona. They were in his office with the door closed. He had nine large waist high bins in front of his desk holding separate peg colors.

  “And you say she doesn’t remember being here?” Fiona asked Nathaniel.

  “Well, that’s what she says, but something tells me that she remembers. You should have seen the way she was studying Jonas’ face on that screen.”

  “They were all looking at his face like that, Mr. Cauliflower.”

  “Yes, but she was the only one who swears not to have any memory of him. Don’t you find that strange?”

  Fiona smiled and placed a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “Give her a chance, Mr. Cauliflower. She surprised us in her personal growth as Annette Slocum. Chances are she’ll surprise us as Miss Redmond.”

  Nathaniel was left alone in his office to begin the adjustments of the clients’ pegs and envelopes but before touching the colored pegs in the bins, he crossed to one of the alcoves to the immediate left of his office door. This is where Nathaniel kept the obsession from his seventh life: every single copy of Annette Slocum’s library books he had carefully repaired. There were many titles he had collected over the years including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables along with other rescued books that had not belonged to Annette. He opened the glass door to the cabinet and hoisted high a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit to the dim light of a nearby kerosene lamp. He looked over his shoulder to check that he wasn’t being observed and flipped open the cover page of the book. Inside, he found three unopened violet envelopes. He took out one of them, leaving the other two. Nathaniel set the book back on its shelf and closed the glass.

  Moments later, he stood in the doorway of Annette’s workplace. She was placed in the office of several stitched-together cathedrals. Rays of white sunlight poured through the stained glass windows, causing the space to look like a living kaleidoscope. Annette’s back was to him. Though about to say something, perhaps warn her he was there, he paused. Annette, unaware she was being watched by Nathaniel, lifted the right side of her wedding dress where he noticed a leg holster. Annette unhooked a .45 pistol and held it for a moment. The fabric of her dress flowed back down. She studied the pistol, opened a drawer in her desk and placed it, with the safety on, inside. She closed the drawer and, looking at the desk, spotted a large rectangular clothing box with a fluffed orange ribbon.

  Annette opened the package and found a yellow ankle-length cotton house dress. She gave a faint smile while holding it in her hands. Annette then proceeded to set the house dress across her swivel chair and reached for the zipper of the wedding gown.

  Nathaniel turned his back to Annette. Even though he didn’t care for her very much, and his trust for her was thin, he was still a gentleman. He heard
the rustling of fabric as Annette switched from one dress to another. As she did, Nathaniel thought of Evangeline. He recalled the sound of Evangeline’s dress as he had removed it from her on their last evening together in 1808. He remembered how it had fallen around Evangeline’s ankles like a discarded clam shell, revealing the unique pearl underneath. Oh, how Nathaniel missed Evangeline. How he wished he could turn around and see her instead of Annette Redmond. Such wishes, sadly, were not to be granted.

  “Mr. Cauliflower?” Annette’s voice sounded. “Did you need something?”

  Nathaniel found Annette standing in her yellow house dress. “Perhaps there’s still a hint of ‘Slocum’ in her after all,” he had thought to himself. He handed her the violet envelope and said “It’s time for the first inspiration. And, as you claim not to remember being here prior, I’m taking it upon myself to accompany you.”

  They gathered by her Lite-Brite peering at the initial violet envelope. A moment of hesitation from Annette brought Nathaniel to lie. “Go on, Miss Redmond, this envelope has been specifically designed for you.”

  “But how can I open the envelope if I don’t remember being that Slocum woman? What if I really am Annette Redmond and not the muse you want me to be?”

  “We’ll never know for sure who you really are until we open the envelope. Now please, be so kind as to, at the very least, try?” There was a hint of doubt that passed across his eyes; it was a look that did not go unnoticed by Annette.

  Annette nervously bit her lower lip, turned her back to him and brought her index finger to the flap of the envelope. Nathaniel couldn’t help but to look over her shoulder. Annette looked to him. Nathaniel nonchalantly looked away, crossing to the other side of her desk to give her space. As he did make his way around her desk, Nathaniel heard a rip in the paper. He closed his eyes and gave a barely audible, indiscernible sigh.