Under A Million Stars by Mindy Haig
voice.’
She slid to the end of the bed, leaned forward and kissed me.
There has never been another woman.
III:
I could have kept my mouth shut and hoped for another night, but it’s possible that the intention of my heart was all the declaration I needed to make.
Still, it had been thirteen years since that first kiss on the night the music called my muse to me. I’d found my success, I had all the worldly goods I could ever need, but I could not love anyone but her. So the day had come that I had to face fate or death or whatever it was that kept her from me. I had to find the gateway.
I began my quest.
...
She came to me only in dreams for a number of years. Those dreams were too few and too far between. There were times I was desperate for even a glimpse of her. I read that story so many times it seemed that I had written it. Certainly I was living it. If reading didn’t call her to me, I played the music I wrote that first night. But when she came to my dream and we touched, that was all that mattered.
The strangest part is that in all that time, I didn’t even know her name. It was not because I neglected to ask, but she was very skilled at deflecting my questions and occupying the small time we had with more urgent pursuits. Morning would come and I would awake both satisfied and frustrated. And still I longed for more of those nights.
Then came a day when a door opened.
I was touring. My music gave me the opportunity to see the world and temporarily escape the longing and loneliness. But it was on this particular trip that I heard there was to be an auction. The descendants of Quentin Gallagher were selling off the author’s possessions, including his original manuscripts.
I decided right then and there that I would pay all I had to own Ardor.
The story was somehow connected to my muse, and perhaps there was some secret in its original pages that would help me find her.
I went to the auction house on the scheduled day. For a man who’d made a good fortune writing, his possessions were few. I browsed the tables eagerly looking for that one thing I needed. I did not want to seem overly eager lest my enthusiasm cause others to be interested. I made note of the item and moved about the room.
A young woman stood frowning near the door. She was younger than I was by a perhaps a handful of years, but we seemed to be the youngest people present. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked me as I stood casually watching the prospective bidders mill around the room.
“Yes,” I answered as I stood beside her.
She gasped. “Are you Oren Gale?” she whispered, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m a huge fan! Wow, I never would have expected someone famous to come view this old stuff.”
“Really? I mean, I wouldn’t say I was famous, but I would have expected producers and actors to be snapping this stuff up like candy.”
“Why? From everything I know about my great-uncle, he was a lonely, bitter old man. He never married, he didn’t have any children, he left all of this to my grandfather to deal with. He was a recluse and all his stories are sort of dark and depressing.”
“I’m sure he inspired many people in his day.”
“Well if they made a movie of one of his stories, I probably wouldn’t go see it!”
I laughed. “Maybe you just think that because your related to...” All the while we were chatting, I had been standing beside her watching the crowd, but at that moment I turned to face this great-great niece of Gallagher, and there behind her was a table of personal effects: a silver pocket watch, an elaborately engraved flask, a sailor’s compass, a large water pitcher, half-a dozen pairs of cufflinks, ornate quills and ink jars, a pan flute, and an ornate picture frame that was home to the one who owned my heart. “What are these things?” I asked as casually as I could manage the words
“The only things he felt a need to keep. There were some other jewels that belonged to his mother, but my father wanted to keep them.”
“The watch is nice.”
“Who carries a pocket watch? Seriously!” she laughed.
“What about the picture?”
She leaned into me just a bit and whispered, “I’m pretty sure she came with the frame.”
It wasn’t long before the auction started. Ardor was quite a ways down the list, so I sat and pondered the personal items the man saw fit to treasure. The photo was obvious, well to me anyway. My muse was his muse as well. Clearly that was her connection to the story, it was written about her. But something was different. For me she was just a dream and somehow he’d managed to get a picture of her. What did the other objects mean? Why were they important to him? I desperately needed to know the secrets of a man long gone from this world.
At last the time came. The first bids were in line with my expectations, and then I made my move. There was one other battling me for the prize, but at last he shook his head and crossed it off his program. I was victorious, but I wanted the other pieces.
I came away with the manuscript, the frame, the watch, the flask and the flute.
I’d never played a flute.
I could learn.
Still, I returned to my room and took the frame from the parcel. I held it my own hands for the very first time. My fingers traced the perfect lines of her face and imagined sweeping her dark hair gently across her forehead as I had done a dozen times in my dreams. I had this overwhelming notion that she was somehow suffocating behind that glass, that I had to save her.
My hands began to shake. Every nerve in my body seemed to hum like the guitar strings too tightly wound. I pried the back away and gently let the picture fall to my lap as I laid her glass house aside. It was made in sepia, but is still saw her in color.
The print was old, it seemed more like canvas than modern paper, but to my touch it was soft as skin. Perhaps my senses were over tuned as this was the first time I was touching her likeness in my waking day. I turned it over; my mind seemed to think the rear of the image would be there, that I would see the stars in her hair as they spread across her shoulders and swayed into the small of her back. But while my imagination was disappointed, my curiosity was engaged. There in the scrolling print that decorated the manuscript was: Piazza Santa Maria, Trastevere August, 1866.
And then the bit of information I longed for these many years: her name, Cybilla.
I whispered it over and over in my mind.
Then I called it out for the world to hear.
IV:
Like Gallagher, I kept only those things which it would hurt me to lose. I set out upon my quest carrying those prizes I won from the auction, my grandmother’s wedding ring which I hoped to put on her finger if I found success, three Byzantine gold coins and my guitar. I knew in my heart that if I expected to take something from the Gods, I would have to give up all I treasured.
Still, there was no price I would not pay, as I told her, I would prefer to give my life than to be found unworthy. So I packed my treasures in a simple backpack. I locked my door, wondering if I would ever return. I walked to the center of the street and I sang out my intention for all the world to hear.
...
I read the manuscript as it was written by the man who’d lost all he lived for. The power of every word was punctuated by the visible tension in the letters, as though the memories caused him to squeeze the quill between his fingers or his heart simply pounded so hard it shook the quill in his hand. For the hundredth time I came to that bitter ending where his vow cost him something he was not willing to pay. But then, beyond his ending, he gave me a gift. Scraps of research he’d done as he tried to muster the courage to possess Cybilla.
As I said, I was touring at the time I bought the manuscript. Concerts were the routine, and I found myself awake through most of my nights and sleeping for a good portion of the daylight hours. Life seemed just one step beh
The music poured from my fingers, my heart, my mouth as I stood upon the stage for all the world to hear. It was that night I saw her in the flesh for the first time. She stood just beyond what the audience could see of the stage. I was changing guitars for the upcoming song and as I turned I saw her there watching. It took every bit of my will to remain on stage. Even my soul wanted to run to her, take her in my arms and beg her to stay. I pointed at her. I whispered her name. She should have been too far away to hear me, but she smiled and nodded. Music continued to come forth, but I don’t remember any of it. My eyes kept sliding back to the place she stood. She seemed to be absorbing the notes as they swirled around her. She and the music were one in the same, but perhaps that is the nature of the muse.
Alas, the show ended, the bows were made and she was gone.
No one who had been on that stage crew had any memory of seeing my beautiful ghost.
I stayed long after the place was empty and the instruments were packed away. Hoping.
I knew I could go back to my rooms and she might visit my dreams. But that wasn’t enough. Cybilla was out in the real world. I needed to see here there. I walked the empty streets in the hour when the first rays of daylight broke through the gate of darkness. I flipped a coin into the water as I passed the fountain but I made no wish, I just continued to walk.
There was a splash behind me; water hit my back and I spun.
“You didn’t make a wish.”
There she sat on the edge of the basin running her fingers through the water. “I have only one desire. Is it madness to wish for something that is only a dream?” I asked as stood before her, gazing down into eyes like the sea.
“Perhaps.”
“Are you only a dream, Cybilla? Am I dreaming this or are you here in the flesh?”
“I am here, Oren. But just because you aren’t asleep does not mean it’s not a dream.”
“Why are you here?”
“You called my name. You called me into the world of men. But I can’t stay.”
“You can come if I call for you, but you can’t stay with me?”
She nodded. She rose from her seat and ran her hand over my cheek. “It is different touching you in the flesh, feeling the warmth.”
I swept my fingers through the dark hair at her forehead, then I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. All the times she’d come to me, I could feel the passion, but my dreams lacked the whole of the sensory pleasures. Here, as the day slowly broke over us, I could taste the honey sweetness of her mouth. I could smell the freshness of her skin. There was heat where her body pressed against mine that was more than just proximity, it was destiny.
Cybilla’s arms were tight around me as she whispered in my ear, “do you know what I am, Oren?”
“I do, but I want to hear you tell me.”
“I’m a muse, my love,” she said dropping her eyes and releasing me from her arms.
I took her hand and we walked. “Do you love me, Cybilla?”
“More than I have loved anything in this world.”
“But I have asked for your name for so long. If calling your name could bring you to me, why would you never tell me?”
“Look at me, Oren, really look at me. What do you see?”
“I see the only woman I have ever loved.”
“Yes, I know that, but you see a woman. This is what I will always look like, what I have always looked like. I could not come to you as the boy you were like this. In a dream, I can be whatever I wish to be. I could grow up alongside you. But then it had been so long I did not know how to tell you without causing one of us pain.”
“Pain?”
“When I told you that you could call me to this world, but I could not stay, did you ache?”
“Yes.”
“If I told you that and you did not call, I would ache. When I hear your music I long for you. When you read the story and feel what it meant, I feel your longing, your passion. I want only you, Oren. If you denied me...”
“I could never deny you,” I said as I looked up at the orange disc broaching the horizon.
And just like that she was gone.
V:
My journey began with the fountain.
It is said in Rome that if you throw a coin into a fountain you are assured a return trip. I hoped there was some truth in that legend. Honestly, I had no idea what was going to happen. Part of me wished I could just throw my coin and wish and Cybilla would be mine. Of course, if it were that easy there would never have been the preceding failures that made her mine.
...
I stood at the fountain in Piazza Santa Maria looking into the water for a long time. The sky was still dark and I needed to wait until the gate between night and day was opened, that was when reality and mystery merged. I set my backpack down and fished one of the coins from the pocket. I sat absently flipping it between my fingers as a small bubbling sound came from the water and the small distraction drew my attention to the first glimmer of light to the east. The coin was tight in my hand as I rose, then I pressed it to my lips and asked the Nymph of the Eternal Water to come to me as I tossed it toward the water.
A graceful hand reached from beneath the surface and snatched the coin before it hit the water.
There was a light giggle.
I looked over the edge and two delicate faces peered back at me.
The first sprang boldly from the water. “That is an old trinket you’ve given, your request must be great,” she said holding the coin in her long-fingered hand.
The second slid to sitting on the edge of the basin as the first rays of sunshine caught her golden hair.
“I’ve declared my intention to claim my muse.”
“That is folly!” the one on the wall laughed.
“Quiet, Kira!” The other gasped. “Do not discourage him, his heart is pure.” She looked at me then and asked, “why have you come to this place?”
“The one I seek sat upon this basin many years ago in this time. I thought this spring might be a gateway.”
“He is clever, Dia” the one called Kira said.
“You seek Cybilla.” Dia reached up and placed her hand upon my chest. She smiled at me. “Yes, this place is a gateway, it is not the one you seek.”
“Can you tell me where I must go?” I asked.
“What do you offer in return?” Kira asked.
“He has already paid a great price, he owes nothing more for our help.”
“But you have got a prize and I have nothing!” Kira sulked. She stood and spoke to me directly. “Would you give me your heart?”
I dropped to my knee before her. “My Lady, I cannot. My heart is already given and that is why I am on this quest. I would give anything else you ask of me.”
“There is a jewel you carry...”
“Kira!” Dia exclaimed again.
I intended to give the ring to Cybilla, but without the goodwill of the Nymphs, I might never reach her so I dug the ring from my bag and held it out to her.
Kira laughed with delight as she slid it onto her long finger, held her hand up in the air and twirled around. “The gate you seek is hard to find, most do not have the courage to look where you must look. You must find the God of Gates and Doors. He must favor the beginning of your journey. Find him on the first of March, that day is a portal itself.”
The sun had completely crested the horizon, so I knew my time was growing short.
“Singer of love songs, would you play for us before you go?” Kira asked as she sat upon the edge of the fountain once again and slid gracefully into the water.
I took the flute from my bag, sat upon the ledge and played the only song I’d learned, the only music my heart wished to make. Lovely Nymphs danced in the cool waters as the sun burst forth and the gateway to night closed. But as Kira slid beneath the surface and back to the sacred spring, Dia pushed
“How did you know my name?”
She laughed as she slid back to the water. “All the worlds know your name.”
And she was gone.
VI:
I was impatient, but I could not let that show.
Ten days was a long time to wait when one has started out on a journey. But I had waited so many years already that I could not let restlessness jeopardize my mission. I wandered about the city as I squandered my days away and at night I tried to learn what would await me at the Arch.
...
I made my way in the dark. I’d already traveled the road a number of times just to be certain I knew the way, but moving in the darkness was different, more sinister. There was a foreboding that I hadn’t felt as I approached the fountain, but I also hadn’t gone to the fountain thinking I would meet a God. Nerves were getting the best of me so I sat and took my guitar from its case and lost myself to the sound of the chords and the feel of the vibration beneath my fingers.
When at last I damped the strings an older gentleman stood leaning against the uneven reliefs on the wall. He pulled a long drag on the thin cigarette between his fingers, flicked it away then clapped.
“Nice piece,” he said gruffly, “you write it?”
“Yes, Sir, I did.”
He nodded. “That why you’re standing at this place on the day when the world shifts?”
“Yes. I came to find Janus, the God of Gates and Doors.”
“Ah, is that what they called me? I can hardly keep my designations straight these days,” he chuckled wryly. “So what kind of gate are you looking for, Son? City gate? The Garden variety? The kind that keep kids out of your business? Or is it a door? Front door? Back door? Just don’t do this ridiculous thing here when you make an arched door,” he said waving his hand in the air above his head. “You know how hard it is to make a door to fit an arch?” he huffed. “Well, come along, we can talk about what you need when the sun greets us on the other side.”