Calliope the Muse Read online

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  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1 ARCHITECTURE-OLOGY BLUES

  2 PROS AND CONS

  3 ALL ABOUT MUSES

  4 FUN AND GAMES

  5 THE MUSIC FESTIVAL

  6 THE CHALLENGE

  7 TIDYING UP

  8 SQUARE ONE

  9 A FRESH LOOK

  10 MORE INSPIRATION

  11 COLLECTING

  PALLAS THE PAL EXCERPT

  ABOUT JOAN HOLUB AND SUZANNE WILLIAMS

  To our mega-marvelous readers!

  Martha H., Olivia C., Ela N., Zubin N., Megan D., Keny Y., Koko Y., Connie S., Latoya H., Keira J., Shelby Lynn J. & Virginia Anna J., Madison W., Dawn H., Kristina S., McKay O. & Reese O., Ariel P., Patrona C., Tiffany & Justin W., Madison S., Madison S., Paris O., Christine D-H., Khanya S., Lillia L., Ryanna L., Amanda W., Caitlin and Hannah R., Ariana F., The Andrade Family and Alba C., Ana B., Jasmine R., Sophie R., Alyssa B., Ally M., Keyra M., Lana W., Vivian Z., Grace P., Jessica S., and you!

  —J. H. & S. W.

  Prologue

  UP IN THE SKY THE chariot driven by Helios the sun god had begun its daily descent toward the west. School was over for the day at Mount Olympus Academy, so most students were in the cafeteria eating dinner.

  After glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, a two-legged figure in a hooded black cloak hurried across the marble-tiled outdoor courtyard. Holding an empty bag, this sneak slipped in through the Academy’s bronze front doors, then padded softly past the entryway and turned down an empty hall, searching for a particular classroom.

  Squeak! Suddenly a door swung open. A tall, one-eyed giant lumbered out into the hallway. It was Mr. Cyclops, an MOA teacher. The cloaked figure gasped and darted through the nearest door to hide. The room turned out to be some kind of storage closet, with reams of papyrus, feather pens, and textscrolls.

  Heart thumping, the intruder crouched on hands and knees under the closet’s bottom shelf and waited until the teacher had passed. Phew! That was close. The figure crept out into the hall again. In a flash it scurried over to the classroom Mr. Cyclops had just vacated. Luckily, the door had been left slightly ajar. The hooded figure pushed through it and went straight to a large, long table in the middle of the room.

  At last! Quickly now!

  The figure’s eyes roved over the table, which was entirely covered by a three-dimensional map, one that was extraordinarily realistic, with roads, valleys, villages, castles with moats, and mountains that looked to be a foot tall. Strange, miniature-size scaly beasts dove and splashed in the magical map’s oceans. As amazing as the beasts were, however, they weren’t what the figure had come for. Its eyes glittered at the sight of dozens of little hero statues scattered around the map, which was actually a game board.

  The three-inch high statues were game pieces. Each one represented a real mortal hero. Students in Mr. Cyclops’s Hero-ology classes moved them around the map during certain class assignments. And whatever happened to the little hero game pieces on this map would also magically happen to the corresponding living, breathing real-life heroes down on Earth.

  After plucking all the hero statues from the game board, the thieving figure stashed them in the bag it had brought, then left the room.

  Retracing its steps, this sneak quickly made its way out of the Academy unseen. Once outside, it hurried down the building’s granite steps and back across the marble courtyard.

  After reaching the far side of the courtyard, the figure entered a grove of olive trees. It took a trail from there, descending from Mount Olympus to Earth.

  Mission accomplished!

  1

  Architecture-ology Blues

  One and a half weeks later . . .

  TELVE-YEAR-OLD CALLIOPE HAD JUST TAKEN her seat in her last-period Architecture-ology class on Friday afternoon when she heard a sound.

  “Psst!”

  She glanced over at Medusa, the green-skinned, snaky-haired mortal girl whose desk was next to hers. Was Medusa trying to get her attention? Or had her snakes simply been hissing?

  This puzzle was solved when Medusa leaned her way. “I heard you gave that author guy, Homer lots of inspiration, while he was writing The Iliad and The Odyssey. True?”

  Calliope’s long wavy red hair, which was gathered in a loose ponytail at the back of her neck, bounced a bit as she nodded. “True.” Inspiring those two scrollbooks had made her kind of famous. Though not as famous as they’d made the fifteen-year-old author Homer himself!

  “Then maybe you could help me too?” Medusa asked. “I’ve got a paper due on Monday for Revenge-ology class, and I’m totally blanking. Can’t come up with any ideas for it. None that are good, anyway.”

  “What’s the topic?” Calliope asked matter-of-factly. She’d only begun to attend Mount Olympus Academy a month or so ago, but already she’d gotten used to fellow students asking her for ideas on this and that.

  Most of them had heard the story of how she had inspired Homer. While writing about a mortal hero named Odysseus, Homer had pleaded eloquently for her helpful ideas, asking her to “sing” to him of Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns.”

  Just thinking about Homer made Calliope sigh dreamily. He had such a great vocabulary and was so incredibly talented. And she adored his cute spiky blue hair. But, unfortunately, she could only crush on him from afar. Because except for when she’d been helping him with his books, he seemed totally blind to the fact that she was even alive!

  Medusa leaned toward Calliope again. “Well?” Emphasizing her request, the snakes on top of her head curved themselves into a dozen scaly, green question marks.

  Calliope snapped to attention. She’d been so lost in her thoughts about Homer that she’d missed Medusa’s reply to her question! “Sorry. Spaced out for a minute. What did you just say?”

  Medusa let out a frustrated little huff and glanced up to be sure Mr. Libon, the teacher, wasn’t yet looking for everyone’s attention, ready to start class. “I said that Ms. Nemesis told us our papers could be about anything related to revenge.”

  “Hmm. Pretty wide open, then.” Calliope tapped her chin with an index finger, thinking. “This is just off the top of my head,” she said after a moment, “but maybe you could write about the relationship between revenge and war. How wars are often started as an act of revenge. Like the Trojan War. It began because King Menelaus wanted revenge against Paris after Paris stole his wife, Helen.”

  “Maybe,” Medusa said with a shrug. If her snakes had had shoulders, they probably would have shrugged too. “Got any other ideas?” she asked.

  Calliope didn’t mind that her first idea didn’t appeal to Medusa much. Sometimes it took a few tries to hit on the very thing that would catch someone’s interest and generate true inspiration! Her brown eyes lit up as a new idea came to her.

  “Or you could write about the psychology of revenge,” she told Medusa. “Like, what causes vengeful feelings, the purpose those feelings serve, and if we should resist those feelings or give in to them. That kind of thing— Oh, wait,” she said, interrupting herself. “Here’s another idea! You could interview MOA students about times when they’ve taken revenge on someone and—”

  “Good afternoon, class,” interrupted their Architecture-ology teacher, Mr. Libon. He’d stood up from
his desk at the front of the room, wearing his usual sandals, which each had a single tassel for decoration. Though he was medium height, he looked plumper than he really was because he wore a tunic with dozens of pockets, each filled with drawing tools. He could whip out just about anything you needed in an instant—flat triangles of different sizes and angles, templates with shaped cutouts, or a pointy scissors-like thing called a compass for drawing any size circle.

  Having gotten everyone’s attention, the teacher sat down again and began digging around in the stuff atop his desk, obviously trying to find something. Good luck with that! As usual, his desk was overflowing with planscrolls and small-scale models of temples, houses, and other buildings. In addition to teaching, he was famed for designing and building Zeus’s temple in Olympia. There was a golden statue of Zeus inside it that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World!

  On the wall behind Mr. Libon’s chair were numerous hand-lettered signs with encouraging or funny slogans.

  BE THE ARCHITECT OF YOUR BEST FUTURE.

  BUILD FRIENDSHIPS.

  ARCHITECTURE NEVER FALLS DOWN ON THE JOB.

  IF YOU HIT A BRICK WALL, BUILD A DOOR THROUGH IT.

  While the teacher was busy at his desk, Calliope leaned toward Medusa and quickly whispered, “If you want to come to my room after dinner tonight, I could give you some more ideas to choose from.”

  “Great,” said Medusa, nodding eagerly. “I’ll come, thanks.”

  Cool, thought Calliope. Tonight wasn’t going to be all about Medusa’s need for ideas, though. The unsuspecting snaky-haired girl didn’t know that Calliope had recently decided to “interview” roommates. Because she didn’t have one yet. And she’d heard that Medusa didn’t either.

  Calliope had been rooming by herself in the dorm ever since she’d arrived at MOA, and she didn’t like it one bit. She missed her eight sisters—well, the seven who were not at the Academy, anyway. She still got to see her oldest sister, Muse Urania, almost daily since she taught Science-ology at the school. Unfortunately, sometimes Urania acted like she thought she was Calliope’s mom. Urania was twenty-six years old, so she was fourteen years older than Calliope!

  As Mr. Libon began to talk about the design projects that would be due next Wednesday—individual projects they’d been working on since Calliope had first started at MOA—she shot Medusa a look.

  Would the green-skinned girl make a good roommate? Hopefully, tonight’s meeting would help Calliope decide. If it seemed like they’d be a good match, she could ask Medusa to sleep over sometime. She wasn’t going to rush into anything. She wanted just the right person, someone who would be a good friend and not boss her around like Urania and some of her other sisters tended to do. They meant well, but hello? She wasn’t a baby anymore.

  She tuned back in to Mr. Libon just in time to hear him say, “Let’s talk about how your projects are progressing. I want to hear a brief update from each of you, one by one.”

  Yikes! A flurry of panic swirled inside Calliope’s chest. She hoped he wouldn’t call on her first. With luck, maybe the lyrebell would ring before he got to her. Because the thing was, she wasn’t as far along on her project as she had hoped she would be by now.

  Mr. Libon picked up a three-sided wooden ruler from his desk. He waved it in the air to emphasize certain points as he spoke to the class. “Remember that Principal Zeus and I will be choosing the most creative and interesting project design—for a temple, a house, or whatever—to actually be built.” He paused, his eyes sweeping the students. “So now is your chance to get valuable feedback from others on your projects. Who would like to go first?”

  Hands shot into the air. But Calliope’s wasn’t one of them. Sad to say, but as of today she still hadn’t come up with a design! And that was news she didn’t want to share, thank you very much.

  Mr. Libon called on a godboy with blond hair and light turquoise skin named Poseidon. Grasping his planscroll, Poseidon stood. Then he strode confidently to the front of the room. Snap! With a flick of his wrist he unrolled the planscroll.

  “I’ve designed a new water park,” he said proudly. “It’ll be as cool as the one I built in Athens but with even more slides, more fountains, and more pools.” As he spoke, he pointed to places on his scroll where he planned to add the additional features. He’d used a spiral symbol to represent the slides, triangles to represent the fountains, and circles to represent the pools.

  “Awesome!” a godboy named Dionysus exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air. Several other students also made noises of approval.

  Poseidon grinned at them all. Then with a sideways glance at Mr. Libon, he said, “If my design is chosen to be built, I’m going to name this new water park after my first one in Athens. I’ll call it Poseidon Water Waves II.”

  Calliope had been to Poseidon’s water park in Athens, and it was indeed fantastic, with gracefully curving slides made of polished marble, tons of fountains, and pools of turquoise water topped with lily pads. It also had real mermaids, mermen, and sea monsters! But it seemed to her that just adding more of the same kinds of features wouldn’t be enough to make this new water park stand out.

  “How about if you added some completely new features too?” she suggested enthusiastically. “Like an underwater cave, maybe? The walls could be lit from below with magical colored lights!”

  “Hey, great idea, Calliope,” Poseidon said. “Thanks!”

  Mr. Libon smiled at her. “Excellent.” Then he glanced around the room. “Does anyone else have feedback for Poseidon?”

  It seemed that no one did, or maybe they were all just anxious for their turns to speak. If students did have a project ready, it was a good idea to get a critique now. Just in case their plan was a dud or had drawbacks they were unaware of.

  Poseidon sat down, and Mr. Libon called on Amphitrite next. Her desk was right in front of Calliope’s. As Amphitrite stepped with her planscroll to the front of the room, Calliope thought how hard it would be for anyone to guess that the turquoise-haired girl was a Nereid—a nymph of the sea. After all, most of the time she was at MOA, she walked around on two legs. When she was in water, though, her gold-colored chiton transformed into a golden-scaled tail and she became a mergirl. Calliope had seen it happen during a swim night at the Academy pool a week ago.

  Like Calliope, Amphitrite hadn’t been at MOA for long. Long enough to have a crush, though, judging from the smiles she and Poseidon traded in class all the time. Calliope planted her elbow on her desktop, set her chin in her palm, and thought wistfully of Homer again as Amphitrite began to speak.

  The sea nymph’s planscroll showed detailed sketches for a landscaping project—a lush and beautiful undersea garden. “I designed it to surround a golden palace at the bottom of the Aegean Sea,” Amphitrite told the class in her bubbly voice.

  “A palace being built in my honor by inhabitants of the sea,” Poseidon interrupted her to boast.

  Amphitrite smiled at him. Again. As godboy of the sea, Poseidon saw to the welfare of all sea creatures, so it made sense that they would build a palace in his honor. And Calliope could understand why he would be proud of it.

  “Right,” Amphitrite went on. “My family and other residents of the watery realms are hard at work on the palace. I’ve designed my garden in five triangular sections. The sections form a star shape with the palace at the center, and each section will feature a different type of garden.”

  Pointing to each of the triangular sections in turn, she described the plants that would populate each of the five garden areas. She’d planned a coral garden, a garden dominated by various sea grasses, a rock garden designed to look like a series of tide pools, a garden of brightly colored plants and simple animals such as sea cucumbers, and a garden with a treasure chest theme that included sand dollars and oysters with pearls.

  Poseidon started clapping the minute she’d finished. “Pure genius!” he proclaimed admiringly.

  I’d give anything to have Homer speak
so highly of me, thought Calliope. However such admiring words had never passed his lips—not headed in her direction, anyway.

  “I love your concept of five gardens in one,” Calliope said to Amphitrite. “But I wonder if you need something to link them all together. Like a border outlining the star’s shape?”

  “Oh! Yeah, like a little fence of greenery or shells. That’s an interesting idea,” said Amphitrite. “I’ll definitely think about it!”

  Several other students gave suggestions this time too, including Medusa. She thought a garden with a sea snake and eel habitat might be nice. Her snakes bobbed their heads in agreement.

  When the period ended without Calliope being asked to share her (as yet nonexistent) project, she jumped up in relief. She grabbed her schoolbag and headed for the door.

  “Just a minute, Calliope,” Mr. Libon called to her before she could exit the room. “I’d like to speak with you.”

  Calliope froze in her tracks and swung back around to look at him. “Um. Okay,” she said. Feeling nervous about what he could want, she went up to his desk and stood there fiddling with her bag. She had decorated it with the names of famous epic poets, such as Hesiod, Asius of Samos, Eumelus of Corinth, Panyassis, and—most important—Homer.

  She relaxed a little when Mr. Libon smiled at her. “I really appreciate the great feedback and suggestions you give others in class,” he began.

  “Thanks,” she said, relaxing even more. “It’s easy for me. Being a Muse and all.” As Muses, she and her eight sisters served as sources of inspiration to others for all kinds of creativity in the arts and sciences.

  Mr. Libon nodded. “Thing is,” he went on, “I’m concerned that I’ve heard nothing from you so far about the project you’re working on.” Eyeing her keenly, he picked up a protractor shaped like a flat semicircle, poked one finger through its open middle, and began absentmindedly twirling it around. “What can you tell me about it?”