Mordecai Eidel, late of two wars (or at least one, plus a little terrorism) was leading this invasion from behind, with both arms spread in case any of his ostensible troops veered off to window-shop, or demand free cookies, or look at the pretty lights. 

It was no wonder he was a dog person. He was literally a dog person. He had dog qualities and served a dog’s function. He just couldn’t literally bite these people he was shepherding around because they were his family and he loved them. Also, they’d just get distracted. Hey, if you’re hungry, can’t we just pop into that store and buy candy?

“Damn it, just keep walking,” he snapped, preemptively. “I know it’s all lovely and we don’t get up to SoHo often, but we can run around the whole place tomorrow with Calliope’s family and have a regular ball. Tonight we are going to behave ourselves. Please. For gods’ sakes. Calliope needs to sell a bunch of paintings and make her money back and feel like a worthwhile person and the press is going to be there. Please, please try to remember that before you do anything stu…”

He stopped, and such was the nature of his constant, irritated commentary that everyone in front of him stopped too. Hyacinth actually turned around to see if he’d been struck dead.

A similar herd of humans was coming up the sidewalk in the opposite direction, towards the modest courtyard of the gallery. “Ooh, look, caramels! This one is giving out caramels!” an obvious adult, male voice exclaimed. There were two small children in the human herd, but they weren’t talking.

Another adult voice, this one female, shrieked, “I have already explained this, Mr. Otis! They are offering you free items because they want you to enter the store and make a purchase — which we might’ve had time to do if you or your family…” She cleared her throat. “In aggregate, I mean. Excuse me.” She picked up the thread with a modicum of restraint, “…If you behaved with one iota of sense, but you do not. Just keep walking and do not disappoint your daughter, whom one must assume you love!”

Mordecai peeked out from behind his group of idiots and beheld the General shooing Calliope’s family along, also from behind.

Dog people, Mordecai thought.

I suppose he fancies himself responsible, the General thought.

We will never speak of this, both of them thought.

They convened in front of the little courtyard. Mordecai handed the smoking baby to the General and they wordlessly traded responsibilities. He greeted Calliope’s parents, Euterpe, Oz, and an auburn-haired woman he assumed was Terpsichore.

“Terpsichore!” said the woman. She pressed both hands to her face in mock horror. “Oh my gods, I’ve lost Notebook-chan!”

Laughing, Euterpe reintroduced Terpsichore’s twin sister, Polyhymnia, and indicated her twin sons and husband with a grin. “And people say I don’t pay attention.”

“Pardon me, but I’ve had a very hard day,” Mordecai said.

Hyacinth gave the General a nudge, “You have gum in your hair.”

“I know,” she answered stiffly. “I have not had time to remove it. I require a mirror.” She glanced back at Calliope’s family and shook her head. “I have more context now than I ever wanted.”

“… Terpsichore wanted to come, but I wanted to meet the weird family,” Polyhymnia said. “It’s my turn.”

“Mom says I need a vacation,” Oz explained, without prompting. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to have a vacation with all these people.” He flung a gesture.

The conjoined families were forming a clot in the capillary of the sidewalk at a very busy, festive time. Some revellers walked into the snowy street, expressing irritation. A few wandered towards the gallery to check out the posters and the lights.

Calliope, Chris, Katya and Teagan had done one poster design each. Calliope’s was perhaps the slickest, though none of them were terribly coherent. Each had the name of the show — The Minority Report — the dates, an invitation to come inside, and some kind of bizarre tagline.

Calliope offered “fresh-squeezed local art,” with rainbow paint being poured out of an orange juice carton. Chris had a man shaving a thin slice off a human brain to make a sandwich, “brain food for starving artists (also, real food).” Katya had produced a beautiful art deco woman doing a rude gesture as she invited you to tell her to smile one more time. Teagan’s poster had a crooked apograph of a photo of an empty field: OUTSTANDING.

Milo had done the lights. There were four different colours, each bulb appeared to contain a literal fairy, and they did not need to be plugged in.

Passersby seemed to be more interested in the lights, which all parties involved in the setup found irritating. They kept noting the fairies and then wandering off before anyone could get to the door and yell that they’d be open at seven.

A blue-haired young woman in a loud, fashionable yellow plaid dress popped out of the door this time, trying to corral the latest crop of electrical aficionados: “We are literally open right now and we have free art for you philistines!”

“Can’t be very good if it’s free,” a random man in the courtyard opined.

A blue-skinned young man with glasses and immaculately tousled hair peeped out of the doorway behind the woman. “I-I think, ideally, we’d like someone to buy it. But you can look at it. We’re not going to, like, police it, you know?”

Teagan turned with her face set in a pained snarl. She lowered her voice, but not quite enough, “Are you trying to do a soft sell or are you just stupid?”

Chris shrank back and managed a weak shrug.

“We are breaking down barriers and refusing to be beholden to the sexist art establishment!” Teagan declared. “Now, if you don’t want to get on board with that…”

“It’s also racist,” Chris put in. “Sexist and racist. It’s… I mean, they’re the establishment, so…”

Teagan was just glaring at him. He shrank back again.

“Kinda seems like you guys just don’t have any idea what you’re doing,” said the man in the crowd. There were murmurs of agreement. A few voices noted that the lights were pretty.

“We got free food in here,” Chris offered.

The man laughed. “Like every other place that’s trying to sell stuff tonight?”

“We don’t want you to… Well, someone,” Chris hedged. “We’d like someone to buy it. But if you could just look at it and like it and talk about it, that’d be really great. Otherwise, well, it’s like nobody’s listening to us and we’ll be sad…”

Mordecai put a hand over his eyes with a sigh. Abject pathos in the face of derision and disinterest was certainly not a soft sell. He wondered if Calliope’s ex-boyfriend wouldn’t mind representing some other race in front of the public, perhaps with a wig and paint like Al Jolson.

“I, for one, am extremely interested in the free art show!” a tall man with gold spectacles and a mop of blond and silver hair cried. “What is wrong with you people? You think you’re cool?” He pushed through the crowd with his head up. “Making nice artists sad is not cool! I bet they have very interesting things to say about… about culture! And stuff!”

“Who the hell is this idiot?” Teagan said.

Stephen Otis offered his hand. “Oh, I’m Calliope’s father. Very pleased to meet you. Are you the one who paints over old photos of naked women or the one she can’t stand?”

Maggie squeezed past Mordecai, urgently muttering, “Gods, she’ll clock him with a chair like that poor waiter…”

…and Rinswell Soap Flakes-Otis blew past her with a hand up, “Stephen, you can’t call Calliope’s art friends uncool! Artists are very sensitive! These are her coworkers! Even if they are being jerks!”

Mordecai spoke in a low voice, to no one in particular, “Have we ever had an art riot? We must be due for an art riot.”

The General responded, perhaps only by coincidence, “I got them here on time. I completed my assignment with no casualties. Whatever else happens, this was a success.” She turned slightly. “Now get out of my way. I trust I will find a bathroom and a mirror within.”

“We’re not with them, free art just sounds awesome. I’m peer pressure,” Polyhymnia added, implausibly, as she entered with the rest of her family. Hyacinth was already following them, grinning.

Mordecai shook his head and brought up the rear with the kids. At least there would be food inside. Maybe they could get through dinner before it got too crazy.

◈◈◈

The long room was finished in fashionable reclaimed industrial brick; crumbly, idiosyncratic and echoey. There were four arched doorways facing each other across the tile floor, two leading to the courtyard and two for the gallery proper. Along the walls, each in its own little brick bandshell, were a random scattering of mosaics, fountains and green plants which appeared to be attached and included with the rent. The glittery white lights, red paper flowers and gold tinsel had been added by the artists to make it look a bit more seasonal. It was cheaper than, say, real flowers.

The long table — made of multiple short tables with matching cloths over them — was another addition, all of it rented. In the centre sat a punch bowl full of bright red fizzy stuff, with a tower of paper cups on one side and an empty champagne glass (the shallow kind) pyramid for midnight on the other.

Every other table had an assortment of towers and platters filled with tiny, decorative food. Paste sandwiches with no crusts, cocktail shrimp stacked into a tree shape with olives, snails tucked into prettier shells for display, a shiny paper cone with cookies glued to it, and similar.

There was a stack of comically small paper plates at either end, encouraging visitors to eat light.

There were no rental chairs to sit down on, nor tables to sit at, nor even any forks. Everything could either be picked up by a skewer or served with tongs and eaten with fingers. Scattered people, art buyers and a couple photographers who had been invited early to beat the crowds (or lack thereof) were doing so.

“Toothpick sandwiches,” Hyacinth said weakly.

Mordecai elbowed her, hard. “Shut up. This is our own fault for asking the wrong questions, and even if it’s not, shut up anyway. Be nice for Calliope.”

“Snaaails,” Erik hissed at Maggie, not nearly soft enough. Mordecai aimed a light kick at his shoe and shook his head at him when he looked up. “But they are…”

“Don’t say it like it’s weird, it’s not weird, they’re just for grown-ups. You don’t have to have anything you don’t want, the way it’s…”

“Oh, gods, there’s not even a bar,” Hyacinth said. “Is this a cocktail party for toddlers? It…” Mordecai put his hand over her mouth altogether and pushed her behind him, smiling.

The dark-haired lady in the shiny dress had just run out of one of the twin gallery entrances with her arms spread. “Dad! Mom! Hi, everybody! You made it!” Calliope waded in and began passing out hugs while counting her visiting family members. “Who’d I get in the grab bag? Is Glorie changing the baby or something? Wow, Melpomene, you get bored of cats or what?”

“I’m on vacation,” Oz said. “It’s cold and depressing. Your snow is black.”

“It suits him,” Polyhymnia leaned in to add.

“Here’s a photo of Sasha eating her present. We give them presents. It’s enrichment.” He handed her a looping snapshot of a dog-sized adult tiger eviscerating a wrapped package with a gay little bow, while two tiny lions observed. “It’s a turkey burger in there. She eats meat.” Not all of them did.

“And naughty children,” Euterpe put in. Helix and Sigma frowned at him. He picked up Sigma. “Don’t take me seriously, guys. I’m the weird one.”

“Cool!” Calliope said. She hugged Oz again — or possibly for the first time, she wasn’t keeping track. “I’ll cut it up for a collage after it freezes. You guys hungry? You wanna eat first or look at our stuff? We got a couple photographers running around, but the reporters aren’t here yet… or anybody else, hardly.” She sighed. “But everyone likes to come late for this kinda thing. Drives me nuts. Thanks for being here.”

“I’m starve…” Euterpe said, but Rinswell nudged him, Mordecai saw it.

Wow, he thought. They pay attention and respect her. I wonder what that’s like?

He was being silly. He knew what it was like, just not in this context. And it wasn’t that great, anyway.

“We had a big lunch, Calliope,” Rinswell said.

“No, we…” Now Stephen got a nudge. He smiled and nodded rapidly. “Er, yes! Let’s look at the art while we get hungry.”

Helix and Sigma burst into tears.

“…Oh, except the babies. They’ve been very good and walked past so many treats. The babies can have a snack, can’t they?”

Hector collected both. “I’ll stay with them. We’ll do the art later.”

“The General’s got Lucy in the bathroom, she’ll take the kids’ tour with you,” Hyacinth added.

Hector paled but could not protest.

“They can totally play on Chris’s stuff if they want,” Calliope said. “He doesn’t mind.” She waved to him. “You don’t mind, do ya, babe?”

“What?” he called back.

“It’s fine. You guys wanna take the fun door or the fast one? It’s just Teagan before me on the left, but Chris and Katya are on the right.” She leaned in and whispered, “Fun door, fun door, fun door…”

They all agreed to take the fun door.

◈◈◈

The room was blue, with an illusory domed ceiling hiding the spotlights aimed at the artwork. The ambient illumination was provided by electric bulbs hung on artfully twisted branches in a series of vases.

It was kind of a surreal forest — emphasis on the surreal — with a circuitous pathway enforced by the fake trees. The woodland creatures were an endless series of black and white stills of one furiously happy raccoon. In every clearing there was some giant feature like a pagan worship circle, but only a few were made of stone. The largest seemed to be a pile of broken chairs with their legs twitching.

The General wasn’t with them to say whether that was real motion or an optical effect, and Maggie knew to keep her mouth shut. It wouldn’t be as creepy if she explained it.

A thin-legged table with a brown finish wandered in and out of the shadows like a deer.

There was even a waterfall, of sorts. It was made of either real or illusory junk store finds (many of which Hyacinth thought had really been found in her spare room) that shimmered and fell up.

“Raccoons and furniture,” Mordecai opined softly, so as not to be too insulting. “The man likes raccoons and furniture.”

“And totally huge women,” Euterpe added, examining yet another fertility idol, this one made of stone and towering five feet above his head.

Calliope swatted him. “No he doesn’t, Katya is a friend and he doesn’t want anything else. He’s just a supplicant at the altar of the Creative Force, that’s all. Compared to the Universe, he is very, very small.”

“Oh, right,” Euterpe said.

Hyacinth was examining the reverse waterfall. “Kind of an Alice in Wonderland vibe here, only it’s a raccoon.”

“Oh, a hero’s journey!” Stephen exclaimed. “I see it, too, but I was thinking a ball of string in a labyrinth.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Hyacinth. Honestly, she just meant it was weird.

“Really, we’re doing Masque of the Red Death, but it was an accident,” Calliope said with a smile. “We were using coloured tape to plot everything out in the studio, so we ran with it. Katya and I had a fight over red, and I won because she’s got so much gold leaf in her stuff. I told her she’d look like New Year’s decorations. Is it okay if we keep going? You can come back later, you’ve got all night, yeah?”

Rinswell hugged her. “Yeah, hon. This is cool, but it’s not you. We’re here for you.”

Calliope smiled. “Thanks, Mom. We just got a little more not-me to go.”

◈◈◈

“Okay, now this person loves totally huge women,” Euterpe said. “Has to. Don’t tease me, sis.”

The room was green, and there was a lot of gold leaf involved, in the art and the frames. The bright swirly floral patterns made one huge tapestry. Each panel included a tinted photograph of at least one naked woman, blown up to life-size or greater with the low resolution corrected in paint. They lounged among abstract patterns and mythic landscapes, looking bored, amused or peaceful in equal measure.

“All women,” Calliope said. “And herself. But for legal reasons, these are mostly the ladies of the pre-copyright era. I like to tease her and say she’s exploiting a lot of grandmas all over again, but she doesn’t see it like that. The one by the doorway is me, but I consented.” She nudged him and indicated a figure wrapped in fur, with long black gloves and a domino mask. Her hands were held over her head like the Raccoon in Wonderland, and her expression was ecstatic as she examined the painted gold light swirling around her.

“Ew, I don’t wanna see my sister naked,” Euterpe said. “And a raccoon.”

“It’s just paint, hon, I had a dress on the whole time.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Okay then. Cool mask.”

Oz still shielded his eyes as he walked rapidly past.

“Is that the end of the happy raccoon’s journey or the beginning?” Stephen asked.

“Same thing,” Calliope said. “Just depends how you look at it. Moving right along…” She shooed them onward.

“Moving right along,” Mordecai echoed, dragging Hyacinth away with both hands clamped on her shoulders.

◈◈◈

The room was red, which those who knew Calliope knew was her board game piece of choice. The ambient lighting, however, was pink. Colour theory aside, you needed to handle your cheerful reds carefully, lest your playroom resemble an abattoir. With the fluffy flower lamps Milo and Calliope had designed, it looked more like a bordello instead. But it was right next to Katya’s ladies and included a saloon girl painting, so that was okay.

Perhaps Milo’s softer and more feminine (weird, but true) influence had resulted in the floral theme. Perhaps it was just to contrast with Chris’s more tree-and-water-oriented nature setting. (The fact that the sol-and-disme store near Chris’s studio had put all their summer garden supplies on clearance in September, when they began planning the show, also had something to do with it. But only Milo, Ann, and the four artists knew that part.)

There were a lot of glass-and-metal flowers and birds on long metal stakes that were meant to be planted in the dirt, but had instead been affixed to the walls between the sketches and paintings. Sometimes they turned their faces to look as people walked past, art that observed its observers in return. Their shiny surfaces reflected your own reaction to the role-reversal, but often with playful distortions, both physical and magic-based.

Broken plates and tin cutlery from Hyacinth’s house sprang up randomly, with assorted loose gears glued to the birds and flowers or displayed in bird-or-flower-like configurations of their own.

Altogether, it gave Mordecai the impression that he’d accidentally stumbled into a house of ill-repute after consuming far too much absinthe (or something he thought was absinthe) in a nearby bar, and now the wallpaper appeared to be crawling and he couldn’t find a way out. Curious, humorous and terrifying, all at once.

Someone had already bought all the flower lamps, Calliope was amused to inform everyone. Milo was already irritated on her behalf, so she didn’t have to get too mad about a cheap set of mage lights made from hummingbird feeders and tissue paper selling before any of her art stuff. Besides, they didn’t belong to the gallery and they weren’t marked NFS, so it was only fair. Art show rules, babe.

“That’s our new sister!” Polyhymnia exclaimed, pointing at the saloon girl.

“Hey, I’ve got some papers for you about that,” Rinswell said. “Before we go.”

“Gods, I did not come here to see multiple instances of my family naked,” Oz muttered.

Calliope hugged him. “I wanted you here,” she drew back with a smile, “all of you, ’cos you know Ann’s my naked sister. You guys get I’m not just a surrealist, you’re the only ones with context. I like that.”

Mordecai was glancing around anxiously. He had espied an old soldier in a worn coat which he thought looked an awful lot like his body and his expression with an alternate face. He was pretty sure he’d posed for that one, yeah, but he’d been high and she asked nicely. “Calliope, surely you’ve done a few things that aren’t about us…?”

She appeared to consider that, “Hmmmnnaaah,” and grinned. “A few things about people who aren’t in the room with me, and never just about them, but Chris likes raccoons and furniture and I like my family.” She gave her dad a nudge, because he got insecure sometimes. “Both parts.” He smiled at her.

“It’s me with flowers!” Erik noted, pointing.

Not reflected in one of the garden decorations, but in a framed watercolour image that he had posed for. He remembered she had sketched him with flowers on the day he found out she and his uncle liked to hide and eat hash brownies together. She wanted to say something about wisdom being passed between the generations, but she couldn’t think of a smart flower for Uncle Mordecai to hold. He thought she just did that for fun!

He beamed at her. “When did you make me a real painting?”

“A while ago,” she said. “I hid it.” She snickered and shook her head. “Some of it’s obvious, but I hid a lot of things. You can split up and go find yourselves, I don’t mind. I don’t wanna be breathing down your necks the whole time anyway, that’s weird for me too. Just meet me at the end when you’re done.”

Maggie, Euterpe and Polyhymnia tore off to examine the paintings and sketches — and get scared and amused by the effects. Erik paused and asked his uncle’s permission before doing likewise. Hyacinth, Rinswell and Stephen departed at a more leisurely stroll. This left Mordecai and Oz standing just inside the entrance, looking awkward.

“Would you like to,” Mordecai began.

“I just want to be anywhere there’s not a naked picture,” Oz said. He wandered away with his head down.

With a wince, Mordecai decided he might as well look for Hyacinth. He only hoped he wouldn’t meet too many iterations of himself along the way.

◈◈◈

Calliope’s medium of choice was paint, but she mixed it up with some pencil sketches and semi-collages with three-dimensional objects glued to them. The floral-themed garden decorations also peeled away from the walls between the artwork, crawling past frames and into your personal space. She was all about violating boundaries. 

Even strangers who had never consented to model for Calliope at all were meant to be part of the show. It was definitely something to do with the flower lamps. Hyacinth hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps into the exhibit, when she caught her own pinkish shadow dancing a pirouette and waving at her. A few paces away, Maggie shrieked laughter when her faint reflection in a glass-fronted picture frame appeared to stick out its tongue and wink. It only looked like a racy red bordello with floral accents; it was a funhouse!

It was only a little bit extra weird and startling for Calliope’s friends and family, who might also meet themselves outside of the mirrors and cool lighting effects.

Hyacinth noted the painting with the polyresin lobster and the dancing cave drawings was up for sale — Calliope must’ve gotten tired of it hanging over the bed — and Milo had loaned her back the one from his closet with the shoe on it, but it was NFS.

She had given Calliope the modified crying doves painting from the kitchen under similar terms, and she was looking for it. The birds were making a heart shape with their beaks and both wearing fancy ladies’ hats now, so either one was a crossdresser or they were both lesbians. She wanted to hang out near it and see what Calliope’s family thought.

However, Mordecai found her stopped in front of a charcoal drawing with acrylic highlights entitled Evil Old Man I Dreamed. The figure had detailed piercing grey eyes in a scribbled suggestion of a face, and a robe which only vaguely resembled the bedsheet she’d posed him in.

“Look,” Hyacinth told Mordecai, without turning. “It’s a twofer. Barnaby asked her to pretend she saw him in a dream, and I told her to write it down somewhere that he was evil. She did it.”

Mordecai regarded her sentimental expression and remembered her overblown attachment to the similarly evil toy monkey last year. He groped for a word that was sensitive and yet not an obvious lie, “Yes, it’s… very… Thoughtful of her?”

Hyacinth was smiling. “Yeah, it’s really sweet. Do you suppose she’d let me have it at a discount?”

He frowned at her. “Don’t even joke about that. She needs real money from people who can further her career. You have lots of Calliope art at home.”

She snickered and turned from the picture with a shrug. “I guess I have an evil old man too. Come on, help me look for my doves.”

A few moments later, their shadows bowed to each other and skipped after them.

◈◈◈

Erik dragged Calliope out from behind a temporary wall, where she was watching people look at her art but not breathing down their necks — a loophole!

He pointed at the painting of his uncle giving him a flower, with both of their heads wreathed in Milo-style spell circles — probably something to do with age or knowledge, since Uncle Mordecai’s was way more complex. He sort of understood that part, he didn’t want to ask about it; sometimes he still ran out of words when he was excited.

She knew that and she waited for him.

“Are daisies a smart flower?” he asked, smiling. She’d picked the yellow kind. He was used to seeing them in street planters because they were impossible to kill.

She leaned in and cupped a hand around her mouth to whisper, “I’m gonna let you in on a secret: Sometimes I put things in places just because I have to put something there and it looks good. Then I let everyone else decide what it means. It usually works out pretty good. What kind of flower do you think a daisy is?”

“Kinda silly,” Erik allowed. “But really strong.”

“Yeah, they’re basically a weed,” she said, nodding. “Maybe he’s teaching you not to take things too seriously so you can keep bouncing back.”

“I don’t know if he’s super good at that…” Then again, his uncle was still alive, so that had to count for something.

“Maybe you’ll be better than him when you’ve had some more time to work on your circles. Yours could be different.”

“Maybe…”

“Hey, sis, hey sis, hey, sis!” Now Euterpe latched onto her arm and dragged her. She followed, laughing. “You drew my guy with wasps in his head again! You remembered! He looks way better than when you drew him as a kid!”

Erik frowned at the painting. If Calliope wasn’t sure what it meant, it might mean anything. That was a little bit scary, honestly, even though they had fun posing when she sketched it and they were both smiling and happy in the painting. Gee, I really hope he’s handing me something good.

His own shadow sprouted a sudden crescent-shaped smile, startling him. He staggered away to examine something a little less disturbing.

◈◈◈

Polyhymnia was leading Oz around, but he tended to stop wherever she left him, and getting him to engage with the art was like pulling teeth. She’d plopped him down in front of a huge five-foot-by-five-foot collage this time, so at least she knew he was looking at it.

“It’s called Communications Breakdown. I think that’s Zeppelin. You must like Zeppelin. You’re old, aren’t you?”

He didn’t say anything.

“I think these are mostly those cards Milo likes to talk with, but she cut them all up. There’s someone who likes to write in block letters like a stencil and some newspaper headlines too. I suppose it’s funny, but it feels mean to me. They were trying to say something for real and now it’s all garbled like someone who gets crazy voices in their head. It’s kinda sad, I think. Do you think anything?”

“It says, ‘Sometimes it’s hard to say I Love You but I know you understand because you love me too,’” Oz muttered. He pointed. “The last letter of every block of text reading top to bottom. Left to right and the first letter gets you, ‘You’re reading this wrong go back lorem ipsum,’ and I think the rest is how they mock up text in an ad, or the paper.”

“Shit,” Polyhymnia said, blinking.

He was already wandering away, too fast for the effects to do much but make his image shimmer briefly in the glass. “You’re not really observant, for a scientist.”

She followed him with a grin, “I quit my job.” Her shadow remained behind, then grew bat wings and flew away.

◈◈◈

“You liked the one in the middle,” Calliope said. Maggie had been lingering unusually long in front of the Alternative Mermaids triptych. Left to right they were part jellyfish, part octopus and part shark. All had devious and secretive expressions, if not obviously evil ones, but only the middle one had brown skin and braids like Maggie. “Right?”

Maggie sighed and turned. “I did, and it kicks ass, but I made something out of your evil mermaid sketches too. I was embarrassed to show you but now that I want to I can’t anyway because I need a whole ocean to work with. It’s really frustrating. Also, your Nymphadora’s way older and sexier than me and I think I’m jealous.”

“You made art out of the whole ocean?” Calliope squealed. That was the important part. “Is it still out there? Do we need to rent a boat? If I make my money back on this I will totally rent a boat!”

Maggie smiled weakly. “It’s not still there, I have to do it myself. I just need a lot of water to make the shapes and I can’t on the beach because everyone will scream and I’ll get arrested. I guess maybe we do need to rent a boat…” She glanced aside, considering. “Yeah. If you make your money back, I’ll show you. And my mom. Everyone. I’ll figure out a way.” She spoke more rapidly, like fine print in a contract, “Unless I get too scared and I don’t want to anymore.”

Calliope crouched and hugged her. “I’m freaking out pretty bad, too, Maggie. Swear to gods. Sharing something you made is super hard. I won’t say you have to, because right now I’m not even sure I should’ve. But I promise if you want to share something you made with me, I’ll like doing that, even if I don’t always like the thing.” She smiled. “Hey, especially if it’s based on one of my things. That’s really cool. You know?”

Maggie considered her for just a moment and hugged back. “I like your things, Calliope. I get why you’re freaking out. I think it’s gonna be okay, but I’ll still be here to help even if it’s not.” She thought she felt dampness on her shoulder. “You gonna be okay?”

“Oh, yeah.” Calliope let go and signed her a double thumbs up. “Just a few more hours to go!”

◈◈◈

Observed by a grove of staring metal daisies, Stephen and Rinswell were standing in front of a set of still-lifes, Found Objects 1 and 2. They were only for sale as a set. Rin seemed interested in a nonjudgmental way, but Stephen appeared increasingly concerned. He flagged down Calliope when he saw her. “Sweetheart, we love these, but I was just curious, are they really…”

Calliope smiled at him. “Family portraits, yeah.”

Stephen applauded lightly, “I knew that was my little Doric column helping to hold everything up! Yay! We’re number one, aren’t we? Because we were your family first!”

Rin shook her head with a patient smile, “Stephen.”

“You’re never gonna stop being my family, Dad,” Calliope said, with a similar smile. “I made you number one because you’ve been my family longer. But I painted the other one first. Hyacinth gave me the idea, it’s like she fishes people out of the trash and keeps them. You guys aren’t found like that, but ‘found’ can mean where something came from too.”

Rin snickered and pointed, “So that big magpie in Two stole you from One, huh?”

“Nah. I’m still in both places,” she indicated the twin paint brushes in each collection, one smaller than the other — because Lucy didn’t get to do much by herself yet. “And the soldier’s medal picked me up when I needed.” It was in the mouth of the magpie, as if the bird really was doing the collecting instead of part of the collection. “You know that, Mom.”

“I suppose I do, but do you mind if nobody else does?”

Calliope laughed. “Yeah. That part’s fun!”

◈◈◈

After about forty-five minutes of fun, feeling hungry herself, Calliope managed to shoo everyone to the end of the exhibit by yelling, “Hey! Let’s look at the cuckoo clock and then go eat!” This also drew the attention of a few regular people who were browsing the art and engaging with (or annoyed by) the interactive parts.

Milo was standing beside the clock just outside the entrance to Teagan’s room. It was hung on the wall like all the rest, but much thicker than any of the collages, which had a few objects glued to them at most, and more solid than the modified garden decor. He had to lean out and wave to make sure they saw him.

Calliope squealed and hugged him. “There you are! I thought you were hiding in the bathroom the whole time. Everyone’s here! What’re you doing?”

Milo pointed to the cuckoo clock. He signed: I/ME SAFE MACHINE SAFE.

She swatted him lightly. “Cut that out. You’re going to make people nervous and they won’t play with it. It’s supposed to be interactive. If it breaks, we’ll fix it. That’s the point.”

He sighed and shook his head. UNICORN NO [EXTRA] MACHINE MACHINE SAFE «i don’t want the metaphor, i want the literal clock not to break»

“I didn’t make it to be a real clock, it doesn’t even tell time anymore,” she said. “Seriously, babe. You can play with it all you want later, that’s what it’s for. It’s NFS, that means if any jerk tries to buy it we can tell them to bug off. I’m just proud of it, so tonight you have to share.”

He nodded, looking down and away.

“Could you pick someone else to wind it up so everyone can see?”

Milo stared at the curious faces of his and Calliope’s extended family, including the cute little kid who was missing an eye, the miserable accountant who hadn’t seen his sister in, like, a decade, Calliope’s favourite bother she rarely saw, her parents, his parents, some guys he didn’t even know and a little girl who could blow his head off with magic if she didn’t care for his decision.

He turned and ran into Teagan’s maze of yellow wallpaper and black-and-white photos, hoping his monochromatic wardrobe would be camouflage.

Calliope glanced after him and shook her head. “That was my fault.” She turned back to her family, “I’d pick Glorie, because she started it, but she’s not here. The rest of you all helped, so do you want to fight for it?”

“I have no idea what it is, but I am not fit to lead and I abdicate,” Mordecai said.

“It’s an on switch that looks like a little wind-up key, Em,” Calliope said gently. “There’s not even a spring, it works on a battery.”

“Ah.” Mordecai filtered this through his recent discovery of what batteries could do to Erik. “Then let Magnificent do it.”

Erik swatted him.

Maggie threw up her hands. “That’s it. You ruined it. Now I want him to do it out of spite.”

Euterpe raised his hand. “Can we wind it up as many times as we want?”

“Yup. Just wait for it to reset. Takes five minutes. It’s an endless loop.”

He nodded. “Yeah, then let the kid do it first.”

Everyone, even Mordecai and the watching strangers, seemed to find this more agreeable than Calliope’s suggestion of trial by combat. However, Erik was somewhat uncomfortable with the spotlight. His shadow turned and fled back into the red room, but every shadow lit at that particular angle would. (This was Milo and Calliope’s subtle commentary on the quality of Teagan’s work.) “But,” he protested. “But could I, uh, uh, uh, mess it up?”

Calliope scolded him with a finger. “If it breaks we’ll fix it, that’s the point.” She smiled. “But I bet you won’t, and you helped a lot.” She motioned him forward and indicated the key, which had a friendly little note above it in her handwriting: Wind Me. NFS! “Just turn it till it clicks.”

Erik blew out an anxious breath, smiled bravely at Calliope and turned the key. It went around three whole times with a satisfying ratchet sound before it clicked and stopped.

The clock began to move.

Erik took a big step backwards to watch it.

It was the same shape as the original broken cuckoo clock Calliope had purchased in Ansalem. She had saved some of the wooden ornaments, mostly birds and leaves, from the original housing, but stripped the rest of the outside away and left only a minimalist cage of brass to fix the decorations about where they used to be. There was a clock face in the middle, too, with the hands frozen at five minutes to midnight. So you could still tell it was a cuckoo clock, but apart from that it was just a big shiny box of moving gears.

There were more gears in there than a clock even needed. Some of them had to be decorations or illusions, but it was hard to tell which ones. They all turned and meshed as the whole clock split right down the middle and opened like the little window the bird was supposed to use.

There were way more gears inside, each one first sketched and designed by Milo and Calliope, representing abstract concepts in a symbolic language only they understood. Hyacinth maybe had the best idea what they were talking about; she had to build all the damn things and make sure they fit together in order, lest Calliope go off on her about how relationships were supposed to work, with diagrams. It was worse than trying to hook up the gears she’d been taught to envision in the human body — a thing she had never bothered to do.

At the top of it all, where the bird would have been, was a beating metal heart shape, like a gold valentine. The machine was alive, in a metaphorical sense.

There was also a ghost in it, because even if Calliope liked to let people figure things out for themselves, she didn’t want them to be totally clueless. She really liked when Milo showed her how the train worked, maybe other people would like that too.

After a few moments of watching the gears turn unassisted, a little ball of light like a sparkler zipped out of the lower left-hand corner of the machine and began tracing the interaction of the gears, from the foundation all the way up to the heart at the top. Each function was spelled out in glowing white letters, which hung in the air even after the sparkly ball had moved past. Things like Creativity, Empathy, Listening, Sharing, Flexibility, Time, Togetherness, Forgiveness and Romance.

(Well, it was Milo and Calliope’s joint idea of a relationship and they were still pretty young.)

At the top, interacting with all the subordinate functions and working together to power the heart, were Trust (a lock with a key in it), Understanding (a brain), Communication (a smiling mouth), Intimacy (a shoe) and Affection (a wreath of smaller hearts).

When the sparkler reached the very top, the metal heart popped out of the brilliant chaos with the cuckoo sound that came with the clock.

Hyacinth broke through everyone’s childlike wonder with a cackle and leaned against Mordecai, shaking her head. She’d told them they shouldn’t leave that in, but Milo and Calliope both loved the goofy-ass bird noise, and they did not consider it at all insulting that their relationship was a metaphorical loony bin. That’s every relationship, Cin, Calliope had explained patiently, while Milo nodded like he agreed with everything she said whether he understood it or not — Hyacinth wasn’t sure and Calliope wasn’t paying attention. Communication and Understanding. Yeah, right.

Well, they were still working on it and they intended to keep working on it for a long time. That was why it wasn’t for sale.

The bird noise informed everyone that Milo and Calliope were “cuckoo” for each other, or just in general, thirteen times — one extra to grow on. Then the whole works folded up again with a click. All motion ceased, but the key invited more winding.

Euterpe put a hand out and claimed it, laughing. “Man, sis, that was great! I want one!”

“I’m never building another one of those again,” said Hyacinth. “Ever. It’s a pain in the ass.”

One of the strangers who had been observing approached her. “Do you have the plans? I’ll buy them off you!”

Calliope broke in between them and put up her hands, “NFS means not for sale — any of it, pal. If you want one, you make it yourself, not with my plans.”

Milo had come back to the doorway, drawn by the sound of the clock working. He liked watching it. He was proud of it too. He nodded firmly at Calliope and signed her a thumbs up.

She smiled at him. “Not by yourself,” she added, to Euterpe. “I’m not saying if you want one you have to do it alone, that would be silly. For yourself. That’s different.”

He was winding the clock again and probably not listening. Milo crept over and quietly put his arm around her. She reciprocated and squeezed.

“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” Stephen said tearfully. “It’s beautiful. I hope you have all the cuckoo clocks you want forever!”

She snickered. “Thanks, Dad, but I got what I need right now.” She squeezed Milo again. “You guys want to eat now? Except Euterpe.” He was distracted, he’d remember food eventually. “We’ve got a mess of cookies, and Teagan came up with a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even sound like real food, salmon shoes or some darn thing. It’s twelve dozen of everything and I’m really scared we won’t have enough people in to eat all of it, so you guys…”

“That food sounds gross,” Oz said dryly.

Calliope scowled at him and Rin told him to apologize.

“I don’t mean ‘gross.’ It’s a number joke, Thalia would’ve gotten it,” he muttered.

“The caterer cancelled and Teagan’s dumb pie restaurant was the only place we could get to cook anything on a holiday and that’s not funny, Melpomene,” Calliope said.

Maggie winced and hid it. “Calliope, this… This is Teagan’s food?”

“She makes an okay hamburger,” Erik reminded her. “It’s just the other stuff.”

Maggie leaned in and hissed in his ear, so as not to disturb Calliope or the other patrons, “Dead bats in the stove vent.”

He considered that for only a moment before hissing back, “I didn’t have any lunch!”

Mordecai pulled them apart with some low words of his own, “I already said you didn’t have to eat the snails!” He smiled at Calliope and said, much louder, “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“Don’t insult anything Teagan made while she might hear you, this is for your own personal safety,” Maggie added.

Calliope smiled. “Hey, if we skip the yellow room and go back the way we came, maybe you won’t have to.”