Gaia waved away her comment. “I have a muse of dance. Terpsichore. She’s very busy with all these crazy new moves she calls hip-hop, popping and locking, breakdancing, and they’re coming up with more all the time. She says it should be named ‘break-your-neck dancing.’ It’s all she can do to keep these fools from bodily harm as they defy my laws of gravity.”
“Oookaaay,” Misty said.
“Goddess, what my wife and I would like to know is what you’re expecting of her?” Gabe said.
“Expecting? Just the best you can do. And I’m offering a lot—not money. Something only I can pull off. I want my muses to willingly accept the job I feel they’re suited for. I want you to be the modern muse of parenting. You know the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’?”
“Yeah,” Misty murmured, still in shock.
“I’ve been saying that for centuries. People still don’t get the hint. My humans used to be nomads, and they traveled together in bands for safety. Even when they settled in one spot, they looked out for each other—and one another’s children.”
“You want her to babysit?” Gabe asked.
Gaia blew out a breath of frustration. “No, dragnix. And if I were you, I wouldn’t test my patience with stupid questions.”
Gabe made a gesture of zippering his mouth.
The goddess turned her attention back to Misty. “It’s a huge compliment, girlie. And because I know you’ll be caring for your own child, I’m willing to help in a big way—but only if you accept.”
Misty chewed her lip. “I still don’t know what I’d be doing.”
“Here, let me show you.” Mother Nature drew a large circle in the air, and an image came into view. A young girl, maybe a teenager, was trying to get a baby to stop crying. She tried to give him a bottle, but he turned his head, refusing it. She checked his diaper, which was dry. She tried rocking him and was getting increasingly frustrated when he only settled for a second and started to cry again.
At last, she held the baby up in front of her and angrily yelled, “What do you want?” Then she began to shake him.
“No! Stop!” Misty cried. “Don’t shake that baby!”
One side of Mother Nature’s lip curved up. The girl glanced around and finally carried the baby down the hall and put him in his bed. Shutting the door, she walked a few steps away and let herself have a good cry too.
A few moments later, the baby stopped crying. The young mother tiptoed back to the child’s room and looked in on him. He was asleep. She quietly shut the door and leaned against the wall, relief washing over her.
When the picture faded, Misty gazed at Gaia. “What just happened?” Remembering who she was talking to, she took a respectful tone. “What are you trying to tell me, Goddess?”
“Your instincts are good,” she said. “You’re going to make an excellent mother. The thing is, there are a lot of parents out there, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who are frustrated, overwhelmed, and isolated! There’s no village to help them. Not only that, but some don’t have the faintest idea what they’re doing.
“I just need you to be a friend when they need one most. A calm whisper in their ears. Do you remember how that girl stopped shaking the baby, put him to bed, and then faced her own frustration?”
Misty nodded.
“You did that. You told her not to shake the baby. And she stopped.”
“She heard me?”
“She did. In her own mind, though. It just sounded like her own voice of reason…that little inner voice that people learn to listen to if they have any smarts at all.”
“Are you saying that little voice inside my head is a muse?”
“Not always. But often enough.”
“So when I knew a dance move was beyond my ability and stopped myself from attempting it, knowing I could get hurt…”
Gaia shrugged. “It might have been your own good sense, or it might have been Terpsichore. You can ask her if you become her colleague.”
Misty remained in stunned silence for a few moments as she put together the disjointed pieces of this “job offer.” It seemed as if with Gaia’s help, Misty would be able to save babies from some of the horrific headlines she’d seen in the news. If all she had to do was see a picture and yell at it, it would probably be okay. In fact, if she were successful, it would be extremely gratifying.
Gaia had said something about powers. Was that the only power she was referring to—being able to talk to people through a bubble in the air?
“Not at all.” Gaia startled her out of her reverie, apparently answering her unspoken question. “There are a number of powers that all my muses have. And there would be a gift for accepting the job. Some muses have had the nerve to call it a bribe. I prefer to call it a sign-on and retention bonus.”
