“Keep going,” I urged.
Aster’s gaze hardened and he looked at me with a furrowed brow.Were you...tempting me just now?
The rain began to fall, and I realized that I had lost my book for good.
THE STORM
When Aster straightened,a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky.The lightning might as well have come from him.
Tempting him.The word came back to me in full force.Tempting—luring, haunting.Defying.I remembered Aster telling me about it the morning I first found him typing away at my draft.The only way to kill a muse was by tempting him to become the creator, trading roles.
I had thought that by now I’d seen Aster in every possible shade of emotion: love, fear, excitement, restlessness.But I hadn’t considered anything this complex could come along and shake things up so much more.
Looking back, no one in my family had ever exhibited any kind of temper.I grew up in a quiet neighborhood and never witnessed any drama beyond cold silence and middle-class passive-aggression.I assumed wrongly that the entire world worked like a giant clock, that things like passion and anger ran to a ceiling before dying off.
Such a ceiling did not exist.I’d asked for something I couldn’t contain or control, and now I had to deal with the consequences.
Aster’s eyes glittered.His face reddened.He extended a hand toward my laptop and then pushed it off the table.It’s not enough that I belong to you.It’s not enough that I gave you my heart and my soul.You never actually wanted to win at this, did you?You’re conniving.A trickster.
I stepped back.“But you didn’t have a problem writing it earlier!What changed?Why is it different now?”
Because earlier it was my will, not yours,he said.But I should have seen the writing on the wall.I never wanted you to be the writer or me to be the muse.I wanted to create this thing.To write it.And the only one who ever could have inspired such a drive in me was you.It was always you, only you, always you from the start.
The downpour thickened, and now the rain landed in uneven dark splotches across the patio.The clouds continued to darken, and the thunder grew louder and more frequent.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” I said.“Let’s put the computer away for now.Neither of us has anything to prove.I mean, you’re a literal muse.And I already won the residency.That’s more success than most writers could dream of.”My voice cracked as I spoke and almost became lost in the thunder.
But we didn’t want success.We wanted to reach above it, to reach the status of legend,said Aster.We’re going to work this out.One way or another.You will write this book.Or you will kill me.
“Aster—” A vision of him flashed through my head, a memory of his angelic presence the first time I had seen him, his long white hair and the glow in his eyes which had since dulled to a shadow.
I’m serious.I can’t live like this.I can’t contort myself further.I’ve already lost my special status.We both know it.
At first I assumed that either I had misunderstood the ultimatum or that Aster exaggerated, but he didn’t push anything further.He didn’t blink.He watched me for two seconds, turned and picked up the laptop from its landing place.The screen was open by two inches, scuffed on the side but still well intact despite the rain.
I accepted the laptop and wiped the water from it with my sweater sleeve.“I’m packing this away.We’re done.”
You’re sitting down.You’re writing this.You’re not going anywhere until it’s complete.
“It’s raining,” I said, raising my voice to accommodate a new curtain of rain that swept past us out toward the ocean.
There’s a lot you don’t know about the book,Aster said abruptly.
“How does it end?”
That’s not what I mean,he said.This book isn’t just an ambitious project.It’s my life.
I took a deep breath.A small voice in my head told me to stay calm and rational.Aster and I had a tie, and his passion could only match my own.Then I turned around.I held my laptop under my arm protectively.
My plan entailed turning and walking back into the house through the glass door, hiding the laptop in a closet or one of my suitcases and refusing to budge if he did anything more.But as soon as I faced the door, I faced Aster.He stood in front of it, arms crossed, cutting off my access.
What security I had felt drained into a vat of all-encompassing hopelessness and frustration.I rolled my eyes, turned, and walked unimpeded down the steps of the patio.
At this point, the rain had grown not just heavy, but thick as well.The clouds darkened so much that it looked more like twilight than noon.I shielded my laptop with a hopeless but maternal instinctiveness, realizing that I didn’t have much to protect either way.I wished I had the poetic courage to cast it into the sea.
I stepped over puddles as I hurried to the front door of the house, but as soon as I reached the steps by the driveway, Aster again appeared at the door, arms still crossed, eyes still dark and glaring.He looked like a statue.He looked like a curse.
“Stop it,” I said.My sense of earlier calm withered.Maybe Aster was more than an extension of myself.Maybe he really was his own person, and as such, he could act on feelings I’d never experienced.
