Rough Magic

by Caryl Cude Mullin

  He squatted down and laid the two pieces on the floor, once more pushing the two broken halves together. Then he grabbed at one of the decaying blankets and tore a strip from it. This length of cloth he wrapped around the break, pulling it tight. Caliban had always been clever with knots. And he had learned, without wanting to, some of the wizard’s magic that would bind where nothing else would. Alone, he could not mend the staff. But he could fashion a bandage that would slow the draining of the island’s life. He whispered the words of power into the tying. The old fabric strengthened. The knot almost slipped, then held fast.

  In the very root of his soul he could feel the island rest.

  He lay down on Prospero’s old bed, the staff in his arms. He held it as though it were his beloved. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I did not know.”

  He felt no response.

  The rain continued to slither down from the sky. He stared out the open door and recalled his last days here on the island. He remembered stumbling about drunkenly with two stranded sailors. One of the men he’d made his false god. The other was a court jester. “A cruel fool,” he said out loud, as though he could chase away the memory with a silly rhyme. He remembered how the spirits of the island had tormented the three of them.

  Well, he deserved it. He had betrayed everyone: island, Prospero, Miranda, spirits, the cormorants. There was a long list of suffering caused by his weakness and stupidity.

  And now Chiara’s name was added to that list.

  The memories finally fell away, and he buried his face in his arm.

  He should have torn up the handkerchief. He should never have given her this choice. What was marriage, and a foreign court, compared to being killed by a monster? What sort of father was he, to let his child meet such a fate?

  What did it matter if the island died, so long as Chiara lived? The thought was betrayal upon betrayal. He felt the island pull away from him. But he could not take it back. If he balanced Chiara against the island… That was what he had done. That was what Chiara had done. He remembered her at age four, trying to thread a needle. They had been making kites. It was a windy autumn day, and Caliban was impatient to go outside. He kept reaching to help her, to hurry her along. “I want to do it myself, Caliban,” she said. It took her almost half an hour to put that thread through the needle’s eye. She cried, but she never gave up. And when it was done, she had smiled so proudly. “I shouldn’t have doubted you,” he’d said to her.

  But he still did. He never learned. He even preferred it when she failed, when she turned to him for help. She was still his child.

  And so he found the heart of his pain. It was not a foreign prince or a dragon who would take Chiara from him. It was life itself. She would grow up, and he would fade in importance. He had tried to keep her, by bringing her here. But she was no longer his, and fate would not let him be so grasping. “She will be killed in the sea, or she will return a wizard, forever changed,” he said aloud. His voice was raspy, the words sounding small and faint. But he knew they were true.

  And which did he want? Did he truly want her to live, to emerge from the water a dragon-slaying wizard? She’d never need his help again.

  If she died, she’d be his forever. He’d die, the island would die. They’d all slip away. He’d keep Chiara by losing her.

  “I am a monster,” he said. “I am a thing of darkness.”

  He lay there, the staff cradled loosely in his arm, and stared up at the sagging roof. He could think of nothing more contemptible than himself.

  IV.vi.

  Chiara went on, plodding around the decaying wrecks that sprawled and hulked in the cold and dark. She didn’t question the direction she walked, certain that she was going straight to the great beast. Her steps faltered only when she felt herself drawing nearer. There was a sudden warmth in the dark water, a smell of sulfur, a pulse of phosphorescence that stretched an impossibly long distance. What did she intend to do?

  “He knows you’re coming,” the mermaid had said. Were they just words to frighten her, or was she telling the truth?

  The floor of the ocean became pebbled. She trod slowly over fist-sized stones, smooth and rounded by the sea. That was strange, so far out in the deeps, where she imagined there would be nothing but sand and silt.

  And then the monster appeared before her, its inner fires fed by every beat of its volcanic heart. A new wave of heat engulfed Chiara, uncomfortably hot, even within her magical shield. By the strange red glow of the beast, she took in the sight of seven massive heads piled upon each other, like a demonic litter of puppies. That’s all wrong, she thought to herself. It was the central head that held the monster’s own tail within its jaws, loosely, almost delicately, though those hinges could clearly crush a boulder of granite and feel nothing in the effort.

  One of the heads smelled her. It was instantly roused, lifting and turning its snakey eye to peer at her. “Chiara,” it said, the giant black fork of its tongue tasting the waters as it spoke. “Come closer. I wish to see you more clearly.”

  There was no disobeying the command. She drew nearer. She did not question how the monster knew her, knew her name. Of course it did. It was the Oldest. Was there anything it did not know? The other heads opened their eyes and looked at her from every angle, one winding around behind her, its tongue flickering down the length of her back. Still, the central head slept on.

  Images flashed through Chiara’s mind: dizzying, giant storms of color. The heads were conferring with one another, speaking in the ancient way of the dragon. Chiara caught vague phrases. It’s like chatting with a thunderstorm, she thought to herself. One of the heads stopped and spoke to her mind directly. It had a beard, and for a wild moment it reminded her of her grandfather. It was amused by her. “You are right,” it said, in images that ripped across the chamber of her skull. “I wield the thunderball and bring the rains of spring.”

  “You’re only supposed to have one head,” she said to it. Idiotically, she knew, but she couldn’t stop. “All the drawings of you show one head.”

  Cosmic laughter punctured her brain. The central head awoke, its heavy, leathery outer eyelids lifting, its inner membranous ones sliding away to the sides. The eyes of this head were golden-green and had round pupils, an owlish monstrosity. They caught her mind and held it prisoner, effortlessly tearing from her every thought and every secret desire she’d ever had. She was left with just enough thought to know that she was nothing at all.

  The great jaws of the central head opened wide, a lazy yawn of terror. Chiara did not even bother to cover her face with her hands as it swallowed her whole.

  Mercifully, she fainted.

  Time passed, how much she did not know. All around her was black. Death-dark, grave-black. It was hot, wet, and impossible. Chiara lay on the oozing floor of the beast’s body, waiting to die. She did not understand why she was not yet dead. How could a person be swallowed whole, and live?

  “How, wizardling?” asked a cool serpentine voice in her mind. She sat upright, feeling the heavy weight of water and time, both slipping past and coiling around the great beast. She felt his bones and knew they were the bones of the earth. She was in the heart of the world.

  “Not exactly the heart,” said the great voice again, amused. “But I see how you think, small one. You may live. The power does lie within you. But you must find it first, and time, youngling, is not your friend.”

  “Power?” Chiara whispered. “I must fight my way out with magic?”

  It seemed as though the very earth laughed at that. “Fight? Magic?” said Leviathan. “What strength can you have, human, that can compare with my own? Force will not free you, nor will tricks. Seek deeper, small one.”

  “Deeper, how? Deeper inside myself, or deeper in you?” She looked about wildly, then shut her eyes against the maddening darkness.

  There was no answer. The Leviathan was finished talking with her. She could sense its mind: withdrawn, faintly curious.

  W
hat power did she have?

  Her thoughts went to alchemy, of course. In the beginning she had studied it just to spend time with her grandfather. But his passion had become her own. “I am in the furnace now,” she said aloud. “I am the lead.” Sweat streamed over her. “And it won’t be long until I’ve completely melted.”

  She waited for something to happen: a revelation, a sudden burst of knowledge. Nothing happened except that she became so hot she thought she could feel her skin crackle.

  It was hopeless. Her mind would not work. She wasn’t able to think. She fell back onto the soft, moist flesh of wherever she was. The dragon’s gullet? Its belly? How long could she last in this place?

  She began to cry. It was ridiculous, this death. Why should she care about this island? She had betrayed her father and risked the peace of two nations so that she could die alone at the bottom of the sea in the belly of a great beast.

  It was so preposterous, her tears turned to laughter. There was no joy in it, just a maddened, hysterical, rib-wrenching convulsion that stretched on and on until she was left breathless and drained. She stretched out on her back. The position made her think of Caliban and of staring at the stars. “I wish I could see you now,” she whispered.

  She remembered the first time they had gone to the tower to watch the stars. He’d been stiff and formal because the queen had officially made him her teacher. She had wanted to tease him, to make him laugh and be her friend again, but because she loved him, she knew that would hurt him. His master’s role hung about him like a poorly fitted cloak. So she was quiet and still and careful in her movements and speech. She’d been a bit shy, too, of course. She repeated everything he told her, committing it to memory. He was so wise, knew so much. She didn’t want to seem a dunce.

  But the times and positions of the stars had tangled in her mind. She had grown frustrated and flippant in their lessons. So Caliban told her the stories of the stars. His brothers, he called them. The heavens began to make sense. She learned the royal stars: Aldebaran, Rigel, Antares, Fomalhaut and Spica, all with their meanings and omens and portents.

  Chiara repeated their names now, out loud, as though Caliban were here to praise her for learning them so well. In the dark they became familiar friends who could comfort her. But it was Sirius, the dogstar, she really loved. He was the first star she could recognize and remember. She admired his loyalty to Orion, the way he trotted across the heavens at the hunter’s heel. Caliban loved him too, said that he was his closest brother, that they both had been born to serve.

  Those words, unremarkable for so long, now jangled the chords of memory. Chiara frowned. The mermaid had said that Caliban was meant to be the island king. Her grandfather had kept him as a servant, instead. Chiara tried to imagine Caliban, who lived and walked in shadows and darkness, who bowed and toiled and kept his own council, as a king. He was nothing like her father, the King of Naples. Ferdinand was tall and strong and handsome. He strode in the sun, gave commands in a voice that echoed, demanded compliance. He moved at the center of his counselors, the axel in the wheel of state.

  “He is sulfur to Caliban’s mercury,” she muttered.

  Moon-calf, quicksilver; Caliban was a creature of the night. No wonder he saw the stars as his brothers. Her mind wandered back to the old memories.

  “Are you out there, dogstar?” she said into the darkness.

  IV.vii.

  Two of the Leviathan’s heads lifted and looked at one another. “That would be an interesting way out,” one said.

  “If she can do it,” the other replied. “Humans find it hard enough to reach the stars when they’re staring right at them.”

  “Hmm,” said the first head. It had a small beard on its chin and a more kindly look to its eyes. “I hope she makes it.”

  “Small surprise,” snorted the second head. This one had red eyes in its black, dog-like face. It had a double row of teeth in its mouth, all of them sharpened like razors. “You always did have a soft spot for the wretched mortals.”

  “They are our children, too,” the first head chided.

  “Be quiet,” grumbled a third head with a horsey look to its countenance, complete with small pointed ears, long snout, and square teeth. “She mustn’t hear us speak anymore. We’ll spoil the trial.”

  All the heads settled down upon one another, eyes drifting shut. But the first head stayed awake, listening to the struggle within.

  It had always had a soft spot for the humans, after all.

  He was the brightest star in their small sky. His rise heralded their lazy days of summer; the “dogdays,” after their foolish name for him. It amused him that this was how they saw him, those quick pale flashes of thought that flickered and fought and died so far from him. They did not even count him among their great stars, he who burned with a light more than twenty times that of their own little yellow sun.

  It did not bother him. He knew his own greatness. It pleased him when one of the small ones reached out to him.

  He could hear her calling him, seeking him out in the great expanse. It was the one his small brother loved. She was blind and distant, muffled somehow. She had talked to him for many years now, and he always replied, but she never listened. She had never tried to hear him before.

  He could sense that she was trying to hear him now.

  The darkness pressed against her face, but Chiara forced herself to stare through it, to let her mind travel out into the high heavens. “I am lost,” she whispered. “Dogstar, can you help me? Can you show me the way home?”

  There, alone in the belly of the beast, Chiara saw the heavens spinning like a great wheel, spraying out fountains of light and life. The starry host danced its turning through the ages. Time ran around the clock, seasons around the year.

  And Leviathan circled the world, his tail caught between his jaws.

  “What does it mean?” wondered Chiara.

  All journeys lead back to their beginning, the heavens hummed.

  “What’s the sense of that?” Chiara said. “If you just end up where you started then nothing changes.”

  You change. And that changes everything.

  “So what am I to do? Wander the length of Leviathan until I end up back in his jaws?”

  Small thinking will not save you.

  “What will save me, then?” Chiara cried.

  You must find the path within yourself and follow it.

  “What path?”

  The path that leads you where you’ve most wanted to go. Find the way, small one.

  The light spun in her mind, illuminating the desires of long ago, buried in the depths of memory. She was five, dancing in the palace garden with Caliban watching her, laughing. She was older, maybe seven, sitting in a carriage with her mother and wearing an impossibly stiff gown. The carriage slowed, and a small group of Romani children raced by, laughing, talking their wild, freewheeling speech. She was ten, and Caliban was showing her the skeleton of a dead gull. She remembered tracing the bones of the wings with her finger, wishing that these were her arms, that she could fly high and free. She was twelve, and had finally been permitted to read from the books in the castle’s great library. She read all that she could find about Marco Polo and his travels, dreamed of walking the treacherous Silk Road herself.

  Good.

  Good? What did these memories do for her? The light pulsed through her brain. “I want to be free,” she said.

  There were fountains, laughter, music in her mind.

  Go then, small one. Be free.

  The dark descended again, rolling through her mind. But it had lost its power to smother. She flipped over onto her belly, pulled up her skirt, and knotted it around her waist. On all fours, like a baby and with a baby’s determination, she began to crawl. “This is the way out,” she said, with gritted teeth. “All ways are the way out, if I have the patience. That must be the answer.”

  And she crawled. Time stretched out, the darkness went on, and still she crawled.
She crawled for hours, crawled until her mind became as numb as her limbs. Then she slept, deep within the belly of the dragon. When she awoke she felt calm, as though her life were behind her, as though it were only a story she’d heard once long ago when she was a child.

  Her crawling had not brought her any closer to freedom. It had been a ridiculous idea. Well, at least it had drained her fear away. Her troubles would soon be over, she was sure of it. There were moments when she could feel the weight of the world pressing down upon her. Her shield of magic was failing.

  She would fail. Her soul would be taken by that hateful mermaid. The island would die. Caliban would die, alone, with the world slipping into decay around him.

  It was that thought of him, of his pain and despair, that threw her back into life. She sat up, her legs tucked under her, her back straight, her hands resting loosely on her knees. This was how Caliban used to sit when he was thinking through an alchemical problem for her grandfather. He kept a small mat in a corner of his workroom where he would meditate his way through their next course of action. She’d gone looking for him there many times and had turned away when she saw him sitting, his gaze unfocused. He never responded when he was in that state.

  The memory was painful. It brought back the sound of her grandfather’s voice calling instructions from his chair; the smell of the herbs in the backroom; the feeling of the sunshine streaming in through the window, warming the table where Caliban did his work. Home.

  She swallowed her tears and tried to remember what Caliban had told her about his meditation. He said that he would sit until everything grew still in his mind. Once he found that peace, then the answer he was seeking would be revealed. The results from these sessions had never impressed her. But the spell was growing thin around her. It was better to die while trying something.