Rough Magic

by Caryl Cude Mullin

  “I cannot,” he replied.

  The three sisters threw back their heads and howled, their voices piercing him. He covered his ears with his hands, trying to shut out the madness they invoked. Ariel gestured them to stop. Amazingly, they did. Caliban let his hands fall.

  “You’ll madden her further,” Ariel was saying to them.

  “She’s asleep,” Caliban said.

  Ariel turned to him. “You have spelled her, then?” He looked disbelieving.

  Caliban shook his head. “Drugged her,” he answered, “with the sleeping powder you gave me long ago for my mother.”

  “So,” said Ariel. His eyes narrowed in thought. “That will not hold her for long. When she wakes, what then?”

  “Then I will feed her. Calypso will be hungry.”

  “And Sycorax?” Ariel’s eyes burned. “What if it is Sycorax who awakes? Will you feed her more poppy and hope that she returns to the land of the dead?”

  “My mother is dead. It is only her memory that returns.” Caliban’s words sounded hollow to his own ears.

  “Her memory, earth-born?” It was Aglaope who spoke, her beautiful face pinched and mocking. She was the fairest of the three, her skin pale and gleaming, her hair a thick curling purple river flowing down her back. “A powerful memory, burning the ship and calling down the storm.”

  “As you are also threatening to do,” Caliban replied. “I can smell it in the air. But you should know that all the rain and all the wind in heaven will not convince me to give up my niece. She is innocent.”

  “Innocent, Caliban?” It was Thelxepeia who spoke now, her words, as ever, as smooth and soothing as milk. “Ariel tells us that she stole the staff in the mending. She claimed the power. Now, it seems, she must pay the price. The island wills it.”

  “She’s a child,” Caliban replied stubbornly. “She did not know what she was doing. She was only trying to protect herself, to make a place for herself. She is not my mother.”

  “But her blood is the same, and the island claims it. You don’t know her, Caliban, however much you may pretend and call her “niece.” She is not the child you lost beneath the waves. She is Sycorax’s blood, and she stole with Sycorax’s will. Her life is forfeit. Spill her blood, and let the island go free.”

  “The island needs a queen,” Caliban began.

  “We’ve had enough of queens, and kings, and the rule of mortal wizards. They bleed the land, bleed us all,” Aglaope said. “It is her turn to bleed.”

  “Never,” replied Caliban.

  The storm fell again, a smothering blanket of wind and water. Waves rose up, empty maws ready to devour him, drag him down to the sirens’ lair. He pulled his own protection around him, fighting his way back to the cave. Hail pelted him, one large ball of ice striking against his temple and stunning him. He fell to his knees.

  “Submit!” he heard Ariel cry. “Submit, moon-calf!”

  The ancient taunt spurred him on. His rose back to his feet and staggered toward the cave.

  “Call down fire!” Aglaope cried. He could hear her shrill voice even above the fury of the storm. “Summon the Leviathan, and we three elements will form the hurricane. That will shake him loose!”

  He fell once more, hearing the words of power Ariel was screaming into the riot of wind and water. The earth shifted beneath his feet. Dragon power had been called, and it was awakening. He felt as though his heart would burst with rage and despair. “Bring on your dragon!” he cried, his words whipped away even as he spoke. “Let me see Chiara’s killer!”

  The sea seemed to split. Caliban stumbled, Ariel fell to the ground, and the three mermaids flung themselves upon one another as their minds were flooded with dragon speech. Caliban saw eyes everywhere in his mind; huge, fiery, reptilian eyes that burned through him, exposing the smallness of his soul. He covered his head with his arms and cowered on the beach. The air was cleaved with a single lightning bolt. It tore a hole through the storm, leaving everything around the warring powers strange and still. Thunder rumbled around the edges of the spell-bubble.

  He lifted his head and stared. Walking across the water, holding the thunderball in her hand, was Chiara.

  V.vii

  Caliban stood and ran to meet Chiara, not realizing his folly until he was knee deep in water. He began to laugh. He laughed at his wet knees, laughed at life, at Chiara’s life that was not lost but was kept, held, transformed, returned. “You have come back!” he cried, and laughed again, because of course she knew that.

  She ran to him, shouting joyfully. Her feet splashed across the surface of the sea, leaving small footprints of bubbles that melted away almost as quickly as they formed. It was such an astonishing sight that he stepped backward and fell down into the water. In a moment she was beside him. She pulled him to his feet and threw her arms around his neck. Her strength was incredible. He felt as though she could snap him in two as easily as he might snap a twig. She kissed his cheek and her lips burned where they touched his flesh. With a great effort, he grasped her arms and held her away from him, searching her face.

  She was herself, and not herself. Her features were unchanged. She still smiled her lopsided smile. Her hair still hung in heavy, lank braids on either side of her head. But her eyes…he puzzled about it for a moment. They were still hazel. Their shape had not changed. Their lashes still clustered thickly about them, looking for all the world like a spider’s legs. But the mind that looked out from behind them was altered. It was no longer simply intelligent. It was ancient, and wise. It was born of the fires found at the earth’s core.

  “You are a dragon,” he said.

  She looked down at the great pearl she held in her hand, its rosy surface wet and luminescent. “I am,” she said softly. She looked back at him, a sudden sadness twisting her face. “It was the only way out, Caliban. It was the only way.”

  “Are you apologizing?” He lifted her chin with his forefinger. “You have become greater than I ever dreamed for you. Why do you think I’d be anything but happy?”

  She searched his eyes. Suddenly his mind was filled with her dragonspeech. “Because you have been my father, and I am no longer your child. Because in my birth, I also died. I will never be the person either of us thought I’d be.”

  “You are alive,” he replied, his own mind-speech sounding frail, pathetic. “You are still Chiara, new and rare. I will love the dragon as well as I loved the girl.”

  Her mind withdrew from his. She gazed at him, her eyes dark and unreadable. “I am changed,” she said. She turned away and looked at the mermaids cringing upon the shore and Ariel once again hovering above the waves. “You summoned me,” she said, her voice as cold as any snake’s. “What do you want?”

  They were silent at first. Then Ariel replied. “We summoned the Leviathan. We have the right.”

  “I have come in my mother’s place,” she replied. “What do you want from me?”

  The spirit flickered unsteadily. “We claim the Sycorax-girl Caliban has hidden in his cave. Her blood is forfeit to the island. Her rule must be stopped.”

  Chiara tilted her head to one side, as though listening to distant music. She raised her left hand and laid it on Caliban’s brow. As she did so, she turned to him. All traces of laughter were gone from her face. “I must see everything that has happened, Caliban. Will you let me?” He nodded, uncertain. With a jolt, he felt his memories of the past days tumble over themselves. They were being pulled from his mind, viewed, and then tossed back to him. It seemed that he could feel them pile up in his brain, a small discarded refuse heap. He tried to jerk his head away, but she held him fast. In another instant she was done. She lowered her hand, reaching down and squeezing his fingers before letting go and turning back to the others. He stepped away from her.

  “The island is taking her life anyway,” Chiara said. “Why do you wish to hurry it? Caliban can contain her.”

  “She will destroy us all,” one of the mermaids hissed. It was the purple on
e, the one she had wrestled with on the seafloor a lifetime ago.

  “Aglaope,” Chiara said aloud, tasting the ancient name on her tongue while she tasted her new understanding of the creature in her mind. “I have said Caliban will contain her. Your war with him is finished. Be gone.”

  The mermaids opened their mouths to protest. Chiara frowned. “Be gone!” she said again, this time with the full force of her dragonspeech. They turned at once, all three, and disappeared beneath the waves. The storm, held at bay, began to shred apart at the edges. The sun returned.

  “This is not finished,” Ariel said. His colors grew more vibrant with his anger. “Caliban cannot control her, not with all the poppy powder in the world. The next time she breaks free, I will be here.”

  He vanished, with a clap of distant thunder. Chiara shrugged, and turned toward Caliban. He was watching her warily.

  She smiled, this time wanly. “Take me in to see her, Caliban,” she said.

  He hesitated, but only briefly. It’s still Chiara, he told himself. And then he noticed that he thought of her as “it.” He swallowed and said, “This way.” He was afraid.

  She followed him, crouching low to enter the darkness, even though there was plenty of room. She stood for a moment in the weak, ruddy light of the small fire. “Higher,” she said, stretching out her hand to the flames. They instantly responded, burning high and bright, flooding the shadows with yellow light.

  Caliban grimaced. “A pretty trick,” he said. He had always hated the use of magic in practical matters. It was lazy and careless. Magic was a sacred art, not a common tool. That was his mother’s mistake. He had never thought it would be Chiara’s.

  She knew his thoughts. “It is no trick, Caliban. The fire belongs to me. All fire, everywhere, is part of me now. I am no longer human. Let me see your niece.”

  He stared at her. She looked back at him. Shadows played across her face. Her familiar features had begun to blur and change. Wordlessly he turned away and knelt beside the sleeping girl, taking Calypso’s good hand in his and stroking it gently. Chiara crouched down on the other side of her. She stared at Calypso’s face, slack in its drugged sleep, and at the wooden hand that clutched the staff forevermore.

  For the first time, Caliban saw them together. His heart was split.

  V.viii

  Chiara touched the staff, then the hand that gripped it. The lore of the spellbook flashed through her mind, as well as the dragon knowledge that was growing within her. She felt the universe spin and saw the fountains of stars that flowed out into space. She was part of all that burning fire, and she wanted to be with it, in it. She did not want to be tied here to earth by this foolish girl and her wooden hand. Her gaze slipped to Caliban. Her love for him still held her, a small fire in its own right. “There is a way to break the bond,” she said.

  “I will not let her die,” Caliban said, fiercely.

  “Her life does not need to be lost,” Chiara replied.

  She felt his suspicion. “And her mind?” he asked.

  He knows I am gone from him, she thought, sadly. He cannot love a dragon. She looked down, shielding her eyes, making herself speak gently. Making herself sound human. “I do not know about her mind. Sycorax has scarred her, I think. I cannot tell you how much can be healed. You may have a difficult time caring for her.”

  “Me?” He stared at her. “Won’t you help me?”

  She rose abruptly, tired of talking, tired of pretending to be who she once was. “Keep her sleeping,” she ordered. “There are things I must do to prepare. Bring her to the place of the staff’s making, where the guardian tree once stood. Wait there for me today, when the sun is at its highest. Do not be late, Caliban.”

  She left, and did not look back. Once outside Chiara, wrapped in her magic, flew, a fiery arrow, to the end of the world.

  To Glass Mountain.

  It wasn’t glass, but amber. It was the land of the dead, the sanctuary of dragons, the home of the phoenix. Ravens circled it, crying out her arrival in their strange prophetic voices. The mountain was wondrous to Chiara’s human eyes, familiar to her dragon’s mind. She landed on its summit, the ravens settling around her in a haphazard circle. A chance memory made her smile. “A conspiracy of ravens,” she said aloud. As a girl she’d always loved the names given to groups of creatures. As a girl…that was a lifetime ago. She waited, unmoving, while the ravens whispered and peered at her.

  There was a burst of fire, of sunlight, so bright that she knew her human eyes would never see again. They were seared to ash in their sockets. She felt some pain. Or rather she felt a great deal of pain, but it seemed to come from far away and belong to someone else. No darkness fell with her new blindness. Instead, her mind was flooded with light, so white and piercing that every thought she ever had, and all the new dragon wisdom she had been given, was seen once more in a grand cacophony of knowledge.

  She felt a breath, warm and spiced, blow across her face. Something hard, like small stones, was placed in each empty eye socket. A word was whispered in a speech that could be uttered only by the phoenix. The stones grew hot and expanded, filling the sockets. This pain was real and near. There was no distance between her suffering and herself. Yet Chiara stood still, her hands clenched. Images began to swim their way into her waiting brain. In another moment they grew clear. The pain faded.

  She could see once more.

  Her new eyes had been made from the amber of the mountain. They were golden, their pupils slitted like a snake’s. She saw the old world in a new way. Her eyes refracted the light, split every image. Everything was a sum of its parts, and now she could look at the miniscule details. Each raven had a rainbow aura, each cell of its body revolved around a microscopic sun.

  She could see the universe within every living thing.

  Chiara blinked and looked at the phoenix. It was large, its wingspan stretching wide. Its feathers were red and gold, flecked with the blue-white of the hottest flame. Only the tips of its long, plumed tail were blackened. It folded its wings and sat down, smoothing its chest with its golden beak.

  “You came swiftly,” it said. “All the other transformed ones waited at least a year before coming.”

  “I can see why,” Chiara replied, dryly.

  The phoenix laughed, its tones high and fluting. “I’d wondered if a dragon would ever be born from humankind. I watched your trial with a great deal of interest. You were hardly the most likely candidate. But then the likely ones almost never succeed,” it added philosophically.

  Chiara stretched in the warmth. The pain in her eyes was now completely gone. She felt deeply content.

  “Where will you go now?” the phoenix asked her. “There is a wide world, youngling. For you, there are many wide worlds. What will you do first?”

  She felt her happy mood slide away. “I have to go back to the island. There’s something I promised to do.”

  The phoenix ruffled its feathers. “Why tie yourself to mortals?”

  “Love,” she said.

  “You have a poetic nature, then?” It turned its head to examine her more closely with one of its azure eyes.

  Chiara grinned. Her teeth against her lips were newly sharp. She wondered how else she was changing. “Perhaps,” she replied. She was suddenly impatient. “I must go,” she said. “I said I’d return for midday.”

  The phoenix blinked. “You are impetuous, aren’t you? Well, go. It is your right, of course.”

  Chiara shrugged her shoulders and stooped down. The surface of the mountain was smooth, but she quickly found the small crack she sought. She dug her nails into the amber, seeing in her mind the object she wanted, speaking the name of it into existence.

  “Knife,” she said. And there it was in her hand, a smooth dagger made entirely of amber, without flaw.

  “The blade of the sun,” the phoenix said, clearly troubled. “It has never been wielded before.”

  “There should be no need for it ever again,” Chiara replie
d.

  “I hope you are right,” said the phoenix. “Such things, being forged, demand their own life. You trouble me, Chiara-Who-Was.”

  Chiara stared down at the knife. She felt no faltering in her will. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “So be it,” the phoenix replied. “Go well, bright star.”

  Chiara lifted herself away. The ravens flew with her. They looked like an escort of doom, but they were good company and made her cheerful.

  V.ix.

  He cradled Calypso in his arms, but it was her drugged sleep that held her tightly. He would not let her go. He would not lose another child. Because the dragon-girl was right; Chiara was gone. That new creature could rifle through his mind as easily as if it were a stack of papers. Not just could. Would. Did. She had read his mind as it suited her purpose, because reading it was faster than waiting for him to tell her about the last three days. He was just a tool to be used and set aside.

  He looked down at Calypso’s sleeping face. She needed him. And when the staff was removed she would need him even more. He stroked her cheek. They could live together here, on the island. He’d build them a new home, a better one than the hut he’d made for Prospero. She could help him, perhaps. Or she could watch and grow strong again.

  They could have the life he’d imagined for himself and Chiara. Calypso wasn’t fleeing from a royal life. She was lost, and now they had found one another. They could be at peace here. There would be no guilt to haunt them.

  He shook his head. He was spinning the same old fairy tale: two happy innocents, an island idyll. He examined the hand around the staff. It looked like the wood had begun to creep further up her arm. She lived under his mother’s curse, brought down on her by her own greed. There was no paradise, even here on his magical island home. He was an old fool to imagine otherwise.

  He went outside. It would be several hours before the sun reached its highest point. He did not want to move Calypso until he absolutely had to. She was ill. Ill people had to rest.