Miranda and Caliban

by Jacqueline Carey

  I am afraid.

  “What?” I say. “Master … what?”

  Master’s face is like a thing made of stone. “It is no concern of yours, lad,” he says. “Tend to your chores.”

  So I do, but it is not the same with Miranda asleep during the day. And I do not know why Miranda sleeps and sleeps, with her face so very white, lying without moving under her bed-linens where Master puts her.

  (What did you do, Miranda?)

  I look for that Ariel but he is nowhere. Then I see a thing that is new: Master leaves the palace with the sun high in the sky. He is carrying something again, something small wrapped in pretty blue cloth from the pirates’ treasure.

  I follow him, but not so close that he sees me. He goes to the far garden where he put Umm in the ground. I climb the wall and hide in a broken place in the corner to watch. Master summons one of the little gnomes to dig a hole. It paddles in the dirt with its strong hands, paddlity-paddle.

  Soon it is a deep hole.

  Master goes on his knees beside it. He moves the cloth away from the thing and puts his lips on it, but I cannot see what it is. Master puts the cloth back and puts the thing in the hole.

  A wind comes behind me. “Thou skulking churl!” Ariel whispers, and I jump like a bee has stung me. “Hast thou no decency? Wouldst spy on a man laying his own dear wife to rest?”

  I turn to him and put my teeth together hard. “Wife?”

  “His beloved.” The spirit shows his teeth and smiles knives at me. “Miranda’s mother.”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Ah, well! Not her, not exactly. She died giving birth to Miranda.” Ariel touches one finger to his lips. “But our dear master thought to use his arts to grow himself a homunculus to replace her. Poor deformed creature! It should never have been made. I reckon ’tis a piece of God’s mercy that it perished, though I daresay the magus thinks otherwise.” He shudders. “And poor Miranda!”

  My thoughts are dark and muddy, and I do not understand the spirit’s words. “What of her?”

  Ariel looks at me sideways. “She caused its demise,” he says. “’Twas an accident, but…”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  And now I do and do not understand. Not all the words, no, but enough. My heart hurts inside me.

  Oh, Miranda!

  In the garden, Master pushes dirt into the hole with his own hands, his head low and his shoulders going up and down. I think maybe he is crying tears. I am not sad for him, though.

  “An accident,” I say.

  “It means she did not do it a-purpose,” Ariel says.

  “Yes,” I say. “I know. I know what is an accident. But Master punishes her for it anyway and I think she is very hurt. She sleeps and sleeps and does not wake.” I look at the spirit in his eyes, in his eyes that turn colors and change. “If you know everything, tell me this thing. Will Miranda die?”

  Now Ariel shakes his head, all his white hair floating around his pretty face. He does not look back at me. “I know not,” he says. “I do not know everything. Only God does and ’tis for Him to decide. All things are His to decide.”

  God.

  I would like to spit on the ground. I do not like this God in the sky who decides everything.

  I do not like this Ariel.

  Most of all I do not like Master.

  I do not want to see or hear anything more. I push past Ariel on the wall, only there is nothing to push when I do, only whoosh and he is gone, a feeling like wind and mist on my face.

  I go to Miranda’s garden and crouch on the wall and watch her sleep. She sleeps and sleeps. I creepity-creep to the window and say her name. Quiet, so quiet, like she says my name through the rocks that night long ago; then louder; then more louder, so loud I am afraid that Master will hear all the way in the far garden.

  But Miranda does not wake.

  What else to do?

  I look at the sun in the sky and think it is high enough to go to my place and back before Master knows I am gone.

  First I gather flowers and vines from the gardens; the little white ones like stars that smell so sweet, and some bigger ones that have flowers that are orange and red and shaped like a thing that makes a loud shout that Miranda says is called a trumpet, though she never did see one. I make them into a big circle as I go, tying them like a snare to catch a hare, but in my thoughts I am making what Miranda says is called a necklace. It is a special thing.

  It is harder to climb to the most high place with my arms full, but at last there is Setebos laughing at the sky.

  I put the circle of flowers and vines around his neck and it is oh, so pretty! Little white flowers and big orange-red flowers like flames side by side, and all the green leaves and vines, smelling so nice. I remember what Ariel says about Setebos, but I do not care. The spirit does not know everything.

  Setebos watches over the isle and the sea, and Setebos watches over me since Umm is dead.

  I am alive.

  And Setebos is here.

  So.

  “Setebos.” I reach to put my hands on his upturned face and say his name. The hard brown stone of him is warm from the sun. My eyes are hot and wet, and my hurting heart is afraid inside me. To pray is to say please and thank you, so I do. “Oh, please! Let her live. Let Miranda wake and live.” I stretch tall and put my lips on his jaw. The circle of vines and flowers tickles against my skin, ticklety-tickle. “Please, Setebos! Thank you, Setebos!”

  Little bits in the rocks in his eye-holes that I put there so he might see better sparkle in the sun.

  I think he hears me.

  “Please,” I whisper again. “Thank you.”

  I go back.

  Master is in the kitchen, moaning and groaning as he makes some bad-smelling thing on the hearth. Now that he is not so very, very angry, he thinks to be sad for Miranda who is hurt and not only himself, but I am still not sad for him. But now he is afraid, too, and that makes me more afraid. “Oh, oh!” he says. “Oh, Miranda, my poor, sweet child! You innocent fool! What have I done, what have I done?”

  (I know what you have done, Master.)

  He sees me. “There you are, lad!” There is white all around his eyes. He takes the pot from the fire and puts some cool water in it. “’Tis a tisane to reduce the fever and swelling of the brain,” he says. “Willow-bark, yarrow, elderberry … come, I may require your assistance.”

  In Miranda’s chamber where she lies sleeping, still sleeping, I watch as Master puts a spoon to her lips, but she does not swallow. Bad-smelling liquid dribble-drabbles away on both sides of her mouth.

  Master takes out a thing that is like the shape of a trumpet-flower, only it is made of metal. “Hold her upright.”

  I do.

  I am careful, oh, so very careful! I crouch beside her pallet and slide one arm beneath her back, lifting ever so very slow. I can smell the too-hotness of her skin. Miranda’s head falls back and her hair tickles my arm.

  Her mouth falls open, too.

  Master puts the thin end of the metal trumpet-thing deep inside her mouth, puts it inside her throat. “There,” he says. “Hold her fast, lad.”

  I hold Miranda and watch while Master pours spoon after spoon of liquid into the trumpet-thing. She does not wake, but her throat goes up and down as she chokes and coughs and swallows in her sleep, and some of the liquid goes into her even though she fights.

  “Enough.”

  I lower her, ever so very slow.

  Master stands. “I have done my best,” he says. “’Tis in God’s hands now.”

  I look at him.

  He looks away.

  And I wish, I wish … oh, I wish I had all the words I wanted, but I do not even have words to say how I feel.

  Master says without looking at me to leave and I do, but I cannot sleep. When it is full dark I go back outside, back to Miranda’s garden. There is a little oil-lamp burning in her chamber and Master sits in a chair beside her pallet and reads a
book, his lips moving and his voice low like a buzzing bee. I cannot hear, not quite, but I think he must be praying to God in the sky; and I think oh, where were your prayers before, Master? Where were your prayers when you were putting the thing you should not have made in the ground?

  But I say nothing.

  All night I watch them like Setebos watches. I think I should hide myself when the dawn comes, but Master does not even see that I am there on the wall of Miranda’s garden, watching, watching. He puts down his book and goes to make his chants, his strong voice rough today.

  I creep through Miranda’s window and look at her face. Her eyes open and my heart jumps like a hare, ready to be happy, hoppity-happy.

  But then …

  I see Miranda see me and I see her know me, but her mouth opens and no words come to her. I see her brow wrinkle, and then the fear of knowing and not-knowing and having no words comes in her eyes.

  It is a fear I know.

  Oh, Miranda!

  “Caliban,” I say to her, oh, so soft. “I am Caliban.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  MIRANDA

  Even looking backward from a distance of years, it is difficult to think about that time.

  Caliban tells me that Papa was solicitous during the early days of my affliction, that he spent long hours beside my pallet while I slept, reading to me from the Bible, dosing me with tisanes and concoctions. That it was Papa who taught me anew how to bathe and dress myself.

  I suppose it must be true, but I do not remember it. There are gaping holes in my memory.

  Whatever broke inside me was slow to mend. My memories of those early days are little more than a haze of dread and guilt and confusion. Nothing seemed to work properly; my vision was blurred and my hands plucked uselessly at the bed-linens, seeking to restore some measure of order to my world. My limbs would not obey me, and my very wits were dim and befuddled.

  For a long time, I had no memory of the incident itself. That returned to me in bits and pieces, each one more unwelcome than the last.

  The crackling voice of the salamander …

  Breaking glass …

  The pale, misshapen thing gasping on the floor …

  But I did not speak of those fragments of memories or what they might betoken. Indeed, I spoke very little in the early days of my affliction. My tongue was thick and clumsy and words were like familiar objects that had been placed just out of reach, frustrating me to no end.

  Caliban understood. Oh, how well he understood! Caliban was the very soul of patience. It is his dear face I first remember seeing clearly when my blurred vision settled at last, not Papa’s.

  Papa.

  I should so like to believe that he cared for me and prayed for me and tended to me in the most dire hours of my affliction, and yet as my memory begins to return, I remember too much. Words I would feign not grasp return unwanted and unwelcome and seep into my thoughts, words spoken in a soft, terrible voice, each one nonetheless as sharp and cutting as a shard of broken glass.

  You’ve killed your mother all over again, Miranda.

  And so it seems fitting to me that Papa is cool and withdrawn by the time I am well enough to begin my convalescence.

  It is a lengthy process, but at every step of the way, Caliban is beside me. It is his arm on which I remember leaning when I take my first uncertain steps. It is his steady gaze that waits patiently while I search for the right words to come, and it is he who supplies them to the best of his ability when they do not.

  Together, we become student and teacher alike as we learn and relearn the art of speech.

  As for Ariel, the spirit makes himself scarce from my presence, and I am grateful for it.

  When I have regained enough of my wits to understand what has befallen me, Papa tells me that he believes that I have suffered a seizure that caused bleeding in my brain, which governs and affects all aspects of the corpus. He says that because I am young and strong and healthy, he expects that with diligence and hard work, I shall make a full recovery.

  He does not say why it happened and I do not ask. I wonder if the guilt that Papa feels for punishing me so harshly weighs as greatly on him as the guilt I feel for my profound disobedience.

  Beyond that we do not speak of the incident in his sanctum, though it lies between us in all its mute horror.

  Caliban does not speak of it either, but it seems to me that there is a different quality to his silence; a careful, waiting quality. It makes me fearful of what he might say if I question him about it, so I keep my counsel during the long months of my convalescence. I make progress in fits and starts, but slowly, slowly, all the broken parts of me heal.

  I come to delight in ever so many things I took for granted before the incident: the quickness of my wits; the words that fall tripping from my tongue; the strength of my limbs; the dexterity of my hands and fingers. And Caliban … in all the goodness of his heart, Caliban delights with me.

  It is an unseasonably warm day in the late autumn when I dare at last to break my silence on the matter.

  We are sitting side by side in the kitchen garden with a large mound of acorns that Caliban has gathered. With his strong hands and coarse nails, he tackles the difficult chore of cracking and peeling them, while I grind their meal into flour in a mortar. It is tiresome work and the flour will need to be soaked many times over to leach out the bitterness, but the sun’s warmth is congenial and I am glad of Caliban’s company.

  With my hands occupied and my gaze on the mass of acorn meal in my mortar, I find the courage to speak of it. “Caliban,” I say to him. “That day…” My voice betrays me and quivers. I will it to firmness. “The day when I was … stricken.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see his own hands go still.

  “Yes?”

  I clear my throat. “You know what happened, don’t you? You know … you know what I did?”

  He bows his head over the acorn he is shelling, his hair hiding his eyes. “I know you did go into Master’s room.” His voice turns grim. “And I know Master did punish you for it and hurt you.”

  “There was a thing.” I do not know what else to call it, but it is at once a painful and vast relief to speak of it at last. I lower the pestle and my hands trace a shape in the air. “A thing in a jar. Oh, Caliban! It was so pale and it looked so very sad. I think it was trying to speak to me. And I…”

  “I know,” he murmurs.

  “I caused it to fall!” The pent-up words flood from my mouth. “I broke it! There was glass, glass everywhere, and it … it died, Caliban! Right there on the floor! And Papa … Papa said…”

  And then I am crying too hard to get the words out, great heaving sobs that wrack my body.

  Caliban abandons his acorns and comes to stroke my hair, strands catching on his calloused skin. “I know,” he whispers to me. “I know, Miranda. Do not cry.”

  At last the storm of my grief passes, leaving me limp and exhausted. I lean against Caliban, grateful for the solid warmth of his presence. “Papa said, ‘You’ve killed your mother all over again,’” I say in a dull voice. “But I do not know what he meant by it. Do you?”

  He is silent for a moment. “The spirit had a name for the thing. He called it a…” He trips over the word. “A homunculus.”

  “Ariel did?” I say.

  Behind me, Caliban nods. “He said it was a thing that should never have been made. And that it was a mercy that it died.” He hesitates, lowering his voice. “I watched Master put it in the ground.”

  “But why would Papa say what he did?” I say. “Why would he say I killed my mother?”

  Caliban shifts away from me, his shoulders hunching. “I do not know what it is, this homunculus. I think it is something to do with your mother but it is nothing I understand.” His tone is careful. “But that Ariel, he did say another thing about your mother that day.”

  I press him. “What?”

  He looks at me, reluctance in his gaze. “The spirit did say that she died giving birth to
you.”

  There is a part of me that thinks it should not hurt as much as it does to hear these words; and yet it does.

  I had a mother.

  She is dead; and I am to blame. Fresh tears sting my eyes. My mother died giving birth to me. And I do not even understand how such a thing can be. I have seen many a newborn chick hatching from their shells, and no hen ever took harm from it.

  “How?” I say to Caliban, at a loss for words. “Why?”

  “I do not know.” Shaking his head, he takes up the stone he has been using to crack acorns. “I do not know!” He strikes another nut with a vicious blow, striking his thumb in the process and letting out a surprised bark of pain.

  “Oh!” Reaching out, I take his hand in mine and kiss his bruised thumb. “I’m sorry, Caliban.”

  He pulls his hand back and cradles it, gazing at the purpling flesh around his nail-bed. His expression is soft and curious. “What is it called, Miranda?” he asks me. “To put your lips on a person so?”

  I smile at him through tears. “A kiss.”

  He smiles back at me. “Thank you.”

  With that, Caliban and I resume our labors and do not speak further of the incident; but I do not forget what he said. The following day, when Caliban is out gathering wood, I seek Ariel.

  As I soon discover and should well have imagined, it is a vain and foolish quest. Ariel might be anywhere on the isle and he might take any form; a passing breeze, a cloud floating overhead. I search the palace ground for what must surely be an hour on the sundial before I give up my quest and simply prevail upon whatever goodwill the mercurial spirit possesses.

  “Ariel!” I cry aloud. “Ariel, please! If you can hear me, I would speak to you!”

  At first there is no answer, and I feel all the more foolish. I am not my father to command the spirit with his art. Why should Ariel come at my beck and call? And then a telltale gust of wind swirls into the orchard, where sour oranges hanging from the trees put me in mind of the night that Ariel baited me, and he is there.