Miranda and Caliban

by Jacqueline Carey

  After all, it is an alarming amount of blood that I lose, and it is no easy task to bind the moss-filled muslin pouches in place with the sash to capture it. Although I pass the sash between my thighs and knot it firmly around my waist, the pouches are prone to shifting nonetheless. In order not to dislodge them, I am forced to walk with a careful, spraddle-legged, shuffling gait, ever heedful of the bulky pouch of dried sphagnum that is wedged between my thighs and growing sodden and distasteful as it absorbs the blood that continuously seeps from me. I find it necessary to place the jar outside Papa’s sanctum and knock upon the door at least three times a day. Of course, the shifting of the pouches causes blood to soak the sash, too, in patches that dry and crust and chafe my thighs. Given that Papa regards this blood—this menstruum, as he calls it—as such a valuable and dangerous substance, I am not sure what I am to do about it.

  When I ask Papa, he frowns. “I should have thought the arrangement sufficient,” he says. “Can you not manage these matters more carefully, Miranda?”

  I look down. “Forgive me, Papa. I am doing my best.”

  “Ah, child!” A rueful note enters Papa’s voice. “I would that … no mind. I am doing my best, too.”

  In the end, he bids me wash the sash in running water and gives me a generous length of the canvas that Ariel has purloined from somewhere—a wrecked ship within some leagues of the isle, I suspect—that I might make additional sashes from it.

  Grateful, I use the canvas to fashion a garment that girdles my waist with a wider sash affixed to the rear of it that passes between my thighs and knots in the front. Although the canvas is coarse against my skin, the garment I devise serves better to hold the pouches in place. It works well enough that I fashion a second and a third such garment that I might always have a clean, dry sash at hand. By the third day, the sickly pain that grips my belly goes away. I empty my wash-basin on barren ground where no gnomes delve, rinsing the basin and my befouled sashes in a swift-running portion of the stream where no undines frolic. Such are the small victories of my messy and burdensome introduction to womanhood.

  And yet along with the unexpected inconvenience of the business of womanhood comes a slow-dawning sense of wonder.

  In the innocence of childhood, I had supposed that to become a woman grown was a simple matter of reaching a certain age; ten years, mayhap. It seemed likely enough to me that passing from one to two digits of age marked a threshold before Papa disabused me of the notion. He said that I would know when the day came, and I suppose there is a certain truth to it since I most assuredly took note of the day’s arrival.

  But it is better not to think of that and fan the spark of resentment. Instead, as the days pass, my thoughts turn from contemplation of disobedience to the words that Papa spoke on the day my courses began.

  It is a sign that your body is ready to bring new life into the world. Your womb, which is the vessel of life within you, does but shed an excess of sanguine humor to make room for the possibility of a child.

  A child!

  I marvel at the notion. To think that a child might grow inside me! There is a great deal I do not yet understand about it, and I know it is a thing that cannot come to pass ere I am wed—and how that might transpire on our lonely isle if I am to wed neither Caliban nor Ariel is an almighty mystery—but the mere prospect of it is a wonderment.

  ’Tis no wonder, then, that there is power in the blood I shed, for it is blood shed in the service of life.

  I should like to know how this whole business works. I have not forgotten Ariel’s condescending pity when he learned I imagined that human babies were hatched much in the manner of chicks, nor have I forgotten that it is a business fraught with danger if ’tis true that my own mother died of it. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children …

  Sorrow or death.

  Yes, I should very much like to know.

  But when I raise the topic with Papa—carefully, oh, so tentatively—he says only that I need not trouble myself with such knowledge yet and cautions me against pursuing it.

  “It is no fit topic for an unwed virgin,” he says in a stern tone.

  Having learned the price of disobedience all too well, I let the matter lie, though it does not stop me from wondering.

  And I wonder … I wonder what Caliban knows. When Papa did first summon him, it seemed to me that I should be the wild boy’s teacher in all things always, for he was almost wholly savage and I knew ever so much more than him. In a sense the latter remains true as Caliban can neither read nor write, and knows naught of the multitude of correspondences and imagery that Papa has bade me memorize. As pleased as Papa was with Caliban’s success in mastering language, he gauged it not worth the time and effort it would require to teach him any higher skills.

  Yet our roles changed during the long months of my recovery, and they have remained changed.

  Is there a sign such as the onset of a woman’s courses that marks a boy’s transition into manhood, I wonder? If so, Caliban has never spoken of it.

  Over the years, Papa has taken regular measurements of the growth of Caliban’s limbs and skull and corpus, and refined his initial reckoning of his age, placing it at ten years when he was summoned, which means that Caliban is some four years my elder. At seventeen, surely he must be considered a young man.

  I think there must not be a sign or he would have told me so … but mayhap I am wrong. He does not tell me when Ariel torments him, and I suspect the mercurial spirit speaks to Caliban of things he is forbidden to say to me.

  And, too, Caliban is angry at me.

  On the day my courses begin, he vanishes and returns at dusk empty-handed, covered in scrapes and bruises, and Papa is forced to punish him. I do not blame Caliban for his anger, for I shouted most unkindly at him when he was but trying to help. I tender him a sincere apology for it the next day, imagining he will accept it and we shall be friends again.

  Instead, he is strange.

  “You should not apologize,” he mumbles without looking at me. “I should not have done what I did.”

  “No,” I agree. “You should not.” Of course, I did not tell Papa that Caliban came to my window. “But you were only trying to help, and I should not have shouted as I did. Will you not forgive me for it?”

  He shrugs, his shoulders hunched and tight.

  I lay a hand on his arm. “Caliban?”

  To my surprise, he jerks away as though my touch has scalded him and gives me a swift, fierce glare. “Do not touch me!”

  Bewildered, I seek to apologize anew, but Caliban turns his back on me and stalks away. Nor does he forgive me in the days that follow, but remains sullen and withdrawn, refusing to meet my gaze. When I enter a room, he leaves it. He vanishes for hours on end, and reappears to stomp about the palace and grounds, tending to his chores with ill grace, doing just enough that Papa reprimands him without punishing him.

  I do not know what I have done to grieve him so. I think it must be the uncleanliness of my woman’s courses that offends him and makes him recoil from my presence.

  ’Tis a hurtful thought, but there is naught that I can do about it.

  On the fourth day, my courses slow to a mere trickle and on the fifth day there is no more blood.

  I tell Papa.

  Papa is pleased. “On the morrow, you shall assist me in my sanctum,” he says to me.

  I make myself smile at him. “Thank you, Papa.”

  That night in my dreams I see it. The pale misshapen thing floating in its jar, tiny hands like starfish pressing against the glass walls, its milky eyes and its bud-shaped mouth opening and closing.

  Shattered glass.

  Its mouth gaping, gasping for air.

  Oh, but when I awaken with a gasp of my own, the dream fades. I have learned well how to put it behind me. And now there is sunlight and the sound of Papa’s chanting. There is a fine gown of whisper-soft blue fabric draped over the chest in my chamber. With a quick glance to be certain that the shutter
s of my window are closed, I don it with alacrity. It is a bit too large for me and it smells faintly of an incense Papa must have used to suffumigate it, with an underlying hint of mold, but it seems to me the most wondrous thing in the world, so wondrous I burst into tears.

  This is the kind of gift for which I have yearned for so long. Now I truly feel like a woman grown.

  I open my chest and take the mirror that Caliban gave me from its hiding place beneath my ragged robes. It is too small to show me the whole of my image, but when I hold it at different angles and turn this way and that, I see myself in pieces. More of the skin of my chest shows than I am accustomed to seeing and the gown gapes in the front to reveal the faint shadow of the valley between my breasts, but it reaches all the way to the floor so that I am no longer bare-legged below the knees.

  Holding my skirts so that they do not drag upon the floor, I hurry to the kitchen so that I might begin my chores.

  Caliban is tending to the fire in the hearth, a task with which Papa entrusted him some years ago. I am so glad, I forget that he is wroth with me.

  “Oh, Caliban!” I twirl, letting my blue skirt flare out around me. “Look! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I think he forgets for a moment too, for his mouth curls into a smile as he looks up from the hearth, warm and kind and familiar; and for the space of a few heartbeats, it seems to me that everything might be as it was long ago, happy and peaceful. But then a different expression crosses Caliban’s face as swiftly as a shooting star across the night sky, a mingled look of sorrow and regret and anger … and then it is gone.

  Turning back to the fire, he mutters something under his breath.

  Weary of trying to decipher his moods, I choose to ignore him and go into the garden to fetch the morning’s bounty, feeling gently beneath the sitting hens and placing their warm, fresh eggs in the apron of my long blue skirt. When I return, Papa is seated at the table. I set the eggs on the sideboard with care, and then, heedless of decorum, I fling my arms around him in an impetuous embrace. “Papa! Thank you ever so much.”

  Papa chuckles. “You’ve earned the right, child. Or, dare I say, young lady? Come, let me behold you in your finery.”

  Taking a step back, I make a deep curtsy, the hem of my skirt puddling around my bare feet.

  Papa smiles at me, the creases around his mouth deepening with pride. “You are the very picture of a fine young lady.”

  At the hearth, Caliban breaks a stout branch over his knee with a sharp, defiant crrrack, shoves both halves into the fire, and stomps out of the kitchen, taking the milk-pail with him. I watch him go with dismay, feeling my brow furrow.

  “In the name of all that is holy, what ails the lad?” Papa complains. “He’s been sulking for days.”

  “I do not know,” I murmur. “He will not speak of it.”

  Papa waves one hand in dismissal. “Then let us pay him no heed. He does but seek attention.”

  I do not think that is true. Something is troubling Caliban; something greater than my own burst of fear and temper, and something other than the uncleanliness of my woman’s courses, since they have passed for now. But I do not know what it is, and I cannot force Caliban to confide in me. I can only hope that he will choose to do so in his own time.

  Papa and I break our fast together. My heart is beating too quickly in my chest. At first I wish that the meal would never end, then I wish it were over so that I might confront my fear of entering Papa’s sanctum and be done with it. I gobble my food in unseemly haste and must sit and wait while Papa eats.

  “Come,” he says when at last he has finished. “You may tidy the dishes later. Today, you are to assist me.”

  I follow him through the palace and up the stairway, down the long hallway to the door of Papa’s sanctum. My chest feels tight, my heart continuing to flutter like a trapped butterfly inside it. There are spots behind my eyes and the walls seem to pulse in my vision, the Moorish writing etched on them wriggling. I tell myself that I am being foolish. I have walked this very hallway several times a day during the past five days, carrying my jar of menstruum. I have knocked upon this very door.

  But there was no question of entering the sanctum itself.

  Papa reaches for the handle of the door and pauses. “Your face is so very white, child,” he says. “Why?”

  I swallow. “I am afraid.”

  “You are here today with my blessing,” he says gently. “And I promise you, there is naught to fear.”

  He opens the door.

  For a moment, I am paralyzed once more, bolts of pain shrieking in my skull; but no, there is no pain, only the memory of it.

  I peer past Papa.

  It is as I remember, and yet it is different, too. There are the gleaming instruments, there are the shelves of books, there are the cases filled with curiosities and the strange glass vessels, the neatly labeled jars and drawers. There is the glowing brazier with the red-gold salamander lying curled in its nest of flame; but its gemlike eyes are closed. There is no glass jar of clear liquid with a pale, floating thing in it.

  I let out my breath slowly and follow Papa into his sanctum. There are no strange drawings or symbols on the walls. The walls are clean and white with a fresh coating of lime.

  A breeze blows through the open windows and a pair of sylphs chase each other through its eddies. One of the earth elementals squats expectantly before a table that contains various stone pots and clay bottles and implements, rubbing his spade-shaped hands together, a broad grin on his rough-hewn face.

  Papa gestures toward the table. “That is for you, Miranda.”

  I approach it, and the little gnome scampers out of my way. With tentative hands, I open the lidded pots. The pots; oh, the pots contain colors! Pigments such as I never dreamed existed—a blue as deep and vibrant as the distant sea under an August sky, a green as rich and verdant as palm leaves, a yellow as bright and sunny as a fresh egg yolk, a red as crimson as blood. There is black as black as a moonless night and white as pure as a cloud.

  My mouth waters to behold such colors.

  There is an array of long-handled brushes, finely hewn spindles of wood to which goat’s hair has been cunningly affixed; some in pointed tufts, some in broad fans. I examine them one by one.

  “You have a gift for illustration, Miranda,” Papa says. “One that surpasses my own.”

  There is a tall book-stand beside the table, a book open upon it. I peek at it. I cannot read the language in which it is written, but there are colorful drawings inked upon its pages.

  “That is the Picatrix,” Papa says in a reverent voice. “That book which Moorish sages of ere named the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, or the Goal of the Wise. It is an illustrated Latin translation and it is worth far, far more than its weight in gold. You are not to lay hands upon it.”

  “I won’t,” I murmur, gazing spellbound at the image of a dark-faced man in white clothing, a rope tied about his waist. The dark-faced man’s expression is fierce and ruthless, haughty and commanding. He holds an axe upraised in one hand and his red eyes glower from the page.

  “Do you know the image?” Papa inquires.

  I glance over my shoulder at him and nod. “It is the first face of Aries, is it not?”

  He bestows a proud smile upon me. “Indeed.”

  No mistake, it is a powerful image. I look back at it. The thought of re-creating it, of bringing the image of this man to life, writ large upon the white-washed walls of Papa’s sanctum in vivid hues, fills me with a strange eagerness. My fingers twitch at my sides, itching to take up one of the long-handled brushes and begin limning the outline of the dark-faced man’s figure. I clasp my hands behind my back to be safe. “Do you wish me to render it for you, Papa?”

  “In time. I have prayed long on this matter, Miranda.” Papa puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me to face him. “You are the flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. It is my belief that the Lord God has given you this gift for the purpose of aiding me in my a
rts.” A wondrous light suffuses his face. “You shall be my right hand, my soror mystica, in our great working.” Unexpectedly, he gives me a little shake and his expression turns stern. “But within these walls, you must never, ever seek to render any image save those I have explicitly bidden you to execute; nor at any time save that I have specified. To do so without understanding the conjunctions of the stars and planets is to jeopardize the working itself. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Very well.” He gives my shoulders a meaningful squeeze, hard enough that his fingertips dig into my flesh, then releases me. “You may begin.”

  The unfamiliar materials and the vast expanse of white-washed wall should intimidate me; and yet they do not. I study the image in the book, memorizing the lines of the figure. I choose a brush of middling size, the cleverly bound goat’s hair tapering to a point.

  Papa watches me.

  I dip the brush into the pot of oily black pigment. There is a stepping stool placed against the wall and I understand without being told that it is there for my use, that I might render the image on a scale larger than life itself. I climb the steps of the stool with care, heedful of my trailing skirts. Hidden from view, my bare toes curl to grip the edge of the top step. The brush’s handle feels good and right in my hand and the brush droops under the weight of the pigment, black as night and shining with infinite possibilities. The white-washed wall beckons me in all its emptiness. Holding the image of the first face of Aries in my mind, I put the brush to the wall.

  A heady sense of power fills me. I shall be like the Lord God Himself, dividing light from the darkness.

  With one fearless stroke, I begin.

  TWENTY-SIX

  CALIBAN

  Miranda is alone with Master in his big room today.

  It is a thought that follows me as I go far, far away from the palace, away from Miranda in the blue gown that shows all her throat and the curves of the tops of her little breasts, down to the seashore.