It is a thought that makes my belly feel sick, as though I have eaten fish that did spoil in the sun, but it makes my rod stiffen, too.
Why?
Maybe my father was a poor dumb monster, too.
I wish I did not have this badness inside me. I wish I could be a man like that Ariel did show me, handsome-faced and straight-legged, who would look at Miranda and think only good holy thoughts, and not want oh, so much to touch her little breasts, to feel the curve of them in the palm of his hand.
But I cannot.
I cannot, Miranda.
I will keep my promise to you. I will not spy; I will only be the good servant. I will go back to the palace at dawn so Master—Prospero—does not punish me and make your heart sore. I will wait and watch like Setebos for the storm that is coming, and I will put myself between you and anything that would harm you.
Always.
It is only that I did never believe one of those things could be me, because I do love you so much; and I am glad I said it to you, because it cut me like knives to think you did not know it.
But I am glad you do not understand it yet.
I do not want you to see the badness inside me.
THIRTY-FOUR
MIRANDA
Having declared that his fondness for me does, in fact, endure in a most pressing manner, Caliban proceeds to demonstrate it by continuing to avoid me. Given that he fled my presence after having done so, I cannot confess myself surprised; and yet I am hurt all over again. Now more than ever, more than any time since my affliction, I need my dearest friend by my side.
I begin to think I will never understand him.
Even if I were clever enough to think of a way to ask Papa about Caliban’s revelations without betraying the cause of my curiosity, I do not think I would be brave enough to do so.
Not anymore.
And so I bide my time, waiting for my woman’s courses to pass and thinking mayhap that when I return to Papa’s sanctum and resume my painting, I may find some pretext to make ever-so-subtle inquiries—but when I enter the chamber, all such thoughts go clean out of my head.
The walls are empty and white.
It shocks me to the core of my being. One hand flies to cover my mouth and I hear myself utter a muffled cry of dismay. “Oh, Papa! What happened?”
Papa gives me a careless glance. “What’s that, lass?”
I point at the walls, my finger trembling. “The first face of Aries … Virgo … Libra … oh, the Sun, Papa! What happened to them?”
“Ah.” He places a marker in the book he is studying and closes it. “Do not concern yourself, for there is naught amiss. I bade the gnomes cover them that you might begin anew.”
The unexpected loss of the paintings over which I labored so long and with such love fills me with anguish. “Oh, but—”
“Did you think such images were meant to endure, Miranda?” Papa shakes his head. “Even as the heavens revolve around us, that which will serve the needs of our working changes from day to day, week to week, and month to month; both with the movement of the spheres and those changing events that transpire on earth to which we beseech the seven governors and their various aspects to lend their influence.” A faint note of reproach enters his voice and his face creases in a frown. “I thought you understood as much. Was I mistaken?”
“No, but—” I catch myself short and cast my gaze downward, realizing his comments have afforded me an opening for inquiry. “Forgive me, Papa. It caught me by surprise. Has something of note transpired?”
Papa is silent a moment. I steal a glance toward the mirror, but it is covered. I feel Papa’s stern gaze upon me, as heavy as a touch. “All shall be revealed in the fullness of time, child,” he says. “But although it is drawing near, that time is not yet upon us. Did I not make myself clear in this matter? If you are to serve as my soror mystica in this endeavor, I require your innocence. I require you to act in perfect trust and perfect faith that the working may not be tainted.” He pauses, knitting his brows. “Has your trust in me faltered, Miranda?”
Yes, I whisper in my thoughts. I fear it faltered a long time ago, Papa; when I found the thing you called my mother.
Oh, but the habit of obedience is deeply engrained in me, and I shake my own head, no, no. “Of course not, Papa.” I hesitate. “It is only that Ariel once said to me that it is the fine edge of a blade that divides innocence from ignorance, and I should hate to do harm all unwitting.”
“Ariel!” Papa’s frown deepens. “Meddlesome sprite.”
I say nothing.
Papa strokes his beard. “I shall have a word with him. Meanwhile, I should like you to commence an image of Venus.”
On its stand, the book Picatrix is open to the corresponding page. I study the image of Venus, a woman standing with a red fruit in one hand and a comb in the other. She wears a pale green gown and long tresses of golden hair flow over her shoulders. Despite everything, the chance to paint another one of the seven governors makes my fingers itch to pick up a brush.
“Do not fear that you may err out of ignorance,” Papa says to me in a voice so kind I almost wish it was not a falsehood I told him. “So long as you work at my behest, I promise you that will never come to pass. And do not mourn the loss of your journeyman efforts, Miranda. God has given you a gift, but as with any skill, practice will hone it. You will do better work.”
I cannot deny the truth of it, for I myself could see that my work had improved with each image I rendered over the long winter months. The first face of Aries was looking distinctly lumpish to my eyes. Still, it pains me that it is all simply gone, gone without warning. “Thank you, Papa.”
He lays a hand on my shoulder. “I shall summon Ariel while this business is fresh in my mind and return anon.”
“Yes, Papa.”
It is not the first time that Papa has left me alone in his sanctum, but it is the first time I have been tempted to disobedience; a thing I never should have imagined would happen again. Had I not been so stricken by the unexpected loss of my paintings—indeed, had Papa but thought to warn me—mayhap it would have been different. I do not know, only that today the cloth-covered mirror beckons me as irresistibly as the lamp-flame beckons the moth. It is a piece of folly; oh, I know it is, for like Caliban I have gazed at the mirror and seen naught but my own face, but if there is a chance I might see these strange men of whom Caliban spoke—these men that Papa named my liege and my brother—for myself, I must attempt it.
I creep toward the mirror and reach for a corner of the ragged piece of cloth that is draped over it.
“Foolisssh girl,” a crackling voice behind me says. “It will avail you naught without the ssspell.”
I very nearly leap out of my skin, my heart pounding.
Across the chamber, the fiery salamander in the brazier regards me with its bejeweled eyes.
“You do speak!” I breathe.
It blinks.
I cross the chamber and kneel before the brazier. “Will you teach this spell to me?” I beseech the salamander.
“And sssee you sssuffer for it?” In its nest of bright embers, the salamander flexes delicate claws tipped with nails of molten gold. “No.”
I sit back on my heels. “How is it that you alone among the elementals speak?” I whisper.
It laughs, that sound like a burst of sparks rising. “I lisssten,” it says. “And fire has a thousand tongues.”
“Has Papa spoken of his plans in your presence?” I ask the salamander. It seems my curiosity has not deserted me after all, for now that I have allowed myself to give voice to it, the questions flood forth from my lips. “Do you know what he intends? Can you tell me what it is that he sees in the mirror? Is it his brother? His king? Do you know how we came to this isle and from whence?” I hesitate. “Do you know what he means to do with my blood?”
“Shall I ssspeak and sssuffer for it?” The salamander flicks its tail in a gesture of refusal. “No.”
I am unaccountably disappointed. “And yet you do speak to me,” I say. “Why?”
The salamander is silent for a long moment, so long I begin to wonder if I have lost my wits and imagined the entire business. Patterns of light and shadow shift beneath its glowing skin. “I do not know the whole of your father’s plan,” it says. “Only pieces. But grant me a promissse and I will anssswer one question that you have asssked of me.”
“What promise?” I ask it.
“A promissse that you will not leave the isle without ssseeing me freed from thisss iron prison,” it says in a voice as dry and crackling as kindling.
“Leave the isle?” I echo in startlement. “Why, however in the world should that come to pass?”
The salamander blinks its jeweled eyes. “Promissse.”
Once, when Papa was in good spirits, I dared to ask him why he did not bind another fire elemental to serve in our kitchen hearth and spare us—or at least poor Caliban—the endless labor of gathering firewood; his reply was that the salamanders were the most dangerous and difficult to control of the elementals, and that our humble hearth was safer without one. I am not sure I should trust this one. It has spoken to me twice, and both times when I was in disobedience of Papa’s orders.
And yet it is a piece of cruelty that the salamander has been imprisoned in the brazier for these many long years, while the other elementals that serve Papa enjoy their freedom when they are not about his bidding.
I am ashamed that I did not think it before.
The notion that I might one day leave the isle seems a possibility as remote as the very stars and planets in their distant spheres, but if such a thing were to happen, surely it would be a simple act of kindness to ensure that the salamander—and indeed, all the elementals—were freed from whatever magic bound them.
“You’ll not burn me to cinders by way of thanks for setting you free?” I ask the salamander. I have grown more suspicious than the trusting child I was.
It laughs a hissing shower of sparks, and yet somehow there is a note of bitterness in the sound. “No.”
I take a deep breath. “Then yes, I promise it.”
The salamander’s eyes wink and sparkle like rubies. “Which quessstion will you asssk?” it says. “Choose wisely.”
Oh, it is so difficult to know! I think about the questions I posed, turning them over in my thoughts like rare shells to examine them, and it seems to me that some of my questions have already been answered in part. If I believe Caliban—and in my heart, I fear that I do—then I know what Papa saw in the mirror. I have an inkling of what is coming. And it seems to me, too, that the salamander sought to warn me; it knows only pieces of what Papa’s intentions are.
I should dearly like to ask the salamander if it knows how we came to the isle and from whence, but what if the answer is no? I would have made a bad bargain in exchange for my promise, then.
I hear Papa’s footsteps approaching in the hallway.
The flames surrounding the salamander in its brazier flare into urgent brightness. “Choose!”
Had I more time to consider, I might have chosen otherwise, but there is only one question to which I have not the slightest portion of an answer, and I ask it now in a hurried rush. “Oh, salamander! What magical working is it that Papa seeks to accomplish with the blood of my woman’s courses?”
It gives me another slow, deliberate blink; in approval? In disappointment? I cannot tell.
“A love ssspell,” the salamander says. “To ensssnare a king’s ssson.”
THIRTY-FIVE
In the earliest days of my affliction, I was dumbstruck. I had no understanding of what had befallen me, only the terrified realization that something was very wrong and my world had changed forever.
Thus do I feel today. The salamander’s revelation is one too many for my wits to encompass. Once again, my world has changed and I no longer comprehend my place in it.
A brother.
A king.
A king’s son and a love spell.
How is it that such things might come to be here on our lonely isle? I cannot fathom it. And yet ’twas ever true that there was a secret goal toward which Papa plied his arts.
It is why he summoned Caliban, that he might learn the name by which Sycorax imprisoned Ariel.
It is why he freed Ariel from the great pine and bound him to his service.
It is why he charts the skies, why he encouraged my budding talent for illustration, why I paint at his bidding. And today he bade me render an image of the Lady Venus herself, Venus who is the very Queen of Love among the seven governors.
I do my best to comply, but my thoughts are as scattered as a handful of petals tossed to the wind, blown hither and thither and yon. My hands shake and refuse to obey me as though I have been afflicted anew, and my brushstrokes, that had grown so sure and joyful, become clumsy and crude.
Why a love spell?
Even in the privacy of my own thoughts, I fear to speculate.
The initial lineaments of my Venus depict a poor, botched thing lacking all semblance of grace and beauty. Mercifully, Papa attributes my failure to the shock of finding all my prior work vanished beneath a thick coating of fresh white-wash.
“Forgive me, child,” he says at the end of the day. “I should have known you would take it amiss and thought to forewarn you.” He gives me a kind smile. “I’ll not be remiss the next time.”
I clasp my hands before me to hide their trembling. “Thank you, Papa. With your permission, I’ll take time to gather my thoughts and offer prayers to Lady Venus ere I begin tomorrow.”
Papa casts a wry glance at my ungainly strokes on the wall. “I think that would be wise.”
Papa.
Prospero.
It is as though he has become a stranger to me. Although my knowledge is far from complete, I now know secrets that he did not divulge to me; did not wish divulged to me. If ’tis true that any knowledge of his purpose on my part will taint our working, well, then, the damage is done, and I do not know if that should be a source of abiding shame or relief to me.
Both, mayhap.
One thing I do know, and that is that I have an urgent desire to speak to Caliban. When I first awakened from my affliction, it was his dear face I saw; my first memory is of Caliban seeing my confusion and reminding me of his name, oh, so gently.
Now I regret that I was short with him the other night, but it was a great deal to take in.
I did not want to believe.
But I do.
On the morrow, I manage to catch Caliban before he succeeds in evading me, and ask him nicely if he might procure fresh river trout for our supper. This he agrees to do with a curt nod, taking the pail with him as he leaves.
When Papa adjourns to his sanctum, I do not engage myself in contemplation and prayers to the Lady Venus. No, instead, I set out to find Caliban.
It is a beautiful spring morning on the isle, balmy and clear, the promise of afternoon’s coming heat alleviated by the lingering freshness of the night’s dew. The jacaranda trees are in bloom, great clouds of violet blossoms clinging to their limbs, and the tall rhododendrons offer up pink and white and purple clusters, such hues as make me long for my paints. In the courtyard where the sour orange trees grow, buzzing honeybees are already at work gathering the pollen of their delicate white blossoms that they might transmute it into golden sweetness. Papa says that bees are nature’s alchemists, and that as proof, honey is the only food that never spoils but retains the goodness of its essence in perpetuity.
The reminder of Papa gives me a pang of guilt, but I persevere, leaving the palace grounds behind me. The flowers that blossom in the wild are less spectacular, but no less lovely for it—myrtle shrubs with their pungent leaves, fields of scrubby yellow broom bright beneath the sun. A great fondness for the isle’s beauty fills me, and my heart aches to imagine that I should ever leave it.
There are two places where Caliban is wont to catch fish and I know them
both, for I accompanied him thence on excursions many times in happier days. The first is a bend in the stream where the current slows as it rounds the reed-covered banks. In high summer or midwinter, the level of the water is no higher than the calves of his legs, but today the stream is swollen with snowmelt from the distant mountain peaks to the east.
It is at the second place, a place where the stream runs swiftly, but great rocks lying just below the surface break up its current and create eddying pools in which the speckled trout bask, that I find Caliban. He crouches low on one of the boulders, water running in a torrent over his feet. Translucent undines frolic in the stream around him, but he ignores them, crouching to gaze intently into the water, hands poised at the ready. The pail is perched precariously on another boulder nearby.
Not so very long ago, I would have been holding the pail for him and shouting encouragement from the banks, both of us laughing for the sheer joy of being young and alive.
With the advent of spring, Caliban has abandoned the coarse shirt I made for him and is clad only in worn and tattered sailcloth breeches. His bare skin gleams like polished wood in the sunlight. The muscles of his bent back fan like wings, reaching for his shoulders. Below the pointed ridge of black hair that descends from the nape of his neck, I can see the knobs of bone running down his spine.
I should like to touch them.
I should like to understand how a man is made.
It is a curious thought, and I am not sure if it is a thought of Miranda-the-painter who would stretch out the wing of a mummified bat to see how its tendons conjoin to the bone or … something else.
And then Caliban plunges his hands into the stream and catches a fish, its scales glistening silvery green as it thrashes in his grip.
“Oh, well done!” I cry, clapping my hands together like the child I had been; I cannot help myself.
“Miranda!” Caliban’s head comes up. He tosses the fish into the pail and glowers at me, straightening from his crouch. “Why are you here? You should not be here.”
“Forgive me,” I say to him. “But I would speak further to you of what you told me the other evening.”
Miranda and Caliban Page 20
