Miranda and Caliban(22)

Does he understand that he lied to me?

Does he know that I betrayed him to Papa for doing so?

I do not know.

“What shall Caliban and Miranda do today?” I say at last, falling back on familiar ground. “Shall we gather mushrooms? Catch fish?”

“Mussshhrooms, yes.” Caliban rolls the word around in his mouth as though he is taking pleasure in the taste of it. “Now is good for mussshhrooms.”

It restores a measure of ease between us.

I fetch a cloth bag that I have sewn out of the remnants of robes that Papa cut down to size for me, with a long strap that I might sling over my shoulder, and Caliban and I set out to forage.

I think that we will go to the pine woods to the south where Caliban has found mushrooms flourishing in hidden places in the damp pine mast before, but he heads northwest toward the rocky crags above the palace. He sets a quick pace and I struggle to keep up.

Airy sylphs trail after us, drifting effortlessly on the spring breeze.

“Caliban?” I am half breathless. “Where are we going?”

He slows. “A place.”

“Is it your place?”

When I asked before, he pretended not to understand, but today is different. He nods. “Yes.”

It is a long, hard climb; not for Caliban, who clambers agilely over the rocks using hands and feet alike, but for me. The rocks are dark and jagged. Caliban pauses often to help me, tugging me by the hand. Near the top, there is a cave, tucked away on the leeside of the wind. It smells of old bones and rotting fruit, both of which are strewn about the floor of the cave. Toward the back, there is a nest of fabric grown so dark with filth that its pattern can no longer be seen.

“You lived here,” I say.

Caliban nods.

Squatting on his haunches, he rummages in the folds of dirty fabric. He brings out tarnished metal objects studded with jewels: a cup, a plate, a thing with a handle that I do not recognize. It catches the light and reflects it.

“See?” Caliban angles it my way. “See?”

I see a strange face in its surface and catch my breath, scuttling backward crab-wise on my feet and buttocks and hands in startlement. “Oh!”

Caliban laughs and presses the object into my hand. “See you, Miranda!”

I peer at it.

A face peers back at me. My face? It is a thing I have only glimpsed in the dim, wavering reflections of streams and ponds, framed with golden hair. I scowl and the face in the surface scowls back at me.

I thrust out my tongue.

So does the face.

Caliban leans his head beside mine, and then there we are, both of us, fair and dark. His eyes are bright with mirth. Mine are blue, blinking and uncertain. Somewhere in the back of my thoughts, my mind forms the word mirror. Caliban and I press our heads close together, scowl and thrust out our tongues, both of us, and watch our faces do the same, then dissolve into a fit of giggles, falling against each other.

“These were Umm’s things?” I ask.

“Yes. Before.” Caliban’s expression turns serious. “Now this is Miranda’s.”

“Oh, no!” I try to give the mirror back to him, but he will not take it. “Now it is yours, Caliban.”

“No.” There is a note at once stubborn and pleading in his voice. “Now it is Miranda’s.” He pauses, gathering his words. “I lie. I make Master angry. I make you sad. I am sorry.”

So he does understand the notion of a lie. Mayhap Papa’s stern method of teaching is more effective than my gentler one after all. I look down, then back up at him. “I am sorry, too. But why did you lie? Was it because you did not want Ariel to be free?”

He frowns in thought. “Yes. But not only.” Bounding to his feet, he beckons to me. “Come.”

I tuck the mirror away in my bag and follow him. There is a narrow path that leads to the top of the crag. Using hands and feet alike, I manage to make my way to the peak. The wind is strong and buffeting. Although we are high above it, we are near the seashore and far below, waves beat against the rocks.

Atop the crag, there is a monstrous thing. Immense jaws rear out of the very rock, cutting semicircles in the sky. The jaws stand twice again as high as I do, and are lined with jagged teeth, each one bigger than my hand.

I do not know what to make of it. It looks like a skull made of stone, brown and stained; but a skull of what? Something huge and terrifying.

“Setebos,” Caliban says with reverence.

Fist-sized rocks flecked with mica glint in the hollows of its eyes. The grinning jaws gape as though to take a bite out of the sky. I find myself backing away from it. “Caliban … no. This is bad! Surely it must be!”

“Why?” His face is as innocent as the dawn. “Because Master says? But Master wants the name. I do not want to give it because it is mine.” He strokes the bony rock. “Setebos watches.”

I shudder. “Watches what?”

“You.” Caliban squats with careless ease beneath the shadow of the great jaws and points out to sea. “You and Master. Setebos watches you come. I watch, too.”

Curiosity pricks me hard, hard enough that I forget to be afraid of the monstrous skull. “What do you mean?”

“I watch you and Master come over the water.” He mimes a floating motion with one hand.

“When?” The word comes out in a whisper.