Miranda and Caliban(23)

Caliban shrugs. “I do not know. One, two, three … four springs ago? Five?”

“You are sure you saw us?”

“I watch you, Miranda.” He sounds patient, the way I sound when I am trying to make him understand something especially difficult. “Yes.”

It is true, then.

It should not shock me so to learn it. I have long wondered, have I not? I have dreamed of the stone house with pictures on the walls and the ladies with soft hands and soft cheeks who sang me to sleep. I have even wondered if Caliban remembered Papa’s and my arrival on the island. And yet it does shock me. This should be a thing I learn from Papa’s lips as he takes me into his full confidence at last, telling me who we are—or who we were—and how we came to be here. It should not be a thing I learn from Caliban atop a windswept crag, beneath the looming shadow of a monster’s bones.

An unexpected sob catches in my throat.

“Miranda?” Caliban rises, his voice filled with concern. He furrows his brow. “I make you sad?”

“No.” I swallow my tears and summon a smile for him. It is not his fault. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me.” He nods and drops back to his haunches, busying himself with rearranging rocks and shells that are strewn on the rocky ground around the monstrous skull. With a creeping sense of horror, I realize that he must have gathered and placed them there in tribute over the years. “Caliban, do you remember anything else about when Papa and I came to the isle?”

He shakes his head, but I cannot tell if it means he cannot remember or doesn’t want to say.

I have upset him without meaning to. “No mind,” I say. “This place … did you live here before we came?”

“Some days,” he says without looking up from his labor. “I find after Umm is dead. After I find her.”

“After you—” I pause, the meaning of his words sinking in. I was so proud of myself for using the occasion of the hen Nunzia’s fate to explain death, I never thought to question how readily Caliban accepted the fact that his mother was dead. My throat feels tight. “You found Umm? Dead?”

He nods. “After Ariel is in the tree. One day Umm does not come and does not come. The tomorrow day I look for her. I find her.”

My heart aches for him. “Oh, Caliban! I’m sorry.” Kneeling beside him, I hug him as I should like to be hugged, but he tenses and I release him, fearful that if he resists, Papa’s spell shall be invoked. A terrible thought comes to me. “Caliban, where did you find Umm? In the palace?”

“Yes.” He looks up. “In Master’s big room where Caliban and Miranda may not go.”

Papa’s sanctum.

I shiver. “She’s not … still there, is she?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Do you know what happened to her body?” I ask. “Do you know where Umm is now?”

“Master put her in the ground,” he says. “I watch.” His gaze searches my face. “Is that why Umm is not in the sky with God, Miranda? Because Master put her in the ground?”

It feels as though this conversation has grown too big and adult and complicated for me. “No,” I say to him. “No, it is not because of that. But is that why you hid from Papa and me and came to live here every day?” I ask gently. “Because you saw Papa put Umm in the ground? Is that why you hid for so long?”

“No.” Caliban frowns down at his rocks and shells, his shoulders hunched. “I do not know.”

I do not press him. It is enough, more than enough, to learn in one day. I want to be gone from this stony crag perched high above the sea and its strange and fearsome watcher.

“No mind,” I say again, making my voice bright and cheerful. “Thank you for bringing me here, Caliban. But we should go find mushrooms before it grows too late in the day.”

He places one last stone before rising, his haunted gaze meeting mine. “Will you tell Master?”

I should.

I should tell Papa all of it, and most especially I should tell him about this monstrous thing rearing out of the rock that Caliban has been worshipping in place of the Lord God Himself.

And what would Papa do?

I fear he might perceive in it a violation of the terms of the promise he made me and take it as some fresh reason to punish Caliban or deprive him of his reason. I do not want to grieve Papa and I am not wise enough to argue with him, but I cannot help but feel in my bones that that would be unfair. After all, Caliban knew no better. He knew only what his mother taught him; and that half remembered at best. Whatever deviltry Sycorax practiced, I cannot imagine it involved placing pretty pebbles and seashells around this terrible stone monster.

And there is goodness in Caliban; I know it. He is kind and cannot bear to see me sad. This day, the gift of the mirror, the sharing of his deepest secret … it is all by way of apologizing for grieving me.

If a person does good in the name of bad all unwitting, surely God in His greatness must understand and forgive it?

Caliban watches me hopefully.

“No,” I say to him. “I will not tell Papa. Not … not unless there is some cause for it I do not see today.”

He sighs with relief and gratitude. “Thank you.”

We descend from the crag, and I am grateful to leave it and its watchful monster behind. We make our way to the pine woods, where Caliban with his sharp forager’s gaze picks out the round heads of mushrooms just beginning to push their way through a covering of pine needles. We find enough to fill half my bag before it is time to return to the palace.