Miranda and Caliban(38)

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.