Miranda and Caliban(39)

The crackling voice of the salamander …

Breaking glass …

The pale, misshapen thing gasping on the floor …

But I did not speak of those fragments of memories or what they might betoken. Indeed, I spoke very little in the early days of my affliction. My tongue was thick and clumsy and words were like familiar objects that had been placed just out of reach, frustrating me to no end.

Caliban understood. Oh, how well he understood! Caliban was the very soul of patience. It is his dear face I first remember seeing clearly when my blurred vision settled at last, not Papa’s.

Papa.

I should so like to believe that he cared for me and prayed for me and tended to me in the most dire hours of my affliction, and yet as my memory begins to return, I remember too much. Words I would feign not grasp return unwanted and unwelcome and seep into my thoughts, words spoken in a soft, terrible voice, each one nonetheless as sharp and cutting as a shard of broken glass.

You’ve killed your mother all over again, Miranda.

And so it seems fitting to me that Papa is cool and withdrawn by the time I am well enough to begin my convalescence.

It is a lengthy process, but at every step of the way, Caliban is beside me. It is his arm on which I remember leaning when I take my first uncertain steps. It is his steady gaze that waits patiently while I search for the right words to come, and it is he who supplies them to the best of his ability when they do not.

Together, we become student and teacher alike as we learn and relearn the art of speech.

As for Ariel, the spirit makes himself scarce from my presence, and I am grateful for it.

When I have regained enough of my wits to understand what has befallen me, Papa tells me that he believes that I have suffered a seizure that caused bleeding in my brain, which governs and affects all aspects of the corpus. He says that because I am young and strong and healthy, he expects that with diligence and hard work, I shall make a full recovery.

He does not say why it happened and I do not ask. I wonder if the guilt that Papa feels for punishing me so harshly weighs as greatly on him as the guilt I feel for my profound disobedience.

Beyond that we do not speak of the incident in his sanctum, though it lies between us in all its mute horror.

Caliban does not speak of it either, but it seems to me that there is a different quality to his silence; a careful, waiting quality. It makes me fearful of what he might say if I question him about it, so I keep my counsel during the long months of my convalescence. I make progress in fits and starts, but slowly, slowly, all the broken parts of me heal.

I come to delight in ever so many things I took for granted before the incident: the quickness of my wits; the words that fall tripping from my tongue; the strength of my limbs; the dexterity of my hands and fingers. And Caliban … in all the goodness of his heart, Caliban delights with me.

It is an unseasonably warm day in the late autumn when I dare at last to break my silence on the matter.

We are sitting side by side in the kitchen garden with a large mound of acorns that Caliban has gathered. With his strong hands and coarse nails, he tackles the difficult chore of cracking and peeling them, while I grind their meal into flour in a mortar. It is tiresome work and the flour will need to be soaked many times over to leach out the bitterness, but the sun’s warmth is congenial and I am glad of Caliban’s company.

With my hands occupied and my gaze on the mass of acorn meal in my mortar, I find the courage to speak of it. “Caliban,” I say to him. “That day…” My voice betrays me and quivers. I will it to firmness. “The day when I was … stricken.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see his own hands go still.

“Yes?”

I clear my throat. “You know what happened, don’t you? You know … you know what I did?”

He bows his head over the acorn he is shelling, his hair hiding his eyes. “I know you did go into Master’s room.” His voice turns grim. “And I know Master did punish you for it and hurt you.”

“There was a thing.” I do not know what else to call it, but it is at once a painful and vast relief to speak of it at last. I lower the pestle and my hands trace a shape in the air. “A thing in a jar. Oh, Caliban! It was so pale and it looked so very sad. I think it was trying to speak to me. And I…”

“I know,” he murmurs.

“I caused it to fall!” The pent-up words flood from my mouth. “I broke it! There was glass, glass everywhere, and it … it died, Caliban! Right there on the floor! And Papa … Papa said…”

And then I am crying too hard to get the words out, great heaving sobs that wrack my body.

Caliban abandons his acorns and comes to stroke my hair, strands catching on his calloused skin. “I know,” he whispers to me. “I know, Miranda. Do not cry.”

At last the storm of my grief passes, leaving me limp and exhausted. I lean against Caliban, grateful for the solid warmth of his presence. “Papa said, ‘You’ve killed your mother all over again,’” I say in a dull voice. “But I do not know what he meant by it. Do you?”

He is silent for a moment. “The spirit had a name for the thing. He called it a…” He trips over the word. “A homunculus.”

“Ariel did?” I say.

Behind me, Caliban nods. “He said it was a thing that should never have been made. And that it was a mercy that it died.” He hesitates, lowering his voice. “I watched Master put it in the ground.”