Miranda and Caliban(41)

Ariel hesitates. “I did not intend thee harm, milady,” he says with surprising gentleness. “Truly, I am sorry for thy suffering. But if thou hast questions unanswered, thou must ask thy father.”

“But—”

He is gone.

And so that night at the supper table I ask Papa about my mother.

Papa stiffens. “If you value this peace we have forged between us, do not speak to me of your mother.”

I look down at my platter. “I just—”

Papa slams his hand onto the table, making our fine silver platters jump and rattle. “I said, do not speak of her!”

So I do not. I do not speak of my mother or the incident.

I bury the memory of it as surely as Papa buried Caliban’s mother and … whatever the thing was. The thing I killed in Papa’s sanctum. The homunculus, the pale floating thing that is somehow tethered to my mother, who died in giving birth to me, tethered by an anklet of dark-gold hair, tethered by Papa’s art.

The thing that should not have been made, the thing that died gasping amid shards of broken glass, sorrow fading in its milky eyes.

I do not think of it.

I am diligent.

I work hard.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months. The sun sinks ever lower in the shrinking evenings, and autumn turns to winter.

Papa praises my progress and gauges it sufficient that I might resume my studies. This I am glad to do. The alphabet returns to me; I memorize lists and lists of correspondences, tracing them painstakingly on my slate. As time passes, I begin to learn about the powerful and arcane images that influence the seven governors and the three faces of each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Papa attempts to impart to me the rudiments of charting the paths of the planets throughout the spheres of heaven and the astrological signs and houses, but this is a complex mathematical endeavor I find impossibly difficult, and in time he decides that it is not worth his while and abandons his efforts.

I should have been terribly dismayed at disappointing Papa so, had I not discovered within myself a talent for illustration. There is a kind of magic in bringing images to life with mere lines of chalk on a slate, and I am content to spend hours immersed in the process of doing so. Papa is pleased by it and encourages me to develop my gift. I take to carrying a bit of chalk with me everywhere I go that I might sketch the flora and fauna I encounter on whatever surface I find that allows it, adorning smooth rocks and the trunks of trees with chalk drawings of birds and flowers and beetles that linger until the next rainfall washes them away.

There are long stretches of days wherein I do not think of the incident at all, wherein it seems it was naught but an unpleasant dream, half forgotten by the dawn.

It is better not to remember.

Had I not been so grievously afflicted, mayhap I would have felt otherwise, my natural sense of curiosity prevailing; but as the seasons pass and months turn into years, I am increasingly content to let matters rest.

One year passes much like the other, and the next and the next, all of us on the isle existing in a tenuous accord.

Papa has his secrets, Ariel has his mysteries, and the three of us share an unspoken guilt, with Caliban in his innocence at the center of it all, growing taller and stronger with each passing year. Although his limbs do not grow straight and true, they are powerful and sturdy, and as his shoulders broaden and his voice deepens, his kindness to me is unfailing.

I come to think nothing would change.

I am wrong.





TWENTY-THREE

Blood.

It begins with blood.

As I near fourteen years of age, I am not insensible of the changes to my body. Like Caliban, I have grown; not so tall or strong as he, but taller. My robes fall only to my shins and I think with covetous envy of the gowns from the pirate’s loot that Papa has hidden away, though I do not dare to say so. Hair has begun to sprout in unexpected places, dusting my shins and growing wiry in the soft pits beneath my arms and at the juncture of my thighs. Tender buds of breasts grow on my chest, and I wonder if it means I am a woman grown at last, but Papa says no.

He is waiting for something, but I do not know what.

The passing years have touched Papa, too. There is more white than grey in his hair, and the dark streaks in his beard have faded.

Only Ariel remains unchanged.

In all the years that pass, I never do tell Papa that it was the spirit’s taunting words that tempted me to an act of such profound disobedience. I am not at all certain that it would have tempered Papa’s wrath; and, too, it pleases me to know that it is a prospect Ariel fears. Although the spirit conducts himself gently enough in my presence, I am quite sure that he continues to bedevil Caliban, who does not care to speak of it. But there are times when he returns from chores ranging far afield in a surly mood, and I know Ariel has been at him. Although I mislike the unfairness of it all, if Caliban prefers to endure it in silence, I respect his wishes. Still, it is a comfort to know there is a threat I can wield against the meddlesome spirit.

Otherwise I put the past behind me. If betimes my sleep is plagued by nightmares, I set them aside with the rising of the sun.

On the day that I awaken out of sorts, my small breasts sore and a dull ache low in my belly, I think little of it. The memory of my affliction will never grow so distant that I am not grateful to be alive and hale. I imagine this is but a touch of indigestion, and although I remember no troubling dreams on that particular morning, like as not I slept poorly for the griping of my belly, tossing and turning and bruising my flesh a trifle in the process. I cannot think what else it might be.