Miranda and Caliban(51)
I scale the wall like a lizard, trying not to think about the drop below me, and haul myself onto the balcony on my belly, hiding as best I might beneath the shadow of the bright metal sky-pointing tube. Lifting my head, I peer over the lintel.
“Oh, la!” an idle voice remarks behind me. “How very intrepid thou art!”
Ariel.
I turn my head to glare at him. “Hush!”
The spirit is half shape, half cloud, drifting wisps coming together and falling apart in endless churning motion. A keen-featured face emerges, a hand touches one finger to its lips. “I am the soul of discretion,” he breathes in a whisper. “Why, when it comes down to the nub of the matter, are we not in this together, thee and I, my fellow servant?”
I ignore him.
Mayhap I was a fool to have worried, for it is a peaceable scene. Master’s grey head is bent over his books. He mutters to himself and makes notes on a slate close at hand, sometimes rising to pace the room, clutching at the amulets around his neck. When he does, I duck low and plaster my belly to the balcony.
Miranda …
Miranda stands atop something and draws upon the wall with strong colors, making the image of a fierce man’s face with red eyes that glare out at the world. Her face … her face is like the face of a girl in a dream, in the best dream.
I watch her.
Girl, yes; and woman, too, and the both of them gone to a place where I cannot follow. My heart and my rod ache alike, the latter stirring beneath my loins against the hard stone of the balcony. A slanting ray of sunlight catches a mirror against the back wall of Master’s sanctum, the round mirror from the pirates’ treasure, now etched all around its outside with letters and symbols. The mirror winks as though it would speak to me, but it is in no language I know.
There is nothing for me here.
Retreating, I clamber over the balcony. Down is harder than up, and I must reach wide to find hand-and foot-holds, my weight hanging from my left side while I seek purchase with my right.
Ariel drifts beside me as I make the careful climb downward. “Dost thou think to protect the lass from him?” he asks in a curious tone. “Her own father?”
I put my teeth together hard. Clench, that is the word. I know oh, so many words now, and none of them do me a bit of good. “I had to be sure. He did very nearly kill her in that room.”
“Oh, aye, for disobedience,” Ariel says as though it is nothing. “But the lass has long since learned her lesson, and she is there at her father’s bidding.” He waits for me to drop the last few feet onto the dusty rocks. “The magus has brought her into his laboratorium,” he muses. “Into the very working of his arts. Yet methinks he has not taken her into his confidence. What thinkest thou, fellow servant?”
“What do you care what I think?” I ask him bitterly. “I am only the poor dumb monster who loves her!”
“Love!” Ariel’s shifting features go still in astonishment, his eyes flaring crystal-bright. “Thou dost use the word?”
I stomp away from him across the palace grounds toward the kitchen. “Leave me alone.”
He follows me nonetheless. “Thou art a fool, tender-hearted monster. Dost think to deny thy baser nature?”
“I am not ruled by it!” I say in defiance. “No more than any man! No more than Master himself!”
“Master!” Ariel laughs, but this time the sharp edge of his laughter is not meant for me. “Oh, la!”
I make my eyes go narrow. “What do you mean?”
Ariel shrugs his shoulders. “Not all base desires stem from the root of thy manhood,” he says dismissively. “To what end dost thou suppose the magus works?”
I am weary of his taunting. “Why do you ask me when you know the answer and will not share it?”
“Why?” Ariel echoes the word. “Why not? Should I pretend to understand mine own whys and wherefores? Indeed, my monstrous friend, I do not.” His hands dance in the air, weaving back and forth, breezes streaming from his fingertips. “While I remain at our master’s beck and call, my whim and will is as the wind, blown hither and thither and yon; no more am I free to say. Wilst tell me thou hast not wondered at our master’s purpose?”
A monster he has named me and a monster he has shown me to myself, so it is a monster I will be. Opening the larder, I thrust my hand into the pail full of mussels and seawater. Plucking out a mussel, I pry it open with my nails and tear loose the morsel of orange flesh. I pop it into my mouth, poppity-pop, and chew it raw with savage pleasure. I fish out a second mussel, but it is closed hard and tight and will not open, so I thrust it whole into my mouth and crack its shell with my strong back teeth. Sharp shards cut my mouth, but I do not care that it hurts. I chew it anyway, chomp-chomp-chomp, tasting brine and blood. “I wish the wind would blow you away forever!” I say fiercely, spraying bits of shell and bloody seawater.
Ariel’s eyes have gone cold and dark with no light in them. “There is a storm in the offing, and where it will blow the lot of us, not even I can say. Thou hast wits and will not use them. Methinks thou art a greater fool than I had reckoned.”
I spit out a mouthful of shards. “I care naught for what you think!”
“As thou wilt.” Ariel bends at the waist, sweeping one arm behind him; Miranda taught me long ago that is a thing called a bow. It is a thing a man does to show honor and respect to someone, and there is a thing that a girl or a woman does that is called a curtsy, and she showed me that, too. It was a thing I had seen her do to Master many times, but I did not know what it was called. Oh, we did bow and curtsy to each other all one long day, Miranda and I, laughing and laughing.