Miranda and Caliban(56)
“Are you kin to a dragon, I wonder?” I murmur to it. “Why do you not speak?”
Across the chamber, Papa raises his head from a chart he is studying. “What’s that, child?”
I do not like to remind him of my trespass. “I was just wondering, Papa, if the salamander is kin to a dragon.”
“Yes, indeed,” he says. “Though on a small and insignificant scale.” He frowns a little. “Surely you’re not thinking to use it as a model? A dragon is a far grander thing, Miranda.”
“Yes, but I have no dragon—” I pause, thinking once again of Setebos’s gaping maw. Mayhap there is a reason I glimpsed it from afar this morning, for it is not at all unlike the jaws of the dragon in the illustration. “Papa? Could a dragon be turned to stone?”
His frown deepens. “How so?”
I hesitate. “There is a thing that Caliban showed me once. He…” I swallow against the lump of betrayal in my throat, and whisper my next words. “He believes it to be Setebos incarnate.”
Now I have Papa’s full attention. “Tell me.”
I do.
It is at once a relief and an agony. Had Caliban not been so strange toward me in the past weeks, I do not think I would have revealed his secret; and yet there is a great release in divulging it and confessing my fears regarding it.
Papa’s face is stern as he listens. “You should have told me this long ago, Miranda.”
I look down. “I know.”
“This thing you describe … I am quite certain it is naught but the bones of a great whale caught in an event of volcanic upheaval some centuries past, preserved in basalt at the moment of its demise,” Papa says, and his tone is dismissive. “’Twould be of considerable interest to study were I not caught up in more pressing matters, but I assure you, ’tis neither a dragon nor a demonic spirit made manifest. It is only Caliban’s fancy that accords it agency.” He shakes his head with rue and regret. “I fear that for all the civilizing influence that we have afforded him, your wild lad retains a savage’s love of superstition.”
I sigh.
Bones; only bones.
Of course, ’twas folly to imagine it was aught otherwise, and I feel foolish for having let Caliban’s ill-founded belief color my thinking. But Papa does not mock me for it, only assures me that if the whale’s jaws will serve as a model for the dragon’s, I should use them. This I do, although I pay no second visit to the great skull, but render its terrifying jaws from memory abetted by the distant glimpse of the watchtower.
Mayhap I cannot help but retain a touch of Caliban’s superstition.
I do study the mummified corpse of a bat which is among the many curious objects that adorn the shelves of the cabinets in Papa’s sanctum. With Papa’s bemused but approving indulgence, I gently stretch out one brittle, leathery wing that I might observe the fine veins, the armature of its bones, and the manner in which its joints are articulated.
Accompanied by a trio of drifting sylphs, I spend a sunlit morning hunting along the banks of a stream where Caliban and I have in the past encountered harmless grass snakes that lurk in the reeds and prey on small frogs and lizards there. When I find one, I follow its winding progress, marveling at the way it propels itself effortlessly through water and over land alike with the sinuous motion of its endlessly coiling and uncoiling length. It moves far too swiftly for me to capture its undulating lines in chalk, but I commit them to memory.
It is a thing I have seen before, of course, but now I see it through new and different eyes, and I am filled with wonder at the richness and complexity of the vast whole of the Lord God’s creation.
To paint, I think, is to give praise to the Creator.
“Shouldst thou not have a care, daughter of Eve?” a breezy voice says behind me. “Thou art a member of the fairer sex, and thus heir to a troubled history with serpents, my lady.”
Ariel.
The snake vanishes among the reeds, its lashing body following the probing wedge of its head.
I turn to face the mercurial spirit. “Yes, and the Lord God did curse the serpent to crawl upon its belly for its sins,” I say in a grim tone. “Mayhap this isle is no Eden, but here as there, when temptation approached me, it walked upright like a man, and I have paid the price for heeding it.”
Ariel raises his hands in a peaceable gesture, the insubstantial sleeves of his garment fluttering around his slender white arms. “I mean no harm. Thou art about thy father’s business, Miranda, and the sooner it is brought to a head, the sooner I am freed from servitude.”
I eye him. “And is it my father’s business that you’re about today? Or is there some other reason that you come to plague me?”
He blinks at me, blue-eyed and ingenuous. “Is it not conceivable that I merely desire the pleasure of thy company?”
“It is unlikely.” Although I am eager to return to Papa’s sanctum and begin painting while the fluid lines of the snake’s coils are fresh in my mind, I find myself hesitating. If there is anyone who would know what troubles Caliban, it is Ariel; though it is equally true that that is because if there is anyone who is the cause of Caliban’s troubles, it is the vexsome spirit himself. “Gentle spirit, if I ask you a question, will you answer me honestly?”
He purses his lips. “As to that, I cannot say without hearing the question, my lady. Thou knowest well that there are matters on which thy father has forbidden me to speak, and I am bound by mine oath.”