Miranda and Caliban(58)

Oh, oh, oh.

It is hard, so hard, to be cold when I am not. The hurt on her face makes my heart hurt inside me.

I do not like for her to look at me, not anymore; and it is not safe for me to look at her. Only when Miranda does not know I am there and looking, only when she is making magic pictures on the walls of Master’s sanctum and her face is pure and dreaming and holy, and I do not think about Miranda naked with her tender little breasts with their pink tips hanging down above the wash-basin.

Oh, Setebos! I am bad.

But I am not only the badness within me that yearns and thinks of rutting like a goat or a dog; no. I have made a promise to myself.

When the moon goes all the way round then begins to go small, and Miranda’s blood begins to flow, Master sends her away and does not allow her into his sanctum. The first time that it happens, I keep watch over her from far away so that it is safe; yes, and the second and third time, too.

As the days grow short and winter comes, I am thinking still, oh, I will protect you, Miranda. Yes, yes, I will protect you from the storm that is coming, this storm that will bring trouble to the isle as a storm once brought you and Master to these shores.

But foolish Caliban, you do not know what this trouble is.

Tricksy Ariel knows, but he is forbidden to say; and even he with his oh-so-sharp smiles and his sharp cutting words does not know what will happen when it comes.

Thou hast wits and will not use them, Ariel did say to me. Methinks thou art a greater fool than I had reckoned.

The spirit’s words are true. Since Ariel did show me to myself, I have been too angry and heart-aching to think. I have been what he did show me; only the poor dumb monster, not that Caliban that Miranda did call a friend, not that Caliban that did teach her words all over again when she was hurt.

So I think, thinkety-think-think, and what I think is: How does Ariel know that a troublesome storm is coming? Oh ho, indeed! How does Ariel know what Master plots and plans?

It comes to me that there are three ways, and the first is that only Ariel is a clever spirit and knows many secret things; and if that is the way, then oh, it is too bad for poor Caliban, he cannot find a secret that is locked inside Ariel’s tricksy head.

The second way is that Master did tell Ariel his plans, because he did need for the spirit to know them to help him; and if it is that way, then it is too bad again for poor Caliban, Master will not tell him, the savage brute. No, he will not, never ever.

Oh, but the third way … the third way is that Ariel is guilty of many, many things that he says are true of me, of cruel and cutting words like skulking and lurking and spying, and it seems that these things are a bad thing when you are ugly Caliban hiding belly-down on a balcony or crouching hidden around a corner, but not when you are oh-so-pretty Ariel floating like a cloud or blowing like a whooshity breeze.

Ha!

And if it is that way, if Ariel did learn what he knows by spying, then it may be that I can learn it, too.

(What do you do when you are alone in your sanctum, Master?)

So I do not keep watch over Miranda on her blood-days, which is a thing that does not truly need doing; it is only a thing that made me feel as though I was caring for her from afar. Oh, I watch enough to be sure she is at her studies in the warm kitchen or at least nowhere where she might see me scaling the palace walls to lurk on the balcony outside Master’s sanctum. I do my chores, always, always, so that the woodpile is stacked high and embers glow on the hearth, and there are acorns gathered and blanched and ground into flour, and there are always fish or mussels in the larder ready for the cooking.

And then I spy.

It is not a nice thing to do, no; not with the chilly winds of winter blowing. With my bare belly pressed to the marble floor of the balcony, I shiver and watch while Master does his work.

Sometimes it is only what I have seen before, Master looking at his charts and books, talking to himself and making notes. He talks louder to himself when he is alone than he does when Miranda is there, and when the wind is not whooshing so hard I cannot hear, I listen and try to make sense of it; but it is all words I do not know and nonsense to me.

Oh, but other times, there are other things Master does. He takes the cloth from his mirror and says magic words, and then waah! There are faces that show in it! Not Master’s own face, no, but the faces of other men like him, old men with beards, and their lips move as though they are talking to each other. I stare and stare to be sure I am seeing true, and Master stares and stares as though their faces make him hungry, and his lips move too, as though he is whispering their words to himself.

I wish I could creep closer to see and hear better, but I do not dare.

And then there is the clay jar that Miranda leaves outside his door during her blood-days. I do not know what is in it, but then I see Master take a thing from it with long tongs, a thing like a little stuffed sack, only it is soaked with blood, and the first time I see it, I make a sound so loud that Master puts down his tongs and comes to the door of the balcony to look, and I almost do not get away in time, leaping for the wall and climbing so fast, fast, fast to hide under the balcony.

There I crouch and cling to the stones of the wall, my arms and legs shaking, shakity-quakity, my heart going pound, pound, pound like a hare’s, my breath going in and out of my throat so loud, and I am scared because I think Master will hear; and I am scared because it is your blood that Master gathers, Miranda, the blood that comes from you after the moon is round since you are a woman.