Miranda and Caliban(65)

The salamander blinks its jeweled eyes. “Promissse.”

Once, when Papa was in good spirits, I dared to ask him why he did not bind another fire elemental to serve in our kitchen hearth and spare us—or at least poor Caliban—the endless labor of gathering firewood; his reply was that the salamanders were the most dangerous and difficult to control of the elementals, and that our humble hearth was safer without one. I am not sure I should trust this one. It has spoken to me twice, and both times when I was in disobedience of Papa’s orders.

And yet it is a piece of cruelty that the salamander has been imprisoned in the brazier for these many long years, while the other elementals that serve Papa enjoy their freedom when they are not about his bidding.

I am ashamed that I did not think it before.

The notion that I might one day leave the isle seems a possibility as remote as the very stars and planets in their distant spheres, but if such a thing were to happen, surely it would be a simple act of kindness to ensure that the salamander—and indeed, all the elementals—were freed from whatever magic bound them.

“You’ll not burn me to cinders by way of thanks for setting you free?” I ask the salamander. I have grown more suspicious than the trusting child I was.

It laughs a hissing shower of sparks, and yet somehow there is a note of bitterness in the sound. “No.”

I take a deep breath. “Then yes, I promise it.”

The salamander’s eyes wink and sparkle like rubies. “Which quessstion will you asssk?” it says. “Choose wisely.”

Oh, it is so difficult to know! I think about the questions I posed, turning them over in my thoughts like rare shells to examine them, and it seems to me that some of my questions have already been answered in part. If I believe Caliban—and in my heart, I fear that I do—then I know what Papa saw in the mirror. I have an inkling of what is coming. And it seems to me, too, that the salamander sought to warn me; it knows only pieces of what Papa’s intentions are.

I should dearly like to ask the salamander if it knows how we came to the isle and from whence, but what if the answer is no? I would have made a bad bargain in exchange for my promise, then.

I hear Papa’s footsteps approaching in the hallway.

The flames surrounding the salamander in its brazier flare into urgent brightness. “Choose!”

Had I more time to consider, I might have chosen otherwise, but there is only one question to which I have not the slightest portion of an answer, and I ask it now in a hurried rush. “Oh, salamander! What magical working is it that Papa seeks to accomplish with the blood of my woman’s courses?”

It gives me another slow, deliberate blink; in approval? In disappointment? I cannot tell.

“A love ssspell,” the salamander says. “To ensssnare a king’s ssson.”





THIRTY-FIVE

In the earliest days of my affliction, I was dumbstruck. I had no understanding of what had befallen me, only the terrified realization that something was very wrong and my world had changed forever.

Thus do I feel today. The salamander’s revelation is one too many for my wits to encompass. Once again, my world has changed and I no longer comprehend my place in it.

A brother.

A king.

A king’s son and a love spell.

How is it that such things might come to be here on our lonely isle? I cannot fathom it. And yet ’twas ever true that there was a secret goal toward which Papa plied his arts.

It is why he summoned Caliban, that he might learn the name by which Sycorax imprisoned Ariel.

It is why he freed Ariel from the great pine and bound him to his service.

It is why he charts the skies, why he encouraged my budding talent for illustration, why I paint at his bidding. And today he bade me render an image of the Lady Venus herself, Venus who is the very Queen of Love among the seven governors.

I do my best to comply, but my thoughts are as scattered as a handful of petals tossed to the wind, blown hither and thither and yon. My hands shake and refuse to obey me as though I have been afflicted anew, and my brushstrokes, that had grown so sure and joyful, become clumsy and crude.

Why a love spell?

Even in the privacy of my own thoughts, I fear to speculate.

The initial lineaments of my Venus depict a poor, botched thing lacking all semblance of grace and beauty. Mercifully, Papa attributes my failure to the shock of finding all my prior work vanished beneath a thick coating of fresh white-wash.

“Forgive me, child,” he says at the end of the day. “I should have known you would take it amiss and thought to forewarn you.” He gives me a kind smile. “I’ll not be remiss the next time.”

I clasp my hands before me to hide their trembling. “Thank you, Papa. With your permission, I’ll take time to gather my thoughts and offer prayers to Lady Venus ere I begin tomorrow.”

Papa casts a wry glance at my ungainly strokes on the wall. “I think that would be wise.”

Papa.

Prospero.

It is as though he has become a stranger to me. Although my knowledge is far from complete, I now know secrets that he did not divulge to me; did not wish divulged to me. If ’tis true that any knowledge of his purpose on my part will taint our working, well, then, the damage is done, and I do not know if that should be a source of abiding shame or relief to me.

Both, mayhap.