Miranda and Caliban(73)

I wish that I had been able to paint the image of the Lady Venus. I’ve learned ever so much more than when I first began. I would have made her dress the pale green hue of the sea below the white curl of a breaking wave when the sun shines on it. I would have made the golden locks of her hair graceful and flowing. Oh, I would have made her face so beautiful and kind.

But mayhap love is not always kind.

Ariel said as much to me once; and as much as the spirit meddles, I do not believe he lies.

There is kindness in my cruelty, he said, and cruelty in thy kindness.

Is it an unkindness I dealt Caliban after all? And yet I do love him dearly. And yet, and yet …

Oh, Lord God, I wish I could undo what I did.

I climb onto the stepping stool and begin painting fig leaves.





FORTY





CALIBAN


Miranda paints and paints.

I know it is true because she is gone to Master’s sanctum every day, and at night there are colors on the skin of her hands and fingers, but I do not spy because it is a promise I did make to her.

It is hard, oh, so very hard, not to look at her!

I want to look.

I want to speak.

I want to touch.

But I do not; only the littlest little bit when Master—Prospero—is not looking. We look, then; only look. Quick looks, as quick as little fishes in the stream.

It is like it was in the beginning.

Oh, I did love you from the beginning, Miranda.

In the beginning when I had no words, even before Master did summon me, I remember I did try to speak to you with my eyes and my hands; my eyes that did watch you from the walls of your garden, my hands that did bring you gifts.

Now there are only looks like whispers.

Are you?

Yes.

Do you?

Yes.

I love you, I say with my eyes.

I love you, I say with my rough hands that do gather wood, gather greens and tubers in the garden, gather eggs from the hens, gather milk from the goat’s teats, gather fishes from the stream and mussels from the rocks. I love you, I love you.

I gather flowers from the gardens and the fields, and put them on Miranda’s window-ledge when she is not there.

I love you, the flowers say.

Ariel, that Ariel, does frown at the flowers, but Master has said nothing to him of flowers.

So I leave flowers; spring flowers, then summer flowers. I gather the red and orange and yellow trumpet flowers, for a trumpet is a thing that makes a loud noise like a shout, and I tie their vines together and leave them to shout I love you in a row from Miranda’s window-ledge.

Soon, I think.

Soon.





FORTY-ONE





MIRANDA


Papa is consumed by his labors.

He pores over his charts, then paces his sanctum, muttering to himself. He concocts incenses and vanishes to perform private suffumigations upon himself, returning with his robes smelling of resins and herbs and acrid things. Betimes he banishes me from his sanctum that he might invoke the mirror’s magic and gaze into it. He eats little and sleeps less, up at all hours of the night.

He grows thin, the bones of his face becoming prominent and angular as his flesh dwindles, the joints of his hands and wrists emerging like knobs beneath his skin. The last of the grey vanishes from his hair and beard, leaving it as white as Ariel’s.

I paint at his bidding and obey him in every particular, because I am afraid to do otherwise.

The salamander in its brazier remains silent, watching me with its glittering ruby eyes.

The moon waxes and wanes; my woman’s courses come and go.

Papa bids Caliban to procure a white he-goat from amongst the wild goats that roam the isle. When Caliban succeeds, the goat is tethered in an abandoned garden where it bleats in protest all day long, until Papa is sufficiently irritated to silence it with a charm. It continues to bleat noiselessly, opening its muzzle to expose its curiously even and childlike teeth, its pink tongue protruding. Its amber eyes with their inhuman vertical pupils beg the empty skies for an answer.

I do not give the goat a name. Those days have long since passed. I have not named a hen since Bianca’s sacrifice, and I did not name Oriana’s replacement when she grew too old to give milk and was slaughtered and rendered into stew meat.

I fear for Papa’s health and wonder if he has begun to lose his wits. In the secret part of me where I think dreadful thoughts to which I dare not give voice, I wonder if it would not be so terrible if Papa were to perish with his great work undone. It is a vile thought unworthy of my filial loyalty and I am ashamed to think it; and yet, I do.

Once, I should have feared for my own survival were aught to befall Papa, but those days, too, are behind me. Caliban provides for most of our needs now, and he would be more than capable of providing for our survival if we were bereft of Papa’s presence. The elementals would not obey us; there would be no gnomes to till the gardens, no undines to fill the wells and make the fountains flow, but we could till the earth ourselves and fetch water from the stream.

We could make the isle our own Eden, Caliban and I.

Betimes it is a pleasant thought; betimes, a terrifying one. I have an inkling, now, of what it means for a woman to lie with a man as bride and bridegroom, and that I do not fear. Rather, I welcome it. And yet, what do I know of bearing children? Only that my own mother died of my birth, and that I suspect that like my woman’s courses, it is a bloody, messy business. I have not forgotten the Lord God’s injunction to Eve.