Miranda and Caliban(75)

On and on Master’s prayer goes until at last it is over, and I wait for something to happen.

Nothing does.

“Ariel!” Master calls. “Come, brave spirit!” And there is Ariel, whooshity-whoosh, coming all white and fluttering, like he has been waiting for this very moment for all of his life. “The hour is upon us, good Ariel!” Master says to him. “Do you recall all that I require of you? Are you prepared to do as I bade you?”

Ariel does bow. “I do and I am, Master.”

Master lifts up his staff. “Then fly, brave spirit; wreak my will, and earn your freedom in the bargain!”

Ariel laughs a high, wild laugh and leaps into the air, wind gathering beneath him. “I go, Master!”

My skin creeps and creeps.

Master watches him go, then gives me a dark look. “You have no further part to play in the events of the day. Hang the goat’s carcass in the garden outside the kitchen that its blood might drain, then be about your chores.”

I would like to cut his throat open. “Yes, Master.”

“Come,” he says to Miranda, giving her the smoke-trickling bowl on its chain to carry. “We are bound for the watchtower.”

Leave the goat and go, go, go, says the creepity feeling; but Miranda looks one last look behind her at me, and Master looks, too.

So I pick up the dead he-goat, which is very heavy, much heavier than a hare, and put it over my shoulders, holding it in place by its front and back legs. Its head hangs down and bounces when I walk and more blood comes from its white throat that is cut open in a wet red smile, getting on the skin of my arm and my chest. More blood gets on me in the garden when I tie its back legs together and hang it from the strong branch of an oak tree, hauling on the rope to lift it and tying knots in a hurry.

At last the dead goat hangs upside down, its tongue sticking out of its mouth. Its eyes are like balls of yellow-black glass and slow drops of blood fall from its cut throat onto the dust.

“Poor dumb monster,” I whisper to it; I do not know why. It is only a goat. “I am sorry.”

The upside-down goat with its stiff dead tongue says nothing. The wind is beginning to rise, strong enough to make the goat sway on its rope.

Setebos is calling me.

Go, go, go!

I run.





FORTY-THREE





MIRANDA


In the watchtower, Papa lowers the spyglass from his eye. “There!” he says in triumph, pointing. “Will you see?”

“If you would have me do so,” I murmur. He passes the spyglass to me. I transfer the chain of the thurible to my left hand and raise the spyglass to my own eye, following the line of his pointing finger.

Far out at sea, there is a ship. Unlike the poor faltering vessel which Caliban described when he told me of witnessing Papa’s and my arrival on the isle—a ship of which I have no memory—it is a beautiful thing, proud and graceful, riding the waves with majestic white sails bellied out with wind. Tiny figures swarm over the surface of it. For the first time, I well and truly understand that whatever Papa plans, there are human lives at stake, and dread grips my heart.

“What do you mean to do, Papa?” I whisper, lowering the spyglass.

“Watch and you shall see,” he says sternly. “But as you love your life, Miranda, disturb me not, for this working requires the whole of my attention.”

I nod in obedience. “Yes, Papa.”

Papa spreads his arms wide, his staff in his right hand. “Barchia!” he cries. “Bethel almoda, Hamar benabis, Zobaa marrach, Fide arrach, Samores maymon, Aczabi!” Although I have heard Papa chant the secret names of the seven governors many times, these are words unknown to me.

A wind springs up in answer, and I realize that Papa is summoning it. At first it is a light breeze and harmless-seeming, but as Papa continues to chant, the wind grows in intensity. It comes from every direction, swirling through every window of the watchtower.

The pale blue sky begins to darken as clouds gather.

The wind rises and rises.

The sea begins to turn angry, darkening in turn beneath the darkening sky. Gentle rolling swells are churned into peaks crested with white foam.

“Barchia, Bethel almoda, Hamar benabis, Zobaa marrach, Fide arrach, Samores maymon, Aczabi!”

Wind blows in buffeting gusts, the sound of it rising to a roar.

The sea is roiling and my stomach roils, too. Although I am hard-pressed to keep my feet in the gale, I manage to put the spyglass to my eye. The ship that was sailing so gracefully only moments ago is now pitching violently up and down as it climbs the peaks of waves which grow ever steeper and plunges into troughs that grow ever deeper. The tiny figures are scrambling in a frantic attempt to lower the sails. Overhead, lightning flickers in the depths of the dark, towering thunderheads; flickers and then strikes with a furious suddenness, jagged blue-white veins reaching for the churning sea. I stagger backward, dropping the chain of the thurible. The clang of the bowl’s falling is inaudible beneath the howling of the wind. The lid comes loose and coals scatter across the floor of the watchtower.

There is a crack of thunder so loud it seems my ears must burst to hear it. All my childhood terror of storms returns to me tenfold, and I should like nothing better than to run to my chamber and hide under my bed-linens.

But oh, dear Lord God, the ship and its poor inhabitants!