Miranda and Caliban(76)

Papa’s tone shifts, and the wind shifts with it, gathering in the west in accordance to his will.

Lightning flashes and thunder booms. The heavens unloose a pelting rain that comes sideways through the west window of the watchtower. I wipe my face with the sleeve of my gown and look through the spyglass. Enwreathed in strange flames, the ship is being driven by the wind, driven straight for the isle; straight for its rocky shoals. When that happens, I think every man aboard the ship will perish.

This is the great working to which I have contributed.

I cannot bear it.

“Papa, please!” I catch his arm. Tears streak my face, erased by the rain. “Please, do not do this!”

He turns his face toward me and his expression is terrible. Rain plasters his hair to his head; wind lashes his beard into tatters. “Did I not bid you not to disturb me?” He grasps my amulet in his left hand and gestures in my direction as though to swat a fly. “Leave be, Miranda!”

My muscles seize in response to his admonition and pain assails every part of me.

My legs give way beneath me and I fall to the floor of the watchtower, the spyglass tumbling from my hand. A lone coal from the thurible, miraculously unextinguished by the rain, burns through my yellow gown to sear the flesh of my hip. It is the least of my hurts.

Ignoring me, Papa resumes his chant.

The storm rages on.





FORTY-FOUR





CALIBAN


Oh, oh, oh! Master has raised such a storm!

I try to reach the high place before it comes, but it is too far; I am fast, but not fast enough to outrun a storm. I am only beginning to climb when the rain comes.

It is bad, but it is not so very bad. The rain makes the rocks slippity-slidey under my fingers and toes, but then I am very good at climbing and the rocks keep away the worstest of the wind that blows so hard from the west.

I do not care about the thunder and lightning. Setebos will protect me, and this storm is not meant for me, not like when that Ariel did make himself a storm above my head.

No, this storm is for the men who are coming.

It is dark, though; so dark it does not seem like day anymore. The sun has answered Master’s prayers by hiding his face away. I have never seen such clouds! Lightning flashes when I reach the high place and I see Setebos laughing against the sky, ha-ha!

Now the wind is so strong it is hard to walk. I creepity-creep on my feet and hands like when I was little.

I am breathing hard, so I rest for a moment under Setebos’s jaws. Here the wind and the rain cannot reach me so much; oh, but there are voices in the howling wind, and I must see. And so I leave Setebos and creep in the very face of the wind to the edge of the cliff and lay myself flat to look over it.

Waah!

There is a ship and it is close, so close! The sea is boiling like water in a pot and the ship is tossed all about.

Lightning does strike it and it burns with blue-white flames; burns on the tall poles, burns in the ropes and sails. Men run about here and there, and their voices are like tiny gnat voices crying in the storm.

Does Master—that is Prospero—mean to kill them all, I wonder? If it is so, my plan is lost.

Thunder sounds like rocks breaking. The rain puts my wet hair in my eyes so I cannot see.

I push it back.

Big waves, the biggest waves, crash and crash on the jaggedy rocks below me. On the ship the blue-white fire leaps from place to place, joining itself to itself like ropes of cracklety lightning.

But lightning does not burn so, and I think to myself: Ariel.

Ariel is in the storm.

“All is lost!” says a voice from the ship. “Mercy on us! We are wrecked! Save yourselves!”

Oh, that is no human voice that could make itself heard in such a storm, no. Only Ariel. What game is this?

“Do not listen to him!” I shout into the wind. “Do not trust him!”

Oh, but I am far away, poor dumb monster; I almost cannot hear my own voice. Little figures like ants jump from the ship, jump into the boiling sea, one; one, two, three, four; one, two.

I think they will drown, but no, there is Ariel, a great whooshity darkness sweeping down like wings out of the storm. One he carries away, whoosh-whoosh; and then the four, whooshity-whoosh, he carries them away far away to different places on the isle where I cannot see.

The ship does not crash on the rocks, but spins in a circle. There is no more blue-white fire on it.

Little gnat voices cry.

The wind shifts and whoosh, there is Ariel again, a great looming thing of storm-clouds, taller than trees, raising the waves and carrying the ship, the whole ship, away to the south.

I am holding my breath.

I let it out.

The rain stops.

The wind stops.

I push my wet hair out of my eyes and look over the cliff. There are still two men in the water. One is swimming, swimming strong toward the shore. One is holding on to a wooden thing that floats and kicking his feet.

I did think to seek out Master’s enemies, but now I think those are the men that Ariel did save his own self; and he will be watching over them. I do not know why, but these two in the water do not matter to him. If these are men Ariel does not care to save, that Prospero has not bidden him to save, these are the men I need to do what my own hands cannot.

I go to find them.





FORTY-FIVE