Miranda and Caliban Read online

  At last I rise from my sleepless pallet. The spring night is cool and the moonlit tiles are cold beneath my bare feet. Caliban’s cell and the gallery above it are forbidden to me, so I steal into the garden outside my chamber and through the unlocked gate.

  In daylight, I should have no trouble making my way across the palace grounds to Caliban’s cell, but everything is strange and unfamiliar in the bright moonlight. All the sharp-edged shadows point the wrong direction. I get turned about in the cypress garden, and wander into the next garden with its maze of hedges by mistake.

  For a moment I panic. My heartbeat quickens and I blunder into the unruly evergreen bushes, my robe snagging on their prickly branches. I begin to fear I shall have to wait until dawn to find my way out, and that Papa will know.

  I shall be punished for it.

  And Caliban … I fear he may suffer for my disobedience.

  Closing my eyes, I offer a prayer to the moon. “May God bless you, O Blessed Lady Moon,” I whisper. “Fortunate one, cold and lovely and shining, I beg you to guide my steps!”

  The act of prayer calms me. The gracious Lady Moon helped Papa summon Caliban. Surely she will help guide me to him. When I open my eyes, the silvery light seems kinder and I remember that I have wandered this maze a hundred times, and it holds no mysteries for me. I have made a game of it to teach Caliban directions. I see moonlight glinting on the dome of the cunning little temple that lies at the heart of the maze, and I know where I am, only two turns within the northern entrance. I begin to count the turns to the southern exit: Left, left, right, left, left, left, right, left, right, right.

  Even so, it is a relief when I stumble free of it at last and backtrack to my destination.

  There is no gate into the little garden outside Caliban’s cell, but there are gaps in the walls. I clamber over one of them, awkward in my robes, bruising my shins on the rough outcroppings of stone. I think ruefully of the days when I would catch glimpses of Caliban crouching on the walls of my own chamber-garden, and I wish I had his gift for leaping and climbing.

  To be sure, Caliban will catch no such glimpse of me tonight. The entrance to his chamber remains blocked; but there are chinks between the great squares of stone that block it. I creep across the garden, holding the skirts of my robe so that they do not trail in the cold dew, and find such a chink.

  You are to have no communication with him during this time, Miranda.

  That is what Papa said.

  I am disobeying him.

  As Caliban would say, I am bad.

  But mayhap … mayhap if it is only me that speaks, it cannot be considered true communication?

  I put my lips to a narrow opening in the stone blocks and call out softly. “Caliban? Caliban, can you hear me?” I wait for a moment until I think I hear the faint sound of movement inside his cell. “Caliban, it’s me, Miranda. Listen and say nothing.” Thinking, I choose my words with care. “I am sorry, but you must tell Papa the bad name tomorrow, Caliban.” My heart feels squeezed in my chest. “You must! For one way or another, he will have it from you. And if you do not tell him willingly…”

  Oh, I wish I could see him, to judge how much he understands! I may have said too much already.

  Inside there is only silence; but that is what I asked of him.

  “Please, Caliban,” I whisper into the dark chink between the stone. There are tears in my voice. “Please? If you will not do it for yourself, do it for me. Do it because I beg you. Just tell Papa—Master—the name.”

  Silence.

  A part of me wants to shout to the heavens, wants to pound upon the stone with my fists. It wants to be certain that Caliban has been roused and has heard me; to hear him respond and know he understood. It is disobedient and brave, that part of me. But it is also the smaller part of me.

  The greater part of me has dared as much as it might for one night.

  Gathering up my robes, I steal back to my chamber where I lie sleepless and await the dawn.

  ELEVEN

  CALIBAN

  What is a lie?

  I think, I think … to lie is to say a thing that is not. Or to say a thing is when it is not.

  To say, I do not know, when I do know.

  That is a lie.

  A lie is bad.

  Caliban is bad.

  But, but, but, but, but … why? Why is it bad? Because Master says it is bad? But it is a bad thing to say the name, too.

  I do not want to say it.

  But I want to be free. I want sun and sky and grass.

  I want Miranda.

  I do not want to be alone. I am angry. I do not want to be angry. Oh, but I am.

  You shall have three days, Master says. You shall have water, but no food, Master says.

  Ha!

  Master lies.

  There are lizards; lovely little lizzy-lizards, one, two, three. Lizards are green. Little green lizards on the walls, creepity, creepity, skritch, skritch, skritch. Lizards are fast but I am faster. I jump and climb and catch them. Blood goes squish, squish and little bones go crunch, crunch, crunch in my teeth.

  But one day is long.

  Two days is longer.

  I make marks on the wall. One day, two days. Where is Miranda?

  Three days.

  No lizards today. Today I am hungry. Today my belly hurts. I drink water. Today is a very, very long time.

  At night Miranda comes. I am sleeping, but I hear her voice and I wake. Miranda’s voice comes from the rocks. I go to the rocks and put my hands and face against them. Miranda talks through the rocks and says, listen and say nothing.

  I am good.

  I say nothing.

  Miranda says, I am sorry. Miranda says, you must tell Master the bad name tomorrow. I listen.

  Miranda says, please. Her voice is afraid and sad. Please, Caliban. Please.

  I listen.

  Miranda goes away.

  The moon is in the window. I look at it and think. The moon is high and round and bright.

  The moon is good.

  I am not angry. I am sad, too. Why? Because Miranda is sad. Because my belly hurts. The name is like a stone in my belly. Ariel is in the pine tree. Ariel is not nice, but Ariel wants to be free. I want to be free, too. I do not want to be hungry. I do not want Miranda to be afraid and sad.

  The moon goes away, and I am alone in the dark.

  I do not sleep.

  In the morning, Master comes and opens the door. Miranda is beside him. She is little and he is big. Miranda’s eyes are red.

  Well, Master says, using his deep voice. Have you something this time to something something?

  I look at him.

  He looks at me.

  Is a name bad because Master says it is bad? Is God good because Master says God is good?

  I do not know.

  I am tired and hungry. Miranda is sad and afraid. The name that is like a stone in my belly is heavy.

  Master waits.

  I say the name: “Setebos.”

  TWELVE

  MIRANDA

  “Setebos.” Papa echoes Caliban in a thoughtful tone. I do not like the sound of the word. There is a kind of darkness to it that gives me a feeling like reaching under a rotten log crawling with grubs. But Papa is pleased, and smiles at Caliban. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it, lad?”

  Caliban says nothing. His shoulders are hunched and his eyes are dark and watchful beneath the coarse hair that falls over them, and I cannot tell what he is thinking. It seems to me that something has changed in him, but I do not know what. There is a stillness to him that was not there before.

  If it is so, Papa does not notice. His face has a faraway look, and I know that in his thoughts, he is already in his sanctum, poring over his books of magic. “Well done, lad,” he says absently. “Miranda, see that he’s fed.”

  “Yes, Papa,” I say.

  In the kitchen, Caliban sits at the table and eats journey-cakes and boiled eggs that I peel for him. There is a
silence between us that feels strange, but I do not know how to breach it.

  Does he understand that he lied to me?

  Does he know that I betrayed him to Papa for doing so?

  I do not know.

  “What shall Caliban and Miranda do today?” I say at last, falling back on familiar ground. “Shall we gather mushrooms? Catch fish?”

  “Mussshhrooms, yes.” Caliban rolls the word around in his mouth as though he is taking pleasure in the taste of it. “Now is good for mussshhrooms.”

  It restores a measure of ease between us.

  I fetch a cloth bag that I have sewn out of the remnants of robes that Papa cut down to size for me, with a long strap that I might sling over my shoulder, and Caliban and I set out to forage.

  I think that we will go to the pine woods to the south where Caliban has found mushrooms flourishing in hidden places in the damp pine mast before, but he heads northwest toward the rocky crags above the palace. He sets a quick pace and I struggle to keep up.

  Airy sylphs trail after us, drifting effortlessly on the spring breeze.

  “Caliban?” I am half breathless. “Where are we going?”

  He slows. “A place.”

  “Is it your place?”

  When I asked before, he pretended not to understand, but today is different. He nods. “Yes.”

  It is a long, hard climb; not for Caliban, who clambers agilely over the rocks using hands and feet alike, but for me. The rocks are dark and jagged. Caliban pauses often to help me, tugging me by the hand. Near the top, there is a cave, tucked away on the leeside of the wind. It smells of old bones and rotting fruit, both of which are strewn about the floor of the cave. Toward the back, there is a nest of fabric grown so dark with filth that its pattern can no longer be seen.

  “You lived here,” I say.

  Caliban nods.

  Squatting on his haunches, he rummages in the folds of dirty fabric. He brings out tarnished metal objects studded with jewels: a cup, a plate, a thing with a handle that I do not recognize. It catches the light and reflects it.

  “See?” Caliban angles it my way. “See?”

  I see a strange face in its surface and catch my breath, scuttling backward crab-wise on my feet and buttocks and hands in startlement. “Oh!”

  Caliban laughs and presses the object into my hand. “See you, Miranda!”

  I peer at it.

  A face peers back at me. My face? It is a thing I have only glimpsed in the dim, wavering reflections of streams and ponds, framed with golden hair. I scowl and the face in the surface scowls back at me.

  I thrust out my tongue.

  So does the face.

  Caliban leans his head beside mine, and then there we are, both of us, fair and dark. His eyes are bright with mirth. Mine are blue, blinking and uncertain. Somewhere in the back of my thoughts, my mind forms the word mirror. Caliban and I press our heads close together, scowl and thrust out our tongues, both of us, and watch our faces do the same, then dissolve into a fit of giggles, falling against each other.

  “These were Umm’s things?” I ask.

  “Yes. Before.” Caliban’s expression turns serious. “Now this is Miranda’s.”

  “Oh, no!” I try to give the mirror back to him, but he will not take it. “Now it is yours, Caliban.”

  “No.” There is a note at once stubborn and pleading in his voice. “Now it is Miranda’s.” He pauses, gathering his words. “I lie. I make Master angry. I make you sad. I am sorry.”

  So he does understand the notion of a lie. Mayhap Papa’s stern method of teaching is more effective than my gentler one after all. I look down, then back up at him. “I am sorry, too. But why did you lie? Was it because you did not want Ariel to be free?”

  He frowns in thought. “Yes. But not only.” Bounding to his feet, he beckons to me. “Come.”

  I tuck the mirror away in my bag and follow him. There is a narrow path that leads to the top of the crag. Using hands and feet alike, I manage to make my way to the peak. The wind is strong and buffeting. Although we are high above it, we are near the seashore and far below, waves beat against the rocks.

  Atop the crag, there is a monstrous thing. Immense jaws rear out of the very rock, cutting semicircles in the sky. The jaws stand twice again as high as I do, and are lined with jagged teeth, each one bigger than my hand.

  I do not know what to make of it. It looks like a skull made of stone, brown and stained; but a skull of what? Something huge and terrifying.

  “Setebos,” Caliban says with reverence.

  Fist-sized rocks flecked with mica glint in the hollows of its eyes. The grinning jaws gape as though to take a bite out of the sky. I find myself backing away from it. “Caliban … no. This is bad! Surely it must be!”

  “Why?” His face is as innocent as the dawn. “Because Master says? But Master wants the name. I do not want to give it because it is mine.” He strokes the bony rock. “Setebos watches.”

  I shudder. “Watches what?”

  “You.” Caliban squats with careless ease beneath the shadow of the great jaws and points out to sea. “You and Master. Setebos watches you come. I watch, too.”

  Curiosity pricks me hard, hard enough that I forget to be afraid of the monstrous skull. “What do you mean?”

  “I watch you and Master come over the water.” He mimes a floating motion with one hand.

  “When?” The word comes out in a whisper.

  Caliban shrugs. “I do not know. One, two, three … four springs ago? Five?”

  “You are sure you saw us?”

  “I watch you, Miranda.” He sounds patient, the way I sound when I am trying to make him understand something especially difficult. “Yes.”

  It is true, then.

  It should not shock me so to learn it. I have long wondered, have I not? I have dreamed of the stone house with pictures on the walls and the ladies with soft hands and soft cheeks who sang me to sleep. I have even wondered if Caliban remembered Papa’s and my arrival on the island. And yet it does shock me. This should be a thing I learn from Papa’s lips as he takes me into his full confidence at last, telling me who we are—or who we were—and how we came to be here. It should not be a thing I learn from Caliban atop a windswept crag, beneath the looming shadow of a monster’s bones.

  An unexpected sob catches in my throat.

  “Miranda?” Caliban rises, his voice filled with concern. He furrows his brow. “I make you sad?”

  “No.” I swallow my tears and summon a smile for him. It is not his fault. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me.” He nods and drops back to his haunches, busying himself with rearranging rocks and shells that are strewn on the rocky ground around the monstrous skull. With a creeping sense of horror, I realize that he must have gathered and placed them there in tribute over the years. “Caliban, do you remember anything else about when Papa and I came to the isle?”

  He shakes his head, but I cannot tell if it means he cannot remember or doesn’t want to say.

  I have upset him without meaning to. “No mind,” I say. “This place … did you live here before we came?”

  “Some days,” he says without looking up from his labor. “I find after Umm is dead. After I find her.”

  “After you—” I pause, the meaning of his words sinking in. I was so proud of myself for using the occasion of the hen Nunzia’s fate to explain death, I never thought to question how readily Caliban accepted the fact that his mother was dead. My throat feels tight. “You found Umm? Dead?”

  He nods. “After Ariel is in the tree. One day Umm does not come and does not come. The tomorrow day I look for her. I find her.”

  My heart aches for him. “Oh, Caliban! I’m sorry.” Kneeling beside him, I hug him as I should like to be hugged, but he tenses and I release him, fearful that if he resists, Papa’s spell shall be invoked. A terrible thought comes to me. “Caliban, where did you find Umm? In the palace?”

  “Yes.” He looks up. “In Master’s
big room where Caliban and Miranda may not go.”

  Papa’s sanctum.

  I shiver. “She’s not … still there, is she?”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Do you know what happened to her body?” I ask. “Do you know where Umm is now?”

  “Master put her in the ground,” he says. “I watch.” His gaze searches my face. “Is that why Umm is not in the sky with God, Miranda? Because Master put her in the ground?”

  It feels as though this conversation has grown too big and adult and complicated for me. “No,” I say to him. “No, it is not because of that. But is that why you hid from Papa and me and came to live here every day?” I ask gently. “Because you saw Papa put Umm in the ground? Is that why you hid for so long?”

  “No.” Caliban frowns down at his rocks and shells, his shoulders hunched. “I do not know.”

  I do not press him. It is enough, more than enough, to learn in one day. I want to be gone from this stony crag perched high above the sea and its strange and fearsome watcher.

  “No mind,” I say again, making my voice bright and cheerful. “Thank you for bringing me here, Caliban. But we should go find mushrooms before it grows too late in the day.”

  He places one last stone before rising, his haunted gaze meeting mine. “Will you tell Master?”

  I should.

  I should tell Papa all of it, and most especially I should tell him about this monstrous thing rearing out of the rock that Caliban has been worshipping in place of the Lord God Himself.

  And what would Papa do?

  I fear he might perceive in it a violation of the terms of the promise he made me and take it as some fresh reason to punish Caliban or deprive him of his reason. I do not want to grieve Papa and I am not wise enough to argue with him, but I cannot help but feel in my bones that that would be unfair. After all, Caliban knew no better. He knew only what his mother taught him; and that half remembered at best. Whatever deviltry Sycorax practiced, I cannot imagine it involved placing pretty pebbles and seashells around this terrible stone monster.