Rough Magic (16 page)

She began to cry. It was ridiculous, this death. Why should she care about this island? She had betrayed her father and risked the peace of two nations so that she could die alone at the bottom of the sea in the belly of a great beast.

It was so preposterous, her tears turned to laughter. There was no joy in it, just a maddened, hysterical, rib-wrenching convulsion that stretched on and on until she was left breathless and drained. She stretched out on her back. The position made her think of Caliban and of staring at the stars. “I wish I could see you now,” she whispered.

She remembered the first time they had gone to the tower to watch the stars. He'd been stiff and formal because the queen had officially made him her teacher. She had wanted to tease him, to make him laugh and be her friend again, but because she loved him, she knew that would hurt him. His master's role hung about him like a poorly fitted cloak. So she was quiet and still and careful in her movements and speech. She'd been a bit shy, too, of course. She repeated everything he told her, committing it to memory. He was so wise, knew so much. She didn't want to seem a dunce.

But the times and positions of the stars had tangled in her mind. She had grown frustrated and flippant in their lessons. So Caliban told her the stories of the stars. His brothers, he called them. The heavens began to make sense. She learned the royal stars: Aldebaran, Rigel, Antares, Fomalhaut and Spica, all with their meanings and omens and portents.

Chiara repeated their names now, out loud, as though Caliban were here to praise her for learning them so well. In the dark they became familiar friends who could comfort her. But it was Sirius, the dogstar, she really loved. He was the first star she could recognize and remember. She admired his loyalty to Orion, the way he trotted across the heavens at the hunter's heel. Caliban loved him too, said that he was his closest brother, that they both had been born to serve.

Those words, unremarkable for so long, now jangled the chords of memory. Chiara frowned. The mermaid had said that Caliban was meant to be the island king. Her grandfather had kept him as a servant, instead. Chiara tried to imagine Caliban, who lived and walked in shadows and darkness, who bowed and toiled and kept his own council, as a king. He was nothing like her father, the King of Naples. Ferdinand was tall and strong and handsome. He strode in the sun, gave commands in a voice that echoed, demanded compliance. He moved at the center of his counselors, the axel in the wheel of state.

“He is sulfur to Caliban's mercury,” she muttered.

Moon-calf, quicksilver; Caliban was a creature of the night. No wonder he saw the stars as his brothers. Her mind wandered back to the old memories.

“Are you out there, dogstar?” she said into the darkness.

IV.vii.

Two of the Leviathan's heads lifted and looked at one another. “That would be an interesting way out,” one said.

“If she can do it,” the other replied. “Humans find it hard enough to reach the stars when they're staring right at them.”

“Hmm,” said the first head. It had a small beard on its chin and a more kindly look to its eyes. “I hope she makes it.”

“Small surprise,” snorted the second head. This one had red eyes in its black, dog-like face. It had a double row of teeth in its mouth, all of them sharpened like razors. “You always did have a soft spot for the wretched mortals.”

“They are our children, too,” the first head chided.

“Be quiet,” grumbled a third head with a horsey look to its countenance, complete with small pointed ears, long snout, and square teeth. “She mustn't hear us speak anymore. We'll spoil the trial.”

All the heads settled down upon one another, eyes drifting shut. But the first head stayed awake, listening to the struggle within.

It had always had a soft spot for the humans, after all.

He was the brightest star in their small sky. His rise heralded their lazy days of summer; the “dogdays,” after their foolish name for him. It amused him that this was how they saw him, those quick pale flashes of thought that flickered and fought and died so far from him. They did not even count him among their great stars, he who burned with a light more than twenty times that of their own little yellow sun.

It did not bother him. He knew his own greatness. It pleased him when one of the small ones reached out to him.

He could hear her calling him, seeking him out in the great expanse. It was the one his small brother loved. She was blind and distant, muffled somehow. She had talked to him for many years now, and he always replied, but she never listened. She had never tried to hear him before.

He could sense that she was trying to hear him now.

The darkness pressed against her face, but Chiara forced herself to stare through it, to let her mind travel out into the high heavens. “I am lost,” she whispered. “Dogstar, can you help me? Can you show me the way home?”

There, alone in the belly of the beast, Chiara saw the heavens spinning like a great wheel, spraying out fountains of light and life. The starry host danced its turning through the ages. Time ran around the clock, seasons around the year.

And Leviathan circled the world, his tail caught between his jaws.

“What does it mean?” wondered Chiara.

All journeys lead back to their beginning
, the heavens hummed.

“What's the sense of that?” Chiara said. “If you just end up where you started then nothing changes.”

You change. And that changes everything
.

“So what am I to do? Wander the length of Leviathan until I end up back in his jaws?”

Small thinking will not save you
.

“What will save me, then?” Chiara cried.

You must find the path within yourself and follow it.

“What path?”

The path that leads you where you've most wanted to go. Find the way, small one
.

The light spun in her mind, illuminating the desires of long ago, buried in the depths of memory. She was five, dancing in the palace garden with Caliban watching her, laughing. She was older, maybe seven, sitting in a carriage with her mother and wearing an impossibly stiff gown. The carriage slowed, and a small group of Romani children raced by, laughing, talking their wild, freewheeling speech. She was ten, and Caliban was showing her the skeleton of a dead gull. She remembered tracing the bones of the wings with her finger, wishing that these were her arms, that she could fly high and free. She was twelve, and had finally been permitted to read from the books in the castle's great library. She read all that she could find about Marco Polo and his travels, dreamed of walking the treacherous Silk Road herself.

Good.

Good? What did these memories do for her? The light pulsed through her brain. “I want to be free,” she said.

There were fountains, laughter, music in her mind.

Go then, small one. Be free.

The dark descended again, rolling through her mind. But it had lost its power to smother. She flipped over onto her belly, pulled up her skirt, and knotted it around her waist. On all fours, like a baby and with a baby's determination, she began to crawl. “This is the way out,” she said, with gritted teeth. “All ways are the way out, if I have the patience. That must be the answer.”

And she crawled. Time stretched out, the darkness went on, and still she crawled. She crawled for hours, crawled until her mind became as numb as her limbs. Then she slept, deep within the belly of the dragon. When she awoke she felt calm, as though her life were behind her, as though it were only a story she'd heard once long ago when she was a child.

Her crawling had not brought her any closer to freedom. It had been a ridiculous idea. Well, at least it had drained her fear away. Her troubles would soon be over, she was sure of it. There were moments when she could feel the weight of the world pressing down upon her. Her shield of magic was failing.

She would fail. Her soul would be taken by that hateful mermaid. The island would die. Caliban would die, alone, with the world slipping into decay around him.

It was that thought of him, of his pain and despair, that threw her back into life. She sat up, her legs tucked under her, her back straight, her hands resting loosely on her knees. This was how Caliban used to sit when he was thinking through an alchemical problem for her grandfather. He kept a small mat in a corner of his workroom where he would meditate his way through their next course of action. She'd gone looking for him there many times and had turned away when she saw him sitting, his gaze unfocused. He never responded when he was in that state.

The memory was painful. It brought back the sound of her grandfather's voice calling instructions from his chair; the smell of the herbs in the backroom; the feeling of the sunshine streaming in through the window, warming the table where Caliban did his work. Home.

She swallowed her tears and tried to remember what Caliban had told her about his meditation. He said that he would sit until everything grew still in his mind. Once he found that peace, then the answer he was seeking would be revealed. The results from these sessions had never impressed her. But the spell was growing thin around her. It was better to die while trying something.

It did not take long before she was chewing her nails in frustration. She'd always supposed that it would be easy to not think. It would be as simple as not moving. But her mind was full of noise and confusion. The more she tried to be still, the more her thoughts raged.

She hit the floor of her prison with her hands until they stung, cursing the beast as she did so. When she grew tired she sat back again. Her breathing slowed. She grew calm once more. She thought of nothing.

She did not notice when the shield fell.

“Temperamental creature,” remarked the horse head. “I don't think much of all that flailing.”

A green and purple scaled head lifted. It was the snakiest of them all, smooth and beautiful and deadly. It hissed in agreement. “Humans,” it said, “know nothing of patience. It comes from that warm blood of theirs. They can't sit still. They don't know how to wait.”

“It makes them tasty, though,” said the dog-like head, its eyes glowing sulfurously.

The horse head snorted in laughter.

The bearded head frowned. Gently it nuzzled at the book between their paws. A large head, armored with plates and horns, watched with interest. “You will be happy to give it to her,” it said.

The bearded one startled, then relaxed. They were similar, these two, in their interest in the younger creatures of the Earth. It was true that this other cared for the humans only because they mined the ground for the gold it loved so dearly. But it would not taunt him like some of the others.

“The island must be healed,” it replied. “We all agree to that.”

Something shifted. All the heads rose as one, tasting the change. “There is another,” the snake head hissed. “Do you feel her? She slips the bonds of magic even now.”

“This should be interesting,” the armored head said.

IV.viii.

The ship rested in the harbor, held fast in the chains of a spell that kept all the souls aboard asleep and content. Dreams were spun and woven for each one. A smile caressed every face.

Every face but one. Calypso, orphaned child of a Greek mother and a Turkish father and at home in no land, slipped loose from the knots of magic and awoke.

The silence of the ship made Calypso's skin prickle with fear. She gazed around at her slumbering comrades laid out upon the deck boards in a peaceful mock death. Rising, she moved swiftly among them, assuring herself that they were alive. She had been a sailor for two years now, could scarcely remember what it was like to sleep alone in a room of her own. The snores and grunts and mumbled phrases of the others were so familiar that she only noticed them now that they were gone. She was happy to quit their silent company and go out on deck.

The fog had lifted, but a steady grey drizzle fell. It crept under the collar of her shirt and turned her hair to wet wool. Calypso sensed that it was early morning. There was no telltale sun hovering low in the sky, but she knew the smell of daybreak.

She was thin, crafty with her hands, and she seldom spoke. Her eyes were dark and heavy lidded. People always said she looked as though she was hiding a secret. They were right. Her features were even, her skin smooth, but something about her face was neither male nor female. She was the ship's boy.

The island before her now was a dreary land; that much Calypso could see. But it beckoned to her. Its strangeness spoke to her in a way that no land ever had before. She had left Greece when she was eleven, after she was orphaned. She had not grieved. Her parents had done their best with her, but she grew up knowing that she was an intruder, that she had upset the cheerful rhythm of their life together. The notion hadn't bothered her. It didn't matter that she was just a visitor in their home. Her fate was somewhere far away. With their deaths, she had run to meet it. She had made herself a boy and gone to sea.

But her ruse could not continue. She was thirteen now, and womanhood was upon her. The small magic of illusion she wore had grown thin. Her body was still lean and muscled, but there was a new softness about her face where a boy should have the early shadowings of a beard. Her body was betraying her. She had started to feel suspicious eyes following her around the ship.

The storm had saved her. They had fought against the wind and waves for three days, resting in short shifts, often not sleeping at all. No one had had a moment to stare at her, to wonder aloud to his crew mate. They had simply shouted orders and relied on her skills to help save them all. In the fury of the storm, she was their brother once again.

Well, she was not their brother. And now this strange island offered her an escape. The dismal shore before her called out to something in her blood. Calypso stared at it nervously, the long fingers of her right hand raking the dark hair that hung in ragged chunks to her shoulders. Oddly, she was struck with the memory of watching her mother brushing her hair in the sunlight. She hadn't brushed her own hair in years. When it got too long, one of the other sailors cut it for her with his knife.