Rough Magic (20 page)

He broke off. She was staring at him, her pupils expanding in her eyes. Black eyes. His mother's eyes: mad and dangerous.

“Caliban,” she said. “Caliban. Ban, Ban, Caliban.”

“That's right, Calypso, it's me,” he said, desperately trying to win the girl back.

“My son is Caliban,” she said. She was speaking the language of his childhood once more, her eyes narrow slits of suspicion. “Who are you that has stolen my son's name from him? Give it back, wretch, give it back!”

“No, Calypso, no!” he cried, but he could not stop her. She raised the staff and blasted him backwards, throwing him against a rock with such power that he felt a rib crack. Pain shot through him. Fire chased the air into his lungs and boiled it there before letting it sear its way back out. “Calypso,” he croaked, “you must remember yourself. You are Calypso, whatever the staff tells you. You are Calypso.”

She stared at him, her face twisting, wrenched by the two minds warring within her.

“Tell her, Calypso,” he gasped. “Tell her that I am her son, full grown now, a man. Tell her she died and I grew up. Tell her, Calypso.”

He didn't know if Calypso could do what he asked. He just knew that his mother would not harm him. She had died to protect him.

“Full grown,” said the Sycorax face. She crawled toward him, grating the staff against the ground. Finally she reached him. “Full grown,” she said again, reaching out to him with her left hand and touching his hair. “Hair like a ginger cat's,” she said. “My Caliban.” She stroked his face tenderly. “You're hurt,” she said, suddenly puzzled.

“Yes,” he replied. The word twisted strangely in his mouth. It felt as though each breath he took was tearing him apart.

“You can't be hurt,” she said. She touched him with the staff 's tip. Warmth rushed through him, soothing and sudden, warmth that caught the burning pain and swallowed it. In an instant the air that he drew in cooled his lungs. This was the mother he remembered. The mother who tried to be kind, no matter how fiercely her madness held her. He sat up.

Her face was gray. “You've drained yourself,” he said, suddenly afraid. “You must rest, Calypso.”

“Yes,” she answered, slumping to the ground. He lifted her in his arms, folding the staff across her body. She was light, but he still staggered as he carried her. He took her into the hut and laid her upon Miranda's old bed, the one that he had slept in only last night.

She looked up at him. “That's better,” she said. Her eyes closed. “Caliban,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Stop calling me by that silly name.”

He struggled to speak through the tightening in his throat. “Yes, mother,” he whispered.

He sat down on the other bed and watched her. She was restless, twitching and muttering to herself in her sleep. Three times during the hour she startled full awake, each time soothed back to sleep by Caliban. Twice she was Sycorax, once Calypso. Every time she was frightened. “Caliban?” she would call. He would stroke her forehead and whisper that all was well, that all would be well.

He convinced her, at last. She fell into a deeper sleep, her breathing calm and regular.

He was not so easily comforted. He sat upon the bed, rubbing the palms of his hands against his temples. He was hungry again, but he was afraid to leave her. Ariel might be nearby, just waiting to bind her beyond his care.

He left the hut and went out to the fire. It was nothing but coals now. He fed it some more wood. The smoke made him dizzy. He needed food. Grimly he cast a sheltering spell over the hut. He must protect Calypso, whatever he felt about magic. There was a taste of metal in his mouth. That always came with spellcasting. It was sour and unnatural and he hated it.

He shook his head and left, swiftly, to forage for food. He was back within the hour, carrying fish, mushrooms, some plants, and his old cooking kettle, rescued from his cave. At a nearby spring he filled it with water. He had done this very thing thousands of times, making food for Prospero and Miranda. Well, now he would feed himself. And he would feed his niece. And then, somehow, he would cure her. He set about making a stew. It had just begun to bubble and give off a faint savory smell when Calypso awoke.

She screamed. It was shrill, panicked, the cry of someone waking into a nightmare. He was by her side in an instant. She was sitting upright, flailing with her right arm, trying to shake the staff from her hand.

“Shhh, Calypso, you're well, all will be well,” he said, over and over, holding her. Finally her eyes cleared and she slumped forward, cradling the staff and her wooden hand against her heart.

“No, Caliban,” she croaked. She lifted her eyes to his. “I be never well now, I think.”

“Yes, you will,” he insisted. “Come now and eat. You need to be strong.”

She shuffled out with him, leaning heavily on his arm as they walked. The sunlight made her squint. He helped her sit on a rock. She held the staff away from herself, letting it hang and drag behind her. Caliban poured some stew into one of the wooden bowls left behind by Prospero. He sat beside her and placed an old spoon in her left hand. The awkwardness of eating brought fresh tears to her eyes. “Nevermind,” he said, softly, “it's only for a little while.”

Calypso must have been famished. She ate three bowls of the stew. When she finished the third, she slid down to the ground and rested her back against the rock. Caliban ate the rest, right out of the cooking kettle. He didn't want her to see how little was left for him. It didn't matter, anyway. He could make more later, when she slept again.

For the longest time they sat in silence, Calypso staring into the flames of the fire, Caliban watching her from beneath his lowered eyelids. He was grateful that Sycorax was gone. He hoped she would stay away.

Finally she looked up at him. “Tell me. This princess,” she said, “she went into the water, yes?”

“Chiara,” he said. He had forgotten about her. How could he have forgotten about Chiara? Grief and fatigue washed over him, compounded now by guilt. The emotions threatened to drown him. Only he was not drowned; Chiara was. “She was my daughter,” he said.

“This I never know,” Calypso said. “I think…people, they say she was princess, but no?” she added.

He shrugged. “She was,” he said, “but she was an unusual child, and they often left her to my care. So she was mine, you see, no matter who her parents were.” As he spoke he saw Chiara's seven-year-old face looking up at him, while she held out a baby bird. “Help me find its nest, Caliban,” she'd said. “I don't want one of the cats to get it.”

“Tell me about my sister,” Caliban said. “Your mother, I mean. Tell me about her.”

Calypso leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Caliban wondered if she was going to answer at all, when she said, “She always afraid. Always. She never left house. People, they see her…” She touched her forehead, searching for the word. “Her burn? This thing you make with the hot metal.”

He shivered, understanding. “Her brand,” he said, softly.

“Yes, this is it. Her brand. She think the people throw their rocks at her, like when she be a young girl.”

Children had thrown rocks at him too, when he first had gone to Milan with Prospero. Before he realized how strange he looked. But he had never been afraid, only angry. The stars were his brothers. He had nothing to be ashamed of, back then.

Not like now.

“What did she love?” he asked, forcing his mind back to his unknown sister.

“My father,” she replied instantly. Then she thought longer. “She love the snakes.”

“Snakes?” he asked.

“Yes, also the ones that bite. She never let snakes be hurt, never. She talk to them. They sit on the rocks in the sun and she stand in the door, and she talk to them. She name them. The snakes, they be her one friends, I think.”

He smiled. He had always liked snakes himself, their strong sinuous grace and speed, their darting tongues. He had kept one in the palace, until Prospero learned of it. The old man hated them. He had to set it free. Chiara had come with him. He remembered her holding the long, black snake gently in her hands as it wound itself around her arm and between her fingers. She stroked its back and then set it on the ground. It had lain there for a moment, tasting the air before it flashed away. “They never look back, do they, Caliban,” she had said, wistfully. “No,” he'd told her, “they live only in the moment. They don't remember.” She had looked thoughtful then, and chewed on the tip of her braid. “Too bad for the snakes,” she'd said.

“She love me, too,” Calypso whispered.

“She never knew you,” Caliban said, until he realized she meant her mother, and not Chiara. “Oh. My sister. Of course she loved you.”

“She wish I had not the magic. She said it was gift-curse.” She looked down at her hand. Caliban saw her flinch.

“Because of Sycorax, my mother. Her mother,” he added. “I hate magic, too. I refused to use the staff when she died, because of what it did to her.”

It was a dangerous comment to make. Calypso turned her face away, her body trembling. “I'm sorry, Calypso,” he said, immediately. “I shouldn't have said that.”

“Why?” she said, turning back to him. It was his mother's haggard face once more, speaking fluently in her own tongue. “You are right, Caliban. My magic destroyed me and everyone I loved. Except your father, of course.” Then she began to laugh and sob at once, folding her left hand over her head and pressing her face against her chest, smothering her cries.

Caliban did not know what to do. If he called back Calypso, he would lose this chance to finally learn about his father. There was no Setebos. He had never been the son of a god. He'd faced that truth long ago. Perhaps now he could learn the truth.

But he could not let Calypso be swallowed up by Sycorax. He could not loose that madness on the island again. “Calypso,” he said, reaching out to the girl, stilling her shaking shoulders with the heaviness of his hand. “Calypso,” he said, “you are stronger than she is. She is dead and you are alive, Calypso. You rule yourself.”

Her sobs grew quiet. Finally she lifted her head. Calypso was restored. For now.

V.v.

The deeps were quiet. Leviathan lay awake, but all of the heads were silent. Finally the central head spoke. “It is the third day,” it said.

The horse head snorted softly, but said nothing.

“The third day,” the goat head said. “The day life came to be. Resurrection day. The day of the triple goddess, of the three-part god.”

“The day we finally get to eat,” hissed the serpent head.

“And about time, too,” the dog head laughed, barking in agreement.

The bearded head lifted and tilted to one side, as though listening. “I'd say not. There's life in her still.”

“She may survive the trial,” the horse head said.

“I hope so,” grunted the armored head. “We haven't had a successful trial for over a thousand years, as the small ones count time. It gets dull.”

“Successful!” the dog head sneered. “She's still a long way from success.”

“Not as long as we may think,” the central head whispered. “Listen. She grows wise.”

They all looked within themselves. Even the serpent's mind began to feel the glow of excitement.

Chiara thought of nothing and knew everything. Her heart's pulse was that of the stars. She was caught up in the breath of the universe, part of its joyous exhalation.

“I am nothing,” she thought. “I am everywhere. I am not afraid anymore.”

“Really?” said the Leviathan. “Do you not fear the burn of our body digesting you? Do you not fear the weight of water crushing your bones once we have spat them out? Do you not fear having your eternal soul kept here, imprisoned in this dark and airless place?”

Chiara felt her way through the questions. “I do not,” she said at last. She marveled at the truth of her answer.

Leviathan laughed. “Shall we believe, then,” it said, “that you do not long to see the sun once more? That you do not yearn to walk freely again, to feel the arms of your beloved around you, to grow and live and taste the world? Do you truly not desire the richness of a full life?”

Chiara sifted the words of the Leviathan through her mind and heart. They fell away, husks of dreams that were no longer her own, pale and shallow against the great gasp of life she had just seen. What was the warmth of one small sun to her now? She was sister to the stars. She did not need life. She was life.

“I do not,” she said. She was not even amazed at her own words. She feared nothing, she wanted nothing. She simply was.

Light blossomed in her mind, the light of the Leviathan, the light of the universe's core.

—
You are our child now
, the light said to her.

“Yes,” she agreed. And then she added, “But I don't really know what that means.”

—
Babies never do
, the light laughed.

“Babies?” she said.

—
You are to be reborn, Chiara. You have passed the guardians and found the treasure.

“I have only found myself,” she said.

—
Then you have found everything.

She spun around, was pressed on all sides. Her mind shrank in on itself. She felt herself swept along in a current of light and confusion. There was pain, too, but most of it was not hers. It was the pain of birth.

And then she was surrounded by water once more. Before she could think, a scaly arm reached out and broought her gently before the faces of the Leviathan. She smiled at them, amazed that they were ever terrifying to her.

For a long time they regarded one another. She smiled at the differences among the heads, heard their unique voices in her mind. They were surprised, even pleased. She looked down and was amazed to see that she was still herself, human and small. “I thought I'd become a dragon,” she said.