Rough Magic (7 page)

Swiftly Caliban stood. His vision blurred with hot, angry tears. He clutched the dead fish to his chest. “I thank you for your meat,” he said, again and again. He walked without planning his direction, but when he finally came to the cave he knew this was the destination he intended.

The boughs that covered the entrance were dead and dry. He pushed them aside and crept in.

The damp, warm darkness wrapped around him. He stood there for a minute, letting the feeling of home comfort him. Then his memory moved him to the old fire pit. In an instant he was kneeling beside it. There was some kindling, ready and waiting for him. He pulled the flint and steel from his pocket and struck it. The spark flashed and caught. Caliban had a gift with fire.

The wood he'd left in here was well-aged and burned brightly. In no time Caliban's fish were sizzling over the flames. He ate them off the roasting stick, letting the oil smear across his chin. He had no one to impress here, in his own home.

Afterwards, he lay down on the old bough bed and fell asleep. His dreams were odd and unsettling. He found himself wandering through a large, empty stone palace, like the kind his mother used to describe. He wasn't looking for her, though. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he knew he had to find it. Everything shifted around. He walked from the corridor through a door to a room, then found himself back in the corridor. He couldn't reach the stairs he saw at the end of the passageway, no matter how determinedly he walked toward them. And the ceiling kept getting lower, until his hair brushed against it even when he stooped.

He woke up. A compulsion dragged him out of the cave, even though he balked. He did not want to leave, but he had no choice.

It was Prospero's doing. The wizard had summoned him, the way he called his spirit servants. Caliban champed and raged and pulled against his own steps, but he could not stop.

Prospero looked thunderous when Caliban arrived at the hut. “Where have you been?” he bellowed. “It's long past supper! Where are the fish you were sent to catch?”

“I ate them,” Caliban growled in response. His heart felt as though it were a smoldering coal in his chest. “If you're hungry, make yourself some food.”

Prospero was speechless, but only for an instant. “Insolent wretch!” he screamed. “I have trained you in speech and raised you from beasthood. Is this how you answer me?”

“This is my island!” Caliban yelled back. Spit flew from his lips, but he did not care. “This is my home! Why should I serve you?” Prospero lowered the staff toward him. “You will do as I say, Caliban.”

Pain coursed through his body. He fell to the ground, thrashing like a landed fish as the teeth of agony bit into every nerve of his body. All thoughts fled his mind, except for the one shining hope that the pain would end. It did.

“You will do as I tell you, Caliban. This is my island.”

And so Caliban went from servant to slave.

II.iv.

His back had been crippled with pain for the last three days. Prospero promised it would not improve for another four. Caliban didn't care. His prank had been worth it.

He'd put toadstools in their stew. Not the deadly kind. If Miranda didn't share her father's food he would have used those. But she did, so he just taught them both a lesson. They were too stupid to notice. They didn't know anything, for all their fine words and books. They'd lived on his island for ten years now, and they still didn't know what was good to eat.

He remembered their writhing and retching and laughed, even though it made him wince with pain. “You'll suffer too,” he vowed to the empty air. And he meant it.

Slowly, breathing carefully after each wrenching step, he made his way to the beach by his cave. There he stripped off his clothes, which caused him to weep and shudder. But he did not stop. Soon he was naked, and he crawled into the sea.

The water was cold, but he didn't care. He pushed himself further from the shore, and each stroke eased the pain. The water loosened the bonds of Prospero's spell. Caliban flipped onto his back and floated, blissfully free of torment. He stared up at the white clouds drifting in their own airy sea. “I'm as free as a cloud,” he said. “I can just waft away.”

“Or you could come with me,” a sly, hissing voice said beside him. He startled, spluttering on a mouthful of brine. Then he saw who had spoken and he grinned. “Hello, Pisces,” he said to the mermaid, dredging up his old childhood name for her. “Do you want to drag me to your seabed?”

Peisinoe smiled back at him, her green eyes full of wicked light. She had always been the one he liked best. She used to come to the shore and tell him stories when he was a child and lived here alone. He had spoken to her in jest, but suddenly, here in the waves, he found himself afraid of her. Her hair was slicked against her skull. When it was dry it looked emerald in the sunlight, but now it was nearly black. From this close distance her yellow-green skin looked sickly. “I might take you, Caliban, such a man you've become.” She stroked his face with her wet webbed fingers. He could feel the thin frill on her tail fin tickling his feet, then his calves, then knees. A strange heat coursed through him. His ears rang a distant chime and his mind blurred. “Stop that,” he said. He pushed away from her and treaded water.

She laughed at him. “Oh, you are a new man indeed, Caliban. You'd better leave the sea and not come back, or I will take you down to lie with me beneath the waves.”

Confusion choked him. He turned and swam back to the shore. Prospero's prison of agony wracked his spine as he pulled himself up on the stony beach. He looked back at the mermaid. Peisinoe met his gaze, then dove under, giving the surface of the water a warning slap with her tail before she disappeared.

Caliban hugged his knees to his chest. Tears of miserable rage poured over his face. He wanted to retreat to his cave, but Prospero wouldn't let him go there anymore.

Soon he would have to gather firewood and pull up the fish trap. Prospero never let him rest. “We must all do what God intended us to do,” he would say. “Some of us must labor in muscle, and others of us in the mind.” And then he would send Caliban away to sweat and toil, while he sat and brooded over the same dusty pages.

“That windbag doesn't know anything about work,” Caliban muttered now. He kicked at the stones by his toes. His back twisted into a new spasm, making him gasp. “I hate him,” he whispered.

“Here you are, bad broody,” said Miranda. She picked her way gingerly across the stones, as though she was not accustomed to walking on them. In her hands she carried the wooden cup he'd made for her. Caliban's glower increased.

“What do you want?” he growled. He wanted to be alone with his hatred. Miranda was too kind. She would spoil his anger.

She smiled at him. “I've come to make peace,” she said. She handed him the cup. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”

He sniffed it suspiciously. It smelled like sunshine and sage. He hesitated.

“It isn't poisonous,” she said. “I've convinced my father to forgive you for the toadstools. He agrees that he has been harsh with you lately. You've been punished enough. We're sure you've learned your lesson.” She smiled encouragingly, so pleased with her speech.

He drank the potion in one long swallow. The pains in his spine fell away. He felt new vigor and health and strength.

And rage.

“I'm going to build a boat and sail away from here,” he said. “You can come with me if you want, but I'm leaving the old man to rot here on his own.”

Miranda stepped back from him, appalled. “How can you say such a thing, Caliban? And after my father brewed this potion for you, too!”

“To heal me from the pain he gave me!” Caliban yelled.

Miranda flushed red. “You made us ill, Caliban. You might have killed us!” Her eyes opened wide with horror at the thought.

“If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead,” he snarled. “I just wanted to teach both of you a lesson.”

“Teach us a lesson; I like that!” Her cheeks flamed redder. “What lesson could you possibly teach us, Caliban? You're a brute. That's what father says, and he's right!” She snatched up the cup and turned on her heel.

Searing white rage flooded him. He leapt forward and grabbed her arms, flinging her back around to face him. She stared up at him, outraged and terrified.

It was the mermaid who had put the thought in his head, he told himself afterward. And that was true, though it was no excuse. Prospero came over the ridge to find him pushing Miranda to the ground, covering her with his own weight. A bolt of sizzling magic struck him, and he lost consciousness.

When Caliban woke he found himself bound to a rock by chains.

II.v.

Caliban stood on the forward deck of the ship, staring at the smudge of land in the distance. The day had only just broken, turning the sky pearl gray and sending the stars to sleep. It was quiet, the few sailors going about their tasks with silent ease. No one stared at him, or teased him.

They had been at sea for a week. So little time had passed since Prospero had raised a storm and snared a ship with his magic. And not just any ship. It was carrying Antonio, Prospero's usurping brother who had stolen the wizard's dukedom and cast him adrift at sea with Miranda. The King of Naples and his heir, Ferdinand, were also aboard. These noble men were accompanied by jester named Trinculo and Stephano, a foul, drunken butler. Caliban blushed with humiliation when he thought of these last two.

They were the first of the shipwrecked men to find him. He'd been gathering wood in the middle of the storm when the jester came along. Caliban thought he was one of Prospero's pesky servants come to torment him again. Ariel may have been the most trusted, but he was not the only spirit who served the wizard. There were many that seemed to delight in pinching Caliban while he worked. So when Trinculo appeared, Caliban tried to hide by lying down on the ground and covering himself with his rough cloak. Trinculo thought he was dead, struck by lightning, and crawled in under the cloak as well to shelter himself from the rain. That made Caliban flail about, thinking that he was about to be pinched and abused.

Stephano found them like that, shrieking and kicking beneath the cloak in the middle of the storm. He dealt with the situation in the way that he dealt with everything. He poured liquor down his throat, and for good measure poured it down Caliban's as well.

That drink had been like a divine nectar to Caliban. It filled him with boldness. The two stumbling men were his chance to win back the island. He called Stephano his god and convinced the drunken man to kill Prospero, promising him Miranda as reward. “Steal his books,” Caliban told them. “He's nothing without them. Then drive a nail through his head. You will be the island king and we will be your servants.”

Of course he planned to take it all for himself. But Prospero knew about their plot. One of his spying spirits had told him. Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo were sent on a hopeless, floundering walk all over the island. The home he'd known all his life became foreign to Caliban, and Prospero's spells landed him in a bog with the two cursing men. When they finally found themselves at the hut, that drunken idiot Stephano had put on Prospero's clothes, playing at being a king. Before long spectral hounds chased them away. When the three of them could run no further, they fell to the ground and were instantly under the wizard's curse of twisting muscle cramps.

During that time Prospero worked on his revenge. By sunset that day he was reinstated as the Duke of Milan. A royal engagement between Miranda and Ferdinand was officially witnessed in the hut Caliban had built. Before abandoning the island Prospero broke the staff and drowned his spellbook in the sea.

But Caliban was not left behind. On the harbor shore Prospero had declared before everyone that Caliban belonged to him and that he meant to keep him. “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,” were his precise words. They were far from heart-warming, but then Caliban had tried to have him murdered.

It had blinded and bewitched Caliban, that claim upon his soul. He had never dreamed of leaving his island. He did not desire the company of all these mocking men. When he had first come aboard they made him dizzy. They all looked like gods, with their straight limbs and shining teeth. But he was not so easily fooled anymore. He would never worship another human being.

And he saw his master differently too. Prospero's magic was gone. He seemed much older, and smaller, especially when he stood beside the one they called king. But Prospero would never be weak. And no one dared to tease Caliban when he stood in his master's shadow.

Soon they would come to this strange land filled with even more people. He'd heard Prince Ferdinand telling Miranda about it. People lived there together like a colony of nesting cormorants. He rubbed one of his bare feet against the other, warming it in the chill morning air. They would go to a castle, the prince had said. A great home, richly furnished. There would be fine food to eat, and servants to bring it to them.

His mother would be happy to have him in such a home.

He heard footsteps behind him. He turned, lowering his head and peering furtively. He'd learned that this was the way to attract the least attention. It was Miranda. She paused, then smiled, and continued toward him. “Good morning, Caliban,” she said, resting her hands easily on the rail before them.

She looked like she'd lost her fear of him, no doubt because she was protected all around. She didn't need to worry. He had seen the horror and revulsion on her face when he had tried to make her his own. Prospero had been equally disgusted with him. “You tried to violate the honor of my child!” he'd thundered, before leaving Caliban imprisoned to a rock.

Remembering the wizard's anger, Caliban still marveled that the man had not killed him. His mouth twisted bitterly. Miranda had called him vile and brutish. Prospero had renamed him Hagseed.