I must rest an hour or two before the sun rises and I take the final step.
It went most excellent well. I am pleased; at least, no flaws can I see. As noted the body stirred as I infused it with vitality; the transformation to flesh was uncanny to see, coming from within the torso and not from the extremities as I had looked for. The blood-clay paled and flushed with the color of live flesh, first over-ruddy and then full natural; I waited until the hands and feet were ready and then drew the body from the Spring where I had submerged it as described in Vol CLXIII. It did not breathe. Fearing failure after such success I knelt to test whether breath stirred; there was no breath nor pulse. I seized the head and moved it back to open the passages, then blew past lips clay-cold and dead to inspire life as is done to new-born babes and the drowned.
The breath took; the creature—she?—trembled once mightily, gasped, and her lips touched mine again as she clutched at air. I saw the eyes move beneath the lids, then open. The pupils shrank at the light. Verily it was a wonder to see them turn in synchrony and fix on me.
I rose and completed the spell; the creature watched me dumbly, bestirring little, beginning to move more surely as I concluded, touching her body. I was full weary when I finished but drew in the Spring’s flow to sustain me.
I shaped as fair a creature as I durst, not desiring to make a paragon, yet I observe that in mutation the form hath grown smoother, the lips softer and the eyes’ shape somewhat altered, the coloring of the skin delicate and pleasing. The hair hath darkened to a shade not unlike mine own, due I warrant to the dominance of my blood, and hath curled. I cannot account for the curl, but it is a full comely effect.
The creature—she—touched my face when I smiled; the fingers are sensitive and light, and the touch was well-controlled, not clawing or rough. I permitted her to finger my beard, my cheek, my throat and ear, and then she touched her own smooth chin, then mine again, most cunningly and visibly comprehending that we differ. She touched my mouth and then her own, then mine again, parting my lips, parting her own, and her brows came together—a charming expression of perplexity, full human and genuine.
I stroked her hair and forehead, and she leaned to the touch, turning to try to see my hand touching her; I took her chin, examined her face—I erred somewhat, the chin is not symmetrical, though the jaw is small and the cheekbones finely shaped, and the flesh floweth smoothly over them. Her expression was serious and her gaze intent on me. I took her hand and moved its fingers; all articulated perfectly, and the joints of wrist and elbow pivot smoothly and easily within the flesh. I moved her shoulders; she was docile and made no opposition as I circled the arms to be sure the joints were mobile, for that I met such difficulty with the scapulae. There is no impairment. The back is nicely shaped, the spine neat and fine, the throat graceful and the torso handsomely feminine.
I desired to know whether she was able to walk, and thus I stood and, holding her hands, tugged upward. At first she sat, not comprehending, and then looked at my legs, the vague perplexity again upon her brow. I spoke encouragement, but she did not rise, though she flexed her feet. I knelt again to assure myself that her legs would bend, and moved them and her feet and toes and she again was docile and unresisting. Then did I lift her bodily to her legs, and she made a startled cry and swayed, letting her knees bend, would have fallen but that I caught her and supported her. Well: she could not walk, then, and must learn, and so I shifted my hold on her and took her wholly in my arms to carry her forthwith. She was frightened now, whimpering, and grabbed at me as if afraid of falling, and I must soothe and coo to her as to a babe until she was quiet.
I bore her to the cave and set her in the chair, and she would not release me until I had spoken to her gently again; as I spoke she watched my mouth and eyes, the sound reassuring her so that she let me take her arms from my neck. I was famished with hunger by then and must sup, and set honey forth and bread, slicing the bread and spreading the honey, eating without nicety. She watched this—never did she take her eyes from me—and I seeing this dipped my finger in honey and offered it to her, to see what she might make of it. She looked at it; I licked my finger and offered it again to her, touching her lips, and she licked cautiously and then with interest, finding it much to her liking. I sat on the stool beside her to try it again, and she put her fingers in the crock and got a great gob of wax and honey in them.
I did not stop her; she sought to remove her hand, but the neck was too narrow, and so she drew the hand forth without the wax, all coated well with honey now. And then she most violently surprised me: she did offer me her honey-covered hand. Is it possible that a human creature uncultivated, in basest natural state, understands generosity? Or is a human creature by nature generous? ’Tis counter to my observance of the coarser run of man. I thanked her and licked a finger clean, not to fail in courtesy, and then gave her her hand back so that she might lick it herself. This she did, honey dripping on her legs and breast, and I ate more bread and we watched one another the while.
Full weary was I from my long working, for this making hath taken me five days, and I desired to sleep, but must not let her wander alone. Therefore I rose, took a cloth and wet it and wiped the honey from her, then lifted her again. She was not so frightened this time; I set her in the bed I had made in hopes of success enough to need it, where I have kept the bones of the skeleton well-wrapped until they were required, and I laid a sleep over her with the coverlet and now go to mine own rest.
Dewar looked at the corner where Freia had been sleeping as he worked through the nights, sometimes distracting his attention by whimpering or crying out in her dreams. Her bedding was neatly stowed there in a wicker basket, a fur spread over the top.
To have transmuted earth to flesh and living bone … Dewar was stunned. He would never have guessed. Prospero had surpassed every sorcerer in the history of the Art. He had constructed an intelligent creature indistinguishable from the natural. He had no need of Aië. Odile was a rank dabbler by comparison. Aië. What said Prospero of Aië? Dewar sought through the text, paused again to read snatches.
He flipped through the close-written pages wherein Prospero told of teaching his creation to speak, to walk, to eat, to bathe. A passage caught his eye:
… then did I say to her, Hast thou a name? And she looked in the glass I had set before us and touched her image, then mine, then her own again. This is Papa, she said, putting her hand over my reflected face. I took her hand and placed it on my head saying, Nay, here is Prospero, that is but the image of him, no real man. Prospero is what I am called, what thou and all others call me. How art thou called?
I did wish to discover, if she hath some sense of name for herself innately.
She said, Child, and I said, Nay, child is but a label for thee, not a name, and I curst myself that I had not addressed this subject with her instanter she could speak somewhat, for she drinketh swift and thirsty of such knowledge as I set before her and thereby hath diluted her original state. Maid, she said, Nay, said I, maid is but a label also. I am Prospero, my name; I am a man, a Prince, a sorcerer. All these are labels save Prospero. I am, she said. I am not-Prospero.
So all that is not Her, is Prospero, and all that is Prospero, is not Her. The self needeth no label for it knoweth all, that which is itself and that which is not itself.
How shall I call thee, then? I ask her. She maketh no answer, as if not comprehending, and beholdeth me owlish, all eyes and ears. ’Twas in my mind to name her Miranda, for Gonzalo’s bright daughter, though she’s but an irregular, discolored image: yet meseems perhaps ’twere insult, to so use the dearest of names. How to call thee? I ask again, of myself more than her, for she hath no answer, methinks; yet again doth she astonish me, and saith, I am not Prospero, what am I?
Right quickly say I, Thou art thyself, and who art thou?
Freia, says she, and I did not understand at first and said, A maid? And she said, That is a label, I am Freia.
So hath she a
name, but I am unsure whence it cometh, or how she knew it, and it is most exhausting to question her, for she learneth apace and betimes giveth answer far distant from the question to my mind.
[…]
… sensitive to smallest pressures, and though this maketh her biddable and complaisant, she cannot endure displeasure long. An she trespass again, I must have done quickly, and give her comfort anon, lest it canker her tender heart.
Dewar was nearly at the end of the book; the last pages were in his fingers, and the word Aië had not leapt forth at him. His eye rested at the top of the final leaf and he read:
… hath swum to the mainland, with but a knife and her good bow and some arrows. I am sore wroth and loth to pursue her lest we do one another harm.
The creature is so willful and contrary I will not have her here, and in her heat she is best off in the wild. In all men doth lie concealed a beast, but in her ’tis by her base nature more like to dominate. Meseems she goeth to seek a mate, and shall find none here, I know, therefore shall bide alone away or return to reconcile herself to me.
—Later. Mine anger abated, I feared lest she come to instant harm. I Summoned vision of her this night and looked upon her as she slept in the grasses by a mothflower bush. She is uninjured, placid in repose, and I gazed to be sure she had taken no harm and then dismissed the sight.
I have mused upon the business and I know myself better; I have fed her wantonness subtly, overfond and indulgent, and there is a piece of me, animal and rude, that straineth for her maidenhead even as she pants in first heat of lust. Poor fool, that knoweth not herself. Did I not shape her sweet body with my own hands, to please my own taste? I do not want a wife; and I ought to have destroyed her after some few days or months, but I cannot, now. Though half-beast in her blood and shaped of wood and clay, she hath grown too human, unlike vild Caliban, a creature of will and whim and desire, and were cold murder to do away with her now.
This is an unreliable way of making men and taketh overmuch of me, and I am weary of it. I shall investigate the methods of the Countess of Aië, but better creatures would I have than those she keepeth by her.
There came a step outside the door. Dewar slammed the book shut, put it in the pile of books to be reshelved, and had his pen in hand as Freia entered with a wooden bowl of cooked meat and grain. She set it wordlessly beside him; he did not look up, but he could not keep from watching her sidelong. Prospero had truly transformed the lowest class of being to the highest. There was nothing to her to divulge that she was not human-born, that her bones had been wood and her flesh blood-clay ensouled with breath and life, and that she was nothing more than a curious experiment Prospero had kept about the place from sentiment.
Freia went out again, glancing back; their eyes met for an instant. Dewar said nothing, but watched her as he would a wild animal caught unawares at its business, and she dropped her gaze and left.
4
ON THE EVENING OF THE TWELFTH day Prospero saw the last course of stone laid down upon his broad walls. He smiled, and his smile faded as quickly as it came.
“Well done,” he told the Argyllines, who stared, amazed, at what they’d wrought. The earth-filled wood-braced walls were thirty feet high, ten thick; they were roofed with logs, to be topped with slate later; outside, a ditch twenty feet wide added to their height. “Done swiftly, done well; you shall be glad of’t ere long, I fear. Now rest you, and bide, and toil by day and sleep by night as men prefer. I’ve other work to complete.”
He walked slowly to the riverside, surrounded by the walls. Smokes were rising here and there from the communal hearths, cooking-smells and evening-sounds coming to him weakly, as from a great distance. Wooden buildings would be replaced with stone, he planned, mud streets with paved. A square, in the center of the city. Fountains, public places, private homes. And the isle—
Prospero paused on the mainland shore and looked at the island. At its crown still stood the huge tree at whose foot the Spring surged, filling the basin Caliban had made and spilling out to cut a little channel for itself after mossing the stone around it. A few squat trees, Freia’s orchard, remained on the lower part of the isle; the giant was fellowless on the height, a naked pale-green-wreathed obelisk. On the slope, the ends of stumps were white and stark against the drying leaf-mulch.
Freia was just visible sitting in the long grass at the downstream end of the isle, arms around her knees. Her garden was overrun with weeds; her budding fruit trees wanted pruning. Prospero frowned. She was sulking, and it liked him little; she had squalled and sulked at all his labors to keep both her and Argylle safe, trying his humor. He’d turn his hand to correcting her megrims later.
The sun stretched long deep-gold arms over the land. It was time Prospero was about his last task. He chose a shallow rowboat and, alone, crossed the satin-surfaced water slowly, but with long strong pulls.
Dewar’s hand and arm were the only parts of him that moved as his father entered the cave.
“Make ink,” Dewar said, voice hoarse, eyes on the lamplit paper.
“Nay,” Prospero said, unoffended. “Thy labor’s o’er, thy rest before thee. Shalt have no more need of ink for thy task.”
“No,” Dewar said, writing still faster.
“Aye,” Prospero said. “Finish that page, and ’tis done.”
“I’m not ready!”
“Alas. Nor am I. All things must end.”
Dewar cursed under his breath, spared a glance for Prospero. Prospero nodded. His son’s eyes were red-rimmed and too bright; his movements too quick, drug-fed. It would take him several days at best to recover from the effects of sleeplessness and work.
“One more,” Dewar said, his eyes on the book again.
“Sundown cometh,” Prospero said, “and with it my time, and thine. Hast done more than any other could, and it must suffice.”
“Not enough,” Dewar said. “This next—”
“No more,” said Prospero, finality in his voice.
Dewar cursed again, and Prospero said, “I’ll return, and when I do, thou’lt leave this place, this chamber and the island; go with thy sister to the mainland, the city, and there await me, resting.”
“Another hour—”
“Nay, son. All the hours have gone.” Prospero left, hearing Dewar’s cry of frustration behind him.
He walked slowly to the other end of the island, and on the way he spoke to the men and women working on the logging and clearing and sent them away to the mainland also, leaving piles of brush and lumber on the shore, whence they were to be rafted. Freia he found seated between the skirted leg-like roots of one of the still-standing woodnut trees. She was feeding birds; there were seeds and bits of dried fruit on the ground, and several dainty songbirds perched on her fingers, supping from her palm. All fled save his daughter as he approached.
“You drove them away.”
“Must drive thee too. Come, take wing; ’tis time I must fulfill my vow. I’ll send thy brother over with thee to the house. Do thou attend that he lieth down ere he sleep standing ’gainst a wall.”
Freia shrugged and stood, folded her arms, and followed Prospero without another word.
“Ariel!”
“Yes, Master!”
Prospero lowered his uplifted arms slowly. The first stars were becoming visible overhead, topazes and diamonds and aquamarines studding the pure, distant heaven’s vault, a piece of the moon cast among them. The sorcerer breathed in power, breathed out serenity, and with that draught of power came to him also a feeling of fixedness, a feeling of inevitability. It seemed to him, in that moment, that all Time had proceeded to this conclusion, that in the beginning it had been set as were the stars’ courses that he should stand thus now: the very spheres required it so. Whirled up by Fortuna, he had forgotten that all she raised, must fall.
Eager Ariel spun dry leaves up and down, waiting; his whirlwind-column rippled Prospero’s cloak at his heels and rustled in the foliage overhead. Prospero clea
red his throat. “Good Ariel,” he said, “the hour hath come for us to part. Thou hast served well, and thy devotion doth merit my full gratitude to thee.”
“Part, Master?” Ariel asked, puzzled. The leaves drifted to the ground. “Am I not bound to you?”
“Bound thou art, and unbound shalt thou be.”
“Unbound?” Ariel repeated.
“For the Lady’s liberty shall be paid by thine, swift Ariel.” He lifted his silver-chased staff and struck the ground three times. “Caliban!”
“Aye,” boomed a voice from far below, a thick and distant sound. Slowly, the earth thrummed and trembled, and at last the ground before Prospero broke. Caliban’s mottled rough head, like lichen-crusted stone, lifted; he raised an arm and then the other, pushing aside a boulder thrown up by his arrival. “Master.”
Prospero hesitated, looking on him in the moon’s slender silver beam, and then said, “How fares thy great labor, Caliban?”
“O Master, it is near complete,” said Caliban. “What task today?”
“No task for thee,” Prospero said, and in his voice was a gentleness, “but holiday, O Caliban, that hath toiled long and long at labors none to thy liking. I shape a sorcery this night that shall open the pents I have placed on thee, and leave thee at liberty to go where thou list, do as thou wouldst, e’en as before I shaped this crude form that prisons thee.”
Caliban was stone-still, stone-silent.
“But, Master,” said Ariel, diffidently, “what would you have us do?”
“When I have lifted my bonds on you, may go where you list, do as you would,” Prospero repeated. “I shall call on you no more. You twain shall be free from association with such mutable and mingled creatures as men, free to ride the gales and sound the deeps, released from servitude. I’ll lay no command on you again.”
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 4