Caliban was clearly puzzled when he returned.
“What’s the matter?” Ariel snapped at him. The spirit seemed to flicker impatiently.
“My connection to the staff,” Caliban explained. “It’s different. It seems… muffled…or muted.”
“Everything is growing weaker. Hurry up,” Ariel said.
Calypso said nothing. She tried to look faintly curious but disinterested. But neither of them looked at her. Their attention was only on the staff.
Caliban laid the staff on the ground. Gently he untied the knot in the bandage and pulled it away. The wound bled afresh, causing all three of them to shudder. But it had to be exposed, so that their healing could be directed to the right place.
They formed the points of a triangle around it, an arm’s length apart from one another. At a word from Ariel they began.
They stared at the break in the wood, and power flowed out from each of them. Ariel burned even more brightly, and the other two began to glow as well. The lines of power between them thickened, grew visible. The three became one power, one magic that wrapped around the staff and held the severed ends together.
Every living thing on the island held its breath and waited, standing still as stone. Yet the stones themselves seemed to breathe, to contain a pulse of life. The island opened itself to the power of the three, and the magic filled the void that had been growing and gnawing at its heart for so many empty years.
Ariel was fire heat, smoke dance, the kiss of sun on snow, pain of birth and pang of death. He was love’s heart and hate’s arrow, the seething song of the sea, the cry of a gull, and the crushing roots of a tree. He was the will of every lightning strike, and he sent it out to the center of the pain.
Caliban was young again, laughing on the shore, imitating the shriek of an eagle as it plunged into the sea for its prey. Then he was running through the forest, playing tag with the spirits of the trees. He knew them all by name, and they loved him, no matter who his mother was, no matter what she had done. He was the island’s child. He was the island’s hope. The trees knew his voice, the air whispered his name, the mermaids sang him lullabies. This was his home, and he sent his love out into the pain.
Calypso was strong, stronger than they guessed, stronger than she knew. She had the strength of the stones and the force of the tides. The moon was her servant. Knowledge she did not know she possessed filled her mind and revealed the path she must take. She could take and shape and hold things to her will. She reached out and grabbed the staff, right around the wound.
They screamed, all of them, but the ties that bound them could not be broken. The staff knew her, and named her: Sycorax.
The island began to writhe.
V.iii.
“My life!” the staff cried into the pain that flooded all their minds. “Pay the price,” it demanded. “Pay the price and make me whole.”
“Take it from her, Caliban!” Ariel shrieked. “Only you have the power! Take it from her, now!” The spirit flailed desperately, unable to touch her.
Caliban tried. He grabbed the staff with both his hands and tried to wrestle it from Calypso. Sweat stood out on his brow, and still he could not pull it free. The earth was heaving beneath their feet. Ariel buffeted them with a wind, but it threw Caliban off balance instead of Calypso. He fell to the ground, losing his hold on the staff.
Both Caliban and Ariel were thrown from the magic, cut from the staff. The spell was done.
Caliban stared at her, horror washing over him. The ghost of Sycorax played across the features of this strange girl’s face. She looked triumphant, and mad. A wild, maniacal laugh broke from her lips and spilled into the wind whipping around them all. Then she crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
It took Caliban a moment to recover. The island grew steady once more, exhausted. Ariel stilled the wind, and Caliban crawled to Calypso’s side. His face was grim. “Look at this,” he said to the spirit.
The staff had been healed, but it had not gone to its new master easily. Calypso’s right hand was now made of wood, up just past her wrist, and it was permanently fused to the staff. Her flesh had been taken for the healing. It was only because of her strength that she was still alive.
“We must kill her,” Ariel said. “Kill her and free the staff.” He raised his arm.
“You’ll kill the island if you do,” Caliban replied.
Ariel lowered his arm. “So,” he said, dully, his colors fading to pale gray, “we are to be enslaved once again. It would be better to die, I think.”
Caliban looked down at Calypso. Gently he pushed her dark hair away from her face. “How can she be related to me?” he asked. “Sycorax died long before she was born.”
“Your mother had a daughter, older than you, born in a distant land. She sent me to see her once, to discover if everything was well with her.”
He had a sister. A Greek sister. A witch, who had a child. This child. Calypso, the sailor nymph; his niece. “And was it?” Caliban asked.
Ariel shrugged. “She was a plain girl. Stayed in her rooms. When I appeared she hid from me. Sycorax never sent me back.”
Caliban looked down at Calypso. “She was a witch,” he said. “People were cruel to her.”
“Imagine that,” Ariel said bitterly.
Caliban gently touched Calypso’s face. His niece. His sister’s child. An unknown sister, for certainly his mother had never mentioned her. Now he understood the bitter silence that came over Sycorax whenever she spoke about her life before the island, the life of her home. Her grief was not for linen and gold and other fine things. It was for her daughter.
And now the child of that daughter was here, caught in the suffering of her grandmother’s magic. Caught by her same desire to possess and control. His mother had found a way to reach out from death and make a final grab at the power she had once held. The power that had held her. Calypso would be driven mad, just as his mother had been. She would twist and die.
He could not let that happen.
“Perhaps we can cut her hand off,” Ariel said. His words tore Caliban’s thoughts. “It would be best to do it now, while she sleeps.”
Caliban considered the grim suggestion, but touching her again showed him that it was impossible. “Her life fuels the staff,” he said. “It will not release her without demanding its price. If we cut her from it, both will die.”
“And if we don’t?” Ariel asked.
Caliban touched the sleeping face once more. “If we don’t, she will be taken by the staff, slowly. In time she will be nothing but wood.”
Ariel grew brighter, flaring suddenly with malevolent glee. “She will be imprisoned in a tree,” he said. “How appropriate.”
Caliban gritted his teeth, biting into his patience to keep it from slipping away. “When her life is gone the staff will have nothing to sustain it. The healing will fail and the island will die.”
“So, we are left with enviable choice. Will it be a quick death, or a slow one?” Ariel stared down at her callously. “We could bind her into sleep and let the island feed off her.”
Bile rose in Caliban’s throat. “What, turn the island into a parasite? Make us all a tapeworm huddled in a child’s gut?” He threw his words at the spirit. He wished they were stones, wished they could hurt Ariel for making such a suggestion.
Ariel glared at him. “You want me to pity her? I have no pity left for wizards. She was the island’s last hope, and she chose to kill us all. The blood of Sycorax,” he spat. His flames burned white.
Caliban had to look away. He swallowed his revulsion and considered Ariel’s idea. The staff would drain her whether she was asleep or not. It was probably merciful to bind her as Ariel suggested. But he could not bring himself to do it. The thought of her lying there while the staff slowly leeched the life force from her bones was unbearable. “There must be another way,” he whispered.
“Don’t be a fool,” the spirit hissed. “She is not worth saving.”
&nb
sp; “She is a child,” Caliban replied. “All children are worth saving.”
Ariel sneered. “Such noble sentiments,” he said. “It’s the island I care about, not some witch-brat.”
Calypso shifted restlessly. Ariel reached out an arm to cast the spellnet around her, but Caliban knocked it away. Her eyes flew open. The spirit flew upwards, his face boiling with terror and hatred. “Fool!” he shrieked, just before he vanished. “Treacherous, earth-born fool!”
Caliban took Calypso’s good hand in his. “Everything’s fine,” he lied, his voice soothing. He stroked her hair. “How do you feel?” he asked. “Do you have any pain?”
Calypso watched his face, her eyes troubled and confused. Caliban repeated his words, hoping she’d understand. He remembered that she did not speak his language well.
“My son,” the girl whispered, in a voice that seemed hardly her own. “Where is Caliban, my son?”
V.iv.
Caliban had lost his mother tongue long ago, but Calypso’s words, spoken in Sycorax’s own voice, stirred a forgotten understanding. Caliban gripped her hand, the left one, still flesh. Cold flesh, the warmth and strength pulled away. He rubbed it gently between his, quieting its trembling. “Hush, now,” he whispered. “You need to rest. You need to be peaceful.”
Clearly she was confused. Her lips moved soundlessly, as though they were trying to pluck words out of the air. He could not make out what she was trying to say.
“Can you tell me your name,” he asked, gently.
“Sycorax,” she said. Then her face twisted. “Calypso,” she said. She looked angry. “I tell this to you before, my name it is Calypso.”
“Of course,” he said. “I forgot, that’s all. I forget things.”
“Yes,” she responded, relieved, almost eager. “Me as well, forget things….” Her eyes drifted away, to the clouds. “I remember the sky over Greece,” she added softly, in her own language.
She was so still that Caliban thought she would fall asleep, but soon her gaze turned back to him. Her expression grew hard, fierce. “Who are you?” she demanded. She pulled away from him and tried to rise.
It was then that she saw her hand. She touched it, puzzled. “Strange,” she whispered. She looked at him uncertainly. “My hand, it is wood,” she said. She laughed nervously, a wild note in her voice once more.
“It was the healing, Calypso,” Caliban said, trying to keep her with him, trying to keep Sycorax away. “You took the staff in the healing and bound it to yourself.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide, her left hand prying at the right’s grip on the staff. “Yes, this happened,” she said. She looked down at her hand, growing more desperate. “Take it, Caliban!”
“I will,” he said. “But we must find a safe way. You are joined now—”
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 ey
es. “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.”
Rough Magic Page 15