Prospero in Hell

by L. Jagi Lamplighter

  My family fell into the second category—with a few exceptions, such as Ulysses. While time had taken its toll, the passing centuries had also brought a maturity to my brothers they had lacked in earlier eras. A month ago, I would have thought it impossible that we would ever again join willingly together to accomplish something—even something as grim as confronting Ulysses over the death of our brother Gregor. While my youngest brother’s treachery still shocked me, he was centuries younger than the rest of us and had not lived through the many experiences that had forged us into family. Sitting in Erasmus’s drawing room, the sunlight falling through the tall windows and onto my face, I felt, to my surprise, unexpectedly charitable toward my younger siblings. Perhaps I had been too hard on them.

  There was a knock, and the door opened to admit a dark-haired boy in purple and gold livery, leading a man by the hand. The man was dressed in a somber suit. A length of royal purple silk had been wrapped about his head, covering his eyes; in his free hand, he carried a blind man’s cane topped with a large sphere of amber: my brother Cornelius and the Staff of Persuasion.

  He tilted his head and asked in his gentle voice, “Brother, I hear you have guests? Are they anyone I know?”

  “Someone you knew once,” Theo replied gruffly.

  “Father . . . no, Theo!” Cornelius’s face split into a smile. “What a pleasant surprise! And who is this with you? Is that your lovely wife whose sweet scent I smell?”

  “My wife is dead,” Theo said bluntly, and I recalled the photographs of an unknown woman that had graced his living room. With a pang of anguish, I realized this woman had lived, been loved by Theo, and died without my ever even having met her. Yet, Cornelius spoke as if he knew her.

  The boy led Cornelius to a chair and helped him to sit. There was something familiar about the child, with his dark eyes and thick black hair. I could have sworn I had seen him before.

  “Have a mango juice,” Erasmus offered graciously, handing a ruby-colored glass to Cornelius and a second to the boy, who took it tentatively and retreated to stand by the window.

  “Hello, Cornelius, it’s been a long time,” I said quietly.

  “Miranda! Even more surprises! When you did not make the last Centennial Ball, or should I say, the Millennium Ball, I feared you, too, had become a recluse,” he said, his voice gentle and soft. “We had quite a turnout. All the Plantdanu attended, the younger Greek gods—what’s left of them—and the Eight Fortunate Ones of China. Even the Archmage came down from the Himalayas. But of our elder sister, we heard nary a peep.”

  “I had intended to come; unfortunately, business interfered,” I replied, recalling a hectic weekend spent chasing wayward sprites who were spreading rumors among the supernatural community that the turn of the Millennium would absolve all oaths and covenants.

  I glanced around the room, my gaze resting upon my siblings’ faces: Erasmus, Cornelius, and Theo, all in the same room. What a joy it was to have so many of us together, and, by tonight, there would be still more of us. It was almost like old times.

  “What brings you two here today? Erasmus’s party?” asked Cornelius.

  “Not that either of them were invited,” murmured Erasmus.

  “We came because Father’s in trouble,” I said, “because the Three Shadowed Ones claim some kind of doom will fall upon our family by Twelfth Night—which is only six days away now—and because we have some disturbing news about Gregor’s death.”

  “Gregor’s death?” Cornelius’s voice rose in surprise. “I thought that matter had been long forgotten.”

  “Not by me,” muttered Theo.

  “Not by Father, either,” I said. “Apparently, it’s been troubling him terribly. He did not retire because he was weary of working. He retired so that he could spend all his time trying to find a way to save Gregor. The matter culminated this September, when Father went to Gregor’s grave and attempted to resurrect him.”

  “Trafficking in black magic?” Cornelius asked, amazed. “Father?”

  “He used his new staff, which he made by sprouting a piece of the True Cross,” I replied. “I suspect Father thinks this makes it white magic. Either way, he failed. He was captured and is now a prisoner in Hell. His attempt let the Three Shadowed Ones free and led to the letter I sent you.”

  “Father, is he . . .” Cornelius’s voice wavered. “Is he dead?”

  “He’s alive, as best we have been able to find out, but that’s not what we came about,” I finished, glancing at Theo.

  “Read them the journal entry,” Theo said gruffly.

  So, I did.

  When I finished, Cornelius sat stock still, his nose and chin pale as milk beneath the royal purple silk of his blindfold. Erasmus, however, began to laugh, a low chuckling sort of laugh that grated on the nerves and reminded me of numerous unpleasant incidents from the past.

  “An amusing forgery. What of it?” he asked mockingly.

  I examined the copies in my hands. “You think someone deliberately created this document to fool us?”

  “Oh, I think ‘someone’ deliberately invented it, yes . . . but it won’t work, Sweet Sister. So, you might as well come clean and tell us for what perverse reason you wish to turn us against Ulysses, hmm?” Erasmus purred.

  His implication was so absurd that a moment went by before it sank in.

  “You are accusing me of forging this document and sneaking it into the records of the Elgin, Illinois, police department?” I asked, astonished. “Why? To what purpose?”

  “I have only your word as to where the document is from,” he replied smugly. “How am I to know there is really such a journal at all?”

  Once someone does not believe your word, it becomes impossible to hold a conversation with them. Erasmus knew this. He must also have known I would never lie, and yet still, he made such accusations. In the past I would have ranted at him. After everything I had endured recently, however, I did not see the point.

  Instead, I said tiredly, “You’ve gone mad, Erasmus. You are madder than Mephisto.”

  “See here, Erasmus,” Theo interrupted. “I was there when Miranda learned this information. She did not invent it. It came in a letter from Illinois.”

  “I’m sure it did,” answered Erasmus smoothly. “And if I attempted to check its authenticity, I have a good idea what I would find: newly minted, antique-looking sheets recently rushed into place by eager airy servants . . . isn’t that so, Sister Dear?”

  “How could she have set up such a letter just for my sake when she had no notion I would be visiting?” barked Theo.

  “How can I tell what tricks our sister plays or why? Her malicious machinations are a cipher to me. I know not nor care how she weaves her tangled skein, but I’ll not be taken in by her schemes. Run along now, Miranda, we’ve seen through your little trick.”

  “Miranda’s right, you have gone mad,” Theo growled, crossing his arms and sinking back in his chair.

  Cornelius, who had been sitting motionless, listening to the exchange, now spoke. “I hesitate to participate in family disputes, but I fear in this case I must take Erasmus’s side. I know Ulysses. I have listened to the music of his heart. He could not do this thing of which you accuse him. He is a thief, yes, but not a murderer. He loved Gregor. Perhaps, he might have it in him to kill a brother in the heat of rage, but a cool, calculated murder such as this describes?

  “No. Miranda,” he continued, “I do not know what dark powers have possessed your heart that you feel you must turn us one against the other, but I beg you to reconsider. We have only each other against the ravages of time. We cannot afford treachery.”

  “You can hear the goodness in Ulysses, who is not here, but you can’t hear the honesty in my voice?” I asked, amazed.

  Cornelius hesitated. Finally, he said, “I do not detect any falsehood in your voice, Miranda. However, as your nature is different from our own, I may be incorrectly interpreting what I hear.”

  “Different?”
I asked, astonished. “Different in what way? Because I am a female? You seem to be making a great effort not to admit that you know I’m telling the truth. Why?”

  “There’s no point in continuing your ploy, Miranda,” Erasmus replied snidely. “We know all about your mother. We haven’t confronted you about it before this because we did not want to embarrass Father. But, as he is not here . . .”

  “What’s this about Miranda’s mother?” asked Theo, confused.

  “You know what about my mother?” I echoed, a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  The thought of discovering that some horror had been inflicted upon my mother . . . After so many recent earthshaking revelations, it seemed utterly unbearable. I had always believed her to have died in childbirth. Please, I prayed desperately, do not let me learn Father also did her some harm, as he had apparently done Ferdinand. I could not bear to learn the sainted Lady Portia had been stowed away in Hell, where she suffered alive and tormented.

  On the other hand, this could be yet another ploy of Erasmus’s. He had always been jealous of Father’s love for my mother. His mother, Isabella Medici, had been Father’s worst mistake in choosing a wife: politically, a savvy move, but privately, a disaster. I recalled the night she died, an embittered old woman of eighty-seven. After the necessary arrangements had been made, Father had slipped aside and opened a bottle of rare enchanted wine, with which he and I had gratefully toasted his freedom and the return of his sanity.

  Erasmus grinned his oily smile. “Do not pretend ignorance, Sweet Sister. I am speaking of the identity of your true mother, and of your real nature—the great secret you have been hiding from us all these years. You may think you have been deceiving—”

  He was interrupted by the urgent voice of Mephisto, who came bursting through the drawing-room door crying: “Erasmus, wait! She doesn’t know!”

  Erasmus’s subtle features froze. He snapped, “What do you mean . . . she doesn’t know? Hasn’t she been deceiving us?”

  “I don’t know what, Mephisto?” I asked with equal vehemence.

  Mephisto looked around at the gathered crowd, his mouth forming a silent “o” when he saw Cornelius and Theo. He was dressed in a dark blue parka and a pair of jeans and might have fit into any modern setting, were it not that the six-foot length of his staff, its carved wooden figures stacked together like a totem pole, was handcuffed to his right wrist. I noticed a newly carved image of a jagged-winged bird had been added near the top.

  The pleasure of having five of us in one place was lost amid the nauseating fear that gnawed at my innards.

  “Ah . . . nothing.” Mephisto looked up at the ceiling and pursed his lips as if pretending to whistle. “Um, maybe this is not the best time to talk about this, Erasmus. Why don’t we all have a cup of hot chocolate and forget the whole thing? We must have bags of stuff to talk about. Cornelius! Theo! It’s been so long!” He spread out his arms in welcome, smiling cheerfully.

  “On the contrary, I discern this may be the best time for this conversation,” said Cornelius. “Miranda has made some harsh accusations against one of the family. We must hear the truth, so that we can properly evaluate her accusations.”

  “I didn’t do it!” cried Mephisto, throwing up his hands. His staff flew wildly, pivoting about his wrist, nearly striking Theo, who ducked.

  “No one has accused you of anything, Mephisto,” I said tiredly.

  “You mean someone’s in trouble, and it’s not me? Oh, well, I guess that’s all right.” He sighed with relief and threw himself into the nearest armchair. “Okay, I’m settled. Tell me all about it!”

  Erasmus crossed over to Mephisto and leaned very close to him, his foot resting on Mephisto’s chair.

  “What did you mean by ‘Miranda doesn’t know’?” he asked in a voice whose softness bordered on menacing.

  Mephisto drew back and squeaked. “She doesn’t know. I never told her; neither did Father. She doesn’t know. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

  “You mean . . . she hasn’t been lying to us all these years?”

  “No, how could she? I told only you.”

  Erasmus turned and glared at me, his dark eyes speculative. “Hmm. How disconcerting.”

  “Enough! What is it no one has told me?” I asked, harshly this time. “What happened to my mother?”

  “Nothing,” squeaked Mephisto, “except . . . she wasn’t your mother.”

  Erasmus came cruelly to the point. “Your mother was the witch Sycorax, whom Father summoned by magic. He merely told you it was Lady Portia to protect his reputation.”

  This was the most ridiculous accusation Erasmus had made yet. I snorted with contempt. “Nonsense!”

  “It’s true,” whispered Mephisto softly. “Father told me himself.”

  I clung to my chair, hoping to stop the feeling of vertigo.

  “He . . . he did?”

  “Well . . . sort of. Once we were talking about the summoning spell, the one used to make my staff? He told me the first time he used the spell, what he had summoned came back nine months later and gave him Baby Miranda. Basically, he and the thing he summoned . . . well, you know . . .”

  “After Mephisto told me this I searched Father’s journals,” Erasmus continued gleefully. “The first mention of this spell is when he summons the witch Sycorax. Nine months later, he clearly states that she brought him a child, which he refers to as ‘the fruit of that first summoning.’ ”

  “You mean, I am . . . Caliban’s sister?” I asked horrified. My own brother had tried to rape me? Did that make the crime less heinous, or more so? More so, I concluded grimly, though this news gave me new insight into why Father had refused to kill the horrible creature. Perhaps he had promised his hideous lover that he would protect both her progeny.

  “Oh, there’s more,” Erasmus continued with relish. “There are numerous references to ‘Sycorax’s Unruly Child.’ Apparently, you kept troubling the ‘A.T.,’ by which I believe Father meant his Aerie Spirits—the journals are in Greek. Then, when you were about five, there is a definite reference to you by name, in which Father wrote, and I quote.” He recited a brief passage in the original Greek, but we were an educated lot. The meaning was plain to us all:

  “ ‘May 4th. Today, I consecrated little Miranda to the Creatrix Eurynome. It is my hope that Her divine influence will curb the natural tendencies of my daughter and make the child more like unto human kind.’ Seems you were not always the perfect daughter you pretend to be now,” Erasmus finished smugly.

  “I knew it!” Theo muttered angrily, “I knew Father had Miranda under a spell!”

  “If Erasmus’s discoveries are true, it may be best for us all that he did,” replied Cornelius. Turning to me, he asked, “You truly knew nothing of this?”

  “Nothing!” I responded faintly. “I’m not sure I believe it still. It’s . . .”

  “The journal in which I found the reference resides in my library.” Erasmus gestured upward.

  I drew back, hugging my glass to me. Had Father truly said such spiteful things about me? It could not be! I recalled so clearly our many chats about my mother, Father sitting beside me on the bluff that overlooked the northwest coast of our small isle. His keen blue eyes shone with love as he spoke of her.

  Could he have been speaking of the foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy was grown into a hoop? No. She could not possibly be the woman who had inspired such greatness in him. Erasmus and Mephisto’s story made no sense.

  And yet, I recalled the King of Fire glaring at me, his eyes ablaze with fiery menace, as he sneered, “Vile half-breed! Accursed Nephilim!” A Nephilim was, if I recalled correctly, a term used for the half-human, half-supernatural monstrosities that roamed the earth before Noah’s Flood. I had thought Iblis referred to Caurus—an Aerie One in a fleshy body.

  Only, I recalled with sudden alarm, the King of Djinn did not turn to address Caurus until after he had spoken his half-breed insult. When he ori
ginally spoke the words, he had been staring directly at me.

  Could it be the woman of whom Father had spoken of so tenderly was not my mother? I struggled to keep the pain this notion caused me from showing on my face.

  “Enough about past sorrows.” Mephisto cheerfully threw out his arms. “Let’s get to the present sorrows. What’s this family tragedy everyone’s yammering about?”

  Erasmus handed Mephisto the letter. Mephisto read it silently, making faces as he went. As he approached the end, he cried out: “O dastardly Ulysses! What a monstrous thing to do!” He was quiet for a long time, tears in his eyes. Finally, struggling to put on a brave face, he declared tremulously, “What a bonehead! I hope he plans to pay up on the money Gregor owed me!”

  “Erasmus believes Miranda invented this document,” Cornelius said softly.

  “Miranda? Why would she care what Ulysses or Gregor did? What a dopey thing to think, Erasmus,” Mephisto replied, dismissing the idea out of hand.

  I felt a flood of affection for my hapless brother. Suddenly, I was very glad I had not abandoned him on the streets of Chicago.

  Behind me, Theo began to laugh. It was a harsh wheezing sound at first, but it developed into a deep throaty laughter that reminded me of Father. The laughter led to a bout of coughing.

  When Theo could breathe again, he said, “What a sad world you must live in, Brother Erasmus, believing the worst of a guileless creature like Miranda.” He shook his grizzled head and put down his untouched glass of mango juice. “Come, Cornelius. Let us get ourselves a cup of something hot, as our good brother Mephistopheles suggested. There perhaps, we can ponder today’s revelations and decide what, if anything, to do about them.”

  “A goodly plan, Brother Theophrastus,” said Cornelius, rising and putting out his hand for the young boy beside him.

  As the young boy left his post by the window and came forward to take my brother’s arm, I was again struck by how familiar his features were. He felt my eyes upon him and gave me a cheerful smile. As he did, I realized that I had seen him before: in Father Christmas’s scrying pool.