With a sudden wrench Chiara pushed away from the mermaid, somehow ducking the siren's power with her own magic. The mermaid shrieked in rage, her teeth gnashing, and her tail foaming the water. “I am not as witless as you think, lady,” Chiara said, holding the creature at bay with newfound strength. The mermaid writhed and twisted, but Chiara sensed that she had given up on her prey. She knew Chiara was no longer helpless.
Chiara moved away from her and her ocean-field of souls. The mermaid watched, her hair wafting in the current. “You are going to your doom,” she said. Chiara didn't reply. The mermaid bent and picked up one of the now-empty cages. “Don't worry,” she called out, “I shall keep your soul safe with me. We shall have all of eternity together.” She laughed, but the waters carried the sound away. The darkness of the deeps closed around her.
Caliban stood in the doorway and stared into the humble dwelling. There were the rough wooden beds on either side of the tiny cell. There was the equally rough table set between them, against the wall across from the doorway. There were the remnants of two chairs, as well, obviously made of some inferior wood because they lay broken on the floor on either side of the table. He rubbed his right hand, remembering the cut he'd given himself while building the furniture. It had seemed so alien to him. The table and chairs were odd enough, but why would anyone want to sleep on a wooden platform? He never did make a bed for himself. He slept in the corner on a pile of straw and boughs.
Like a mule
, he thought. Then he tossed the resentment away. Sleeping on the floor had been his preference, his choice.
He entered the hut and ran his hand across the table, sweeping aside the dust of one and a half decades. The surface of the table was stained and scratched. It was strange, now, to imagine Chiara's royal mother here, living in a place as mean as this.
Something was lying on the longer of the two beds. At first he thought that he had been mistaken, that some creature had come in here to die in comfort. He lifted what appeared to be a dead bird from the torn covers. Dust flew from the feathers, assailing his nose and memory at once. It wasn't a corpse he held.
“I want a cape, Caliban,” Prospero had said, long ago, when Caliban still thought the old man was a god. “I need something to keep out the wind and weather, but fine, too, so it's worthy of my magic. Can you do it?”
He'd been so eager to prove his worth to Prospero. All these years later, even in the gloom of the cabin, the ancient cape he'd made from cormorant skins seemed to shine. Caliban held it for a moment, gazing down at the shimmering blue-black of the feathers; then, with a quick decisive gesture, he threw it around his shoulders. In that instant, he was the island king, here to claim his throne.
The moment passed quickly. He shook the cape from his shoulders and stood, stroking it. He remembered how he had caught them. It had been easy. They had trusted him. And he remembered how he had killed them and skinned them and eaten their flesh. His face twisted into a wry grimace. The birds had not tasted very good.
He stroked the feathers again. His work had been well done. He remembered curing the skins carefully, then sewing them together so that they poured over Prospero's back like black water. And he remembered watching while Prospero worked his magic into the garment, making it his own. Jeweled water, obsidian power.
“I was the tailor, not the prince,” Caliban said aloud.
His glance strayed across the other bed, Miranda's bed. The first time her father had tucked her in there, she'd been so small, her blue eyes wide and fearful. “It's such a big bed, Father,” she'd said. “And I'm such a little girl.”
Prospero had sat beside her. “It won't always be so big,” he told her. “You grow taller and stronger every day. Now close your eyes, and I'll tell you a story.”
Caliban had sat there in the corner, watching the two of them. Prospero's story was about a princess who was so beautiful she made the goddess Venus jealous. The goddess had sent her son to kill the princess, but he fell in love with her and took her away to a secret castle, where he married her. But the princess was sad because her husband would only visit her at night, and she'd never seen his face. She finally lit a lamp one night and looked at him. He was so handsome her hand shook and she spilled oil on him. He awoke and was angry, and she had to do many tasks before he agreed to love her again. But she worked very hard, and so she was made into a goddess herself. It was Miranda's favorite story. She asked for it nearly every night.
It became his favorite as well. Perhaps, if he worked as hard as the princess, the wizard would love him.
He watched his memories for a long time, lulled by the pattering of rain on the roof. Finally, his mind recognized what his eyes saw on the bed. He froze. It was the staff, the wizard's staff, the power of the island broken in two. From the jagged edges bled the strength and health of the island. Here was the cause of the island's suffering. Tenderly he lifted it up, fitting the halves into each other and willing them to knit together. For a brief instant there was a check in the island's pain, but it resumed again.
He squatted down and laid the two pieces on the floor, once more pushing the two broken halves together. Then he grabbed at one of the decaying blankets and tore a strip from it. This length of cloth he wrapped around the break, pulling it tight. Caliban had always been clever with knots. And he had learned, without wanting to, some of the wizard's magic that would bind where nothing else would. Alone, he could not mend the staff. But he could fashion a bandage that would slow the draining of the island's life. He whispered the words of power into the tying. The old fabric strengthened. The knot almost slipped, then held fast.
In the very root of his soul he could feel the island rest.
He lay down on Prospero's old bed, the staff in his arms. He held it as though it were his beloved. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I did not know.”
He felt no response.
The rain continued to slither down from the sky. He stared out the open door and recalled his last days here on the island. He remembered stumbling about drunkenly with two stranded sailors. One of the men he'd made his false god. The other was a court jester. “A cruel fool,” he said out loud, as though he could chase away the memory with a silly rhyme. He remembered how the spirits of the island had tormented the three of them.
Well, he deserved it. He had betrayed everyone: island, Prospero, Miranda, spirits, the cormorants. There was a long list of suffering caused by his weakness and stupidity.
And now Chiara's name was added to that list.
The memories finally fell away, and he buried his face in his arm.
He should have torn up the handkerchief. He should never have given her this choice. What was marriage, and a foreign court, compared to being killed by a monster? What sort of father was he, to let his child meet such a fate?
What did it matter if the island died, so long as Chiara lived? The thought was betrayal upon betrayal. He felt the island pull away from him. But he could not take it back. If he balanced Chiara against the island⦠That was what he had done. That was what Chiara had done. He remembered her at age four, trying to thread a needle. They had been making kites. It was a windy autumn day, and Caliban was impatient to go outside. He kept reaching to help her, to hurry her along. “I want to do it myself, Caliban,” she said. It took her almost half an hour to put that thread through the needle's eye. She cried, but she never gave up. And when it was done, she had smiled so proudly. “I shouldn't have doubted you,” he'd said to her.
But he still did. He never learned. He even preferred it when she failed, when she turned to him for help. She was still his child.
And so he found the heart of his pain. It was not a foreign prince or a dragon who would take Chiara from him. It was life itself. She would grow up, and he would fade in importance. He had tried to keep her, by bringing her here. But she was no longer his, and fate would not let him be so grasping. “She will be killed in the sea, or she will return a wizard, forever changed,” he said aloud. His voice was raspy, the words sounding small and faint. But he knew they were true.
And which did he want? Did he truly want her to live, to emerge from the water a dragon-slaying wizard? She'd never need his help again.
If she died, she'd be his forever. He'd die, the island would die. They'd all slip away. He'd keep Chiara by losing her.
“I am a monster,” he said. “I am a thing of darkness.”
He lay there, the staff cradled loosely in his arm, and stared up at the sagging roof. He could think of nothing more contemptible than himself.
Chiara went on, plodding around the decaying wrecks that sprawled and hulked in the cold and dark. She didn't question the direction she walked, certain that she was going straight to the great beast. Her steps faltered only when she felt herself drawing nearer. There was a sudden warmth in the dark water, a smell of sulfur, a pulse of phosphorescence that stretched an impossibly long distance. What did she intend to do?
“He knows you're coming,” the mermaid had said. Were they just words to frighten her, or was she telling the truth?
The floor of the ocean became pebbled. She trod slowly over fist-sized stones, smooth and rounded by the sea. That was strange, so far out in the deeps, where she imagined there would be nothing but sand and silt.
And then the monster appeared before her, its inner fires fed by every beat of its volcanic heart. A new wave of heat engulfed Chiara, uncomfortably hot, even within her magical shield. By the strange red glow of the beast, she took in the sight of seven massive heads piled upon each other, like a demonic litter of puppies.
That's all wrong,
she thought to herself. It was the central head that held the monster's own tail within its jaws, loosely, almost delicately, though those hinges could clearly crush a boulder of granite and feel nothing in the effort.
One of the heads smelled her. It was instantly roused, lifting and turning its snakey eye to peer at her. “Chiara,” it said, the giant black fork of its tongue tasting the waters as it spoke. “Come closer. I wish to see you more clearly.”
There was no disobeying the command. She drew nearer. She did not question how the monster knew her, knew her name. Of course it did. It was the Oldest. Was there anything it did not know? The other heads opened their eyes and looked at her from every angle, one winding around behind her, its tongue flickering down the length of her back. Still, the central head slept on.
Images flashed through Chiara's mind: dizzying, giant storms of color. The heads were conferring with one another, speaking in the ancient way of the dragon. Chiara caught vague phrases.
It's like chatting with a thunderstorm,
she thought to herself. One of the heads stopped and spoke to her mind directly. It had a beard, and for a wild moment it reminded her of her grandfather. It was amused by her. “You are right,” it said, in images that ripped across the chamber of her skull. “I wield the thunderball and bring the rains of spring.”
“You're only supposed to have one head,” she said to it. Idiotically, she knew, but she couldn't stop. “All the drawings of you show one head.”
Cosmic laughter punctured her brain. The central head awoke, its heavy, leathery outer eyelids lifting, its inner membranous ones sliding away to the sides. The eyes of this head were golden-green and had round pupils, an owlish monstrosity. They caught her mind and held it prisoner, effortlessly tearing from her every thought and every secret desire she'd ever had. She was left with just enough thought to know that she was nothing at all.
The great jaws of the central head opened wide, a lazy yawn of terror. Chiara did not even bother to cover her face with her hands as it swallowed her whole.
Mercifully, she fainted.
Time passed, how much she did not know. All around her was black. Death-dark, grave-black. It was hot, wet, and impossible. Chiara lay on the oozing floor of the beast's body, waiting to die. She did not understand why she was not yet dead. How could a person be swallowed whole, and live?
“How, wizardling?” asked a cool serpentine voice in her mind. She sat upright, feeling the heavy weight of water and time, both slipping past and coiling around the great beast. She felt his bones and knew they were the bones of the earth. She was in the heart of the world.
“Not exactly the heart,” said the great voice again, amused. “But I see how you think, small one. You may live. The power does lie within you. But you must find it first, and time, youngling, is not your friend.”
“Power?” Chiara whispered. “I must fight my way out with magic?”
It seemed as though the very earth laughed at that. “Fight? Magic?” said Leviathan. “What strength can you have, human, that can compare with my own? Force will not free you, nor will tricks. Seek deeper, small one.”
“Deeper, how? Deeper inside myself, or deeper in you?” She looked about wildly, then shut her eyes against the maddening darkness.
There was no answer. The Leviathan was finished talking with her. She could sense its mind: withdrawn, faintly curious.
What power did she have?
Her thoughts went to alchemy, of course. In the beginning she had studied it just to spend time with her grandfather. But his passion had become her own. “I am in the furnace now,” she said aloud. “I am the lead.” Sweat streamed over her. “And it won't be long until I've completely melted.”
She waited for something to happen: a revelation, a sudden burst of knowledge. Nothing happened except that she became so hot she thought she could feel her skin crackle.
It was hopeless. Her mind would not work. She wasn't able to think. She fell back onto the soft, moist flesh of wherever she was. The dragon's gullet? Its belly? How long could she last in this place?