“I know naught of rumors,” I say, gathering oranges in the skirt of my robe; but it is a mistake even to reply.
“Naught of rumors!” Ariel sits cross-legged in midair on a cushion wrought of nothing save clouds, his filmy garments fluttering about him. “Why, I speak of the boy’s father, of course. Hast thou not thought to wonder?” I say nothing and Caliban does not even glance at the spirit, but Ariel is undeterred. “The sailors who brought thy cursed witch of a mother to this isle, bound in chains and gravid with child, did gossip amongst themselves,” he says conversationally to Caliban. “Some did claim that thy father was an imp from the pits of hell, and some did claim that he was the fiercest of Barbary pirates, black of hide and heart. But others … ah!” Ariel drops his voice to a whisper. “Others claimed that thy mother mated with a great ape, a dumb, hairy beast from the deepest, darkest jungles.”
With a hoarse bark, Caliban drops from the branches, landing on his haunches. There is banked fury in his expression.
“Why must you be so cruel?” I ask Ariel indignantly. “Caliban has done nothing to you!”
“Has he not?” Ariel’s eyes turn cold and wintry. “And yet it is because of him that Sycorax imprisoned me.” He turns his pale gaze on Caliban. “Dost thou know what thy mother demanded of me? Dost thou know what demand I refused to earn such a punishment?”
Caliban’s shoulders hunch. “No.”
“She bade me to lie with her as a man lies with a woman,” Ariel says, and there is disgust and loathing in his voice. “Dost thou know what that betokens? She beseeched me to get her with child. A child of light to replace the spawn of darkness that condemned her to exile from the presence of all decent, God-fearing folk. Thou.”
Caliban snarls and hurls an orange at him. “You lie!”
Ariel’s form dissolves in a flurry of mist and tendrils of fog, and the orange passes through the mist to land harmlessly on the grass; and then Ariel is there once more, hovering above the earth and smiling his cutting smile. “Do I?”
With an effort, Caliban turns his back on him.
“Go away!” I shout at the spirit, my hands fisting in the folds of my robe, heavy with the weight of gathered oranges. “Leave him alone! Leave us alone!”
“Us.” Ariel echoes the word and laughs. “So I shall, for now!”
And then he is gone.
Without a word, Caliban walks away, his shoulders still hunched and tight. “Wait!” I call after him, and he breaks into a loping run. “Caliban, don’t go! Don’t listen to him!” I give chase, the oranges spilling from the apron of my robe, but Caliban is too swift for me. Within minutes, he has scrambled over the wall and is out of sight.
And I am left alone to wonder.
There is so very much I do not understand.
By suppertime, Caliban has not returned and Papa is wroth with him. “If he thinks to shirk his duties without punishment, he shall find himself sorely mistaken on the morrow,” he says in a grim tone. “He has gathered no kindling and the woodpile is all but empty.”
I push a bit of fish around my silver platter; fish that Caliban caught for us that very morning. “Do not be too angry with him, Papa,” I murmur. “Ariel goaded him cruelly today.”
Papa makes a dismissive gesture. “’Tis a poor excuse. The spirit has a mercurial nature.”
“He spoke of Caliban’s father.” I hesitate. “He said … he said mayhap his father was an ape, a great hairy beast.”
Papa frowns. “That is no fit topic for a lass of your tender years. I shall have words with Ariel.”
“But it’s not true, is it?” I ask.
“No.” Papa’s voice is firm. “Such a thing is impossible, Miranda. What else did he say?”
Ariel’s words come into my mind unbidden. She bade me to lie with her as a man lies with a woman. I do not know what this means, only that the words, and the manner in which Ariel spoke them, make me feel uncertain and unclean, and I do not want to repeat them for fear that Papa will chide me for listening to them. “Ariel said that the sailors who brought Sycorax to the isle gossiped,” I say instead. “Some said Caliban’s father was an ape, some said he was a fearsome pirate, and some said he was an imp from the pits of hell.”
Papa is silent for a moment. “Such rumors should never have reached your ears,” he says gently. “Yet I will say that while whatever deviltry Sycorax practiced may have affected Caliban ere his birth, having examined the lad at length, I am quite certain that his father was a mere mortal and human.” His frown returns. “What manner of human, I cannot say; and indeed, we may never know. No one wholesome of character, of that you may be sure.”