I do not want to look closer. I want to run away, I want to turn back the sun and unmake this morning until I am safe in my chamber, all thoughts of disobedience abandoned and forgotten. I do not want to have seen this thing in Papa’s sanctum, and I do not want to know what it is. And yet I find myself moving forward nonetheless, rising on tiptoes and putting my hands on the jar, inching it across the counter to draw it toward me for a better look.
It bobs as the liquid sloshes a bit. There is a thin braid of hair tied around one ankle like a tether, golden hair a shade darker than mine, the stray ends of strands floating in the liquid.
My throat feels thick, and my heart is thumping and thumping, faster than a hare’s inside my breast.
Its milky gaze holds mine. Can it see, I wonder? I am not sure, but it seems so. Somehow there is sorrow in those sightless-looking eyes. Its pale bud of a mouth opens and closes, and I think it is trying to form words. The fingers of its tiny hands open like the petals of a flower, splaying to touch the glass.
“What?” I whisper. “Oh, what is it? What do you seek to tell me? What are you? Who are you?”
“Miranda!”
Papa’s voice crashes over me like a wave. I jerk away, but I am scared and careless, and … oh, I can hardly bear it.
The jar topples over the edge of the counter and falls.
It smashes to bits on the tile floor, liquid splashing everywhere. And the thing … the thing …
It lies amid the shards, a pale, naked, misshapen thing, its mouth opening and closing, gasping like a fish. Bubbles rise from its lips. Its soft, narrow chest rises and falls; quickly at first, and then slower and slower.
I am shaking, shaking.
“Oh, you foolish child.” Papa’s voice is soft and deadly, filled with more fury than I have ever heard. He holds his staff in one hand, and the other rises to grasp one of the amulets strung about his neck; not Caliban’s, but the one that contains a lock of my own hair. “You foolish, careless, treacherous child! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Unable to speak, I back away, shaking my head in wordless denial, willing him to understand, to forgive.
Papa does neither. “You’ve killed your mother all over again, Miranda,” he says in that soft, terrible voice, and his fist tightens on the amulet.
There is no time for understanding before the pain comes, a great tearing shriek of pain, tying my entrails in knots and pounding within the confines of my skull. Like Caliban, I fall writhing to the ground, but I cannot even draw breath to cry out. My lungs heave in vain as surely as the poor misshapen thing in the broken jar dying on the floor beside me, sorrow fading from its milky eyes. The pain is too vast, encompassing the whole of my existence. I see only red and think my eyes must be filled with blood. I think my body will tear itself apart, and my skull split asunder.
I think I must be dying, too.
Somewhere Papa is still speaking words laced with anger and venom, but I cannot hear him above the pain.
Oh, merciful God! I would listen if I could; I would beg Papa’s forgiveness if I could. But I can do nothing save endure his wrath.
Oh, merciful God, it hurts, it hurts! Something inside me is breaking.
And then …
… nothingness.
TWENTY-ONE
CALIBAN
Miranda has done a bad thing, but I do not know what it is.
I think … I think she goes into Master’s room, the big room that was Umm’s room, the room where we are not to go, never ever never. But I think it is a bigger thing, too, because Master is so very, very angry.
I find him taking Miranda down the stairs. She is asleep in his arms like when they came to the island and she was so little, but she is not so little now; not so little that her head and feet do not hang over Master’s arms. Her golden hair hangs, too, and her face is very white. And he does not carry her like she is the very best thing now. He walks hard and angry and he carries her like she is nothing more than so many sticks to throw on the woodpile.
I am afraid.
“What?” I say. “Master … what?”
Master’s face is like a thing made of stone. “It is no concern of yours, lad,” he says. “Tend to your chores.”
So I do, but it is not the same with Miranda asleep during the day. And I do not know why Miranda sleeps and sleeps, with her face so very white, lying without moving under her bed-linens where Master puts her.
(What did you do, Miranda?)
I look for that Ariel but he is nowhere. Then I see a thing that is new: Master leaves the palace with the sun high in the sky. He is carrying something again, something small wrapped in pretty blue cloth from the pirates’ treasure.
I follow him, but not so close that he sees me. He goes to the far garden where he put Umm in the ground. I climb the wall and hide in a broken place in the corner to watch. Master summons one of the little gnomes to dig a hole. It paddles in the dirt with its strong hands, paddlity-paddle.
Soon it is a deep hole.
Master goes on his knees beside it. He moves the cloth away from the thing and puts his lips on it, but I cannot see what it is. Master puts the cloth back and puts the thing in the hole.
A wind comes behind me. “Thou skulking churl!” Ariel whispers, and I jump like a bee has stung me. “Hast thou no decency? Wouldst spy on a man laying his own dear wife to rest?”