So I do.
In the palace, I place the pail full of mussels in the larder and creep up the stairs, creep down the hallway.
Outside Master’s door, I listen.
I hear nothing.
I raise my hand to rap upon the door, then lower it. Today is not like the day when Miranda began to bleed. Today I have no reason to disturb Master at his studies; no, nor Miranda with him.
Master will be angry, and my flesh flinches at the thought of the punishment he will inflict upon me. I only want to know, to be sure that Miranda has taken no harm. She was frightened to return to this room where she did almost die, where the thing her father called her mother, the thing that Ariel named a homunculus, did die at her careless hand. I know she was.
And yet I cannot make myself knock upon the door. Angry at my own fearfulness, I retreat.
Oh, but there are ways and ways.
Outside, I circle the palace, gazing upward. There is a balcony on the upper story that looks into Master’s big room, his sanctum. A gleaming metal tube sits atop it, pointed at the sky.
It is not meant to be a place that anyone could reach save from inside Master’s sanctum itself, but I am not anyone. I am Caliban, a misshapen monster with strong bent legs and hunched shoulders meant for climbing, and hard-nailed fingers and toes that can wedge deep into the smallest of cracks, like those between the crumbling old stones of the palace.
I scale the wall like a lizard, trying not to think about the drop below me, and haul myself onto the balcony on my belly, hiding as best I might beneath the shadow of the bright metal sky-pointing tube. Lifting my head, I peer over the lintel.
“Oh, la!” an idle voice remarks behind me. “How very intrepid thou art!”
Ariel.
I turn my head to glare at him. “Hush!”
The spirit is half shape, half cloud, drifting wisps coming together and falling apart in endless churning motion. A keen-featured face emerges, a hand touches one finger to its lips. “I am the soul of discretion,” he breathes in a whisper. “Why, when it comes down to the nub of the matter, are we not in this together, thee and I, my fellow servant?”
I ignore him.
Mayhap I was a fool to have worried, for it is a peaceable scene. Master’s grey head is bent over his books. He mutters to himself and makes notes on a slate close at hand, sometimes rising to pace the room, clutching at the amulets around his neck. When he does, I duck low and plaster my belly to the balcony.
Miranda …
Miranda stands atop something and draws upon the wall with strong colors, making the image of a fierce man’s face with red eyes that glare out at the world. Her face … her face is like the face of a girl in a dream, in the best dream.
I watch her.
Girl, yes; and woman, too, and the both of them gone to a place where I cannot follow. My heart and my rod ache alike, the latter stirring beneath my loins against the hard stone of the balcony. A slanting ray of sunlight catches a mirror against the back wall of Master’s sanctum, the round mirror from the pirates’ treasure, now etched all around its outside with letters and symbols. The mirror winks as though it would speak to me, but it is in no language I know.
There is nothing for me here.
Retreating, I clamber over the balcony. Down is harder than up, and I must reach wide to find hand-and foot-holds, my weight hanging from my left side while I seek purchase with my right.
Ariel drifts beside me as I make the careful climb downward. “Dost thou think to protect the lass from him?” he asks in a curious tone. “Her own father?”
I put my teeth together hard. Clench, that is the word. I know oh, so many words now, and none of them do me a bit of good. “I had to be sure. He did very nearly kill her in that room.”
“Oh, aye, for disobedience,” Ariel says as though it is nothing. “But the lass has long since learned her lesson, and she is there at her father’s bidding.” He waits for me to drop the last few feet onto the dusty rocks. “The magus has brought her into his laboratorium,” he muses. “Into the very working of his arts. Yet methinks he has not taken her into his confidence. What thinkest thou, fellow servant?”
“What do you care what I think?” I ask him bitterly. “I am only the poor dumb monster who loves her!”
“Love!” Ariel’s shifting features go still in astonishment, his eyes flaring crystal-bright. “Thou dost use the word?”
I stomp away from him across the palace grounds toward the kitchen. “Leave me alone.”
He follows me nonetheless. “Thou art a fool, tender-hearted monster. Dost think to deny thy baser nature?”
“I am not ruled by it!” I say in defiance. “No more than any man! No more than Master himself!”
“Master!” Ariel laughs, but this time the sharp edge of his laughter is not meant for me. “Oh, la!”
I make my eyes go narrow. “What do you mean?”