(What do you do when you are alone in your sanctum, Master?)
So I do not keep watch over Miranda on her blood-days, which is a thing that does not truly need doing; it is only a thing that made me feel as though I was caring for her from afar. Oh, I watch enough to be sure she is at her studies in the warm kitchen or at least nowhere where she might see me scaling the palace walls to lurk on the balcony outside Master’s sanctum. I do my chores, always, always, so that the woodpile is stacked high and embers glow on the hearth, and there are acorns gathered and blanched and ground into flour, and there are always fish or mussels in the larder ready for the cooking.
And then I spy.
It is not a nice thing to do, no; not with the chilly winds of winter blowing. With my bare belly pressed to the marble floor of the balcony, I shiver and watch while Master does his work.
Sometimes it is only what I have seen before, Master looking at his charts and books, talking to himself and making notes. He talks louder to himself when he is alone than he does when Miranda is there, and when the wind is not whooshing so hard I cannot hear, I listen and try to make sense of it; but it is all words I do not know and nonsense to me.
Oh, but other times, there are other things Master does. He takes the cloth from his mirror and says magic words, and then waah! There are faces that show in it! Not Master’s own face, no, but the faces of other men like him, old men with beards, and their lips move as though they are talking to each other. I stare and stare to be sure I am seeing true, and Master stares and stares as though their faces make him hungry, and his lips move too, as though he is whispering their words to himself.
I wish I could creep closer to see and hear better, but I do not dare.
And then there is the clay jar that Miranda leaves outside his door during her blood-days. I do not know what is in it, but then I see Master take a thing from it with long tongs, a thing like a little stuffed sack, only it is soaked with blood, and the first time I see it, I make a sound so loud that Master puts down his tongs and comes to the door of the balcony to look, and I almost do not get away in time, leaping for the wall and climbing so fast, fast, fast to hide under the balcony.
There I crouch and cling to the stones of the wall, my arms and legs shaking, shakity-quakity, my heart going pound, pound, pound like a hare’s, my breath going in and out of my throat so loud, and I am scared because I think Master will hear; and I am scared because it is your blood that Master gathers, Miranda, the blood that comes from you after the moon is round since you are a woman.
I am sure of it.
“O la!” the wind whispers in my ear. “Careless, careless! Our master will catch thee a-spying!”
Of course, that Ariel must come trouble me at the worst time. I want to shout at him to go away, but then Master will catch me. I clench my teeth together hard and say nothing, trying not to fall; and Ariel only laughs and goes on his whooshity way. And I think to myself, oh ho! I am right and Ariel spies, too—and he does not want Master to catch him, either.
I am using my wits.
Now I want to run away, but I do not. I climb back and watch, quiet as a mouse. Master puts the sack in a funny-shaped bottle with a bit of water until the water is red and bloody, then he takes the sack out with his tongs and puts it in a different jar. Then he puts the bottle on the metal thing that is like a little hearth, and the little salamander glows and glows, oh, so bright, and the bloody water boils and boils until it is gone, and then Master adds something like grains of sand to the bottle and there is a sharp smell that gets into my nose.
When it is done, Master takes a long spoon and scrapes the bottom of the bottle and there is a dark red powder and this he puts in a little pot.
Why, oh why?
I cannot guess, but I do not like it.
Master boils other bad-smelling things on his hearth, too; but it does not trouble me like Miranda’s blood.
One month when Miranda’s blood-days come, it is very cold, more cold than I ever do remember, and I do not spy on Master. The wind is so cold on my bare skin, I am shaking like a leaf on a tree when I bring the wood that I have gathered for the hearth inside.
Miranda sees this and sews a shirt for me out of the same coarse cloth as my breeches.
She gives it to me in the kitchen the very next day. “I know you no longer reckon me a friend,” she says without looking at me. Her voice is soft, so very soft, and there is oh so much hurting in it. “But I hope you will accept this nonetheless. ’Tis uncommonly cold and I should hate for you to suffer a chill and fall ill for it.”
My throat goes tight.
I take the shirt. “You are my friend, Miranda,” I say to her. “You will always be my friend.”
Miranda does look at me, then.