Caliban bounds away to fetch an armload of broom, returning to scrub vigorously at me with the coarse stalks. Although it is a strange course of treatment, it causes the blood to rise to my skin and warms my limbs until I am no longer trembling. “Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you.” I manage to sit upright. “Forgive me, Caliban. That was unwise.”
He backs away from me and averts his gaze. “Yes.”
I should like to weep in sheer frustration. “Oh, Caliban! What has come between us? Why will you not look at me?”
“I cannot,” he murmurs. “You are too beautiful, Miranda.”
“Beautiful!” A wild laugh escapes me. I am a mess, soaked from head to toe. My hair is dripping and I am covered in bright yellow broom blossoms, their ragged petals clinging to my wet gown. I stare at him. “Do you jest?”
Caliban’s shoulders tense. “Do not look at me. You should not look at me.”
“Why?”
He steals one quick, darting glance at me. “Because you are beautiful,” he says again. “And I am a monster.”
The words are like a blow to my heart. “How can you say such a thing?”
“Because it is true!” There is a savage note of anguish in Caliban’s voice. “I am a swart, stooped thing with hunched shoulders and bowed legs, and … and a villain’s brow, and sullen eyes, speckled like a toad!”
Each word is a fresh new blow, cruel and vicious, cracking open my ignorant, selfish heart and driving understanding into it. Caliban loves me not as a friend, not with the innocence of childhood, but as a man loves a woman; loves me and believes himself unworthy.
Love is strong as death, says the Song of Solomon; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
I should like to laugh and rant like a madwoman at the blindness of my own folly; I should like to weep an ocean of salt tears for Caliban’s pain. He does not seek to flee my presence, only squats quietly on his haunches, his head hanging low, breathing like some hunted beast that can run no farther.
He is set against himself, Ariel said to me, and thou art the cause of it.
Ariel.
The words Caliban spoke are not his own, I am sure of it. Only the mercurial spirit would be so cruel.
Gathering myself, I go to Caliban. When I touch his shoulder, he flinches. “Did Ariel say as much to you?”
“It does not matter,” Caliban mutters. “It is true.”
“No.” I flatten my palm against his warm skin. “It is a lie. You are dear to me, and beautiful in my eyes, Caliban. Every part of you. You could never be otherwise.”
Caliban shakes his head. “Do not say so.”
“Should I not love you because your skin shines like polished wood in the sunlight?” Kneeling before him, I stroke his upper arms, feeling the corded muscles tense beneath my hands. “Should I not love you for the strength of these limbs that have saved my life this very day?” My heart quickening in my breast, I touch his averted face, stroke the hair from his brow. “Should I not love this face that is so dear to me? It is the first thing I saw when I emerged from a sleep like death. And your gaze … since we have been friends, your gaze has always been sweet toward me, has it not?” One by one, I touch the scattered moles on his face. “Should I not love you because you wear a constellation of stars upon your skin?”
“Miranda!” he groans. “Do not do this.”
Oh, but I have gained understanding; an understanding that is fragile and precious, and yet there is power in it.
“A constellation of stars,” I whisper again, touching his throat, his shoulders, the broad expanse of his bare chest, making a pattern with my fingertips. His skin is warm, so warm! At the base of my own throat, my pulse flutters like a dragonfly’s wings. “Will you not look at me, Caliban?”
The sun climbs higher into the sky and the stream sings a fast, burbling song to itself as it rushes over the rocks.
The scent of bruised flowers hangs in the air.
Somewhere, a bird is singing.
Caliban raises his head and looks at me with dark, dark eyes filled with longing and misery and desperate hope.
Now he touches my face, and though his hands are rough, his touch is oh, so gentle. He kisses me, his lips soft on mine.
Now I am trembling.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
The understanding I have gained unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, growing vaster and deeper.
I am a woman.
Caliban is a man.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
He kisses me and kisses me, and I kiss him and kiss him in turn, both of us trading kisses back and forth like presents we demand and exchange in a game of rewards in which every player wins, and although I do not know what wine is, I think it must be a heady thing, for it seems my head is spinning with pleasure, and I find that I am no longer kneeling but lying on the green bank of the stream, the green bed of Solomon’s song, Caliban’s weight pinning me to the sweet earth.
I hear my bodice tear.