I am afraid, too. The creepity feeling grows stronger and stronger; biting ants, now. But I am angry, too.
The sun does rise in the east and Prospero says his dawn chant, the deep, magic words rolling from his mouth. The air feels shivery, and Miranda shivers although it is warm, and the lid on the smoke-trickling metal bowl that hangs from a chain she holds shivers, too. The goat tugs at the rope, its mouth opening and closing, opening and closing.
Master—Prospero—takes out his knife. “Hold it fast, lad,” he says to me, and I do. I hold the goat by its curling horns, lifting its head toward the sky and holding it in place to show its throat. Its tongue sticks out.
Prospero goes to one side of the goat, and flash, waah! He cuts its throat open. Blood comes out hard and fast, one, two, three, then slower. The goat’s legs go crumplety-crumple under it and it sags heavy, its horns sliding in my hands. I catch it and lower it gently to the stones. Some of its blood gets on my hands. The fear goes out of its eyes, and they are empty like glass.
Now Master wipes his knife on the goat’s rough white hair, leaving smears of red. He puts away the knife and lifts the lid of the smoking bowl, puts herbs and things on the coals. He takes the chain from Miranda and begins to swing the bowl around, leaving trails of strong-smelling smoke like streaks of clouds in the air, and begins to make his long prayer.
This is the part I remember from when he did free Ariel that is so very long, only it is the sun that Master prays to this time, and it is all, oh, Lord Sun who is so wonderful, oh, Lord Sun who is called this thing and that thing and another thing, oh, Lord Sun who is the light of the world, I ask you this, I ask you that, oh, Lord Sun, hear me, hear me, hear me.
All the while the creepity feeling is shouting at me to go, go, go, go to the high place and look!
But even if I did dare, I would not leave Miranda. It is the longest time I have been near her since that day. Master is not looking at us, he is looking toward the sun, waving his staff and his bowl around, making his prayer.
Behind his back, Miranda and I look sideways at each other again. She is so near, I could touch her hand; only mine are bloody.
I love you, I say to her with my eyes.
She gives me a scared little nod. I love you, too, her eyes say.
On and on Master’s prayer goes until at last it is over, and I wait for something to happen.
Nothing does.
“Ariel!” Master calls. “Come, brave spirit!” And there is Ariel, whooshity-whoosh, coming all white and fluttering, like he has been waiting for this very moment for all of his life. “The hour is upon us, good Ariel!” Master says to him. “Do you recall all that I require of you? Are you prepared to do as I bade you?”
Ariel does bow. “I do and I am, Master.”
Master lifts up his staff. “Then fly, brave spirit; wreak my will, and earn your freedom in the bargain!”
Ariel laughs a high, wild laugh and leaps into the air, wind gathering beneath him. “I go, Master!”
My skin creeps and creeps.
Master watches him go, then gives me a dark look. “You have no further part to play in the events of the day. Hang the goat’s carcass in the garden outside the kitchen that its blood might drain, then be about your chores.”
I would like to cut his throat open. “Yes, Master.”
“Come,” he says to Miranda, giving her the smoke-trickling bowl on its chain to carry. “We are bound for the watchtower.”
Leave the goat and go, go, go, says the creepity feeling; but Miranda looks one last look behind her at me, and Master looks, too.
So I pick up the dead he-goat, which is very heavy, much heavier than a hare, and put it over my shoulders, holding it in place by its front and back legs. Its head hangs down and bounces when I walk and more blood comes from its white throat that is cut open in a wet red smile, getting on the skin of my arm and my chest. More blood gets on me in the garden when I tie its back legs together and hang it from the strong branch of an oak tree, hauling on the rope to lift it and tying knots in a hurry.
At last the dead goat hangs upside down, its tongue sticking out of its mouth. Its eyes are like balls of yellow-black glass and slow drops of blood fall from its cut throat onto the dust.
“Poor dumb monster,” I whisper to it; I do not know why. It is only a goat. “I am sorry.”
The upside-down goat with its stiff dead tongue says nothing. The wind is beginning to rise, strong enough to make the goat sway on its rope.
Setebos is calling me.
Go, go, go!
I run.
FORTY-THREE
MIRANDA
In the watchtower, Papa lowers the spyglass from his eye. “There!” he says in triumph, pointing. “Will you see?”