No, this storm is for the men who are coming.
It is dark, though; so dark it does not seem like day anymore. The sun has answered Master’s prayers by hiding his face away. I have never seen such clouds! Lightning flashes when I reach the high place and I see Setebos laughing against the sky, ha-ha!
Now the wind is so strong it is hard to walk. I creepity-creep on my feet and hands like when I was little.
I am breathing hard, so I rest for a moment under Setebos’s jaws. Here the wind and the rain cannot reach me so much; oh, but there are voices in the howling wind, and I must see. And so I leave Setebos and creep in the very face of the wind to the edge of the cliff and lay myself flat to look over it.
Waah!
There is a ship and it is close, so close! The sea is boiling like water in a pot and the ship is tossed all about.
Lightning does strike it and it burns with blue-white flames; burns on the tall poles, burns in the ropes and sails. Men run about here and there, and their voices are like tiny gnat voices crying in the storm.
Does Master—that is Prospero—mean to kill them all, I wonder? If it is so, my plan is lost.
Thunder sounds like rocks breaking. The rain puts my wet hair in my eyes so I cannot see.
I push it back.
Big waves, the biggest waves, crash and crash on the jaggedy rocks below me. On the ship the blue-white fire leaps from place to place, joining itself to itself like ropes of cracklety lightning.
But lightning does not burn so, and I think to myself: Ariel.
Ariel is in the storm.
“All is lost!” says a voice from the ship. “Mercy on us! We are wrecked! Save yourselves!”
Oh, that is no human voice that could make itself heard in such a storm, no. Only Ariel. What game is this?
“Do not listen to him!” I shout into the wind. “Do not trust him!”
Oh, but I am far away, poor dumb monster; I almost cannot hear my own voice. Little figures like ants jump from the ship, jump into the boiling sea, one; one, two, three, four; one, two.
I think they will drown, but no, there is Ariel, a great whooshity darkness sweeping down like wings out of the storm. One he carries away, whoosh-whoosh; and then the four, whooshity-whoosh, he carries them away far away to different places on the isle where I cannot see.
The ship does not crash on the rocks, but spins in a circle. There is no more blue-white fire on it.
Little gnat voices cry.
The wind shifts and whoosh, there is Ariel again, a great looming thing of storm-clouds, taller than trees, raising the waves and carrying the ship, the whole ship, away to the south.
I am holding my breath.
I let it out.
The rain stops.
The wind stops.
I push my wet hair out of my eyes and look over the cliff. There are still two men in the water. One is swimming, swimming strong toward the shore. One is holding on to a wooden thing that floats and kicking his feet.
I did think to seek out Master’s enemies, but now I think those are the men that Ariel did save his own self; and he will be watching over them. I do not know why, but these two in the water do not matter to him. If these are men Ariel does not care to save, that Prospero has not bidden him to save, these are the men I need to do what my own hands cannot.
I go to find them.
FORTY-FIVE
MIRANDA
When the storm dies at last, it is like a long-sought blessing. Still, I cannot stop weeping. I sit with my back pressed against the wall of the watchtower and my knees drawn up beneath my rain-soaked yellow gown. Silent tears slide down my face. My body aches, my burned hip hurts, and I cannot summon the will to stand.
Papa lowers his staff, retrieves the fallen spyglass, and surveys the sea. “The greater part of the deed is done,” he says in a voice grown hoarse from long chanting. “Though it is no thanks to you my working did not fail.”
“I trust there are no survivors,” I say, and I am surprised at the depth of bitterness in my own voice.
Papa stares at me, his face haggard. “No survivors? What manner of man do you take me for?”
I look away. “I do not know.”
“Oh, Miranda!” Now a note of sorrowful reproach enters his voice. “Could you not, just once, have done as I bade you? Could you not have trusted me as I have begged you so many times? If Ariel has carried out the fullness of my bidding as I believe he has done, he has spirited them all to safety, and not a man aboard the ship did perish.”
So they are not dead.
I am not complicit in killing an entire shipful of men.
My breath hitches in my throat, and I take in a gulp of air. I do not know whether to laugh or scream. I let my head fall back against the stones of the tower and gaze at Papa. “Well, if it is so, I am surpassingly glad to hear it. But could you have not, just once, entrusted me with the whole truth?”