Prospero Regained (11 page)

“Really?” I sat down again, hard.

The world seemed to spin around me—or maybe it actually was spinning—as this missing piece fell into the puzzle that was my father’s secret plans. So, Aerie Ones could gain souls! Was that why Mab and Caurus seemed so civil, while Boreas—who dwelt in a body but seldom interacted with men—did not?

Mab had not been civil back in his windy days. The Greeks had considered the Northeast the worst of all winds, and sailors knew to fear the notorious Nor’easter. Could the Aerie Ones who interact with humans on a regular basis be joining the Company of Men, of which Astreus had spoken—a term he had used to refer to a gathering of human beings, the way one might say, a pack of wolves or a herd of deer.

My thoughts returned to the cavern of naked Italians beneath Logistilla’s house—bodies I suspected Father had instructed her to create for the purpose of housing Aerie Ones. Could Father’s plan be to give souls to all the Aerie Ones? Was such a thing possible? Had he hoped they would gain souls before he was required to free them at the end of their thousand years of service?

What of the
oreads
and the
oni
? The sylphs and the salamanders? Could they gain souls, too, if they spent time in a body? The possibilities were mind-boggling!

“Mr. Prospero told me this, too.” Mab shrugged. “But I don’t feel any different, so I’ve been figuring it didn’t work. What will happen if I don’t have a soul? Can I still hold the star?”

Malagigi shook his head sadly. “It will either burn you or fall through your hand.”

“Best not to tempt fate,” Gregor said hoarsely. “We cannot risk either wounding you or losing the star.”

Mab nodded glumly and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Nonsense.” Malagigi went to wave his hand through Mab’s arm and was surprised to find it somewhat substantial to him. He patted Mab’s shoulder, his hand sinking into Mab’s coat. “When else will you get such a chance? And besides, if you don’t have a soul, you needn’t lose hope, it could still come! Here, take it. I’ll snatch it away again, instantly, if you start to burn.”

Malagigi knelt upon the seat of the gondola and pulled Mab’s hand from the pocket of the trench coat. The Frenchman dropped the star just above Mab’s palm, while cupping his other hand under Mab’s, ready to catch the star, should it fall through Mab.

As we sat hunched within our tent and watched the twinkle of silver fall, time seemed to stand still. Gregor, still seated, leaned against his black staff, watching intently. Erasmus had turned off his staff and sat up. Now, he squatted beside Mab, eager for a better view. Mab himself stood rooted in place, his face screwed up. I wondered if he was saying a prayer.

My heart hammered oddly, as if playing a melody against my ribs. Even though there was no reason for my reaction, I felt certain that a great deal rode upon this test. Father had told different stories to various of his children, none of which I knew for certain to be true. If Father’s theory about Aerie Ones receiving souls by inhabiting bodies and interacting with men was true, then maybe other things Father had claimed might be true as well.

Maybe, despite all the evidence otherwise, I was not the child of the witch Sycorax. Maybe Father’s great love for my mother was not a lie. Maybe Father had never enchanted me, or used me cruelly.

Were the star to burn Mab or fall through his hand, it would be the death knell of all my hopes—as if I would then know for certain that Father was a liar, I a slave, and my entire long life a fraud.

The little star reached Mab’s hand. He cried out, gasping, and flinched backward.

My eyes filled with tears. I turned my head away.

“Look!” Malagigi leapt up and danced. He pointed with great excitement. “It’s staying!”

I snapped my head up. It was true! The tiny silver star rested upon Mab’s palm: it did not burn his flesh.

“Feels … sort of weird,” Mab voiced hesitantly. Then, slowly, a smile crept across his stony features until it became a wide, jubilant grin. He held his hand up high. The little star shone upon it. Its silvery light flooded the entire hideout, illuminating the cardinal robes above, the gondola below, and the rim of the huge skull.

Erasmus laughed. Malagigi clapped his hands, and even Gregor allowed himself a slight smile. As for me, I cried tears of joy.

Of course, as there was no evidence to support my intuition—no Lady who could have sent it—Mab’s catching the star was not really proof of anything.

Yet, my heart sang.

*   *   *

“IT’S
definitely getting smaller in here.” Erasmus’s shout jarred me from the waking dream into which I had slipped. He knelt on the edge of the skull with his head sticking back inside our tent. “The ribs have been pushed together, for one thing, with the vertebra all sort of knocked together in a pile. We’d be squished in the mix, too, if it weren’t for this skull. We should begin preparing for the next step.”

I stretched my stiff limbs and tried not to gag as the stench of digestion assailed me anew. The roaring and grinding were nearly deafening now, and the inside of our makeshift tent was sweltering. My face and neck dripped with perspiration. I wondered that I could have slept through this at all.

Gregor looked up from the middle of the gondola, where he and Malagigi had been kneeling together in prayer. “What did you have in mind, Brother?”

“I think, with my expert knowledge of medicine, the steps I have taken should induce the creature to vomit. I doubt the kronosaurs on earth had a regurgitation reflex, but this creature seems to, so I won’t argue with providence.

“Once it throws us up, we’ll need to sail on something when we get out. Or, at the very least, hold on to something. Any idea how to go about this?” Erasmus asked. He lifted the crimson robe that formed our tarp, scooted inside the tent, and then tucked the robe back into place, insulating us somewhat from the violence of the stomach. “I’m assuming we’ll be spit out into the midst of the swamp rather than near land. Of course, we might be spit out into the depths of the ocean of slime, and all asphyxiate before we reach the surface—in which case, we won’t need a boat. Assuming we do need a boat, however, what are we going to do about the gondola?”

We studied our vessel, moving the silver star here and there, to facilitate the examination. I ran my hand along the damaged area, feeling the break in the otherwise smooth wood. “It’s cracked, but not split. The
dolfin
has broken off the bow, of course, but that will not affect its water-worthiness. If we had some oakum, we could patch it.”

“Didn’t think to bring any,” Mab mumbled apologetically. He looked puzzled when the rest of us laughed.

“How about securing it to the skull?” I suggested. “We already know that the skull can float a bit; maybe the two of them together could stay afloat.”

Erasmus laughed derisively. “Oh, that will work, I’m sure! I can just see us now, floating through Hell in an upside-down skull.” Smiling, he tipped back his head and recited:

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,

In a Sieve they went to sea:

In spite of all their friends could say,

On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,

In a Sieve they went to sea!

“If I recall,” Gregor said, humor twinkling in his eyes, “‘they’ returned twenty years later, hale and whole, having ‘been to the Lakes, and the Terrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore.’”

Mab shuddered. “If this is the Lakes, then I guess we have the Terrible Zone to look forward to. Hope it doesn’t take us twenty years to get back, though. That would be bad for Mr. Prospero. Don’t much like the sound of Chankly Bore, either.”

Erasmus chuckled. “I didn’t know you could quote Edward Lear, Gregor. You never cease to surprise me! Very well, let’s lash our gondola to the sieve and throw our fate in with The Jumblies. May we be as lucky as they, and our sieve float.”

*   *   *

“UH
 … people!” Mab peered out from under the robe as we completed the task of binding the gondola to the skull. “That sea monster we killed? I don’t think it’s dead!”

“Of course!” Malagigi slapped his forehead. “We never saw its spirit leave its body and depart for some other place! Why didn’t I think of that! Bad, Maugris!
Mal!
”

“Perhaps, you should attend more,” Erasmus chided mockingly.

“Ah!
Touché!
” Malagigi made a show of clutching his heart as if he had been stabbed.

“Is that what would usually happen?” I asked. “We would see the spirit depart from the body?”

“If a living creature died, yes.” Malagigi sat down beside me. “Unlike the kronosaur, however, the sea monster may not be a creature that swam, living, from Earth. It may be one of those nightmares that serves the demons and preys upon the Lustful. If so, then it is bound by the rules that govern the damned. When spirits are damaged here, they lay in a stupor for a time and then regenerate to suffer the same torment again—or to inflict it, if they are one of the torturers.”

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, readying my fan.

“Easy enough,” Erasmus declared. “We ‘kill’ it again!”

Mab frowned. “This place gives ‘kill’ a whole new meaning.”

Putting his hand on the hilt of
Durandel,
Erasmus lifted the crimson robe. Then, the world turned upside down. We were all thrown willy-nilly, bouncing off my brother’s garments and slamming repeatedly into the gondola, until my head, back, and shins were all stinging. From all around came thuds and shouts of pain. Erasmus, who had been partway out, nearly slid over the edge of the skull, but Gregor managed to grab his foot and yank him back in. Eventually, all of us were able to grab on to the seats.

“Malagigi!” I shouted, once I had wedged my feet under the far seat, so that I now flopped around with the skull-boat rather than in it. “Go up and see what is going on!”

The blue-robed Frenchman flitted away, reappearing soon after.

“La! I believe the creature is trying to disgorge us.”

“Finally,” Gregor croaked hoarsely.

“That answers any questions about its vomit reflex.” Erasmus clung to the upside-down gondola seat. “Quick! Cut the ties that are holding us to the ribs!”

Around and around, we spun, like fair-goers trapped in a children’s ride. I managed to open my fan and slice through the rope securing us to the ribs nearest to me. I could only hope that the others had done the same.

Then, we were right side up again, rushing along on a river of bile. The crimson robe had pulled free in several places; it fluttered wildly. Through the openings, we could see that we were in the mouth rushing toward the creature’s teeth. The wet roof of the mouth was only a little ways above our head, and the teeth were now only the size of fence posts—nowhere as large as the sharpened columns we had passed on our way in, but still big enough to pierce us through the middle. As we careened toward them, the jaws began to close.

We were heading directly toward a picket fence of death. The river of stomach fluids that bore us forward poured over the lower teeth, but the gleaming tips of the upper teeth descended rapidly.

“It’s going to bite us!” I cried.

“Down in front!” Erasmus cried. “Everybody duck!”

Erasmus drew the sword
Durandel.
Rising in a place where the ropes had come free, he balanced on our unsteady craft like a surfer, the blade raised behind his head.

We shot forward just as the jaws descended. Shouting, Erasmus swung. His sword struck through two teeth with the full force of his strongest blow. They cracked, spraying splinters of ivory enamel right and left. Erasmus threw himself down onto the crimson robe, squashing the rest of us, and we sailed through the gap to freedom.

The force of our ejection from the kronosaurus propelled us some distance across the scum-covered swamp. Luckily for us, the plesiosaur had surfaced before disgorging us, so we could breathe. However, there was no way for us to escape, should it decide to pursue us. As it dived, we held our breath, waiting to see if it would resurface. Our skull-boat bobbed lopsidedly, but it did not sink.

“Any sign of it?” Mab peered off into the gloom, looking this way and that.

“None,” Erasmus replied after another tense minute had passed. “I see our other friend over there, the sea monster. It’s floundering about, but it looks as if its eyes are healing. Perhaps, we should run before it recovers more fully.”

“Run, how?” I asked. “Our pole-oar is broken.”

“Ah! As to that!” Malagigi pulled free the two pieces that had been used to support the tent. Closing his eyes and bringing his hands together, he prayed over them. When he lifted his head, he was holding the full-sized pole again.

“Well … that’s convenient!” Erasmus declared. “Nicest thing that’s happened all day!”

*   *   *

MALAGIGI
poled us through the swamp. Mab held the silver star, grinning like a jack-o-lantern. The swamp was horrible, ugly, and stank, true, but it beat being digested by an ancient dinosaur.

“Now we are back where we were,” Malagigi said cheerfully as he poled, “seeking the Greatest Swordsman in Christendom. Ah, what a fighter he was in his prime! Come, Erasmus, distract us from the horrors around us. Tell us more of this famous duel that your brother fought.”

Erasmus obliged, describing the duel between Mephisto and Cesare in some detail, adding, “It was a great rivalry. Both young men were handsome and talented. They moved in the same circles and were fighting over a beautiful girl. Antonio set the whole thing up. He made a mint off the match. Everyone had bet on the higher-ranking, better-known Cesare, of course.”

“Higher-ranking?” Mab paused. “Wasn’t Mephisto’s father the Duke in an independent Duchy?”

“Cesare’s father was pope,” I replied.

“Pope!” Mab exclaimed. “I thought popes weren’t allowed to be fathers … except in the spiritual sense, of course.”