Rough Magic by Caryl Cude Mullin Read Free Book Online Page B

did anything there but eat and work magic, just like she did here. And it was full of odd and useless people. “They respected me!” she would say. “They feared me.” Then he knew it was time to leave. She always got angry after the stories.
    It had never nourished her, the magical food. He had watched her grow frail and thin, refusing to eat the good island food he made. “You must,” he had said. She had smiled, and ruffled his hair. She had not wanted to live.
    Caliban knew why. It lay there, in the corner. The mean stick. It had begun calling to him. It wanted a master.
    He looked down at the staff. He knew that it held the island’s life. It had held his own. Now it was looking for someone to wield it. “You are the island king,” it said. That was one of his mother’s pretend words. King and queen. She always said them together. “Setebos is king,” he told the mean stick. “He doesn’t need you.” The mean stick tried to catch him, but he was free of it, freed by his mother’s death. He would not be caught by it as she had been. He would not die twisted into a hoop.
    At first he tried tossing it into the sea. But his mother was right; it would not float away. No matter how hard and how far he flung it, it would not follow his mother out into the deeps. Time after time it washed up again on the shore. Its voice bothered him. It bothered all the creatures. Birds began to flap about aimlessly in disordered flocks. Pigeons flew with ravens, seagulls swooped by with starlings.
    He could burn it in his fire, cook his supper over its coals. But the very idea seemed to make the island shudder. Finally he brought it back into the cave. He scraped together the earth of the floor and buried it, in the corner of the cave. Then he brought in rocks to cover the small mound. Its call was muffled, now. He could ignore it. He would forget it.
    He ran out into the falling rain when his task was done.

II.ii.
    Caliban had been alone for many years. His language was all but gone. “Fire,” he would say, holding his hands up to the heat. “Fish. Water. Cave. Setebos.” He would turn his words over in his mind, like stones in a stream, polishing them, keeping them bright and alive.
    And now he could share them again. He watched, shaking with fear and hope, with wanting, as a man pulled a small boat onto the shore and then, amazingly, lifted out a sleeping child.
    The man stumbled. He was tired, he needed help. Caliban crept from his cover of the trees. He approached slowly, his hands empty, to keep the man from fearing him the way the wild creatures often did.
    Even so the man stepped back, alarmed. He was tall, his graying beard long, his hair too. His dark robes were weathered, and his face was newly reddened and peeling from exposure to the sun. Caliban guessed he’d been adrift at sea for several days.
    The child in his arms stirred and whimpered. The man spoke to it, his words quick and lilting, none of them familiar to Caliban. They made him feel suddenly ashamed, those slippery, lightning words, as though he were only a beast and not the son of a god.
    Then the child lifted its head, and Caliban gasped in wonder. It had golden hair that spilled over its shoulders, gleaming in the sunlight. It must be a god-child too, this beautiful creature. The man spoke again, to him this time, his voice rich and deep. Now Caliban could sense his power. Perhaps he was a god. Perhaps he was even Setebos, come again in the form of a man.
    Caliban fell to his knees. He tried to speak, to tell the god that he would serve him, help him, here on the island. But the words strangled in his throat and only a guttural croak came out. He blushed with humiliation, hanging his head lower. This was not how he meant to greet his father.
    But then the god put a hand on his shoulder, and the words that he spoke were gentle. Caliban felt such a sudden rush of relief and happiness