Prospero in Hell (26 page)

I stood amid a rare-book collector’s paradise. A brief glance revealed three-hundred-year-old volumes of Shakespeare and Bacon, original works by Leibniz and Spinoza, disintegrating editions of Descartes, and a hand-illuminated Harvey, probably filled with notes written by Erasmus during his time as a student of that great father of modern medicine.

In among these ancient worthies were titles of a more arcane or esoteric nature, some of which I had been seeking for centuries!
The Secret of Secrets
by Duban the Sage,
Iconography from the High House of Dreaming, Habitats of Water Nymphs, The Journeys of Randolph Carter, Oneironaut, The Theonomicon, Seven Nights In Elfland: an Eye-Witness Account,
and
Four Hundred and Seventeen Alchemical Salts,
this last, apparently, by Erasmus himself.

To my astonishment, I even found books I had thought lost or that should not exist at all:
Euclid’s Book Four, Aristotle’s Dialogues, Andromeda
and
Helena
by Euripides. Where had he gotten these?
Revelations of Hali, The Whole Art of Detection, The Architecture of Small Country Houses
by John Drinkwater? I had believed these last three volumes merely imaginary!

I stared goggle-eyed at this bibliographic feast, my mouth watering. Ever since childhood, back on Prospero’s Island, books had been among my favorite companions. Of late, I had been concentrating on Father’s journals and seeking hints regarding the secrets of the Sibyl, but there had been a time when I had read nearly every volume available to the known world. That was impossible now, of course, due to the recent increase in the number of books published, but it had been possible in my youth.

As I came to the next shelf, my heart nearly stopped. The entire bookshelf, from top to bottom, held black leather volumes bound with a strip of yellow cloth along the spine. I recognized those books. They were Father’s
Libri Arcani,
the journals into which he entered the results of his magical experiments. When Father retired, he gave me his personal diaries, black leather volumes bound with a strip of red, into which he noted his daily thoughts and contemplations. When none of the ancient yellow-striped volumes were among the collection, I thought they had been lost. Yet, here they were, pristine and whole, in Erasmus’s library. I moved my hands across them, my fingers hovering a hair’s width above the spine, then leaned in to breathe deeply of their musty leather.

As I came around to my starting point, I noticed the spine of the Spinoza was charred. Seeing the blackened binding evoked a memory. I recalled Erasmus kneeling on the grass, surrounded by scattered books, weeping bitterly. The rest of us stood around him, watching tongues of flame flickering in the windows of our great Scottish mansion. The books lying on the grass were the armfuls he had brought out on his first two trips. He had tried to run back into the flames yet again, but my other brothers had stopped him; Theo and Titus restraining him physically.

It was a tense few hours for all of us, for our staffs were still inside, and we did not know if they would survive the conflagration. It was worst for Erasmus, however, who lost most of the library he had been gathering for over two hundred years, some volumes of which were the last-known existing copy of a particular work. This loss pained me as well, but less so, partially because, while I loved reading as much or more than my brother, I was not a collector, and partially because the books I loved most were in my chapel and, consequently, not in danger from the fire.

When the blaze finally died away, and we were able to return to the blackened hulk of our home, only a few volumes of Erasmus’s ten-thousand-book library had survived. This copy of Spinoza’s
Ethics
had been one of them.

I dropped into one of the delicate filigreed chairs and absentmindedly slid the queen’s bishop’s pawn forward, imitating an opening I had tried the last time I had played Erasmus. In our youth, I often beat my brother, I who had spent so much time playing Father in my youth. But Erasmus stuck to the game and I did not, and so he had become the master, even besting the supernatural competition at some of the Centennial Balls. Only the subtle elf lord Fincunir was his better.

Shakespeare had presented me as playing chess with Ferdinand—most likely because chess was one of the few activities that a young man and woman could perform alone without her virtue being considered compromised. In the play, my namesake worried about whether Ferdinand would play me false, before claiming that she would not mind even if he wrangled kingdoms from her. The scene was entirely of Shakespeare’s invention; I had beaten Ferdinand soundly on the few occasions that we had played.

And yet, I wished I had not recalled this, for the notion of Ferdinand playing me false caused a sudden chill. I released the chess piece and glanced back at the burnt copy of Spinoza upon the shelves.

Perhaps Father and I were not the only ones who would be dismayed by the loss of the ancient tomes that had been damaged during Seir of the Shadows’s first attack in the Great Hall of Prospero’s Mansion. Any sympathy I might have felt for my bibliophile brother faded, however, as I considered how he would react if I told him of this recent tragedy. I could picture him sneering triumphantly, as he contrived some way to imply that the attack on Prospero’s Mansion was my fault. Whatever else one might say about Erasmus, he was tremendously good at sneering.

The memory of my brother weeping gave way to a recollection of the time he auctioned off his shares of Prospero, Inc. Once, all ten of us, Father and we children, had owned shares of the company. After Gregor died, and Theo had abandoned us, Father gave control of Gregor’s shares to Cornelius and Theo’s to me. Over the next quarter century, the others bailed out as well. Since, under our charter, they received a stipend whether they owed stock or not, they felt they would prefer not to be bothered the annoyance of attending stockholders’ meetings and running the company. Titus and Logistilla gave their shares to Cornelius. Mephisto and Ulysses gave theirs to me. Father—who was already preparing for his retirement, though he did not officially retire until three years ago—decided I would succeed him as C.E.O. and signed over his shares to me. This left only Cornelius, Erasmus, and me as shareholders.

One frosty day in February of 1975, Erasmus announced he, too, had decided to bow out of Prospero, Inc., and he wished to auction off his shares to the highest bidder. If I won, I would have a clear majority, sixty percent to Cornelius’s forty. If Cornelius won, we would be tied fifty-fifty. Since the idea of a deadlocked board, with no tie-breaker available, seemed daunting, I was willing to do anything reasonable to win Erasmus’s shares.

What Erasmus asked in return for choosing me was beyond the pale of
reason! He wanted a full carafe of the Water of Life. I offered him a little vial of Water, but that was not enough; only a full carafe would do.

I did not have enough Water left to fill a carafe. To meet his requirement, I would have to take the journey of a year and a day to the Well at the World’s End. I argued with Erasmus for three days, explaining how this was a very bad time for me to take a year off. Normally, I prepared for these journeys decades in advance—and that was before I became the C.E.O of Prospero, Inc.—but he was adamant.

Resolved to win the auction and protect the company, I took the journey. A year and a day later, I returned with a full carafe, which I took directly to Erasmus. He met me on the steps of his palatial mansion, near Philadelphia, and announced with a smirk that I was too late. He had gotten tired of waiting, he declared with a casual wave of his hand, and had given his shares to Cornelius.

I objected that I could not possibly have arrived any sooner and pointed out how he knew this would be the case when he asked me to go. Erasmus just shrugged and replied that he had never intended to give me his shares. He had held the auction for the purpose of irritating me.

When I arrived back at my office the next day, I learned that, while I was gone, a contractual dispute between the Aerie Ones and the Eastern undines had led to the worst typhoon in a century. Their dispute had been over a simple matter. Had I been present, or even had proper time to prepare before I departed, I could easily have solved the dispute; however, I had taken my flute with me. Without it, even Father could do nothing. A hundred thousand Chinese died because I had left my post, because Erasmus found it entertaining to irritate me.

As I stood there, fuming at the memory, I heard his footsteps in the hallway. He unlocked the door and came striding back into the hexagonal chamber, singing merrily. On his right hand, he wore a gauntlet of shining silver-white, the mate of the gauntlet Caurus used to wield the
Wounding Wand
. In the gauntlet’s grip, he carried a five-foot tube of a transparent material. Enclosed within it was a square staff with alternating sides of black and white. Erasmus tapped the clear exterior against the carpet once and then held it up. Within it, the square black and white staff began to rotate, whirling and humming as it gained speed, until it appeared as if Erasmus grasped a single gray blur.

I took two steps back.

“Fear not, my cowardly sibling. You are not my target today,” my brother
announced lightly. “Have you destroyed anything while I was gone, hmm?” He glanced over the shelves. “No? What a lucky accident for us. Slipping up, are you, Sister?” Then, holding his staff aloft, he strode to the back of the library, singing to himself cheerfully.

I waited wary.

Stopping before Father’s journal, Erasmus raised the
Staff of Decay
and brought its whirring length down upon the ancient book.

“No!” I cried, leaping forward. I would have thrown myself forward to save the precious journal, except I knew Erasmus would have been only too happy to wither me along with it, happier, most likely. He did not harm books easily. “Don’t destroy Father’s journal on my account!” I cried. “Please! I’ll—”

“Destroy a book? Do you take me for a madman?” Erasmus asked, running his staff back and forth across the ancient pages. “On second thought, Mephisto is a madman, and even he has the sense not to destroy books.”

I watched his progress, my eyes glued to the crumbling parchment of Father’s journal, as if the force of my gaze alone could preserve the pages. The staff’s hum decreased in pitch, and the air about the tome grew warm and bluish. Before my eyes, the parchment brightened, and the binding grew more supple. Soon, the journal looked as it had in my youth: hale and strong, and filled with endless wisdom.

“You’ll… what?” Erasmus asked mockingly, as the whirr of the staff died away. “What could you possibly offer me? Or was that supposed to be a threat?”

“May I examine Father’s journal now?” I crossed my arms.

“With that scowl? A little gratitude might be in order, don’t you think, Sister? Another person might even say: ‘Thank you,’ but not you. That’s the one thing I like about you, Miranda, you’re reliable: selfish to the end!”

I drummed my fingers on my forearm and waited. I was grateful—if grateful is the proper word to describe what one feels when someone goes out of his way to help substantiate a claim against one’s character—but any attempt to express gratitude would be lost in the general storm of malice. Erasmus was a master at interpreting virtuous impulses as vices, and I refused to be drawn into yet another of his pointless games. Mankind could not afford it.

“Be my guest.” He waved expansively at the book, bringing the whirring
Staff of Decay
dangerously close to my head. I jumped back, startled. He gave a short cruel laugh. “Don’t want to be a child again, eh? Can’t say I
blame you. As you are about to learn from Father’s journal, the first time around was unpleasant enough!”

He shook the staff, and the whirling center section slowed until the two distinct colors of white and black could be discerned again. “I shall leave you in peace. Spend as much time investigating your misbegotten childhood as you desire. Yank the bell pull when you want to be let out. Tootle-loo!”

He strode out of the chamber, humming, and locked the door behind him.

Surrounded by the burnished gleam of the sun’s metal, I explored Father’s journal, flipping here and there, examining Father’s sketches, and reading his descriptions of our life on the island. There was much about “Sycorax’s Child” troubling his beloved “A.T.” and numerous complaints about Caliban, but little mention of me by name. The longer I read, the more my heart constricted. Had Father not loved me at all?

When it came to other matters, Father was a meticulous chronicler. With great love and care, he described the flora of our island prison-home, including detailed sketches of palm leaves and orchid blooms. As I read, the mists of memory that hide our childhoods from us thinned, and I could again hear the cry of the storm petrels and smell the brine of the sea.

Turning a page, I came upon a sketch of little me, standing amid the orchids, charming and sweet. Underneath, in Italian, Father had written:
LITTLE MIRANDA, THE JOY OF MY LIFE
.

Happy tears welled up over my lashes.

As I wiped my face with the back of my hand, I realized, with sinking heart, that this picture had been drawn when I was six; well after my fifth birthday, when I had been consecrated to Eurynome. Perhaps Erasmus was right. Perhaps I had been a hellion, and only after the Unicorn tamed me did I become the joy of Father’s heart.

On the other hand, if it were my service to Eurynome that brought about the change in my youthful character, that hardly counted as the enchantment Theo so feared, any more than one would bewail the loss of wildness in a child who had later been schooled in good manners by nuns. If Father had cast some additional spell upon me to make me pliable, I found no mention of it in his journal.