Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I (38 page)

Mab had been staring out to sea with his hands thrust into the pockets of his trench coat. As he turned toward me, an object fell to the ground. He stooped, picking up the partially carved wooden figurine of him Mephisto had made, the one I had slipped into his hand the previous evening on the ship. Mab stood a moment, gazing at it, before answering.

“Yesterday, Ma’am.” He slipped it back into his pocket. “But not today.”

“
THERE
’s something you should see, Ma’am,” Mab said presently, after we had stood silently a bit longer. “I don’t know what it means, but I think you oughta see.”

He led me around the back of Logistilla’s house. Amidst the slender trees, decomposing leaves had been kicked aside, revealing a set of storm cellar doors.

“Found this place because the bear was scratching around over here. Figured it was a food store, but it had a funny smell about it . . . enchantment funny, I mean. So I thought I should take a look—just in case.”

Mab opened the doors and started down the stairs, descending into utter blackness. He gestured for me to follow and, once I was below ground level, he scurried back up again and shut the doors behind us, leaving me floundering on a rickety wooden stairway in pitch darkness. The air was cold and smelled of damp earth. Somewhere in the distance, water trickled over rock.

A light flicked on, revealing Mab’s hands and legs. He had lit the headlamp I had given him back at the warehouse. Apparently, he had stuffed it into one of the many pockets of his new trench coat. Strapping it to his head, he turned and shined the light down the stairs.

Below lay a vast underground cavern, a natural cave complete with an
irregular stone roof and stalactites. Covering the floor, stacked one upon another as far as the eye could see, lay naked bodies.

“Are they . . . dead?”

“Don’t think so, Ma’am. No stench of death.”

“Then . . . wha . . .”

“Empty bodies, Ma’am. Far as I can tell with my instruments, these have never seen life. My guess is Madam Logistilla made them.”

“But . . . why?” I cried. “Why make a stadium full of bodies? What does she plan to do with them?”

“Don’t know, Ma’am.”

“Could they be for her clients? Could there possibly be this many animals on this island?”

“Don’t think so, Ma’am, not unless she’s turned some of ’em into birds and bugs.” Mab shook his head disapprovingly. “Seems like a rather macabre hobby. If you ask me, your sister should give up this shady business of hers and turn her attention to some wholesome pursuit that does not stink of the arcane. If she must be a collector, let her collect lacy picture frames or those little porcelain Hummel dolls. Something decent!” Mab’s voice held more than his customary touch of bitterness. I did not fault him. He had been through a difficult day.

Gesturing for Mab to bring the light closer, I descended the staircase into the chilly cavern and examined the expanse of naked bodies stretching out before me. Some lay neatly with arms crossed across chests and eyes closed, like corpses. Others had been casually tossed, one upon the other, vacant eyes staring outward. Nearly all the bodies had olive skin, Roman noses, and dark, shiny hair. Italians. My sister was living above a cavern filled to the brim with the naked bodies of Italians.

I stepped around a stack of them, and my stomach lurched. The bodies I could see from the stairs had all been adults in the prime of life. These were children. Little dark-haired boys and girls lying lifeless on the ground. One of them reminded me so much of young Theo that tears came to my eyes.

I backed up slowly.

Mab came up beside me and swore softly. “Maybe she’s bonkers, Ma’am . . . went the way of Mephisto. All this living alone with animals can’t be good for her. Not to mention . . .” His voice died off.

“Not to mention what?”

“Well, Ma’am, I don’t like to spread rumors. I’d rather not speculate just because of a hunch.”

As I walked back to the staircase, I tried to recall an instance of one of Mab’s hunches being wrong. “Go ahead, Mab, speculate away.”

“All right, Ma’am, if you insist, but I want you to remember that this is just speculation.” When I nodded, he spoke hesitantly. “There’s a . . .
smell
upstairs, a smell I didn’t like.”

I chuckled. “Which one? Bear? Dingo? Or wild boar?”

Mab was not amused. “I wish, Ma’am . . . unfortunately, I’m not talking about anything so wholesome as animal musk. I’m talking about a real stink, as in ‘stink of corruption.’ In one of the side rooms, one of the rooms we passed by, I could have sworn . . . now mind you Ma’am, I didn’t go in to investigate . . .”

“Yes, Mab, get to the point. You could have sworn . . .”

“Smelled like demon, Ma’am.” Mab spoke in a quick rush.

“You think the Three Shadowed Ones have been here?” I asked, dismayed.

Mab rubbed the back of his neck, “With all due respect, Ma’am, the Three Shadowed Ones are posers. I don’t mean they haven’t caused trouble for you and your family, or that they’re not dangerous, or that we should not be wary. But in the grand scheme of things, they’re just posers, lesser minions in service to the Powers of Hell. This . . . this smelled like a Power of Hell . . . one of the big Seven.

“Those big guys . . . they leave a stench you never forget! Had some dealings with the Lord of the Flies long ago when I was—well, I think you know I wasn’t so nice a guy back then.” He hunched his shoulders. “Let’s just say there are reasons those Greeks used to call me the ‘Bad One.’

“Anyway, the big guys, they have this . . . call it a smell. The stink of corruption hangs about them like a cloud of ill omen. It reeks like nothing else on Earth or below. Your sister’s room? Whatever was in there, it reminded me of that.

“And did you notice how nervous she was acting when she told you about Mr. Cornelius using his staff on Mr. Theophrastus?” Mab’s eyes narrowed. “Almost like she expected someone to be looking over her shoulder.”

I whistled softly to cover my shock and fright. “When you said demon, you meant devil? As in The devil? As in the Prince of Darkness and his cohorts, the Rulers of Hell?”

“Yeah. A devil.”

“That’s bad,” I whispered, shaken.

I grabbed for the rail, but the staircase did not have one. My hand closed
on empty air. I wobbled perilously but managed to retain my balance. Beside me, Mab opened his mouth, shut it again, then shook his head.

“Gotta say it, Ma’am. This project your sister was working on with Mr. Prospero? Well, I just wish we knew more about it, is all.”

“Me too, Mab,” I said. “Me too.”

We retreated rapidly up the stairs, leaving the cavern of naked bodies behind us.

MAB
and I returned to the docks, where we gazed out across the ocean at the rosy fingers of dawn. The vista was lovely, but it was hard to shake the memory of stacks of naked bodies and pale children, as still as death. My imagination, overly vivid from lack of sleep, pictured armies of Italian zombies rising to serve some nefarious cause.

If my supposition the night before was correct, perhaps Father intended these bodies for Aerie Ones. I found this theory difficult to accept. Where could Father intend to put such a large group of people? Back in the 1920s, they could have arrived at New York Harbor on a boat and no questions would have been asked. But today? To mingle with modern society, they would need birth certificates, driver’s licenses, or, at the very least, passports.

True, documents could be forged. Mephisto, Erasmus, and Ulysses were each a fair hand at forgeries. Nowadays, however, identification documents required secret watermarks, special materials, and electronic histories. Updating my ID, which our trip to Joliet had shown would soon be necessary, was going to prove difficult enough. False IDs for thousands of people? Including a credible history for credit checks and other computer-related identity searches? Such a project would require a tremendous amount of effort.

Perhaps, Father intended them to blend in among one of the dwindling indigenous populations, somewhere in the Southern Hemi sphere. If so, why were they all Italians? Surely, Father realized that Italy had moved into the modern age and was no longer the idyllic land of pastures and country villages of his youth!

Could Father intend the Aerie Ones to live as their own community, either here or on Prospero’s Island? Playing the roles of adults and children alike? A clever idea on the surface, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted it would work. The incarnated Aerie Ones who showed signs of developing self-control, like Mab and my dear departed friend Gooseberry, were the ones who interacted with human beings. Those that did not—such as our enforcer Boreas, another of the incarnated Northerlies—remained as
fierce and uncivilized as they had been before they put on a fleshly form. It was not his body that had transformed Mab into a being with judgment and perspicacity, I realized, but his interaction with mankind.

And then there were the little bodies. I did not think Aerie Ones would make good children, as their whimsical nature would be encouraged rather than curbed. But maybe I was wrong. Perhaps they would make excellent youngsters.

“Ma’am! Watch out!”

Startled by Mab’s shout, I swung about to find Logistilla’s bear looming over me. The enormous creature, even larger than Osae the Bear, stood on the dock, blocking any view of the island or the house. Its huge paws, with long curved claws, reached toward my face. I shouted and leapt back. Mab’s shoulder knocked into me as he thrust his body between me and the bear. Despite the difference of their size, he courageously brandished his lead pipe before the bear’s nose.

The enormous towering bear hesitated. Then, slowly, it continued to stretch out its arm. It reached past Mab and, very gently, brushed my face. The soft pads of its paw rested against my cheek. Mab stood there a moment longer, then stepped back, frowning.

“Poor sucker was a man once.” He put away his pipe.

I reached up and touched the thick matted fur of the bear’s paw. The musky smell was nearly overpowering, yet had a pleasant quality. The creature plaintively gazed back at me, its huge eyes looking sadly into mine. In the dim dawn light, I could just make out their rich brown color.

The door to my sister’s house swung open. Logistilla’s voice cut through the darkness.

“Miranda? Where did you . . . No!
You
! Get away! Get back in the forest now! Shoo!” When the bear did not move immediately, she brandished her staff, pale beams of green light emanating from the ball at the top illuminated the darkness. “Quickly now, before I turn you into something more vile!” The bear drew back and lumbered off into the forest. “And stay there! What impertinence!” She turned toward Mab and me, smiling. “I’m sorry. He’s harmless, really. But, just to be on the safe side, why don’t you two come inside?”

As we followed my sister back into her house, I watched the bear disappear among the dark trunks. Whispering to Mab, I said, “The poor man. I wish there was some way I could stop Logistilla. Men should not have to live this way.”

“No one should have to live this way, Ma’am.”

*    *    *

I QUESTIONED
Logistilla about the bodies when we returned to her house, but she merely became enraged that we had been prying into her business, called me a snoop and a sneak thief, and accused Mab of trying to make off with her silver. Finally, she sniffed haughtily and declared that if Father chose not to make me privy to his secrets, who was she to go against his wishes? We could get nothing else out of her.

The three of us departed my sister’s house at dawn and slept on the sloop, leaving the Aerie Ones to sail the craft. Five hours later, we sailed into the harbor at St. Thomas, returned the chartered boat and then set off for the airport.

The afternoon was beautiful. We strolled through the Royal Dane Mall on our way back to the airport, peering into the quaint little shops tucked in among alleys and walkways off Dronnigens Gade. Warm palm fronds tickled our faces, and brightly-colored banners rustled in the light wind. In these pleasant surroundings, it seemed almost surreal to recall that my family was in danger, our staffs hunted by demons who wished to destroy us. And yet, it was so.

The warm breeze brought back memories of our family’s great journey, the one that transformed the
Staff of the Winds
into the weather-mastering instrument it was today. Ever since Father whittled my flute from that cloven pine back on Prospero’s Island, it had been his dream—and mine, of course—to capture all Eight Winds and thus control the weather in all directions of the compass. Ariel and Caurus Father captured in my youth, and in the early 1500s we tracked Zephyrus to his lair in the Outer Hebrides islands (which was how we came to take up residence in Scotland). Some two hundred years later, we still controlled only the Southeast, Northwest, and West Winds.

Our travels in the company of Peter the Great took us deep into the heart of Russia. When the tsar returned to his court, we continued north, passing over the Rhipaean Mountains into Hyperborea. There, we finally cornered the elusive North Wind. With Boreas at our command, we were able to capture the fiercest wind of all, the Northeast.

After the bone-chilling cold of Russia and Hyperborea, Father promised our next journey would be through gentler climes. Some fifty years later—after that terrible earthquake in 1755 brought us to Lisbon—he kept that promise. All of us, except for Logistilla who was pregnant and remained with her husband, departed Europe for places farther east, setting out on what we later called the Great Wind Hunt.