Prospero Lost: Prospero's Daughter, Book I (5 page)

“Lively fellow. I don’t remember you mentioning him.” Mab crossed the hall and read the inscription above the alcove. “ ‘
Staff of Summoning’?
Hey, isn’t that the one Mr. Mephistopheles lost?”

“That is Mephistopheles. Or, rather, was. . . .”

“Seriously?” Mab peered closer as I came to join him. “Doesn’t look like the same fellow at all. No . . . now that you mention it, the features are the same; however, the resemblance ends there.”

“He has his cheerful periods and his morose periods. He was in one of his morose periods when you met him. But this statue is from the days before he lost his wits.”

“So, he wasn’t always crazy? What happened?”

“No one knows. One day, he came back, and he was different.”

“Did he change over a period of years? Or all at once?” Mab asked.

“We don’t know.”

It had been so very long since Mephisto had been sane that, even with the statue before me, I could hardly recall what he had been like. I wondered if perhaps Mab and Theo were right about the nature of magic. On the other hand, even mundane men could go mad. If it were not for magic, Mephisto would have been dead long ago. Madness was preferable to death.

“He doesn’t have his staff anymore. Lost it to some woman who seduced him. I don’t know why she’d keep it. She can’t use it. No one can use the staffs except our family. Perhaps, without his staff, Mephisto’s in no danger from the Three Shadowed Ones.” I shook my head, still finding it difficult to contemplate the notion that my crazy brother could be a rapist.

“Let’s hope,” Mab muttered. He walked by the next column and stopped before the last alcove on the right wall.

“Mr. Prospero.”

My father’s statue held a tome in one hand and pointed toward the horizon
with the other. Kind but penetrating eyes peered out from beneath bushy brows. A full beard framed his mouth. Mephisto had done a good job of catching Father’s age and wisdom in the yellow marble. I could almost imagine he stood here before us. If only it were true!

“Nice likeness,” Mab commented again. “Looks just like him.”

“Mephisto did Father’s statue first,” I replied, “That’s how Father got the idea for the others. In fact, Mephisto carved all the statues, except for Ulysses. By the time Ulysses was born, Mephisto was just too far gone. Father hired some Englishman to carve it.”

“What about the inscription here?” Mab peered upward. “It says . . . ‘
The Staff of Eternity
.’ ”

“What!” I hurried to examine the inscription. “That wasn’t there last time I came!”

Our nine staffs had existed, had been an intrinsic part of our experience, for so very long that the idea of a new one was more shocking than I could find words to express. Where had it come from? Why had Father never mentioned it?

“When were you last here?” Mab asked, pencil poised.

“About six years ago.”

Standing on my toes, I ran a finger over the engraved letters. The stone was smooth with crisp sharp edges, with little flecks of stone dust still in the letters. “This carving seems recent. I wonder if Father added it before he retired. Or even last time he was here.”

“When was that?”

“September.”

“That would be about three months ago.” Mab squinted at the inscription, but the mute stone revealed no secrets. He straightened. “Has Mr. Prospero been heard from since then?”

“No. The last time any of his servants saw Father was when he departed for America.”

“So, this ‘finding your brothers’ thing isn’t urgent,” drawled Mab. “I mean, if your father left you a message three months ago . . .”

I cut him off. “His message was only just brought to my attention by an urging from my Lady. I am certain She would not have taken the trouble had the matter been unimportant. Therefore, until I know otherwise, I must assume some member of my family is in immediate, or at least imminent, danger.”

He walked over to the red stone thrones, splashing through a shaft of sunlight as he went. His footsteps echoed loudly in the empty hall. When he
reached the dais, he sat down upon the arm of Father’s throne and began scribbling in his notebook.

I sat down on the arm of the second throne, the “Wife’s Chair” we called it, but the stone was icy cold. Standing, I rubbed my arms and gazed at the painting that hung behind the chair. It was a portrait of my mother, whom I had never met. She had died in childbirth, bringing me into the world. Giovanni Bellini had painted her portrait upon the occasion of her engagement to my father. It showed her young and fresh and vibrant with life.

Beneath the portrait, a brass plaque held an inscription:

Portia Lucia dei Gardelli
Duchess of Milan, 1456
“
Thy mother was a piece of Virtue
.”

The last was from
The Tempest
; Shakespeare’s rendition of my father’s description of the only woman Father ever loved.

Beside me, Mab halted his scribbling and asked, “Hey, do you think there could there be a relation between this new staff and these Three Shadowed Ones? What does the
Staff of Eternity
do?”

“I don’t know. Father never mentioned it.”

“Do you think this new staff could have anything to do with Mr. Prospero’s disappearance?”

I shook my head in puzzlement. “I could not tell you, Mab.”

Mab straightened and scowled at me. “Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but you must know something! Think back. When did you last talk to him?”

“Early September.”

He began scribbling again. “What about?”

“At the end of December, the treaty between the djinn and the efretes comes up for renewal. The djinn have great respect for Father and are more biddable in his presence. And you know how dangerous they can be when they get incensed! Last time they rioted, the resulting earthquake killed over twenty thousand people! Anyway, Father promised to come.”

“Early September. Was that while he was here at Prospero’s Mansion?” Mab’s pencil scratched away.

“No, he was here in late September.”

“You didn’t speak to him then? What? The house is so big you couldn’t find each other?”

I laughed. “Unfortunately, his visit coincided with Prospero, Inc.’s
once-a-decade rendezvous with the
kami
of Mount Fuji, so I was in Japan at the time.”

“No leads there,” Mab grumbled. “Any idea what’s he been working on recently?”

I sighed. “I’ve often asked him what he was up to since he retired, but he always replied with the same answer: ‘Keeping busy.’ ”

“Mr. Prospero was always one to keep matters to himself,” Mab grunted, “Still, bears looking into. I’d wager my hat . . .” His voice trailed off. He was staring at the remaining alcove.

Within the last alcove stood a statue of pale jade-green marble. The subject was a young woman. The high stiff collar of her Elizabethan gown framed a strikingly fair face. Her eyes gazed demurely down, but there was a proud cast to her upturned chin. Her delicate green hands were carved so as to hold a flute. Her lips were pursed as if to play. Her features were my own.

In the statue’s delicate hands rested a flute, four feet in length and made of the palest wood. It had been fashioned long ago, wrought from the cloven pine in which the witch Sycorax had imprisoned the spirit Ariel. Its virtue was to command wind, weather, and the Aerie Ones, the race to which Mab and Ariel belonged. Even the lightning bolt, the symbol and servant of my Lady, bowed before its song.

Mab had drawn back his lips, exposing his teeth. “So this is where you keep it.”

Reverently, I drew from the statue’s grasp the gift Father had bestowed upon me. Holding the instrument close, I brushed its cool polished length against my cheek. My flute. My birthright. The key to mystery and magic, to tempests and storms, and to everything I held dear, save my Lady Herself.

Feeling the flute between my fingers brought back memories of the first time I ever heard it. I had been on the island, out by the bluff, plaiting daisies into a wreath for my hair and gathering orchids to brighten up Father’s cold stone study. Caliban had followed me, as always, slinking among the shadows of the trees and ogling me, but, though his presence filled me with revulsion, I no longer feared him, for I knew he dreaded Father’s wrath and dared not approach me again.

As I returned to the mansion, where it stood on the highest point of the island overlooking the vast expanse of the sea to its west and a deep ravine to its east, I heard something new. It sounded like the voices of the Aerie Ones, if the Aerie Ones were both singing and weeping simultaneously.

It was as if the wind itself had been given tongue. Its song reached into
my soul and drew me out from myself, simultaneously embracing me and making me one with the sky. The wind sang, and the sky answered. My body never moved, yet my spirit was swept up into the air. As the winds chanted and the earth danced, the sea leapt from its bed. Walls of water flew up rather than down, ringing us in a fortress of storm and fury.

“Tempest,” Father called it later, and the glorious sound that had drawn me from myself, he named “flute.”

This was the very storm that drove the ship carrying the King of Naples, his handsome son Prince Ferdinand, and my wicked Uncle Antonio—the one responsible for exiling us to our lonely island—against our shores. That same vessel was destined to take us back to civilization.

I could not look upon the flute that had played such music without recalling the wonder of that day when I, an earthborn and duty-bound creature, first tasted freedom. Nor had the desire to return to the sky ever left me.

“My staff,” I murmured, cradling the precious flute, “The
Staff of Winds
!”

“And the bane of my race.” Mab stomped up beside me. “One whistle from that oversized piccolo, and we Aerie-Born start hopping like rabbits. Doesn’t such a contraption violate the Thirteenth Amendment? I’m going to complain to my congressman.”

I laughed. “Mab, you don’t have a congressman.”

Mab drew himself up as tall as his stocky stature allowed. “Oh, yes I do! I’ve read your constitution through and through, and nowhere does it specify that men need be born of flesh to be protected by its rights. ‘Race, color, and/or previous state of servitude.’ Says it right there. In my case, it’s previous state of servitude.”

“But Mab, you’re not just another race, you’re another species.”

“Are you certain?” Mab’s gaze was fierce. “Haven’t you heard it said that we Aerie Ones are the shades of men who escaped from limbo when the High God broke open the doors of Hell to rescue his son?”

“Really? I thought your people were much older than that.”

“Perhaps we are,” Mab shrugged. “Or perhaps, by the High God, the story meant Odin.”

I looked down the immense hall that held the statues of my brothers and sister. Ghosts of ages past seemed to walk its marble floors, dancing before my mind’s eye. I saw the family gathering to hear Father’s latest tasks for us; Mephisto practicing sword stances; Theo patiently teaching Logistilla to waltz; Titus practicing his golf swing (to Father’s dismay); Erasmus leaning casually against the wall, his arms crossed, throwing me a supercilious sneer;
grim and pious Gregor and blind Cornelius playing chess while Ulysses filled them in on the latest gossip of the Ton.

Once, all the power, all our staffs, had been under Father’s control. Working together at his behest, we freed mankind from the tyranny of the supernatural. Then, Father put the staffs into our separate hands, and, one by one, each of my siblings deserted our cause. Now, they roamed across the planet, wasting their strength and squandering the gifts Father had granted them. Only Father and I remained at our posts, and now, Father was missing.

With the setting sun, darkness was gathering, obscuring the faces of the statues. I sat down on the arm of the Wife’s Chair again, icy chill and all. My fingers curled about the polished shaft of my long flute.

“Never mind, Mab. Go on back to the office and finish following up whatever petty larceny case you’re working on. I’m not going to warn my family. They just don’t deserve it.”

“Wise decision,” Mab stuck his notebook back in his trench coat. “You’ll only increase your own danger by traipsing around trying to locate these goons. My suggestion is that you hire a lawyer to check out Mr. Mephistopheles’s situation, drop Mr. Cornelius a letter in braille, and hire a few mundane detectives to locate that Theo chap, to give him the warning just in case. I’ll do the initial legwork myself, if you prefer.”

I nodded. “Yes, I guess that would be best. Maybe you could put Gooseberry in charge of looking for Father.”

Mab scowled, “Ma’am, Gooseberry’s been dead for eighty years.”

“Has it been that long?” I felt a pang of sorrow as I recalled. Gooseberry had been a helpful spirit, adventurous and brave. Whenever I went boating, he had been the Aerie One I called to blow into my sails, and when I was but a child, he had taken me flying over the beaches of Father’s island. We swooped through the air like gulls, racing over the shore, and then soared upward, the earth falling away beneath us until the island appeared to be but a sandcastle in the midst of the tide. Father put a stop to those expeditions, fearing the danger to his darling little angel, but the memory of them shall remain with me so long as I live. The joy of those flights has seldom been paralleled in my long life. It was that joy the music of that first flute concert brought back so vividly.