Read Online Rough Magic by Caryl Cude Mullin - Free Book Online

stroke eased the pain. The water loosened the bonds of Prospero’s spell. Caliban flipped onto his back and floated, blissfully free of torment. He stared up at the white clouds drifting in their own airy sea. “I’m as free as a cloud,” he said. “I can just waft away.”
    â€œOr you could come with me,” a sly, hissing voice said beside him. He startled, spluttering on a mouthful of brine. Then he saw who had spoken and he grinned. “Hello, Pisces,” he said to the mermaid, dredging up his old childhood name for her. “Do you want to drag me to your seabed?”
    Peisinoe smiled back at him, her green eyes full of wicked light. She had always been the one he liked best. She used to come to the shore and tell him stories when he was a child and lived here alone. He had spoken to her in jest, but suddenly, here in the waves, he found himself afraid of her. Her hair was slicked against her skull. When it was dry it looked emerald in the sunlight, but now it was nearly black. From this close distance her yellow-green skin looked sickly. “I might take you, Caliban, such a man you’ve become.” She stroked his face with her wet webbed fingers. He could feel the thin frill on her tail fin tickling his feet, then his calves, then knees. A strange heat coursed through him. His ears rang a distant chime and his mind blurred. “Stop that,” he said. He pushed away from her and treaded water.
    She laughed at him. “Oh, you are a new man indeed, Caliban. You’d better leave the sea and not come back, or I will take you down to lie with me beneath the waves.”
    Confusion choked him. He turned and swam back to the shore. Prospero’s prison of agony wracked his spine as he pulled himself up on the stony beach. He looked back at the mermaid. Peisinoe met his gaze, then dove under, giving the surface of the water a warning slap with her tail before she disappeared.
    Caliban hugged his knees to his chest. Tears of miserable rage poured over his face. He wanted to retreat to his cave, but Prospero wouldn’t let him go there anymore.
    Soon he would have to gather firewood and pull up the fish trap. Prospero never let him rest. “We must all do what God intended us to do,” he would say. “Some of us must labor in muscle, and others of us in the mind.” And then he would send Caliban away to sweat and toil, while he sat and brooded over the same dusty pages.
    â€œThat windbag doesn’t know anything about work,” Caliban muttered now. He kicked at the stones by his toes. His back twisted into a new spasm, making him gasp. “I hate him,” he whispered.
    â€œHere you are, bad broody,” said Miranda. She picked her way gingerly across the stones, as though she was not accustomed to walking on them. In her hands she carried the wooden cup he’d made for her. Caliban’s glower increased.
    â€œWhat do you want?” he growled. He wanted to be alone with his hatred. Miranda was too kind. She would spoil his anger.
    She smiled at him. “I’ve come to make peace,” she said. She handed him the cup. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
    He sniffed it suspiciously. It smelled like sunshine and sage. He hesitated.
    â€œIt isn’t poisonous,” she said. “I’ve convinced my father to forgive you for the toadstools. He agrees that he has been harsh with you lately. You’ve been punished enough. We’re sure you’ve learned your lesson.” She smiled encouragingly, so pleased with her speech.
    He drank the potion in one long swallow. The pains in his spine fell away. He felt new vigor and health and strength.
    And rage.
    â€œI’m going to build a boat and sail away from here,” he said. “You can come with me if you want, but I’m leaving the old man to rot here on his own.”
    Miranda stepped back from him, appalled. “How can you say such a