Rough Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

relished the trusting fertile power of the land. The soft breeze lifted her mood. This could be as much a time of healing as it was of atonement. Sycorax searched the ground until she found what she sought. Flint, bleached white in the moonlight. She found another stone and began to chip away. This, at any rate, was familiar. It was in just such a manner that she had fashioned her other knife, the one she had never used.
    She paused. Who would find it beneath the corner flagstone of her sleeping-chamber floor? Would it be some distant royal child, casting about for something to do? Would he cut himself on the blade, have it taken from him by a scolding nurse?
    She bent her head again. It would not be her child who found it.

I.ix.
    Caliban was crying again. She had been gone too long this morning. The fish seemed to be growing more clever and were evading her traps. But she had won in the end, bringing home three fine trout. She slipped into the cave and stirred up the coals of the cooking fire. She hung the fish over the glowing heat to cook, then went to the bough bed and lifted up her small son.
    He nuzzled against her, drinking greedily. His rusty hair stood up in tufts all over his head. His birthmarks were an angry dark purple, thanks to his wailing. She stroked his head and smiled at him. “My wild child,” she crooned.
    Caliban was ugly. She knew it. His head was so strangely proportioned. She had hoped his narrow forehead and his broad jaw were simply the result of his difficult birth, that they would smooth themselves into something resembling her own. But time had not changed his features. He was squat and thick and speckled, with short limbs that promised strength without grace.
    None of that mattered. He was hers.
    The cave was filled with the sounds of the food cooking, the child eating, her own soothing song. This was one of the happy times of her day, when the fight for survival paused and she could sit for a moment with her child. She could forget, for a short time, the life she’d lost. The anger would ease, and she could let herself drift free of memory.
    When the child finished his meal reality pressed back in upon her. She could not go on like this, scrabbling about from day to day. The first few months on the island had passed in a blur of exhaustion and sickness. She managed to make the cave habitable, but most days she could not stand its gloom. So she had fashioned herself a nesting place on a bluff overlooking the ocean. No ship came near enough to be snared by her magic. Her pregnancy weakened her, the baby drawing from her bones when she did not find food. She grew to hate the smell and taste of fish.
    It had been hot and dry when Caliban was born. She had retreated to the cave, its dark coolness suddenly a refuge. She’d stored up water and food for the time of his birth, had gathered all the herbs she could that would speed his coming. When at last her waters broke she was ready. She’d expected an easy delivery. He was her second child, and her daughter had been born without trouble. But her pains stretched on endlessly through the day and into the night. She had no midwives to help her. There was no one to rub her back or bring her water. She scrabbled about on the dirt floor, cursing Alonso. But she could not curse his blood, for it also flowed in the veins of her son.
    She was bruised and torn by the time he slid free of her. She managed to catch him and lay him on a soft heap of cloth, the remnants of her clothing. He lay still and did not breathe. She held him upside down and thumped his back. She remembered women saying midwives did that when the child was born blue and silent. He choked and gasped and finally screamed. She’d held him to her breast until he grew quiet. There was no wet nurse for him. They slept beside each other on the floor that night, her blood pooling on the dirt. Somehow, they both lived. She would not die. Caliban would not die. She promised