The fifth story in my honors thesis, based upon The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

When I waked / I cried to dream again.

-The Tempest, Act III Scene ii

High above the Island’s forest, gray smoke curls. It brushes against leaves, seeps through clouds, drifts higher and higher, blending with the lighter gray of the setting sun.

In the sand, Caliban sits, and waits. “By Prospero’s staff,” he says to himself, in the only voice he has, a dry and guttural voice. “By Prospero’s staff, I order you, Ariel…”

Caliban pokes his fire again, watching the ashy feather which he threw into it smolder and burn. He wraps his Magic garment, shining and strongly stitched, more tightly around his scaly shoulders, keeping out the chill of dusk. Even next to the fire, it is cold. Cold is what the Island is, now that it has just Caliban for company. Cold and gray.

Caliban wonders how much longer this is going to take, if it always took Prospero this long to summon the spirit. Maybe all he was meant to do was call Ariel’s name, not bother with the theatrics of fires and feathers. Caliban is about to try just that—shouting—when the flames burst into the air.

Caliban jerks back. His golden eyes widen as the fire burns, and blurs into a figure. The person is stark white, clear as air, with young eyes, bright with mischief. Insubstantial and so very real. Ariel.

Caliban runs his tongue over his sharp teeth. “Spirit,” he says, in what he hopes is a confident, menacing, steady tone.

From the center of the flames, Ariel looks around, at the gray trees and the grayer sand. He tilts his transparent head to the side. “Are you wearing Prospero’s cloak?” he asks.

Caliban blinks.

“It’s all right if you are,” Ariel says, stretching like a cat, gleaming, glimmering. “Prospero did leave it behind. It just looks strange on you, Caliban.” Ariel grins, his teeth just as sharp as the creature’s before him. “Ca-Ca-Caliban.” He sings in a voice like bells.

Ariel kicks a small flame off his opaque foot, and it lands in the sand, extinguished. “Is there a reason you summoned me?”

From the pocket of Prospero’s Magic garment, Caliban pulls a scrawny stick of wood, battered and broken at both ends.

“By Prospero’s staff,” Caliban says, “I order—”

“Is that really the staff?” Ariel is suddenly alert, drifting up and perching just above Caliban’s head.

“He broke and buried it,” says Caliban irritably. “This is what remains.”

“I remember. And it still does Magic?”

“Yes. Of course. Why wouldn’t it?”

Ariel shrugs. “I don’t know.” He sucks his cheek. “Sharp, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” says Caliban slowly. He rolls the stick over in his palm, then points it up at Ariel, who yelps and jumps. Caliban bares his teeth, excellent for tearing into fish, terrible for smiling.

“By Prospero’s staff,” he says, “I order you to assist me in my quest.”

Ariel wrinkles his delicate features. “What kind of quest?”

Caliban clenches and unclenches his clawed fists. The little stick scratches against his palms. The truth, he decides, is necessary.

“I need to find my mother’s Book,” Caliban says.

“No,” says Ariel, without a second of hesitation.

“But you have to,” Caliban growls. “I’ve got—”

“What you’ve got is a splinter of a Magic staff,” says Ariel. But he still eyes Caliban’s hand warily. “What do you want Sycorax’s Book for?”

Caliban studies his feet. “It’s my birthright.”

“It won’t do you any good; you can’t do Magic.”

“Can’t I?” Caliban points his stick at Ariel again, who scowls. “I was able to bring you here, wasn’t I?”

“Put that thing away,” says Ariel. “You can’t do proper Magic, I mean, beyond simple summoning. You would hurt yourself.”

“Maybe I don’t want the Book for Magic,” Caliban snaps. “Maybe I just want it to have. To own. It’s mine.” He rubs the edges of the stick, soft like down. So unlike its ends, sharp like thorns. “I know Prospero told you where it is.”

Ariel shifts uncomfortably. “Maybe,” he says. He stretches his back, and sunlight reflects through him in a dazzling array of colors. For a moment, the Island is more than gray and seems to return to its former vibrancy. But it is only for a moment. A strange look crosses Ariel’s face, as he glances at Caliban, at the diminishing fire. Caliban imagines he can see his brain churning through his transparent head.

“Fine,” Ariel says at last, flatly.

Caliban opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “You’ll help me?”

Ariel is already floating off towards the forest. “I have to, don’t I? You’ve got Prospero’s splinter.”

Caliban gathers his cloak, and stumbles after the spirit. They travel past vine-choked boulders, over flower-dappled grass. Greenery grows even in shade on the Island, but it is not green. Ariel does not pause to admire a thing, merely looks vaguely concerned at the stone-colored grass. Caliban resists the temptation to pocket an interesting looking beetle.

“How long has it been like this?” Ariel asks. “So dark and gloomy?”

“Since Prospero left,” Caliban replies.

Ariel glances back at him. Then he swiftly turns ahead again. He sniffs the air, and narrows his eyes. “I thought you were alone on the Island.”

“I am,” says Caliban.

Whatever Ariel was going to say next is interrupted by a sudden stampede of spirits. The airy shapes of a thousand hounds tumble past Ariel and Caliban.

At least, they could be hounds. They are very poorly made. Some have ears and tongues too long, and others, too short. Some have three heads, or none at all. One is covered in speckles, another in stripes. Each is a mere outline, without any substance. They run swiftly, like shadows.

As the hounds pass between them, Ariel glowers at Caliban, who taps his toes upon the earth, humming guiltily to himself.

“It’s one thing,” says Ariel, as soon as the hounds have bounded away, “to use one of Prospero’s spells to summon me. Quite another to engage in precarious Magic like this. You said that you wouldn’t use Sycorax’s Book.”

“And I won’t,” says Caliban. “You never asked about Prospero’s.”

“Because it was at the bottom of the ocean! He drowned it! I thought perhaps you’d found a page of it, to summon me with, I didn’t think you’d actually…” Ariel furrows his brow. “Did you swim…?”

“Well, obviously,” says Caliban.

Ariel shakes his head. “Caliban, I can’t let you go about conjuring things.”

“Why not? It was fine when Prospero did it.”

“Prospero was Art-full. You are not.”

“I just need practice,” Caliban mumbles.

“Prospero shouldn’t have left you here by yourself. You can’t be trusted.”

“I haven’t hurt anyone, have I?” shouts Caliban. “And I won’t!”

 Ariel runs a hand over his translucent face, elongating one of his eyes, before it springs back to normal. “You never mean to, do you?”

His words bounce off the trees, through the dusk, ringing in Caliban’s ears. “That isn’t fair.”

“Nothing ever quite works out for you, does it?” Ariel glides higher and higher, his beautiful face twisted and cruel. “All those plots of freedom from Prospero…what has it gotten you? Wearing motheaten garments, reading water-moldy Books, hunting for a cursed birthright. You can’t let things be. Always, always causing ruin. Never obeying, never once thinking that someone might be cleverer than you.”

Caliban trembles with rage. “That isn’t fair,” he says again.

“No, Caliban,” says Ariel. “It is. You’re just like Sycorax, hunched in the dirt, scrounging for whatever power or Magic you can find, not caring what damage you inflict along the way. You’re selfish.”

“I’m not like my mother,” says Caliban.

“Well, you’re after her Book,” Ariel hisses.

 “But I don’t want to do wicked things with it. I just want to do Magic like Prospero did. To make beautiful things. I could hear them. Always. They had voices like chimes. Like bells. They were living dreams. Prospero never meant for me to know that they existed, but I knew. I knew everything.”

Ariel stares at Caliban, who fiddles with the hem of the Magic garment, Prospero’s garment. Caliban can’t read Ariel’s expression, as the spirit studies him. 

Caliban swallows. “The Island is lonely,” he explains. “I tried to remake some of the spirits that Prospero had. The hounds that he would send to chase after me. Only I was going to make them different this time. Gentler, kinder. But I just made them stranger. And—I thought that my mother’s Book might be easier for me to use. Only to make beautiful things, though, like I promised. Like Prospero did.”

“Mostly,” says Ariel darkly.

“Mostly,” Caliban agrees.

Ariel is quiet. Then he says, “You lied to me.”

“Only a bit.”

Ariel glowers down at Caliban, then sighs, and begins to sink down. “Sycorax’s Book does not have spells for making beautiful things. It is a Book of evil.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” Caliban says. “Things can change. You remember what the Island was like before Prospero arrived, when my mother ruled it. It was dark and dangerous, filled with vines and thorns. And it was darker still, after my mother died, after she left you imprisoned and me alone.”

Ariel shivers, seemingly involuntarily. Caliban ignores it; he must speak.

“But the Island changed, when Prospero arrived. He made it beautiful, full of birds and breezes and green and flowers. And now I can change it. I can make it like that again. Better even. Not like…” He gestures to the gray forest. “This.”

In a low voice, Ariel says, “You can’t, Caliban. It is not in your nature.”

Caliban releases Prospero’s garment, as his arms go lank. He feels his eyes sting, like a cold wind is blowing in his face. Caliban turns away. He refuses to let Ariel see tears fall down his ugly, scaly face.

“Wait,” says Ariel, “we must deal with those spirits. Caliban!”

Caliban ignores him. He stalks into the forest, deeper and deeper, as the sky bleeds into bluish-black, like a scab, stalks towards the cave that has long been his home. It is a dark and damp place, with sharp shadows that kept him awake at night as a child. It is not a welcoming place, but it’s not as if he ever has any guests. Caliban sits on the cave’s stone floor, with his back to the last shades of sunlight falling upon the earth. Caliban takes the sliver of Prospero’s staff from his pocket, and studies it. There is a bit of moss growing on it, gnarled and gray.

“What’s this?” Ariel asks. Caliban turns around to see Ariel pointing at a patch of tangled leaves and roots, which have been neatly, painstakingly, marked out in a tight circle.

“It’s my garden,” says Caliban stiffly.

“It’s weeds,” says Ariel.

“No. They’re flowers.” Caliban rises, and angrily strides forwards. He points to the tiny petals growing in between the thorns. “See?”

Ariel pokes one of them, and the flower stretches forward and wraps its stem around his finger.

“It likes you,” says Caliban. “How shocking.”

“What’s wrong with that?” asks Ariel innocently, tilting his head as he examines the flower.

“Everyone likes you. Prospero liked you. He hated me, and now even my flowers like you better.”

“Do your weeds—sorry, flowers—not like you?”

“I tried to cast a spell on them,” Caliban says, “to get rid of the thorns, because they kept poking me, but it didn’t do anything. Usually the spells at least do something. The flowers haven’t liked me since.”

“Things don’t like it when you try to change their nature,” Ariel says, as he pulls away his hand. The flower uncurls, sinking back into place.

Caliban looks at Ariel, who smiles gently at the little flower, which he calls a weed. “Is that what my mother tried to do to you? When she bound you to her will?”

Ariel is still. Caliban wonders for a moment if Ariel hasn’t heard him. Then, Ariel says, uncharacteristically stiffly, “It hurt a great deal.”

Caliban tucks his hands into the pockets of his garment, looking down. “If someone changed my nature, I’d be grateful to them,” he says.

Ariel laughs, high in the air. Caliban scowls at him, and the spirit shrugs.

“Prospero tried,” he says.

“But not because he cared about me,” says Caliban, straining to see Ariel, white against the moon. “That’s the difference, that’s what I mean. Prospero only used me, to find where the berries with water in them grew, where the rivers ran crystal-clear. I only thought he loved me.”

“Maybe he did. Once.”

“He used me.”

“Prospero used everyone. It doesn’t mean he didn’t love them too.”

Caliban looks away from Ariel, and at the gray dirt instead. He decides to drop the conversation, and pretend that things that matter don’t. That itself is a kind of Magic, the only one he’s ever been any good at.

 “It’s getting dark,” Caliban says. He runs his tongue along his sharp teeth, thinking.

“Why did you agree to help me?” he asks. “You never wanted me to have my mother’s Book. Why did you say yes?”

Ariel stares ahead. The moon is full; it looks like a single eye glowering down at the two of them.

“I thought,” says Ariel, “that the Book might be mine.” He looks at Caliban with the same glint in his eye as before. Mischievous and secret and indefinable, like a cool summer breeze, blowing away dandelion dust.

“Sycorax inflicted great evil upon me with her Book,” Ariel says. “Pains like those Prospero wracked upon you. And I thought—I thought that perhaps I might make things right. I might use the Book for something…”

“Beautiful,” Caliban supplies.

Ariel nods, and presses his lips together. He looks at his transparent hands, turning them over. “But I was foolish to imagine that. I am not a wielder of Magic; I am Magic. I am a creation, not a creator. Magic Books aren’t meant for beings like us.”

The wind whistles through the night, the sound of crickets and owls filling the empty air. Caliban knows that he knew things before, but he believes he understands them now. He hesitates for only a moment, before he says, “Then we’ll destroy them. Sycorax’s Book, and then Prospero’s too. They’ll never hurt anyone ever again.”

Ariel is silent. He looks at Caliban as if he’s both in awe of, and a little afraid of him. He blinks, strangely, one eye at a time. Ariel is the only being Caliban has ever seen who blinks like that. Then Ariel closes both of his eyes, and says softly, “Where is Prospero’s Book?”

Caliban lumbers back into his cave. He carefully lifts Prospero’s Book out of its hiding place, behind a stalactite formation. He has been trying to dry it off, to little avail. The moist air of the cave is not helping, and the pages are crinkled and fragile. But the book’s cover is still a startling, swirling blue-green, bright as the sea, bright like a star in the dark gray cave. It is a little loss, Caliban tells himself. It wasn’t as if Prospero’s Book worked for him anyway.

“It’s not far to Sycorax’s Book,” says Ariel. “Come.”

They wander through the forest. The leaves are dappled with moonlight now, shining with silver. Night is the only time when the Island is beautiful again. Caliban clutches Prospero’s Book tight to his chest with one hand, grips the shard of the Magic staff in the other.

Ariel halts in front of a mound of dirt, a place that Caliban had always thought it best, in the back of his mind, to avoid. It is surrounded by dry, dead grass and wilted flowers. The air around it is cold and choked.

“You’ll need to dig,” says Ariel.

“Can’t you help?”

Ariel shakes his head. “I am of air,” he reminds Caliban. “I am not for earthy tasks.”

Caliban does not argue. He steps forward and begins lifting huge clumps of dark gray dirt away. The work is tedious. He removes the Magic garment, so that it isn’t ruined any further. Ariel watches from above, anxiously.

Just when Caliban is prepared to ask Ariel if they could continue in the morning, when he would have the sun to light his labors, he feels the rough texture of a page. Caliban grasps it, and lifts his mother’s Book from the earth.

A harsh chill grips the air, a blue-eyed evil. Ariel breathes deeply, and Caliban sees him tremble, like a mirage.

The Book is rotten and worm-eaten, in sore need of binding. Drawings of runes scatter the cover haphazardly. It is made of soft brown hide. Caliban couldn’t begin to decipher the markings, to know his mother’s mind. It could not look more different from Prospero’s blue-green Book, carefully preserved, propped carefully against a stone. Caliban takes a deep breath, then thrusts the Book towards Ariel. “Here.”

But Ariel does not acknowledge him. Instead, he stares ahead of Caliban, his eyes large. “Something is coming,” he says.

From out of the forest, into the grove, bursts an apparition. Glowing translucently in the dark, it can hardly be seen. But its shape is clear enough. It is one of Caliban’s hounds, the speckled one, separated from its pack. It flickers, and hobbles towards its creator, whimpering hideously. Panting, tongue lolling, eyes deep and wild, it collapses at Caliban’s feet.

Caliban reaches towards it. “Don’t,” says Ariel, “you don’t know what—”

Caliban pets its fur tentatively. It is like stroking a gust of cold air, with just a brush of soft texture. The hound’s flank heaves up and down, but it seems to relax at Caliban’s touch.

“I have to help it,” says Caliban.

Ariel’s face tightens. “Then you must undo it,” he says.

Caliban flinches. He remembers how hard he had worked to create this spirit, painstakingly studying Prospero’s tight, neat scrawl, practicing the motions of his hands, waving the splinter of the staff over and over again. But the spirit is in such pain.

Caliban stares helplessly at the being he has made—out of boredom, longing, spite, loneliness. He had never meant to make a thing that suffered, to imbue it with his own essence. He had only ever meant to make a friend.

“The Book,” says Ariel. “There must be something in there. Sycorax was always destroying things with her Magic.”

Caliban opens his mother’s Book, scanning the pages for anything that might be helpful. He tries to ignore the hound’s labored breathing, coming out in a high, agonized pitch.

“There’s nothing about killing spirits in here,” says Caliban. He stares up at Ariel imploringly.

Ariel swallows. “Try Prospero’s,” he says.

Caliban obeys, scanning the familiar pages. Again, there is nothing.

But the pages are not without the words he is looking for. There, printed in neat black ink he can hardly read, are “spirits”, “magic”, “airy charm”. Caliban is reminded of how he wished spells could be linked together, of how much easier that would be, if he could dissect the sentences and sew them together anew in different combinations. Then, he could do whatever it was that he wanted. And Caliban is desperate enough now to trust his own imaginings.

“Ariel,” says Caliban, “I have an idea.”

The spirit freezes, then shakes his head. “No, no, no, please don’t have any of those! That’s where this poor beast came from. We need to burn the Books, we need—”

“It’s not a beast.”

“What?”

“It’s not a beast,” says Caliban again.

“What’s its name, then?”

Caliban looks up from Prospero’s Book. “Its name?”

“Caliban, that’s why it’s like this!” huffs Ariel. “You have to give a spirit a name. Otherwise, it doesn’t know what it is. It’s caught between being and non-being.”

Caliban looks at the hound, fading, cold, yet so alive. Every breath begs to live, even in its strange, misshapen body. Ariel is wrong, it is not caught between being and non-being, everything about it screams presence. It would be a terrible thing to do away with it, to erase it like it was an ugly splotch of ink.

The hound whimpers again, a drawn-out sound, and Caliban’s eyes widen. The spirit’s cries, he realizes, are not random, or mindless outbursts of suffering. There is a pitch to them, a music. The hound is in terrible pain. What else could it do but sing?

Caliban’s face goes cold. Singing. It has been some time since he last sang, since he had a reason to. He sang in slavery, songs of high-day freedom. His songs were those of vehemence, of protest against Prospero. Then, once Prospero was gone, Caliban wasn’t sure what he was, a destroyer or a creator or both. But still, he made something. That was a responsibility, a purpose, and a choice.

“This thing of darkness,” says Caliban softly, “I acknowledge mine.”

Caliban tears a page from Prospero’s Book. There’s a strange catharsis in it, a violent delight, but a terrible, heavy sadness too.

“No!” shrieks Ariel. He dives forward, and Caliban maneuvers skillfully away, the same way he would avoid Prospero’s elves and devils. He rips from the Book another page, and then, for good measure, tears several from Sycorax’s.

“Stop it!” Ariel screams. “Don’t do it like this, Caliban, please don’t destroy it like this! Don’t rend it! Don’t torture it, please!”

The hound watches Caliban with curious, fading eyes, as he tears the old pages into strips, separating the words from one another. As he bats him away, Caliban vaguely wonders why Ariel is trying to stop him. Didn’t he want the Books destroyed? Surely it doesn’t matter how. But Caliban can see a deep sort of terror sunken in Ariel’s translucent face, something he hasn’t the time to fully appreciate. He must act now, and understand later.

Ariel is too preoccupied with collecting the pages to stop Caliban from reaching into the pocket of the Magic garment. Caliban pulls out the sliver of Prospero’s staff, and, using it like a quill, dips it into the coarse dirt and draws a circle around the hound and the words he has arranged. The circle glows honey-yellow, stark against the night, and emits a warm glow. Caliban backs away, and Ariel is forced to do the same, as the circle gleams. It is brighter than the sun, brighter even than Ariel.

Caliban and Ariel watch as the honey-yellow light bleeds into the hound, as the words echo through the night, up all the way to the moon, which Sycorax drew from. Caliban does not have the ambitions of his mother; all he does is wonder at the moon, at its reflected light upon the hound, who, gradually, is gaining substance and standing upon shaky legs.

Ariel takes in a sharp breath, as the light dissipates. He drops all the papers he holds, as the hound wags its too-long tail. It bounds towards its creator.

“Hello,” Caliban says, as the hound licks his face with a scratchy tongue, like that of a cat.

“You gave it a name,” says Ariel, after staring at the scene before him a long while.

“Yes,” says Caliban proudly. “Freckled Whelp.” The hound’s new name is printed across its side in wobbly letters.

Ariel laughs, and bells ring through the clearing. “That’s not how you’re meant to do it,” he says, not unkindly. “And I’m not sure that’s a real name.”

“Well,” says Caliban, “it’s what it is, isn’t it? A freckled whelp? That’s what a name is meant to be.”

“I suppose,” Ariel relents.

Caliban grins, and pets the hound’s head, which is now covered in short, smooth hairs, like Caliban’s own scales.

Ariel squints at the words laid upon the dirt. “They look sort of nice, all spread out like that. You know,” he says, floating behind Caliban’s shoulder, “you could make a spell with these words. A new one.”

Caliban stares at him, his brow furrowed. “You said no more Magic.”

Ariel drifts down, until he is sitting cross-legged just above the earth, eye-level with Caliban. “I wonder…if perhaps the problem was not Magic, but the means of it.”

“You mean, my using Prospero’s Magic?”

Ariel nods. “You are not Prospero. It follows that his Magic would not cooperate with you. Neither are you Sycorax. Her Magic would not work for you either. But when you combine them, something different happens. It becomes your Magic. I think.”

Caliban considers his mother, and he considers Prospero, the two who, separately, had raised him, had molded him into who he is. Neither of them could claim him, though. He was his own being, just as Freckled Whelp, though it owed its existence to Caliban, was not his slave. Caliban would not use magic like Prospero had. Freckled Whelp was his creation, yes, an extension of him, yes, but free—to bound where it liked, to circumvent the Island.

Ariel picks up a page, and studies it closely. “’This rough magic I here abjure,’” he reads. “That’s very sad, isn’t it? Beautiful and sad.” He turns to Caliban, his face suddenly bright. “Do you know what Magic is like?  It’s like a tempest—terrible, grand, brief. It flames amazement, across the sky, and then it is gone forever.”

Caliban laughs hoarsely and shakes his head. “That’s not what Magic’s like at all,” he explains. “Magic can last, when you need it to. It’s like a dream, Magic. It won’t be destroyed, can’t be beaten, chased away, ripped to bits. It stays.” Caliban taps the side of his head. “It stays, even when it’s gone. And it doesn’t need to be grand to do that. Even rough Magic can flame amazement.”

Ariel frowns and tilts his head. He looks up at the sky, which is growing lighter and lighter, as dawn spreads like waves upon a shore. Ariel sees something, and he gasps. Caliban watches as he flies high into the air, and plucks a leaf from a tree. He sinks back down, and shows it to Caliban. It is green. They look at the circle Caliban drew, the one Freckled Whelp is sniffing. The earth within it is a rich, warm brown.

“I don’t think we can destroy the Books,” Ariel says. “I can’t, at least.”

Caliban nods. Freckled Whelp whines, perhaps in agreement.

“So we’ll keep them instead,” says Caliban. “And see what we can do with them.”

Caliban lays both of the Books open, side by side. And they begin. Ariel and Caliban read the old words, try and fail to understand them, then try again. They dream up new spells, strange sounds and syllables. Freckled Whelp and the hounds all about the Island howl and sing songs of their own invention. And as their music echoes, as the sun rises like a pool of gold spilling across the sky, color trickles from the Books, trickles over everything, every blade of grass, every flower petal, every wave, and every little unseen thing. Frogs croak. Crickets cry. The Island wakes from a long sleep. It opens its eyes, and it dreams again.