Scene Thirty Four
Miranda and Proteus, stopping in a clearing, while the night of the crux swirls above in streaks of black and dark, dark blue. Around them, the forest rustles. It sounds as if the shadows, lengthening beneath every bush, were animated with purposes of their own. The night smells of frost and fear.
“Let us rest here, and proceed apace,” Proteus said. “And here shall I conjure food to assuage your hunger, water to quench your thirst.”
Miranda nodded. She’d talked but little the whole day. She felt that Proteus was not being truthful with her, and she shied from talk in which he might tell her untruths.
As of yet, she could not decide whether Proteus lied to deceive her or lied because he had deceived himself.
The world outside fairytales and legends was more complex than she’d ever dreamed.
Now she watched as, standing in the middle of the clearing, he made arcane gestures and strange passes and called to him the food from the elves’ tables in Avalon.
He’d told her that elves sometimes did this, and stole the food from the tables of humans, leaving only shadows and illusions in its place, things that could not feed the mortals, nor fulfill their physical needs.
Yet the illusion remained and humans didn’t know themselves duped.
Looking at Proteus doing the summoning, Miranda wondered if she, also, had been taken in by a shadow and an illusion.
Was fair Proteus that which she’d imagined, the creature with whom she’d believed she’d spend her whole life?
Or had he lied to her?
Proteus, mid-summoning, looked at her and smiled, a gentle, kind smile.
Oh, unworthy thoughts. Oh, cursed doubts.
Miranda smiled back. He loved her. How could she doubt it? He had told her he loved her. And look, the fond looks he bestowed on her. Unworthy Miranda doubting Proteus.
Yet a man may smile and smile and be a villain.
Proteus brought forth flat cakes, cooked in the kitchen of the hill, and warm, savory roasted meat, and ale in a foaming pitcher.
Miranda ate the cakes but only tasted the meat.
It seemed to her that if it were Proteus who had tried to lay the sleep-spell on her the night before, then he might try something different today.
In fact, whoever her enemy was, he might try something else today. The spell to make her sleep having been detected and failed, whoever had cast it might now set a sleeping potion on the ale or meat and make Miranda sleep thus -- in a way her magic training could not detect.
And while she slept, what would happen?
Had she slept last night, Caliban would have been eaten. Had the mortal slept, she would have been — she shrank from thinking on it. Up in her mind came an image of herself, surrounded by the wild centaurs.
“Give me of your ale,” she told Proteus. He had conjured thick ceramic mugs and poured ale for each of them in separate mugs.
He looked at her, gently puzzled, and creased his eyebrows in wonder over his dark eyes. “You have your own, love,” he said and, gently, touched the side of her mug with his finger.
“I want yours,” Miranda said, seeking to put into her voice just the right caprice, the right careless command to sound like a spoiled girl playing with her lover. She smiled on him, what she hoped was her most radiant smile. “For all that your lips touch is sacred to me, fair Proteus.”
He wrinkled his brow. He looked puzzled. He smiled and sighed at once, as though accepting the inevitable. “Far be it from me,” he said, "to disobey my lady’s command.”
He offered her his mug. He took her own.
Taking it to his lips and tasting it, he made a face, then looked at the mug and chuckled. “How came this blade of grass onto my mug?” He poured the ale out, gave himself a new portion from the pitcher.
Miranda sipped her ale.
There were leaves and moss aplenty here, but no grass in sight. How not to suspect ill, when so many reasons for suspicion were at hand? How not to fear? How not to plot and plan?
She slaked her thirst on that one mug of ale. When Proteus poured her a second, she noted how his hand lingered over the mug, and how it seemed that some dust fell from his sleeve onto the drink.
She pretended to drink it, but when he turned she poured it into the ground, behind her.
Then she faked sleepiness, and she covered her mouth with her hand while she yawned. “Oh,” she said. “What is it with me all of a sudden, that my eyes close and my head droops.”
If she were wrong, she would be doing Proteus an injustice. But what would Proteus know of it, if she were wrong? How would it affect Proteus if her suspicions of him were unfounded?
He would know she looked sleepy, and then nothing more. He wouldn’t know of the night she’d spent, vigilant, upon the hard ground, spying on him.
And their life and their love would go on unaffected. Their joys would erase her shaky suspicions. Thirty years from now, she might tell him and then would they laugh on it, together, in their palace.
But first she must be sure, and to be sure she must stay awake.
“I am so sleepy, my Lord, that I can scant see your beloved face, and my eyelids, weighted like two stones, pull me down to the bottom of the lake of sleep.”
Proteus smiled again, his smile perhaps just a little too satisfied. Satisfied at her calling him her lord? Or did he have darker reasons for satisfaction?
“Let yourself sink into sleep, then, Miranda, and upon this clearing, let us call the day farewell. Tomorrow is the last day we may spend in the crux without forever becoming a part of it. Let us, tomorrow, finish our journey to the castle and free the small, innocent prisoner. Then we shall return to the hill and make terms with your uncle who might be, truly, more sinned against than a sinner.”