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Scene Twenty Five




The campsite where Quicksilver and Caliban sit companionably on either side of the blazing fire and eat ill-cooked meat. Caliban sits with a bottle in his hand and four others by his feet.


Quicksilver eyed Caliban, while Caliban ate in fierce, growling bites, all the while making sounds as though he muttered to himself beneath the chewing.

Quicksilver picked desultorily at the slice of veal resting on a large leaf upon his knees.

The veal had cooked unevenly, in water that was really magic, as was the ocean of the crux -- pure magic, under the aspect of water.

Quicksilver was thirsty but hesitated to ask the troll to drink from the one open bottle into which the creature had been slobbering.

And yet, who was Quicksilver to call any being a monster? What right had he, who’d been born double and was now single, to call less than an equal to anyone?

He looked across the fire at Caliban, and the troll grinned at him, showing his sharp fangs encrusted with bits of meat, most of it raw.

Quicksilver looked away and set aside the veal, upon which a spark of magic force seemed to run, sizzling upon the tongue, electrical to the fingers.

Quicksilver wiped the tip of his fingers to the covering of his bed, that he’d wrapped around himself like an uneven toga. He cleared his throat, looking at the troll. “You’re from the Northern Mountains, then?”

For a while it looked as though Caliban wouldn’t answer, but then he growled once, twice. He held his dinner by the bone that ran through the piece of meat and, with each of his bites, he scraped the meat off and cut two swaths into the bone beneath.

He swallowed with another growl, then looked sideways at Quicksilver. “I was born in the mountains, but I didn’t stay there long enough to know them. The Hunter, the creature of the night who takes those who break the ancient laws, came to my den and took me away while I was no more than a cub.”

Caliban looked away from Quicksilver and into the distance. For a moment his dark eyes softened, acquired an almost human expression. Quicksilver would swear they had filled with tears that caused them to shine in the fire light.

Did trolls cry?

“I remember my dame,” Caliban said, and a catch of tears seemed to stop his voice from coming out fully.  It caught upon itself in the creature’s throat, seeming to thin as it squeezed past a lump of emotion. “She was a brave one, standing up to the Lord of The Night, and growling at him, and yelling that I was but a cub, a little one, and didn’t deserve damnation.”

Caliban blinked, and fat tears fell down his muzzle, water rolling over the orange fur before seeping slowly into it. “Faith, I remember her well, her moist tongue, her long fur. I was her favorite from the litter and she gave me the tit first. She tried to keep me. She tried. But the Lord of The Night said he wasn’t taking me for my crimes, but for his needs. He said he needed a servant and playmate for his daughter and he’d return me to my tribe and my clan, my den and my mother when his need was past.”

Caliban looked down at the gnawed-clean bone in his hand and gave a growl, low upon his throat. He flung the bone violently into the fire, raising a shower of sparks. “That was almost fourteen years ago, and sometimes I wonder how my mother and my clan fare in the northern mountains.”

Quicksilver wondered, also. So many clans of trolls had fought beside Vargmar, so many been decimated root and branch, the caves they inhabited blocked with trunks and leaves and set on fire — every creature, mother and father, adult and warrior, cub and babe alike, dead.

Thinking on it now, on that ruthless strategy, Quicksilver wondered how he’d found the heart to do it. Though, faith, his heart had little to do with it. The elves had not fought with their heart but with their brain -- with cunning and decision and strategy. With tradition and knowledge and duty.

Quicksilver had fulfilled his dynastic duty. He’d fought the ancient enemies, just as the other kings of elvenland had — Quicksilver’s father, Oberon, and before him Oberon’s father.

Caliban took another sip from the bottle. He watched Quicksilver though narrowed eyes, as though knowing what scenes passed behind Quicksilver’s tired gaze, as though he knew that he might not have a clan to return to and that the guilt for their decimation would rest on Quicksilver’s shoulders.

Quicksilver looked away feeling remorse for actions that he’d never before even questioned. He felt his throat close from thirst, thirst and hunger together — the hunger he could not satisfy, not on this veal that was more rare than cooked and cooked more by magic than by fire. He could not stomach it.

As for thirst....

From everywhere, nearby, came the sound of running water, the sound of water dripping. But it was an illusory sound.

Quicksilver remembered the pond where he’d met the lady Silver, remembered the feel of it. That was not water, but living, liquid magic. A drink of it and, force, he’d burn alive.

He cleared his throat again, “Kind Caliban,” he said, “May I have a drink?”

Caliban looked surprised, and well he might, since the wine was, by rights, Quicksilver’s, by him transported from the palace in fairyland.

To his credit, he made no protest, but smiled, showing his overgrown canine fangs, as he passed the bottle to the king of fairyland.

Quicksilver took a deep draught and told himself that he only imagined the slightly foul taste in the wine.

He tried not to think of the creature’s lips touching the bottle neck.

The wine was wet and — faith — wet was all Quicksilver required now.

He wondered if even now this wine would be flowing freely in fairyland, to commemorate the victory he’d obtained.

What would Malachite, what would fair Ariel think of Quicksilver’s disappearance? How long had he been gone?

He stared into the fire and saw in it patterns and shapes of monstrous import — armies in battle, creatures meeting each other in a field where neither love nor reason mattered, and only duty counted. Each one’s duty, differently arrayed, called in an opposite direction till only one race, one point of view emerged victorious — the other, perforce, dead.

“And you?” Caliban asked. “Who are you, O king? Why came you here?”

Quicksilver opened his hands. He couldn’t -- nor did he wish to -- tell the troll about Will and Will’s child, and Quicksilver’s feelings for Will and Will’s suspicions of Quicksilver. “I am the uncle of your mistress,” he said.

The troll smiled. “Ah, you’re Proteus's enemy.”

Quicksilver inclined his head. “You could say as much.”

“Oh, how I crave vengeance on Proteus,” Caliban said. “He has magicked my mistress with a magic more potent than any philter. He’s made her fall in love with his false ways and her innocent maiden heart has he deceived with tales strange and wondrous.” He paused. “He’s made her believe you are her enemy.”

“And you believe it not?” Quicksilver asked, wondering what the monster would say if he knew Quicksilver’s inner thoughts and Quicksilver’s sins and how long Quicksilver had fought against his trollish kin.

Caliban shook his great, matted head. “Proteus is too smooth, his tongue too glib. He loves not my mistress, nor could he, for all his heart is taken up with himself. He is too smooth and gentle to be true, and he knows those manners of men and elves that I cannot muster — but Lord, we trolls have some memory from our species, and some things we know without being told. With that memory, thus older than myself, I know when an elf is true and when he’s not. This elf is not.”

Something vibrated in Caliban’s voice — a hint of tears, a touch of affronted feelings. Of a sudden, Quicksilver saw it, and his eyes widened in shock.

Caliban loved Miranda. The troll, with his inhuman looks, his glimmering fangs, loved delicate Miranda, highborn princess, the daughter of the late king of fairyland.

Oh, what a wondrous thing this was, for did not each creature love after his own kind?

To trolls, were not troll fur and a gentle, moist canine tongue more important than the fine features, the long hair of humans or elves?

And yet, Quicksilver was sure of it, sure he heard the tremolo of love in the creature’s harsh voice.

Caliban might remember the memories of his ancestors, in some things. He might have the sense and feel of how the world worked. He might not trust all he heard and all he saw and he might know truth beyond the reach of his young eyes.

Yet he remained an innocent, a tender young fool

Caliban didn’t know troll females. Coming of age beside fair Miranda, he’d made her the pattern and plate of his affection until his love had slipped from the adoration of playmate, almost brother, to something quite different.

Quicksilver wondered if Caliban knew it.

He stared at Caliban and felt moisture come to his own eyes, moisture he could scarcely spare. For here had nature arranged a snarl, where elf loved human and troll loved elf, and none of them, neither elf nor troll — nor perhaps human — had the least chance of fulfilling his desire or gaining happiness.

Quicksilver finished his bottle, and his body slipped down to curl on the ground. He fell asleep upon moss and leaves, wrapped in his bed cover.

In the moment between sleep and wakening he heard the tinkling of glass, the beast’s footsteps upon the leafy ground and he knew the troll had besought himself some privacy for crying -- carrying his bottles of wine with him.

 He knew then that Caliban was aware of being in love with Miranda, and that Caliban knew his dreams would never come true.

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Framed