Scene Eleven
Proteus and Miranda stand amazed, in the landscape that looks too quiet, too glossy, filled with a drowned light, like a scene cast in glass or seen through the filter of softening memory. Slowly, Proteus's face shifts to an expression of anger. Caliban, sitting nearby, moves closer to huddle near Miranda like a protecting dog at his mistress’s heel.
“Luckless girl,” Proteus said. His voice came out strangled and slow, as though he’d forgotten how to speak or as though the remaining magic in the air made him witless. “Luckless girl. What have you done?”
What had she done?
Miranda would gladly have answered the question, but she knew not. She had done the spell. She had done it, as it wished — commanded — to be done. Had she not?
Those two voices in her mind, the sense of her father — her adopted father — so near, had it been real?
As she tried to remember what she had done, the memories and thoughts shifted and twisted just as the words had writhed upon the page, and she could not fix her mind to any certain thing.
It had seemed to her — it was passing strange — but it had seemed to her — she could swear it — that someone else had intruded upon the spell, that someone had touched her power with a greater power.
Quicksilver? The thought came to her, but she didn’t know how to express it, nor even if it was possible. “Did Quicksilver--” she started.
Proteus looked on her with cold eyes — hard-pebble eyes, black and opaque. He took a deep breath.
“Quicksilver,” he said, "came quicker than we expected. I should have known the tyrant, the despot, was following me. Yes, Quicksilver was here, but for a moment and in that twinkling he jumped into the stream of power carrying that child — do you know where your spell has carried the child?” He crossed his arms on his chest and looked remote and distant, a superhuman judge, trying her for her crimes that she couldn’t remember.
Miranda shook her head and lowered her gaze.
“You’ve sent the child to the crux,” Proteus said, his voice assured and full of strength as though making a final, triumphant argument.
“The crux?” Miranda repeated, like a child reading by rote, not knowing what the word meant.
Proteus's eyes opened wide, in surprise, his mouth twisted in disapproval. “Oh, what are you that don’t know what the crux is? The crux is the center of all magic, Miranda. It was once the world, or all the worlds. It enveloped all, was all, a part and parcel of the great egg from which the universe hatched, entire, all the spheres, the arrayed worlds.
“But magic has shrunk as these, our corrupted times, wound the world away from the force of creation.
“Now, the crux is nothing but an island, an island of magic in the ocean of unmagic. But there, it is strong and there it is central to life, and, from it magic comes to every world. Without the crux there would be no magic, none--in any of the worlds, mortal or elven.”
Miranda swallowed. She imagined the crux as a sphere at the center of all the worlds. An egg within an egg. “I sent the child there?”
Oh, luckless. Amid such power, how could human child survive?
“You’ve sent him there, through some grievous error.”
“But I followed the spell, I made all--”
“Worse yet, you’ve sent your uncle there, also. In that center of magic, what might Quicksilver not do? For that land was not made for man or elf and there the presence of any thinking being can wound the delicate balance of the crux, the balance of all magic. Wishes are truths in the crux and there the very thoughts have blade-sharp wings, that cut as they fly. He might perhaps destroy the crux so that, with it, he can destroy all magic and us.”
“You must send me there, Miranda. You must send me and my friends after the tyrant and the mortal boy. You must. There I can kill him, and then can I return to you.”
She turned her head to look, as the sound of hooves announced riders. “Your friends?”
She blinked, as the riders approached, for their magnificent stallions seemed headless, as from where the neck of each horse should be there rose the rider's torso, tanned and nude. Above the torsos, broad faces, surrounded by dark hair showed concerned expressions.
“We almost caught him,” the one upon the black horse said.
“Alas that he escaped,” spoke the rider of the roan.
They had thick accents and in Miranda’s mind their appearance and the accent fell together.
Centaurs. These were centaurs, the inhuman monsters who’d almost destroyed the glittering human civilization of ancient Greece in its crib.
These were Proteus's friends?
She looked at her Lord, unsure what to think.
He smiled at her, a tender, wounded smile. “You made a mistake, Miranda, and now I must correct it. My friends are here to help me.”
For a moment, chastised, her lips trembling, her eyes full of tears at having caused Proteus's anger, Proteus's vexation, an heretical thought that perhaps she didn’t want him to return to her, crossed Miranda’s mind.
But then she looked at his perfect face, his dark eyes, his golden hair, and she sighed. She wanted him to return to her. But she was not sure she wanted him to go. “Will it be dangerous,” she asked, "in the crux?”
“It will be dangerous,” Proteus said, and composed his face to manly courage. “But I will return to you.”
She swallowed a lump of fear in her throat and opened the book. She raised her hands for the spell and stared at the words that slipped and twisted beneath her gaze.
And stopped.
She didn’t want Proteus to risk himself without her.
Too many times, in these months that he’d courted her, she’d seen him leave and known that he was about to face some great challenge, some battle that might wither his soul or kill his body.
And now must she again stand and watch him go into that dark vortex, that weird place from which he might not return?
Must she let him go to face the monster alone?
She raised her hands; she recited the words that twisted and writhed beneath her gaze. She called to her each of the elves he’d indicated, and slipped the noose of the spell around Proteus's beloved neck.
And then she stood, hands raised, ready to close the spell.
She was casting the spell. She was closing it.
How could Proteus prevent her from going with them?
She pulled the spell around herself, and said, “So let it be,” closing the spell.
The vortex opened and she dropped through it, shivering and breathless.
Proteus's scream, “Miranda” echoed in her ears.
She felt the book drop from her numb hands as the whirlwind swallowed her.