Scene Twenty One
The beach where all this started. Proteus sits on the sand, dazzled, looking lost. Miranda emerges from the forest. As she runs towards him, he lifts his head and, with joy shining in his eyes, extends both hands to her.
Oh, how could she have abandoned him?
As Miranda walked upon the cold shifting sand of the beach and saw Proteus sitting on the sand, looking sad and deserted she couldn’t comprehend her own thought.
Gray waves still pounded the shore, but the magical wind no longer howled. The crux, having absorbed its invaders, had calmed its magical fury. Only the unseen beating of ghostly waves upon the gray edge of the beach, gave the impression of continuing tempest.
How tired Proteus looked. How wan his complexion. How his shoulders sagged in despondence.
Had Miranda’s desertion hurt him so?
And how ragged his clothing looked, how ill his whole aspect. Had his uncle then fought back, after Miranda ran? Had his uncle hurt him so?
Proteus looked tired and ragged and destroyed by the encounter with his uncle, by Miranda’s desertion.
His hair was disheveled, having escaped the leather binding with which he normally confined it. In a blond mess, it surrounded his face, making him look wild, barely civilized.
Blood that had trickled from his nose had dried upon his skin, marring its smooth whiteness.
When she first arrived upon the beach, he turned at the sound of her steps. On seeing her there, his eyes seemed to fill with the joy of a man seeing paradise.
He stood up, but his attempt at rushing was betrayed by his left leg, which gave out under him -- as he stood -- and caused him to grimace in pain and steady himself upon the other leg.
Miranda’s heart misgave at that grimace, and she hurried to him and offered him both her hands, feeling guilty that she’d ever deserted him. For he was her Proteus, a hurt Proteus, a miserable and bedraggled Proteus, but hers nonetheless, her lord and her love.
“Milord,” she said, as her hands met his cold, too-dry hands.
Had Quicksilver, then, hurt him so much? Was Quicksilver, perhaps, one of these villains who held their temper a little but, when aroused, did more damage than any other?
But she would not think on it.
Had she not seen Quicksilver hold still while Proteus attacked him?
The matter was too complex for her mind, and she’d not judge Quicksilver, yet. Or Proteus.
If Quicksilver had defended himself, he’d done no more than any elf would, stopping the knife that would slay him, the hand that would hurt him.
If he’d hurt Proteus, maybe Proteus deserved it.
Yet need he have hurt Proteus so badly?
Proteus squeezed her hands hard and said, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, “Do you forgive me, then? Does Miranda speak, yet, to her misguided Proteus?”
“Misguided?” Miranda said. His voice was so sad, so full of remorse that she had no trouble at all calling a smile upon her face. “How can Proteus be misguided when he loves Miranda? Isn’t loving Miranda the fact and essence of sanity, the measure of good taste, the exactness of fashion?”
Proteus smiled, in answer to her smile, but his smile was wan and half-hearted, the sickly wince of a patient who tries to forget his pain. “Oh, how kind my lady, who yet saw her lord act worse than any villain and attack, again and again, a man who sought to do him no harm.
“Look here, these wounds.” He moved the tattered bits of his suit, to uncover a red gash upon his leg, and yet another upon his arm. “These wounds I got when I tempted that poor king, my uncle, beyond his endurance.” Tears appeared in Proteus's eyes, making them shine brightly with something like a light of remorse. “He, who could have killed me where I stood, only did this harm to me and no more.”
Miranda, her heart clenching at the sight of those piteous wounds, those tears upon Proteus's fair, smooth skin, thought that Quicksilver might very well have forbore from inflicting even those wounds upon her love.
“You’ve changed your mind about your uncle, then?” she said. “You do not wish to kill him?”
Proteus shook his head. “Aye me, no. Long life and prosperity to the king of fairyland.” He squeezed her hands hard again. “I’m not saying he always acted right, but the quarrel was between him and my father. And my father being dead, who I am to carry it forth? If Quicksilver would not kill me — me, who had attacked him — even while I lay unconscious upon the sand of this supernatural place, then surely, surely, he cannot be evil. All will be understood when I speak to him, for I’m sure he meant no ill to me. Know you where my uncle Quicksilver lies, that I might be reconciled?”
Miranda shook her head and congratulated herself on Proteus's excellent head, his great mind, that he was already ready to forgive Quicksilver, to believe the best of him.
And if Miranda now doubted Quicksilver’s peaceful intentions — if she thought that perhaps, just perhaps, the villain had faked peaceful behavior for the sake of winning Miranda’s support away from Proteus — if she doubted Quicksilver, yet it was good that Proteus was willing to consider all angles of this.
It was good that rage no longer blinded her Lord.
Proteus had an excellent wit, she decided, and their life would be such as fairy legends promised at their end — a happy, ever after for the whole of eternity.
“I know not where my uncle is,” she said. “But I have thought myself on a greater responsibility.”
Proteus frowned on her, puzzled. “Responsibility?” he asked.
“That child,” she said. “Whom we—"
“Of course,” Proteus said, and his eyes softened with eager gentleness. “That child, that poor creature of mankind that we lured to the crux with our black arts. He must be allowed from hence, to his mother’s side, where he’ll be safe. We must go,” he said, and picked up her hand and pulled her towards the forest. “We must go to the castle at the center of the crux. Can you feel the true path? I cannot. The battle and the exhaustion from it,” he said. He put his free hand on his forehead as though cooling a raging fever. “My ill-conceived attack on my cousin, and his just response, have left me too tired to find the magical feeling of the true path.”
“The path is this way,” Miranda said. “And I will guide you if you desire it of me.” What sort of an attack could Quicksilver have inflicted on him that would make him blind to the feel of the path? She looked at Proteus's pale face and felt dull resentment at Quicksilver.
Justice need not to be reckless.
Holding his hand, she led him tenderly to the edge of the forest and set Proteus’s feet upon the path that would take them both to the heart of fairyland, the castle in the crux.
She looked back and saw his smile and smiled at it.
“Where is that net that you took from me?” Proteus asked. “The magical net?”
Miranda’s smile faltered. Why did he ask about the ill-omened object?
What did he mean to do with it?
And how would he react when Miranda told him it was wholly lost?