Scene Forty Six
The scene from Miranda’s eyes, as she stares at Proteus.
How pale he looked and yet still handsome.
Miranda felt the old accustomed softness towards him, as he turned his dark, dark eyes towards her.
“Oh, Miranda,” he said. “I loved you well. Yet, you betrayed me.”
The centaurs, behind him, in disarray, looked on, their faces full of terror, their eyes rolling, as magical flames licked their tall legs and singed the ringlets of their human hair.
Miranda could sense that the power of the alliance, hers, her — uncle’s? She looked at Lady Silver — and that of the two mortals, all of it did no more than keep the centaurs encircled in fire and neutralize Proteus's power so he could not attack them.
But they could not penetrate Proteus's defenses. The force of desperation strengthened his shields and put steel in his self-defense.
Unharmed, yet he looked ill and tired and miserable. “Miranda, you used to swear you loved me true. I know I’ve done you wrong.” Proteus opened his hands wide in a gesture of appeasement. “But think you on my many wrongs. I lost your father, my beloved cousin, who would have advanced me in his realm. And then I lost my father.
“I might have done wrong, but can you fault me? It was only my angered heart that led me astray.”
As he spoke, he approached her step by step, step on step closer. “You have the net, Miranda. Just throw it over Silver; she’s but Quicksilver’s female aspect. Stop her making magic. Then, together, we can be happy yet.”
Proteus's presence that near, as in the days of yore, was disturbing, but Miranda remembered what she’d heard him tell the centaurs when she’d hid herself in the forest.
Had that been naught, but his intemperate, angry tongue? Had he truly meant naught by it?
She couldn’t quite believe it, and yet his beautiful, stern face commanded belief, and his black eyes shimmered with held-back tears.
“Miranda, please,” he said.
“Mistress, don’t,” Caliban said, from the ground.
Looking down, Miranda saw that Caliban had crawled towards her till he lay at her feet, his hand on her ankle.
“Mistress, don’t, for he is but a villain, and he’ll kill you too. Those others — mistress, they might not be perfect. Indeed, the king has many crimes upon his tainted soul. But they’ll not hurt you. That villain Proteus will. Oh, Mistress, I care not what happens to me, just so you live.”
“Listen not to the vile creature,” Proteus screamed.
But Miranda looked down at Caliban’s sad eyes and bloodied fur.
She heard a scream form in her throat, and she leapt forward past the Lady Silver.
Miranda flung the net, and it flew wide — a golden cobweb sparkling in the cold light of the crux.
It opened as it flew, like a bird opening its wings.
Proteus stepped back, startled, but it was too late.
The net fell on him and stretched to envelop him.
He fell to the ground, wrapped in the coils of the very weapon he would have used.
The centaurs, too, their power worn out by the magical flame that encircled them, collapsed to the ground, one atop the other.
Miranda, staring at Proteus, who writhed in the coils of the net, felt a human hand upon her arm.
Turning, she looked into the golden falcon eyes of the creature who’d been the human child that she had kidnapped for the love of Proteus.
Now he was no child and his features, his demeanor looked like those of a prince of elvenland.
He smiled at her, and his gaze sparkled with something she didn’t quite understand.
“You’ve done well, milady,” he said.
Miranda’s breath caught upon her throat, and her hands trembled.
The odd sense of belonging together that she’d felt before at seeing him, upon the pond, was a hundred times magnified, and she realized suddenly she’d loved him since that first, magical glimpse.
Did I love before? she thought, and, bewildered, glanced at Proteus who, writhing upon the sand, seemed insignificant, unimportant. A stranger for whom she cared not.
Heart, forswear its sight. For I ne’er saw true beauty till last night.