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LIBERTY
There have been strange whispers on the sea of late. Ariel has ignored them for many a month, chasing Iris through the island glades and singing his taunts to the old pine at sunset. For a place so small and wave-locked, the world has yet to lose its wonder. By night, he sleeps in the sand and dreams of a painted, windswept dawn.
One morning, a storm woke Ariel, scattering his bed with driftwood and sea-reeds. It had not been long since his master's departure—nay, not half a century—and such a storm was not unheard of in the pages of Prospero's memory. He brushed the stuff away and told the tide to tell the duke-magician that he would have to do better than that.
For long months, Ariel's days passed in frolic, and the sea brought no answer.
Iris says that the sea is restless now because Ariel has pelted it with one too many white pebbles. Ariel tells her that what he does to the sea is no sprite's business but his own. She skips away down the strand making bird-sounds, laughing and mocking. Ariel pitches another pebble and tells the sea that he cannot hear her.
For amusement, there is also the witch's freckled bastard, who has taken to hiding now that he, too, is free. Prospero had little choice but to bind him there, and being bound to an entire island is better than being bound to a tree. Ariel hovers about the caves, murmuring this into every mouth. Sometimes, the creature answers with a snarl, and sometimes, garbled words echo back from the shadowed depths: names and incantations and familiar charms, all twisted into the vilest of curses. Ariel curses, too, and flees.
After dusk, asleep in the sand, he dreams of pearls and a gentle voice.
The morning arrives both windy and beautiful. There's been a storm overnight, a fierce one, and the beach is strewn for the first time in decades with wreckage. The island-nymphs are already rummaging through piles of broken timber and tangles of fishnet, curious. Ariel creeps from his rest and lights upon a scrap of sail, its red-dyed insignia faded to fine coral. This is not a new wreck, for the water has had its way.
Not far off, in the surf, a pale thing rolls to rest and glistens.
The skull is tumbled white, wondrous without eyes. Ariel takes it in both hands and lifts it from the sand, for a moment flesh enough to hold the thing that was so lately flesh. As he kneels, wet dark hair hanging in his eyes, he touches the ridges where the cheeks would have been and knows that the absent tongue still speaks.
"Come, master," he whispers, and draws the pearls out of his dream.
Adrienne J. Odasso is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the University of York English Department. Her poetry has appeared in Strong Verse, Aesthetica, Hum-Drum, and Succour magazines. Her short fiction has appeared in Issue #2 of Behind the Wainscot and in the recently released Ruins Terra anthology from Hadley Rille Books. New poetry will be appearing in issue #5 of Sybil's Garage, the 2008 Exhibition at Farrago's Wainscot, and in the upcoming Little Red Riding Hood anthology from Drollerie Press.
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