Star’s Tempest- Episode 58

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Episode 58

I run to where Caliban lies helpless, struggling to breathe, the large hole in his chest horrifying to behold. I don’t look on it. I take Caliban’s head into my lap. He is deathly pale and trembling, and I know he is dying and nothing can be done.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say, my eyes filling with tears.

“Oh, go away,” Caliban says faintly, and it takes me aback until I realize he means it even less than ever, that it’s almost a joke. I stroke the side of his face.

“You don’t have to be a jerk, you know,” I say, trying to tease through my tears.

“Don’t I?” he whispers, with a slight, crooked grin. Then he sobers. He takes a labored breath. “I finally realized… surviving, back then, when I was a kid—that wasn’t the thing I did wrong. It’s everything else I’ve done wrong ever since.”

He trembles, and his eyes plead with me for understanding for all the times he hurt me or lashed out at me—and for the times he was rough and indifferent in taking what he wanted from me.

I make myself smile, to show him it’s okay. “I love you anyway. Always did. Always will. I would have done anything for you.” I force back tears.

“Well, I finally… did something… for you,” he whispers, and there’s something completely new in his voice—pride.

I hug him as hard as I can without hurting him. Our bodies still fit together so perfectly, still know one another so well.

“I wish you hadn’t,” I say, weeping. “It’s not right, for you to die like this.”

“There was nothing else… for me,” he whispers, struggling with every word. “I’m too… broken. It’s better…”

“Never,” I say. “I refuse to believe that.”

He looks up at me with a ghost of a smile on his face. “The world is better… with you in it. That… I… know.” He holds my gaze for a long moment, and touches my cheek gently. Then he nestles his face against my shoulder.

I rock us both.

I look down at his face a few minutes later and see that his gaze is empty. He’s already gone.

My Caliban is gone.

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When I’m finally able to stop crying, the ground near me shudders and heaves and Isotta comes up out of the earth, followed by Ercole and Agnella and Carlo, and finally, Ariel. They lay their vines and their hands on Caliban’s body with respect and care.

Ariel looks at me without speaking, but I know what he’s asking, and I nod my consent.

They wrap his body in their vines and draw him down into the earth.

I wipe tears away until they return a few moments later. They look on me pleadingly, and I don’t know why. I turn to Ariel in confusion.

He speaks, his voice wet and deep, like a pool of mud. “They wish to know whether you will command them, or whether they may go free.”

I’m instantly horrified. “Of course they may go free. I would never hold them captive as Prospero did.”

They reach out their vine-like arms toward me and touch me lightly on the shoulder, the arm, and I recognize that they are expressing gratitude, and I steel myself to endure their creeping touch. They are still people, no matter how changed.

“What will become of them?” I ask Ariel as they pull away.

“They will dig deep into the planet until they reach a place where they cannot survive, and their suffering will finally come to an end.”

I blink away tears. “I’m sorry,” I say to them. “I’m so sorry for what my father did to you.”

I see in their expressions that they feel only gratitude and relief. They sink into the earth, their eyes of mud closing at the last moment.

I turn back to Ariel. My voice trembles in sorrow. “What will become of you? You are free now. Do you want the same fate?”

“Yes, but not yet,” he says. “First, I will bring you Alonso.”

My heart leaps. “He lives?”

“He lives,” Ariel says, and disappears into the earth.

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Alonso is asleep or unconscious at first, when Ariel brings him out of the earth and lays him on the ground in front of us. He looks pale but healthy. We all gather around him. Gostanza and Ferdinand kneel next to him, wiping mud off his face, pleading gently with him to wake, before at last his eyes open.

At first, his gaze is unfocused, and his expression shifts from confusion to fear, but then his pupils constrict and he looks upon Ferdinand. His expression turns to amazement. “Ferdinand?” he asks, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Father,” Ferdinand says.

Alonso presses his fingers against Ferdinand’s face—his red mustache and beard, his pale skin—and tears well and escape his eyes. “My son,” he says, his voice trembling with joy.

Ferdinand pulls him close and they hug one another tightly.

“I thought you were dead,” Alonso says, weeping. “I thought I had lost you.”

Gostanza hugs them both, and Cristoforo puts his arm around her.

I take Matteo’s hand and squeeze it, because I need someone to hold onto right now, lest the wave of emotion carry me away with it. He smiles at me, weeping inside his helmet. Domenico, too, openly cries. Cristina and Bandecca hug one another.

Good things can still happen, here at the end of everything.

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Continue to Episode 59

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