Caliban

Author: Katherine Incandenza

It was the first light of a spring day and the rooster crowed thrice. Caliban awoke as a drop of moisture suspended on mildewed rafters above fell unto his shut eyelid. There was a stench of terrible loss in the air, deep in his cerebellum he knew what had transpired in the night. He wondered what the next week, month, year might entail and who he might find to aid him in what had to be done, a new yungin to become the Younger. For now he had to work alone.

He peeled his sheets away from him – fused to his skin in a thick, smelly film of sweat excreted as consequence of his nightly terrors, machines of fire, ever accelerating motion giving way to total stillness, the end of the world – like a child cracking open the first fruit of the citrus harvest. He picked fibres and shoots out of his back and beard and stumbled toward the barn door. Thin rays of morning light poked and prodded at his half-open eye. As he walked he stretched his arms, turned his head and shook his legs, muffled cracks and pops in his neck and back let him in on a secret – you’re still kicking. As the barn door was thrown open and the full light of a cloudless spring morning washed over him he tried again in vain to open his eye and keep it so. He decided to navigate in the dark.

Mounds of grass and sharp dusty rocks underfoot kept him honest. Stumbling and yawning he knew the way despite his detours toward the ground. His biggest detour was off twenty yards to the right, to the small duck pond that sat at the mid point between the barn and cottage. A stream flowed in and out keeping it from stagnating, he’d have liked water lily to immigrate to his little swimming hole but as it stood he found it to be a quaint if not quite beautiful amenity in his simple life. He walked possessed down the bank, further and deeper until the waterline met his organ at which point he lowered himself backwards into the water. He remained submerged for ten seconds before coming to surface and gasping for air, pulling aside his wet slightly matted hair from his eye and finally awakening for certain as the cold water shocked him back into sentience. As he sat in the pool and looked around for his friends he massaged his scalp, picked his nose and the corners of his eye to remove the smegma of the night. Over his many years of apprenticeship he had become adept at sleeping through to morning despite the demons that prodded him awake – and the barn cat who simply wouldn’t have it.

As it went, this morning Caliban felt a great sense of unease and unrest, something had been different. He had the feeling that his dreams were not mere portents of foreign wars and mudslides at the mouth of the Aravaro valley but something personal and close to home – he knew what it was but he wasn’t one to make plans until it was certain plans needed making. He finished his bath and laid on the bank for a half hour, letting the sun rise a few more degrees and evaporate the moisture on his skin. A small insect took the role of provocateur in his rest but he never swatted, now was the time for calm, a time for the breeze to take centre stage.

Eventually the ageing Younger took to his feet and continued on his makeshift path of trampled grass toward the cobble cottage of his master. He found himself at the cut stone step of the door frame, he spit in the lock and the knob turned. It was quieter in than out, the common cacophony of snores that once crowded the room in fits and starts were not to be heard, Caliban sighed as he felt a twinge in his heart – the posted signage read ‘You were right’ and he’d never been more shamed to read those words. The door opened into a kitchen with an oak table centrepiece, to his right was a wooden counter with cupboards affixed above to the walls and supporting below, across the table from where he stood was a stone wood-fired oven filled with ash. To his left was a sandstone arch dividing the kitchen from the sitting room, in which sat a cushioned chair and a stool. The walls were lined with dusty tomes and a fireplace with a wrought iron grate. Adjoined to the kitchen to his right was a dark cellar floored with rough pebbles, housing hundreds of bottles of wine and mead. There was a stack of soiled crockery and cutlery in the copper basin, cabinet doors hung ajar and a jar of open preserve on the table. These small articles were evidence of a life lived. He crossed the kitchen to a set of wooden stairs affixed precariously into the wall with no underside support and no backboard – planks of wood struck into the wall. He climbed and lifted the hatch at the top, careful not to bang his head against the corner and found himself in a tiled landing with a grand instrument he and the master knew not how to play, framed by a double doorway with satin curtains leading to a set of exterior stairs to the small fenced in garden surrounding a low hanging, dead olive tree which once supported a hammock. Another door in the landing lead to the master bedroom, he approached it and let out a deep breath before coaxing the door open. He crossed the threshold.

Standing just beyond the frame, he looked upon the small wooden cot. From the moment he awoke he knew what he would find, but what little air remained in his lungs was taken from him nonetheless, as if he had been stabbed in the stomach. Both eyes open with no awareness, no rising and falling in his chest, no stirring. Caliban had died in the night. Never again would he speak, never again would he teach, never again would he feed the cat and sing sweet lullabies as it slept. Falling to his knees: Caliban wept.