Chapter Six
Six
To most magical scholars, Mars and Venus present us with a clear dichotomy: action and reception, masculine and feminine, hatred and love.
Venus builds, Mars destroys. Venus stitches, Mars rips apart.
Yet does Venus not indulge in pleasure until it has destroyed itself, too?
I admit I have seen more similarities between the two planets than my predecessors.
—PROSPERO THE ALL-KNOWING, THE CELESTIAL BODIES
Roland was late to tutoring. I sat with my head in my hands and practiced manipulating Prospero’s emotions. “Good,” he said—a burst of laughter—“Now”—a wracking sob—“Enough of this, I think, for today.”
I released his mind and returned to staring out the window, where two figures, a tall, spindly man and a petite woman, walked arm in arm through the knot garden.
Prospero followed my gaze and frowned but said nothing.
He chose his words carefully, often discarding most of what he wanted to say.
When he spoke, his voice was authoritative and booming, plump with the king’s will.
It was a golden age. A time of abundance.
The treasury overflowing, the palace kitchens bursting with poultry and venison and sweet pies.
The armada swayed with the tide, ready to set sail at a moment’s notice. Queen Gertrude was gout ridden.
“Since Roland has delayed us again, let’s work on your transformations.”
“Anything but a tree.”
“No, no, no.” Prospero shuddered. “Not a tree.”
Prospero had found a drawing in a wrinkled book of a white-bearded magician mid-transformation, his hair bursting into a leafy crown. It had taken Roland two days to pry all of the splinters out of my arm.
Together, Prospero and I interrogated my limits.
I could wear any face, become any creature—any living thing—but nothing beyond the boundary of my skin answered the call of my magic.
To my dismay, not even clothing. I’d also attempted transforming someone other than myself—Prospero said he’d always longed to be a cat for a few blissful, quiet hours—with no success.
“I did receive this the other day. It was sent to me from a library in Lionesse.” He showed me another old tome. Thumbed through pages until he landed on a sketch of a woman with a serpent’s tail. “It would take a great deal of control to limit the change to only a portion of your body.”
Roland finally surged into the room then, followed closely by Hal.
They were flushed pink, bright with amusement—something they would never share with me, no matter how I longed for it.
As a pair, they were impenetrable. I chased them still; perhaps I’d chase them forever.
They were always a hundred yards away, disappearing around a bend.
A door in the palace closing, locking me out, and their laughter from somewhere behind it.
Roland kicked Hal in the shin, then settled in the chair beside me, crossing one long leg over his knee.
They’d shot up last summer, the two of them.
Roland was fifteen, and to me, it seemed as though many things—his voice, his confidence—were full where they had once been sparse.
He’d grown his hair out to his shoulders, braiding or twisting it around his forefinger whenever he was bored.
“Hal would like to stay today,” Roland said then. He often spoke for Hal, as if they were one mouth. Hal was their ears, the one who paid attention while Roland’s mind wandered.
Hal smiled at Prospero. “May I?” He turned to me. “Do you mind, Oswyn?”
“Mouse,” corrected Roland.
“Beatrice,” said Hal.
“I’d forgotten about that one,” muttered Roland darkly.
Prospero boxed Roland’s ear then nodded at Hal, for Hal was the prince and could learn whatever he wanted.
I envied him that. Prospero swept the book in my lap away, returning it to his shelf.
In his hands now was a thick tome bound in calfskin leather.
His masterwork, The Celestial Bodies. A compendium of magical knowledge.
His own planet, Jupiter, was the largest section of the manuscript.
Venus, a thumb’s width. Mine was only a page or two.
Prospero assumed, though he couldn’t be certain, that I was the first Moon-ruled magician in a thousand years.
He pored over any account or legend he could find to discover what I might be capable of, but they were sparse.
Drawings like the woman with the serpent’s tail.
The leaf-crowned sorcerer, who was said to live as a man in winter and a tree in summertime.
Now, he multiplied The Celestial Bodies so there were two copies, setting one before me and the other before the boys. “You two can share,” he said. Hal scooted into Roland’s chair, crushing him, while Roland attempted to swat him away. “Mars today.”
I obediently flipped through the book until I arrived at the thick parchment Prospero had dyed red with madder and crushed insects.
But Roland was now whispering in Hal’s ear, describing how eagerly a pretty kitchen maid had kissed him, and Hal’s eyes were wide.
“Roland, do shut up,” said Prospero.
I surfaced from memory, twisting the silk sheets I lay on. It was so easy, so tempting, to linger in the past. But there were also moments I couldn’t bear to relive.
Was The Celestial Bodies still in the king’s library, or had Prospero’s masterwork been cast into the fire when he died?
For the book was Prospero’s mind—curious, limitless.
Inside it, he lived eternal. If my hands traced those pages, it may as well have been the threads of his brain.
And I needed his brain right now if I was to survive against the Marsborn.
Every time I thought of her, my heart sped with panic.
When I lived here, the library shelves were crammed with Prospero’s research.
But as I searched the stacks, pulling out tome after dusty tome, I could find nothing at all.
No familiar spines. There was only The Stellarium, written by a Saturnborn named Valdes.
Inside was nothing detailed on the individual planets, only pages and pages predicting various cataclysms from peasant uprisings to plague. I tossed it aside.
It was then that I heard hushed voices. The hearth crackled as I crouched in the depths of the library stacks, the whispers drawing closer to where I hid.
It was Roland and Queen Cecily. And tucked beneath Roland’s elbow was the faded leather of The Celestial Bodies. I had never seen him willingly reach for it in his entire life.
In the candlelight, they regarded each other.
I wondered: Was intention treason? Her mouth, so close to his?
If only I could warn her that lust was a failure of strategy.
Even though the queen and I were close in age, both twenty-two, I felt superior in my restraint.
Years ago, my breath would have hitched to have his lips so close.
I would have caught on fire; I would have lit the candle myself. Not anymore.
“—if I could,” Roland was saying.
“Why must you compete? I could not bear it if you were hurt.”
I nearly rolled my eyes as I peered through the bookcase, shifting heavy volumes aside to see better.
Cecily’s voice was faint, so I transformed one of my ears into a bat’s to hear her more clearly. I caught: “—tell the king.”
“No! Do not tell Richard anything unless you are certain.”
“After I have his son, won’t it be easier for me to do as I like?”
“Cecily,” said Roland gently. “You will never be able to do as you like.” The tone of his voice was like a door closing.
She blinked in confusion. Her hand lifted off his arm. Without another word, she swept up her gown in one hand and stormed from the library.
He watched her leave, then sighed, and after several moments he sat at one of the long oak tables in the center of the library.
Prospero’s book was still tucked beneath his arm. I considered asking him for it outright. Or I could wait for him to fall asleep and steal it. But sleep had never taken Roland easily, and he looked as though he’d be awake for a long while.
He tore a hand through his hair. On the table beside him was a bronze armillary sphere.
Its oscillating metal rings tracked celestial movements.
He spun it absentmindedly, moving from sunrise to sunset in a single thrust. Then, as if resolved, he reached for a fresh piece of parchment, dipped his pen in ink, and drew a star chart. I balanced on my toes to see.
It was one I recognized intimately: the planets at the moment of my birth, an alignment so striking it swept magic into my veins, just as it did him.
He bit his lip, twirling his quill pen through his fingers.
Staring down at Venus, his own ruler, he drew circles around the planet’s glyph.
Prospero would say that such a placement would suggest I’d make a good marriage, but we all read charts differently.
Roland was theatrical. He’d predict I was destined for an enduring, passionate love.
He blew on the ink so it would dry quickly, then folded up the parchment, drumming his fingers against the desk.
Pen dipped in ink again. He tackled a large stack of the king’s petitions next, melting wax and drizzling it over a folded letter, stamping his ring into the center.
The candles melted down to stubs, the wax pooling in their silver bowls, as he scratched his signature over and over.
Only when the stack was considerably smaller did he finally pry open The Celestial Bodies.
My toes ached from holding my weight as I peered over his shoulder.
He was flipping through a section I didn’t recognize.
The pages were stark white, undyed. Prospero’s scrawl was surrounded by frantic sketches. A strange word scribbled over and over again: Exaltation.
Roland eventually leaned his head back, set the heavy tome over his eyes, and groaned, long and slow, into the pages.