Prospero

The reception room was uncomfortably warm. The light from the untrimmed candles flickered in the windowless room. A black and white spiral mosaic was the only adornment on the walls. If one looked at it long enough, the black helix snaked inward like a whirlpool. There were no leaflets to read.

The clients fidgeted, waved fans, and closed their eyes against the nauseating candlelight. They had been waiting for hours. An appointment with the great Prospero was nearly impossible to win, and they would endure much for it.

I watched them through a cleverly devised window hidden in the mosaic. They were nearly ready. The show could begin.

"Master, they are primed," I whispered to Prospero. Primed was the state of climactic anticipation needed for a body to accept the flux of Divine Sympathies.

Prospero meditated in his small parlor. He nodded, but did not take his eyes off the crystal orb in his lap. It was his gateway to the universe. He filled his veins with its power, readying himself to transfer that healing balm to his clients.

I brought the first patient, Lady Trafalgar, into the surgery. She was a large woman, exiled from London while her husband paid tribute to his clients in Vienna.

I relished these small moments of wonder in Prospero's service--simple acts, such as leading Lady Trafalgar into surgery. After hours in the reception room, the relief was plain on her face. She had long since stopped trying to hide the sweat on her brow. Graying hairs escaped from her combs in damp curls.

"Bless you," she breathed. I took many such blessings in proxy for the great man.

The surgery, lit by mage's fire, was unbearably bright after the dim parlor. It was a bare white room, a purgatory, with a feather bed clothed in crisp white sheets as the only furniture.

Lady Trafalgar shaded her eyes and nearly swooned. I held her arm firmly.

"Wait here, my Lady. The great Prospero will be with you in a moment."

"But there is no chair," she said, glancing at the bed.

"No, there isn't."

I did not need to watch what happened next. I had seen it a hundred times.

Lady Trafalgar waited alone for several long minutes, until her anticipation verged on a breakdown, and then Prospero appeared in a cloud of mist, a simple conjuring that never failed to impress. Prospero's indigo gown rose around him on the wings of a mage wind. His hair, as white as the walls, was purposely unkempt, wild and billowing like a madman's or an angel's. Lady Trafalgar gave into her trembling and fell to her knees. Prospero's silky gown enveloped her as his arms bound her into the circle of the Divine Sympathies. He shouted the ancient words of power, calling the universe's humors to him. His fingers pressed her temples hard enough to bruise and she swooned, her eyes rolling back in her head. All the while Prospero shouted until the froth of his words lathered the patient's face. He set her on the bed as gently as a mother with her newborn, and passed his energized hands over her body, once, twice and then again, until the shame of his touch was almost too much for the good lady to bear.

And then he was gone.

Lady Trafalgar waited until her heart slowed. She wiped the spittle of the great Prospero from her face and returned home, cured of her digestive difficulties and looking forward to her next invitation to tea so she might revel in the glow of her sordid experience.

"You see, Edouard, these people have real ailments," Prospero said to me one evening over a bottle of wine. "Improperly balanced humors can be painful and even life-threatening. Take Lady Trafalgar, for example. Her belly is bloated with yellow bile and it burns like the devil's fire. I need only release the cooling phlegm of the universe into her body to extinguish the bile. Once her sympathies are balanced, she will able to eat all the schnitzel in Vienna."

Like all the great theories, Prospero's was simple. He built on the framework laid out by Hippocrates and elaborated on by Empedocles. The body was a delicate balance of the four humors: black bile, blood, yellow bile and phlegm. These humors were reflected in the natural world by earth, air, fire and water, respectively. It was basic history learned by any mage in his first year of studies.

Prospero took the theory one step further. He posited that the mortal and natural humors were not just reflections of each other, but symbiotic links between man and his universe. Those interconnections were the Divine Sympathies. The possibilities of his discovery intoxicated Prospero and he published copious articles on the subject, claiming many astonishing cures. Any capable mage could balance the humors, he wrote. Any capable mage could channel the Divine Sympathies. Of course, none but Prospero enjoyed success with the technique, but his successes were staggering.

The Holy Order of Physicians, Augurs and Theurgists was divided on the subject of Divine Sympathies. Some of his peers thought Prospero a genius. Many watched his theories emerge with quiet curiosity. Others saw only his showmanship and extravagance. Even his name was chosen to evoke the days of magical whimsy. His ostentation was a betrayal of the Holy Order's accepted doctrines that regulated all magic and divination.

His methods reeked of wizardry.

Lines were drawn. Sides taken. His former tutor, Artura Pienekoff, the Russian-born chair of HOPAT, and surgeon who had made leechcraft a common cure, was on one side and Prospero on the other, but his faith was unshaken. He quit the university and forfeited his position at the hospital. He continued as a member of the Holy Order of Physicians, Augurs and Theurgists, in name only. He opened the Fas Corpus Clinic at his manor and funded his research by private donations of the rich gentlemen and women who sought his services.

As his fame grew, so did his notoriety. He was an innovator. He was a throwback to medieval charlatans. He was a champion. A thorn. He was God's chosen and the Devil's journeyman.

I came into his service at the height of this fanfare. My professors urged me not to accept Prospero's apprenticeship. If his detractors proved victorious, my career was over before it began. If his supporters won this most public debate, I would be forever in his shadow.

But I had no other offers. My holy gifts were slight and my talents slighter. I would never be anything more than a minor augur in a minor house. At Prospero's right hand, I would be welcomed into any salon, perhaps even the Holy Royal court.

I was not always Prospero's betrayer, though history will name me as the one who brought down the great man. Once, I was his devoted disciple, a rare breed in that modern day when apprenticeship was a campaign for power and popularity, rather than a scholarly pursuit.

Betrayal implies cunning, cruelty and foresight. I had none of these, only the nagging suspicion Lady Trafalgar's belly was not her problem.

Her introductory consultation yielded fascinating insights into her character. She missed London horribly and worried her absence would destroy her social standing in that society. She loathed her husband and feared her German-speaking servants. The Viennese food upset her digestion.

Except for that last bit, I gleaned this information through carefully veiled questions. Personal interrogation was the first step in priming a patient. My mage gifts may be few, but as Prospero's apprentice, I discovered in myself a strong talent for delving into the undisclosed desires and fears of our clients.

"How are your acquaintances in London faring during your absence, Lady Trafalgar?" or "Your German is quite astonishing. Where did you learn it?" These were enough to learn the fears weighing heavily in the Lady's heart. I believed the excavation of these mysteries had some healing merit, but Prospero found little use for my theories.

Not that I belittled the Divine Sympathies. I had seen their effects on too many patients not to be impressed. It was a logical and clinically proven remedy. Despite my own misgivings, I resented the Holy Order's childish opposition of a great mage's service to mankind.

"Oh, that," said Prospero, now drunk enough to open up to me. "That's just Peniakoff's jealousy. An apprentice should never outshine his master. You won't ever do that, will you, Edouard?" He slapped me on the arm, sloshing his wine over my coat.

"N ... no, sir," I stammered. We both knew there was no risk of me outstripping Prospero's fame.

Maria

I never questioned Prospero's methods, until I saw them worked on Maria Kepler, and then, I did not question them enough.

The first time I met Maria, she shyly explored my face with her fingers, seeing me with her touch, apologizing all the while for her necessary boldness.

The experience emptied my soul into my veins. I was glad she could not see my blush. Her delicate touch, like the beating wings of a butterfly, taught me a most urgent lesson: passion does not fill the soul. It empties all will and thought, leaving only desire in the echoing cavity.

Since that encounter, I have been the empty vessel waiting to be filled by her.

Maria was an accomplished pianist, favored by the Empress. No one understood her blindness. She was a healthy child until one day, without explanation, the veil of shadows fell over her eyes. In her darkened world, she turned to music. The piano made light in her head and brought visions of the world she could barely remember.

As a last effort, after many years of examinations, her parents brought her to Prospero. He did not usually welcome patients into his home, but the girl intrigued him. He had never cured anything as grievous as blindness. It was plain she suffered from a glut of black bile. He claimed that she would be his greatest achievement. And so she was.

Her remedy was slow but as her vision improved under Prospero's care, so did Maria blossom. She explored her new world of shadows and light with the wonder of a child. Nothing was too mundane for her examination.

Perhaps it was in this spirit of exploration she confided in me. Her candor was enough to leave us both surprised. My usual interrogations opened the gates to a tortured soul.

"What do your parents think of your musical talents?" reminded her of a brutal music teacher who slapped her knuckles with a wooden pointer until they bled. "What is your most frightening memory from childhood?" procured stories of demons crushing her to the bed at night. Many-tentacled monsters, bearded like her father, with knife-like incisors that threatened to tear her open. Nightmares, I thought, though she insisted they were real, insisted with such a voracity that she broke down weeping.

Prospero encouraged these inquiries. Tears, he said, were a kin to phlegm, a purgative of bile. I was not so certain but I was a diligent, if reluctant, apprentice. I continued to probe the young girl's memories, bringing forth all her forgotten wounds.

She was obsessed by countless fears both named and unnamed. She feared pain, though she knew none. She feared abandonment, though her parents obviously doted on her. She feared failure and success as a prodigy pianist at the royal court.

We alternated these horrifying interviews with sessions of Divine Sympathetic therapy. Prospero worked on her body as if it was a lump of clay, and she often emerged bruised and shaken. Other than these treatments, Maria was cared for as a pampered guest. Her parents, at Prospero's insistence, stayed away. She was isolated from the world of her family and peers, just as her blindness isolated her from the physical world.

As the cure progressed, Prospero became obsessed with the girl. I too, could think of none other, but my obsession was noble. Prospero was immune to Maria's beauty and charm. To him, she was nothing more than an experiment.

"She is my triumph, Edouard," he told me. "Who in the Holy Order can claim to cure the blind? None, I say. None but me. And when Maria walks into the Empress' court, a whole person again, none, will be able to criticize my methods."

I could doubt those methods, but not his success. Maria's world lightened. She saw shapes in the shadows and then shadows in the ever-increasing light.

The day she saw a human face for the first time in fifteen years, we all wept.

"I see you!" she whispered. "Master Prospero, I see you!"

My heart cried out to be her first vision of man, but I willed my selfishness away. Only Maria mattered. She reached her fingers toward Prospero's face and then lowered them.

"Master Prospero," she laughed, "you have the hair of a madman!"

"Yes!"

He wasted no time on the frivolities of his miracle, but began preparations for another treatment. His fingers worked over Maria's body, purging the black bile and infusing her with the Divine Sympathies.

I had seen this many times before, but suddenly I was struck by the impropriety of his methods. I was seized by a paralyzing and inappropriate fury that he should be so free with her body. Maria did not move under his ministrations. She looked over his shoulder, and for the first time, our eyes met. Once again, I was emptied of my rage and passion, filled only with the sight of her.

Maria sat at the piano in Prospero's pristine parlor. I loitered in the doorway admiring the tableau. The light from the window burnished her hair like a halo. Her back was effortlessly straight, and her waist perfectly cinched. Her hands were in her lap, not on the keys. She had the faraway look of a blind girl.

"I can no longer play," she said. I could never outwit her keen sense of hearing, no matter how lightly I stepped. "My fingers touch the keys, and the notes sound, but I can no longer play for the Empress."

"Nonsense," I said, stepping into the room. "Your music is divine."

"Yes, divine. My gift came from God, and now he has taken it away, as payment for my selfishness."

"Maria! You are the most selfless creature I know." I knelt before her seat, but was not brave enough to take her hand. Her sadness was a perfume as intoxicating as her beauty.

"I was not happy with all God had given me. I needed more. Oh, don't you see, Edouard? The darkness inside me is gone! Without the darkness, there can be no light, no music."

"I heard you play just now. The music is still in you."

"No, the Empress will know the difference. She will hear the banality in my technique."

She took my stricken expression as insulted and rushed on.

"Oh, Edouard! I don't mean to say that you have no ear for music. But she is the Empress and has the ear of, well, an Empress. I am no longer worthy of her sponsorship."

She was right, I knew. All the passion that she had once poured into her music now fueled her wonder for the world. She could gaze at a rose for an hour and not tire. The sky, blue, gray, white or black, never failed to bemuse her.

"He despises me, you know, for my weakness."

"Who?"

"Prospero. My refusal to play has ruined his grand triumph. I am nothing to him now."

The loss of her musical gift had tainted Prospero's success just enough that he held back on publishing the case history. Though he would not tell Maria, he actively sought a new patient to become his trophy.

"Your music will come back to you," I said. "Just give it time."

"Sweet Edouard." She laid her hand along the side of my face. I leaned into the touch. "You would believe in me. It is your nature."

She did not elaborate on that implied denial and I did not tell her of my growing theory. Her talent was no more a divine gift than her blindness. Both were a product of her inactive fears and desires.

Charged with the false bravery of a man in love, I sought out Prospero and dared to reveal my tentative model of the human mind. Maria's blindness, I theorized was a physical manifestation of her latent nightmares, whether they be real or not.

"I call it a psyche, for the Greek word meaning 'breath of life'."

Prospero laughed.

"Edouard, I did not choose you for your intellect. Remember that, and keep your preposterous theories to yourself, lest someone believe that they originated in my house."

Ridiculous they may be, I thought, but no more ridiculous than current vogue theories of demon possession, leechcraft or Prospero's own Divine Sympathies.

A line had been drawn once again, though no one but me was aware of its chalky presence. I was not certain of my theory. I was not certain of Prospero's faults. I was certain only that I could not bear to have him touch Maria again.