The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked, I cried to dream again.

- act III, scene 2

June 14, 1997

Goliath couldn't tell if Mira was scared or shy or just overwhelmed. Likely some combination of it all, and his clan wasn't exactly helping.

Of course they'd all swarmed in once the little expedition party had returned with the new child and beast in tow. Elisa had called ahead to have Broadway relay the news— and a warning not to crowd the little one or bombard her with questions— but she may as well have delivered that last part in some other language for all they'd heeded it.

Goliath couldn't fault their enthusiasm. It hadn't been that long ago that they had gone about their nightly lives under the grim background awareness that they were likely the last seven gargoyles in existence. Now every new face, every discovery and meeting of new clans, was cause for lifted spirits.

But this wasn't at all like returning to Manhattan with Angela.

Bronx had been first to trot into the great hall and gamely approach to inspect the newcomers, but Caliban imposed himself between Mira and the younger beast with a gruff noise of warning. Bronx came to a halt ten feet away and whined and tilted his head. Katana was quick to snag the back of Nashville's shirt as he made to rush ahead but Fu-Dog waded boldly in to sniff inquisitively at Caliban. Caliban only hissed in return.

Hudson and Broadway came in next, the former veering toward Goliath while the latter leaned in to get level with Mira, who still clung to Angela's side. Brooklyn appeared at his mate's side, while Lexington, Coldstone, and Coldfire must have been out, likely still on patrol.

"Hey there! I'm Broadway, welcome to—"

Caliban took great exception to this. The rosy-pink beast rose up on his short legs, puffing up as he rounded on Broadway with even louder hissing. This in turn caused Bronx to come to Broadway's defense, growling nose-to-nose with Caliban, and Fu-Dog, not to be outdone, shook his mane in a threat display of his own. In all of two seconds they suddenly had three posturing, protective, snarling beasts.

Broadway was quick to grab Bronx and haul him back. "Whoa, whoa, okay!"

"Fu-Dog! Heel, buddy." Brooklyn kept his distance, and Fu-Dog backed off. Caliban visibly deflated, settling back down to his belly on the floor with a sustained rumble.

Goliath, who'd been readying to tackle Caliban if necessary, relaxed and glanced down at Mira. The little one had all but vanished into the folds of Angela's wing, staring out at the other gargoyles with a stunned expression.

"Everyone," Goliath addressed his clan. "This is Mira and Caliban. Proper introductions will have to wait until she's settled in. For now, give them both space."

Hudson lingered as the rest of the clan reluctantly filed out. "Just the wee lass and the beast, then?" he asked Goliath. "Where's her clan?"

"She insists she has none," Goliath replied. "None but her father, who calls himself Prospero, if this message is to be believed."

Hudson took the rolled paper Goliath held out as Elisa and Angela cajoled Mira into sitting on the table, Caliban supervising the operation closely. "Och, and I thought learnin' to read English was a task."

"Elisa says each one translates to the same message, as far as she can tell," Goliath said. "This Prospero sent her out with the beast alone to find other gargoyles. It's unclear why he could not come with her."

"He can't!" Mira burst out, standing up on the table, wings flaring (and one of them nearly catching Elisa in the face). "He can't leave! Fortuna won't let him!"

"Mira, it's all right," Goliath replied, keeping his voice gentle. She was clearly frustrated that they just didn't get it, as if everything was glaringly obvious. "We don't know what that means. Can you tell us about this place? Why can't your father leave Fortuna?"

Mira blinked and wrapped her arms around herself, wings snapping down against her back. For a long moment she didn't answer. Perhaps, Goliath considered, she couldn't answer. She looked so young, much younger than Nashville's nineteen. Goliath would guess ten, perhaps twelve at the most. "There's breaks," she said at last. "This one he couldn't get through. But I could."

Goliath exchanged a look with Elisa. Breaks? Breaks in what? Her raised eyebrows and small shrug told him she had no more insight than he did.

"Who else lives in Fortuna?" Elisa asked. "Your father, Caliban, you, and…?"

"Nobody," said Mira, frowning at her.

Goliath could see the little wrinkle between Elisa's brows that meant she was trying to put pieces together in her mind. He had to admit privately that he would be surprised if she could find any solutions yet to this puzzle. All he felt was more baffled with every answer Mira gave.

"'… could— could not risk keeping her here… overlong.'" Hudson quoted, squinting at the Rosetta Stone of a note. "Couldn't risk what, I wonder."

Mira had sat back down and was fiddling with her claws. "Baba said I had to go or it might be a long time."

"Until what?" Elisa asked.

"'Nother break."

"Okay," said Elisa, "So a break is an event, not a thing or a place, I guess."

"An opportunity for Mira to escape Fortuna, but not for Prospero," Goliath added, watching as Mira tucked her knees up and tried to wrap her little wings around herself. What could be so terrible about Fortuna, wherever and whatever it was, that would make an elder gargoyle desperate enough to send one so young out by herself? Caliban, though old, was a diligent guardian, but a beast was no substitute for an attentive adult in the end.

"Tell us about Fortuna?" tried Angela. "What was it like there?"

That was apparently the wrong thing to ask. Mira made a little hitching noise and slipped off to the floor and under the table, where Caliban lurked. Almost as one, Goliath, Hudson, Angela, and Elisa all bent down to see as Caliban curled into a circle with Mira nested in the middle, almost completely hidden except for her horns and her tail, draped over the beast's neck and head.

Elisa knelt and reached in. Caliban's only response to this was to huff but otherwise he made no move. Elisa had earned a bit of his trust, it seemed. "Hey, sweetie, it's okay. We—"

But Mira had reached her limit. "我想回家," she said, voice breaking in a distressed warble. "我想回家!"

Blinking in surprise, Elisa hesitated. "… what was that?"

"這里人太多了. 我要爸爸." Mira just buried her face in Caliban's side and began sobbing. "我要爸爸!"

Goliath only just caught the word 'baba'— the poor thing was calling for her father. He wasn't sure how to console her. It had been a long time since he'd been around younglings this age, the trio's generation, and he hadn't been considered an adult himself at that point either. He had a feeling even gently pressing the truth, that her father was not here nor could they promise a reunion, would only make things worse.

But no one had a chance to do anything; as soon as the words, muffled into the beast's flank, left Mira's mouth, it happened.

A near-invisible ripple, almost like heat distortion above a candle flame, spread out from where Mira sat. Goliath reacted on instinct and darted forward to pull Elisa and Angela out of the way, but the faint iridescence bubbled outward and passed through them all with no sensation. Angela and Elisa both nonetheless flinched, and Hudson took a step back and gripped the hilt of his sword— and the great hall vanished in the wake of the strange effect.

They found themselves in a circular room about half the width of the great hall. Dim but warm golden light from ornate crystalline sconces replaced fluorescent fixtures. Stone castle walls faded and became a dome of colorful stained glass set in an intricate lattice of polished silver and brass metal. Beneath their feet was now crystal-clear glass, beneath which lay a tangle of clockwork, massive gears slowly turning.

"Sorcery!" breathed Hudson, backing away from the edge as lightning and thunder cracked threateningly from outside. Rain beating against the glass filled the room with a constant dull hiss.

Goliath spun about, scanning for and quickly spotting a doorway. The circular opening, a frame of golden metal, wobbled ever so slightly, and on the other side he saw the familiar sight of the elevator doors at the end of the great hall. He turned back; Elisa had gotten to her feet and was approaching a long curved table set against the wall upon which were piles of papers and books. Angela was attempting to coax Mira out of Caliban's protective hollow while glancing warily around— and Goliath could see Angela's hand gripping the edge of what should have been the table in the great hall, but seemed instead to be empty air.

"What—" Goliath started to ask, not quite knowing what it was that he was asking. "What is this—"

"Mira," said a low, soft voice behind him.

Goliath whirled to face the stranger, only catching a shadowy impression of someone tall and lean silhouetted against a flash of lightning on the other side of the stained glass before the entire vision— figure, storm, dome, mechanical floor and all— shimmered and dissolved in an instant into nothing.

Familiar stone walls, antique tapestries, the more modern but claw-ticked marble underfoot. They were again in the great hall of Castle Wyvern, with a clear, calm night outside, and absolutely nothing unusual or out of place save one sniffling youngling. Mira had let Angela pull her into her lap, and now the little one peered miserably from the corner of her eyes at Goliath.

Elisa, momentarily frozen in place with one hand where the cluttered desk had been, took a step back. She turned slowly to face the others. "You guys saw that too, right?"

"Mira," Goliath asked, "did you do that?"

Mira nodded once, and hid her face in Angela's arms. "Didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

"Was that magic?" Angela curled one wing over the little one. "Were we… in Fortuna just now?"

"No." Mira sounded as if she were starting to cry again. "Just illusion. S'not real. I wanna go home. I want baba ."

"Hey, Mira, we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. Okay?" Elisa gave Goliath a look and tilted her head once, to the corridor leading into the eastern wing of the castle. "Goliath and I will go get you some real food from the kitchen. You and Caliban just sit tight here with Angela and Hudson, take a minute to calm down and get your bearings, all right?"

Goliath followed her out of the great hall, speaking only once he knew they were out of earshot. "We seem to have taken in a young mage."

"To say the least," Elisa replied. "I think she pulled the same trick on me back in the library in Vermont. The bookshelves rearranged themselves to keep me from finding her. At first I thought maybe it was just small-town creepiness getting to me, but when I touched it— like just now in there—" she gestured with a thumb over her shoulder.

"It vanished. An illusion, as she said." Goliath glanced back the way they had come. "All sight and sound but no substance. And… she may have conjured the image of her father, as well. Though I didn't get a good look."

"I couldn't see anything intelligible on the desk, either," Elisa said, frowning in thought. "But this whole mystery is going to have to wait."

"Elisa, if she could show us—"

She slipped her hand into his and looked him in the eye. "I get it, believe me. Everything about her is questions with answers that are just more questions. But all we really have for certain is a scared little girl who misses her dad. That's where we start. And with a situation like this, these first steps need to be taken very carefully."

"Have you had many situations… like this?"

"Tiny magic gargoyle kids, no, this is a first," she retorted, favoring him with a wry grin. "But from the few pieces of the puzzle we have: Prospero referred to Fortuna as a prison, so let's take him at his word for now. If Mira were human, this would be as if her parents had been incarcerated and she's been placed with a foster family. That's us, the clan."

He thought back to the note, and the implication that this Prospero could find his way free of his captivity and appear out of nowhere to 'explain himself', phrasing that was doing nothing good for Goliath's wary nature. "I would rest easier if we knew just why Prospero has been imprisoned."

"And we'll deal with him when and if he shows up, same way we handle anything— together." Elisa's smile was gentler at that. "But right now, it's just Mira. First rule is we don't say anything to disparage him, especially around her, or she will never trust us. He could be completely innocent or a total bastard, but to Mira, he's baba, and she clearly loves him.

"And secondly, we stop peppering her with questions. She's in a place that looks nothing like home, if that illusion was any indication, and she's surrounded by strangers. She doesn't feel safe , let alone comfortable enough to share her life story. We let her take the lead there. She'll tell us when she's ready. Until then…"

"Until then," Goliath said, "we will treat her no differently than any other hatchling of the clan. I'll make sure everyone knows what to do. One last thing, however… surely you noticed."

"Noticed what?" she asked as they turned into the kitchen.

Goliath held up a talon for each name: "Prospero. Miranda. Caliban."

She gave him a hopeful shrug. "Maybe Mira's dad is just a really big fan of Shakespeare?"

"Elisa."

She laughed. "Yeaaaah, not putting money on that one. But given our track record can you blame me?"

Goliath smiled ruefully back at her. Risky encounters, attacks, captures, city-wide enchantments, attempted child abduction… "No, I cannot. I have often wondered if the Bard was truly just a talented playwright or something more."

"Or, he just kept tripping over the most fascinating people. Some of us are lucky like that." Elisa reached up to run her fingers briefly through his hair, eliciting a much warmer smile from Goliath, and he tenderly returned the gesture.

"Still," she added, "if Titus Andronicus shows up, I'm out."

Goliath had to laugh at that.

June 15, 1997

The next night, Elisa came out of the elevator and nearly stepped on a tiny go-kart driven by a cartoon dinosaur. She was about to look around for whoever was holding the remote control for the toy when it giggled and ran straight into the wall, disappearing in a puff of iridescence.

"Right," she said to herself. The castle's newest resident could create illusions at will. And was the equivalent of a six-year-old.

Nashville burst into the hall and stumbled to a stop upon seeing her. "Hey, Elisa," he greeted breathlessly. "Did you maybe see a Yoshi come through here just now?"

"If you mean the little green guy in a go-kart, he kamikaze'd into the wall a second ago, sorry."

"Oh, good!" The youngster straightened up and turned to yell back down the corridor he'd come from. "Hey, Mira! We got two left!"

"Do I want to know?" Elisa asked, hands on hips.

"Well I asked Mira if she likes video games and she was all 'what's video games?' so I fired up Mario Kart and she got confused or something when I tried to explain how to play," Nashville rattled off, as Mira skidded up behind him on all fours. "Turns out she's never seen a TV before."

"TV casts illusions!" Mira added breathlessly, wide-eyed, "but they're all flat!"

"Well, you're not wrong." Elisa was at least glad to see this change from the previous night.

"Anyway, she made like six of the karts and kaasan said we had to make sure they were all poofed," said Nashville. He grabbed Mira by the hand and they were off again. "See you later!"

"Somehow nobody warned Coldstone," Brooklyn said from the opposite hallway and motioned her in. "We've had a fun evening so far tonight."

"She's coming out of her shell fast, though," said Elisa, following him.

Brooklyn made a thoughtful noise. "I'd say less coming out of her shell and more like Nashville is keeping her busy."

"That's as good a start as any," Elisa said. "At least until we know more of what she's been through."

"We should probably be laying down some ground rules about magic. That could be a useful talent, but random video game characters popping into existence is an extra layer of chaos this castle could do without. At least it was just Mario Kart and not… I dunno, something like Silent Hill."

"What's Silent Hill?"

"Oh right, that won't come out for another couple years. Sorry, nevermind."

Elisa gave him a sidelong look. "Should you be telling us stuff about the future like that?"

"What, are you a timecop?" Brooklyn's good eye narrowed at her in mock-suspicion. "You have to tell me if you're a timecop."

"Oh, ha ha," Elisa retorted, then paused. "…you'd tell me if that were a real thing, right?"

With the most impressively understated mischief Elisa had ever seen, Brooklyn merely shrugged.

"The little one said the most troubling thing to me," Coldfire was saying as Elisa and Brooklyn entered the dining room. "Out in the courtyard. She pointed to the sky and asked how far up the ceiling was."

"Kids ask all kinds of weird questions," Elisa put in, helping herself to a sausage from what was left of the clan's breakfast.

"Perhaps," Coldfire replied, "but when I told her that the sky had no such roof, she looked frightened and ran inside to hide. The idea that a gargoyle is afraid of the sky… ?"

"That strange clockwork room she showed us. D'ye suppose her father kept her indoors, in that place, all the time?" Hudson stroked his beard.

Broadway made a disapproving noise. "But that's cruel! She's big enough to be learning how to glide, and that's gotta be done outside."

With one ear on the conversation and nothing of note to add herself, Elisa had spotted Mira's little satchel at the end of the table, open and contents laid out. Such as they were, anyway; the girl's worldly possessions, aside from the message she'd given to Goliath, amounted to a plain leather-bound book and a bejeweled brass compass. No food? Caliban alone would have needed a St. Bernard's diet plan at least, unless it had been Prospero's plan to let them forage or hunt. Unless Mira and her beast had been wandering longer than a handful of nights in Vermont and had exhausted a supply of provisions, criticisms against this Prospero were starting to rack up.

Elisa opened the book and leafed through. The first pages were filled with large Chinese characters— several to a page, and each one repeated once in a neat clear script immediately accompanied by its copy in a messier, shaky hand. Then in English: lists of basic colors, numbers, short sentences like "One talon, two talons, three talons" and "My wings are green and yellow."

The tidy handwriting— that had to be Prospero's. The chaotic and unsteady script, that was a child's handwriting, a child learning to read and write. Mira.

The compass was nearly the circumference of a softball, and under the glass its free-floating disc was dotted with tiny pearls arranged on etched lines that Elisa recognized as a handful of major constellations. She picked it up, noticing it seemed unusually heavy for even a fancy compass of its size, and discovered that on the reverse side was a clock. Only, in place of familiar numbers arranged in a circle, were inlaid wedges of polished stone in colors going from pale white-speckled agate blue to a rich obsidian black. The short hand pointed to a crescent in a ring of pearly circular shapes. The long hand had just passed a line of silver on the wider face directly opposite a line of gold. These metallic lines divided the light and dark backdrop.

Navigation to match the night sky, and timekeeping by phases of the moon and sunset and sunrise. Not to mention a work of art and master engineering. It was beautiful, its brass casing etched with elegant scrollwork. Elisa wondered if Prospero himself was the craftsman. Craftsgargoyle. Whatever.

"…how she casts magic so easily," Katana was saying. "We had only one sorcerer in Ishimura, in my time, and it took him a lifetime to master the art, studying alone. Mira seems to do it without thinking."

"It all circles back to Prospero, whoever and wherever he is," said Elisa. "Definitely intelligent and taking great pains to educate and bring Mira up in two languages," here she held up the book, open to a page of colored-ink flower drawings labeled in both Chinese and English, "and turned her loose with a device tailor-made for navigating a gargoyle's nocturnal world," and here she indicated the clock-compass, "so he at least wanted her to to be able to get her bearings somehow. It wouldn't surprise me if he's also her magic tutor."

"The Prospero of Shakespeare's tale was a sorcerer," Goliath added. "as well as a dedicated father. Although the Miranda of the play was a young woman, not a child sent to a remote village where there were no others of her kind."

"Been thinking about that," Lex piped up. "The message he sent with her, that is. What if the reason he used so many different languages is he didn't actually know where she was going?"

"Like our skiff from Avalon?" Angela frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose that makes sense. Avalon's magic translated for us while we were on our quest, but if Prospero doesn't have that sort of magic, the many languages would mean a greater chance someone might understand his message and help Mira no matter where she was."

"Exactly." Lex nodded. "But that means if Mira could have ended up anywhere, there's no telling where this Fortuna place actually is."

Goliath looked to Elisa. "Did you have any luck researching today?"

She shook her head. "No prisons or jails on record, federal, state, or county level, named Fortuna. I even looked international and for closed and abandoned facilities. There are a handful of towns by that name, but, I gotta be honest, I don't get the feeling any of them are keeping any lone gargoyle sorcerers captive. Wherever Fortuna is, it's off the map."

"You might be right, Detective."

As one the clan turned to look. Somehow David Xanatos had sauntered unnoticed into the room and was casually perusing Prospero's multilingual missive as if it were a memo of a missed business call. A faintly palpable tinge of awkward tension cooled the atmosphere and Elisa forced her figurative hackles down. "That's not meant for you," she said evenly, holding her hand out for the scroll.

"I apologize for intruding," Xanatos smoothly replied, "but hear me out. It could be nothing, but I must admit this little puzzle has intrigued me."

Goliath let out a quiet rumbling exhalation. Elisa paired it with a level unblinking stare at Xanatos, keeping her expression neutral. He'd been careful to give the clan space so far since returning their ancestral home to them, and he had declared their feud over, but that didn't exactly make them best of friends. If that were ever possible.

"What is it you have to say, Xanatos?" Goliath asked. "Mira is not your concern."

"I live here too, Goliath. So do Fox and my son. Mira might be perfectly harmless, but…" Xanatos held up the note. "You can't tell me you don't have doubts about this so-called Prospero."

The clan's glances at each other were answer enough to that.

"At any rate, even if I can't speak to Prospero's character, I did notice something about his word choice," Xanatos continued. "Here, in English, he says 'in this, the Fortuna, my prison.' But in Greek, he leaves out 'my prison' entirely and only says στη φουρτούνα. Just 'in fourtúna.' "

"Well, what's the difference?" Broadway asked.

"For one, it's not written as a proper place name. It's been awhile since my old man forced me to take Greek lessons, but that doesn't strike me as a mistake the author of this message would make. Φουρτούνα roughly means a set of unpleasant events, or a string of bad luck, something like that."

Another round of glances, more baffled and unsettled than anything else.

"It's also another word for storm," Xanatos continued, looking up from the note with half a smirk, "or… a tempest, if you will."

"Oh good," muttered Brooklyn. "Shakespearacy confirmed. I can't wait to see how this one goes off the rails."

"It makes little difference at this time," Goliath cut in. "Miranda is here. Prospero is not. Villain or no, we can only deal with him when he comes, if he comes. Until then, even if we never piece together their full story, Mira and Caliban are part of our clan now."