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  Thomas does not seem to want to entertain my thoughts, my questions. He does not answer me. He remains in silence, still, brick-minded, and I feel him begin to retreat away from me.

  I want to beckon him back – to get a proper answer – but his silence is more than enough.

  It always has been before.

  I am just another chess piece of his life. I already knew I was nothing to some people... but the thought that I’m something to be taken care of, to be watched out for, makes me feel sick.

  So, in silence, I turn my attention back to the group of people who have defined my life in so many ways and do not even know my name.

  Perhaps that is better. They cannot learn to hate it.

  twenty-four

  I have made up my mind.

  My resolve is firm, hard, and decided.

  No matter what the cost – both for me and Thomas, as I now know – I must go over the staircase.

  My joy at the returning of my brother was premature. He is different, now, someone else. His words are crafted from fire and bite like a serpent. Lies infect each of his thoughts, and hatred is the undertone of every statement.

  He lied about who he was. He told Freckles a story – a story that Thomas had never told us, that we had never shared. He said he was some sort of country boy who had a little brother and sister, and whose parents had been divorced. His story was strewn with the fact that he hated his mother and went to jail upon, according to him, being falsely accused of something that he “had permission for”. Though I know nothing about my origin story and past, I feel in every crease of my soul that none of these words are true. Just fabricated lies.

  Fabricated lies he did not even include me in.

  He forced Freckles to drink water, the very same liquid that I found him once doused in, that seems to cause nothing but pain and torment to all those that come in contact with it. Though I wished to walk through, I remember the agreement I had made with Thomas, even if he now feels distant and silent, once again.

  He is such a child, with his often puerile tantrums.

  Isaac continues on the path of the questionable. He weaves lies that appears even shakes Freckles’ foundation. He bites at Screech’s whistling abilities, or rather, lack thereof. It seems every word and speech that comes from him is bile, acid dripping from his lips and poisoning all those around him.

  I find it fascinating – frightening, that is – that though he offers water to Freckles, he is completely unimpressed by Screech.It’s obvious by every step, every cast of the gaze, that Screech despises him – but Isaac has made no attempt on his life yet.

  Until, frustrated with the lack of speed, he pushes past the pair and storms up the stairs.

  It isn’t even the near-shoving of the formidable duo off the staircase that worries me most, though I had tasted my heart for a moment. It’s the ensuing argument between my charge and his, murmured like stolen secrets as Isaac stalks away, about whether or not to ‘keep him’ in ‘their group’.

  “There isn’t an ‘our group’.” The words Freckles choose are so harsh that, eternities away, I shiver.

  He starts, backs up slightly as if she had just struck him. “What?”

  “Listen, this isn’t like a book or something, okay?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I don’t know who the main characters are! There was a point in my life when Todd was one of them.”

  “Yeah, but not anymore.”

  “But it still can be!”

  “Listen, like... I don't know who are supposed to be the people in my life. You know. The people who never stop, who are always there. Like, I know we said you, but it could be Todd, too.”

  “He left you once!”

  And he left me, too. I wish to open my mouth and scream it to them. I want them to know his history of disappearing. He’s done nothing but leave. It’s his only consistency. Freckles forces a forgiveness I am not sure either Screech nor I have in our souls.

  And I can see it, as if it’s visible, as Freckles yells at him to stop. The wedge being drawn in the figure of Todd, beginning to tear the two of them apart. And, though Screech finally consents under the pretense that no one deserves to walk alone, every part of his face begins to declare some sort of mortified fear that he won’t have anyone – that Freckles is going to leave him, and he’ll be alone.

  I’ll be damned if I let that happen.

  It’s time for me to reveal myself. It’s time for them to know me, and hold me, and for me to join this story, too.

  I may never come back. I take a sweeping glance at the invisible staircase below me, swirling white vapors dancing in the air, pushing near me, bending away from the barrier.

  I hold my breath for a moment, stiffen my back, bend my elbows.

  I do not even say goodbye to Thomas. I don’t have it in me. I don’t have the power and certainty to look up into the sky and tell my Moderator that he is about to die, because he loves me, and I’ve decided to never come back.

  So, in silence, I plunge through.

  I don’t hear his strangled cry as I fade into a spinning, watery world. I don’t feel him search out for me. I am alone, paling into the colors underneath the veil of my soaked hair, looking for the spot of black where the colors intersect.

  I feel no feeling, but my lips still twitch when I find what I am looking for.

  The ground beneath me is spotted and dotted with the gold lights of other lives and, for the briefest of moments, I allow myself to watch it, attempting to forget about the turmoil inside and scattered between two staircases in opposite dimensions.

  I feel somewhat tired, already, and I haven’t even crossed over yet.

  I haven’t even moved yet...

  I am the being that I was with Madame Veneera, Freckles, and Screech. I am the cloak and bend of stars. I move forwards, to where I know the staircase must be, and I crash and spring through a barrier so invisible that it takes me a few moments to realize I scaled it.

  I immediately turn back to myself. The filter. The filter that broke me before. Only one hand is holding me, but it’s still within the shield, so I release it and attempt to move my constellations away from the physical reaching out.

  I am separate from myself – stardust on one side of the barrier, skin on the other.

  Now... how do I get my body through without breaking it?

  Perhaps this is the most dangerous part – perhaps this is the section Thomas was most worried about. I wait for that thought to unsettle me, but it does not, as is one of the many perks of being free of body.

  As I stare at eyes gazing blankly back at me, I realize something that, for some reason, has not occurred to me before.

  I am a human.

  A human who looks exactly like someone that my charge despises with every fiber of his being.

  I am something that he will not trust. He does not intrinsically trust others – Freckles seemed to always be the exception, not the rule – and yet, I am flinging myself through the barrier, as a human, as a twin to mirror Isaac, hoping to find and gain acceptance I can already tell he will not offer.

  I need to change.

  I need to evolve into something different – something that will be acceptable to both him and Freckles. Something that may shroud my identity... but will still, in a way, be me.

  The reflected face begins to morph at just my thoughts. (Then again, without physicality, all there is are thoughts, right?) My nose begins to darken and grow, my eyes space themselves out. Between the expanses of my eyes grows silver hair, harsh and bright, catching light that is not here. My eyes themselves roll into a deep red that stares back at me blankly and non-threateningly. The form shrinks down to the ground, my back yawns horizontal, my fingers and hand turning into a small padded foot, the other one growing into where there had been nothing.

  I stare as the finished project portrays itself to me, singular tail beginning to extend back.

  I am so
me sort of canine.

  A... wolf, as it were.

  A wolf. Not too violent, I hope? Just the right amount of frightening and friendly?

  Maybe well enough to defend myself against Isaac, but to still appear appealing to my charges?

  My charges...

  I extend starlight towards the filter. The cosmos tap once.

  The filter breaks apart, shatters, as if crafted from glass, and scatters upwards, floating as it does. I feel the vacuum of space in my soul suck the figure in front of me into me, and we meet and become one as though we had always been meant to one day join.

  A wolf.

  I have never been beyond myself. Even the form that I was just in, took to save Screech, felt like another corner, another entity, another puzzle piece that signified me.

  And now I feel myself pour into the body that is not mine, my soul and control filling every corner, every claw, every paw and snout and tail. All the bristles of my hair stand up on edge as a chill takes over me.

  I open my eyes.

  I am falling, though I feel weightless; descending, though I feel no downwards movement. The world appears to be different through the shield of these eyes – the blacks are gray, the deep reds are pale yellows. My spectrum of color seems greatly limited – but all other senses seem to spike.

  As soon as I land, slightly rocking as I get used to my new form, hundreds of smells assault my nose, so many I cannot decide which to decipher first. I bury a black snout into the gray ground, breathing in a dusty smell that has little to no significance. (No rot, no pain, no nothing, just emptiness.) I raise my head after a brief sneeze, smell the blood ocean crashing below, smell cut flesh and stale air and iron so intense I believe it’s in my teeth.

  And then I smell something new.

  It smells like flesh and bone attached to breath that sways and pushes down into the staircase.

  It smells of crisped and dusted jeans that drag down every step, and sniffling and lost emotions.

  I hear a jumble of words as, rising from the staircase, a group hobbles and sways towards me.

  Freckles is in the back, arms crossed over herself, and Screech is above her, head focused on the ground with fighting fists. Isaac leads, and is scoping the entire area – his eyes catch on me.

  There’s a freeze in everyone’s steps as they take in my form. Freckles stares, Screech’s anger melts away to surprise, and... Isaac.

  Through the few hues of color I can see, I make out every emotion within his perpetually confused eyes.

  He recognizes me.

  There is the light of understanding, of knowledge on his face as he takes me in. A slight smile begins to twitch at the corner of his mouth. I wonder if he, like me, can feel nothing – I wonder if he is searching for a feeling to begin with, because he has none at his command.

  “It’s a wolf,” Freckles whispers, momentarily diverting my attention. When I look back to Isaac, I notice that tears are beginning to gather in his eyes, in his face. He pushes them away and approaches me, a single hand extended.

  “What, are you crazy?” It’s Screech now, attempting to stop the one he had hated only moments before Isaac’s hand brushes me. “Who touches red-eyed wolves found on planets without creatures?”

  “What d’ya mean, planets without creatures?” As he speaks, I lean forward and take a sniff of his hand. Interesting smells and compounds reside there, most of which I can hardly distinguish between, but not least of all is the reassurance that this is Isaac – that the smell that enters my nostrils is one I can associate with him. Something clean, something lavender, something sick. I rub my nose against him, and he begins to massage behind an ear. I close my eyes, allow this silent greeting.

  A touch somehow both casual and near intimate, after so long.

  “There’s no creatures on this planet,” I hear Freckles saying.

  “Are ta!” He pets me a bit more fiercely, and I feel myself panting my approval and opening my eyes to stare at him. “‘Nd dear Ivory and I ‘ave met before.”

  Ivory. There it is. The use of my name.

  It is true.

  He does know me.

  Eyes open slow, but I pull away from him quickly, rather rightfully. I have others to attend to. My name, for a moment, is caught against Freckles’ lips, and somehow the sound of it is so... relaxing, fulfilling, though my mind has never been muddled or upset in this form, yet. She will die with the memory of my name, even if it is not the nickname that I go by.

  I pull away and begin to move the pair situated a bit back from Isaac. Moving is odd on this staircase – floor near rubber, bouncing. I feel as though my claws are going to sink into them and catch.

  But they don’t. At least, not before I tentatively approach Screech. Of course, he backs up, all fear, into Freckles, but she offers her fingers forward without a care and I hesitate.

  Thomas’ warning not to touch her only registers briefly. It does not matter now, I suppose, that I am lost.

  A slight pause. A sniff. And then, gentle, a lick.

  Immediately comes a flash of white teeth in a smile, and I cannot help but allow myself to show my joy in my current form; my tail begins to sway, and I move forward and sniff the top of Screech’s pants, which is the furthest my current position allows me.

  Isaac has taken a long time to think up a lie. “Yeah, Ivory. That’s her’n name. She’s tha staircase dog. Always wanderin’ the stairs. We pet har, y’know, brush har and stuff sometimes.”

  “Who named her?” Screech is still staring down at me, towering above my slight form. It feels so weird, to be looking up at him, at Freckles, at everyone. It feels so odd to be below, for once.

  “I did, o’course! Ya see me walking up here by ma lonesome.”

  “But you said ‘we’.”

  Ah, Screech. Nothing gets past him. I can presume Isaac was mentally including Thomas in the headcount.

  “Well, I meant I. I just assume everyone knows her.” Isaac frowns as he turns towards me, but his somber expression is more directed to the ground, or himself.

  “So are you really saying there are other creatures on the staircase?” Freckles fingers tangle in my short hair as she speaks, offers a single pat, nudges Screech forward, between her and me.

  “Duh! We usta see them all the time, back when we was climbing all tagethar.”

  Screech slips in, bends down to the ground. Eyes shift and become level with mine, now, and we stare at one another. He looks at me as though I am a mystery, something to figure out – a puzzle piece, almost – as though he seems to half-recognize me, half-know me, now that he is closer, but is not sure how, where from. One of his hands touches at my hair.

  And I feel again. It is just like the last time our figures met. I feel his apprehension at me, mostly at Isaac – I feel something sick and churning in the pits of his stomach – I feel terror at Freckles and the heavy possibility that Isaac will pollute her until there’s none of her light left.

  Most of all, I feel a desperate need to protect him.

  My wish to keep him safe had always been a bit like drowning. Gasping at air never there. Wishing for something impossible. But I am here now, with nothing left to lose, nothing expected of me, nothing else I must be. I am here now, built and designed to be a savior, carved and smoothed to be the one to rescue him from anything that should befall him.

  He must feel it, too. There must be a link between a charge and their Moderator, a string joining our souls. Otherwise, why would his expression soften? Why would his shoulders unfurl? Why would he wrap his arms around me and hold me as frantically as I wished to reach out to him, had I still had my arms?

  I breathe and close my eyes, relax fully and truly for the first time, here.

  He knows me.

  Not just my name.

  Me. He sees me, in the space I try to inhabit. He sees all of it.

  He understands.

  He has said not a single word to me, and I know, as I breathe in the smell of fear
and fortitude, that he knows me better than Isaac or Thomas ever has.

  “You dun’ remember nothin’, Rascal.”

  Apparently Freckles has admitted that she does not remember these ‘other animals’ Todd pretends existed to cover my appearance. Before she can stumble through some sort of explanation or apology, Screech comes to her rescue.

  “Her name’s Freckles.” He pulls away and begins to pat me, once again, so I sit down next to him, enjoying how new it is to have a tail and a body like this, to be lines in the story and not just an abstract audience. “And her – ” he pats me again “ – name is Shadow.”

  Shadow? I think, but cannot say.

  “Wha’?” Isaac immediately is fighting with Screech, after a moment of my being here. “She’s definitely an ivory.”

  “Ivory and silver are two totally different things.”

  That’s a good point, I suppose. If I didn’t know my real name, and someone had called me Ivory, I suppose I’d be confused as well. Part of me grins – the part still with a tongue and a maw licks at him to show my approval.

  He smiles wide, and I feel the warmth spreading through him echo in me.

  Screech, smiling. Because of me. Someone who did not even know I existed a mere minute ago. Now smiling.

  I am beginning to understand why the idea of leaving through the barrier was so alluring to Isaac. I am unsure if I’ll ever get used to this.

  Isaac’s eyes are ice towards me. I feel the fear of Screech, the fear of me. Perhaps it is one in the same. Perhaps we share it.

  “Okay, ya’ve had yar fun. Let her go, now.”

  I feel defensive before he even speaks, but his words are so charged that I almost wish to snap at him, with wit or fang. It is like he is trying to control who and what I see and do, just like another certain Moderator did, one that I rather only belatedly realized was a Moderator. I attempt to curb the emotions I did not think I could have on this side of the staircase, wonder if these thoughts and this anger, too, is somehow entwined in Screech.

  “She doesn’t want to go, Todd,” Freckles soothes. “Just let it be.”