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  He stretches down next to me and continues watching her with a staggered sigh, a hand lingering on the glass.

  Alone lies a stranger, universes away, fast asleep.

  Together my brother and I lie, wide awake, the sounds of our breathing a melancholy chorus of confusion.

  Somehow, even through it all, I’m sure I feel more alone right now than she does.

  nine

  Time passes.

  Perhaps not slowly – perhaps not quickly.

  Time just merely passes.

  Every now and again, Isaac’s freckled charge chances a few steps in either direction, and makes serious progress scaling the staircase. But every time, as though it is written that way and is an unchangeable truth no matter expenditure of effort, she always eventually dies back down, settles on a stair, overcome with some emotion she probably should have learned to hold back by this point.

  One thing that is under control, however, is Isaac himself. He has no more sporadic breakdowns, no more strange fixations on or about his charge. He holds himself together with a sort of still serenity that only worries me further, but forces me to, at the very least, attempt to think positively.

  I spend all my time with Isaac, committing his similar face to memory, attempting to ascertain a personality from the swirling vortex that is him. Every time I believe to have a characteristic pinned, he suddenly changes, usurps my foundations, and I must put the brick structure back together again, alone, searching for cement to help keep the blocks in their places. Thomas is the only one who can lend me cement – and he is not keen to this idea.

  Thomas doesn’t speak now that I have found Isaac. Whether it’s because a part of him is jealous that I am spending time with another, or because he simply does not like Isaac, I cannot tell. I’m not sure I want to. Let him think what he needs to think. He is acting a child, and I choose not to indulge him in his puerile whimsies.

  The charge is not doing much, and Isaac and I are lying in contented silence. My hair is splayed out beneath me on the imperceptible stairs, and Isaac is lying the opposite way, our heads side-by-side and legs splayed in opposite directions. I am tasting the air, staring at the clouds, and wondering when my charge will arrive so I can do something more but baby sit my babysitting baby brother, when he speaks.

  “Hey, Ives – I have a question.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Do you ever get, like... thoughts?”

  The hint of a smirk touches the corner of my mouth. “Back on this again, are we?”

  “No! Well – yes. I mean it in a different way, this time.”

  “Perhaps you should specify.”

  “Memories. Like... of your past life. Of who you were. Of... anything.”

  I’m intrigued, but I hide it expertly. I do not want him getting the wrong idea, whatever that may be. “What kind of memories?”

  “Just – a person. A place. A thing. A...” His smirk twitches in the exact same corner of his dimpled mouth that it does in mine. “Piece of the puzzle, so I speak.”

  I laugh, despite myself, a single, “Ha!”, before regaining the little control I do have. Something about near Isaac seems to relax me. Well, so long as he’s still like this. “Sort of. I have... inklings, almost.” I turn my head to look at him, and he’s staring back at me. “Like I felt connected to you when I met you, or I have inclinations about... different aspects of life.” Now that I think about it, most of those ‘aspects’ were directly related to Isaac. “But I do not remember things directly. The Ashen Staircase doesn’t even look recognizable to me.” Hm. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He seems melancholy in his response.

  “That is illogical. If it were truly nothing, you wouldn’t have asked. And nothing that exists in any form is nothing.”

  That smile returns to his face, just long enough for me to capture it, before it fades and leaves him looking as empty yet as occupied as ever. “I don’t know. I just... have a lot of memories.”

  “What about? Who about?”

  “It changes.” His voice is somewhat hoarse, his eyes widening as if he can see the scenes he were about to describe above him in the sky. “So many different people, Ives... so many different lives. Things I don’t understand – can’t understand – and they’re trying to tell me something.”

  “What do you mean?” I do not wish for my voice to be as guarded as it is, but alas, it stills bites. I do not want to distrust him, my supposed only brother and twin, but if he is to spiral away from sanity, I would rather not be dragged down with him.

  “So many memories,” he only repeats, eyes beginning to glass. “So many people. Which one’s me, Ives? Which one?”

  His question is almost confrontational in pitch. As if he expects me to know, and I have merely been keeping the correct answer from him. As if he has an innate belief that I am the holder of knowledge and truth in this world, while in honesty, he holds all the shreds of insight as I flail like a fish thrown from water. Yet still, I’m looked to. Like... some sort of leader.

  I am the older one, after all. But the likely few minute gap between our births does not seem to grant me much.

  Still, I try.

  “This one. Right here. This is you, Isaac – don’t attempt to overthink it. There is no further answer.”

  And then he grins, somewhat brokenly, and angles his body away from me, solidifying my failure. “Yeah,” he says, voice thrown into both light and shattering. “As I said. It was stupid.”

  I do not know what to say. I turn my head and see him watching his charge, and I watch the rising and falling of their chests, in synchronization, and I do not know what to say.

  Brother or no, I don’t know him.

  I don’t know him.

  So we both dance with silence as the small shred of him that had decided to open up closes in on himself.

  It is what seems to be a full week later – or maybe it is a year – that something else notable happens.

  It’s the sort of notable that even drags Thomas back to the surface, though his presence is and has been eternal, a weight on the back of my mind.

  Isaac’s charge is so used to silence, and isolation, that I’m sure she’s near given up the trek that she had started on after my brother’s and my disagreement. Isaac and I instinctively follow her steps, slowly, on our own side, stopping to rest only when she pauses. In all our time, we haven’t exchanged words – but the tension of the situation seems to have eased relatively quickly after only a scant amount of time.

  And then another person appears on the staircase.

  They do not grow like Isaac’s charge – they appear on their legs, stumbling, stuttering, sobbing, from behind Isaac’s charge. It is exactly the anchor Isaac’s charge needs, and my curiosity is only furthered by the new stranger’s presence on the staircase.

  “Run! Run for your life!” Her voice is low but somehow hoarse, her horrified gaze cast behind the glare of large, circular glasses, half hidden by puffy, black hair. Her skin is many shades darker than Isaac’s charge, and she is continuously tripping over a large, peach colored dress that she has scooped in her fingers.

  “Woah, woah!” Isaac’s charge jumps up from the brief rest she had been taking, both excited and frightened, by the flush of her face, to see another human. “Hang on! You’re the first person I’ve seen, and I don’t know where I am, or who I am, and I don’t know if you know me, but I – ”

  “Run! Run for your life!”

  She barrels passed the charge, who teeters dangerously close to the edge for many moments, breath held and face gone white, before regaining her balance and staring up at the woman who peeled past her. After a moment of breathing – perhaps regaining such – and after glancing to make sure nothing, indeed, was in pursuit of them, she turns and begins to follow her, wildly, taking the stairs two at a time after the first other she’d ever encountered. I stand and Isaac follows suit, and we begin to chase the strangers on our side, seeking out
the image bobbing against the screen that manages to keep eluding our capture.

  Finally, Isaac’s charge succeeds to not only catch her up, but to also slide in front of her, and holds out hands to stop her. Glasses tumbles into her, and Isaac’s charge holds her somewhat firmly, trembling herself as she forces staggered breath. Isaac and I stop, hesitate, as they do.

  “Hey. Sorry to interrupt but, uh, there’s nothing behind you. Except for me. But I’m not gonna eat you, or – whatever.”

  Glasses stares at the more sensible human, her chest rising and falling, expeditiously, her eyes wide and yet, somehow, lost beneath her dark curls.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m confused too.” Charge gives a reassuring smile.

  The other pulls out of Charge’s hands – not harshly, not hurriedly, but rather eases out of a grip that was never tight to begin with. “Who are you?” Her accent is strange. Rippled, thick. Hs falling where they don’t belong, Rs rolling and rolling away. Charge doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I don’t know.” She’s no longer weepy, no longer teary – the lack of knowledge is merely something Charge states matter-of-factly. She stares at the stranger in front of her and breathes like the swaying of a tree, somehow too quickly and too slowly at the same time.

  Glasses is only momentarily untrusting. Within moments, she’s collapsed into Isaac’s charge’s arms, who looks around as if looking for our guidance on what to do. When she does return the embrace, however, she does it with gusto and strength.

  A hand to hold.

  Sometimes, that’s all one needs in life.

  I know that must be true because as the days begin to wear on of the pair knowing each other, it’s obvious that their clasped fingers won’t break for anything. They hold each other securely and tightly as they walk – as they rest – as they climb, and sleep, and breathe. When the wind shakes and a scream peals all around them, echoing in nothingness. When they speak, huddled, in low voices, sharing words I do not dare catch. When the sky darkens their hands are linked, and when it brightens they are still intertwined. It seems their hands always remain locked. I catch Isaac staring at his own fingers, and I wonder whatever could be going on in his mind.

  I don’t dare ask, of course. He will either share, or he will learn how to swallow his thoughts.

  That’s what tends to happen, here.

  It is not until a third figure joins the first two that Thomas’ voice joins us again, only a moment of insight, as though he had been waiting with bated breath and heaviness in his lungs for just this moment.

  The other figure approaches from above the position of the two we are already watching, descending. It’s small, and swaying, and both the charge and the one with glasses are lying in rest, eyes closed, unseeing. Isaac’s charge is smiling in her sleep, and as he leans against the barrier, I can see the reflection of Isaac smiling back.

  I can almost feel Thomas’ anger from my position. Silently seething, biting, growing. His presence is so much so, like a fog surrounding the area, that I finally decide to talk to him for the first time since Isaac and I regrouped.

  “Hello, Thomas.”

  “Hello, Ives.” His voice is slightly lighter than I expected it to be, but there is still a bite within the grossness of it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I do not approve of... her kind.”

  “Her kind?” Isaac questions, searching for a battle within the shards of his vocal chords.

  “I don’t think I was speaking to you, actually.”

  “That’s enough.” The tension between the two is palpable, and instead of curious, for once, I feel left out. Like they both remember their sides to an argument I hardly have figured out is even going on.

  Sure enough, the sitting Isaac turns towards me, hunched, eyes almost red. “He can’t have you.”

  I start at the suggestion. “Have me? No one has me. I am no one’s.”

  “You’re mine.”

  I am startled by his possessiveness, but as this is the second occurrence, I am not so much upset that I cannot return his statement. “Incorrect. I’m your sister. You do not own me.”

  Within the breadth of a silence, I watch the figure on the other staircase move closer. Bright red hair and eyes so dark, I cannot ascertain the color of them. Her head is tilted, turned, twisted, to one side as she walks, with a gait that rocks back and forth.

  “What kind of being is she?”

  “She isn’t allowed the specification of being anymore.” Thomas huffs. “She’s a lost soul.”

  My reply is a single, breathy laugh. “Aren’t we all?”

  “No. Those are people – Moderators – who... who are gone. They brought their bodies through the barrier with them and lost themselves to it. They live in the world their charges once lived in. They have no sense of knowledge anymore. They don’t know what’s right, or what’s wrong. They’re twisted, and confused, and... infinite.”

  Isaac is cringing, as if every word is another dagger into him. My maternal instinct to care has long since died, and I merely watch him while continuing my conversation.

  “Infinite?”

  “They have power over the world. Can manipulate it to their will. They can make sure they never fall, never die. They can exude some of their power over the people in that world, too.”

  “Sounds like cheating.”

  Even if my prompt to get him to say more was clever or intuitive, it would go unnoticed by Thomas, it seemed. Or rather, pointedly ignored. A silence that spoke more than an affirmative would have.

  I understand. We couldn’t do vague backflips away from topics if he accepted that bait. Still. Rather boring.

  “Can’t you help them?” I try instead.

  This, he’ll allow me, gravel in his voice, his tone. “They don’t want to be helped. They believe they’ve seen the light – they know what is right, and what is wrong, and how to solve each. Their souls died with their charges, but somehow, they didn’t. It happens often to Moderators whose charges died while they were through the barrier with them, or...”

  The redhead finally stops in front of them. Her short white dress – similar to mine, actually – hangs in the stillness of a place that is empty of wind that does not haunt or screech, her stick straight hair around the length of mine holding in place. When she smiles, there’s nothing in her eyes.

  “Or what?” I finally murmur.

  “Those who have gone through the barrier too many times for too long. A suggested stay shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. Any longer – and that world starts to wear on you. The minds of your people aren’t meant for such a world.”

  “You sound as if I’m a different species from them.”

  “I do, don’t I?”

  I can’t tell if I appreciate or hate his unanswering quality at this exact moment. At the least, I begrudgingly allow myself to consider, he’d said something this time.

  “So why aren’t you attempting to offer assistance to Isaac’s charge?”

  I hear the hint of a relaxed, playful smile in his voice, something that has been absent for so long, I almost don’t recognize it at first. “Aw, Ives. You actually care.”

  My shrug is obviously nonchalant, without a trace of goodwill. “I’m merely questioning your decision to leave her there while – ”

  “I know, Ives. I know.”

  There’s a pause in which we watch the lost soul do nothing – just stand there, so still she surely can’t be breathing – and I see Isaac’s gentle fingers curl into protective fists.

  “She’s not my charge. She’s Isaac’s.” There’s still a bite in his voice when he says my brother’s name. “Any choice to intervene would be his.”

  “Oh! Really, now?” Every line, etching, breath of my brother is obviously provoked. Angry. Willing to throw punches and wrestle to the ground. “That’s fucking rich.”

  I open my mouth, but Thomas is faster. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “No?”
>
  “Why would I lie about that, Isaac?”

  “Oh, I dunno.” Blue eyes seem somehow ablaze with this anger. “You’ve just spent all this time spitting on people who do go over there.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a cross over!” Both tentative and defensive.

  “Just something wrong with staying, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what. We’re supposed to watch? Save their lives? No, you know – what’s it that you said?” He stands, gestures upwards at the sky, and I feel numb hands hover over him, a weak, nothing attempt to bolt him back downwards. “We’re supposed to fall in love with them, yeah? Fall in love with them without knowing anything about them. Without being with them.”

  “You’re seeming to have an easy time doing that already.”

  A hard laugh, and I raise myself next to Isaac, tentative and slow as though I am waking from a dream and do not wish to exert my muscles too drastically yet. Fingers link and stretch above my head.

  “So now you’re mad at me? For doing what you’ve asked us to. For loving.”

  “Isaac, calm down,” I say near tiredly. “Nobody’s attacking you.”

  “No? Not attacking, huh? According to him, if I go over there, I’m a horrible, lost person, but if I stay here – I’m not doing my job right. That what I’m getting from you, Tommy? Did I leave anything out?”

  “That’s enough, Isaac.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Thomas glowers from above.

  “No?” Isaac’s eyebrows rise, slightly. “You don’t like that? What, it makes you uncomfortable? Huh? Wanna talk about uncomfortable? You won’t even show your fucking face! You leave us with nothing to go on, ever – you always leave me with too much, and... and, what? You get to cry wolf because I called you a nickname?”

  I look away from impassive clouds and to my brother by my side, whose chest is rising and falling in desperate pace. He stands there, fists clenched, face bent, still pertaining that eerie sense that he’s in another reality – or, perhaps, another reality lives within him.