Brothers
> Such contacts evolve their own texture; a tactile sensation is a blind spot; we touch in silhouette.
There is a town somewhere with a castle overlooking the countryside, there nestled below the sheer rock which serves as its seat is a small house, a building, hardly a dwelling but for the fact that there dwell two young boys. If you had asked any in the town they would tell you there was only one boy, that he was not really so young, that their parents had been wanderers and fugitives.
This somehow house was built upon black rock, a boulder uncommon in the area, a stone deposited by time, or thrown by a giant as others said, some aeons ago when the world was far more full of movement and magic, whichever you prefer, and such things were yet possible if not wholly probable. Whatever the case the rock thus sat there, and upon it a house of smaller stones, more common for the area, cream-white rock as that of which much else was built in these surrounds. The roof of this home was built likewise of stones, a little longer and darker but much the same, and the whole sat slanted into the soil which was its support. It was difficult to tell whether the little house had been built thus or if it had collapsed into a more comfortable position, whether steadily with the years or all at once in one of the earthquakes that intermittently shook the land in which this story takes place.
Those of the town did not know or care, the eldest of its inhabitants when asked as often denied that such a dwelling existed, whether for another claimed category or forgetfulness or some third thing none could ever tell. To ask the boys themselves, or the boy as it seemed to them, would be no help either for the one did not speak and the other was deaf. While perhaps one may yet communicate the inquiry by gesture or dance, this would work solely with the young brother, for the other deaf was also blind.
It was not this deficit, these deficits, which explained the obscurity of this second son in the slanted house, rather his temperament, his nature, explained the fact that he was so rarely seen, so wholly unknown to those beyond. There was, of course, the further aid of circumstance to this fact, for the only cause that the townspeople had once had to travel near this dwelling was the old well which sat a while below down a precarious path. More recently, however, a deeper well had been driven into the earth within the town itself and few now travelled down this way. This further followed from the general age of the townspeople, with little in the way of youth, and fewer yet nimble enough to navigate with pail or pair thereof the path which passed this place.
The older brother did not mind this, or he might have said as much had that been in his nature, rather it was known by the sole communication that prevailed between these two. The younger ever watched older carefully, in the silence of their environs was attuned to his slightest movement; for him the subtlest sign was stern imperative and treated with the authority not of brother but father, or somehow even more.
Despite the silence and darkness which characterised his reign, the older was not ignorant of the world around them, nor particularly of his young brother’s needs, not to mention his own, and so despite himself he allowed the littler to roam the area around their home. There was not much here, little in the way of people, little in the way of speech, not that it would have been any use to either, for none had ever taught them speech, not even the younger who might yet have learned readily, let alone the older for whom it would take concerted effort and a rare sort of intellect which was unlikely to be encountered in this forgotten place. Still they had no need for speech.
The younger in his own way spoke instead to the trees, to the lizards with their green armour, to the birds and the bats, which he knew not as separate taxa but rather as united by their lofty mode, differing only by hours, and indeed all here was of life. There was little in the way of dissatisfaction for these two, with the water from the well which was solely theirs and milk from the few lost goats that they accumulated over the years. The townspeople broadly knew these goats were there, but they either saw the loss as a sacrifice ordained, else were encouraged sternly by the priest to this view of the touched, and on the whole the boys thus went without any inconvenience.
There was no notion to either of them that there might be anything missing from this place, aye no notion at all, nothing in the world but that with which it presented them. Nor was the older dissatisfied with the scantness of his world; to him it was full, there being no other world to which he might compare. Their separate ideas of this realm being beyond the possibility of plain comparison, and there even the notion of species or fraternity was foreign, such that the distinction between them seemed not of deficit but nature. They simply were, and this was enough, more than enough, for both.
Of the two, their temperaments differed both between and in the contrast of inner and outer with each. The older was cautious beyond measure, rarely ventured even into the light which fell through doorway or the window which sat above, the light which he knew first for the feeling, and through which feeling he knew the day, as also the seasons, by that combination he would taste carefully with a finger each morning as one might test for the direction of wind. This done, thus satisfied with his knowledge, he would retreat then to the corner which was his immediate domain and there lay flat upon the cool black stone which was his home. The world was known to him thus not through sight or sound but rather by the echo of events which this rock communicated to him, and thereby he kept an eye of sorts upon his younger brother who was prone to range a way, whether for purpose or pleasure, even beyond the door.
Their temperaments, we have said, differed both between and in the inward and outward aspects of each. The older brother, all caution in his outward behaviour, was inwardly sturdier of the two. He knew the world to be a certain thing, had in this absent place a sense for the continuity of things which the younger lacked. His brother, with boldness apparent to match his youth, with sight and sound alike, was too often misled by these senses into believing that the realm had changed, for the world did seem over the course of days and years to differ plenty for one with eyes to see and ears to hear. The deaf-blind brother, in contrast, knew his world solely through the rock which was its medium, and in this the whole was a thing as solid as stone if not well nigh eternal.
This younger brother, meanwhile, though not animated by a desire for anything further as we have noted, for he knew nothing further, for there was nothing further, was yet hungry for the whole of what he could he see and hear. His days were spent ranging the land allotted to him as fief by his older brother, tending thus to the goats as necessary that he might provide this necessary tribute to his king. Else besides he would wander the area on and around this great stone which marked their realm, would commune there in his way with the birds and the lizards and even the varied insects which were his beloved people. This younger brother thus occupied often did not rest for the day entire, and it was through the play of his feet upon stone and soil that the older brother knew this world world and maintained a watch over his vassal.
When night came at last then the younger would join his older brother in the house, would there curl up with him in the corner which was their bed, and the older would tell him stories as they fell asleep. These were not stories of any ordinary sort, were not told as such in the strict sense but were rather communicated by the shapes and figures that older would trace upon younger’s back. Thus he would tell of his dreams, waking and daylight, and of all the stone had said to him that day; thus the younger would recall the day, would find in this a memory of the patterns which were his own: his hurry that morning at the sound of a goat stuck somewhere, the later leap and landing of having caught a lizard. These forms would turn from touch to image within the younger’s mind, would trail off smoothly into dreams as his mind moved further through the signs that were their sole communion, drifting there into the sea unseen.
Of course, the boys had never seen the sea, did not even know the name, but the younger had once glimpsed something blue in the far distance, his eye caught at first by a glint of light which seemed to signal something self-important and foreign. As it happened, it was while staring at this, squinting to make out that form which would not coalesce into meaning, that the older brother felt something further in the stone.
There were other things before, of course, besides that low hum of the earth which was the constant backdrop of his silent, sightless knowing. This tone varied through the year, varied with the warmth and length of the days, further interspersed with the activity within that realm: the familiar movements of his brother, of the goats, of the insects and even the trees and birds of that place. Time to time, and the first noted especially, there had been the soft vibration of a movement somewhere deep below, a scratching intermittent with pauses of varied length, of which that night the older had told the younger, had danced upon his back, the movements of some subterranean creature travelling far below. We would know it as a mole, to them it was a dream.
This new sensation, however, differed even from that, foremost in its placement, for it was not below the surface, nor within and above as the trees and their swaying spelled out by the wind, rather it was a pattern alike but not the movement of his brother, a gait unfamiliar which gave him pause. At this the older, as he had so rarely, indeed as he could hardly recall having done before, but which was known as a strict imperative to the younger, thumped his childlike hand upon the stone. At this the younger came running without having even heard the noise of what it was that approached, without even having caught a glimpse the girl with a pail who came quietly that way.
They remained for a while within their dwelling then, the younger quiet and satisfied, safe in the certainty of his brother, and thus together they stayed as the movement passed, as the girl went down the path and to the well which had seemed solely theirs, who went that way and back again with ample speed and sure steps. The younger did not even look, nor could they have been seen from outside through the door, for the older lay in the dark where no light fell, an angle obscured entirely from outside world.
The next day, this movement unfamiliar long since gone, the older tasted the morning once more and with this reassurance let the younger back into the sun. Of this new presence he had told little in the prior night’s stories, though not for having hidden this, rather that the telling was muddled, mixed as it was with the boy’s own steps, with his movements, for the shape so resembled that pattern which was his when seeking water, yet there was enough of a difference here within those events to wake something in this brother and when the dream came at last it held subtly new colours for them both. Thus the younger went into the day once more but now with a sense nebulous of unknown expectation, while the older listened to his stony world anew.
—
The town above was a dry place, water never being plentiful, usually in short supply, but on the whole their new well provided what was necessary. This far more so than in earlier days when it had been more inhabited than now, before the young had been drained away by those great cities whose distance was counted in sleeps and moons.
While there was usually water enough for that small population, for the quiet town upon that rocky face, below that castle which was only so in name, there were drier times that yet came intermittent. This had been the cause for that girl to come their way, an orphan of sorts who lived there with grandparents that looked nothing like her. The grandfather, the grandmother, they claimed that she was her own, but so unlike was she that the people of that town disbelieved them. When the drought came that month they refused her an allowance equivalent to those who were properly of this place. Surviving yet the while, only once, with her grandparents guidance, did she have cause to go to that old well which sat below the castle. Young yet she was strong enough to carry to and fro a single pail, and this held her fast until the rain returned.
When going down that day she had not seen the boy, the younger, let alone the elder who had lay quiet in his dark dwelling. She had not heard the thump which had been his call, had only caught the faintest footsteps of littler hurrying to the home. Coming upon the house itself she had been frightened, knowing nothing of this place, though abandoned homes were nothing new for a town with so few remaining, still those at least were within its sphere. This she felt was something else, foreign despite itself, distant in placement and design. The black rock which was its seat disturbed her, and she skirted the outside of this marker, barely even glancing at the doorless opening beyond which our brothers now lay quietly. She saw the goats, of course, and paid them no heed, they moved to avoid her and she went quickly on her way to the dark well where a bucket and rope sat beside those stones which were the water’s marker.
Having taken up water from below, she again returned by skirting the building, now daring to peek at its structure, its dark portal and the sole square window which sat above, but even then she saw nothing here. Turning onward then, hurrying back, what water she had taken enough for the month, as being a small girl she needed little, even gave some of what she had to her grandparents, asking all the while nothing in return.
Nearly a moon passed before she spoke to her grandparents about what she had seen, her thinking then of the bucket and rope, that these had been old and worn yet clearly cared for, and more, that they seemed to be slightly damp. She asked then whether any other had use of that faraway well, and separately received from them two stories.
The grandfather first cautioned her against that place, that it was abandoned for good reason, that no other knew or remembered or would even dare to use the well, not merely for the precarious path but further for the darkness of that place. None came from there for the church, he said, and no other went that way but for in times of true desperation where the ways prior had cause to be recalled. He spoke to her of wild creatures that lived beyond the confines of the town, of things human-like but wholly uncivilised, nature in its bestial aspect, not of flowers and fields but fire and storms.
The grandmother spoke otherwise, and this more quietly for her having heard, said there had once been a family who lived below the town. She knew little of their cause, only that they had been kindly people, elderly with a daughter who had returned from the cities on the plains below. The daughter had died, her parents soon after, and the place had been abandoned since, but she had heard further rumours of lost goats and an intervention by the priest. Some said the girl had come with a child, or that she had given birth before her death, none knew precisely, only that whatever remained after was not of the town and if living must by now be dead or half-animal to survive down there.
It would be several moons again before drought struck once more, then again the girl was barred from the further rations which were allotted to its people, then again she had cause to visit the water hidden below, and when she went next it was with both stories in her fairy-tale mind: dark creatures and wild children, nature unkempt.
—
After her first visit to the well, the younger had the very next day returned to his wandering, had returned to the light, to the realm which was his care and sole concern, to the place and time beyond the dark where his brother dared not travel. This place so unlike that which his brother inhabited, not merely for preference but further for the worlds they knew. The world of his older brother was a whole born of cool black rock, that all was known only through its entanglement in matter’s union. There was change, of course, but such alterations were known foremost as rhythm, as continuity, patterns held together like the motion of stories told by a dancing hand.
The world of the younger, in contrast, was a place of distinction, of light and darkness, distance and separation, and in this it was change which came foremost to his mind, with all held together if at all by the simple continuity of the stories his brother traced. Where the older brother was eternal, then, where he spent his days splayed and feeling through himself the slow movement of water which filled the well below, a place in which the soft thrum of the earth’s sleep was his waking world, the younger knew this as something else entire, as a movement with many centres. The goats, yes, but also the lizards with their darting, the birds that swooped, their song, the whole was here a thing of extension and motion, at last was held together only by his mind.
When first the two had heard, or the one had heard and later told, what know as a mole moving far below, that soft rumbling at a distance, then closer as scratching intermittent, it had been as if a new dimension were opened in the dreams of the younger. The world below had prior existed only in the distant darkness of the well, as if the water had created this other place, as if it existed foremost by virtue of that gift, a wet hollow amidst blasted rock. There had likewise been the motion of water prior, but how foreign this for the younger brother, how difficult for him to dream the form of this third thing alien to the realm of distinction, of an eternal flowing movement which he had never known but for the rivulets which sometimes came in heavy rain.
With the girl that day, though then he did not know her as such, there was yet again the first opening of a further dimension. This movement that did not obey the laws that he had come to know, which seemed to operate according to unknown rhythms, which he had not seen and could not understand, not even from the footsteps danced that night which he mistook instead as his own. There had been since then a sense of something else, for young as he was he knew his realm adequately, nigh perfectly for the time he had spent there, for the curiosity which led him to inspect every creature that came within the bounds drawn in shadow by that black rock.
This sense brought about in the boy a certain restlessness, known less even to himself than to his older brother, that it was felt to the latter in a new gait which echoed through the rock. He had thought this a disturbance of youth which would dissipate, although if he had known himself then he might have felt the same there, that there was a new rhythm in this place. While the sense softened with time, the alteration wrought by that day never wholly disappeared. There was something new in their world, and while the thought never occurred to either that it might be sought, for such seeking was not in their nature, for their knowing did not exceed this place, yet there was something of a new and steady anticipation that now coloured their state.
—
The heat returned some moons later, at which we might see again the scene with girl in the town, the queues at the well and priest’s solemn disavowal repeated again, again felt the same as first. With this, having in mind the stories she had been told, she was at first to go back to that place, the dark portal and single window sat uneasily in her mind. This did not displease her grandparents, for her question and the tales it had woken weighed uneasily on them as well, but in time she began to see the cost that her requirements in water caused them, at which she felt with growing certainty the need to visit that place, and with this found, foreign to herself, foreign alike to her cautious nature, a sense of curiosity which arose with this cause.
Whether only to ease the dark requirement, the necessity of this journey in the face of the thirst that followed inevitably as she took less and less from her grandparents rations, the drought this time lasting longer than the last, she felt herself drawn to that place, thinking then of the soft footstep she had heard, the dampness of that old bucket and rope, the goats which seemed content despite their desolation.
It was with this spirit then that she took up her pail and made the descent, tracing first through the smooth stones of the town until its edge, clambering over the walls at the edge of the cliff which served as the castle’s perch. This time, however, instead of moving only with the well in mind she took a more careful path, moved close along the cliff face and peered all the while down at the slanted house which rested there as if relaxing against a wall.
Soon enough she spotted a figure there, wild hair knelt upon the ground and leaning over something, then lowering herself to the ground and even leaving the pail behind her, she crawled as quietly as she could manage to get a better look at this figure, first to discern that it was, in fact, a boy, and further to see what it was he seemed to be inspecting so intently. There was nothing in his demeanour which matched to her mind the madness of a storm, that but for his hair perhaps and the disarray of clothes which seemed more akin to wrapping, as they were in fact, than any sort of tailored.
This day the elder whether by some distraction, as if the waters below whispered more distinctly than usual, whether deceived by her careful crawling, though he was more than familiar with the motion of all living things in the place, whether perhaps it was a slip of his own curiosity that caused this apparent lapse, whatever the cause, the older brother did not thump out his command that day. The girl thus came nearly upon the boy before she was heard, and this then by the younger rather than the older. It was only at this leaping that the elder, sensing then this plain disturbance, thumped out his clear command, thumped once, twice, three times, but all to no avail. The boy was caught in the sudden fulfilment of unknown anticipation, a form here seemingly crumpled and thrown to the ground before him, and eyes that shone out from the dust.
He stood then, ignorant to the thumping, perhaps for his being still less attuned than his brother to this means of communication, likely for the fullness of his other senses, for the image which overwhelmed and came entirely from outside, and most of all for what he saw in the eyes of this creature that was like but not him: for the first he saw then sight. This not the sight of the goats, that he knew, nor the alien eyes of lizards and insects, rather the steady sight which prior had only through him fallen upon this place. He saw there himself in her eyes, not as the rhythms traced and tapped but in the mirror of recognition, even of knowledge, and a further hint of something more.
Neither said anything to the other, the girl caught awkwardly in her crawl, the boy standing still with hands clasped as if to carve an orb from the air, at which, in the absence of anything else to do, he simply opened his hands. The egg he had made of his palms thus cracked, out crawled a lizard with dappled green stripes, and this lizard too, albeit with the frenetic attitude common to its species, blinking at the sudden birth of day, glanced back and forth between the two still staring.
The older brother had ceased to thump out his command, not thrice but seemingly countless, at first with the steadiness of a sure sovereign, then with panic, finally at last in acceptance, even trust, for he felt within him still the situation out beyond, and though he knew little of what had come, still he knew enough to sense that there was no immediate danger. Eventually, for the two stood staring a fair while, he even went so far as to lift himself temporarily from his scrying stone, went so far as to taste the light with his finger, not so far as to emerge but further than before, and finding that this at least was all as expected, he returned carefully and quietly to his throne.
It was then that the girl spoke, and though sound be a sort of vibration it was not such that the older could hear, nor the younger in his own way, a sort of song was all he took it for, and his eyes took on an air of surprise at this girl-bird that had seemed so alike and yet, in every other way, in mere presence, in aspect, in her mode of dress, in the drawn out squawking which was her song, was wholly other than anything which had prior entered his realm. There was little of beauty in her song, but it was not so much a matter of being in some way lesser than that of other birds, rather it was alien entirely, and in this he felt more the spirit of his brother’s dance than the rhythm and regularity of the many birds which now perched silent above this scene.
With this sound the older brother then thumped once more, and this the younger heard, this he took as imperative not so much for the appeal of its command but rather for the lack of knowing anything else that he might do. He did not turn suddenly, did not hurry as he had the first time where she had been but an unknown and distant encroachment, rather he placed the lizard down before this girl, there still laid flat upon the ground, in which aspect she reminded him somehow of his brother, and then turned at last to move towards the house. She squawked a few more notes as he walked away but he did not turn, taking this to be a farewell akin to that of other birds rather than the entreaty and inquiry that was intended from her perspective.
With the boy gone then she was alone with the lizard which now sat likewise on all fours before her, mirroring her posture, and there continued to stare for a moment before it too, yet with somewhat less repose, darted away into the nearby bushes.
She did not go for water that day, had not told her grandparents that this was her intent, instead clambered back up the hillside and collected her pail, walked to the house which was her home and put it away quietly. This she did not with any intent to return to that place, not with anything much in the way of thought beyond the moment, and there of those eyes which seemed to see some novelty in her own, which seemed to be recognising something for the first time, and it was this sole memory that remained with her of the day, which followed her that night even into dreams.
The next morning this girl woke without remembering her dreams, a fact not unusual for her, but stranger still she barely remembered the day prior in any self-conscious sense, and in the heat of the sun with dry mouth and little in the way of water, she went to fetch the pail and return to complete the task which she had forgotten the day before. The same path as prior, the same steps even, but now with something new.
—
That night the younger brother rested there in the corner of their dwelling, there against his brother, and between them a distance. This was a thing foreign, for the older brother had always spoken in his way, with the dance of hands upon back, and yet now it seemed that the younger had something to say, but this meant nothing to him, and so he sought a way through in the only method he had ever known: he tapped the older until he turned, and there began to trace out a figure upon his back.
This was the first time that the younger had ever done this, not for any law but rather for it never having occurred to him, always the older had seemed to know the world foremost in its reality, only now did there seem to be anything beyond him. The younger had recognised on his walk back to their dwelling the pattern that his brother had tapped out however long ago, though he had not seen her walk or felt its rhythm, yet it was the same sense as had confused him then: this which was like but not me. Now he traced out this figure, a face, upon his older brother’s back, at which the elder turned and lifting his hands, placed them upon the face of his younger brother, upon the face of the boy, and felt inverted a form akin to that which he had just sensed upon himself. He then took his hands to his own face and felt there, and again detected this likeness which was not quite identity.
The older brother knew many things in his own way, was familiar with the recurrence of patterns in their subtle distinctions, held in his own way a set of categories, but for these did not divide the world; rather they were a mirrored unity. This which he felt now might well have been the same but for the sense of a shift in his brother’s bearing, the unfamiliarity of this conduct, the reversal of roles. He did not understand what it was exactly that the younger had come to know, could not grasp this, and felt then a sense of despair at this first intrusion of distance into his world. This was not a thing known cognitively, let alone with language, for we find thought a fragile flame without the glass of language to contain it as lamp. There was only here the first faint sense of some change which had come into the world.
This night, for the first that either could remember, the older brother did not send the boy to sleep with the dancing stories of echoes played out by hands. This night, the elder did not even turn to sleep, instead lay upon the black rock a while longer and listened as if the waters below might whisper to him of what had happened, as if they might explain to him the faraway sense he now felt within himself: that the change had not been so much in the world but in his relation to the world, more so in his brother’s relation to the world, to himself, their relation to one another.
The elder fell asleep splayed upon his rock that night, the boy in turn quietly in the dark, that there was here a new distance between the two, here in the night that they both shared, that treasured place, which, perhaps even more than this dwelling of stone, was their true home, that there was for the first time a separation.
—
That summer was long, the drought went on, the girl came to visit more regularly seeking water from the well below. She came with this at first as her sole cause, later merely as a convenient excuse, and eventually even as the drought ended she would still take up her pail daily and venture down and around castle and cliff.
Their third and fourth meetings were irregular as the first, still moving carefully down the hill, quietly but now not crawling, she would spy the boy as he tended to the goats or inspected some other face of his domain. At first they would simply stare at one another, at which eventually either he would turn to depart, having heard the silent thumping through his bare feet, else she would break their gaze herself and head for the well. This continued for the first while without much in the way of change, though less and less did she try to speak to him, a fact which the boy felt a shame having come to appreciate her strange squawking, not for being any closer to understanding, rather for it filling the space with a new sound, a new song, and even beginning to sense the regularities within its pattern, though never truly grasping any notion in this as might be known as meaning.
Eventually the boy seemed to expect her, even to wait for her, and always at these times he would come to her with something, an insect in red and black, an injured bird, and he would he bring these in delicate hands without ever a word, would simply hold them out to her, not as gifts, not with a hint of the thing as property that might be handed over or otherwise exchanged, but rather as a means of showing her, of sharing in sight, and in a sense sharing of himself. The boy was undoubtedly wild, that she knew, but he was closer to the story told by her grandmother than that of the grandfather, there was nothing here in the way of that violence brought by storms, nothing of thunder or lightning, always a quietness, even a fragility, in his movements and manner.
Later the boy would even lead her to places and point in his strange manner, never having had cause for this before, rather with the gesturing of a backward hand, and it was a long while before he came to mirror the fashion in which she indicated for her attention, as she came to know this place, came to share in his realm. For while the boy had been here a long time now, had thought himself to have thoroughly inspected all within his domain, still there is something in the eyes of another which brings new things to light. She came herself to gesture tentatively at first, respectful of his prior rights, and then slowly to even lead him to what she had encountered along her way.
It was around then that the boy, wholly silent thus far, first uttered a noise which was recognisably human to her. She had led him to see what she had found that day, where having forgotten her pail she had gone to return for this piece of act lest he suspect, and there beside a tree on the way up the hill had found an egg fallen from a nest that they had observed together in its construction some sleeps before. Hurrying to find him, leading him there, she had carefully shown him the egg laying still whole upon the dirt. He smiled at her as if affirming her position alongside him as custodian of this place, and leaning down had delicately lifted the egg from the ground. Climbing a little way up the hillside, he reached into the tree and placed it back into the nest.
When he returned to her side, still smiling, now both, she looked to him, pointed, and without consideration gave him a name. This alone of all her words seemed to have a meaning beyond mere squawking, here alone he turned to her and repeated her words, gestured at himself and repeated them again, and then he laughed. The first human sound from him, a thing elicited by smiling name, a joke shared between these two, the memory of this event, and he repeated the word again, half mumbled at first and then clearer as she guided him, laughing between with perfect clarity. She did not know whether he had truly grasped this sound as name, whether he knew at all what this might mean, nor did it seem to her a proper name, and yet his speech and the laugh were pure and bright, were a moment distinct amidst many.
Throughout these occasions, in the midst of their meetings and times together, the boy would often slip away suddenly, usually just as she was looking at something he had pointed out, squinting to catch what it was he intended, she would turn to find that he was not there, at times could be spotted in the distance heading towards the dwelling. These turnings mystified her, for she could find in them no rhyme or reason, nor did her calls cause his return, at most he might glance back, even smile at her, only to turn back again and enter the dark portal of that stone dwelling which still she never approached. To her there was no clear cause for these, they seemed necessarily to come from within the boy, animated by some quiet thought or movement else mysterious. She did not sense the soft thump of command to which he was attuned, not only for her wearing old shoes, not only for the various other vibrations which were present in the place, but most of all for the fact that this was not a language which held for her any meaning. Just as her squawking reminded only of birds, so the brother’s thumps tended to disappear into the manifold movements of nature.
This time was not without difficulty for the brothers, the distance felt that first night waxed and waned with the moons but there was never again the simple alignment that had reigned prior. The lines of authority remained clear, and yet the brother felt that he had somehow lost access to an aspect of his younger sibling. This he had, for the world was now split in two. Where the whole of his environs had prior been passive, even with the obvious agency and purpose of the animals to which the boy attended carefully and understood with a sense well beyond his lack of learning, there was yet something new in the sight signalled by this third pair of eyes. Though it was not the fault of the brother, though he understood this in some way, still there was something missing from his eyes, something which was only faintly translated and transferred through that dance of hands which grew less and less regular as the summer endured.
They still spoke in their own way at night, had returned to sleeping beside one another, had returned to sleeping and even to dreaming in this same way, but this introduction of distinction had troubled his brother. Despite this sense for the existence of something new in the world, despite the apparent interest it held for his young sibling, still he never came further than to taste the light with his finger each morning as he always had. Instead he turned more and more to the stone, more and more to listening intently, and in this he could not help but sense the movements of these two in the place beyond, for as their comfort increased so did their play, the regularity and ease of their motions came to be a new rhythm in the echoes which were his world. This did not trouble the brother in itself, and he was not unaware of the importance this held for his sibling, the joy, even the still silent and in some sense unknowable meaning that this held for him, but he came to feel himself as further from that bright-lit world which seemed forever beyond his home echoed in stone.
At first the boy tried to communicate something of this to his brother, tried as he had the first night to draw upon his brother’s back, not at first, not for some while after the initial that had been such a disturbance, but eventually he would tap his brother upon the shoulder and clumsily seek to dance out some sign in the way which had so often been reversed in earlier times. This the brother accepted at first with some mild interest, but more and more it seemed only to disturb him until at last he shrugged off the boy and subsequently refused thereafter to turn his back to him.
With this there came a further turning in the relation, that the brother would spend even more time, even throughout the night, splayed upon his black rock and listening with singular intensity, in the day alike he pursued this with a sort of restlessness that had never before characterised his scrying. This came to be not a thing of simple unity but rather a striving for something in the black that seemed to exceed him, and with this inward disturbance he further came to thump more and more regularly for the return of his sibling. These were not in signs of danger, nor even to share any news, and when the boy returned, as he still did promptly on the whole, there would rather be a new silence between them, nothing but the dim dwelling to hold them together.
The increase in these commands was not initially noticed by the girl, that they did not shift suddenly but rather became more insistent over the course of time. By now the drought had ended and yet she came still to this place, still with her pail to play the part, though her grandparents did not seem to notice or mind, and at these ever more frequent interruptions she came to think the boy was simply bored of her, that she had overstayed her welcome, that something had soured or else she had otherwise come too often. She too began to limit herself, came less regularly, and yet whenever she would eventually return, for her time away was not without care or interest for that place where at last she had acquired some sense of home, some sense of a world which could and would encompass her, she would find the boy waiting, as often as not with a look of joy upon his face at seeing her, with some new sight to show her, a peculiar rock or a home newly established by birds, anything at all he had to share with her, anything of himself that she might come to know.
She would even see in him a restlessness when she approached without his notice, something that only dissipated at first sight of her, which melted away in her sight, and yet just as surely he would as often disappear again when she had hardly been there a moment, when she had not even had a chance to share in his presence and the little realm they explored together beneath that imposing castle. There came then some further sense, that there was something she did not understand, and at this the thought of her grandfather’s story came to her, that there was a fickleness in him akin to the weather, that the nature could likewise turn in a moment, clouds might just as suddenly block the sky and a storm unheralded crowd out the horizon.
These thoughts began to gather in her mind, contradictory and unsettled, for there was simultaneously a certainty and a doubt here, a sense of something unknown and even unknowable, and worse yet that despite her best efforts she could not ask him a single thing. He smiled when she spoke, attended carefully to the sound of her words, but never did he reply, learning only after some time to nod in response, mirroring her mannerisms again in this, and yet but for his naming all never with a sign of meaning grasped, rather in a simple acknowledgement of her being and action. She soon grew frustrated at this felt contradiction, yet noticing that the boy was not unaware of its effect on her, and he in turn began to ignore for one or several turns that thumping of command which issued noiselessly from the dwelling stone.
There was for a while after this a peace, that he would remain with her for longer and longer periods, that with this came a further disturbance of the brother’s state, that the boy noticed this when he returned in the evenings having spent the day with her, that somehow despite their plentiful supplies of milk and water he yet grew weaker. Though lacking language the boy understood, having once seen a mother goat stand over the corpse of her child, having seen the wasting that followed and her refusal to move, the heat that bore down upon her and the suffering she endured for this loss which ought to be nothing. This despair unyielding which followed from losing to the world a part of herself.
These conflicting impulses thus warred within the boy, for the girl, for his brother, himself torn between, and in time began to bear on his aspect. This likewise did not go unnoticed, that the girl saw his demeanour shift and become heavier as the days went by. He began again to listen to the commands, but this always with a newfound frustration, with an expression of the anxiety and tension he felt worn plainly on his face, and at this the girl resumed her fears from earlier, that now she must surely have outworn her welcome, that she had intruded into this place, that this just as the village could never be a home for her, that she was equally alien and foreign here.
These thoughts heavy upon her, still she continued to visit, for there seemed enough in his smile to assure her despite the stormy aspect of his frequent turnings away. There was further grew in her a desperation at the impossibility of communication, that she could not understand and nothing in her could ask, that the whole seemed an absurdity born only of this lack. When next he turned to disappear, without any sense of premeditation, the idea never having occurred to her prior, she simply followed him. She squawked after him and when this time he did not even turn, rushed angrily at him as he approached the dark entrance with the dim window above, reaching him only as he began to pas through the portal to that black place hidden from the sun.
There she grabbed him by the shoulder, pulled by his motion seemed half as if to enter with him, at which he turned violently and pushed her away, half threw her backwards into the dirt as with a storm bursting in his eyes he emitted the first sharp sound from his mouth in all the time they had known each other. With true venom he growled at her, his face contorted with tension and rage, this the storm as had been promised, the lightning and thunder predicted, all of this crashed over her and left her scrambling backwards amidst the brush. He glared with dark eyes until certain that she was retreating, that she intended to leave, at which he disappeared at last into the black.
—
The next day the girl woke and decided, not even due to the event prior, with mind to no specific cause, not by reason or thought, simply felt and chose with this feeling that she would not again visit the boy. The drought was long over, water was adequate again in the village, and her isolation now did not seem so intense. Though there were no other children in the town, still there were birds and plenty else to see, still there was much that had been awakened in her by that time down by the stone. This was enough for her, she thought, and she believed this honestly, that she had yet received enough from the place that they shared, and that it was only greed which compelled her to return for more. She would take nothing further from him, would intrude no longer into his peace, and so she stayed away for several moons, wandering instead with borrowed eyes.
For the while, so long as it lasted, she was happy there in this town which was not her own, walking the cobbled streets and stopping to inspect all the moments which went unseen by the many who took it simply as a place, as their place, and it was perhaps only for her feeling so foreign, further only for having first encountered the meaning of a place as such through the eyes of the boy, that she came to see what it really was.
She saw there countless sights, in each of them shared with the boy, if not in presence then in spirit, and though she delighted in these she yet grew restless for the lack of anyone to share them with. While telling her grandparents, even when showing them what she had found and describing what this meant to her, the patterns of birds or the strange intelligence and activity of insects, she felt that words were nothing more than sounds, a squawking they shared, which were ultimately little in the way of any shared sight, which meant nothing compared to the silence that she had known.
This growing sense came in time to detract from her wanderings, happy as they were, until one day she spotted a goat entirely out of place, a thing walking precariously, as they were wont, but somehow further yet, there along a cliff near the castle. She knew this goat as one of those belonging to the boy and thought then of him with a further pang, a sense that she did not sully with words, for which she sought no further communion but the sight itself and that shared knowing, despite its lapse in time and space, despite the distance at once implied by this presence.
It was not until she saw another of his goats, and then another, that she began to feel some sense of concern. The goats were well tended to down below the castle, that they were wandering so far as to encroach upon the town seemed to imply some disorder in the affairs of that careful and quiet place below. With this she came, not all at once but ever so slowly, to consider that it had been long enough now and that she might return, if only a single time, to check upon him, to ensure that the remainder were alright, and subtly, without clear intent, perhaps to see him at least one further time.
With this she collected her pail, thinking at least to use the excuse if it proved necessary, that she could hurry through to simply retrieving water if her presence seemed wholly unwelcome, thus she climbed the wall by the cliff and descended down the soft hill to that old stone dwelling which still sat leaning softly against the dirt.
At a distance she could not see the boy, nor could she make out any sign of him in the area, and even coming closer there was nothing to indicate his presence. When she at last reached that smooth black rock which surrounded his home, she saw then that the place was out of sorts from that which she had known. The goats were now not set happily in this proper order, some several were even missing, those that she had seen but more besides, and her heart began to tremble for thinking of the boy and their last encounter. The storm which had raged then, that darkness which swallowed his eyes.
She walked then around the home, turned to look at the doorless opening where he had frightened her so, and despite herself, thinking the goats at least some excuse, steeling herself against the memory of that violent reaction, of her flight and the many moons which since intervened, stepped to the entrance and called out his name.
There was no reply, as well she might have expected, but neither a laugh nor even the bare sound of movement issued from that place. There was only a blank silence which was beyond even that she had come to expect here, not the wholesome silence of quiet presence but rather a distinct absence which seemed to linger in the air.
The portal where he had glared at her, where had frightened her away with evident intent, lay open as ever before her, and coming closer she could caught sight of the outline of a figure within splayed upon the dark rock which was its ground within. This figure did not move even when she called again, seemed not to even hear her, and with worry in her heart and fear in her mind she took the single step necessary to breach the entrance which had last so fiercely repulsed her.
There she found the boy lying naked flat upon the rock, then speaking his name quietly at first, the name she had given him, their name, at which he had laughed so clearly that day, then repeated again louder alike to nothing. At last approaching him with all care and quietness, with the hesitation of one coming close to a flame, she moved towards him and placed her hand upon his back. He was warm and familiar yet far frailer than the last she had seen him, the outline of bones protruding through pale flesh, a shape to which her hand only vaguely confirmed as if some unnatural form.
She took his shoulder then, slowly turned him to see his face, saw with shock two pale eyes in the dim light of that dark stone dwelling. The face looked at her but the eyes did not see, and after steadying herself and placing him against the wall, she ran then to fetch water in her pail to bring him something to drink. Then returning she found the boy as she had left him, no longer pressed to the stone but instead leant against the corner, and with cupped hands she brought water to his mouth, to cracked lips beneath vacant eyes. He did not react to any sound, neither name nor anything else, not even to her tears, and when she cradled his head in her arm to give him water, though he faced her it was plain then that with milk-white eyes he saw nothing.
Taking his hand in hers, she then traced the letters of their name upon his palm, and the boy, finally feeling fingers which were not his own, smiling at last began to dream.