Chapter Text
The snow glimmers under moonlight as though it was alive. Above you hangs the moon in all its fullness, covered in a thin cloud in the shape of a crane's head. It watches you with increased interest as you disturb the stillness of the frozen white that had once captured the world into silence. You are running. A deep line cuts through the settling flakes, reflecting sharp light from the ocean of stars that remain undisturbed from crystal light. Your legs carry you, numb from the cold, moving on their own to the edge of the Earth. It hurts to breathe, the air bristles down your throat and burns your chest as it reaches into your lungs.
You are running.
The ghost's massive hand comes again, in dreams and in wake, forever it reaches for you through the darkness. Even when light comes to blossom, even when the moon beams down the light of the sun down to you, once the blackness overcomes the sky you will find the white pale hand coming towards you. It's a ghost, you know this because of your studies as a magician. Ghosts, however, are not a popular field of study. They are a niche subject meant for the truly curious— for the minds that seek truth over salvation.
You are not one of those people. For magic requires you to cast spells, to believe in lies that allow you to wake up the next day, and the next, and the next. If you fall too deep into truth, your magic disappears, the lie is dispelled.
You are running.
The crane with its waning eye pierces through your right pupil straight into the depths of your heart. It comes alive, just as the moving snow, and opens its beak. From the palm of the thing that has cursed you ever since your life began here, into the maw of a entirely new beast you have yet to understand. A language unfamiliar to you drifts into the tunnels of your ears— it's a spell, you realize. Images flash through your mind.
Between death and the unknown, which one would you pick? Your arms fling at your sides, your breath the fog of dragons, and your legs with knees up high— you have already chosen. The white crane takes flight and you are stuck watching as you drop down, safe distance away from the giant hand that threatens to choke life out of you, etching in glyphs into the snow with your red shaky hands.
The wind that sat at the ground, freezing, begins to howl. Revived by your magic, splashes of color swirl, and you witness lives and losses you have never experienced. Hands of all ages reaching out to you, inviting you into something beyond the skies. Their faces discarded, unnecessary for the transaction that you had unknowingly inscribed into the land where no man has reached.
You have something I want.
I have something you need.
The ghost's hand, seemingly trapped in between worlds— its nail barely scrapping your cheek— travels backwards in time as you clasp the hand summoned by you.
Are you ready?
A question you are all too familiar with. You want to laugh but the cold is down your throat, piercing its needles through the insides of your delicate flesh.
You shake the hand of what was once a man, and for a second, it felt deeply familiar. A warmth you grew up with and adapted to, but there is no time to think for he has disappeared into the colorful winds. As if nothing happened, your magic unfurls. From howls, to cries, to whispers, until it all becomes nothing. You are left in the dark. The crane no longer guiding you. When you look down, you come to find your right hand is missing from below your elbow. Instead, replaced with a nearly transparent form that you can only see the edges of by the architecture of light. Your bones shine through in an eerie blue— the same color as the flashing snow.
You remain there for some time, observing your new arm. Your breath fogs the bottom half of your face, running hot from the anxiety and thrill of new magic. The loss not quite hitting you.
It's time to head back, don't you think?
You thoughtlessly nod, legs finding the black line that you had cut through the white. Back to where you escaped, turning on the stars and moon. Touched briefly by death in different shapes, you come back.
The first person to consider this sacrifice as a massive loss is your brother. His eyes flittering between your perfectly intact arm, to your other more ghostly apparition. He doesn't say anything at first, only attempts to gather his thoughts and what he could do to fix it. With his brotherly instinct carefully intact, he grasps both arms only to find he cannot touch your right arm at all. It goes right through and he is left with his hand up high reconciling your missing warmth.
He is taking this much harder than you— the one affected. You knew this would happen, a more irrational part of you wanted to say he wouldn't have cared. He was so absorbed by his studies here at the academy, so obsessed with being the top student, that before you went to sleep last night, you imagined his eyes to land on your right arm with so much disinterest your body felt as cold as it was out there beneath the mountains. When you woke in the morning you reviewed the facts: he is indeed your brother and you remain by his side as his darling sister, this is unchangeable, and this would guarantee his sympathy.
"How…?" Is the first things to grace his lips.
You don't know where to begin. Nervously, you scratch your left arm— except, you can't. You feel nothing. Awkwardly, you set both arms down, elbows on your knees, as you chew on your bottom lip to try and piece the events together. "Well, I… I just didn't want to bother you," you begin with a plead for mercy.
"Bother me? You are missing an arm! You—! You could never…" His disbelief swayed, and quickly, it evolved into guilt. What did he do to make you think you couldn't come to him? After all this time in molding himself to be your caretaker, receiving you with open arms— you've only grown older and have taken a step back from him; despite you being so near, he misses you more and more. When you declared to him that you were going to learn magic with him, he was overjoyed. Still his little sister that he raised so carefully, so adamant to take the same steps he has.
Now, when he looks at you with your face hidden in constructed shadows, he realizes he must accept that his hold on you has loosened and that if he doesn't quickly fix this, fix something, it will disappear altogether.
"You just seemed so distant. You were always in the labs, in class, meeting with professors, going to conferences. I didn't want to disturb you with my problems." Lost in thought, you cradle your self with your arms. Your left side lacking the pressure and warmth of what was.
He says nothing. Just watches you with his hands clasped around each other so tight that his knuckles were white.
"I'll tell you now— I've solved it! It's done. So, promise you won't worry about it. We don't want your grades to drop, right?"
Here you were, arm missing talking about his grades as if they mattered more than your physical being. What about yours? What about you? Drowning in questions, his mouth opens but it fills up with dread, so he closes it and burns in the image of you trying to soothe yourself with a hand you no longer have into his head.
In reality, as you say all this, the truth has spotted you like a hawk in the sky. Your soul laid bare as a black dot in the gleaming clean records of your brother's unstoppable academic career. He is going to become a real magician, one that is allowed to remain at the academy by majority vote to research and teach. Always behind him, like it was the natural order of the world; you have, for a long time now, endeavored to scrub yourself off of him. Unnecessary burden that he constantly reached out to, and now you were truly worthless. Hands were the most invaluable asset to a magician— forever juggling books, staffs, pens, you name it they have it in their palms. All you have now is your nondominant hand to hold onto your lifeline, your silver staff too tall for you to wield with efficiency.
"I've been haunted by a ghost— well— more like its hand. It's huge," you were about to mention that it had come close to killing you many times, but you decide to leave that out. "Uh, right, well," you struggle to find your footing here, unfamiliar with close conversation with your brother, at least, as an adult. "You know, of course you do, that the living cannot affect the dead. I couldn't defend myself—" shit, you slipped up.
"Defend yourself?" His frown deepens.
"That's not the important part! I can deal with it now— I dealt with it then—"
"You dealt with it?"
His voice was smooth and it made you terribly anxious. Whenever you spoke to him it has gone exactly like this. Under his gaze you'll trip up and fumble with your words. You'd have everything preplanned like you were off to meet with your adviser to discuss your progress, you were ready to be professional, for the conversation to be curt, and for the air between the two of you to be filled with only the necessary details before leaving to go get lunch and eat in the quiet of your dorm. Except, he is your brother, and it bewilders you that you have to keep reminding yourself of this simple truth. Do all brothers have this effect on their sisters? To make them feel small and meaningless in their presence? To make them lower their head as though they were bowing to the highest of deities?
"Can you just not worry about me?" You cry out meekly.
"How could I not?" He looks as though you had just stabbed him, which was surprising. You thought you had just lifted a weight off of him— the weight being you. A light sparked in your mind, perhaps he is so miserable because you made him think he failed. How would it look if his sister lost an arm? How would it reflect on him that he couldn't keep his sister in check? You wish you could make yourself hurt, all you can do is push your trimmed nails into the soft palm of your hand.
They were watching you, not because you were important, but because they wanted to see him fall, and you had just given them something to use against him. Once again, you taint his brightness.
"I'm sorry." Without saying anything else, you pick up your coat and bag, and head out the door.
He is left alone in his room, astonished. All he did was ask questions in his shock, he didn't once offer you any comfort. He saw you reach for your bag with your right, only to sigh when you remembered you could not. You were probably outside the dorm right now, bag on the floor as you put on your coat. He should get up, go running to you and apologize, but your guilt left him speechless for he could not fathom just why you were. Were you struggling to zip up your coat? Or were there buttons? Did you leave without preparing yourself for the winter out there?
He should get up.
He sat there instead, listening to his window rattling, protecting him from the wind. Did your coat have buttons or a zipper? He doesn't know. It crushes him. He places his head in his hands and wonders if the darkness could swallow him.
This new disability of yours upsets your adviser.
"How will you do your exams?"
"Do you think your progress will stagnant?"
"For how long?"
"What have you done?"
It wasn't my choice! You wanted to scream. You wanted to tell the truth, to say that you've met with death far too many times and you wanted to buy some time. So what if you lost an arm? Isn't it better to be alive? Yet, they all looked as you as if you should've just let it take you. This was the end of the line, your time as a magician will come to a screeching halt, and there is no life if you are not a magician. That's what they say. That's what you believe.
You go to reach for the pen with your right hand to fill out the disability form. It passes through the table.
You don't move for a very long time.
Eventually you are able to fill it out with your left— it is completely illegible. Tears smudge the ink. You wish you could cover your face, there is no one here in your room, but the shame lives inside you and there is no getting rid of it. Your left will have to do— it's all you have.
When you first began at the academy you asked your brother, two years above you, why he decided on this path. He gives you a look, as if saying, you're asking me this now? You can't answer him, you had graduated early from undergrad, but even then, you spent three years studying magic. At that point, you probably should've had an answer to your question. You look down at your feet and see his large shoes next to yours. Truth is, you were following him. He must've known this from the start, but had assumed you'd come to your own conclusions with time. You would not. You still have not.
It was during your first year in the graduate program where things began to grow awkward between you two. Somehow, in your attempt to pursue his lifestyle, you both had become strangely distant. Your habits had changed from when you were a child and your memory was fading. Despite this he teased you about days you can't remember, things you used to do or say, silly mistakes you made. You know it was all in good fun, but you wanted so badly to yell at him:
What do you know about me?
The version of you in his heart stuck in this purgatory. A child. His darling sister.
Why do you do magic?
It gives me freedom.
He looks ahead with stars in his eyes. His staff at his right; it is made of a beautifully rich wood from a pagoda tree, intricately carved by his skilled hands. Little flowers decorated the top of the staff which was symmetrically forked. You remember him sending you drawings of the staff he was working on in delicate envelopes— these flowers are so annoying!— he complained. You asked him why he had to carve them in at all, he replied in the typical vague manner as he always did:
I have to.
So, you leave it at that. You suspect they are crab apple blossoms. You never ask him to confirm.
Sometimes you'd stay in his room. The first night you stayed at the academy, you imagined it'd be like before. You'd bother him and he'd tell you made up stories about his day while you nitpicked him.
I met an alien today.
Were they nice?
Nope, that's why I kicked him back into outer space and told him to never mess with Earth again!
My hero!
It turned out to be an incredibly cold ordeal. He had to stay in the lab to work on his projects and gave you the keys to his room so you could, in his words, do whatever you want. Except you wanted to talk to him. The one thing you wanted to do has made itself scarce. You would try again to stay overnight at his room, but he'd smile like a stranger asking someone to please leave, that the party was over, and he had work the next day. He never said any of those things, however. He'd just open up his textbook and begin scrawling out notes at a furious pace.
This is a real magician. Someone who belongs here. So, you'd get up from his bed and leave his keys at the table by the door. Your reign over his life has ended. You don't know when. He probably hasn't even realized. What's done is done, and there is no closing the distance. Hands at his sides, body closed off from you. Reaching for a light you never had the right to see. Especially not now.
Being dead in the land of the living was its own form of entrapment. Even if your arm could move past everything, what haunted you in your current state was not death, but the life that surrounds you that you could never truly be part of. What hurts the most, because everything hurt, was your brother's placating closed smile that never reached his eyes. You had been dead to him ever since he started to practice magic, and you had unknowingly brought him the shackles he was so desperate to be free of, but he'll treat you well. He'll offer you the keys to his room, he'll never demand you to leave, he'll just cling onto a temporary form of what you were to pretend nothing has changed all while maintaining a distance that left you in the dark.
He is your brother. He will always act accordingly.
That night you dream of a gentler life. Your brother is at your side under an ever growing tree, its leaves touching the tops of your heads as the two of you stare out at the blue sky. The sun dazzling from above the tree, its light dappling your noses. When you look at him you notice the small freckles on his face from being out in the morning sky. His grin makes his eyes squint and he laughs with his body. Hands perpetually all over you, petting your head, tapping your nose, rubbing your arm as if to comfort you or remind you that he's here.
You're elated. At the back of your head, a darkness squirms. This isn't your brother, it was imagined, a hope that you could never get rid of. In another world where you mattered, where you went to the same college for undergrad, where you were closer in age and intelligence, you could've followed him everywhere. The distance between you two would've been nonexistent and you wouldn't feel that bubbling shame for being his sister.
Under this tree, you hid from the truth, and a spell is cast. He loves you and you return that love with equal passion. Talking about nothing, speaking about what-ifs, new theorems— but most importantly— about what to eat tomorrow, if there was anything in the fridge, what chores you each had divided for one another.
Magic is crucial to you, but not in the same way as your brother adores it. There was no real power to gain from it, you were just as trapped as you were, from one cage to another. Magic was your tether to him. It was your excuse to step into footprints much larger than your own in the whipping snow, praying to some divinity that his presence not be covered by time, that you could forever stare at the ground knowing where you should head to next. Isn't to so nice, so comforting to know that your brother was someone leagues ahead of you? You'd never have to think for yourself, you were his completely. But, wouldn't it also be nice to not be so accustomed to seeing his back?
Maybe, once in awhile, you'd just wish he'd look back at you and tell you to keep walking. Through the mighty winds and dancing white crystals too soft to cut, his eyes would tremble with light again and you'd see the world erupt into life with his pumping blood and rosy cheeks. The smoothness of his voice would dissipate and he would choke a little from the freezing winter when he'd try to encourage you to continue pushing.
"It must've been tough." He says to you, sunlight kissing the tips of his hair. Brown turning golden.
"Hmm?" You're slightly rattled by his comment.
"Your arm." He points at your missing limb.
You chuckle. It seems even in your dreams you can't escape. Having him around makes you feel a little better about it, strangely. "Ah, I had no other choice." The words have a sour tang to them. It dispelled the magic of your dream, but only slightly.
"I know." He kisses your forehead, his hand on the small of your back, rubbing in his warmth with his thumb into you.
He knows, and it feels so good to have someone know. To know you were handed a tragic fate, and you'd die a special kind of slow death because you wanted to desperately live. "Thanks," it's breathless, you can't say the full phrase or else you'd cry.
"For what?" He pushes you into his chest and you cling to him with your good arm.
You shake your head. It's impossible to speak.
"Was that thanks for me? I might misunderstand— tell me what you mean." He removes his hand from you and you fall back a little to look at his face.
He's teasing you! He has a stupid smirk on his face as he goes in to flick your forehead. You try and defend yourself, but you're used to using your right, and a red spot emerges from where he attacked. "Come on, I know you're a big girl now. Use your words." He leans in so all you see is him.
"Thanks, Caleb." The tears that had threatened to fall were now gone. You reach up to flick his forehead.
He accepts his fate and closes his eyes. You decide against it and kiss him there instead. His eyes flicker open in surprise, mouth slightly agape. "Got you." You giggle.
He begins to smile. "Yeah," it comes out more like a sigh than a word, "you got me."
He begins the day by unscrewing the bottom of his staff and placing the lid onto the table with a soft thud. He peers into his hollowed out stick, some of the dust still sticks onto its insides just barely visible by the soft orange light resting on his desk. Carefully, he pulls out a metal tin from the drawer and scoops out a couple of tablespoons of bone powder into his staff. After he is done, he screws the cap back on, it crunches slightly, dust between its teeth. To make sure it's on tight, he flips his staff back right side up and taps it on the floor. No fall out. It's time to start his day.
Magic requires resources, and so an object that can carry the materials necessary for casting is best. Although, there are many nontraditional tools, a staff was considered the best for the job. It had great range and with something so long, it was easier to tell where you were aiming. This prevented accidents from happening within the academy— it's why each student is given a default staff until they're able to craft their own. Since the academy set up the standard of the industry, staffs became widely popular and other nondescript objects fell into obscurity.
Your first day at the academy you swung your glorified metal pipe around like a child. He remembers when he was given the same staff. It was too short for him and he hated the sound of metal scraping on the floor when he drew glyphs into the ground to cast. The free staff that came with a student's admission into the magic grad program was not made for prolong use; they made it as frustrating as possible to handle so students would procure the materials needed to create their own with intense need. In other words, students would pay the exorbitant prices the academy forces them to pay for resources instead of outsourcing because they were at their wit's end with the shitty silver staff.
You, however, stuck with it like a thorn at your side.
Why do you keep using that thing?
He asked you one day.
You shrugged and stared at the staff with no emotion.
He doesn't understand why, but your expressionless face makes him deeply uncomfortable. As a child everything you felt, you wore on your face. Your heart was stitched onto your palms and he could feel every desire in you with ease. His hands, larger than yours, wrapped around yours to feel your pulsing life filled with want. He regrets it. He regrets flying away to learn magic in the north and leaving you behind, but at that time, it felt like the only option. This was the best way he could secure an education for you.
Your assured smile and determined gaze when you told him, I want to be a magician! Every one of your dreams was his to carry out into reality. He'll grow wings and steal the light of the sun to keep your spirit burning with that starry passion only ever found in children.
Stay golden.
The last thing he said to you before getting on the train as you waved goodbye, for now.
When you came back into his life, he was (and still is), completely swamped. Projects, articles, readings, work, class— all of it was piled on top of him. Yes, he was able to keep in contact through sparing letters and drawings, but each day was like a hundred balled up into one. There are not enough hours in a day. He so often said to his peers and professors, yet even if there were longer days and nights, he's not sure if he'd be able to stay awake. Occasionally, there would be weeks where the only conversations he had with you were at night when he read a summary of how your day went and fell asleep without ever responding.
He wonders if that time away spurned in you a hatred for him; he is so frightened by this prospect that he clings onto the past— the time the two of you shared. Often, he finds his hands closing in to hold yours, only to pull away at the last second. He is your older brother, but there's an emphasis on older. Always a separation between you two; something he allowed to fester and expand.
Sometimes he thinks about being weak, about sitting with you at night and explaining that he's doing this all for you. He is involved in skeptical work, shaking hands with the corrupt, and he wants out— he wants out like a man in the desert looking for water. Head nearly under the waves, ready to dive into the world of truth and entirely giving up on salvation. Magic is like that. It invites you to learn more and opens itself to you, but once you walk in, you realize you have nothing beyond it. If you were to devour the truth of magic its power would be chased away by light.
He was very close to that point, which is why, he worked every second of everyday to build a wall around the cliff that he is about to fall off of. You were that wall, but you move further and further away, and he only has himself to blame. Of all the puzzles of the world, you are the one that troubles him most.
He stood outside of your dorm after that day. Fist about to knock on the door, weary that you'd even open it for him. The fear of rejection eventually tore him apart and he put his hand down. He is aware of how moronic he is being. As your brother he should be able to cross these boundaries and properly place himself in the role of "family", but then he'll think of the keys you left at the table. The copy of his dorm key he personally made for you. You never bothered him to visit again. Just smiled politely as you would to a stranger before briskly walking past to class or to the lab. He doesn't have time either— he has so very little of it— it falls away like sand right through his fingers, just like you… and yet! He wants to pull you back into him and beg you to tell him what to do with you.
How should I care for you?
What do you want me to be?
All of these silent moments that kill him little by little, but he has no time to think of these matters. No, he simply can't. Your prudent wish from all those years ago— if he can make it come true— it will make up for all his wrongs. This is the spell he casts.
Lingering in shadows, he peers over the shoulders of passersby to watch how you're doing. You're worse these days; bags under your eyes, sleepy smiles, barely any words are exchanged. Your hair is always down, a symptom of your missing right hand. No one asks if you're alright. No one points out your plight. They just glance down in horror and offer a polite, slightly stilted, smile.
Ghost magic is not technically forbidden, but it's not exactly a respected study. It's not something he wanted you to be involved in. He doused himself in that darkness so you'd never see it nor interact with it. He theorizes it is his proximity to you that caused you become a victim of a haunting, but he doesn't know. There is so much he doesn't know. He stays in the lab incanting spells under his breath, eyes completely bloodshot from staying up so many nights, writing down the glyphs with his right hand with some chalk he found by the board.
So tired. So profoundly tired. Everything is clockwork, except for you, but he doesn't know how to think about anything outside of magic anymore. All he knows is this encrypted language, the ghosts he speaks to, and this lab painted blue when the morning and night converge. Yellow emerging over the horizon, urging him to go home. He no longer knows where that is.
Really, the burning question is:
Just how did you do it?
How were you able to undergo a transaction with a ghost without any physical connection? Your staff isn't special, it is not enchanted nor made of ancient magical material. Did you even have a staff with you at the time? You looked so frazzled then, unable to explain what you did that night. Or was that a consequence of the unfamiliar nature between you and him? You were never like this. Never worried over what exactly you should say next. How should he navigate this newfound coldness? Would you care for his efforts to close the gap or would you go running? When you do, should he come to chase?
All of it— an impossibility, a contradiction.
Fuck. He wrote the wrong equation. He needs to restart.
Tomorrow, he'll find you tomorrow.
Is what he told himself yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and…
On unpleasant days, like this one, you think about asking your brother for the keys to his dorm back. You had just finished a meeting with your advisor. Nothing has changed, he is still pushing you to quit.
"We're not sure if magic is right for you given your…" He looks down to your lack of an arm.
"I'm still making substantial progress."
"I wouldn't call it substantial—"
"Give me a month."
He wavers until eventually sighing and nodding in defeat.
Sitting alone in the lab at 2AM, staff in your left. You kept the candles unlit, a counterintuitive act as you needed to make sure your glyphs and equations were correct at all times lest something goes terribly wrong, but who cares anymore? Certainly not your brother. You were lost. Correction: you were fucked. Just what could you do in a month now that your casting time has doubled? Your lines were no longer stable or straight, you had to redo simple spells over and over again. You couldn't even take notes in class anymore. You had to go off your shoddy memory and the stress you're under made your mind a cavern that retained no information.
You stared at the perfectly crafted equation in front of you on the floor. Someone was here before you and forgot to erase their work. A major mistake. Perhaps they were so tired they forgot. Envy surges through you. Must be nice having both hands! Why is magic so meticulous anyways?! Why did your brother have to pick such a difficult field? Surely he could've done anything else given his plethora of talents.
In another life, you wouldn't have to suffer like this, but you only have this one. So, you get up from your seat and bang your staff down three times. The metal rings through the room and announces to the air that you are about to cast. The still silence shifts, wind coming alive under your feet, and you read aloud the equation written down already. You have no idea what it'll do, but you've already lost so much, what else is there for you to lose?
A lake appears underneath you. It reflects an unfamiliar sky with the morning sun strung up high in the gentle blue. How nice. An illusion spell? The smell of home wafts through the lab; breakfast at the table as you blink the sleep out of your eyes to rise. You're in your brother's bed and you feel the emptiness by your side of where he was. Instead of feeling anxiety bubble up, you walk down the stairs in instinct knowing he will be sitting there, waiting for you to eat together.
The sound of clattering plates and utensils. Grandma pestering the two of you about school. Laughter. When was the last time you heard laughter not in your dreams? What a brilliant spell. Was it personalized for the caster? Amazing— is this the work of your brother? Ah, the thought makes you cry. Your tears fall into the lake and it ripples the lake. This is all you have of him. This spell, the smell of his magic, the brilliance of his leftover genius. If the two of you were related by blood, would you have this gift passed down to you as well?
Somehow, you were doubtful of this. Your luck would not allow it, at least, that's what you think.
Suddenly, a hand splashes out of the lake. Paralyzed in fear, you hold your staff closer to you and watch as someone, not quite ghost but not quite living, crawl out. His right arm from under the elbow, completely flesh, the rest of him as blue and transparent as your arm. You're on your knees now, looking up at the sight of him, mouth hung open. He stretches and groans to life as you try and think of strategies to defend yourself from the ghost. Despite your arm, you actually have no idea how to use it. You're not even sure just what you did that night.
Finally, he looks down at you. You squeeze yourself in tighter.
Is that—?
"Is this how you greet your brother in this world? How strange." He chuckles.
The only thing you can stammer out are noises.
"Are you mute?" You realize he's asking a serious question. He has bent down to your level and looks at you with genuine curiosity; eyes wide, searching for an answer. Is this really your brother?
"No…" Is all you're able to push out of your throat.
"Wow! She speaks! Are you able to walk, or did you lose your legs too?"
You blink.
"Was that too mean? I'm sorry. Do you need help getting up? Take my hand." He reaches out with his right hand.
The scene is all too familiar. His open palm, the only thing you can focus on, the same one that you saw that night. The rough skin rubbing against yours, a deal was made and he went dashing back into the storm. But here he is again. Your brother. Your not brother? He stays still, patiently waiting for your hand to come into his. You accept his invitation, his warmth enveloping you. He grins at this and stands to his full height with you following in suit. Your knees feel like they're about to give out.
"That wasn't too hard, was it?" He doesn't let go.
"I think I'm going to pass out." It all comes out too fast— a warning you have to quickly convey before—
"Don't! Shit—!"
The last thing you remember is him grasping both your hands in his before you hit the ground.
Down the spiraling halls of the school, bronze shimmering in firelight perpetually glowing by way of magic. Everything about this school is grand. It's the first thing he noticed when he began his studies here.
How do they keep burning forever?
He asked his advisor.
The older man shrugged, you'll find out in time. His voice weathered down.
Turns out nothing is forever— including magic. It's why he started here. He is their last plan.
It is always winter in the north. Darkness comes early, sometimes it lasts for months. The ability to tell time is reliant on the sands of the hourglass and the church bell at the top of the building that rings every hour. In his pocket, a silver watch that clicks with each second that passes. It has tarnished over the years, edges blackened, losing its luster with age. The school is built like a maze. Encouraging you to get lost, lose sense of time, die here, but he knows his way around. Death, an easy passage to navigate, always nearby in the corners escaping light.
History that remains strong enough to stand is cursed with that blackness, perpetually burning candles can do nothing against it. He follows this light down through the circular staircases into the labs that feel more like dungeons than study rooms. Years ago, he needed to summon a small light that would help him see where each step was. Now, his steps ease down, sound echoing in the darkness with a familiar rhythm. A hand on the clock, only ever moving forward in the same pattern, never changing.
When he steps into his lab he stops breathing.
"Ah, there you are." A lilting voice. His voice.
He wastes no time, aiming his staff at the ghost of himself.
"Don't shoot! Hold on! If you get rid of me, she dies."
He looks down to where the ghost is pointing. You lay there unconscious, you look serene as if you were simply napping. He realizes he has been heaving like a bull the second he walked in here. "You… I thought I told you—!" His anger interrupted by the calm streaming voice of his ghost.
"Well, she summoned me, I can't deny her."
"You're not her brother. You can deny her everything." His staff still aimed at its head.
"Ooh, fighting words," the ghost mocks. "She has my arm, I have hers— you jealous?"
The crazy part? The answer would be yes.
"I know you're not stupid. Put the staff down." The only fleshed part of it, motions at his staff.
He struggles to set it down— anger nearly erupting from his body. Vein visible in his forehead as he grits his teeth. The stick clatters onto the floor.
"Hey, hey, no need to be mad at me. We're on the same side here. I want to protect her, just as much as you do. Enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that, right?"
His eyes darken. "The enemy" in this circumstance is not very clear. The fire in the hall flickers.
It takes notice of the wavering flames and changes strategies.
"Look, I didn't knock her out. She was just shocked that— well— that I'm me. As for the arm… that was me, I won't lie. I didn't want to do it either, but the haunting was getting bad. Were you not watching over her? Some brother you are."
"You have no right to criticize me."
"I'm doing more than you and I'm dead."
"And she's not your sister. She is my responsibility."
"Yeah? Then you did a shit job. I think it's time for a change, hm?"
The wind howls and batters against the glass of the windows. The light begins to pour into the room, slowly creeping up towards the ghost.
"Looks like my time is up! Why don't you take our darling sister back to her dorm?" It fades with a cynical smile, dipping into the sunlight until it becomes invisible under the waking sky. The right hand— which was yours— the last to disappear.
He jumps to check your staff, unscrewing the bottom to see what is left of the bone powder. It's all still there. None of it was touched. He nearly drops your staff. You don't need bone powder to cast. You don't need a staff to cast. In his stupor, he laughs manically. Hand pushing his bangs out of his face, cracking up like this was the funniest joke of the century. How does he fix this? There is no coming back from this.
He screws the cap back on tight and repeats his standard check, tapping it on the ground lightly to see if there is any fall out. None. He picks his staff up, the poles scrape against each other and he levitates you off the ground with an incantation onto his shoulder.
It's time to take his darling sister back to her dorm.
You live in ghastly conditions— not that his were any better. Spattering of papers, handwriting growing more and more decrypted over time until, finally, it was unreadable. Among the mess, he found the disability form you were trying to fill out. There are tear stains.
Life lost its texture without you. Magic brought him back into the land of the living, but to call this life was absurd. He stares at your resting face, at the staffs placed properly next to each other. His is so much taller, its strength grew with age, while yours is riddled with dents and scratches. Was it time that pulled you so far away or was it the train he boarded for the sake of your future? He brushes his hand across your cheek. Was this allowed? Could a brother indulge in the softness of his other half? You lean into his touch.
He swallows down his joy. You don't love him, not in the slightest, it is your loneliness that pushes you towards him. Instead of focusing on your want, he pulls your shoes off and place them at the floor of the bed. He motions to be right above you, pushing the robe of your uniform off gently with as little movement as possible. For just a second he catches your scent and considers putting your robe under his nose. He quickly leaves it on your chair by your desk.
A good brother, despite himself, would stay by his sister's side until he knows for sure she is back at full health. He is, in reality, a terrible man. He will leave as though he was never there, except, he will leave behind a disability form filled out in his pristine handwriting and take your previous attempt to remind himself of the harm he has brought you. All of it, your miseries, your tears, the dirt under your shoes, and secrets you don't even know you contain— will belong to him. He is made of your shadow that sticks to the walls of this school, and he'll be happy to take it.
Whatever you offer him, he'll hungrily devour.
He returns underground and checks what lab room he used for his work. The metal number eleven nailed onto the door stares back at him. He was supposed to be in thirteen. Shit. Was it because he was thinking of you he ended up using the lab you booked? Was it because of the lack of sleep, the hours of classes, work, meetings, and casting— oh, he doesn't know. His body is being rendered through the time spent in this nothingness.
Never ending halls filled with the shuffling sounds of passing bodies, the clicking heels, and whispers of revelations that were completely worthless. Magic, forever a shifting lie, changing to fit into the palms of people willing to believe. Habit invented the world, the routine of opening his staff, scooping in bone dust, and tapping it three times on the ground to check for fall out. Sharing brief words in meaningless variations to prove that he was someone worth keeping around. Only for his real work to begin in the dark, in lab thirteen.
Cold. It was all so cold, and it infected him. Interacting with you as though you were a peer; with his preordained lines he greeted you, consoled you, chided you— none of it belonged to him. His heart caught in the hands of routine, so when you pulled away he treated you the same.
In his years at the academy he unlearned you. Companionship an after thought. He dedicated his magic to you as though were a being more of the air that surrounds him than the blood pulsing through his veins. His life is a ritual to the only divinity he bothered to believe in, but you came down to him alive. You knocked on his door to show him your loss and he…
Upon seeing your arm he became horrifyingly aware of how useless his life was. When he saw that it was him, in an ethereally blue and particularly useless form, that saved you from death— ah, how is one supposed to take this?
Can we meet up?
Do you want to come over?
This reminded me of you.
Do you want to eat together?
I can look over your work.
I'm sorry.
Thousands of messages thrown away before ever being sent. Love with nowhere to go, settled at the bottom of his cold body like ash. Life spent in an old building for a dream you had because of him.
She is a lot simpler than you think. It told him while they were under the black sky, scattered with stars, by the mountains.
What would you know about her? He casts an area spell to try and find the bones it told him about that were supposedly here. Only one skeleton. He begins drawing the next glyphs to dig the skeleton out.
Hm, well, for one I spent my entire life with her. It doesn't bother helping him, just watches him do the dirty work he was forced to do in a previous life.
Not with her. He finishes writing.
Souls don't change. Not really.
He throws the skeleton into a discrete bag and begins the trek back to the school. A gigantic hole, more like a tunnel, is left behind.
Are you going to close that? It asks.
You can do it.
Haha, funny joke.
The dead remain unable to affect the living world.
Magic carries a scent; it's heady and warm, the same warmth that traces under your skin when you fall in love. The same warmth he feels when he sees you awkwardly shifting underneath him, asking him if you could have the keys to his dorm. Sweet and light, taking flight without notice under the spilling sky. Your magic was clumsy, it had the aftertaste of metal and was insecure. It was only when you were alone, not under his gaze (that you knew of), were you then capable of casting beautiful magic. It traveled on wind and painted colors into the sky, boundlessly leaping to the moon.
His magic was quiet. It appeared from nowhere and disappeared with the same ease. The tunnel was there, and suddenly it wasn't. The only evidence of his being, the fresh patch of dead grass the snow has yet to cover. Too slow and you'll miss him entirely.
You hand in the disability form your brother left behind.
You will now have extra time for your exams.
"Thank you." Written the best you could on a crumbled letter. You set it on the floor in the middle of your pentacle, ready to cast a spell that would fold your message into a crane to fly to him. It took you about an hour to draw this. You stare at the broken chalk at the edges of the circle. If you still had your right hand you could swipe it all away, push your staff through the still air and watch it ripple to tear your work apart. Your left lacked the strength to do this.
You set your staff down and pick up the letter. It's unnecessary, you decide. Your love lacked any weight. He would just leave again, as he always does. So, you throw it away.
He is out again. Another expedition with his ghost, looking for skeletons.
"It's probably around here." It says, kicking the snow. Nothing happens.
"You've been lying a lot more these days." He hums out his lazy observation.
"I wonder why."
"I don't want her involved."
"She's a magician. A strong one at that."
That's the last thing I wanted. His nose scrunches. "Doesn't matter." His voice whipped away by the howls of the night.
When he first found his ghost he also nearly passed out like you. Am I already dead? He wondered through the harsh sparks of shock bursting in his mind. Soon, the fear dissipated and he made use of himself. A dog that would sniff out the bones required to keep the academy running.
At your service. It said to him after their deal, bowing as though finishing an act in a play.
This version of himself was seemingly more lax, which irked him to no end. Bothersome to work with, and worst of all, a chronic liar. Unfortunately, of all the spirits he had spoken to, this one, remained the most knowledgeable— even if he didn't want to tell the full truth. It was a matter of time, he simply had to wait out its temper tantrum and he'll be able to find a trove of deaths.
Why do you work for them? You should just run away with her.
He hates how plausible it sounds coming out from something that looks precisely like him. The calm allure of his own voice, the thoughts he never spoke aloud, he is forced to face. Run away with her? He could laugh— he should. Instead, he looks morosely at the falling snow as he stumbles forward, farther and farther away from the academy. He has debts his little sister shouldn't worry about. Those were his, and his alone. Her studies, her dreams, and her happiness— those were things worth concern. That is all he thinks about.
They'd find me, in the end.
Rationality returns. The magic is dispelled.
Bone dust is the first thing any proper magician learns about. It is the fuel for all magic; crushed up bones from magical creatures from before man was made. Many years ago, your brother visited home with a little bag of it. This, of course, was against school policy, but he is your brother and brothers have an innate sense in them to impress their little sisters.
"Anything can be a catalyst for magic— even your body." He grins sheepishly with excitement.
You are next to him crouched over watching his twitchy fingers draw a perfect circle on the living room floor with chalk.
"Won't Grandma get mad?" You eye him carefully.
"It's just chalk. We can wipe it away." He casts away your worries.
He explains to you there are many different spells, not all of them are pentacles or pentagrams. Some of them are just equations folding to the geometry of magic that you replicate the best you can on the ground. Magic is its own language, undisturbed by the language of man. It is the voice of Earth streaming through to lend you in on the secrets man walks on. He looks exhilarated, barely able to contain himself, as he says this all to you. His sentences glide into each other and it's difficult at times to piece together what he's conveying to you.
It is his joy that infects you. His untethered body, teeth chattering from the glee, whispering to himself the formulas he had just drawn to make sure he did everything correctly.
"Usually you use a staff. I couldn't bring that here— it'd be too obvious. So, I hollowed out this stick instead. This will be our catalyst for today." He shows you the empty inside.
"Didn't you say our bodies could be the catalyst?"
"Yep! That would require you to eat the bone dust though since our bones don't have enough magic stored in them to be useful. Even then, the magic may not travel properly through our body."
"What makes these bones different?"
"High concentrates of magic."
"No— why are they different? Were they just exposed to more magic at the time, or were they born with it?"
"Probably born with it? If it was exposure to magic that made their bones so dense with it, wouldn't that mean everyone alive today would be like them?"
"Ah, you're right."
He closes the hollow stick with some tape and taps it to check for fall out.
"What are you doing?" You press him.
"Checking for fall out." He peers into the bottom of the stick.
"Why do you need to do that?"
"Think of the dust like a road that magic takes. It bounces to each particle and takes flight. With staffs it's easier, since it's so long the direction it'll take is obvious. Wands," he shakes the stick in his hand, "are less popular. They store less dust so you have to be really close to the object you're trying to cast on."
"What if you want to cast something like the ground? Do you really need to aim for that? Why not just put the dust in with the chalk?"
"Some places do that! But what if it's snowing or raining? Your writing will melt and wash away."
"Why even have the writing in the first place?"
"Wow! Are you a magician? So many questions!"
"Is it wrong for your sister to show interest in her brother's hobbies?" You pout with your cheeks puffed.
He laughs and messes your hair. "Of course not. My sister can do whatever she wants."
The first spell you ever see him cast is levitation. He casts it on himself, poking himself with the stick before floating off the ground. You demand that he does the same to you. He obliges and the two of you are floating in the living room giggling with depraved excitement. Magic was this, the ability to make ordinary life bearable. He knew this far better than you, and to you, magic is your brother. It came in small bags smuggled out of his school when he came home for the holidays. It allowed you to fly. It made the flowers bloom in Grandma's casket. It invited you to smile.
Always, it came in the shape of an open palm. His large hand taking in yours to trek further into the darkness of something unknown. His glowing eyes stuck on the horizon as he pulls you through the storm.
Writing, as you come to realize, is the most integral part of the casting process. As you watch your brother be wheeled away into the hospital room, blood covering the white sheets.
Writing tells the world your intentions. It is the only thing magicians have to communicate with the Earth. If you skip this step, it may bring out subconscious desires that ought to have never been born.
It's ok, you didn't mean it.
But I did! I did…! That's why you're…!
…I see.
In his dreams you love him. He sleeps beside you, just like he did back at home. You let him cradle your face and warm yourself by fitting your body against his. He kisses your cheeks, brushes his thumb against your lips, and smooths your hair gently against your head. He feels your arms wrap around his large back, clinging onto him like the incredulous little sister you are.
Oh, just how thrilled he is to have you here beside himself.
Never in the waking world does he allow himself to imagine these scenes as vividly as his dreams do. If he did, he'd have to admit that aching part of him only visible under the arch of bending light. That he loves you. He loves you dearly and his name coveted by your voice is the spell you cast on him. The dirty parts of him, the hardness rubbing against you, accepted by you with open arms. He, who is your very good brother. He, who is your very terrible man.
He can hold you in your entirety in this ghostly realm. Fingers intertwined when he is inside of you, lips gasping for him, and his for you. You contain all of him, disappearing into the fires of your soul.
Oh, love must be the truth of magic.
He can see nothing beyond this bed. Beyond your naked form covered in a sheen of sweat, heaving with want.
"Gege," you sigh.
"Caleb," you breathe.
Because he is both in this dream. He is everything for you, he can fill in every crack of you. Here and only here, can he indulge in your desires, not just your needs. He can bury his face into the crook of your neck and bite down on smooth skin as you whine from the pain and pleasure melding together by his tongue and teeth.
"Caleb!" You shout, giggling at the same time.
"Mhm?" He mutters, still lapping up the blood he had drawn.
The lecture you'd give him dying in your throat as he pushes himself deeper in. Hitting the most vulnerable parts of you with all the strength he had suppressed from being your beloved brother.
Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. He loves the way you say his name— the way it had no meaning. How you'll say it a dozen times because you don't know what else to say. He needs for it to not matter, just for a moment, just for a stillness. A real one not silenced in ritualistic routine. Water that looks silver under the bleary sun, a descending depth only discovered by dipping yourself in. He needs you to tell him all the useless things. All the little thoughts nipping at you. The temporary wisps of helplessness that invade your mind everyday.
He needs you to want him. He needs you need him. His needs always circling around you— the center of all his spells.
The day begins before the sun rises. He unscrews the bottom of staff and…
At his table a crumbled note next to his scrawling notes that spells out one simple phrase:
"Thank you."
He drops his staff.