That voice. That incessant, condescending voice. I was sick of it. Tired of it. The never-ending questions. The demands for answers that go on forever and ever. Does it have to be this way? Yes, of course it must be this way. There’s no other way, is there?
“Brother?”
I clenched my teeth, dug my fingernails into the palm of my hands, closed my eyes and span around on my heel. But by the time I was facing her I’d managed to recompose myself. Bring that veil of calm down around me again.
The same veil of calm I’d been using for as long as I could remember.
It felt like I was stood mid-way between anger and calmness for longer than an eternity, but it must have only been a millisecond. Not long enough for her to have noticed the change in my demeanour. When I say change, I mean my constant disposition. The one I’m forever having to wear. Because this never ends for me. I’m forever having to wear this mask for others.
“Brother?” she asked again.
In that millisecond I unclenched my teeth, widened my eyes, let out a huge grin and released my fingernails from my palms, stopping before I drew blood. I puffed up my chest, took a silent breath and then angled my head to the left, blinking my wide eyes.
“Yes, it does, sister.”
“But shouldn’t we try-”
“No, sister,” I replied, my voice faltering on the edge of a precipice that I’d not be able to come back from. “No, it has to be this way.”
“But surely, we could…”
I held an ancient finger up to her. I was trying to hold back the anger. Like when you shake up a bottle of fizzy pop that the ones below are so insistent on drinking, and you remove the top. Except I’d become an expert at keeping my top screwed tightly shut.
If only she knew…
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice calming again as I hoped I hadn’t let my mask drop. It hadn’t slipped in all these years so there was no way I was going to let it slip now. “If we wish to continue on this journey, then we have to do it this way.”
“But what about the animals? What about the people?”
I swallowed down a chuckle. It was just like her. Just like my sister to think of the animals first. In my head I nodded at her sound logic. Quite often animals gave people more pleasure than anything in this world. So, it almost felt like I was going about this the wrong way.
Perhaps leaving the animals would solve all the problems.
I remained resolute, my eyes flaring white-hot fire. “They have all had their chances. Countless times.”
“But the animals. Surely, the animals…”
I’d let my mask slip. I closed my eyes again and smiled. “There’ll be more people. More animals. Better people.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “Better animals.”
“But if we could just save a few then at least some of this wouldn’t have been for nothing.”
I shook my head and looked down at my sister. Her old eyes filled with tears, delicate teardrops balancing on the edge of her eyelids, threatening to tumble down her young face. A face that had stayed youthful for such a long, long time whereas I…I had chosen to grow older. To really become the character in this never-ending play.
I leaned in and kissed the top of her head. The curls of my whitened beard brushing her forehead, my fingers lost amongst her dark ringlets.
When I drew back from her the tears had overflowed, staining her cheeks in glistening silver. I laughed at her, but this time it was a genuine chuckle. Where had she gone? Where had my once-tough sister disappeared to. Some would say she was stronger than me. It would be hard not to disagree with that viewpoint, but at what point did she become so attached to them?
Maybe it was all her years spent living among them. Watching them. Trying to understand why they did what they did. Mingling with them. Falling in love with them.
But it’s not like they were family.
Merely…outsiders.
“When did you become so disinterested in them?” she asked me
It almost took me aback. Had she been listening to my inner thoughts again? It felt like a rebuke against my criticism of her.
“I became disinterested in them when they became disinterested in themselves.”
“But there could have been another way.”
I shook my head and made a mental note to trim my hair back. It was brushing the top of my shirt collar. I may have become old, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t still be distinguished.
“But why not?” she asked. That irritating, whining voice had returned again.
“Be thankful I’m not leaving you behind, sister,” I found myself gently snarling at her.
I had shaken her. She stepped back from me. Her ruby-red lips parted, a shiver escaping her mouth. She looked like I’d slapped her in the face with a wet, cold fish.
I realised what I’d done and forced down that anger again. I smiled at her. “I’m just joking. You know I would never leave you behind.” I took her fingers and brought her pale, almost China-white hand to my lips. I kissed her gently and I saw her melt back into assurance once again.
“I just wish there was another way.”
Finally. The acceptance.
I shook my head. This was the only way. “There may have been another way. Once upon a time.” I exhaled and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the room around us had darkened. Only pinpricks of starlight could be seen. My sister was stood, bathed in platinum light and within those old, dark eyes were the swirls of a thousand, distant galaxies.
“What’s to say that it won’t happen again?” she asked. The tone of her voice told me that she’d finally understood what was to come. “What’s to say that we won’t make the same mistake again?”
“Because this time there will be a ‘we’,” I told her. It was a mistake last time. I never should have rejected her ideas. Her designs. She had always desired it. Always wanted to help me. She was my twin, after all.
There was a look on her face. Excitement? Fear? I’m not sure. It was certainly something I hadn’t seen in her for a long time. “Do you mean…?”
I nodded. She irritated me. She annoyed me to the brink of pushing me over the edge, but maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have allowed her freer reign. It was either that or leave her here to die with everyone else.
“It means, Amara, that we will do it together this time. Like it always should have been.”
Her skin had turned monochrome. The darkened colours of her dress crushed black. Her face paled. Her flowing ringlets of hair now jet-black. Not a hint of colour on her. It was then that I realised I had already begun the process.
Amara took my hands, cupped together, the searingly bright glow burning from between my fingers. Both of us remained still, pale and emptied of all colour. The stars had begun to flicker and die like candles on a birthday cake.
Until there was nothing but darkness.
“We will begin again?” she asked. “We will do something more? Something better?”
I nodded. And for once I didn’t feel frustration at my sister. Just a sadness for what had become of the people. Of my people.
“We will do it, together, my sister.”
She took my old hands in her young hands. I watched as the wrinkles on my flesh tightened and smoothed out. I was becoming young again. I was becoming like her. And then, with a final glance at the world below us – all blue and green and white surrounded by a smog of rusty-brown war and deathly black hatred – I let go of the orb of light within my hands.
The light flared.
And then there was nothing but the ear-piercing scream of silence. A white noise that lingered long in my ears. The silent scream of an infinite number of souls. Each of them pondering the same question as my sister – could there have been another way?
A world died.
Something new was born.
And we created a new world together. As it always should have been.
The End
Copyright © 2022 by Jim Allenby
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