Glass Lullaby

A toymaker's son falls in love with one of his father's creations: a beautiful ballerina in a music box. It seems hopeless. Or is there something more extraordinary happening?

One day late in September, when the last dying embers of the month were segueing into deeper Autumn, the Glass twins were gifted with a great treasure, probably the greatest that the Glass family were ever likely to own. But it was a value that far exceeded their imaginations. And so they did not imagine it.

Likely enough, Daniel Glass would've been able to appreciate the effort and months of sheer work and love that had gone into it but the true scope of the pricelessness of the finished outcome escaped even him. He was a skilled toymaker with his own shop and business in a forgotten corner of London. His artistry and talent were exceptional, his clientele small, and his passion and their loyalty boundless. Toys were not so much as made in his shop but rather they were born, imbued and coaxed and magicked into life by his deft and inventive fingers and that year, burning away most of the months down to cinders, whittling them away into wood shavings as surely as they curled and snowed down on his workbench and around his feet, he slaved and worked in preparation for that one day in September, when he would give the two children that, like his toys, he had also played a part in giving life to, the finest and best craftsmanship that his hands were capable of.

And so it was that on their fifth birthday, standing in the kitchen of their home with matching looks of anticipation and barely suppressed excitement, the twins watched as their father with a smile that betrayed his own pride at his work and smugness at their obvious eagerness, pulled out from under the table at which he was seated the culmination of all his labors. It was a music box, a simple enough object, but one of so ornate and exquisite a design that it quite took one's breath away.

It was dove white, vaguely elliptical in shape, with smudged dapples of cloud grey, bands of green verdigris spun round the white wood and clashed like two armies into detailed locks carved in fine gold filigree, these locks punctuated the white expanse at regularly spaced intervals, they were intricate and etched with argent swirls and whorls, and in the remaining blankness were birds painted and wrought in the most winsome and arresting colors, the lines so fine, detailed and fluid that they seemed to move as if the creatures that they described lived and breathed, just a few wing-beats away from leaping off the flat wood and soaring off into the world.

There were magpies, black and white with stripes of blue through their wings, meridian colors flashing in their tails like sun on water, their bodies caught in various stages of flight, some perched on brown-black branches, others poised to jump, still more gliding freely in air, kites tethered by nothing but the strings of sky, and there were nightingales, smaller and painted in light hues of fawn brown, dashes of gold stealing in to nestle furtively in the outlines of feathers and eye, their beaks were open in song, painted black music notes streaming out to banner above them.

"A watch for my little Nightingale." Daniel said, pulling the younger twin, Gale, to his side and burying her in a warm, one-armed hug, dropping a kiss onto the little girl's soft hair. "You can sing with them and they'll watch over you."

"But she can't sing." The other twin, the boy, Cael, pointed out with the bluntness that characterized his personality. "She just screams and all the birds always fly away."

"They do not!" His sister objected loudly and vehemently.

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Not!"

"Too!"

"Alright, kids, that's enough." Daniel interrupted firmly after this back and forth bickering had gone on for a while and threatened to reach a new decibel of high pitched screeching. "Besides, it doesn't matter if Gale can't sing because..." Daniel turned towards the music-box and behind his back, Gale stuck out her tongue at her brother and not being one to be outdone, he responded in kind.

"This little beauty will do it for you!" With a grin and a flourish, Daniel swept the top of the box open and out popped a delicate ballerina carved in miniature from smooth, creamy, soap- colored ceramic and porcelain.

She was no bigger than a small child's ring finger, quite capable of fitting snugly and perfectly into either of the twins' palms, her limbs were perfect tapers and as thin as pencil leads, silver studded slippers were painted onto her dainty feet in a bright sun gold that was only a shade lighter than her hair which was a rich, lustrous light caramel brown painted onto her small head in liquid swirls like poured chocolate, her dress was a lovely confection of leaves of silk, gauze, net, lace, and velvet seamed and stitched together in a patchwork of autumnal shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown, and her eyes were faceted almonds of clear blue glass, stuck fast onto the candle-wax pallor of her face, the sunlight coming in through the kitchen windows lodging within those mirror depths and spinning strange colorful patterns like a mad seamstress at a whirring loom.

Daniel, his grin growing like spring, wound the music-box and soon a haunting but soothing melody like rain at night came issuing out of the box, the notes ascending as a flock of birds will rise up from out of treetops. The little ballerina began to twirl and spin with a motion that was not in the least mechanical, rather her movements were simple and somehow natural, smooth and somehow organic.

The twins watched with awe until she finished after which there reigned a few moments of reverential silence.

"That wasn't singing." Cael stated critically, clearly trying to disguise his wonder of the ballerina and yet failing for his eyes were still fixed on her as if they were unable to see anything else. "That was dancing."

"Ah, but what's dancing except singing with your feet?" Daniel countered with an indulgent smile.

"She's so pretty." Gale breathed, resting her arms on the table and leaning forward so that her face was only an inch away from the ballerina. "She's like a princess."

"Better than a princess." Daniel asserted. "Ballerinas have to have talent and that is a thing more common but also more precious than a tiara."

"I want to be a ballerina." Gale said. "Can I be a ballerina too, daddy?" She asked, turning beseeching eyes on her father.

He laughed. "Sure. You can be whatever you want." He turned a smile towards Cael. "What about you, son? Do you want to be a ballerina as well?"

But the boy wasn't paying attention. Instead, he was still staring at the little dancer in the music-box, standing a little behind his sister and looking over her shoulder at the porcelain face and the glass eyes with a look of intense and wistful longing that somehow made him look older than his five years.

"Don't worry, Cael, I haven't forgotten about you. I have a gift for you as well." Daniel said reassuringly.

"I don't want it." Cael murmured, his eyes never straying from the ballerina.

"You haven't seen it yet. I promise it'll be as good as Gale's present."

"No. Nothing's as good as Gale's present." He did not say it in a sullen, pouting voice as one would expect but matter-of-factly as if it were an irrefutable truth, as undeniable as the rising of the sun.

"Just wait and see." Daniel insisted. "It's good, I swear."

"I don't want it." Cael repeated, again with no resentment or anger in his voice, just a flat and firm refusal.

Daniel looked askance at his son and asked doubtfully, "Is there something you really want? Tell me and I'll try and get it for you.”

"When I grow up, I want to marry her." Cael answered, a distant, far-away look in his eyes as if he were already seeing some remote future in which a fully grown version of him stood at the altar awaiting the bride he had chosen and demanded of destiny.

Gale suddenly let out a loud, pealing laugh. "She's never going to marry you. You smell."

"And you're dumb." Cael snapped.

Daniel scratched his head, clearly stumped. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, son. You see-"

"I'm going to marry her, you'll see." Cael told his sister challengingly, a defiant glare on his face.

"She's like a princess. Only a prince gets to marry her." Gale argued, matching his glower with one of her own.

"Then I'll become one." He replied with conviction.

"Dumbo. You can't just become a prince. You have to be born one."

"I will be a prince. You'll see. " Cael vowed, his face settling into stubbornness.

Daniel sighed long-sufferingly. "Well, son, all I can say is good luck. The course of true love never did run smooth but I'm afraid yours might just lead to a dead-end."

*

I don't know when I was born, not that you can call it 'born' exactly. It was more like an unlooked for awakening, a trickling in of consciousness that sprouted in my mind like a bud from soil, a drowsy stirring and opening up of my awareness as of someone waking up from a deep and dreamless slumber to a sudden and miraculous dawn.

Not that I've ever really seen a real dawn. All that I know of the sun and the colors it paints across the sky are what I've picked up from the voices and conversations I often hear shivering, tautening and shaping the air over my head, building up the world around me and my understanding of it. The only thing I truly know on a personal level is night. The dark emptiness of it. The way it swallows up everything but your own loneliness. Your voice, your vision, your body, all that it gulps down but your loneliness is the one thing it does allow you to keep, to ponder and stare at as it grows larger and more looming in the darkness, a huge, hulking black creature that pins you with its desolate gaze as surely as it does with its heavy paw.

But enough of that. It's true that I've never known a real dawn but I have instead two suns, or one sun and a moon. These come in the form of two pairs of eyes that often stare at me with twin looks of awe and appreciation and dare I say it? Even love. Sometimes in turns and sometimes together, they watch and gaze at me with rapt attention and I dance for them, my whole body a sonnet and rhapsody to their pure and unadulterated delight in me and the gratitude and devotion I feel for them because of it.

In those earliest days after I had first woken up and was still adjusting to the fluttering movement of life breathing and surging within me, the first thing I saw had been a big pair of innocent eyes, as round and brown as old coins, a dark, rusty coppery color, peat bog hues intersected and threaded through with wires and strands of metallic gold, and it was only then when I saw those beautiful eyes staring at me with a look akin to wonder that I felt truly alive.

This had been the first thing I saw of the world and I devoured it with my eyes, lifting them to see above that mesmerizing gaze to stare up at the mass of hair that floated like an aureole around the round and childish face, it was a light, soft, dishwater brown and just like his eyes, was darker in some places and light in others, ash and butter, it bobbed about his ears in drifting waves like duckweed on water, his eyelashes were long wisps of a similar texture and color, his nose was an emperor's nose, strong and proud, too grownup still for his young face but even then I knew he would grow into it and suit it well, and his smile as it dimpled up at me, well, it really was the sun breaking upon me in the full glow and warmth of summer.

Cael. As I soon learnt was his name. He is my sun. And moon dark Gale who often glows and burns as bright as midday fire, she is the second orb around which my existence hovers. The second pair of eyes that watch me and give meaning and life to my dances. She has magpie eyes, sharp and bright and discerning, but at the same time kind and gentle and feather-soft, they are as black as night but like the bird's tail feathers, flashing with hidden jewel tones of blue and green, she has her brother's hair except it runs as straight as a river right down to the middle of her back and has a darker cast to it. Her face is small and heart shaped with a cute button nose, eyelashes darker and even longer than her brother's, and a smile that is un-dimpled but makes up for it in the way that it stretches wide and carefree across her face.

I wish there was a way that I could keep that smile with me always and the marsh-light of Cael's lovely and beautiful eyes. Those two things would keep the darkness at bay, I know. Talismans to guard against the engulfing and frightening blackness, they would be twin lights in the tarry gloom of this box, helping me to survive the fear and loneliness for another night, another day perhaps, hard to tell for the lid to my prison is lifted less and less often with each day that passes.

The lapses of time where I lose track of the hours grow longer and longer, barren wastes in which nothing is sown or born, nothing except the perpetual night which almost seems to become an organic thing in and of itself, a poisonous spore that nourishes still stronger and more powerful on its own insidious life and miasma. I choke on it, hold in breath I don't have, cling to the memory of the gold of Cael's eyes and Gale's face peering over his shoulder and use the image as a tonic for the tightness in my chest that only truly disappears when the lid opens and I rise up to dance in the mirror of their avid eyes.

But everything comes in a container. Me in this box. And every medicine in a bottle that must inevitably drain down to empty. What will happen to me when my own clumsily brewed nostrum runs out and I'm left clutching nothing but an empty bottle? Shall I fill it with my terror and loneliness or the joy of Cael's smile? There's no one to tell me. I can turn over and over in my palms the memory of their faces and hold it close like a glowing coal but the only thing that's ever been prescribed to me is this darkness and every day, alone in this box, I lie down and close my eyes, dreamless and awake, floundering in shadows...

*

Cael was an artist. That is, if a boy with only one subject could be called an artist. But he did have a subject and he approached it with all the zeal of a child tearing into his presents on the day of his birthday, ripping into the paper with raptor claws and casting aside the lacerated coverings like the licked bones of a thoroughly enjoyed meal, determined to get to the coveted treasure that lay hidden beneath all those excessive layers.

He attacked the task of capturing in lines and strokes his visions of dazzling beauty with a concentration and motivation that seemed too big and intense for the small body of a boy his age to contain. Seven was perhaps a little young to have developed an obsession but he was completely devoted to the mission of peeling away all the superfluous adhesive layers of his subject and muse in order to get at the true thing of value, of importance, the core element that made up the beauty of his obsession.

In this way, his method (for, just like every artist, he did in fact have one, though it was by no means conscious) was not so much scientific as mathematical. He was not interested in the mechanics of a thing, the tissue that made it up, or the cause and effect relationship that sprang it into being. For him, beauty (as, just like any other artist, that was a central concern with him) was an equation, a sum, an answer that could be arrived at if he could just figure out the formula that led up to it. Good eyes, nose, hair, teeth, and figure, that all added up to equal an appealing person. Subtract any of those and you got something far removed from the intended result.

He could not yet conceive of beauty a notion that it was a many faceted thing, a multi-carat diamond that sparked a new white fire every time light hit it, gleamed and shone a thousand different ways depending on which angle you looked at it from but still blinded no matter how you saw it. Cael had a rather narrow way of seeing. That is not to say that he was narrow minded, rather that he was the kind of person who could only see one thing at a time and once having set his sights on something, he could only move straight towards it without veering in any way.

He was a straightforward and honest boy and that was why when he often proclaimed that the little ballerina in the box was the most beautiful thing in the world, he meant it. And when he said that he would become a prince for her, he meant that too.

One day at school during the lunch break, he was out in the playground, seated on a bench by himself, his young, serious face screwed up in an expression of the utmost concentration as he pursued yet another artistic endeavor to render the likeness of his beloved little ballerina to the best of his seven year old skill. This was how he spent most of his time and his classmates who were often unsettled and put off by his quiet, sober demeanor of taciturn reserve were content to leave him to himself.

On this day, however, as he carefully scribbled in the last touches of blue to his ballerina's eyes, a vague, nagging disquiet haunting him that he still had failed to do justice to the precise translucent hue and quality of his dancer's eyes, the slightly creased white sheet in front of him which he had taken from the scrap paper tray in his classroom and which he had made his canvas was suddenly and roughly snatched away by a big, fat hand the color and appearance of uncooked and unshaped dough.

Cael followed the loose contours of that meaty paw with his eyes and slowly raised them to the face of Ross Bain, an unfortunate and detestable soul trapped in the corpulent and grotesque body of an eleven year old boy whose only pleasures in life seemed to be the total decimation of the cafeteria's lunch menu, the crushing and grinding of slugs and snails underfoot ("probably cos they look like him", Cael had once heard an older kid comment snidely to the snickers of his friend), and the relentless bullying and tormenting of children younger than himself.

Now, he looked down on Cael with a rictus grin that lifted his doughy cheeks and pressed his eyes into mean little squints that glittered with malice. His teeth were tombstones, crooked, yellow and rotting, no doubt from all the sugar he consumed or maybe it was from the poison that flowed naturally in his veins. "What’re you doing, slug head?" (When it came to insults, his main recourse was slugs with an occasional variation of snails).

"I'm drawing." Cael said slowly as if he were talking to someone younger and dumber than himself.

"Oh, is that what this is?" Ross asked, flicking a dismissive glance at the paper which had become crumpled in his large and careless hand. "I knew it was something stupid."

"Can you give it back? You're creasing it." Cael asked politely, trying to keep the insistence out of his voice. He was familiar enough with how Ross operated that he knew to sound in any way pleading would only encourage and goad the older boy further.

"It's not like it matters. It looks rubbish anyway. Who's this ugly girl supposed to be? It is a girl, right? Kinda hard to tell, it's so bad." Ross said with a snigger.

Cael flushed with anger. He was sensitive to the fact that his own capabilities were insufficient to ever fully capture the beauty of his ballerina and that alone was enough to upset him but for anyone to insinuate that the little dancer was anything but the most perfect and dazzling creation on Earth, that was more than he could comprehend or tolerate.

"Shut up! You don't know what you're talking about! You're just jealous because she's the prettiest thing ever and you're just a fat and ugly-" Cael paused for a moment, searching for the perfect derogatory finish to his indignation, "pig!" He finally exclaimed triumphantly.

Ross certainly was as pink as one by this point. His face was entirely suffused and transfigured by fury and his skin had become mottled with almost magenta blotches of color. He lunged forward like an enraged rhinoceros and scooped Cael up in his big hands so that the smaller boy was dangling almost three inches off the ground in a hard, vice like grip that threatened to squeeze the very life out of him. Ross rammed him up against the nearest wall with a jarring impact that made the younger boy's head ring like a bell and knocked a pained and frightened whimper out of him.

His bully wedged his face as close to him as he could, rancid breath seeping out of his big mouth and wafting over Cael so that he had to turn his head to the side. "You stupid little slug!" He tightened his grip on the boy and shook him with such force that Cael actually cried out this time and as it carried across the playground, a crowd started to form and drew close. "You think you're so great, walking around and showing off about your toymaker dad when everyone knows that he's losing it. And everyone knows that you're crazy too. Always going on about your 'ballerina this and ballerina that'. What kind of pansy talks about a girl's toy like that, anyway? She's not even real."

Cael began to struggle, his feet striking out in a desperate bid to get away. "She is too real! I'm going to marry her!"

"You're such a baby." Ross sneered. "Making up imaginary girlfriends. You're so lame. It's no wonder you don't have any friends."

Cael suddenly stilled and looked over his aggressor's shoulder to the gathered crowd in which he could spot a few familiar friends. "You're wrong." He insisted to Ross, though his gaze was locked on his classmates with a beseeching plea for help, imploring even only one of them to step forward and support his claim.

But every eye he met only glanced away and as the silence of the crowd tautened the air into a razor edge that cut into his gut, he realized he was facing a crowd that was made up of cowards that would not lift a finger to help him for fear that that finger might get broken. And after all, who was he that they should go so far for him? He could see now in their shifty, uncomfortable stances that Ross was right. To them, he was nothing more than the class weirdo who they only endured out of the persistence of the teacher's and their parents' lessons of playing nice with others. All those instances in the past when he could somehow sense a reluctance in them whenever he joined in their games suddenly crystallized into an affirmation of Ross's cruel words.

He struggled again against Ross's grip but more feebly this time, his bravery depleted. "She is real. I know it. She is." He insisted again but his voice was much weaker this time. Both his voice and chin trembled as he fought back tears. His body hurt in several places and Ross was still holding him hard enough to bruise, clearly not intending to let him go any time soon. Instead, he was obviously going to hurt him some more and no one was going to stop him because they didn't care about Cael. Only Gale, his father and...his ballerina....

"You gonna cry, slug face?" Ross jeered and he suddenly and deliberately administered a sharp and merciless pinch to the boy, pressing and digging in his nail which was grimed with dirt into the soft and sensitive skin at the side of Cael's neck. He did this with such fervor and glee that he managed to draw blood. Cael gasped and finally reached the bottom of his reservoir of endurance and tears now began to leak and pour down his cheeks.

"P-p-please..." Cael begged through his sobs. "L-let m-m-me go. I-I wanna go h-home." To his ballerina. Whose soft music and entrancing steps and beauty would take him beyond his seven and a half year old small body that was so easy for large, cruel kids like Ross to break and damage.

Ross grinned, a horrible, malevolent grin that sent a nauseous curl of dread snaking through Cael. "All you had to was ask, snail brains." And he did let go but not before he delivered a hard punch to Cael's stomach. And again. And again. Over and over until the small boy had become an even smaller ball curled up, shaking and crying on the ground, while dusted over and around him like flakes of snow, were the bits of his drawing of the ballerina, which Ross had shredded into confetti and thrown over him before he finally walked away and left the boy.

After that, Cael was a different child entirely. He'd always been quiet but now he hardly spoke at all. Or laughed. Or smiled. His sister and father watched him with growing concern and tried with all their heart to draw back out the son and brother they knew and loved. But despite all their best efforts, he did not return and instead withdrew further, shunning their company in favor of that of the ballerina. He had always used to spend a lot of time with her, often staring at her for minutes on end with a rapt expression as she twirled and danced. But now even this had changed. There was a different quality to his watching of the dancer.

He no longer drew anything and that was because when he stared at the little ballerina, his expression was not one of fascination as before but one of expectation. Instead of seeing only the beauty that used to so captivate him, he was now searching for something that he had never thought to look for before: A voice. A heart. A Life.

Something to indicate that his fantasies of marrying and living happily ever after as the hero and prince who had got his reward for being so good and brave were reciprocated and not just the crazed delusions of an outcast little boy. He stared into the glass eyes of the dancer, trying to detect an emotion in there that was akin to his own loneliness and desperation. He followed her movements and tried to find something in her dance that wasn't the same as every other time, a step that wasn't predetermined and mechanical. He touched her hand, wanting her so badly and wretchedly to curl her fingers around his, maybe even touch it to his hair and tell him that everything was okay like he remembered his mother doing a long, long time ago...

But the transparent blue eyes were empty, the dance unchanging and robotic, and the tiny, delicate hand was cold and lifeless as a corpse, the only thing it had in common with his mother. And now Cael was forced to accept the second truth of Ross's words. And it was the single biggest blow of his life. In former times, when he had been upset his main solace was always to be found in his ballerina but now what was he supposed to do when she was the cause for his devastation?

She was not alive. She had no comfort to give because there was nothing in her capable of giving. She was never going to marry him because that was something only the living did. And now he wept. Not like a child but like one who has lived through a thousand lives of pain and has only just now suffered his biggest anguish. When Ross had hurt him in the playground, he had realized then that Ross was right and he had no true friend in that building but then he had still the consolation that he had one friend at least, one who would never fail to be there for him and who was the prettiest dancer in all the world. But now he realized that getting friendship from a lifeless thing was the easiest thing in the world and it was not worth anything at all. He was truly friendless. He had never felt more alone.

And so it was that just shy of eight, Cael Glass learnt despair, hopelessness, and bitterness and what some people are fortunate enough to go through life without ever learning: that dreams are not essential for living. They are not what sustain you through all the days to the future. For, even when they are disintegrated, pierced through and bled out until completely cold, the body and soul still lumber and shamble on after the chains of time.

Cael Glass had dared to dream big. And now the weight of it was crushing him.

*

I have stars now. And it's thanks to the only two people in the world who watch my dances as if they were more than the pre-automated steps that my restless feet are helpless to escape. What is the point of feet that are always unmoving, always still, anyway? Am I even really dancing? Real dancing involves a calligraphy of movement, an artwork of loose and tight limbs that curve and swirl through air. But all I do is revolve in one place, rigid and unchanging, never able to improvise or create.

If my feet were more than just imitative appendages, if I had the ability to walk, I would run, sprint, leap to where Cael and Gale are and never stop running after them. If I had a voice, I would hoarsen it with my thanks for all that they've given me, attention, care, and love, until it ran out into a thin wisp. Even then, I would still use it to free Cael's voice, who grows quieter by the day.

My stars cling and mold to the walls of my prison-box of darkness, points of glowing yellow that crack and splinter the sepulchral black. I wonder if this is how real stars look. I have so few memories. Not having had much opportunity to create many. And the ones I do have vary so little. Always the same cast and set. Nevertheless, I cherish them all and the day when my darkness was broken up is especially beloved.

This day bled out the from the same vein as all the ones before it, composed of the same plasma cells: me, huddled and alone in my dark box, waiting for a voice. I hear it, from a distance, muffled by the barrier of the lid above me. It's Gale's voice, drawing ever closer as she undoubtedly, hopefully, approaches my box. My heart lifts in anticipation as I wait eagerly for light to dawn over me and two faces to crest in the air above me. The lid lifts and so does the darkness, slowly and almost painfully as the daylight of a closed bedroom steals in to jab and prod at my eyes which would squint if any part of my body were capable of movement. Gale's face slides into my vision and for a moment my heart seizes in joy but also with a fear I hadn't known I had been harboring until I see Cael's face finally appear beside hers. I am afraid of being forgotten. How long do I have with them before they realize the barren repetitiveness of my steps and abandon me for something that is more than only half-alive?

Gale considers me for a moment with a thoughtful and serious expression that would look more at home on her brother's face rather than in conjunction with her sunny and effervescent disposition. "Do you think she gets lonely in there all day by herself?" She asks, directing the question over her shoulder at Cael.

He turns a probing, speculative gaze on me and I feel something inside me quicken and then settle as those earth crusted gold eyes catch me in their shadowed glow. It's something I've been noticing a lot lately. Whenever Cael is near, it's as if everything else fades and pales in comparison, even Gale. He's almost as bright as the light I look forward to hoarding in my box everyday and often in my fantasies of a sun dappled, shadow free, daylight world I find it too easy to substitute the noon's discus yellow glow for the lunar sheen of his skin and the aureole of his hair. It makes me wonder if I had a heart, what would it be doing right now? The hollow space where it should be feels emptier and heavier than ever.

"I would be." Cael says quietly. Shadows move in his eyes like wolves and the coin bright glimmers start to sink into the peat bog brown. The dead cavity inside me starts to fester.

"And she's in the dark. All alone." Gale slumps onto the nearby table, her head sagging onto her folded arms as she stares at me dejectedly. There is a deep chasm yawning open in me and in it are all the tears I cannot shed at these simple and compassionate words.

"Not everyone's a scaredy cat like you and needs to sleep with a nightlight." Cael says to her with a mocking and provoking smirk.

"Shut up! At least I never used to wet the bed!" Gale retaliates fiercely, spots of colour glowing warmly on her cheeks.

Cael flushes darkly in response and seems about to reply when his eyes suddenly fall on me and he abruptly stops, shutting his mouth and biting off whatever he was about to say. He stares at me for a long moment, his gaze fathomless and his expression inscrutable. My body beats and flutters like a heart as the emptiness inside it stretches and yearns to be filled.

"Give me your money." Cael suddenly commands his sister, his eyes never straying from me. 

"Huh?" Gale stares blankly up at him as if she were not sure that she had heard him right. Then, seeing from his steady look that she indeed had: "No! It's my pocket money! It's not my fault if you've already spent yours. What did you do with it anyway?"

"Bought some sweets." Cael answers, irritation and impatience creeping into his voice. Clearly, the thought of being lectured by his younger sister, even if the difference was only by a few minutes, is not one he relishes. If I could, I would smile at the scowl that is beginning to form on his small and young face. "I still have some money left. Just not enough."

"Enough for what?" Gale asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.  

"Just trust me." Cael says, the impatience obvious now.

Gale just stares at him petulantly, unmoving.

He sighs. "It's not for me. I promise." Then, more quietly, he repeats, "Just trust me."

Gale tilts back her head so that she can look him more fully in the eyes from her sitting position. Even when they are both standing, he is still a little taller than her. He has grown a lot in recent months, in body and mind. I can see her thinking it as she stares up at him and feels herself wavering before his earnest request: he is not our Cael anymore. Somehow, he has grown up faster than we can keep up with him. Somewhere far away and too distant for us to reach him.

Okay." She answers, reaching into the belt pouch at her skirt where she keeps her money and other treasures she deems important enough to hold a place in there. She holds out the coins in her palm, her eyes intent and questioning on her brother's face. "You really promise you're not going to use it on something dumb?" 

He takes the coins from her and smiles reassuringly. "You can see for yourself when I get back." And with that, he turns and runs to the door.  

"Cael, wait!"

He stops on his way out and turns to her inquisitively.

"Where are you going?"

He gives her an incredulous, half-pitying look like he can't believe that she can be this slow and yet has to feel sorry for her that she can actually be this lacking in sense. I wait in tense expectation for Gale to catch and comprehend this look and then immediately explode into anger and indignation but Cael, evidently sensing the same eruption forestalls it by quickly saying, "I'm just going to the corner shop. I'll be right back. And I promise, you won't be sorry for giving me your money."

He turns away but once again Gale stops him. He looks back at her, evidently annoyed. "What now?"

"Are-are you okay?" Gale asks haltingly, hesitant as if she is not really sure what she is asking and whether she should even be asking at all.

He c***s his head to one side, a perplexed look on his face. "Yeah. Course I am." Then, without another word, he turns and runs out as if to avoid any further delays. The clattering of his feet down the stairs floats up to us and then: bang! The slam of the front door.

Gale stares at the rectangle of black in the empty, open doorway for a moment before she turns to me with a facial expression that is more serious and sadder than any I have ever seen her wear before. "He's so weird." She folds her arms on the table and rests her head on top of them, leaning forward and staring at me with those big, dark eyes of hers in a gesture and posture that is so familiar and that I hope she will never grow out of. "But you know, I think he's lonely. And I don't know why."

These words come to me in a soft whisper as if she is speaking from a place deep inside herself, a place that is so much older and darker and lonelier than herself. Cael has already discovered that part in himself, I think, and has recognised it for what it is: that part in us that is irrepressibly and irrevocably individual and different from everyone else, that is our own unique blend of darkness and light and constitutes who we are, and is what ultimately condemns us to the feeling of loneliness as we realise that our souls are alone in their imprisonment of our bodies and no one can step through or even look through the bars to see our bare souls and answer our hope that someone may be able to understand and articulate our inmost palimpsests better than we ourselves are able.

While Cael is already struggling with this dark intimation of himself, Gale is only just beginning to realise it and is racing to catch up with her brother and reach him in that frightening and distant place he is in, aware only that her brother is growing up faster than she likes, somewhere away from her and she doesn't want to be left behind. A part of her is frightened that she is losing him and so she wants to grow up faster so that she may be able to understand him. But she will only grow into a prison. Watching someone and seeing the shadow of loneliness grow over them only casts a shadow over you too and I want to warn her. To tell her not try to grow up too fast. I want to comfort and reassure her. But my lips are mute and my hands are stiff. I cannot move them any more than I was able to squeeze back when once Cael had clutched at my fingers, a silent plea in his eyes for comfort I could not give. I am alone in this body with emotions that cannot be expressed. Tears cannot flow from ductless eyes. Sealed lips can't cry.

After an interminable time has elapsed, wherein each of us is lost in our own melancholy thoughts, we hear a door slam, signaling Cael's return. Thunder and lightning are in his feet as he sprints up the stairs in leaps and bounds before he finally bursts into the room, eyes glowing and twinkling, an excited and pleased grin on his face as breath huffs from him in heaving pants.

Gale is on her feet, looking him up and down with curiosity and wariness as if she is prepared both to be disappointed or to find out the cause of Cael's excitement and be swept up in it as well. "So? What did you buy?"

Cael grins in a way I haven't seen him do in a while: free and easy and just brimming over with energy and delight. He holds up something wrapped in a small plastic bag in his hand, victoriously and high over his head like a spoil of war. Gale goes forward for a closer look and then starts back with a gasp.

"Stickers!"

Cael's beam is as bright as a solar flare. "They glow in the dark!"

Gale looks over her shoulder at me and her eyes widen and she suddenly breaks out into a loud laugh that is sweet and jubilant and electrified all at once. "Oh, Cael! You're a genius! This is the best idea you've ever had!"

He smirks, smug and pleased. "I know. I was always the smart one."

Gale snatches the bag out of his hand and glares at him. "Just for that, I think I should get to stick them all on." She unwraps the plastic bag and stares at the thing that she is holding. "They're even shaped like stars. Now she won't be in the dark all the time."

Cael is staring at me over her shoulder just like he has done so many times before but with an expression that is so unfamiliar and that I am seeing more and more often on his face. The carefree and happy grin from before has vanished to be replaced by the shuttered and almost haunted look that he wears almost all the time now. His eyes are swimming, with shadows and a presage of tears, and he looks so lost and forlorn all of a sudden that I know if I had a heart, it would be breaking right now.

"Yeah." He says in response to Gale but he is looking at me as if I were a stranger or worse yet, as if he himself were a stranger staring with foreign eyes and begging me to explain to him what it is he is looking at and with what he is looking.

For the rest of that afternoon, the two of them sit with me, hunched and kneeled over my box, pressing stars into the walls around me, fighting over who gets to put on the stars, crumbling apart the darkness bit by bit with each press of their fingers. Constantly, I feel the skin of their hands brush against me as they dip again and again into my box to create a night sky for me and it is the best happiness I have ever known.

But every now and again, I catch Cael staring at me with that spectre gaze that's always asking, who are you? Who am I? And it's enough to set another shadow heart to breaking within me. He's given me stars. But when Cael is alone, fighting the terror of the dark within his own body, are there any stars for him? Who does he wait for? What sun does he dream of? And when he finally sees it rise, is he as happy to see it as I always am to see him?

*

There was just something about cold air that always felt so clean. Cael could feel it as he stepped out into the sharp January chill of the street, not even bothering to wrap his scarf properly to defend against it, preferring instead to leave the woolen ends dangling loosely over his shoulders where he'd flung it carelessly and haphazardly.

The ice crystals of winter sleet bit into his cheeks, as if trying to scour and slough off the very skin on his face. Maybe that's it, Cael thought to himself. Summer, the too warm, muggy air of it was something that hung heavy and oppressive over all, hazy and languid like the slow, droning circles of a bee. That kind of temperate air was something that clung to your skin, beaded in knots of sweat, too lazy to move. He hated summer. It always left him with a sluggish feeling of grime and sweat, no matter how many times he showered.

Winter, on the other hand, that was something that moved. Light and airy and fast as air sprites, it didn't sit on the world, spooling sweat and stink. Winter was free and fast motion, too crisp and clean and quick for the buzzing flies of filth to keep up. Maybe you just have a winter heart, Cael thought with a dry smile. Frozen inside. Cold blood flowing through crystalline veins. It wasn't the first time he'd thought this about himself.

"Don't you care about other people? About all those girls whose hearts you break and then toss away?" Gale had demanded of him more than once.

The answer that he knew and never told her because it would only anger her was no, he didn't. He didn't care about those hearts he broke. Their fault for being so easily broken. He made no pretences about himself. He was a cold thing and if you were going to touch something like him, you had to know that you were going to get frostbite.

The only lie he allowed himself was this: he knew he was cold and attracted to cold things and yet he allowed himself to seek warmth even though he knew that there was no heat in the world that could melt him. His fate had been sealed years ago when the only hand he'd sought warmth from yielded only lifeless cold.

Why should he want warmth anyway? His mother's funeral had been on a sweltering summer day. He didn't remember much about her or the day itself since he'd only been four at the time. But he remembered the way the sun had beat down on him as the coffin was carried out to be buried, a single fly coming to rest on the dark polished wood of the lid, its wings iridescent in that awful, burning sunlight that made him feel too tight and sweaty in his heavy and somber mourning clothes.

Everyone else had tears trickling down from their eyes but his tears were on his back, under his armpits, on the nape of his neck. He had wanted this to count because he couldn't make the tears come from his eyes and he didn’t understand how and why everyone else was doing it but it made him feel left out to think that he couldn’t do it too.

In summer people died but in winter everything was already dead. On a winter day the ballerina and his love for her had been born but they were both already dead from its conception. Stillborn. Perhaps in being with all those girls, he was hoping to be reborn. But he was fooling himself again. He knew there would be no rebirth for him without her and maybe that was why each new girl had a different piece of her; hair that was almost but not quite the same caramel, eyes that were bright blue but without the pale translucence that made him feel like he was staring at his own soul, once even just the right face shape had been enough for him, it was exactly right but the eyes, nose, mouth, hair, everything else had been wrong. That one had lasted the shortest time but it was the one he had put the most hope and longing in, for the sake of that one exactly right detail.

He wondered if he was finally losing it. Seventeen and he still couldn't quite completely let go of a childhood obsession. Maybe he was finally going the way of his father. Wandering eyes and mind, lapses of time and memory where the past collapsed into the present like a line of dominoes, and all falling towards the sinkhole in which depression and confusion and loneliness were already trying to claw their way out. This was the existence that his father now primarily led. And Cael's own seesawed between watching the disintegration and trying his utmost to get as far away as possible from it.

He wasn't sure when the fragmentation had started, maybe since his mother's death, maybe before, maybe after, there was no way to tell. He only knew when he first became aware of it. On a blustery Autumn day long ago, when the sky was leaden and drab and the wind was snatching handfuls of ochre and bronze leaves and just throwing them up into the air as if in the hope that those floating boats of colour might relieve and enliven the dullness. End of September, beginning of his fourteenth year.

On that day, his birthday, he had reached home before Gale (who was busy with club activities, which club, he had long given up trying to keep track of as she was forever quitting and joining clubs, never able to fix on just one interest) to find his father sitting alone at the kitchen table, turning something over and over in his hands. A smile, faint with satisfaction, flickered in and out of being on his face which had grown haggard and careworn over the years.

Cael had let his bag slide from his shoulder onto the tile floor with a loud thunk. His father twisted in his chair to look round at him.

"Business slow?" Cael asked. Ordinarily, his father would be down behind the counter in the shop, a welcoming smile ready on his face for any customer who happened to stray in, though there hadn't been much straying for a while now.

There was a blank look on his face right now and Cael was beginning to get unsettled by the way his father just continued to stare at him silently, eyes baffled and blinking at him as if he were trying to puzzle something out. Finally, point-blank, he asked, "Who are you?"

Cael felt a chill and his stomach felt hollow as if all his insides had been scooped out and then shoved into the wrong place, right into his chest, alongside his heart which nudged up next to all that stomach stuff, now had too little room in which to beat its frenetic rhythm. "Dad, it's me." He swallowed hard, trying to speak past the fear and panic lodged hard in him like a stone. "Your son. Cael."

There was a furrow digging deep grooves into the space between his father's brows and his mouth was turned down into a frown. "That's my son's name, yes, but you're almost a man and my son, he's ten...today..." His voice trailed off and his frown deepened as if something was just beginning to occur to him, itching and tugging at the corners of his mind.

"Yeah dad. Today is my birthday." He tried to keep his voice steady. "My fourteenth birthday."

"No. That can't be right." His father murmured. "I have a daughter too and she's-"

"Fourteen, dad. Gale and I, we're both fourteen today." He felt frozen, paradoxically paralysed by the urge and need to run away. But his body felt encased in stone and he could only stare down at his father who now turned to the table as if he couldn't bear to look at him anymore and in whose hands he could see the slightest tremors starting.

"No. But that-that can't be. I made her a present. With my own hands. And I just finished one for my son..."

The trembling had taken complete possession of him now and his hand had fallen open so that Cael could now see what it was that his father had been turning over in his hands before. It was a soldier, small and miniature and beautifully crafted. It resembled the guards who stood outside Buckingham palace, with a red coat that gleamed and blazed as bright as a ruby, sun gold epaulettes glowed as warm as fire up near the soldier's shoulders, and his arms tight to his sides clutched a thin and sharp bayonet to his side. His face was in repose, an odd way to choose to depict the soldier, Cael thought. Why not tense and alert and undaunted as you would expect from a soldier on the battlefield? But Cael soon saw that his father with his unerring skill had made the right choice. For the soldier was somehow regal in his calm, charming and endearing in the small but sure smile that played on his lips. It was a smile that said he was content with the world no matter what it threw at him and that whatever choices he made and will make, he would not regret them. This leant warmth to his eyes, which were a bright amber as gentle as his bayonet was sharp. He couldn't imagine what colours his father had mixed to get a hue that was so rich in depth and light and well life.

Cael looked at his father. He was still shaking. "Dad?" He said softly, hesitantly. He had no idea what to do and really, really just wanted his father to snap out of it so that the matter would be out of his hands and he could unburden himself of this sudden sense of responsibility that felt too big and too heavy for him.

His father looked up at him then and straight into his eyes and what Cael saw there frightened him more than anything else thus far. There was real terror there. Sheer, unadulterated fear in the eyes of the man who had always tried to raise him to be fearless. And now on that man he could see nothing but fear. "Dad?" He said again, as if that utterance alone could restore to him the man whom he had always addressed in that way.

His father took a deep breath and sat quietly for a while, until the last tremors had died away. Then, he fixed Cael with a bleary, tremulous smile that in no way looked sincere. "I'm sorry, son. I didn't mean to scare you. Just age and stress catching up with me. I...I guess I just got forgetful today all of a sudden. I'm okay now."

"You...you thought I was ten." Cael said, the words passing stiff and shocked through numb lips. "When I came in, you didn't recognise me. You asked me who I was."

His father bowed his head and his shoulders caved in around him so that he was almost a slumped heap on the table. "I...I'm sorry about that."

"Dad." Just that. All the horror and shock and fear and desperation expressed and voiced in that one word.

The cave-in of Daniel Glass crumbled and collapsed further. "I know. I...I'll get help. I swear."

"O-Okay then." He hovered, unsure now what to do or say. The matter was being taken into more responsible hands than his but he still didn't feel free of the burden. The desire to run was more potent than ever but the stun was also working more strongly on him than before. The reason for this was in the desolate and dejected sag of his father's shoulders and he felt that he should say or do something but in searching all the crevices of his mind, he found that it was a desert and that there was nothing.

He turned to leave, feeling cowardly and useless. But his father's voice stopped him.

"I know you don't care much for toys now and so this is a pretty terrible gift." He gestured to the soldier and gave a feeble laugh. "But I hope you can at least appreciate the sentiment that this probably terrible father of yours had behind this gift." He turned in his chair to face Cael in the doorway and pinned him with an earnest and intense stare. "You're a fighter, Cael. You have dignity and strength. And I-I just want you to know that I have always been and always will be proud of you."

Cael had to look away before that unwavering and fierce gaze and could only mumble, embarrassed and uncomfortable but still somewhat touched, "Thanks, dad." He moved to leave again but then paused to say quietly over his shoulder, "And you're not a terrible father." Then, without waiting for a response he finally indulged in the long suppressed desire to run and sprinted to the sanctuary of his room as if he were being chased by death itself.

If he were braver or had been more than himself, too honest and too proud, he perhaps would've accepted the soldier from his father despite being too old for toys. But he didn't want any kind of a reminder of that day and for a moment he was angry with his father. Why was it that his father could only give him birthday gifts that later became to him representations of pain and loss? First the ballerina and now the soldier who rather than serving as the emblem of the strength that his father saw in him, only reminded Cael of the loss of strength that he had seen in his father that day.

He had often wondered after that what became of the soldier. Had his father thrown it away? Or kept it? He was too cowardly to ever ask his father directly about it, again wanting to avoid any reference to that day and he had often thought since then that it would be very apt if his father had thrown it away. In the same way that Cael was throwing the strength that made his father so proud away. If he had ever had any. Parents were often biased when it came to their kids after all.

Snowflakes had melted in his hair and now trickled down into his eyes. He shook his head a little, as much to free his head of the moisture as to banish the unwelcome thoughts and memories that were invading his mind. It was no use dwelling on the past. There was nothing he wanted from there. All that pain and uncertainty and despair, he wanted nothing of it. The past could keep it. And it could keep away from him. He wanted only the future. To move forward and keep going forward into the future as step by step, the past receded behind him.

It waited somewhere out there for him. He knew it as surely as he knew that not far now, Amirah, a girl with hair darker than a panther's fur and skin as gold as honey, waited for him. He conjured up the image of her eyes, almond shaped and a deep azure blue. He smiled satirically to himself. He knew that this would end just like all the others. With a broken heart. He just couldn't help but harbour the hope that this time it would be his. It would prove that he at least had one.

*

Time is purgatory. I am stranded in a no-man's land where on one side I am assaulted with the shellfire of the present and on the other shredded by the shrapnel of the past. It is a constant loop that rewinds but with twists and changes in the repeated renditions. I feel as though I now watch my memories daily but they are distorted versions that leave me feeling lonelier than ever and with a deep ache and longing for a past that was simpler and purer.

Gale has grown into a beautiful young woman. Yet I can't help but search for the child in her. The old roundness of her cheeks has hollowed out and sharpened into high planes fit for an Egyptian princess, although there is none of that haughtiness in her features, just the familiar sweetness that, thankfully, has never left her. At seventeen, her eyes are every bit as sparkling as they were at seven. She is taller than anyone ever expected her to be, matching her brother for every inch. She is willowy and graceful, her movements as river-smooth as the fall and wave of her hair which she still wears long but in a changed colour that is a violet as deep and dark as the velvety inside of a black dahlia.

As near as I can tell, her personality hasn't changed much but rather has grown from roots that were planted in her earliest years. Her eagerness and excitable nature from back then has developed into a zest and hunger for life and an adventurous streak that leaves her restless and always looking for something else to explore. This feeds into and is fed by an irrepressibly romantic imagination that I know Cael despairs of. His own sister is an enigma to him that he can barely comprehend.

Every day I am grateful for her and her knowing look that sees more than it reveals. Her brother is less of a mystery to her than she is to him and certainly less of one than he was when they were kids, though he is still not yet completely known to her. But whatever insights she has about him, she will not share with him or anyone. Her eyes are so canny sometimes, I think she can see through even me and see the anguishing loneliness and desperation that passes for a soul in this stiff and mute body.

In fact, I think that can be the only explanation. For her kindness to a lifeless doll. For her gentle and benevolent smiles on a dead dancer that can't smile back. For where I am now. In the best place I could have hoped for. Close to the one who provides the most light in my life.

"Cael," only a few weeks ago, when she had entered into his room with me shut up in my box clutched in her hands, "I think you should have this."

"Have what?" I heard his voice ask, slightly muffled by the shut lid of my box.

I hadn’t heard it in a while as he had stopped coming to see me a long time ago. The day I had dreaded had finally come some years ago. He had forgotten me, forgotten in a way that I never could, trapped as I was in my lonely box with only the stars he had given me and my memories to curl up around. I shut my eyes, sealing the timber and rhythmic cadence of his voice, which was deeper than when I'd last heard it, behind their lids as a memory to add to my treasure trove. I am forty thieves with only one treasure to plunder and guard. There is not enough to satisfy even one of us and yet we are all still greedy for it.

"This." There was a bright burst of light and for a moment I thought I was going blind, it had been so long since my box was opened. Gale would visit me occasionally but why should a young girl like her who feels the call of the world so strongly waste her time on an inanimate thing like me? If I could, I would have blinked. As it was, I could merely wait until the glare of the day faded and things came into focus.

The first thing I looked for and immediately found was Cael. He was sitting on his bed, legs which had grown long and could carry him far no doubt stretched out in a lounging and relaxed position. He sat up when he saw me and his face was beautiful but oh, so cold. As with Gale, he had grown into a stunning creature. But whereas Gale was radiant and happy, Cael's beauty was of a more distant and cool kind.

His face was longer and narrower than it had been and his features were not exactly harsh but certainly sharp like a fox's, his skin was paler than his sister's, almost translucent which leant a softer air to his face, almost one of fragility, but he had grown into his emperor's nose just like I had predicted he would, he was slender and slim, he had grown out his blond-brown hair which now floated to the nape of his neck, it was wispy at the ends and stuck up a little at the top in tufts of duck-fluff, and his eyes, I wish I could say they were the same, but, although they were the same copper gold as before, the expression in them was different, that look I had caught in them all those years ago, of stalking wolves in the shadows, I could see it now, stronger and more blatant than ever.

A whole minute passed in which he just stared at me with those haunted and haunting eyes. Then, he slid back on his bed and returned to the book in which he had been writing and had set aside momentarily when Gale and I had come in. "Quit wasting my time."

Two angry spots of colour appeared on Gale's face. "That's just like you. If it's not about you, it's a waste of your time."

"What are you getting into a hissy fit about? Just what am I going to do with a toy?" Cael asked in a voice that was half exasperated and half weary.

"It's not a toy. It’s a music-box. And no one's too old for music or dancing." Gale countered with a stubborn tilt of her chin.

"Great. But in case you've forgotten, I am a seventeen year old straight male. And that", a careless gesture in my direction that pierced right through me, "is a ballerina generally intended for little girls."

"You didn’t think so when we were kids." Gale pointed out.

"Exactly. I was a kid. I thought wearing glasses meant you were Superman."

"I remember. Dad had a hard time explaining to you that you weren't going to find his cape in the closet." Gale said with a fond smile.

"My point is, that whatever craziness you're on to now, leave me out of it." Cael then turned his attention wholeheartedly to the book on his lap, pointedly ignoring Gale.

"I'm being serious here, Cael." She plopped down onto the bed next to him and added softly, "You need something in your life." 

There was a pause before Cael finally sighed and set his book aside once more. "Okay. I'll bite. Just what the hell are you talking about?"

Gale looked him straight in the eye and said bluntly, "You're not happy, Cael."

Cael gave a snort that sounded like disgust or disdain and turned away as if bored of the conversation. "Define happy." He tossed out flippantly.

"Not going through girls like they're a pack of cards and keeping everyone else at a distance, smiling and laughing just because you feel like it and not because you've made a point or because it's what's expected of you." She answered almost immediately. "Also, a lot of people have a hobby or a passion, like an instrument or something."

"You don't have anything like that." Cael pointed out.

"Yeah, but I'm looking. I join clubs and stuff. You don't do anything. You just hide up in your room by yourself and study." Gale replied, wrinkling her face in distaste at the last word.

"Not always by myself." Cael responded with a smirk.

If anything, the look of disgust on Gale's face only grew. "Please, I don't even want to think about what kind of studying you get up to."

Cael chuckled. "Well, I promise you that it's all been very informative and my study partners are always so eager to learn."

"Gah." Gale put her hands over her ears and directed a nauseated and beseeching grimace at him. "Please stop. No more. I'm begging you."

"If you don't want to listen, you can always leave." Cael replied with a sly and subtle smile. It was one that pulled and clawed at me. He'd changed so much in the time since I'd last seen him. How many new expressions did he now have? And where had he learnt them all?  

 Gale let her hands fall to her lap and she looked at him long and hard. "Okay, I'll leave. But I'm leaving her," her finger pointed at me, "here."

"Gale, why?" Cael demanded and all his impatience and frustration with her was obvious.

"I told you, you need something in your life. Because there's something missing." Her voice was firm and serious, leaving no room for argument but when she looked at her brother, I could see genuine concern and consideration and care in her eyes.

"And you think this-" his voice was tense and seemed to break for a moment under the strain, "she", again, another gesture in my general direction, "will replace whatever's missing."

No, I think she is what's missing. Or something that she stands for."

Cael looked at his sister as if he were truly afraid for her mental state. "And where did you get that idea?"

"I don't know. It's just that whenever I look at her, she looks as if she's really sad. It's the same kind of feeling I get from you." Gale was thoughtful and she was staring at me as if she were looking for some kind of clue or answer in my face. But I had none to give. I was only a spectator who could only wait on the answers others chose to let drop within my hearing.

"Um, sis, you do know you're talking about an inanimate object, don’t you?" Cael asked, peering at her warily.

She looked down at me for a moment, turning my box over in her hands. "Dad doesn't make anything anymore." She said in a more subdued tone.

There was a pause before, "I know." Cael said quietly, watching her.

She took a deep breath and then laid me down on the bed beside Cael before she stood up. "Nothing goes away just because you won't look at it, Cael. She wants to be near you. So stop running away. I know you want to be near her too."

She started to walk towards the door but Cael's voice stopped her just as she reached the threshold.

"This is all pointless, you know. I don't-she's not-" Cael rubbed his hand over his hair, a new gesture I'd never seen before, one clearly indicative of frustration, "I mean, Gale,

"Okay, then answer me this: in all the time I've been here, why haven't you looked at her even once?" She waited for a while at the door with her back still turned towards him and when he didn't answer, she gave a self-satisfied nod as if something had been proven and then left, leaving me alone with Cael.

She was right. Although he keeps me in the room with him, on his desk under the window, daylight and moonlight alike falling on my up-stretched arms- he always leaves my box open for some reason- he never looks at me. Instead, he makes a point of ignoring me, in much the same way that he used to do when he wanted to punish Gale for something when they were children. But I have no idea what he could possibly punish me for. I only know that his silence and refusal to acknowledge my presence cuts me to the core.

Everyday he enters the room, shuts the door, drops his stuff by it, and sits on his bed to read, do homework, listen to music, or sit with his laptop, all without one glance in my direction. His desk with its chair has become become an area he deliberately and unfailingly avoids as if the air itself is toxic and carries a risk of radioactivity.

The worst part is that he's not always alone. Before, I hadn't completely understood what he and Gale had been talking about or the insinuations that had snaked and crept under their banter. Now I know only too well. It's almost enough to make me wish for the darkness of my closed box where there are only the stars that he gave me for comfort. But now even those are tainted. Whenever I look at them now, in the dimness of the night, their yellow glow chasing shadows across my soap coloured skin (can you call it skin? does a lifeless thing have any claim to such words?) instead of the thankfulness I used to feel at the thought of the boy who was so proud and excited of the ingenious and merciful solution he had come up with for his dead and frightened dancer, I feel only sorrow and regret for the impassive young man who sleeps only a few feet away from me.

I listen to his snores and hear instead the breathy whispers and giggles of girls who have sat with him on that very bed in various stages and states of intimacy. People talk about hearts too carelessly, I believe. I don't think I have one and yet I am sick and hollow with the absence of it. I can't imagine what would have become of me at this point if I did have one for as it is, something in me is already in pieces and disintegrating and crumbling further with each day into fine dust.

The moments of his return have by now resolved themselves into a pattern for me. First, there is the initial moment of elation when my ears prick up and I hear the familiar tread of his footsteps just outside the door, then there is the precarious instant as the door starts to swing forward in which I am poised between hope and dread, hope that this time he'll be alone and the dread of seeing who he has brought home this time, and finally, more often than not, there is that devastating revelation of his latest conquest. But on those occasions when he is alone, my joy and relief is such that my body scarcely feels adequate to contain it all.

Today is not one of those happy occasions. He enters the room and close behind him is a small and petite girl with dark hair, light brown skin, and blue eyes. There are a few freckles dusted across her nose and a slight, shy smile plays across her lips as she looks round the room with a look that is equal parts curiosity and awe.

"So this is the secret world of Cael Glass." She says.

He turns to her with an easy smile. "Yeah. I'll have to erase your memory before you leave but until then, make yourself comfortable."

She laughs and matches his teasing tone with a playful one of her own. "Well, since I'm going to have my memory erased anyway, I think I'll explore and try to find out all your darkest secrets."

He shrugs and widens his smile just the tiniest bit for her. "Feel free. You won't find anything. I've been in the body burying business for too long."

She shakes her head at him but with curved lips that lets him know she finds him amusing and endearing. Her eyes rove over the room with a keen and acquisitive look until they alight on me. Curiosity sparks like a blue flame in her eyes and she strides forward towards me. Her fingers brush over me and her voice is quiet and intrigued as she says, "It's beautiful. Where did it come from?"

"Just something my dad made when we were kids." Cael's voice is sharp and comes from the other side of the room. He still won't come near me then.

"Oh, I heard about your dad." She says in a much more subdued tone. "Is he-"

"He's fine." This time, even she can't miss the edge in his voice and she swallows and refrains from asking any more questions, looking chagrined.

Cael clears his throat. "He's doing better now actually." He says in a much more controlled and gentler voice than before as if to make up for his earlier shortness. "But that-I don't know, Gale just got sentimental all of a sudden and dumped her in my room. I'll have to get rid of her soon."

I thought I was dust before, but now I can feel whatever hope and happiness I'd managed to protect and harbour wither and die soundlessly, though everything within me burned to howl and scream in agony. Cael, who for so long had been the centre of my world, no, the whole world itself to me, thought of me as something unnecessary and unimportant, to be discarded and thrown away. All this time, I'd thought of myself as a dead thing. But right now, in this moment, I was truly dying. And it was long. And excruciating.

"Do you really have to?" The girl asked with a note of regret. She picked me up delicately and ran her fingers gently over my box and me. "It's really beautiful. Your dad must be very talented."

"He was." I hear his footsteps approach, closer than he has ever come before. "Look, forget about it. She's just a toy and you didn't come here to play with toys."

He steps up right behind her and places a hand, gently and almost caressingly on the small of her back. She jumps, startled, and in her surprise her hands come loose and my box goes airborne. For the first time ever, I am loose on the air, looking down at things from above rather than looking up from below. The experience is exhilarating and terrifying. I am suspended, floating, but only for a moment, a long, slow moment, before I suddenly feel myself falling, tumbling, fast, too fast. And now I can feel only terror. This has never happened to me before. What will become of me at the end of it?

There is a jarring impact and I feel a slicing, tearing pain all through me, as if a knife has cut straight through my midriff, determined to rip me into two. I thought I knew pain but that was only of an emotional kind, the kind that sits and festers and spreads inside of you, slowly deteriorating over time. This, right now, is physical pain, my first taste of it and it is immediate and sharp and has already possessed me completely. My whole body and head is full with it and I can't think or feel anything else beyond it.

I thought this would be the end of it and that first impact meant the end of my fall. But I was wrong. As I soon find out when a second shock rattles and sweeps through me like a destructive wave. This one feels even worse than the first. It rams into me and the pain this time is beyond anything I have ever experienced. It will not fade and it takes some time for me to realise that I am lying on something soft. Carpet. I have never touched it before. My cheek is against it. That is the only thing I can feel. My own feet, it feels like I have somehow lost them on the way down.

I try to twist my body round but then remember that I am a useless and lifeless thing that can not move. So I try to look straight up and see...Cael. He is looking at me. Cael is looking at me. For the first time in I don't know how long, Cael is looking at me and his face is not cold or impassive. He looks more like the child I remember. But why does he look like that? His eyes are too wide and his face too white. He looks horrified, upset, and scared. Why? I hurt so much. I want to whimper and cry. Why does it hurt so much? Why?

*

Cael stared down at the broken pieces of his beloved ballerina. When he had seen her tumbling through the air, he had watched with his heart in his throat, not sure when it had flew up and lodged there. Reason told him that that was an illogical response for him to have for an old toy, especially one he had decided to get rid of not five minutes ago. But he had reached out his hand to catch her before he was even consciously aware of it and now as he stared down at the scattered parts of her, he felt as though he was somehow culpable for what felt like the death of the dearest person in the world to him. No matter how he tried to rationalise it, he felt that his words from before had somehow caused this. And stupid as it was, he felt the remorse and grief and devastation hit him in the gut like a fist.

He was on his knees before he knew it. Beside the bits of his beautiful dancer. He scraped up the ruin of her and cradled her in his palms. Her head and neck were still attached to part of her torso. One arm broken in half. The other in smaller pieces. Her lovely legs now shattered stumps. She would never dance again.

There were no thoughts in his head. Just a keening white whine that grew louder and louder. There was no conscious thought to any of his actions. He was moving like an automaton. His whole body was a gasp bowed over in a question over his cupped hands. Far away, he could hear Amirah's voice, desperate and concerned but he couldn't make out any of the words. But what did that matter anyway when he was searching his ballerina's beautiful, soul-reflecting eyes and could see nothing there but his own despair and the beginning of a crack in one of her glass almond eyes?

He heard the patter of feet. Probably Amirah. He wish she would just go away already and leave him to wallow in the certainty that there was nothing left for him now.

"I don't know what's wrong. It's like he went catatonic all of a sudden." Amirah's voice, almost tearful with the fear and confusion she was undoubtedly feeling.

"Cael?" His sister's voice, cautious and gentle as she approached him. "What's happened?" She knelt down beside him on the carpet, a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "What've you got there?"

He wordlessly held out his hands for her to see and she gasped. "Oh no. No." She whispered. "How-?"

The world was shaking. No, he realised, it was him. He was trembling.

"Oh no, Cael, be careful." Gale reached out and steadied his hands. Some of the pieces of the ballerina had begun to slide off his fingers. She kept her hands on his and her head bowed, said in a low voice that tried to be hopeful, "Maybe we can get dad to fix her."

"You know he can't make anything anymore." His voice came out a dry, withered husk of itself and still the trembling wouldn't stop.

Gale sagged against him, her limp weight against his shaking one. "I know."

He closed his eyes, hoping this might seal away some of the goddamned shaking. Why wouldn't it stop? What was wrong with him?

"Cael. Look." Gale's voice sounded strange. It was choked and thin, with tension? Shock?

He opened his eyes and turned towards Gale questioningly. But she wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were riveted on the mess in his palms and he looked that way too. He felt as though he had been struck in the chest, in the gut, and over the head all at once. He had found the cure to his trembling. Shock that struck him dumb.

For right there in his hands, his crushed and broken ballerina was crying. From lidless and ductless eyes, tears were oozing out and trickling down the perfect face. His lips parted in wonder and awe. He watched as, unbelievably, her lips parted and formed silent words.

"I-I think she's trying to say something." Gale's voice was barely a wisp of sound and her eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them.

They both leaned down to catch the words. Whispered words that fluttered and ghosted across the outermost rim of his hearing but he caught them, felt them brush against his heart and soul like a caught feather and when he drew back to look at Gale, his face was wet with tears he hadn't let himself shed since he was a kid.

"What? What, Cael? What did she say? I couldn't catch it." Gale's voice was insistent and strained, perhaps from the shock of seeing her brother in such a distraught state.

"She said, 'I'm sorry. I don't want to leave you.'" His voice was a broken curl around the words.

Gale's face crumpled and when she looked down at the shattered dancer in his palms, a tear fell into his cupped palms to join the little pool that had already formed from the ballerina's sorrow.

He closed his fingers over the dead dancer. Once before, he had looked for a pulse in her and not finding one, he had thought there was none. He had thought that made her a cold and lifeless thing. But he had been wrong. He had always had a pulse and yet he was still a cold and lifeless thing. Perhaps from all those times he had pressed her tiny hand, looking for something he believed that only she could give him, some of her coldness had transferred to him and some of his own life into her. He wanted to be able to hold onto that thought. To believe that despite everything he might have given her something of some worth. Because he now knew that it should never have been about what she could give him but what he could give her.

From the beginning, even though it was foolish and pointless, he had given her his heart. Despite his best efforts, he had never been able to reclaim it completely. Without it and without her he had become frozen and had started to forget what it was like to be whole. He had started to wonder if he even had a heart. He now had his answer. It lay in pieces before him.

Author's Note

I wanted to write a story about the missed opportunities of unrequited love, the impossibility of some dreams and whether they're still worth it in the end, and the limitations of language and communication and how it can sometimes fail us in reaching the person we most want to hear our words. So please feel free to review and let me know how successful I was.

Reviews

[Cyndy Robinson]

Truly exceptional, and to the author's note, you have done that in spades. This story is timeless and can reach all ages, much like Harry Potter. It is a fantastic piece and was real pleasure. It can be read on a fairy tale basis, or as you were portraying, that pesky human emotion love we all seek to find and never quite get right. Extremely well written!

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. I am very much into fairy tales and mythology and folklore and so this was a story inspired by Anderson's The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Pgymalion myth. I think that fairy tales are timeless and that's because they're stories that continue to inspire the imagination, they're stories that beg to be retold and reinvented in new ways and so that's often what I try to do in my stories.

[Cherry_blossom_red]

Your writing style is simply riveting, the descriptors paint such a vivid picture. i give you many many thumbs up!!

[LeaTheHatless]

Reading the note I understand what you were going for but maybe the story still needs a bit of exploration.

The dry cut between the past and the present could still be in the third person. Switching the narrative like that was a bit strange to me, I get that it was meant to convey the fairytale vibe but maybe you could choose just one.

But I wonder if the box was closed at one scene, how could she have observed everything that happened? And if it was open all the time wouldn't that be bit strange for someone that claims he is too old for ballerinas? (I might have misread things, sorry for that in advance)

I really liked this story, it was so full of pain and emotion. I was just expecting things to evolve a bit more but maybe you can develop into a full book. If so:

It's important to explore the evolution of the dementia.
Explore the relationships between characters a bit more.
Or keep things vague and describe it solely from the ballerina's perspective. That would be an interesting take.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I guess you could say I had been experimenting with the whole third person and first person thing. To me, a third person narrative fit Cael as he's a character who's distant and somewhat detached from his emotions. His head's an impossible place to get into thus readers and even me as the writer don't get to see the story through his narrative voice. The ballerina on the other hand has no mental or emotional barriers. Her emotions are out in the open and she gets lost in them so for her voice to dominate the narrative made sense to me. As for the whole closed box, I'm not sure what you mean since as far as I recall she only observes her surroundings when her box is open. She can still feel and think when the box is closed however. Cael claims he's too old for ballerinas but that's all it really is, a claim. Rationally, he knows she's an inanimate object and as an adult male, she shouldn't have any special significance to him and yet she still does. This contradiction manifests in the fact that he leaves her box open but avoids looking at her. You can say he's in a form of denial, I guess. I currently have no plans to revisit this story as a novel. I plan to write a novel but it's completely unrelated to this story but I appreciate your comments nevertheless and am grateful you took the time to read this story. I hope you enjoyed it despite its flaws.

[LeaTheHatless]

I did enjoy it and I'm glad you are working on a novel. Good luck in your future projects! :D

And thank you for taking the time to replay. It's nice to sometimes understand why the author choose to do things in a way. :)

[Scheherazade]

You're very welcome. I enjoy talking to people about my writing and stories. :)

[Mira]

It took me a while to read this but I would like to say that it was totally worth it! You are a gifted writer, creative and imaginative, your use of vocabulary really stunned me! I would hang on to your every word, engrossed in your story. The way you write makes one feel like they're a part of the story, and that's a wonderful quality you can rarely find in an author these days.
I would love of you to write back on my stories and poems, any feedback is appreciated! Thank you so much for sharing, may you continue in your path of writing.
Love and regards,
Mira.

[Scheherazade]

Thanks so much and I will absolutely read and feedback some of your stuff.

[Jesse W.]

I enjoyed this story very much. The relationship of Cael/Gale was interesting, while the overall story is very much like a fairy tale. That being said, you had a lot of run on sentences that could have been split into two or three sentences. It would have made the story flow much better. The dad's mental instability came out of left field for me, it could have used some build up to that point. Otherwise I enjoyed this story very much. Nice work :)

[Scheherazade]

Thank you very much. I am working to improve on making sentences more concise.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

The story is rather malnourished like an anorexic model with tapeworms. You have so many interesting things but none of them are fully explored. Example for this is Cael's and Gale's dad going bonkers that'd be more impactful if we had seen it slowly happening and not just some kid at school telling Cael his dad is nuts and near the end that just kinda fades out without any closure. Weirdly story is also cluttered with many needlessly overlong descriptions yeah i expect that from you but in your first story they'd take you on a ride trough colorful imagery while still keeping you tethered to the story while in here they are just kind of in the way there's some descriptions that feel redundant and some feel nonsensical. Nonsensical one would be the one where ballerina describes Gale looking like a desert princess and having a smile of a sphynx. The reason they are nonsensical is cause ballerina says that and she's a toy I can understand her learning words from listening to their dad while he's making her but I doubt he was blabbering about sphinxes,even tho he was a nut job. And yeah that's also a bit of a nitpick I'd like to add, ballerina is too poetic for a being that came to be in a workshop of an toy maker. I can see that in some parts she takes the role of the narrator so that might be your reason. In the end I did like the story and the ending was a really good payout for all the time you spend with characters and it leaves an impact but I think it could be much better.

[Scheherazade]

I always feel that a short story is like a snapshot, a photograph rather than a film. So when I'm writing one I tend to start in the middle rather than the beginning. I try to show a character as he is in the present and give some indication as to why he is the way he is by touching on some of the significant moments of his origins. To go into Cael's dad's gradual breakdown would probably take up the better portion of a novel and it was never meant to be the prime focus of the story, just something that feeds Cael's jaded and distorted view of the world. I also wanted to have Cael thrown into confusion and chaos. He's never really aware of his father's crisis until he's suddenly thrown right into the middle of it. For him, it comes out of the blue and completely throws him off-kilter because he's never seen his father so weak and vulnerable or even thought him capable of it. The moment when you finally see your parent as a frail and flawed human being rather than as an invincible hero is, I think, an irreversible one that forces a kid to move that much closer to adulthood and does often tend to come in abrupt brief moments. With the ballerina, I wanted her to be the embodiment of those feelings of longing and loneliness that come with unrequited love. My aim in the story was to explore how language, one of our most creative and effective ways of communication, can still fail us even with all of its poetry. So the ballerina has all these expressions of her love for Cael but they never reach him despite the depth of her words. I kinda threw realism out the window when I wrote this story but I believe that it doesn't matter where you come from or what you are, there's a poet in all of us. (After all Charles Dickens came from a poor family who went to prison for debt and thus required him at age nine to leave school for a bit and work at a blacking factory). I believe that if you speak with passion and conviction, then even the words of a soulless a*****e like weaselface George Osborne would come out sounding like poetry so long as they come from the heart. The ballerina thinks she's a mechanical invention without a heart and soul, never realising that her words reveal so much feeling and humanity. But anyway, I appreciate your criticisms and will try my best to act on them. I just wanted to explain some of my rationale and goals behind the story. Overlong descriptions is an ongoing battle for me but I'll keep some of what you said in mind as I go back over my stories and edit today. I've come up against a wall in the current story I'm writing so I figure might as well go back to some old ones and use the feedback I got from others.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

Well yeah his dad's behaviour is obviously meant to influence him but I wish we could see a bit more of his father not really the whole backstory but like a scene or two more where he spends time with them even tho,as I said, it still does it's job pretty well. Yeah I understand that ballerina has no other means of expressing her feelings and that idea was executed neatly most of the way trough cause you mostly used simple metaphors and comparisons. In the end as i already said i really liked the story but when I'm writing reviews,or at least when I'm writing them before Monday and on Monday, I prefer to point every petty niggle despite my personal enjoyment and it's nothing you should take to heart it's more of a note for your future works because you have rather nice works but I'd rather see you improve than stagnate.

[Scheherazade]

No, absolutely, I appreciate it greatly. Anyone can be a writer but it's not everyone that can be a great writer, take the Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey hacks. And call me ambitious, I don't just want to be a writer, I want to be a great writer, the likes of J.K.Rowling and Tolkien who can immerse readers completely in worlds and emotion. I know I'm still a long way off my goal and still have a lot to learn so I'm really grateful for any advice or suggestions that people give to make my writing better.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

Yeah and that's why my comments will be extremely cynical. Even tho they are not as much facts as my subjective opinion I like to think that after all the books and stories I've read I can sort of feel where things could be improved,this of course is not necessarily true but it doesn't hurt to try different approaches heh.

[Scheherazade]

No of course not. Every opinion should be valued and respected. Well unless, they're racist, homophobic, or misogynistic in which case those should just be thrown on the trash heap.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

I second that

[Scheherazade]

Hahaha, motion passed.

[richieb]

Scheherazade, I am in awe of your vocabulary, imagery and descriptive talents. Your style reminds me of the old classical masters. As far as reaching your goals in this story I give you an A plus. I was thunder struck from the beginning of your story and knew this was something very special. I am a very avid reader and your story, style and literary finesse are to be equal with many of the best. I cannot tell you enough what a great writer you are. Do not be depressed by the lack of reviews you have received. It takes a practiced writer with a trained eye to recognize what the writer is attempting to portray to the reader. The reader needs a certain stamina to appreciate the imagery that the writer has so precisely worked to create. I love our young people but too many in today's writing want to "shoot em up and kill em all" on the first page. I look for you to go far and achieve great literary status. I hope to enjoy more of your work. Many Blessings, Richie B.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. Yours are the kindest and best words I've heard. I can't tell you how much they mean to me and how happy they make me. I grew up reading Dickens and Austen alongside fairytales so maybe that accounts for my classical style as you call it? This was a story I very much wanted to write and I'm not sure I can articulate how personal and important it is to me. It was very much a story that was written out of emotion and passion and love for the act and art of storytelling. So thank you for taking the time to read it and giving it such glowing praise.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

Yep he sure makes people feel like neanderthals when they compare their vocabulary with his. And i can second that his works always paint everything in them with pinpoint accuracy. Granted somewhere it feels a bit exhausting as you said,and sometimes a bit unnecessary but it's what makes them feel grander and much more beautiful than other writers.

[Krizito]

This is one of those stories, that is worth every minute spent reading it...this is *breathless*

[Scheherazade]

Thanks so much.