The Other Side | Short Story

5

"The story about the boys," I say. "The glass in-between them," I say. "It wasn't glass."

Blue looks up at me, wary, as I speak. I tell him, the way secrets are told, "It was a mirror."

I am stood pressed against the invisible Divide. I watch Blue, and Blue watches me. I hold up my hand.

I hold it up gently, gently, like that hand is a lit candle, like I am moving through the still of night, afraid of the dark. 

I hold it up exactly against the Divide, even though I cannot see it or feel it. I have tattooed the distance of it behind my eyes. I know where I have to be.

I close my eyes and wait.

There is nothing. 

There is strain in my muscles from holding still. I breathe. I wait. 

A warmth slides up against my palm, slides up gentle the way precious things are dusted at, and then Blue's palm is slotted against mine. I think I want to cry.

I do not cry. I do not move. 

I can feel that the both of our palms are clammy, so I move slow when I map the very tips of my fingers down and up Blue's lines. I test the firm heel of his palm. I pinch his wrist. I trace the outline of his fingers, of all his fingers, every finger, and then I settle flat against him again.

It is his turn. He does the same. 

He touches me lightly enough for it to tingle, like leaving behind a scent. He writes something in the seat of my palm, but I do not know what it is. He writes it again and again, and then he pulls away.

When I open my eyes, he is gone. He has left the room and climbed down the ladder. I want to see him. I want to cry again.

*

He's unchained me. My ankle is free. When I look, I see that he's also removed the floorboards from the ladder.

I can climb down. I can leave. I am free to go.

Hours later, well past the time for my breakfast, I finally see Blue. 

He peeks up from the ladder, and he peeks shyly, shyly, because I think he is afraid that I am gone. But I am here. He sees I am here. 

I sit crisscrossed on my mattress with my hands in my lap, and I hold up a drawing of me, of an angry fire-breathing me pawing at food, and then I mime what I drew. He smiles like I knew he would, except, I did not know smiles could look halfway like crying.

He waves me over, and without waiting for me, climbs back down the ladder. I rise from my mattress. 

I step timid over the Divide because, I realize, I am shy at seeing his world, shy at his permission, shy at the missing weight of the chain around my ankle. 

I stand there on the Other Side and breathe, and I look down at my hands and dress and feet. I still look like me. But maybe I am already turning. Maybe I am already all wrong.

I climb down the ladder. 

The air is warmer, baked, like a stone oven. At the bottom, I see I am inside a cozy kitchen. Its cabinets and shelves and tables are heavy and brimming with food, with jars, with cooking utensils. Dried herbs and bulbs hang from the wooden rafters. A kettle trembles on a stove.

The space has only three walls, and is built open to the outside, to a hill that rolls away from the tower.

I look up. The sky is the same colour on this side.

On the hill I see a chicken coop. There is a fence for ducks and rabbits. There is a shed with two cows. I do not see Blue.

Down the hill a little ways from the tower is a quaint stone cottage. The lights are on, and smoke puffs from its chimney, so I go to it. I go to it and stand at the door, but do not knock. I do not try the doorknob.

Blue comes around the house, leading a horse behind him. He does not look at me. He does not touch me when he passes me the reins. I say, "I've never ridden a horse," before I pull myself up into the saddle.

Blue says something while looking away at the tree line, and I know it is because he is afraid. I look like a monster to him now.

He pats the horse and sends it trotting off.

I grip tight the reins. I clamp my knees against the saddle. 

The horse carries me along a worn dirt path, away and away from the tower, deeper and deeper into the forest, and I do not stop it. It does not matter that I do not know where we are going.

I want to see his side of the world.