Heart no Kuni no Brother

Ezra Icah

My hair was dark. I always thought it was because my sisters somehow sucked up all my mother's blonde-ness, leaving me, as the only son, stranded with the darker hair of my father, even though Edith was younger than me. My eyes were dark as well, a bland, washed-up brownish-blackish-gray almost the same shade as my hair, as if my creator couldn't have been bothered to choose a complementing color.

Truthfully, I was the very essence of "washed up", to the point that I was sure my picture could be found under the dictionary definition of the phrase. My features were all pale and indistinct, my eyes watery, my hair prematurely graying. I was sure I was somewhat attractive, considering how beautiful and handsome my family was, but one would have to peer past the sickness that enveloped me like a looming omen of death to notice it, and not many were willing to come that close, for fear of catching it.

I wasn't actually sick. I was born with a poor constitution and weak heart, so I became ill much easier than the average person, and I wasn't very strong. It took me three years to learn how to walk, although I began speaking and reading at a remarkably early age.

Being bedridden most of the time had given me the chance to devote immense attention to my studies, delving into Psychology, soaking up Advanced Biology, hardly struggling at all with College Calculus.

When I was ten and a half, my mother passed away, but I didn't learn of it until I was twelve. At the time, I had relapsed and was teetering on the brink of death, so until my condition had stabilized, I was banned from hearing any sort of distressing news or dealing with any pressure or expectations. Of course I was devastated after the fact, but then again, my mother had only visited me in our country home a few times and when she took my sisters on a vacation. All I remembered of her was striking blonde hair and a calming voice, but that may have been Lorina. Mother was too busy caring for Lorina, Alice, and Edith to waste time on a fragile boy expected to die at any moment, and rightfully so.

Lorina though, Lorina was my savior. She visited once every two months and stayed for two days, and she spent every minute of available time reading me stories and catching me up on what things were like back at the main house. It was unfathomable to me, that some place other than our country estate existed, especially that it was an even bigger house. Once a year, Lorina and Father and Alice and Edith would come visit all together, and I'd get to feel like part of the family again.

Alice was a shadow of a presence to me, one that frolicked and cheered just outside the window, one that left me with glimpses of blue dresses in trees and faint whiffs of new paper.

Edith, however, I detested with all my being. She was my tormentor; when she visited and was left alone with me, she would taunt me mercilessly about my fragile state, calling me more feminine than a real girl, and even tore up my schoolwork so I would have to do it over. She was very sneaky about it, so she was never caught, and I didn't want to be more of a burden with my complaining. She only came once a year, so I always made sure to hide duplicate copies of my work for those days, and prepared myself to sleep for long periods of time.

When I was thirteen, Alice, the shadow of my three sisters, went missing. Lorina left her in the garden to fetch a deck of cards, and when she came back she was gone. Lorina was distraught. Edith was upset. Father secluded himself even more so in his work.

But I got stronger.

Eventually, I could go outside and even run, ride horses, play games, albeit only briefly. I still needed enormous amounts of rest, but I could finally be a boy. Someone fairly dependable.

During the year that Alice went missing, I visited the main house, even going so far as to stay for months at a time. Father was immensely proud, Lorina glad to have a second child around to fill the empty space, and Edith finally came to rely on me, visiting my room to cry at night over how she drove everyone important away after Mother's death.

When Alice returned, looking not a day older than when she had disappeared, I retreated to the countryside once more. I was intruding again, and on the verge of a relapse from the city air anyway, so it was for the best.

Unexpectedly, Alice followed. After a month, she also took up residence in the country house I had practically called all my own. Edith refused to listen to her chatter about talking rabbits and people without faces, so she came to 'recover from the mental trauma acquired during her disappearance'. Truthfully, she just wanted someone to listen to her blab about imaginary friends.

I humored her. How was I any better, any more normal? I had lived my entire life alone with only a tutor, chef, maid, and butler. So what if she liked to talk about her inane adventures? She was family. And she turned out to be the closest to me, in terms of personality. A similar love for books, mutual curiosity, a bit of a romantic side. Our senses of humor differed, as did our senses of responsibility, but Alice was not bad nor insane.

Or, at least, not completely.