my soul whirling above my head like a lasso

x

In the beginning was the Body.

Alphonse had the Soul, too—he’d been, in fact, mostly soul majority of the time—but the Body would argue they were about neck and neck now. Funny, that. Alphonse’s Body sank to the silt bottom of the river. The water, no longer warm as the day blushed dark over the hills. In two years, the Body would travel outside the German countryside, find a nest of disgruntled ex-cultists, and step between his big brother and a hot, brass bullet. A body-rupturing bullet. Its inventor, dead to the war that employed him, had dreamt cruelly of ripping a body just like this to shreds, so that even digging it out meant a second wounding. 

That was in two years. Today, the Body watched the Soul, or part of the Soul, wiggle impatiently against its tangle of bones, that heavy, complicated coat. I’m sorry, said the Body. I messed it all up, didn’t I? 

If the Soul said anything, the Body didn’t hear. Already a fragment of it was floating unmoored into the clouds, how it always did when bored by the banal concerns of the material world, eager to chat with lingering spirits about things far more interesting. Like meteors, or silent film. 

Alphonse’s Body wished Edward would come sooner, so they could make up. In the wagon, they’d said things to one another—terrible things. Terrible, because they loved one another. They’d learn to laugh about this later, but now the Soul was drifting farther and farther away, and Edward had not reappeared from when he’d stormed off into the street, eyes bright with furious tears. 

Only Edward’s voice could snap the Soul back to the Body.

Wait for me, called the Boy at the Gate. 

Come back, Al. As blue arrays crosshatched his skin. 

Get your butt down here! Came the mythic force that, again and again, drew Alphonse through the verge. Wake up, Al, did you hear what I said? And the Body blinked blearily awake. At the mouth of their tent, Edward announced the news with glee: he’d finally found a Job, capital J, a chauffeur for some sour-faced government official. In a brown bag was an apple strudel for them to split; such simple pleasures.

Al, Edward called, when he’d lost that job two months later, let me in. His face, flushed from shame and something else. Coat rumpled, buttons done up wrong. Most of all, it was the black eye that shocked the Body most: such sheer ugliness did not belong to Edward. In his back pocket, three sour, crumpled euros.

And—

Alphonse, he’d whispered, c’mere, silly, when the Body, in hysterics, begged him to take another job, any job, if they had to starve, then so be it. 

You think I’d let that happen? Edward scoffed into Alphonse’s neck as they lay stacked on top of each other, crushing the season’s cold that crept like a weed between their two limp, shivering bodies. I’m Edward fuckin’ Elric. But something had crept into his voice without them noticing. It’d come from an old, mossy place the Body and all bodies would come to know, a place much closer to them here than it was in Amestris. For two days, Edward lay on his side, staring at the gray corner of the room without moving. Their research on the Thule Society—he’d taken to it with a dog’s joy—lay strewn on the floor, abandoned. 

Edward never complained. But it was clear that caring for two mortal, hungry boys was taking its toll. If only the Body didn’t thirst, Alphonse thought. Didn’t get sick with little rain. Didn’t cramp in the winter draft, the muscle failing, a dead leaf. 

If, if, if.

Then, on the third day, Edward stirred. Ironed his best shirt. Kissed the bridge of Alphonse’s nose, and, on his way back to the world of the captive living, sent a look over his shoulder that jolted the Body with a heady, luminous memory: a boy's red coat flickering, like a promise.