At first, I refused to believe Eric when he claimed you dead. I thought for sure that you must have gone wandering through shadow, as I knew of your love for those fictional worlds that are our bloodright to traverse. I left Fiona and Brand to plot without me and left our remaining siblings to mourn your supposed passing while I traveled after you, seeking you as my destination. I traveled for many days before my journey ended abruptly on a shadow Earth in a place known as England. I saw you amid the crowd, and I felt my heart leap. Eager to have you in my arms again, I elbowed my way to you and embraced you heartily. However, you struggled against me. I opened my arms, and you pulled away, a look somewhere between alarm and confusion on your features.
"Forgive me," I said hastily. "I mistook you for my brother, who has recently vanished."
The man's expression on that face that resembled yours so closely turned from confused anger to pity. "Vanished? How? Since when?"
"Just recently," I answered. "Eric, another of my brothers, claims him dead, but I refuse to believe this when there is no corpse. Thus, I set out looking for my dear brother. I must have mistaken you for him at a distance, but now that I've gotten a better look at you, I can now see that you aren't the same person." It was a lie. I knew that, if this were not you, it was but a shadow of you. The resemblance was too uncanny for it to be anything else.
"I see," he replied. "Though, I don't see how you could mistake me for your brother at all. You and I hardly look alike. Our hair, to start."
"He's a half brother of mine," I said. "Still, we were very close. By the way, my name is Tobias Blaisdell." I gave him a pseudonym, and I'm still not sure why.
"Blaisdell?" he looked as though he were thinking. "I haven't heard of anyone by that name. Does your brother share your last name?"
"He might not," I admitted. "He might be living under a pseudonym. For all I know, he went into hiding. We all knew he and Eric never got along well."
"I see," he replied. "Well, my name is Carl Corey. It was nice meeting you, Blaisdell, although a little awkward with the hug. Anyway, I wish you luck in finding your brother before this plague does."
"Plague?" I asked. The streets seemed too crowded for there to be any sort of illness running rampant.
"You hadn't heard?" Corey replied. "It's extremely deadly. Very few treatments have been known to work on it. I wrestled with it myself recently and barely made it through alive."
"Sounds like you're a lucky man, then," I said. "As for myself, I'm new to town. I only came here because I had a feeling that this might be where my brother had gone. However, if there's illness, I doubt he would have stayed. I suppose I should leave myself before I catch it."
He nodded. "That might be wise," he said. "Fare well."
We went our separate ways.
I turned a corner and vanished into shadow, where I wandered for many nights before deciding to try seeking you again. Yet once more, I was led back to Corey. He was seated on a low wall. He blew on his hands and shivered as snow fell around him. I approached silently and draped my coat about his shoulders, and he looked up. "Blaisdell!" he exclaimed, rising to his feet and clutching at my coat.
I smiled and then turned away. Part of me wanted to remain with him and chat. However, I still hadn't given up my hope of finding you and didn't want to waste too much time on this false positive.
For some reason, though, his words stopped me. "Have you found your brother yet?"
I shook my head and then turned to face him. "I've searched far and wide but had no luck," I said. "Looks like you haven't had much luck yourself." I eyed his clothes, much dirtier and more tattered than I remembered them being. But then again, time flows differently between shadows. Who knew how long it had been since we had first met?
He shrugged, seemingly indifferent to his situation. "Such is life," he said. "But I'm tough. I'll be fine. Thanks for the jacket, though; it'll help. But are you sure you don't need it yourself?"
"I'm about to head somewhere warmer," I said. "But thank you for worrying about me."
We said our goodbyes, and I turned the corner to find myself in a pleasantly sunny shadow with a coat store nearby.
They say that three is a magic number, so when my travels through shadow led me once again to Corey, I decided to stay with him for a while.
We quickly grew close, Corey and I, and at times I even allowed myself to pretend that he was you. Between his appearance and his personality, this was easy enough a fantasy to believe. With Corey down on his luck, I decided to use my powers to help him by acquiring money for food and shelter for the two of us. To avoid suspicions, however, I tried not to be too extravagant in my spending. Thus, we lived modestly but not uncomfortably.
However, I feel that I should have expected what came next.
One day, I decided to buy us a large amount of cheap alcohol, and we talked late into the night as we consumed it. He seemed to be as affected by the booze as any citizen of shadow would be, and I played along and acted drunk even though it hardly had any effect on me. All of a sudden, a strange urge came over me, and as though compelled, I leaned over and kissed him, just as I had kissed you once. His reaction was much different from yours, however. Where you had refused me, Corey embraced me. He and I retired to the bedroom as a single entity, our hands and mouths wandering hungrily across the other's skin.
We stripped each other naked, and then he threw me down onto a bed and took me with a passion I had only heard about in the ballads singing your praises. I longed for him to call me by my real name, for him lose his composure and cry out "Bleys!" in his passions, proving that this was all some sort of cruel and drawn-out joke that my dear brother Corwin was playing on me. However, this did not happen. But in spite of this disappointment, I was not disappointed physically.
Once we were both sated, we held each other in silence for a long while, and I almost thought he had fallen asleep. Then, he spoke. "This must be an awkward thing to do with someone with such a strong resemblance to your own brother," he said.
"The resemblance was only fleeting," I lied, not wanting to explain that my actions had originated because of, not in spite of, the similarities.
"Did you ever find him?" Corey asked.
I shook my head. "I've given up hope," I said. "I searched and I searched, and each time I was brought back to you. I've taken it as a sign of his passing and that I need to finally admit that he's gone."
His embrace tightened around me for a brief moment. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said.
Corey's words stirred something in me, and I realized all of a sudden exactly what I had lost, my dearly beloved brother whom I had never had the chance to be loved by in return.
I wrapped my arms around Corey and buried my face into his chest, inhaling his scent, so similar to your own. It calmed me, soothed me, and the thoughts and emotions settled.
He played with my fiery locks. "What will we do, though?" he asked. "A relationship such as this, it may be dangerous. I thought I had hidden my feelings toward you well enough, but judging by your bold first move there, I must have been more transparent than I'd thought."
I shook my head. "I had no clue. I was just emboldened by drink," I said. It was another lie. What had emboldened me was the fact that I knew by then that he was merely a beautiful fiction of you, and that any rejection from him would mean nothing. "But either way," I continued, "you shouldn't worry about what others will think."
We talked to each other in drowsy murmurs until he fell asleep against me. I then got up, gathered my clothes, and left Corey and his world behind in order to return to Amber. Brand and Fiona needed me in their scheming, and I had already stayed much longer than intended. I left no note, but I did leave him with enough money to last him at least another month. My feelings toward him wouldn't allow me to leave him without any resources.
And this is how I abandoned you, amnesic and alone, in a distant shadow. It wasn't purposeful, of course. The problem was that I had assumed that Corey's actions that night were those of a mere shadow, not the actions of you, unfettered from the memory of us being siblings, finally doing to me what you had wanted to do all along.