Counting

When you were little, you learned to count. First there you could count to one, but after that you got lost in many and lots. Then came two, and then three, and so on, forever and ever, and you wondered what the largest number in all the world was. You asked your mother and she laughed and said she didn't know, that no-one knew, not even the wisest person living, the old man who sits alone in his cave at the top of a mountain, with the wind and snow howling all around.

You wondered how she could know what the wisest person did and did not know, since she had never climbed to the top of the mountain to ask a question and have the wind tear the words from her mouth before they could reach the outside air.

You asked your father and he chuckled, in that gently rumbling way of his, and put you on his knee. He drew back the curtain and asked if you could see the stars outside, in the dark sky. There are as many numbers, he said, as there are stars in the sky. You wondered, then, how you could count in the daytime if there were no stars and he smiled. Just because you cannot see or hear or scent or touch or taste a thing, he replied, it doesn't mean that it is not there. There are stars that we cannot see, even at night, but our not knowing of them doesn't mean that they aren't there.

You tried to count the stars, many times, until gradually you realised that there was no limit to how high you could count, that forever and ever truly meant forever and ever, that you could count for the rest of your life and still never reach the pinnacle and you lost interest in what could not be achieved by anyone, ever.

***

Later you were in school and you were thinking about counting again, not how high but just how. How could you count to four and still get one? You could take one and one and one and one, and you would have four of you, but the four of you made one, one group, each willing to do anything for the others. You hadn't always been like this, of course. When you were born, you were one and one and one and one, and put together you made four. Then school happened. Even then, in the first year, the four of you never made one. There were two of you who gradually grew closer, became as close to brothers as two people who weren't could be, taking one and one and making one. So there were four of you, but it was really one and twothatwasone and one. You had to stay as a one, you could never let anyone be as close to you as the two were to each other, but you could watch and wish and dream of what might have been.

Then the other one grew closer to the two, not as close as the two were to each other but closer than you were to any of them, as it had to be, because they could never know. So there were four, but it was really one and threethatwasoneandahalf, on its way to being one and threethatwasone. The three tried, gently, to include you, to make you a part of their one-to-be, but you remained alone, one, because you had to, because you promised to keep the secret and because you knew what would happen if they found out.

Or you thought you knew. They did find out; they slept in the same room as you, took the same classes, they were intelligent and curious; it was inevitable, really, that they'd find out, and you sat in your room, packing, definitely not crying, it was the dust in the immaculately clean, if messy because it housed four boys, room that made your nose prickle and your eyes water. You wondered why you had even tried; one was one and all alone and always would be, so what was the point in coming to school to learn?

Then they came in and spoke, unconnected words and sentences tumbling out of their mouths and running into and around and through each other, almost unintelligible but eloquent and elegant because they spoke from their hearts without the words going through their minds, falling out unplanned and unthinking but the more true because of that. And you began to believe that maybe, just maybe, four could be fourthatwasone.

And now you were fourthatwasone, whole as one by yourself but more as a part of the entity. And so you knew that you could take one and one and one and one and get one, a larger, better, wholer one than its parts, but still one.

***

Later again, you're no longer in school. You have graduated, have become a member of society, an adult with adult responsibilities and worries, but also adult joys. You are counting again, still to four but in different ways. There are so many ways to split four. One and one and one and one, as you were in those inconceivable younger years that you barely remember, the ones before school. And two and one and one, the two can be the brothers in all but blood, or the closest friends who confide and help each other, brown and light brown heads bent nearly to touching each other as you rearrange numbers on parchment. Or the two in love, that took you so long to realise, because before when it had been two it had been two dark heads or two light heads, not one of each and it seemed so different at first. Now it is as natural as breathing, more, because you cannot imagine him not being there, do not want to admit the possibility exists.

Although two and one and one is an inaccurate way to describe it, because the one and one become two, by some connection or other, and the four still remains one. There is also three and one, but that does not happen, never does one of the four allow another to be a one, not after the reconciliation after that night, because you have all realised that you are incomplete without the four, that the four make you your better, more complete selves.

***

You remember, only the night before, when you thought that you were part of four and four was one. Foolish, you now know, and naive to believe that the laws of nature would allow you to keep playing with numbers. One and one and one and one should never have been allowed to make one and now you know that four never really was one, it was always four, weaker together because you depended on others when they couldn't be depended upon. And because of that you are now one, as you always were and always will be, and you promise that you will not delude yourself again. Even as you make it you wonder if you can keep it, but if you cannot than you will be betraying yourself. Everyone else has, in one way or another, and you suppose that it's your turn. Your body has betrayed you time and time again, but your mind has never had the opportunity.

You begin to laugh, at the irony, that everyone but your own mind has betrayed you and now you are handing it the opportunity on a silver platter. You laugh even more at that thought and you recognise, vaguely, the onset of hysteria, but you do not particularly care, as the green light shines from the mark in the sky and the sun dares to peep over the horizon with its false promise of hope.

***

Years have slipped by when you open the door to let him pad in from the outside. It's late summer, but somehow it always seems to be cold and wet and windy here. Isolated, too; you must protect society from you as best as you can. Besides, you are one, alone, so you may as well live it.

Except you recognise in you the hope, stirring, that maybe one and one can be twothatisone again. You realise that you are handing you mind not only opportunity and the silver platter, but also a dagger dipped in wolfsbane essence, should it care to use it. Somehow, though, you cannot muster the will to quash the hope before it stabs you and twists the knife. You are so tired of existing as one, without hope of more.

Dog becomes man and you stop counting, for a little while, to care for him and to hear him, listen to his words as you should have listened to your heart years ago.

After a while, days, maybe weeks, time has little meaning here, you realise that you can hope, that two is becoming one and a half and may become one. You feel mostly relief, that you can let yourself live again, instead of merely existing.

One and a half does become one, eventually, and you know now that it was not foolish to bend numbers, because nature did not intend for her creatures to be one and only one all the time.

***

Not so long has passed this time. You are sitting, trying to count the stars, to believe that there is no limit, no pinnacle, that you can never count all the stars because you cannot see them all, even at night. But you cannot count past one, the brightest of them, shining steadily, a guide to you as once a star guided three men on camels. You will never hear or touch or scent or taste him again. You will never see his face as he turns to you, only this distant star. But you know he is there, by you, that you will never be one alone again, and maybe four were one for only a little while but two will be one always.