The World to Come
by Eildon Rhymer
What if the Dark had won at the end of Silver on the Tree? The world is sliding into darkness, and only tattered remnants of the Light remain. Will, Bran and the Drews grow to adulthood, and each to their own destiny in this World to Come.
Part one: chapter six
BullyThey tried to laugh at him. "Look at the new boy," they taunted. "What a freak!"
Bran had endured this for his whole life, but no longer. Not any longer. I made a choice that will change the world, he thought. I can deal with laughing idiots like these.
One of them came capering up to Bran, sniggering. "Why're you so white? Did you fade in the wash, or something?" He looked back at his friends, smirking at his mighty wit.
Bran stood as tall as he could, and kept his face blank. "Why are you ugly? And you, there, why is your nose so long? Why have you got freckles? Why have you got dandruff?"
Their leader turned back to Bran, all laughter gone from his face. "What did you say?"
"Only that I will not let you pick on me. If you want to pick on someone, find someone who cares."
They scurried away.
"That was fantastic!" Bran turned to see a podgy boy at his side, his hands pressed together. "That lot make everyone's lives a misery, but you showed them."
Yes, Bran thought, letting out a slow breath. Yes, I did.
The Light would not have given him the strength to do such a thing. The Light had watched him for years, waiting for the right time to use him. They had watched him endure agonies in the playground, and they had done nothing. They had done nothing.
"Will you be my friend?" the podgy boy asked.
Pathetic, Bran thought. Even then, I was never as pathetic as that. Yes, he had practically thrown himself at Stanton's feet in his eagerness to have a friend, but he had never come right out and said so. He had kept that much of himself intact, away from the clutches of the Light.
"I don't need friends," he said coldly, "but you can be my follower."
The boy's eyes widened, but he nodded.
Another one came to him at break time.
"Is it true that you told Ed Norris and his gang where to go?"
Bran nodded, hidden behind his dark glasses. This one was weedy and spotty, a born victim.
"That's amazing. What's your name?"
"Bran," Bran said. "Bran Pendragon." Not Davies, oh no. He would never use that name again. The name belonged to the man who had snatched him from his true mother, and pretended to love him. It belonged to a man who wanted to deny Bran's true nature, and instead shape him into the very model of himself, stunted and frozen and alone.
"Bran." The boy pronounced it wrong, of course. The English always did, even when he told them and corrected them, as if it didn't really matter how they said his name. Only Will had ever…
"Bran," Bran said harshly, making it sound as Welsh as possible. "If you can't say it right, don't bother speaking to me at all."
The boy swallowed nervously. "What does your dad do?"
"I don't have a father." Bran dug his nails into his palm. "I have a… guardian. He's called Mr Mitothin. He's going to be really important soon. You'll see."
The boy looked unimpressed. "Most people here have important fathers. It's that sort of place. Important, but thick. I'm here on scholarship. That's why they pick on me."
Bran eyed him slowly and obviously, from his scuffed shoes to his greasy head. "I don't think it is," he said. "They pick on you because you let them. People who let themselves get picked on have only themselves to blame."
The boy started to sniffle, crying without shame. Bran despised him. Fourteen years old, and crying openly! When Bran wanted to cry, he screwed his face up and clenched his fists and willed the tears to go away. He had not cried, even in private, since… since…
He walked away and left the boy without a word.
He was walking back to his House after lessons when he heard it, the unmistakable sound.
Bran froze, clutching his books to his body. Fists and laughter; tears and cries of, "Don't. Please don't." Curled on the floor, looking up at boys taller than the sky. "Freak," and "weirdo," and no-one coming, no-one stopping it no-one caring…
"No." The books fell to the floor. He was forward, round the corner of the building, and on to them. The first one was big, but Bran hauled him off bodily, taking him by surprise. His side-kick gaped, then, "Stay out of it, Pendragon." It was a pathetic attempt to sound threatening.
Bran grappled the ringleader to the ground, and knelt astride him. "Don't you dare." He slammed the bully's head into the tarmac surface. "Don't ever bully someone again." Each word came with a blow. "And now you're crying," Bran hissed. "Not so tough now, are we?"
Hands hauled at his shoulders, pulling him off. Bran clenched a fist and swung it round, striking the side-kick in the jaw. Behind him, the victim cowered, watching it all with wide eyes, but making no attempt to join in. Bran wanted to strike him, too, to slap him on his pathetic little face, but he did not.
"What is this?" bellowed a grown man's voice.
They froze, bullies and victims alike, in the universal posture of children caught by a master. Bran would have no part of it. He stood tall, and looked the teacher full in the face, knowing that he could see the master's eyes, but the master could not see his. "They were picking on this child," he said. "Two of them against one. I stopped it."
"He tried to kill me!" cried the leader. Blood was trickling down the back of his neck, and he was snivelling.
"Of course I didn't," Bran said. "I intervened to stop an assault. The school does not condone bullying, I believe?"
Something about his own voice made him remember, then. Will Stanton standing before an adult, and speaking to them not as a child, but as an Old One, always steady, always sure. It almost made Bran falter and lose everything he had gained. I will not model myself on him. It made him feel sick, to think that he had almost done so. Instead, he thought of the crystal sword, and the power that had flowed through him when he had held it. I am the Pendragon, he thought, and this man is nobody.
The master turned red. "It doesn't condone fighting, either. You will see the Headmaster, all three of you."
"But Bran saved me," the victim piped up. Not a child at all, Bran realised, but a boy in the same year as him. They all looked so young. They prattled of foolish things, and their eyes held such innocence. They did not know the treachery that could lie at the heart of those who spoke of good. They did not know what it was to choose.
"Then of course the Head will take that into account," said the master. He pulled out a notebook to jot down their names. Bran's, though, he knew without asking. The bully had known it, and the victim had, too, though Bran did not know any of them.
He wondered about that, as he walked away.
end of chapter six