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.
Three chapters today, because it's the weekend.
Part two: chapter three
Just words
Today, thought Simon, not for the first time, I will do something to change this.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, pressing his jacket tightly to his body. The wind was chill, racing across the barren wilderness that had once been houses. A hotbed of dissent, the authorities had deemed it. When a fugitive had gone to ground, and no-one would divulge any information, the whole estate had been burnt. Most of the inhabitants had got out in time, but not all. People whispered in the shadows, saying that those who died had been the lucky ones.
A clock sounded from behind him. He counted the hours, tensing up a little, as everyone always did, in case he had accidentally missed the curfew. It reached six, and then stopped. It was a gloomy day, and looked dark enough for an hour later. The winter curfew was seven, unless a special pass was obtained to travel to a government-sanctioned talk or rally in the evening.
An old man approached him, shuffling along with a hungry-looking dog. Simon did not make eye contact. As their steps brought them closer and closer to each other, he looked over the rubble, blinked, and looked at the ground.
"Afternoon," the old man mumbled.
Simon swallowed, and fought the urge to look around him anxiously. The flesh on the back of his neck crept, as if with unseen eyes. "Good afternoon," he said eventually, in reply, but the man was past him now.
Simon almost called after him. What a fool he was, to still speak so to strangers. People had learned to keep their head down and touch nobody. The whole world had eyes and ears, and innocent words were twisted and turned into admissions of treachery.
He walked on. A woman passed him, and then a child. Neither of them said a word. They were like ships on their own little course, encased in a shell of metal, keeping them from others.
It wasn't like this when I was young, Simon thought, but memory was painful. He tried not to remember any more than he could help. Not everything could be suppressed, though. He remembered old ladies smiling and talking to him, ruffling Barney's hair, telling Simon how tall he was, and, oh, what a pretty little girl Jane was. He remembered his mother stopping to chat half a dozen times before she reached the local shop, and his father hailing people from the garden, or waving from the car.
It was as if the pool of words had dried up. People now said only what they had to say, and only to those they could trust. People had flown apart, the bonds between them broken. The only people who reached out were the bullies and the rulers and the lords, and they reached out to dominate, not to greet.
A car drew up beside him. Simon's heart sped up, beating audibly in his ears. "Show me your papers," a voice commanded. Simon remembered when such a voice would have been placatory, and orders phrased as requests, with a "sir" at the end.
Simon reached into his inner pocket, and pulled them out. His hands only trembled a little. He knew his papers were in order. He was heading to the shop to get some milk, and there was nothing illegal in that.
The man in the car looked at his papers. If he was disappointed to find them in order, he did not show it. "Your purpose for being out?"
"I'm going to the shops." Simon kept his head down. "I've run out of milk." He was not walking the most direct route, but the man clearly did not know the area, for he did not comment. He handed Simon his papers back, and continued on his way.
Simon let out a shaky breath. It happened often. "If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to fear." That's what the government said. Simon knew it was true. "The trouble is," Barney had said once, "the government defines "wrong" according to their own whims and their own purposes." Jane had turned white, hissing at Barney to be quiet, even though they were huddled in their mother's kitchen, watched by no-one. Simon had said nothing, but he had wished that he had been the one to say it, not Barney.
He hurried towards the shop. I will do something, he thought again. It was a shaky thought, almost comforting in its familiarity. Because I keep on saying it, he thought, with a sick feeling inside him, and it's become just words. I never do anything.
For six years, he had drifted. He had started at a good university, but after only a few months, all universities had closed down, replaced with training colleges designed to churn out government loyalists and enforcers. Simon had joined hundreds of thousands of students on the streets, where little work was available. He had found work eventually, but it was manual labour, and nothing he dared tell his mother about. It allowed him to share a house with three other young men. The rest he could lie about, on those occasions when he could not avoid a family visit.
He had thought of Pendragon surprisingly often. He thought of him again, as he scurried through the dusk, past the wreckage of a place that had once been full of life.
Pendragon had been a bully, but he had protected Simon, too, in his way. Pendragon had contacts high up in the government, and he was doubtless in a position of power and influence by now. He was the sort of person who could not be anything else. On the last day of school, Pendragon had as good as offered Simon a job, and Simon had turned it down, still suffused with the naivete of youth. He had wanted to strike out for himself, making something of himself, prove that the bullies had not won.
Instead, he had this. It was a shadow of a life. He was on the fringes, eking out an existence, keeping his head down, dying a little inside with every day that passed.
"I really will change things," he whispered out loud. "If not today, then soon." Hidden in his pocket, his fist clenched in secret resolution.
This was no life for him. He was made for more. He would have been more, if school had not derailed him and forced him to become something else. Perhaps he would seek out Pendragon and accept his offer after all. At least then he could be someone. He would be in a position to make a difference. He could exercise his power to make life easier for the people he cared about. He would never again have to cower in the twilight, heart pounding in terror, just because a man in a car asked to see his papers. He would be the man in the car. He would be in control.
Something surged towards him, scraping and scratching. He gasped, leaping out of its way, before he realised that it was a sheet of plastic, blown by the wind across the wasteland. He tried to smile, tried to ease his fear. See? he told himself. That's what I meant. You can't live always in fear.
He just wanted a day when he did not awaken with an ache in his chest. He just wanted a morning when he did not drag himself out of bed, knowing that nothing stretched before him but uselessness.
"Good evening," a voice said.
Simon swung round. A young man around his own age had emerged from a side road. He was wearing a scuffed leather jacket, and his fair hair looked as if it needed a cut. He was smiling, and Simon almost smiled back. He liked the look of this man. Then, when the man drew closer, Simon saw that the smile did not reach his eyes. He knew what wariness looked like. It stared back at him whenever he looked in the mirror.
"I need to get on," Simon mumbled, making his excuses before the man could ask him anything. "Shop's closing soon."
"I know," the man said, still smiling. "I've often seen you walk this way. You always seem so preoccupied. And sometimes…" The smile faded. Simon thought he was supposed to understand the meaning in the man's expression, but he did not. "Sometimes you speak to yourself…"
Simon turned cold all over. He thought the end would come in a black car, and stern men with steely eyes. He had never looked for it on a wind-torn street corner, from a man who, in another world, could perhaps be his friend.
The man leant so close that Simo could feel the warmth of his breath on the side of his neck. "You want to change things." It was clipped and urgent, completely at odds with the relaxed tone of his greeting. "Why don't we walk for a while."
Simon did not know if it was a request or a command. He nodded. It was the only thing he could do.
End of part two: chapter three