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 two: chapter four

Left behind

Her mother was fretting again. "Jane!" she called, her voice querulous. "Make sure there's enough sugar. Is the bathroom clean enough?"

Jane scrubbed fiercely at a stain on the working surface. She did not like the bitterness that she so often felt. It bubbled inside her until it felt as if her chest was going to explode. When she smoothed her clothes down, ready to return to her mother, she often smoothed her face, too, and carried the movement down across her body, pressing down on those things that she could not show.

"Jane!"

Jane let out a long breath. "Coming." She smoothed nothing away this time, but when she picked up the small tray, with its tea and biscuits, she clutched it tight enough to turn her knuckles white. The surface of the tea quivered as if with a coming storm.

Her mother was hunched on the couch, knees covered with a thin blanket. She looked twenty years older than she had looked when her husband was still alive. She had not painted a single thing since he had disappeared. Drained of life and energy, she spent her days watching television, and worrying.

"Anything on?" Jane still tried to be bright. She tried to talk. She tried to pretend. She did not think she could bear it, otherwise.

Her mother bunched the blanket in her hand, then let it go. "More about those sorcerers."

Jane set the tray down, and put the cup and saucer into her mother's outstretched hand. "Do you think they're real? It's hard to believe, the things the government's saying about them."

"Don't say that!" Tea slopped over the edge of the cup, spilling into the saucer. Her mother's head darted from side to side, in case government enforcers were hiding behind the couch or lurking behind the curtains, listening to everything.

Jane sat down, perching on the edge of the couch, hands clasped on her knees. "It is hard to believe, though, isn't it, mother? I mean, magic, in this day and age… But, then, a dozen years ago, the idea that Britain could become a police state was as laughable as magic. Once people accept one impossible thing…"

"I don't want you to talk like this." Her mother put the tea cup down. "I've already lost my husband. I couldn't bear it if I lost you, too."

The television flickered darkly, with its dramatised scenes of dark sorcerers cackling as they struck down innocents. The acting was bad, but sometimes the television showed fuzzy films showing distant views of real so-called sorcerers. The sorcerers could be anywhere and everywhere, the television constantly told them. All loyal citizens were to denounce anyone who showed the slightest signs of sympathising with such a one.

"They killed your father, Jane!" her mother shouted, suddenly vehement. "It makes sense. They're behind everything."

But they aren't, Jane thought, the thought coming into her mind so clear and certain that it was as if someone else had spoken it. They're trying to stop it. The government was behind the sorry state that the world was in. The sorcerers were opposing the government, and that meant that they were on the side of good. We should help them, Jane thought. I should help them.

She bit her lip, frowning anxiously at the tenor of her thoughts. The sorcerers were just an invention of the government. They were probably laughing even now, vying with each other to invent an even more ridiculous lie for the sheep-like people to believe. How it must amuse them to watch the country torn apart with suspicion and paranoia because of something that did not even exist. They could not be real. But they are, her heart told her.

She got up and stamped back towards the kitchen, leaving her mother to her lies. Jane had spent ten years suppressing her heart. While her mother lived, that was all she could ever do.

The doorbell rang before she had left the room. "Is that Simon, early?" her mother trilled. "Or is it…?" She pressed her hand to her chest.

Jane could not entirely suppress the fear that coursed through her. She was only human, after all. An unexpected knock on the door could lead to many things, few of them good.

Once, she had dreamed that they came to take her away. They had cold, silver eyes, and black gloves, and faces that did not know how to smile. They led her to a car with blackened windows, and she was terrified, but she was excited, too. At least when she was terrified, she was also alive. She was feeling. She was so tired of bleakness and emptiness, trapped in the same four walls.

She edged quietly to the door. "Who is it?"

"Simon."

It was her brother's voice, but it sounded different from normal, though she could not tell how. Sometimes she still started with surprise to hear her brothers speak with the voices of men. She had been the adult in the house since she was fifteen, but sometimes she wondered if she would ever stop thinking of herself as a child.

She unbolted the door, and Simon came in. His eyes were shining. She could almost see the thoughts and feelings churning beneath his skin, like parasites desperate to burst out.

She stifled a burst of jealousy. "You're early," she told him. "You're never early. I'm not ready."

"Jane?" her mother called. "Is that Simon?"

"Go through," Jane urged Simon. "Talk to her, while I work on dinner."

"I'd rather talk to you," Simon said. "I've got something to…"

"Talk to her." Jane surprised herself with her vehemence. The nameless feelings were still there, so close to the surface on Simon's face. She wanted to claw them out. It wasn't fair! It wasn't fair! She smoothed all thoughts away. "You visit so seldom," she said. "She looks forward to it so."

"But it's so hard," Simon said. He looked resentful, those bubbling emotions quenched a little by her words. "She makes things so hard. She brings me down, and things have been hard enough..."

I have it every day. Jane dug her nails into her palms, into the well-worn grooves there. Every day for ten years.

Simon sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm being selfish." His voice was flat, as if he was saying it for form's sake, and did not really mean it. He stiffened his shoulders and headed for the living room, like a martyr destined for the sake.

Was it possible to hate someone, even as you loved them, Jane wondered. But the word "love" felt cold in her mind. It was like a ghost city, seen in dreams, always far away, always for someone else.

She heard Simon greet their mother, and heard her mother's reply. The television went off. It never went off for Jane.

She retreated into the kitchen, closed the door. She could no longer hear their words. Her hands shook as she busied herself with plates and cutlery. She cleaned a cup that was already clean, and stirred a sauce that was not yet on the heat.

The door opened, and she tensed, clutching the spoon, then dropping it. Simon came in. "She wants more tea. It wasn't strong enough last time."

"You pour it, then." Jane jabbed her finger towards the pot, though she kept her voice quiet. "There's still some in the pot."

Simon made no move to do so. He put the tea cup down on the kitchen table, and stood beside it, clutching the back of a chair. "I wanted to talk to you." His voice was bubbling again. "Something's happened."

She felt herself turn cold, even though his tone was not at all grim. She did not ask him what. She knew he wanted her to.

"I met someone a few months ago," Simon said.

A girlfriend, then. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Even in this terrible and uncertain world, people still met and fell in love. Children were born, and life was passed on. She saw then through her windows, sometimes – couples walking hand in hand, still foolish enough to smile.

"I can't tell you his real name," Simon said, "but he goes by the name of Phil. He's in the Resistance."

Love would be better, she thought. She turned her back on Simon, and thrust the spoon into the sauce. It scraped horribly on the bottom of the pan. "Then he'll be captured soon," she said, "if he tells that to strangers."

"He didn't tell me that at first, of course." Simon spoke as if she was ridiculously stupid, not really worth bothering with. "It was weeks before he trusted me. He had to see if I was worthy. It was like a test, I suppose."

"And you passed." She closed her eyes. Things spun away from her in her mind, fleeing and leaving her. She was alone at the centre, unable even to call. "How you must have liked that."

"I've joined the Resistance, Jane," Simon blurted out. He sounded impossibly pleased with himself. "At last I'm doing something. I've been sitting around for far too long, moping and complaining, but never doing anything. Everyone has. Well, let them carry on moping, but I'm out there doing something. I'm fighting for them, even if they're too afraid to fight for themselves."

Not everyone can fight, she thought. She wanted to hurl that that him, confront him with the reality of living with their mother. Or sometimes people have to fight so hard just to get through one day without screaming, that nothing else is possible.

She did not say that. Her life was built on never saying what she felt. "You shouldn't be telling me this," she said, instead.

"I had to tell someone," Simon said. "Jane, I feel so alive. I feel like I used to feel years ago, before that awful school. See? I can even talk about that now. It can't hurt me. Nothing can hurt me. I'm alive again. I'm going to change the world."

"Or die," she whispered. "Or get us all killed. They do that, you know. They strike at the families of people who are known to be in the Resistance. Ignorance might have been a defence, but probably not. Still, you shouldn't have told me. You shouldn't tell anyone."

"I thought I could trust you." She had finally succeeded in killing the excitement in Simon's voice. She took no joy in it. "I haven't told anyone else, just you."

"I'm sorry." She passed her hand across her face, and through her tangled hair. I'm just jealous, she thought. I want to slap you for your naivete. I want to be you. I want you to live as I do, just for a month. "I'm just afraid," she said. "It would break mother's heart if anything happened to you."

"It won't," Simon assured her. "And, if it does, I am not afraid."

A child, she thought. He was a boy in the badly-fitting body of a man. Perhaps their whole generation was like that. They had lost their childhoods to despair and darkness, but part of them would forever remain a forlorn child, wishing that the world would come back for them.

"Take mother her tea," she said wearily. "Don't breathe a word of this to her."

Simon nodded. Only when he was safely away did she cry.

End of part two: chapter four