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 fifteen

Footsteps

"Simon?" Barney touched his brother's shoulder. "Simon?"

There was no answer. Simon had been unconscious for several hours. Barney had called for help, but no-one had come. Long ago, or so he had been told, questions were asked if people died in police custody, but now nobody cared.

"I'll try again, Simon," he said. He limped the few paces to the door, and tried to peer through the tiny grille. He could see nothing but the blank face of the door opposite, but just as he began to move away, he thought he heard shouting.

"Nothing." He settled down again beside his brother. Simon's lips looked dry and bloodless, but Barney had already used up their scant allocation of water, gently coaxing it down Simon's throat. They had not been fed. It was over twenty-four hours, Barney thought, since they had been brought in, and they had been left alone for the whole time.

He did not yet want them to come. Soon, though, he would become so desperate from hunger and solitude that he would be begging for them to come, even though their coming meant torture. That was how the secret police worked, he knew. First the solitude, then the attention. Both were as bad as the other. It was a terrible thing to be so lonely that you were crying out for the coming of one who would hurt you.

But I can take it, he thought. I will face it, as long as they come before Simon dies.

He had no idea how badly Simon was hurt. Simon had once intended to be a doctor, but Barney's thoughts had always been on art, once he had grown past childish things. He did not know how much abuse the body could take before it gave up and died. He did not know how close Simon was to that point.

"You shouldn't have fought them," he murmured, stroking his brother's blood-caked hair away from his brow. "It was obvious they were going to win."

Barney had yielded instantly, recognising impossible odds. Perhaps it had been cowardly; perhaps he had just given up. It had already felt half like a dream, and he had been drifting into the reality of his premonition, moving towards it almost with a sense that this was right. Simon, though, had struggled, and tried to run. They had fought to take him. Throughout the terrible journey to their cell, Barney feared that Simon was dead.

Simon's eyes began to flutter. "Where…?" his cracked lips muttered. "What…?"

"Don't try to move," Barney told him gently. "You're hurt. We've been arrested. Remember?"

Simon's face crumpled. "Yes." It was a sob, a whimper of pain. "You let them. You didn't fight. You…" He bit his lip against the pain. "Coward," he whispered.

Barney did not contradict him. He was afraid – terribly afraid. He was terrified of the silence, and he dreaded the sound of footsteps at the door. He didn't want to be hurt, and he didn't want to die. A simple death was terrible enough, but to be captured was the worst thing of all. What if he broke under torture, and talked? What if he betrayed…?

"Your fault," Simon muttered. "Yours."

Barney sat very still. It would have happened anyway, he thought, but he did not say it. He did now know which of them had been followed. He did now know which of them had been indiscreet or unlucky, and betrayed their meeting to the enemy. He did not know whose fault it was, but he also knew that it did not matter. There could be no reproaches when you played a game of life and death. There could be no blame when death stalked them all every day.

"It's all over now." Simon's face twisted in a sob. "Nothing left."

"Try to sleep," Barney told him uselessly. "Your body needs to heal."

"What?" Simon gave a bitter bark of laughter, closer to tears. "So they can kill me or torture me? Best to die here, isn't it, now you've ruined everything."

Barney thought of the footsteps that would approach their door, sooner or later, inescapable. Everyone who joined the Resistance knew that this day might come for them, and they all claimed that they could live with that risk, because the cause was good. But it was one thing to say it, and another thing entirely to live it. He thought about all those others who had been captured before them, and wondered how they had faced their end, alone and afraid. Did they regret making the choices they had made? Did the fear unman them all in the end?

There was no comfort he could give. Words of comfort would be a lie, and he thought he was beyond words now. Simon turned his head away, and drifted into sleep, or unconsciousness, or the last drift into death.

Barney was alone, hearing only the scraping sound of his own breath. The silence trembled. No footsteps came, and every second without them was a reprieve, and every second without them was a curse.

His fingers were bloody, black behind his nails. He wondered if they would take his fingernails, if they would…

"No," he moaned to himself. Be strong. Be strong for Simon. He wanted to sob and tremble and scream. But I…

He shuffled to the edge of the cell, and pressed his face against the cold stone. This could not be the end. They were in England! He had seen so many terrible things. He had watched the world fall into tyranny and despair, and he had fought it. Since he was barely more than a child, he had fought it, and surely you could only fight a thing if you believe that it was real. But now, at the end of things, it seemed absurd. This could not be happening. This could not be true.

He had spent his childhood laughing and painting and playing games in the sun. He could not end it here, screaming in a cell.

Simon moaned. Barney's head snapped up. "No!" he gasped, because sound meant footsteps, and footsteps meant the end. Simon moaned again, and then was silent, and Barney crawled over to him, to touch his throat and find him still breathing.

It was only then that he realised that the footsteps had come after all. They were fast and loud, and someone was scratching at the door of their cell, clanking and turning and scraping, and…

The door opened. "Please," Barney said. "My brother's badly hurt. Please don't hurt him any more." And that was a surprise, the words coming as if someone else was saying them, because until the moment the door opened, he had thought he was going to collapse and grovel and beg.

"Come on," the person at the door urged him. "Quickly."

Barney blinked. The light from the corridor hurt his eyes after hours of gloom. It pulsed on and off, as people ran past in the corridor, and he could hear shouts in the distance, and the sound of guns.

"Come on!" the person shouted. "It's a rescue. Come on!"

Barney looked at the light, then back at Simon. "He can't walk…"

"We haven't got time." The man at the door peered desperately over his shoulder. "Got to go."

Barney looked at the door again, at the light, at the hope. Out there was freedom and sunlight. He would have to hide, of course, and live forever under an assumed name, but he would be alive. Here there was nothing but fear and pain and death. It was footsteps in the darkness, and a hand with a knife. It was torment and despair, and then it all ended in dark and nothingness.

"Go," he said, flapping his hand. "I can't leave him here. I'm staying."

The man at the door nodded once, and left.

Barney knelt there in his cell, and stared at the light outside. He did not move.

He was still there when the soldiers came with guns.

End of part two: chapter fifteen