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 three: chapter five
Gilded cage
Soft music seeped from the room behind her. The light was pale golden, flickering gently as the diaphanous curtains drifted in the breeze. Jane could still taste the expensive chocolates, that had been left for her on a table, wrapped in a red bow. Her head was slightly fuzzy from her afternoon sleep.
She rested her forearms on the wrought-iron balcony, hands clasped above the darkness. In the west, the sun was fading, burning like a harvest fire in the smoke and ashes that filled the city sky. Other fires blazed beneath it, set by man upon the earth. Few nights passed without bomb or blaze, without raid or reprisal.
Not that Jane saw any of that. She was a princess in a tower, like Rapunzel, set above the world of men. But no prince would climb up to save her. This was her life now, and it would never end.
She lacked for nothing. No-one in all the world would ever dare to hurt her. Where other people struggled on the ground, she lived in the air. While they lived in ugliness, she was surrounded by all the beauty that she could ever dream of. There was art and music, soft fabrics and rich food. She lived in light and ease and comfort.
Jane leant out over the railing, as if she was straining for something out of reach. "Are you happy?" her husband asked her every night, and she would smile with brimming eyes, and tell him yes. "I want you to be happy," he said, and he was a man who always got what he wanted. She told him what he needed to hear. Sometimes she even believed it. But, at the same time…
She drew herself back, and rested her hands on her swollen belly. Six months along, she was. Her little boy, growing inside her, child of a man whom she did not love, but had been married to for six years. She did not love the child yet, but she hoped that she would. It was not the child's fault that the world was as it was. The child was not her prison. Her prison had been locked a long time before that, by her husband and her brothers.
"A baby." Her husband had been over-joyed, and had even cried a little. "My baby. A little boy. My son. An heir."
"Yes." She had smiled at him. "Your son."
He did not seem a stupid man. How, then, could he live this lie? He had forced her to marry him by blackmailing her with the life of her brothers. Did he really think that six years of gentleness could make her forget that? Did he really think that expensive gifts could make her love him?
It's because I'm too afraid, she thought, returning to the railing. Too afraid to tell him that he's wrong. He still had the power to kill her brothers. He still had the power to break her mother's heart.
The music came to an end. The machine changed to another disc, and started again, seedy and sensual. I should go in, she thought, picturing the open box of chocolates, and the heavy cushions on the velvet couch. Her husband had books only as works of art, and did not like them to be read, but there was always the television. Ordinary people could only watch government-produced propaganda, but her husband was a member of the elite, and their television could receive the full range of entertainment channels, denied to the masses.
She did not move. I'm afraid of that, too. It was a shaming admission, but she could not avoid it. I'm afraid of losing all that.
She liked the art and the music, the food and the comfort. She had spent years struggling to run a household and cope with her mother's depression, and it was a wonderful thing to finally be free from fear and the need to work. She had sacrificed her education and her future for her mother, and at last she had her reward. Her mother was safe, looked after by a full-time carer in the apartment below, and Jane was free. She spent her days at leisure, and she wanted for nothing.
She was terrified of losing it, and she hated herself for feeling that way. I am a coward, she thought. I always have been. She remembered how she had tried to stop Simon from joining the Resistance. She thought of all those days she had scurried through the town with her head down, hiding herself.
"Afraid," she murmured out loud, touching her belly, as if by doing so, she could give her son the courage that she lacked. She had been afraid in the dark days, and was afraid still, now that her life was full of light and gold.
Gunshots sounded in the street far below her. Holding her breath, she strained to see into the dusk. A man ran past, illuminated briefly by an orange street light, then hidden by the dark. Not long after, four men in black ran through the smear of light. She could hear them shouting, but the height made their voices thin and reedy, more like a plea than a command.
She let the breath out slowly, as her hands started to tremble. The men in black were the secret police, Pendragon's men. She had seen them kill a man once, far below her in the street. She had been too far away to see his face, and too far away even to see the blood, but that night she had lain awake for hours, unable to sleep for imagining it. In her dreams, the man had looked like Simon, or Barney, and once even like herself.
The guns sounded again. I don't want to watch, she thought. Heart fluttering, she began to turn away. I can't do anything. He'll die all the same, whether I'm watching it or not.
She walked towards the light and music of her apartment, but a man was there, standing before her.
Jane screamed, but her hands had risen instinctively to her mouth, and the sound was muffled and strangled. Safe! her brain gibbered. I'm supposed to be safe here! It was not her husband, not one of the servants. He was a stranger, tousled and grubby and smeared with blood. His side was bleeding, but there was no sign of pain on his face. Cold, she thought he was. Cold and merciless, a killer who would never feel remorse.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. He started it like a fact, not like a reassurance. His voice was soft, though. It made her want to believe him. "I just needed somewhere to get away."
Her knees gave way, and she sank to the ground, her unconscious mind realising the truth before her conscious mind could do so. This man was a sorcerer. He was the one she had glimpsed in the street-light below. He had ducked into the darkness, and now here he was on her balcony, hundreds of feet in the air, and a world away.
She should turn him in, of course. She should scream for help. If she did nothing, and her husband found out… Simon and Barney would die, and Jane would be cast out, or even killed.
"Please," she whispered. She raised one hand imploringly. Please, she whispered. Please go away. Please leave me alone. It would break mother's heart, and I… And I…
"Please save me," her treacherous voice said.
He touched her cheek, cupping her cheek in his hand with a gentleness that filled her heart with a yearning almost too painful to bear.
"I have another to save first," he said, and then he was gone.
End of part three: chapter five