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Stories of the old world never fail to capture me. Tales of light and suns and moons and stars illuminating a world where the dark fae didn’t rule us, and cities that stood taller than the highest tree.
Grandfather, before he passed, used to tell me the stories his mother told him. She was the daughter of one a ‘last one’ as we call them. Those humans who somehow survived all that war and every obstacle that the dark fae threw at them: famine, eternal darkness that swallowed up a once-light world, disease, battles, invasions and the morke.
Grandfather told me all about the blazing ball of fire in the sky, and that even when the sun went away, a second ball of white light would appear above and gleam down on us with the twinkle of the stars. Fantasies. Beautiful ones, but all the same, these are not truths in this new world.
It’s a hard picture to summon in my head, even with all the tales spun my way. Everyone in the village knows the old stories. Some cling to secret hopes that the world this once was will be rebirthed and come again. Others—like me—try not to dwell too much on what the dark fae have taken from us. It’s just easier to keep moving on through life, whatever scraps of it we have left these days.
Now, the world isn’t light. It is perpetually dark. A thick blanket of blackness is draped over us, suffocating us. And there is no escape.
I feel the pressure of the blackness as I slip out the creaky door of the farmhouse. Once, there was morning, noon, day, evening and night. Now, time comes in four waves: the Chill, the First Wind, the Warmth, and the Quiet. It’s how the whole village operates between labour, rest and meals.
Now is the Chill, so I tug the woollen shawl around my shoulders, hike up the heavy skirt of my beige dress and let my boots flatten on the wooden porch. The rest of the house is stirring awake now, prepared to make our first meals, readying themselves for the chores that lie ahead today.
My chores are of a different sort. They lie in the basket that’s hooked around my bare arm. It’s the twilight apples that my family grows for the dark fae, and I’m on errands today to pay our taxes to the guards and trade for some fish meat down in the heart of the village.
Hugging the shawl closer, I bow my head and step off the porch, dipping into the icy air sweeping all around me. It’s the only reprieve from the constant thick suffocation of the darkness, so I don’t mind the Chill all that much. But it doesn’t take too kindly to me, not this day.
I’ve barely made it to the foot of the downhill path when the first cough strikes through me. Fisting my hand, I bring it to my dry mouth and let the fit take hold. The force of the coughs have me hunched over, eyes leaking pained tears, face twisted into a grimace, but even still, it’s not the worst one I’ve had. I’ve had fits that have left me unconscious on the floor of my narrow bedroom before, and no one found me. I woke up, cold, alone and chest in ruins of agony.
‘Too poorly’, Mother often tells me when I ask if I should hang back with my sisters to help with the harvesting instead of taking the dreaded trek to the village. Guess she isn’t wrong. Still, I do love the trees. How I would like to be well enough to care for them, feed their soil with fertiliser, stroke their pale butterscotch trunks, prune the bad leaves from their branches. Anything, really. Anything to do with the trees, I volunteer myself often.
My health, on the other hand, is not so keen as I am.
I draw my hand away, feeling the wet on the edges of my thumb and pointer finger. Despite the darkness this far downhill, I know blood has come up, now staining the pallor of my skin crimson.
Drawing a handkerchief from my fastened bodice, I dab away the smears of blood, then tuck it back into my cleavage. Once I readjust the shawl around my shoulders, I duck my head and venture down the rest of the hill to the field that separates the village from our tree hill.
During the Chill, the walk through the field is hardest. Each dark blade of grass is frosted over and crunches beneath my brown leather boots. The icy air is like claws all around, sinking deep into the flesh and gripping bones.
Grandfather once told me that the old world has seasons like we do now. Only, they came in waves throughout a whole year, not four times in a day.
It’s a world I can’t fathom. Fantasies to keep me warm in this cold, dark world.
So as I brace the Chill and reach the far end of the field, starting to see the flickers of faint light in the distance, I hold onto murky images of hot days that last a full quarter of a year, and snow that lasts just as long.
It’s unusual, I decide, and throw it from my mind as I come to the edge of light. No natural light blossoms anywhere in the world, of course, so the village is awake with the signs of gas lanterns hanging from old lampposts, fires roaring in black metal bins and the gleams of fae world scraps dotted around the dirt-road streets; pearlescent pears that shine just as the moon did (according to Grandfather) and wood-built shops and buildings that flicker like ambers, sloped more and more to the side as the generations go on by.
All the last ones didn’t carry with them the skills needed to rebuild. Truly, they must have been terrified to be the firsts to live under dark fae rule after the morke rounded them up to the gateways at the end of the invasion.
It is only at these gateways that we are allowed to live.
It is only within their grace should we exist.
That’s what Father says sometimes. Most people in the village will stick to that motto, but I suspect it’s got more to do with keeping themselves sane rather than actually worshipping the dark fae.
Who knows, though? Maybe they do worship them. After all, they are our gods now.
And how closely they rule us...
Even before I set my boot down on the packed dirt street that weaves between the shops and thatched-roof houses, I spot them. But before then, Ifeelthem.
My senses prickle the moment their unnatural gazes shift to me, a newcomer in their calm and quiet village. A dozen of them, as usual. Guards and trackers, both as vicious as each other, different in only their skills. Trackers for catching up with human runaways, guards for inflicting pain for punishment and interrogations. And their differences come in their uniforms.
The trackers are dressed in all black, like the darkness between the buildings that they stick to. They melt into the shadows. And their dark clothes cling to them like a second skin, all the way from their silent soft-soled boots to their high-necked jackets, waists decorated with belts of daggers. But the guards carry swords slung over their backs, and wear leather armour.
Either way, both kinds are to be avoided.
