Silenciel City: Chapter 1

This is what I've been working on whilst I've been away. I'm incredibly nervous about posting this up here, so please be gentle with me, but I'm hoping that it isn't too bad. I've already had both a friend and my father look over it, but it can't hurt to get some more opinions. I hope.

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Chapter 1

The World Beneath London

In Silenciel City, there is nothing so valuable as a human child.

There is no scroll of parchment detailing the myriad uses for them, but if there were, there is a large chance that it would be incomplete; possibly it would peter out in the middle of a sentence as the writer grew tired of scrawling down function after function, or alternatively it could fade out due to a lack of ink. Both are just as likely.

The real question, however, is how many of these uses are humane.

Frequently, the natives feast on them, and they are considered somewhat of a delicacy. Occasionally, a faerie parent will settle itself down in a luxurious armchair and call its children to its heels, wait for them to quieten, and whisper in a soft, musical voice that they are to dine on human that evening. Undoubtedly, the children will clamour and cry with delight, beating their gossamer wings with excitement, and merriment will rise throughout the household. It may not always follow, however, as human meat is so very expensive that it can easily rob a family of a month’s worth of gold, unless they choose to purchase the less succulent – and thusly less desired - cuts such as the wrists or neck.

If not eaten, they will be used elsewhere. Should a demon find herself expectant of a child, she will need to locate a host for the imp for when it struggles its way into the world – the pall of a demon’s true form cannot survive without a body. She and the father’s choosiness will be proportionate to their wealth, and so whilst the richest will spend countless hours dismissing human child after human child due to the size of their noses, the shades of their hair, the jut of their chins and so forth, others will descend into poverty just in order to pay for the ugliest, scrawniest host. But the youth at hand suffers a depressingly unvaried fate; no matter what demon possesses them, rich or poor, they lose their hold on themselves without losing their lives.

Sometimes, they are stripped only of their dignity. Wealthy, patronising families of pixies, lacturns or such-like often choose to entertain their offspring by supplying them with a small creature that they can either pet or terrorise as their mood takes them. Human children are appropriate for this, as they have enough intelligence to be interesting but not quite enough to be difficult; the offspring can cuddle them, play with them and wrap their slight forms in lavish silks, yet also smack them about the head for impertinence. Over time, the polar treatment will wear them down into no more than fear and desperation for approval. Some feel a butcher is kinder.

The parents that live in the land above the City, in London, are repelled by the thought of Silenciel (if they believe in it at all). Who would ever give their dear, sweet cherubs up to that place of danger and darkness? Not them, that is certain. Most do not know what happens to the little girls and boys who descend into the City, only that you are paid well – very well – for offering them to it.

And that they never return.

William Kendall’s story began in a way not dissimilar to those of many children. He lived in the west of London, on a street crammed with identical-looking houses that appeared as though they were pushing against one another for space, in a neighbourhood that one walks through with wariness. Will had been born there in the dregs of autumn in 1881, growing up small, slight, smart and a little imperious with it, making use of a sharp tongue that cut down others with enough ease to compensate for his lack of height. Two years after, he was followed by a brother – Thomas, the yin to Will’s yang. He was docile child, the kind to smile in his sleep and aid the elderly across the road, and he looked up to his older brother like a deity, as dissimilar to him as he was.

By the time William was ten years old, he had a considerable degree of authority within his pocket of the neighbourhood and he exercised it with Thomas at his side. Will was the one trusted to dismiss or confirm rumours, make judgements on newcomers and decide the relationship with other groups of neighbourhood children, and Thomas often took it upon himself to spread his brother’s message. It was only Will’s status that prevented bullies preying upon his younger brother, so he concocted vicious punishments for anyone that dared to insult him.

“I en’t takin’ instructions from your milksop brother,” a girl once spat. “Why should I? He’s Silenciel-meat anywa-.”

She didn’t finish her sentence. Will’s parents received a furious visit from her own several hours later, before the boy himself got a half-hour scolding from his father when he defiantly claimed that the girl’s black eye improved her appearance.

It wasn’t so much the use of ‘milksop’ that had riled him, but the mention of the City of which Thomas was so mortally afraid. His younger brother drank in hearsay with the same readiness that he did hot cocoa, whether it be about ghosts, wardrobe monsters or underworlds; Will, by contrast, had little patience for rumours, especially those of a magical nature. But Silenciel City? That was different.

Will had a keen eye for detail. When he was eight years old, a small girl disappeared from a house seven doors down, and in the aftermath he found himself noticing that the remaining members of the family were wearing new clothes, and that they looked significantly better fed.

Almost as though they’d managed to get their hands on some money.

In a neighbourhood such as his own, you’d be hard pushed to name a single family living there that had two spare pennies to rub together. But if you could name one, then the odds were that you knew their name because you’d recently heard that their child had gone missing.

Stories of an underworld were thrown back and forth between the children like the tattered balls from which they sought entertainment, yet most of them never took their own words seriously. But what they spoke of was this: children disappearing from poor families and being sold to ghastly creatures below London for meat or clothes or entertainment. The horror of the thought itched at the back of Will’s mind for months, until one day he spat a question out to his parents at the dinner table.

“Does Silenciel City exist?”

And when they replied with no, it was in the same urgent tone of voice that they had used when he had inquired about the reality of Father Christmas.

When William Kendall was nearing the age of twelve, his brother fell ill.

At first it seemed to be no more than a chill brought about by the cold weather – a slight bout of fatigue and a tickling cough that was more irksome than sinister. Will’s father insisted it was a mild infection, but his mother worried.

As did Will.

Although Will tried to deny their seriousness, the symptoms persisted. Weight began to fall from Thomas’ previously stocky frame. Will remembered sitting alongside his brother one evening when a multitude of coughs began to shake his body. They ceased after half a minute, but Will’s heart continued to pound for a long time afterwards, his stomach tense and knotted. When it began to loosen at last, he saw something that made his heart swell to the point that his whole body was racked with its pulses.

A spatter of blood, dark against the grubby floorboards.

A doctor was called at great expense, and his own brother was diagnosed with consumption.

Within weeks he was bed bound, and Will left his side only to sweep the streets for the extra money that they now needed so desperately (their mother had abandoned her job; caring for Thomas was now her only concern). Will was more than content to steal what the family required, be it food or medicine or anything that would give his brother closure, but his father’s moral wrath often deterred him from doing so.

“I will not allow my son to defile the Lord’s commandments in this way!” he once roared.

“I wouldn’t need to, not if your precious God hadn’t done this to Tommy,” Will snapped back.

The blow landed, leaden and bony, before he could register it. Whilst the bruise took less than a week to heal, the memory of Thomas’ upset when he saw it lingered in Will’s mind for much longer. He did not steal again.

Honest work, however, was not enough; over the months, the little money they had begun to drain away. And the family became desperate.

In the months after Will passed his twelfth birthday, he started to recognise a delicate shift in the way that he was being treated. For one, he was being fed more; the slices of bread he received were thicker, and the butter that glazed them was nearly substantial enough for his teeth to leave indents in it. The portions weren’t large enough to warrant a weight increase, but he noticed the attempt – and he noticed how thin and flimsy his mother’s slices had become on behalf of it. When he protested, she didn’t respond, and his father cursed him for causing her yet more grief.

His parents seemed to be acting differently in his presence. He didn’t always detect it, for he spent the majority of his time rattling off stories and reports at Thomas’ bedside rather than in the company of his mother and father. However, when Thomas sunk into a sluggish slumber on an evening, Will would join them in the sitting room, slumping onto the dirty floor for lack of an armchair. Little discussion took place, so he often occupied himself with books or otherwise the truly enrapturing activity of staring into space; however, if he cast his gaze around just a fraction quicker than normal, he would sometimes catch sight of his parents watching him, each wearing a peculiar expression. It was longing, somehow. The kind of intense look that you would give a person whose appearance you were trying to devote to memory.

He was sure he saw tears in his mother’s wide eyes at one point.

She drew up a bath for him one evening. It was a sudden gesture, but he took advantage of it, even though the lukewarm, shallow water was insufficient for bathing in. Afterwards, he sat at her feet in his nightclothes as she snipped his damp hair with her delicate sewing scissors. He didn’t trust her shaking hands, and all the time he had the uneasy feeling that one gets when circumstances are different, but not different enough to warrant questioning. The squeezing in his stomach extended beyond hunger, and he had the sense that he was tiptoeing around the fringes of something horrible and upsetting, like a predatory silhouette on the edge of his vision that he knew would come for him the moment he stared it in the face.

And come it did.

As the following morning began to inch its way into the world, spreading its cold tongue over the surface of London and pushing planks of dry light through the window of Will’s bedroom, the sheer obviousness of what was to happen settled in his mind as though it had always been a part of it, like a rock of knowledge that had finally come loose and been upturned.

Will’s mother appeared at the doorway, as if on cue. She was a slight woman, worn down into little more than delicate, pale bones wrapped up inside even paler skin, which provided a haunting contrast to her bedraggled, black hair. Her cornflower eyes were wide set and staring, either one buried inside a pit of shadow stroked into her face by both time and a multitude of stressful, sleepless nights. Will had heard from many of the beauty his mother had possessed in her youth - the beauty he had supposedly inherited - but it had become very difficult to recognise.

"William," she croaked out the name shakily. "Please dress yourself in your Sunday best and come down for breakfast. Be prompt."

Will pulled himself upright on his bed, feeling as weary and old as his mother now looked. He stared at her, a slat of light striking his rigid face, and watched her fixate her eyes on a portion of the room that he was not in.

"You're taking me to the City, aren't you?" he said steadily.

She swallowed. Her eyes fell closed.

“You-” she began as though to say something apologetic, or dismissive, or something else of weight, but stopped herself. “Y-your clothes, William,” she said instead.

He ripped back the sheets with ferocity, and she flinched.

“It’s for Thomas, isn’t it? Tell me it’s for Thomas,” he hissed.

She nodded dumbly, tears gathering in her eyes. “For all of us, it’s for all of-”

“For Thomas,” Will cut her off, irate. “Okay. Get out.”

She stared at him blankly, then dripped from the doorframe and made for the staircase. A minute or so later, Will heard the quiet drone of speech fill the kitchen below him.

He was breathing heavily, more heavily than he realised, and only when he pressed a hand to his forehead did he notice the tremor running through him.

“For Thomas,” he muttered. “It’s for Thomas.”

He stood stock still, face in his hands. The shaking stopped.

Several moments later, he stood staring at himself in the mirror, clad in the buttoned white shirt and stiff black trousers that served as his best clothes. They felt tight, hadn’t been worn for a considerable amount of time, and smelt faintly of carbolic soap – recently laundered, it seemed. But when? For how long had they been readying him for the market?

“Will!” a voice called, faint and husky, from across the landing.

Will’s stomach plummeted. Thomas.

He moved tentatively towards the sound, resting on the doorframe of the room opposite his, which was pitch dark and filled with little more than faint outlines. Thomas’ eyes met his through the blackness.

“They ain’t taking you,” he whispered hoarsely. Will had often tried to shield Thomas from knowledge about the City, as his younger brother had always feared it more. He was trusting, weighty, young, exactly the kind of child who would be sold into it; no one would have expected Will.

“They are,” Will replied flatly, “And I’m going to let ‘em.”

“No! You’re not- I won’t-” coughs began to tear his words apart, and Will pushed further into the room to his side, his heart stinging.

“Listen,” he whispered, after Thomas stopped. “They sell me, and they’ll have enough money to make you better. You won’t cough anymore; you’ll be able to go out and do things, right? You remember the circus? An’ all London’s streets and the river and all that? You’d get to see it all over again if you wasn’t so sickly, so I’m going to-”

“But you’ll die! Or worse! Y-you haven’t any idea what happens down there!”

“Let me finish. I en’t going to die, because I’m going to get out.”

“What? How?” Thomas said, incredulous.

“I don’t know yet, do I? But I’ll find myself a way, and I’ll get back to you. And you’ll be well again, I promise.”

“No one makes it back though, do they? You're just saying this to make me feel better, but you ain’t putting nothing over," Thomas whimpered. "You ain't going to get home. Nobody does."

"I'm not nobody!" Will snapped. "I say that I'm getting back, then, by God, I'm going to get back. Here, watch me."

Will moved swiftly from Thomas' bedside and motioned towards the wardrobe, the only other piece of furniture in the cramped room. He reached inside it and pulled out a coarse, brown tweed jacket, both far wider and longer than his frame, and slipped it on.

"See? I've got your jacket and I'm going to need to give it back some day, so I'm going to have to come home, ain't I?" he said, trying hard to hide the strain in his voice.

Whether it was because he was genuinely comforted or because he had realised that his brother was on the verge of breaking, Thomas replied with a precarious smile, holding it for a few seconds before the coughing tore through it.

“Hush,” Will urged, his heart stinging again. “I need to go. Ma’s expecting me downstairs.”

“I hate her,” Thomas wheezed. “Her and Pa both.”

Will pressed his lips together. He couldn’t afford to agree with him now, as strong as the rage inside him was. He couldn’t turn him against them. “They’re going to make you better,” he said quietly. “Just…just let ‘em do that, Thomas.”

Will wondered whether to embrace his brother, to kiss his burning forehead, but eventually decided that either gesture would be too final, too much like a goodbye. He needed to go without leaving, maintain the idea that he was going to return.

So instead he said: “this jacket looks so ludicrous, I’ll be returning it in a heartbeat. A handful of weeks – you’ll see.”

Thomas smiled bravely, and Will looked hard at his shadowed face before he left the room. There wasn’t much about his sickly form that Will wanted to remember, but he wrapped up the colour of his eyes in his mind – nothing remarkable, to be truthful, just a muddy brown – and stored it away. There was an honesty and conviction in their shade, something that welcomed all who looked at them, and Will had always admired how much they contrasted with his own eyes, which were thin, sharp and the pale blue colour of lakes frozen into immobility. He needed Thomas – and if not Thomas then his memory – to thaw him.

Then he was out of the room, and his façade fell. The lump in his throat was heavy and uncomfortable, and he swallowed it before going downstairs to face his parents. His stockholders.

The penultimate stair creaked loudly, so he stepped over it to avoid readying them for his entrance. Looking through into the kitchen, he saw his mother at the sink, shoulders shaking and back turned, with his father’s arms wrapped around her and his face in her ragged hair. The lump rose again.

No.

He battled against the burning feeling mounting behind his eyes, blinking back moisture that he was too proud to wipe away with his fingers, and cleared his throat so loudly that it almost hurt.

His mother jerked round suddenly, throwing off her husband’s hold, and she looked at him with such a broken and helpless expression that Will wondered, briefly, if she would relent.

“That-” she tried to speak, but her voice was cracked and thin. “That’s Tommy’s jacket,” she whispered.

Something about this remark thudded against the mounting anguish in his chest and knocked it down, away and out of sight, leaving the space it had occupied to be filled with a raw, desolate rage.

“I daresay you’ll be able to afford him a new one soon,” he said coldly.

His mother’s face crumpled; a fresh wave of sobs racked her body, and Will felt guilt worm its way into his chest.

“For God’s sake, child!” his father growled. “Can’t you see that this is enough of a hardship for your mother? For all of us?”

It vanished. He cocked his head to the side, dangerously near tears.

“Beg pardon,” he said, and the words seemed to scrape up through his throat like broken glass. “I’ll hold my tongue next time you decide to sell me for monster-meat, though I en’t so sure there’ll be a next time. What do you think?”

His father’s head sank. “Please, son. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“I en’t going to do a damn thing you say. I’m going to that place for Thomas, not you. Nor her, neither,” Will said, gesturing towards his mother, before another thought struck him. “How d’you even know you’ll be able to sell me, anyway? What if I’m too old?”

There was no reply, but Will took on their meaning. It was worth an attempt.

“Do I get breakfast? A last supper?” he said, and he knew the Biblical reference would strike his father in a place that was unguarded and vulnerable. Sure enough, he flinched.

His mother was still crying, but she was doing so silently now. As Will pushed his porridge around in the bowl, less hungry than he had ever felt in his life, his father guided his mother out of the room and began to murmur to her. He made out little of what they were saying, but guessed that, from the way his father’s eyes had darted between her sobbing form and Will’s proud face for the last five minutes, he was offering to take Will to the Silencien collector in place of her. He could hear a faint tone of protest in his mother’s voice, however, so presumed she was declining.

The events that followed seemed to blur into a single, rapid smear. The porridge was gone; he was fumbling with his boots, lacing them numbly; he was at the door, his father trying to embrace him, and holding himself rigid; the cold air outside was wiping itself across his face, and there was a bang behind him as the front door snapped shut.

Then nothing.

And he felt not as though the world had collapsed in on him, but rather that he had been plucked out of it and into a place where living was as strange a concept as sorcery.

It was still very early, and the weak light was not enough to rouse the greying households around him, so they saw little life as they made their way through a complicated series of streets, alleys and miniature ruts between buildings – so complicated that Will thought that his mother must have made the voyage before. He normally preferred London in the early morning, because it was still and silent and easy to call your own without armies of people bustling through the streets, but presently he would’ve given anything to see it flooded with the torrents of citizens whom he had so often detested for their intrusion. Now, being eased along by his taciturn mother with only the clash of feet on cobblestones to fill the morning hush, the silence seemed like a huge and tangible thing pressing down against him.

After a half-hour of walking, William Kendall and his mother came to the grimy edges of the Thames, where they gazed up at the great arcs and columns of the London Bridge, which was, by now, starting to come to life with people and carts. Will’s mother hooked her arm through his and began to pull him towards it, clopping along the damp river’s edge towards the dank shade beneath one of the enormous stone arches. As Will tore his eyes from the bridge’s majesty, he spied, with a jolt of his stomach, a handful of people clumped underneath it.

Drawing nearer, he saw that there were no more than three children lying in wait, all accompanied by adults that appeared to be pointedly ignoring everybody else. Within minutes they were among them, listening uncomfortably whilst a bearded, wide-shouldered man roared with complaint as he tried to bargain a higher price for his pale, sickly-looking daughter.

The darkness beneath the bridge spread a damp coldness throughout the entirety of Will’s body, and he pulled Thomas’ coarse jacket further around himself, folding the fabric of the lengthy cuffs over his fingers. He couldn’t look at the Silencien collector, not yet, so distracted himself by observing the other unfortunate children around him.

The boy opposite was holding himself about as well as someone can in such a situation. Whilst his pinched face was stoic, his shaky fingers, which were picking at the skin around his nails until they bled, gave away his terror easily. He couldn’t have been over the age of eight, but his spindly figure reached a height an inch or so greater than Will’s. Upon this realisation, it did cross Will’s mind that his mother may try to pass him off as younger than he really was, but, remembering the weary, old expression his face had worn that morning when he viewed himself in the mirror, he knew that any attempt would be in vain.

As his eyes fell on the small girl a few paces away from him, his stomach churned with pity. She was younger still, probably no older than five, and so breathtakingly beautiful that she would easily secure enough money to feed a five-member family for a month, perhaps longer. Her fair hair was twisted into ringlets, each one a shaving of gold, and they seemed to radiate a self-induced glow amongst the shade. Her eyes, blinking rapidly with confusion and dawning fear, were about as green as a person’s can get without infringing upon the impossible, storybook-emerald shade - a mottled hue of jade flecked with stitches of amber and gold. Nonetheless, for all her beauty, she still looked somewhat unkempt. Though her clothing was elaborate and satiny, obviously of a very high quality, it looked crumpled and grubby, as though she’d been wearing it a day too long. With a glance to her guardian – a lean man in tatty breeches and a scruffy jacket not dissimilar to the one Will was wearing – Will understood why. Neither the man’s garments nor appearance bore any likeness to that of young girl’s; he was not her parent, but her kidnapper.

The broad-shouldered, bearded man stormed out from under the bridge without a backwards glance, having finally given up his bargaining and accepted what he deemed to be a poor sum of money. The skinny boy’s mother was to become the next customer, and she sold her son quickly and without conflict. She too left without looking back, but this time because her hands were crushed over her eyes, poorly stemming the flow of tears.

The young girl was dragged up next. The collector had to push his offer higher no less than five times before her kidnapper was satisfied, and then she was sold.

Will felt the strength leave his legs.

“Ma-” a whimper escaped him, but he smothered it. His mother guided him towards the collector without a word.

Will regarded him with poorly-concealed horror, the acrid smell of tobacco scraping invasively through his nostrils. He was a hunched man, with a twisted back that gave him the crooked look of a broken marionette, and his grizzled hair lay sparse and ropey beneath his sagging stovepipe hat, which was the same swamp-like colour as his suit. His face, though lined with so many wrinkles that his eyes were nearly lost within them, was cragged, knowing, and malicious - the kind of face that leers without trying and carves smiles into itself at others’ misery.

The collector’s gaze fluttered over Will’s shabby, scowling form and then slid past him to rest on his mother. His crooked mouth opened as though to say something, and then, quite suddenly, he began to laugh.

When he stopped, the sound still ricocheting distortedly off the walls, he spoke:

“The name’s Grockford, ma’am,” he said, his voice so harsh and throaty that it seemed to grate against the very air, “and I’m a-going to have to ask you just what the hell you’re doing here.”

“I’ve come to sell, sir,” Will’s mother replied, and her voice came out steadier than her son had expected.

Grockford guffawed again. “Pray tell me what. Not this lad here, surely?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dear Lord,” he muttered. “How old is he?”

“Twelve, sir.”

“And what use is a twelve-year-old to me? Give him a few months and the law’ll be calling for his blood. I don’t take adolescents, nor anything near to ‘em.”

“There- there must be some kind of immediate use for him.” Will detected a fleck of fear in her voice. “Meat, or something similar.”

“Meat?” he said, incredulous. “He’ll be too damn tough, lady. And no self-respecting alchemist will buy his organs; most spells call for the parts of children a quarter of his age.”

Suddenly, Will felt sick, overwhelmed by a nauseous feeling that sank into his very bones. Every nerve, every logical ounce of his body was telling him to run, to just run, and lose himself in the labyrinth of the city, because no matter what fate he came to in the dregs of London town, it would be preferable to whatever he would become in the world below its surface. It wouldn’t even be that hard; his mother’s grip on him was slackening as she became more frantic, and with a quick tug he would be lost to her - free. So what was this rigid part of him – this proud, unshifting obstinacy – that allowed him to listen stoically as an inhuman creature and his own mother discussed how he would die?

It was Thomas; of course it was – his stomach rippled with warmth and sadness at the very thought of him. If the price for his life could buy back his brother’s, then he’d sell it in a heartbeat. But something told him that it was more than that – a childish part of him, an edge of a sliver of blade sliced into his judgement, still glinted with hope.

Perhaps – perhaps – he really could make it home.

“…a pet!?” Will blinked himself out of his daze to hear Grockford responding with yet more scepticism, and saw his mother’s eyes were prised wide with desperation. “If someone takes this lad for a pet, they’ll be drowning him before their own bratty children have had a chance to gloat about him. Ma’am, thank you kindly for your time, but you’re wasting a darn sight too much of mine. I need to be off.”

“Wait! No, please!” Will’s mother cried, grabbing hold of him. “Look, I’ll take anything! M-my younger son- I need- you don’t understand!”

“I understand just fine, ma’am, but I’m no charity.”

He brushed her off with slippery, effortless ease, and the fear that swallowed his mother’s face was so frighteningly profound that Will almost found himself wishing that she had sold him. Her pale eyes were flitting around restlessly, her lips trembling, and the purple vein splayed across her porcelain-white forehead seemed to scrawl its way over her skin like a spider crack; one more push, and she’d break altogether.

“A demon!” she burst out, and Grockford paused. “A desperate one – they’d take him!”

Grockford turned to her, watching her beadily. His eyes were glassy and without colour, flooded with black and nothing else.

“Demon couples want a youngling, not a lad of his age,” he said, frowning.

"Not a desperate one, sir - they'll take anything,” Will’s mother said, breathless. “If they’re expecting a child soon and they ain’t got a host yet, they’ll take anything you can give them, and so they'll pay anything too. An' look how handsome he is. You can't ignore that. Most parents would give anything to have their youngling take as handsome a host as him. I'm begging you, sir.”

She was right, of course, and Will cursed her for it. While Thomas had taken on the plain, stout look of his father, taller and wider than Will to the point that, prior to his illness, he was often mistaken for the elder brother, Will had inherited the once-beautiful features of his weary mother: ink-black hair, tilted cheekbones, lily-white skin, and amongst them all those piercing, ice-chip eyes, framed on all sides by dark lashes. There was elegance to him, intensified by the slightness of his figure, yet he shouldered also a kind of animalistic defiance that made him look vicious, relentless and proud. Will had never paid much heed to his appearance, nor what people thought of it, but his heart hammered as Grockford’s eyes slithered over it, feeling now that it would be the reason for his death.

And, he reminded himself, nails digging into his palms, Thomas’ survival.

“Alright,” Grockford said finally, and Will’s mother made a noise somewhere between a sob and a sigh of relief. “Alright, I’ll take him - but I’ll offer you no more than twelve pounds. No bargaining.”

She wanted none. The exchange was made.

After, she opened her mouth to say something, but Will stared her down with those sharp eyes.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Please, William…” she pleaded.

“Don’t,” he repeated. “Just- just look after him. That’s all I want.”

She gaped helplessly for a second, then nodded solemnly, eyes glistening.

“Okay,” Will whispered, breathing deeply, “Now go.”

And at his command, she did, halting and unsteady though she was. Her body was frail and stiff, her limbs as rigid as wooden planks, and Will doubted if she would make it all the way home. Perhaps she would break down in the street, tumble to the floor like a severed puppet and get trampled by the endless flow of the city. He’d never know.

Grockford wound a cord tightly around Will’s wrist, binding himself to him, but he barely noticed it. The boy looked out from the shade of the bridge, watching the form of his mother disintegrate into the distance, and vaguely wondered whether he should call out, attempt to reel back a piece of himself before it disappeared forever.

But then she was gone. And a sharp tug to the wrist told him that it was time to go.