Chapter 69
THE SILVER REALM
Once upon a time, the Silver folk ruled most of the British Isles, until the mortals grew in such numbers that their cities, cobbled together from wood and clay and stone, spilled out into the countryside and encroached on the rivers.
The Silver folk and the rest of their kin did their best to mitigate this – a great fire here, a plague there – but when city skies changed from white to smoky, and the moths, wolves, and other species whose spirits aligned with theirs began to die off, they decided to make the forests and mountains their domain, turning time and space in on themselves to make endless room in the darkness between trees.
They called their former home the Restless Lands.
No matter, declared Alder Meadowfrost, king of swans, and King of the Silver Realm. We wait. We grow our own numbers. Whatever the mortals make of the Restless Lands, we will outlive them all. The Restless Lands are ours to inherit and nurture back to health, in the end.
But growing their own numbers was not as easy as planting a bed of new seeds.
Occasionally they stole mortal babies and replaced them with changelings, or bedded mortal women and claimed the babies that followed as their own, their lives prolonged by an ancient glamour while mortal blood preserved their sense of time.
But such children would never rise above the status of servant, or plaything.
The rulers of the Silver Realm would be of one eternal bloodline, or nothing.
Alder Meadowfrost made a strategic choice of queen in Laura Rosethorn, a lady of the greater nobility who could take the form of a barn owl whenever the winds were favourable.
She and her brother, Wick, were the only twins in the Silver Realm, which the king and his advisors took as a sign of fertility.
Sure enough, the queen of the barn owls successfully carried a baby to term: their new and cherished prince, who they naturally expected would take the throne of stained glass and crystal when he came of age.
The Silver Prince wanted for nothing: he slept on the softest goose-feather pillows, grew strong on the marrow of stag antlers, and was serenaded nightly by songbirds.
His parents procured a changeling infant from the West Country for him, his very own servant and companion.
They gave the servant a new name and cast their glamour over him to ensure that, like their prince, he would grow like a green shoot, brightly and with haste, until he reached adulthood, never to age another season, never to wither or die.
With the passing of invisible years, the servant was instructed to cross back and forth between the realms, to bring news of the Restless Lands along with exotic delicacies, fashion plates, music, and any other diversions the Silver folk might enjoy.
The Silver Prince cherished music above all – like the rest of his kin, he loved to dance, but more than that, he lived through dance.
He could always be counted on to lead the court in spirited, intricate numbers that made days bleed into nights.
His vitality made the king and queen look proudly on him, confident that he would raise a new generation, their people growing stronger while the mortals of the Restless Lands descended further into self-destruction, with their atom-split, ash-spilled wastelands and oil-slicked waters, their chemical leaks and ever-sophisticated death machines.
It was obvious who was of superior stock.
But the Silver Prince’s luminous smile when he danced belied a disquieting truth: he did not share his family’s dream.
He preferred to look outwards, beyond the trees, towards sunrise and sunset, moonrise and starlight, wondering where they began and ended, trying to tally them with scratches from a quill dipped in blackberry ink. Breaking it in half when he lost count.
He did not care for thrones or titles, and as for mortals – well, he had only seen a few of them from a safe distance in court, when his parents meted out curses and executions, but he saw no reason to scorn them on sight.
When whispers of betrothal to Cressida Mulberry, who he could not stand, became loud declarations in the feasting hall, he conspired with his trusted servant to step outside the Silver Realm. To cross the border.
It was a strange transition. The servant had to explain to the prince that time was more granular than a mere four seasons, that everything would feel too loud, too abrasive, too much, and that every mortal had a role to play in their little world.
You cannot be a prince here, my friend. Good, I have no wish to be.
What do you wish to be instead?
The prince thought a while as they left the border behind. I wish to live alongside the mortals. To bring them light. A warm light, he added. The cold light of silver, not.
You could model.
Model? The prince thought of sculpting. But I have never made anything.
The servant circled a hand around his face with a flourish. You need only stand still and look beautiful, my friend.
The prince conceded that this would be a relatively easy way to earn some money, which he soon realised was fundamental to surviving in the Restless Lands. And he was, according to the gasps of passersby who turned their heads on the street, very beautiful.
But oh, how he hated to stand still. He was used to moving extravagantly. Dancing, running, and leaping without ceilings or walls. Between camera shots, he would absent-mindedly jump on the spot, extend his legs and arms high, swivel on the ball of one foot. It always gave the photographers pause.
‘Are you a dancer?’
He nodded.
Enough of them said, ‘Ballet?’ with such certainty that he decided the universe must be telling him something.
And that is how, once upon a time, the Silver Prince – known to his family as Nimble Meadowfrost, to mortals as Aleksander Sylvan – found happiness and almost held on to it.