At first, Hannah assumed that she was simply in the process of being blown to bits.
The pain that she was experiencing upon stepping face-first into the speeding metallic side of the District line train was something that resembled what she imagined it would be like to be squeezed through the eye of a needle. The pinching, writhing sensation that shot down the length of her body and constricted her lungs was clearly going to be the last thing she felt before her brain matter was smeared out of her skull and onto the concrete of the platform.
She wondered if the crowd that had been pressed in tight on all sides around her would be in a complete state of shock after witnessing two young people step lightly and without pause over the yellow line and straight to their deaths, and she hoped earnestly that the trauma that would inevitably come from such an act of total recklessness would fade for most of them as time went on and with the appropriate amount of compassionate social work intervention.
But besides what would happen to those innocent bystanders, Hannah was flummoxed at the continuation of the pain. The roar of the train was all she could hear--a brutal scream of machinery that echoed in her ears--and the wind that had blasted them when it had first approached persisted to gust all around her. She felt as if she were being pulled apart by millions of little threads tied to the whole of her, each of them yanking and stretching out in all directions with incredible force--undoing her. Her skin felt taught, her head felt crushed, and the unrelenting pain was taking far too long if it was going to end in something as simple and quick as death. She could see nothing but swirling gray and blue window glass--fluid motion all around her that had her dizzy with nausea and confusion.
As the throbbing under her flesh and around her organs intensified to a fever pitch, Hannah thought that perhaps she was somehow still alive--somehow miraculously and horribly pinned to the bottom of the filthy tracks in writhing agony. How dreadful, her thoughts roiled through the vise grip of the pain that was starting to choke the breath from her lungs. I suspect it must be so, however, since I’m still apparently capable of breathing at all.
There was a lurching around her arms that severely broke her from the overwhelming tide of the torment. Through the stinging, clenching strain, something tugged her back to herself. The squeezing lessened slightly, and the pain paused for a beat, waiting to see what she would do. The air around her was electric with sound and metal and the faint sound of her own voice in a distorted scream, and she let her wrists be pulled out straight in front of her as something was dragging her along by them, heaving her forward through the mire of glass so firmly that her bones threatened separation from the joints. She honed her mind in on it, since it seemed to be drawing her out of the fist of agony that she was squelched between.
Another tug, stronger the second time. Then came a third tug, which was so forcible that it ripped her completely from whatever purgatory she had been enraptured in and tossed her headlong into a blinding white light.
She came up gasping for air, choking on smoke. The scream of the train had died down, and there was the peculiar sound of squealing brakes on metal, the torrent of wind becoming nothing more than a gentle breeze. She opened her eyes, and saw blurred panes of glass high above her in long whale-bone strips--skylights--and a cold sun was shining through many of them and sending blades of light cascading downward along gray mortared walls. She was lying flat on her back, hard concrete beneath her, and the pain that had been flaying her alive only seconds prior had subsided to nothing more than a rather ghastly headache and a furtive ringing in both of her ears. She pulled in breath after burning breath, her eyes trying to adjust to the quality of the light.
She recognized the sounds of many sets of footsteps all around her, and the bustle of lilting conversations through the rampant clanging between her eardrums. She was somewhere busy, presumably on the floor, and no one seemed to understand that to be anything out of the ordinary; surely someone would have come and investigated my predicament by now if anyone had any real concern.
A shadow moved above her, blocking out the vibrancy of the skylights, and she squinted as she tried to clear her double-vision. The figure that was kneeling over her was wearing a rather unimpressed smirk.
“You made a real fool of yourself just now,” the familiar voice of the man in the peacoat cut into her senses. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone get so easily entrapped in the Choke.”
Hannah saw his face come into sharp focus, and she was caught by the blue of his stare. He didn’t look angry, or threatening, or even generally annoyed. Instead, he surveyed her with something that almost rivaled disappointment. “When you feel alright enough to sit up, do try not to blubber. I’d like to keep you somewhat inconspicuous, and you’ve already received enough scrutiny by those who had to witness me tearing you free.”
“Am I dead?” Hannah asked blankly as the man sat back, and she was once again accosted by the blinding flood from the skylights.
The man snorted. “No,” he said lazily. “But you certainly made an excellent effort in trying. Come on, let’s get you off the floor.”
He put a warm hand on her shoulder and helped peel her up from the cool surface of the concrete. Hannah sat up, bracing her arms behind her as her head spun in circles, and she squeezed her eyes shut as stars infiltrated her vision. “There you are,” the man continued. “No vomiting, please. I can’t stand it when people are sick.”
Hannah pinched her eyes open after a moment of darkness and allowed herself to take in a few centering breaths as she gazed about at the train station. Well, it wasn’t exactly the train station that she had just allegedly committed suicide within--no, the current train station she occupied was vastly different than the darkened, twisting tunnels of the tube station at St. James’s Park.
This new place that she found herself in was all black brick with white mortar, and there were no advertisements for things like chewing gum or cigarettes on the walls. Instead, mirrors lined the lower portion of the long walls surrounding the station, and above them on the twenty or so feet that stretched to the ceiling, lush vines, and decadent ferns, and all assortments of delicate multi-colored flowers grew in broad tapestries that reached their carpeted fingers up to the very edge of the skylights, encroaching lovingly on the panes and along the frames that connected them.
She was sitting on a polished concrete platform, and just behind her--maybe fifteen feet or so--the plunge of the short cliff that led down to the two opposing sets of train tracks split the building into two halves with a massive staircase on the far end of the station blooming above it, connecting the walkway for people to cross to and fro from the two platforms. The stairs were so white that they appeared to glint as porcelain might, or perhaps even some sort of iridescent pearl, all glimmering in the rays of the sunshine that beat down through the marvelous expanse of the skylights.
And indeed, the skylights were the most impressive piece to it all. The entire ceiling was constructed of seemingly nothing but air--the glass that separated the magnificent station from the sky was so glossy that it took a few moments of silent study for Hannah to realize that there were any windows there at all--and it stretched the whole of the building from end to end, sending sun into almost every crevice and casting shadows out from seeming every direction. Amid the sun, great white puffs of cloud rolled merrily by, occasionally shielding the sun and sending the station into pale blue light, but there was no rain dotting the glass.
All around her, people bustled in every direction. This station was even more jam-packed than the tube during rush out, but the whole of the building was so spacious and open that it didn’t seem as if there was any competition for room. There was a single train on the double track closest to where Hannah sat, and it was a beautiful black and silver passenger steam engine that hissed with its recent arrival, its doors already slung open to allow its occupants to enter and exit with their baggage. Hannah could smell the familiar scent of coffee, and that mixed with some distant whiff of something floral, her eyes scanning the array of flowers that dotted the plants growing fervently on the walls above.
Beside her on one knee, the man crouched to nearly eye level. “Have you got your wits about you now?”
“This isn’t the tube station,” she whispered faintly. “This isn’t like anywhere I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
“That’s because it isn’t,” the man’s voice was vaguely amused, even though Hannah could tell that he was impatiently waiting for her to stand.
“You tried to kill us both,” she gawked at him. “You jumped into the side of the train!”
“Yes,” he fought an annoyed smile. “And you insisted on resisting my instructions and nearly got lost in the Choke.”
“The Choke?”
“It’s what happens when you get off track when traveling the Way Through. Nasty thing; it can squeeze a person until they’re nothing but toothpicks. I’ve also heard tell of a few people getting turned the wrong way around in it, and never finding their way back out again.” He held out a hand to her, “but, luckily for you--and you are welcome yet again--I managed to pry you back.”
“The chain,” Hannah sat forward and inspected her wrists. The living orange light that had been shackled to her and tethered to him was gone, but Hannah could still see the faint imprints of metallic links pressed into her flesh under her palms, fading with each passing moment. “You had me on a leash!”
The man shrugged, not appearing apologetic in the slightest. “Unfortunately, my hands were tied.” After a scathing look from Hannah, he realized his words and Hannah saw a flash of his teeth form a grin. “Uh, no pun intended.” He motioned his outstretched hand in her direction, “let’s stop causing a scene in the middle of morning foot-traffic, shall we?”
Hannah, seemingly having no other choice, took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. She was instantly eclipsed by a feeling of nausea, and she staggered forward for a moment, her hand still clenched in his. “I might retch,” she sputtered, and the man pried his grip from her hand and launched himself backwards.
“I told you no vomiting,” he yelped. “Do it on your own time!”
Hannah steadied herself. Her body was sore--almost as if she had been hit by a train.
“Where are we?” She asked after a moment of deep breathing where the man stood awkwardly beside her, his hands clenched at his sides. When she saw his eyebrows quirk into a sarcastic expression, she cut him off before he could speak, “and you’d better tell me before I chase you down and vomit on you and truly cause a spectacle.”
He was disgustedly thoughtful for a moment, but he finally acquiesced. “Brink,” he said shortly, and when Hannah gave him a terribly cold glare, he rolled his eyes. “I don’t expect you to be able to understand it, so I don’t feel like wasting my breath on explaining it, frankly.”
“Try me,” Hannah said through all but gritted teeth as she fought another wave of nausea, a hand on her stomach. He sighed.
“The place between worlds,” he said with a toss of his hands. “The city that serves as the line between The Known and The Unseen.”
Hannah felt a chill on the back of her neck, and she planted her feet a little more firmly beneath her as a particularly large group of people hurried past to make the train readying itself for departure behind them. “...between worlds?” She managed, the words thick in her mouth.
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A tick of annoyance flared across his jaw, “precisely. And,” his voice dropped low so only she could hear it, “Commoners such as you are not particularly welcome visitors here. So please, let’s not cause any more dramatics; I told a few people on the platform before you came round that you were merely an apprentice still learning to wield.”
“Wield?” Hannah felt incredibly hot in that moment, a sickly flash of heat that melted away the gooseflesh she had endured only seconds prior. “What do you mean?”
The man crossed his arms and his eyes narrowed mockingly, “you’re not very observant, are you?”
“Be straight with me,” she felt her knees wobble.
“Magic, Hannah,” he snarled under his breath, something flashing in those cold, blue eyes, and Hannah’s heart dropped into her feet. “All of this--all that you’ve seen--it’s something that you should have never been allowed to witness.”
He reached for her hand then, and pulled her towards him, “and I’ve got to fix that. You are frustratingly turning into a bigger bit of a hassle than I expected you to be, and now it’s become a problem that I need additional help exterminating.”
“You’re joking,” she felt something in her chest squeezing her lungs, making it hard to breathe once more.
“I assure you, for your sake, I wish I was,” he said coldly.
“Let me go!” She cried out, pulling her arm back away from him, drawing a few curious glances from passersby. “I’m not going anywhere with you, you psycho!”
“Please,” he muttered, not dropping her hand and instead stepping closer to her, “keep your voice down!”
“Why should I?” She hissed, feeling mutinous fear rising up in her throat once more. “Seconds ago, we were in a totally different train station on a totally different platform, leaping to our deaths! And now, you tell me it’s all magic--which is, by the way, a horrible manipulation tactic--and expect me to follow you off to wherever you’d like? I think you’re insane,” Hannah decided, her pulse quickening. “And I think that maybe you’ve even gone so far as to drug me.”
He fixed an appraising eye upon her, “I’m flattered that you think I’m so vile as to go that far.” When she practically threw out her shoulder in another wild attempt to free herself from him, he grimaced. “Okay, I’ll admit my methods are poor.” Still clinging to her hand and barring her from running, he stepped even closer, his peacoat swishing forward to brush her jeans. “I can’t tell you anything more while we’re here. There’s too many listening ears--and I know you don’t believe me,” he shot down her retort before she could get it out. “But if you try to run from me now, I can’t ensure that I can get you back home again.”
“You’re sending me home?” Hannah’s jaw practically hit the concrete beneath their feet. “After all this bloody ruckus you’ve caused?”
“I will,” he said, glancing around nervously at those still watching them fight. “I promise; if you’ll do as I say for just a bit longer, I’ll get you back where you belong post-haste.”
“I don’t believe you,” she scowled, lurching backwards once more. She knew that if she could just get to one of the open doors of the train behind her, then she could likely get someone to believe that she was being chased by a lunatic, and perhaps one of them would call the authorities in her stead. “Get your hands off of me!”
“Will you listen to me?” He was getting desperate; Hannah could tell by the pinching of his brows. “You can’t get back by train.”
She grunted in trying to free herself. “If it’s going anywhere away from you, then I will gladly take my chances, ticket or not.”
“It won’t allow you onboard.”
She faltered, “what?”
“Hannah,” he said then, so softly firm that it took her by surprise. “I’m the only one that can help get you back. If you don’t want to believe me, you don’t have to, but you will have no other aid in returning home to London.” She met his gaze, and something in her gut told her that he was being painfully truthful. “Others here will try to stop you--or worse. I can’t tell you more beyond that; I’m sorry.”
She was surprised at the sudden pricking of tears in her eyes, and she blinked them away furiously. “Why did you do this?” She questioned him, her arm slackening in his grip. “Why me?”
He shrugged, looking earnest. “I don’t know why. All I know is that you were in that cafe the moment I was drawn back to whatever that thing was as it tried to get to you.”
Hannah felt terribly vulnerable, standing there on a strange train platform in the sharp grip of a strange man who seemed to be telling her the truth about concepts that she couldn’t even begin to wrap her mind around. She wanted to be at home, in her bed, with her library book. Or better, down in the sitting room with Bartrum, a record spinning on the turntable, Freida dozing in her lap. She stole a look over her shoulder at the train on the track behind her, and it looked so foreign--she had never seen a steam engine like it before--and she had no clue where it would lead to. She had no clue where she would even start to seek help from, either. She had no identification, no money, and no way to make a telephone call. When she turned her eyes upon the man once more, he swallowed, his throat bobbing.
“Will you come with me?” He asked her, not entirely unkindly. “I mean it--I swear on my life that I won’t rest until you get back to London--as soon as we get where we need to go and we fix this, I will return you safely home,”
With barely any faith in herself or her choice, Hannah at last let him drag her forward on stumbling legs, and she realized how dry her mouth had gone as she swallowed what remained of the threat of her tears. He clenched her hand so tightly that her fingers were tingling, and as they passed through the main archway to the station and approached the head house terminal, Hannah saw that the front of the station was nothing but massive panes of glass, melting with the skylights above as they stretched downwards to the white-tiled floor, a large iron-framed door smack in the center of the expanse, its two open panels wafting in pleasantly cool air from the outside.
“Will you slow down?” She tripped slightly as she brushed against a man in an impressive gold and black woolen coat, toting a little handcart with two canvas-covered bird cages on it.
“We’ve got to make up some time,” he said over his shoulder. “Keep up.”
They pushed through all varieties of people, each of them laden with baggage, or holding children in their arms, or nursing hot paper cups of cloudy streaming beverages. The head house was spacious and gleaming with light just as the station had been, but there were archways all along the brick walls, leading off into corridors that led to staircases and alcoves that undoubtedly led to other smaller platforms and ticket offices. A few people around her were moving their baggage along behind them easily--it took Hannah a few second and third glances to realize that their baggage was actually levitating behind them--some of them even going so far as to place their small children atop the carriages of floating suitcases and let them ride alongside like little square ponies.
“This is absurd,” Hannah called to him as they moved through the throngs. “Magic isn’t-”
He pulled her up next to him with such vigor that she yelped, and he shot her a glance so full of fire that it caught the words in her throat, all signs of gentleness that he had held a moment ago wiped away. “Don’t,” he spat. “Not here. Open your eyes.” His words were so tense they sent the hairs on the back of her neck to stand. “If you want to deny it, and stay gloriously content with your head rammed into the sand, please do so silently; and far away from where others might hear you and kill you.”
They crossed the main atrium of the terminal, and Hannah nearly went sprawling, catching an edge of a suitcase that had been set down on the floor beside a woman wearing an exquisite purple hat. There was a burst of green light beside them, and Hannah watched as someone nearby magicked a floating orb in front of their face, and Hannah saw the form of another person inside of it, talking animatedly to the beholder. The man scoffed her out of her staring and pulled her upright, keeping her from hitting the floor.
“What is this place?” She breathed. Another burst of light--pale blue this time--and Hannah saw an elderly woman in a gloriously elegant muslin coat conjure an umbrella out of thin air and hold it upward to shield themselves from the magnificent barrage of the sun through the skylights above.
“It’s called The Stratum Rim of Vale,” the man said, lifting a two fingered wave to a man in a dapper military coat and hat--some sort of guard?. “But locals mostly refer to it as the Stratum.”
“And it’s just a train station?”
“Well, yes and no,” they shouldered through a large group of people all holding tickets and wearing clothes that looked awfully warm for the heat of the spring--parkas and fur hats and pockets shoved-full with mittens--each of them pulling along little carts with luggage. “It has two trains, that much is true. And there’s tunnels underground that go to the canals. But the trains that come and go from here don’t work exactly as yours do in The Known.”
“How so?”
He sighed again. “Really, can we talk about this later? It doesn’t matter much to you since you won’t be here long, anyhow.”
“Where are we going now? Can you at least tell me that?” Hannah breathed as they approached the regal iron and glass door that Hannah could see the tops of shapely buildings through as they neared.
His grip on her tightened, “just do me a favor, Hannah--now that we’re both in this mess, can you try your best to simply be compliant?” His voice was marled with anger. “I didn’t have time for this in the first place, and the sooner I can get you figured out and sent home, the better.”
“Why is it so important to keep me in the dark?”
“The less you know and the less you see, the better.”
“I’ve seen quite a lot of you that I’d rather not continue to see, that’s for sure,” Hannah grumbled.
“I’m not babysitting you for any longer than I have to,” the man sighed as they made it to the foot of the door, stepping out onto an incredibly wide cascade of white-tiled stairs that descended dramatically down to the street below where automobiles of all kinds were hustling about on the black-top of the pavement. “Move a bit quicker, will you?”
But Hannah was flummoxed at the sight that beheld them at the top of the stairs. There, in the gentle breeze of a dangerously gorgeous spring day, she stood stark still at her first view of the city the man had named Brink.
With parapets of winding stone reaching out in every direction, the city looked to be a conglomeration of high-rises, stately towers, and strangely-crafted buildings that resembled art pieces more than practical apartments or hotels. The station they they had emerged from was on a hill, and the city spilled out below them in every direction--wisps of stained glass windows off of lavish churches and shirks of estate homes nestled in crevices between the towering shadows of buildings that seemed taller than Hannah had ever before known.
Everything looked so much more enhanced in this city--angles were sharper, windows were wider, sidewalks were streaks of red cobble that ran like veins through the body of it all--it amazed her that such a place could even exist at all with how oddly constructed it all appeared. She could see marquees, and massive market squares dotted with fountains, and streets that were brimming with food carts and cars and all sorts of pedestrians and people on smart little bikes, just as if she were viewing her own city through a distant window.
It wasn’t totally unlike London proper, but somehow it looked off, as if it were crooked, or perhaps like it had been inflated out of proportion. She could see farmland in the distance where the buildings tapered to suburbs, and then eventually to wide plots of green, fertile land. She could see train tracks weaving far out from the city limit, heading into a nape of a mountain pass that cut down from one of the two mountain ranges that cupped the city in the deep bowl of a valley surrounded by darkened carpets of forest. It was a grid of crossroads and spiraling cross-streets that stretched like an ocean from base to base of the snow-capped peaks that seemed hundreds miles away, but so large that they could have very well swallowed up any other mountains that Hannah could draw upon in her memory of her own country.
Off to the left, she could see the shimmering slash of a winding river cutting perpendicular through the city, a few tiny bridges crossing over it in various places in the distance. She glimpsed rectangles of city garden lawns lined with trees, and pathways that spiderwebbed through them in every direction.
At the city center, a huge dome of glass sat atop a swell of street and earth--a capitol building of sorts--peppered broadly with gold in every place where glass wasn’t. It shone like a beacon in the daylight of the sun, which didn’t give off a light that was necessarily warm. Instead, it cast the city in a wash of vibrant yellow that felt almost alien to her--like it was trying to imitate the sun, but it was somehow brighter than she recalled it--and it made the whole place seem to hum with a heartbeat as it glinted off of every reflective surface it touched, sending light skyward once more.
“I’ve never…” Hannah tried to speak, but she found that words couldn’t form her thoughts. She watched as black spots began to drift into her periphery. “This…”
“You’ve gone rather pale again,” the man’s voice drifted out from beside her. “Don’t let this overwhelm you, now.”
It was all too extraordinary, and it all left Hannah totally speechless. It also left her swaying weakly on her feet on the fourth step the man attempted to drag her down, and she promptly fell forward in a splay of woozy vision and flailing limbs.
“Damn it, Hannah!” She heard him snap as he tried to break her fall. She vaguely remembered her right knee striking one of the sharp edges of the steps, exploding a riot of pain down her shin, and as he caught her in a rough, haphazard embrace--cursing violently into the pleasant atmosphere of the sunny spring morning--Hannah’s vision faded mercifully to black.