Beautiful World is a stand-out take on modern society's image culture told through a dystopian setting.
In a broken future, ink-like stains have appeared on people's skin splitting the world in two. Now the beautiful people all wear masks and live i...
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She stared. Nothing. The shapeless mist rose up in front of her like a frosted curtain, hanging lank against the pale light and stirring in the slight, chill breeze. Nothing.
She moved. She paused. She moved again. She was like a ghost against the mist, her eyes wide, her head tilted to catch the slightest sound. All about her the air was heavy with silence, drenched, cold and unknown. She stepped forward, carefully measuring each stride. Her boots sounded in the emptiness as they sank up to the lacings in the sodden turf, and then squelched as she eased them clear.
There were two broken pillars hung with rusted iron work, directly ahead of her. They loomed out of the mist like ancient sentinels. She approached and they let her pass. Again she paused.
Just in front of her, it must have been no more than three spear lengths, she could make out several huddled shapes almost lost against the greyness.
She waited yet again: watching, listening, sensing the chill against her cheeks and fixing the shapes in her gaze. Still, there was nothing, no movement at all.
'Well, all right,' her lips moved in a whisper. At the same time, one hand slid to the hilt of the sword at her hip, and she eased it carefully out of the scabbard. 'No sense taking any chances.' She glanced to the left and right. It was still day but there was not enough light in this broken place to catch her polished blade and warn someone of her approach.
Once more she moved. The shadows did not stir to meet her coming, nor did they melt back into the mist. They stayed where they were, motionless almost lost and unknown.
She crept forward as a hunter.
And as she came towards them, like figures in a dream the shapes revealed themselves. With a slight gasp of relief, she saw that they were statues, no more than statues. But they were strange statues: squat, rounded, colourful and weirdly childlike.
Despite herself, she smiled, reached out and touched the painted surface of the nearest one: it was ice cold to the touch. For a moment she studied it: the statue of a unicorn, its paint chipped and worn but with eyes that were big and round, black on white and edged with red and gold. The twisted horn of this abandoned unicorn had been broken near the top, and the carved mane, once purest white, was stained with mud and the touch of many little hands.
She smiled again, but unwilling to be distracted, and then straightened and looked around. What was this place?
As the breeze rose and the mist stirred and swirled, more shapes appeared. Some she recognised, some she didn't, and those that she recognised were only vague memories from books that she had found among piles of rubbish in empty houses on empty streets: an elephant, a camel, a zebra with one leg missing, and a crocodile with a carved seat moulded onto its back.
At last the sun pushed through the gloom, glowing like a mirror of polished pearl and making dull shadows beneath the silent figures.
Anna-Seka of the College of Scouts, lifted her sword and rested it across her shoulder. Was this a temple, or was it a burial place? She shook her head. No one would bury their dead like this, nor would they gather priests here and make sacrifice.
