‘On your feet, boy,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to die in shame.’ He fingered the pistol at his belt.
Chester eyed the pistol. For a terrible moment, he considered it. If he stopped here, the sheriff would shoot him. Perhaps that would be better. A fast, clean death. His head would remain on his shoulders.
But it would mean giving in. Chester still had minutes to live, precious minutes, and he wasn’t about to give those up. If he truly was as brash as a banjo, then he’d damn well keep plucking those strings until the very end. Convince the world you’re strong and you’re halfway to being there.
He clambered to his feet.
In the square, a crowd had already gathered. They broke into cheers as the prisoners approached: Chester and the horse thief, bound and helpless in the growing light. The thief whimpered and cried, and Chester caught a whiff of urine as the man lost control of his bladder. The sheriff shoved the man in the small of his back. The man stumbled forwards then tripped into the puddle of mud that had formed in the dust around his feet.
‘Get movin’,’ grunted the sheriff.
A minute later, they stood in the centre of the square. The crowd roared. A pair of local farmers grappled with the horse thief, forcing him to kneel, his head upon the block.
‘Thomas Malkin,’ said the sheriff. ‘You are found guilty of theft from a government official. You are found guilty of denying your crimes, and attempting to flee from justice. Your sentence is death.’
The man called Malkin was sobbing like a child. When the axe came down there was a terrible crunch of flesh and bone. The crowd cheered. Chester clenched his eyes shut, breath like fire in his throat. He couldn’t watch the head roll away, or the blood splash across the platform. He couldn’t …
‘Next!’ called the sheriff.
And then he was up there. Chester didn’t even remember those final steps across the square. All he knew was that his head was lying on the block, and the other man’s blood was smearing his cheek, and liquid was pooling around his knees, his shins …
‘Chester Hays. You are found guilty of illegal Music. You are found guilty of connecting to the Song without a licence. Your sentence is death.’
He could see the hill. With his head at this angle, it curved like a treble clef. Chester thought of his fiddle. He thought of the Song. This is just another performance, he told himself. The crowd was just an audience, enjoying his music, dancing to his fiddle as his fingers ranged across the neck. He was pressing his bow to the strings. He was coaxing a melody from its touch. His heart was fluttering because the music was so pure, so perfect.
Someone was shouting, a blur in the crowd, pushing towards him …
He would not let them see his fear. He would not –
The axe came down.
And just before it hit his neck, the world stopped.
CHAPTER SIX
Chester didn’t breathe.
For a moment he thought he was dead. The axe had come down, his neck had been severed, and this world of blurring light was just the final scream of a dying mind. But he could feel his hands. His legs. His chest.
The world was grey: the sky had tipped a bottle of ink across Hamelin, turning the town to shadow. Chester took a cautious breath. His lungs inflated. The air tasted bitter, with an odd tang of salt, and it moved like molasses in front of his eyes.
Slowly, Chester twisted his neck around. It was still attached to his shoulders, as far as he could tell. He rolled his head to the side and looked up. The executioner was gone. The axe was gone. He struggled to his feet. If he focused his eyes, he could make out the remains of the square. The cobbled streets. The execution platform. Faint silhouettes of buildings loomed behind the unnatural rain. But there were no people. No voices. No sound. Just empty sky, as dark and smoky as the world to his sides. Rain fell, tumbling and swirling, but it didn’t leave him wet. It spilled around and around, like a fistful of colourless leaves.
Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps he –
‘Chester Hays?’
He whirled. The speaker stood beside him, cloaked in a swirl of rain and shadow. Chester strained his eyes to make out the face.
It was an older boy, about nineteen: a bulk of height and muscles beneath his leather coat. He wore a cowboy hat, tilted slightly downwards, and had pale blue eyes that glinted beneath the rim. With a rush, Chester remembered the blurred sight of a figure running, shouting, shoving through the crowd towards him …
It was the boy from the saloon. The one who’d suggested ‘The Nightfall Duet’. Had he known what would happen when Chester played? Had he somehow guessed, in that whirlwind of music, that Chester would accidentally connect to the Song?
Chester took another weak breath. ‘Who are you?’
‘Samson Walsingham’s my name,’ said the boy, ‘but most folks call me Sam. And you’d better hurry. Ain’t safe to be in the Hush without no training.’
‘The what?’
‘The Hush.’ Sam gestured at the grey expanse of air. ‘This place.’
Something stirred in Chester’s memory. The Hush. He was sure he’d heard that term before … but his mind felt muddled and he couldn’t think clearly. His brain was strained with fear and panic, adrenaline still pumping after the horrors of the execution, confusion at the swirl and whip of this unnatural grey world.
‘Is this the afterlife?’ he whispered. ‘Am I dead?’
Sam snorted. ‘No, you ain’t dead.’
‘Well then, what is this place?’
Sam shook his head, impatient. ‘It’s hard to explain, all right? But you ain’t dead, and the Hush ain’t no afterlife. It’s just … somewhere else. Somewhere to escape to.’ He waved a hand. ‘Look, you gotta come quick – no time for spelling it out.’
Chester backed away. ‘Why should I trust you?’
‘’Cause if I hadn’t yanked you into the Hush,’ Sam said, ‘your head would be taking a vacation from your shoulders right about now.’
‘Good point.’
They hurried across the square and down a street. As Chester moved, the patch of visibility around him shifted: the square vanished into rain behind him, as the road ahead formed nebulous shapes and shadows. It felt as though he was walking in a bubble of light, deep underwater, with a boundary that ebbed and shifted.
‘What did you mean,’ Chester said, ‘about it not being safe here?’
Sam grabbed his sleeve. ‘Hurry up.’
Chester stumbled, startled by the larger boy’s speed. Sam’s legs were powerfully long; for every stride he took, Chester was forced to take two. The older boy glanced around constantly, checking from side to side. His eyes were intense, pale and glinting beneath the rim of his cowboy hat.
Occasionally, a strange noise echoed in the Hush: a huff from their left, or a shriek in the distance. Whenever this happened, Sam would yank Chester behind him. He would thrust out his hands protectively, as though to ward off an attack from the dark. There would be a long pause. A silence. Chester would hold his breath.
Then Sam would yank him forwards with a new burst of speed.
As they hurried down Hamelin’s main road, Chester glimpsed the looming bulk of the Barrel o’ Gold through the gloom. But here in the Hush, the saloon was no longer whitewashed wood. It was grey and distorted, shrouded in rain and smudged by darkness. As soon as Chester passed, the building faded: just another vanishing ghost in the Hush.
Chester’s throat stung and his breath felt sharp. They passed through the outskirts of the town, hurrying onto the road beyond its boundaries. Cornfields rose on either side of them: tall and faded, swirling with grey. Black paint seemed to splatter the sky.
Sam jerked him to a stop. ‘Touch the ground, and close your eyes.’
‘But –’
‘Just do it!’
As Chester knelt, he kept his muscles tense. If the larger boy attacked him, he would be ready to run. But Sam did not attack; instead, he knelt and pressed his own right hand into the dirt. Then h
e grabbed Chester’s shoulder with his left hand.
‘What are you –?’
‘Easier if we’re touching,’ Sam said. ‘I had a hell of a time yanking you into the Hush before, when you were under that axe. Had to yell the blasted notes over the crowd and grab you at exactly the right moment – used up every damn speck of concentration I had.’
There was a moment’s silence.
Sam whistled.
It was a low, deep whistle. It echoed and rolled, like the howl of a wolf. It faded. Sam let out another whistle, then another. And suddenly, Chester recognised the tune. The Sundown Recital. But instead of humming the notes in order, Sam was whistling them backwards.
Chester recoiled. Blasphemy. An abuse of the Song. He jerked away, but Sam tightened his grip.
A flash. A compression of the air. Chester felt as though his skin had been pressed in, pushed against his bones and flesh. His eyeballs ached and his nails crushed like knives into his fingertips. The air whirled and whipped, as though to pull him away, and he dug his hands desperately into the dirt of the road, as though the dust and soil was an anchor in a stormy sea. The air around him sucked backwards, a whiplash, and then …
It was over.
Chester blinked. He knelt on a dusty road, with Sam beside him. Hot morning sunlight beat down on his frame. The darkness was gone; the fog had vanished. They knelt on the outskirts of Hamelin, by the edge of the cornfields. The grass crackled a little in the rising heat, and he heard the buzz of insects in the fields nearby.
Sam rose. ‘Come on.’
Chester struggled to his feet, trying to keep his balance. He felt dizzy – almost drunk – as the last few minutes caught up with his brain. He had almost died. He had almost died. But Sam had saved him. Sam had pulled him out of the normal world, and they had escaped through the dark unreality he’d called the Hush …
Suddenly, Chester knew where he’d heard that phrase before. The memory returned like a slap. His father, tossing and turning in the night, his forehead streaked with sweat, his eyelids twitching, lips muttering. His father in the throes of a nightmare. Hush, hush, hush …
Chester felt a sudden coldness. ‘Sam, what’s the Hush?’
‘Told you, I ain’t got time to explain. It’s too –’
‘I have to know!’
Sam grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Chester Hays. If you want to know right now, you’re gonna end up dead. I’ll tell you, I swear, but not right now. We gotta get out of here first, get someplace safe. You hear me?’
‘But –’
‘There’s a blasted Songshaper in that town,’ Sam said. ‘He’ll know you headed for the edge of town – where else are you gonna run? If you fancy living long enough for answers, we gotta go.’
Chester’s stomach twisted. Sam was right. Chester couldn’t help his father if the townspeople killed him. He could hear them now, quite close: shouting, yelling, barking orders. Their cries rang out like gunshots in the quiet morning air.
‘This way!’
‘Get him! Someone’s helping the little –’
‘There’s trails in the dust, look!’
The shouts grew closer by the second: a bustle of noise, yells, footsteps. All coming from the centre of the town. All surging towards them.
‘They’re coming,’ Chester whispered.
Sam swore under his breath. ‘I didn’t save your neck to have it blown off by a pistol.’
But to Chester’s surprise, Sam didn’t charge down the road. Instead, he twisted aside and ploughed down a tiny trail into the field of corn. Stalks swayed higher than his head, creating a labyrinth of green and gold.
Chester darted along the path, suddenly grateful for his size. He’d always wanted to be taller and stronger, but he was well suited to this narrow path, clearly designed for a nimble farmer to navigate his crops. Chester could dart and weave, twisting and turning with the loops of the trail. Sam, on the other hand, was the size of an ox. He crashed along without the slightest hint of caution, smashing corn stalks as if they were toothpicks.
Chester hurried forwards. ‘You’re leaving a trail.’
‘Oh, really?’ Sam said, gruff with sarcasm. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘I just thought, maybe you could run sideways …’
‘And I just thought,’ Sam said, ‘maybe you could start showing some respect to the person who saved your Song-cursed neck.’
There was a shout from behind them. It was closer this time. Too close.
Sam grabbed Chester’s arm. ‘Come on!’
They plunged down a path to the side. Chester spluttered as leaves and stalks kicked him in the face. Then they were running, smashing through the field. Broken stems slipped under Chester’s feet and every oversized leaf seemed determined to whip his eyes.
‘Couldn’t we … just … go back into the Hush?’
‘No!’ Sam was sweating now, but his breath held steady. ‘Too many dangers, and you ain’t trained to deal with ’em.’
They burst into a clearing: a long, wide row of corn that had already been harvested. Chester stumbled into open sunlight, doubled over to clutch his knees, and sucked down a lungful of air. Then he straightened up, taking a moment to get his bearings.
On the distant blue sky, a pegasus circled.
Chester swore. It was a chestnut horse with wings of golden brown. Its rider was just a silhouette from this distance, but it wasn’t hard to guess why he’d taken to the sky.
‘What?’ Sam said.
Chester pointed. ‘They’re hunting us from above.’
Sam squinted up. ‘This way.’
A dozen wider paths trailed off into the corn. They didn’t take the widest path or even the one that led furthest away from town. Perhaps Sam thought that would be too obvious – although privately, Chester would have settled for obvious, so long as it took him away from Hamelin.
The hillside sloped lower, painted with fields. Every breath he took tasted of dust and half-dried cornhusks. They swerved left and right, navigating forks in the path, weaving ever downwards.
As the morning wore on, the heat thickened. Air slapped hot on Chester’s face, his neck, his forearms. Insects buzzed. Chester felt as though his shirt itself might dissolve into sweat. He wished for a river, a creek – anything to wash the dust and salt from his body. But there was nothing. Just the smother of the sun, and the crackle of dried husks underfoot.
He could still hear shouts, but they sounded more distant now. Perhaps the townspeople had chosen the wrong path in this endless maze. Chester shielded his eyes, took a shuddering breath, and almost allowed himself to hope.
Then he glanced up. ‘Sam, get down!’
They collapsed into a heap under arches of foliage just as a sweep of chestnut wings crossed the sky. Chester held his breath and fought to keep still. If he rustled the stems, a jolt would travel up the corn stalks and toss their highest leaves into a quiver.
But he risked raising his eyes, just a little. There was still an arch of darkness above, circling, as though the rider thought he might have spotted something, and was looping back around to double-check …
Chester felt Sam beside him, torso pressed against his shoulder. The older boy held his breath. He kept as still as a boulder, silent and steady in the leaves.
Finally, the shadow was gone.
Chester raised his head. The path through the corn was clear. He took a deep breath then slowly began to unfold his limbs. As he did so, he angled his neck for a better view of the sky.
‘Gone?’ Sam whispered.
‘I think so.’
Chester crawled forwards onto the path, where he could move more freely. Then he looked up properly and shaded his eyes.
‘He’s leaving,’ he said quietly. ‘But I think we should wait a minute, to be sure.’
Sam slumped back onto his elbows. Chester followed him back into the crook of the corn, where they’d already trampled the foliage. After a while, he lifted a hand to shield
his face from the sun. He wished he had a hat like Sam’s, with a rim to cast some shade. The skin on his knuckles and his arms stung raw with sunburn.
When he could no longer stand the silence, he asked Sam: ‘Why did you save me?’
There was a pause.
‘Why’s it matter? You’re alive, ain’t you? No cause for complaining, if you ask me.’
‘I don’t see why you’d risk your neck for a stranger.’
Sam hesitated. ‘I’m working on a job with some friends of mine. We’ve been … recruiting, I guess you’d call it.’
‘Recruiting?’ Chester turned to stare at him. ‘And you want me?’
‘Well, you passed the test.’
‘What test?’
‘Last night,’ Sam said, ‘in the saloon. You hooked up to the Song, all on your own.’ He made a sound that was half-laugh, half-scoff. ‘Just what the captain’s been looking for. When she sees what I dragged in for the job, I bet she’ll offer me a pay rise.’
‘That’s why you saved my life?’ Chester said. ‘You want me for this … job?’
‘Hell no,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t want you for nothing. I don’t trust Songshapers, and I sure as hell weren’t hankering to save your neck.’
‘Then why –’
‘’Cause orders is orders, and I do as I’m told. Captain wants you, and Captain gets what she wants.’ Sam glanced up at the empty sky. ‘Come on. Better move before that blasted horse comes back.’
‘But the Hush – you were going to tell me –’
‘Later.’
Chester forced himself to swallow a retort. This wasn’t the time to argue. They were still in danger, and Sam still held all the answers. This boy might even know the reason for his father’s vanishing. But if Chester pushed too hard, or asked too many questions, the older boy might clam up completely.
All he could do was follow and trust that the answers would come.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The fields were eerily silent. Chester trudged with a stitch in his side. There was no wind, no breeze, just heavy air, as hot as stew, and the sound of their own progress. Huffing. Stomping. Snapping twigs and heaving breaths.
The Hush Page 5
