The Hush

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  Nathaniel cut her off. ‘I chose to live in Hamelin. I happen to like it there. It was my home town, once. A long time ago.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘You see, my dear, you made a terrible mistake. You assumed that a Songshaper living in a tiny town must be a failure. Someone too humdrum to make it in the big city. Someone with no accomplishments, no career, no prospects.

  ‘But you forgot the other reason that a Songshaper might live in a tiny town: because he’s a success. He’s someone with enough clout and power to live wherever he likes. He’s someone with the wealth to buy long-distance communication globes and enough pegasi to travel to and from Weser whenever he pleases. He’s someone who hires underlings to do his dirty work. He’s someone with a great career and limitless prospects.’

  He tightened his smile. ‘He’s someone like me.’

  ‘You’re lying!’ Susannah said. ‘If you’re such a high-up Songshaper, why the hell would you let us break into the Conservatorium?’

  Nathaniel shrugged. ‘I was curious. I wanted to see what your plan entailed and what flaws you’d discovered in the Conservatorium’s defences. Nice job on the dome descent, by the way. I shall have to remedy that one. And I’m impressed that you dismantled my light-beam trap. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting –’

  ‘You stole it!’ Travis shoved himself forwards, anger on his face. ‘You stole that trap from my sister, just like you stole her –’

  Nathaniel raised his pistol and Travis froze.

  ‘Uh, uh, uh.’ Nathaniel wagged the finger on his other hand. ‘One more step, my lad, and I’ll be forced to use this. And that would be such a pity, wouldn’t it? I have so many questions to ask you all. So many things to learn.’

  ‘You stole my sister!’ Travis snapped, breathing heavily. ‘You stole her away in the middle of the night, and you stole her ideas and turned them into weapons.’

  ‘We steal many things,’ Nathaniel said calmly, ‘and many people. You can’t expect me to remember the identity of every soul we gather up for our mission.’

  ‘What mission?’

  ‘Why, our mission to keep the Hush populated, of course. Our mission to replenish the supply of Echoes.’

  Susannah stared at him. ‘What are you talking –’

  And then it hit her. She twisted back around to face the cage.

  The cage. The cage full of writhing bodies, of grasping hands, of silenced throats. The cage full of Silencers, twisted into something less than human, pumped with warped Music and imprisoned for months in the Hush …

  And she understood. She understood it all.

  ‘The Silencers,’ she whispered to herself, her throat barely managing to form the syllables. ‘We’re not finished transformations … We’re just … just … unfinished Echoes.’

  Susannah stared at the cage bars. At the grasping hands. Unfinished Echoes. The Songshapers were building an army of Echoes. They were stealing people from their beds, sparking the transformation with drugs and melodies, and then somehow letting the Musical toxins of the Hush do the rest.

  ‘That’s why we’re immune to Echoes,’ she whispered. ‘We’re half-baked Echoes ourselves.’

  It all made sense. The truth throbbed; a pulse of terrible realisation in her brain. Echoes were people. They were all just people who’d been taken and twisted and driven mad by the Songshapers’ schemes.

  She looked up at Nathaniel. ‘But how …?’

  ‘Oh, the process is simple,’ Nathaniel said quietly. ‘We take a man and we impregnate him with a melody. A melody of control. The tune is only a seed, at first; it hasn’t yet germinated. At this stage, he is what we call a Silencer. He still retains his mind, his memories, his free will.

  ‘Then we lock him down here in the Hush. The tune inside him will slowly germinate, nurtured by the twisted Musical pollution of the air. So long as he never leaves the Hush, the melody inside will awaken. Little by little, day by day. The melody prevents him from connecting to other Music – even if he has studied Songshaping – so he cannot escape the cage.’

  Susannah could not breathe.

  ‘Eventually,’ Nathaniel said, ‘the man will lose himself. His natural qualities will remain intact – strength, courage, resilience – but he will use them on our behalf, not his own. He will forget his past, his future. He will forget everything but the tune in his veins. The Music inside him will grow and strengthen, gradually hijacking his mind and body, until nothing is left but a hazy ghost of humanity.

  ‘Finally, when his mind is gone, he will regain the power to detect other melodies. He will not only detect them, but he will crave them, just as a starving man craves nourishment. He will drift out between the bars of the cage, hungry for a new source of Musical energy. He is now an Echo. He is a slave, ready to roam the Hush on our behalf.’

  ‘But why?’ Susannah’s voice was hoarse. ‘Why would you –’

  Nathaniel took a step towards her. He didn’t lower his gun. ‘Ah, now – that’s the question you should have been asking all along, isn’t it? Not so clever as you think you are. Not so clever by half.’

  Susannah could sense Dot and Travis on either side of her. The entire world seemed to take a giant intake of breath, teetering on a precipice, as she waited for more horror to unfold.

  Part of her wanted to leap forwards, to throw herself onto Nathaniel and tackle him now, to shut him up, to stop him revealing whatever terrible gloat was about to drop from his lips. Because she could tell from the twist in his smile that it wasn’t good. Part of her didn’t want to know.

  But the rest of her – the part of her that had propelled her on this mission to form the Nightfall Gang, to fight back against the cruelty of the Songshapers, to release the Silencers – that part of her burned for the truth. It hungered for knowledge, for answers. For the reason this had been done to her.

  So she took a deep breath and forced her feet to stay steady. ‘Why do you care about making Echoes?’ she said. ‘The Songshapers are more powerful than the government! You’ve already got power in the real world – you don’t need the Hush to –’

  ‘The real world?’ Nathaniel’s lips curled up higher, revealing his teeth. ‘Ah. That’s an interesting label, isn’t it? The thing about reality, my dear, is that it’s all so relative.’

  ‘What do you –’

  Nathaniel’s teeth were white as lightning. ‘What if I told you that the real world is the Hush?’

  A hand grabbed him.

  Chester’s body was jolted, caught by this tug against momentum as he leant towards the pond. He jerked backwards, startled by the strength in the arm that held his shoulder. Then a thought hit him and he almost couldn’t turn around. He was certain that it was him. His father. It had to be. His father had found him and saved him and how was Chester supposed to sacrifice himself when his father was standing right –

  But when Chester turned, it wasn’t his father.

  It was Sam.

  Chester choked. The pale blue eyes of a Silencer, eerie and shining in the dark. Sam held him so tightly that his fingertips stung against the bone of Chester’s shoulder but the older boy showed no signs of letting go.

  ‘Don’t,’ Sam said.

  It was such a simple word. Don’t. One little syllable. How could one little syllable hold so much meaning?

  Chester shook his head. ‘It’s part of the plan …’

  ‘No, it ain’t. She’s back there screaming for you, Chester. She wants you to come back until we figure out something else.’

  Chester stared at him. ‘She?’

  ‘The captain.’

  They met each other’s eyes for a moment and Chester had no idea what to say. Susannah had planned this. It was the only way. How could she want to back out now, when they were so close to victory?

  ‘This is her chance for justice,’ Chester whispered. ‘This is what she wants.’

  Sam shook his head slowly. There was a strange expression on his face, a slow kind of w
eariness that Chester had sometimes glimpsed in his eyes, when the older boy thought no one was watching.

  ‘It’s the only way to save my father,’ Chester said. ‘And Penelope. And all these other people, too.’

  ‘Ain’t the only way.’ Sam’s voice sounded gruff now, choked with something left unsaid.

  ‘I’ve got to disrupt the melody,’ Chester said. ‘It’s what’s holding the cage’s Music together. If I can touch the tune, then I can reverse it …’

  ‘Don’t need a fiddle then,’ Sam said. ‘You’re just planning to break the water’s tune, ain’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Chester said, ‘but –’

  ‘Remember when we crashed into that river? Dot said maybe we could just throw in an Echo. A creature with Music inside it.’ Sam gazed down at the water. ‘She figured it might be enough – the mixture of its Music and its dying life-force, or something like that.’

  Chester shrugged, helpless. ‘Yeah, but we haven’t got an Echo to throw in there! There’s just me and you.’

  ‘I’m a Silencer,’ Sam said. There was a haunted look in his eyes. ‘Know what Silencers are? Know what we’re really made for?’

  Chester felt his heartbeat stammering. He could tell that there was something very wrong in Sam’s voice. Another secret? Another revelation?

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Silencers ain’t the final product,’ Sam said. ‘We’re just a step along the way. A half-baked recipe. A work in progress.’

  A glimmer of understanding brushed the edges of Chester’s mind. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘It can’t be …’

  ‘A Silencer,’ Sam said, ‘is an unfinished Echo.’

  The glimmer became a shine, then a fire. Chester’s brain lit up with too many understandings to bear. It all made sense, a horrible, calculated kind of sense. Silencers were immune to Echoes’ touches; in fact, the creatures floated right through them. Silencers were kept in this cage for months and months, in the twisted air of the Hush, as if they were seeds being kept in a greenhouse to develop …

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It can’t be.’

  But it was. He knew it now, as sure as he knew his own breathing. Susannah was halfway to being an Echo. His father was halfway to being an Echo. Penelope was halfway to being an Echo, alongside all the other half-mad souls that clawed their way through the thick of the cage. Their voices were gone, their minds were being twisted, their memories were slowly fading …

  All the Echoes he’d encountered on his journey through Meloral – the one he’d killed on his first night in Sam’s echoboat, the ones he’d fought in Yant’s vault – they had been people, once. Vanished people, turned into monsters by the Songshapers …

  ‘Why? What do they make them for?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’ He was staring at the pond now, at its quiet ripples, at its sheen. His fingers flexed on Chester’s shoulder and a new twinge of pain ran up Chester’s collarbone.

  ‘I only know ’cause I heard ’em talking when they chucked me onto death row,’ Sam said. ‘After they stuffed me up with their experiments, they figured I’d never make a proper Echo so they might as well be rid of me. And since they were getting rid of me, they didn’t figure I’d live to spill their secrets. I did live – but I never told a soul. Not even Susannah. Figured she’d be happier not knowing what she really was.’

  ‘But you’re not a full Echo,’ Chester said, breathless. ‘It’s just the start of the process – you’re still human, mostly …’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe not. Either way, they put a melody in me. It ain’t properly developed, yet, but it’s there. It whips me round like a damn lasso. It fills up my head with … with fear, or hate, or happiness, or fury – all just from hearing a bit of Music …’

  Sam sucked down a breath. ‘I ain’t even sure what I am anymore. I feel like … like a bull at a rodeo, all roped down and trembling in the dust. Nothing left but the whip.’ His voice cracked. ‘But I know one thing for sure. I’m gonna make the bastards pay for what they done to me.’

  Chester stared into Sam’s pale eyes. For the first time, he saw not just anger but pain. Anguish. Chester and Travis weren’t the only members of the Nightfall Gang to have put on a false show of strength.

  And with a terrible rush he realised what Sam was about to do.

  ‘No! No, Sam you can’t –’

  Sam shoved him backwards, so violently that Chester crashed against the floor. He struggled back up and launched forwards to try to snatch a fistful of Sam’s shirt. But Sam’s headstart had been too much, and Chester’s fingers were still inches from –

  Sam hit the water.

  The splash was a roar. The moment seemed to freeze in front of Chester: the strangled cry, the wild determination in Sam’s eyes. Chester had one last glimpse of Sam’s face, those ghostly blue eyes, the scars, the stubble, and a final cry from his mouth as the black smoke rose around him, engorged him …

  The air gave an almighty yank and hurled Chester backwards again. He heard the clatter of bodies as hundreds of prisoners staggered sideways, tossed violently in the cage. He knew they would be shouting, screaming, but their silent lips held back the sound.

  The cage that held them flashed a hot, violent white. Its bars lit up like a broken sorcery lamp and for a moment Chester saw everything. Then the scene unfolded in staccato jerks as bodies poured between the bars, shoving out into the darkness beyond the cage …

  ‘Sam!’

  Chester forced himself onto his knees, reaching forwards. If he could just grab the boy’s disappearing hand, if he could drag him back out onto the Hush-blackened floor …

  Flickering light shot down from the top of the cage. It sizzled like lightning, a tongue in the air, and hit the pond with a crash louder than a gunshot. The pond exploded with sorcery and Chester was slammed backwards a third time. He rolled to the side, gasping and cursing and forced himself back up onto shaking knees. He caught a final glimpse of Sam’s hand – charred, broken, and unmistakably dead – before it vanished beneath the sheen of the water.

  Chester stared at the pond. It was still sloshing, still electrified. He knew it was too late to rescue his friend. Even if he threw himself in after Sam – even if he fought the Music and managed to drag him out – the boy was already dead.

  Chester felt a cry rise in his chest and he fought it down. He clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails left bloody marks in his palms.

  Later, he told himself. Later, he could fall to pieces. Later, he could deal with the horrors of the cage, with Sam’s sacrifice, with the fact that Susannah had betrayed him. For now, he had to hold himself together and do what he could for the rest of his gang.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Susannah was still struggling to process what Nathaniel had just told her. The Hush was the real world? But that meant Meloral was …

  ‘It’s a grand piece of Music,’ Nathaniel said. ‘The greatest symphony ever performed. Isn’t that what music is, after all? Conjuring emotion out of sound. Conjuring stories from the air. Well, why not increase the scale? Why not conjure a whole world out of the air?’

  Susannah stared at him. She opened her mouth to argue, to deny it. But her mouth was so dry that it felt like tissue and her lips stuck together in a prickly suction seal. She licked her lips and tried again, but still the words would not come.

  ‘This place,’ Nathaniel said, gesturing at the Hush, ‘was our real world, once. It is so rich in magic, you know. So rich in power, so rich in fuel to increase the strength of our Music. Down in the depths of the earth, there are rich deposits of liquid sorcery just waiting to be harvested.

  ‘The earliest Musicians learnt to exploit those resources,’ Nathaniel said. ‘They were seen as heroes, as innovators. They learnt to mine for liquid sorcery, to carry it with them, to enhance their own abilities beyond their natural limits.’

  Nathaniel’s spare hand roamed up towards his throat. His
fingers settled on his nautilus shell pendant, which curved upwards like a silver vial. Susannah stared at it, her pulse pounding violently as realisation hit. The pendants weren’t just symbols of the Songshapers, they were vials of liquid sorcery, worn around their necks to enhance their powers.

  Nathaniel smiled. ‘Unfortunately, as the liquid evaporates with use, we needed more of it. The process of extraction is … difficult. We dug through shafts of toxic sorcery, through rock and shale and veins of Music. We released gases and twisted melodies into the air. The process stained the air dark with fumes and pulled unnatural rain from the skies.

  ‘My people were no longer seen as heroes. We were villains. We were called polluters and we were shunned. We had power in Music, but no power in society. And we wanted both, my dear. We wanted it all.’

  Nathaniel’s eyes were alight now, bright with mania. He tightened his grip on the pistol with one hand, while the other clenched greedily at his pendant.

  ‘We needed people to forget,’ he whispered. ‘To live in ignorance.’

  ‘The real world isn’t real?’ Susannah whispered.

  ‘Oh, it’s real enough,’ Nathaniel said. ‘It exists. It’s a physical place. But we created it. We all created it. You created it, my dear: you and every other soul in Meloral.’

  ‘The Sundown Recital,’ Dot whispered. It was the first time she’d spoken since Nathaniel had revealed himself. ‘That’s what it’s for, isn’t it? Thousands of souls, humming that tune every night in unison.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Nathaniel said. ‘Five hundred years ago, the world’s Musicians created the largest Musical enchantment in history. They didn’t just build a sorcery lamp, or a shield, or an echoship. They built an entire world. They gave themselves a new name: “Songshapers”. They built the largest Musical enchantment in history and most of the musicians don’t even know they’re part of it.

  ‘Just think of it, Dorothy. You’re a clever girl. You’ll see the genius in it. Thousands of souls to replenish this world, feeding back into the enchantment, renewing the sorcery for us. Thousands of souls rebuilding their own prison for us, night after night.’