They waited until the village lay drowned in its own uneasy dreams — when even the gossiping tongues snored and the dogs gave up their howls to the cold. Only then did Rafi slip from the cramped wooden room, careful not to wake old Marnie, who called herself his foster mother but prayed he'd leave soon.
The braid girl was already outside, bare feet sunk in the frost-rimed grass. She didn't turn when he approached. Her braid — that ragged rope of hair — swung heavy down her back, the tip crusted with sap.
"Couldn't sleep?" Rafi asked, though he knew better. Sleep was the one mercy the hush rarely gave back.
She spoke without facing him. "Roots cracking under stone. I hear it. It's hungry."
A chill burrowed beneath Rafi's ribs. He wanted to say, We burned it. We buried it in ash. But lies withered on the tongue out here, under the moon's bald eye.
So he offered the truth instead. "Show me."
They walked past the farthest huts, where the forest reared up in broken silhouettes, black limbs against starlight. A goat bleated somewhere in the distance — a strangled, choked noise that made Rafi tighten his fists. He wanted to believe it was just an old buck startled by shadows. But he'd seen how the hush could root itself inside fur, feathers, bone.
The black tree waited deeper in — where the hush's mind once bled into bark and breath. The fire had charred its trunk to a twisted tower of coal. Yet even from a distance, Rafi smelled it: the sweetness beneath the rot, sap weeping through the blackness like a wound that refused to scar.
When they stepped into its clearing, moonlight spilled over them both like a pale curse. The braid girl dropped to her knees, palms flat against the scorched roots. She leaned close — so close Rafi half-feared she would press her ear against the bark to listen.
Instead, she scraped her finger across a deep crack. Amber-red resin smeared her skin. She held it up to him. "It bleeds," she whispered.
Rafi crouched beside her, ignoring the way the ground felt alive — a faint pulse drumming through the soles of his boots. He reached to wipe her hand, but she jerked it away.
"The hush wants you back," she murmured. Her eyes flicked to his chest, to the place where nightmares still clung like mold. "It wants us both."
Rafi looked at the resin glistening on her fingertip. In the moonlight, it glowed like a fresh heart beating outside its cage.
In the hush, nothing died clean.
He knew, in that moment, the fire hadn't ended it. The hush mind had simply retreated, roots curling deeper than flame could reach. And now, fed by whispered prayers and the ache of orphans, it clawed toward the surface again.
He took the braid girl's hand, closing her stained fingers in his.
"Then we burn it again," he said. But the hush inside him laughed — soft and sure — as if it knew better.