The next dawn tasted like iron and old smoke. Rafi hadn't slept. He watched the braid girl's chest rise and fall in shivering gasps while the villagers outside gathered in the fog, voices muttering like restless crows.
They'd come for him at first light — five men and Marnie at their head, a lantern swinging from her fist. Rafi saw them through the cracked shutters, saw the pitchforks, the ropes, the hollow fear in their eyes that said: Not again. Not in our village.
He slipped his knife under the girl's pillow and opened the door before they could pound it down.
Marnie's eyes gleamed, sharp and black like a magpie's. "Boy. Step aside. We take the witch girl to the river — wash the curse out of her before it roots deeper."
Rafi didn't flinch. "Touch her and I'll cut your hands off." His voice was raw from whispering to the hush all night. From begging it to leave her bones.
Behind Marnie, one of the men hissed, "He's mad — brought the hush back in his blood. We should hang him and salt the house."
They edged closer. Rafi smelled the fear rolling off them — and under it, something else. Something colder than fear. A resigned hunger to see blood again if it meant safety.
He took a step back, ready to bolt, when a sound rose from behind the barn. A soft, stammering chant. Then another voice joined. Then a third — young, cracked with cold.
Marnie froze, her lantern swinging wide. "What's that?"
Rafi turned his head just enough to see over her shoulder. Shapes moved in the mist. Small, ragged shapes. Children — ten, maybe more. Dirty faces, bare feet cut raw by thorns, some clutching sticks sharpened to knife points.
At their front stood a boy no older than Rafi, wearing a crown twisted from green saplings and bone splinters. He stared straight through Marnie, straight at Rafi, eyes glittering with a madness Rafi knew too well.
The boy spoke, voice calm as a lullaby. "We heard the hush singing again. We came to listen."
Marnie snarled, "Get away, you brats! Back to your parents, if you even have any."
But the children didn't flinch. They clustered behind the crowned boy like seeds clinging to a root. One girl giggled and rocked on her heels, whispering, "Hush hush hush hush hush…" under her breath.
The crowned boy smiled at Rafi — and there was hunger in it. Not for food, but for the hush's whisper. "You belong to it too, don't you? Come with us. We'll make it stronger than before. Stronger than the grown ones."
Marnie spat in the dirt. "Monsters. Every last one."
Rafi stepped onto the threshold, feeling the braid girl's breathing catch behind him. He looked at the feral children, at the crowned boy who smelled of damp leaves and old grave earth, and he knew: the hush wasn't dead. It had just found new roots.
He tightened his grip on the doorframe, throat dry. "I won't let it take her. Or you. Not again."
The crowned boy tilted his head like a curious wolf pup. "Try, then."
Behind him, the outcast children smiled as one — a ring of teeth in the rising fog.