Above the crawlspace, dusk had swallowed Hollow Street whole. The braid girl sat cross-legged on the filthy mattress, the little boy curled up asleep against her thigh. She didn't touch him but watched him breathe — shallow and quick, like an animal dreaming of running but too small to escape.
Outside, the wind rattled loose glass. Somewhere down the block, a bottle smashed and a voice slurred a threat that fizzled to laughter. The city still turned. But here in this husk of a room, time bent around her the way it always did when the hush stretched awake beneath the concrete.
She traced the frayed edge of the blanket beneath her palm. She'd promised herself once — back when her tongue still knew how to form lies — that she would never speak for the hush again. Not like before. Not like the first time it promised to quiet the hurt in her father's fists if she just gave it her voice.
But Rafi was down there now. And the hush knew her scent, her heartbeat, the taste of her breath when she wept.
So she closed her eyes, dropped her chin to her chest, and let her thoughts slip sideways into that whispering dark that filled the spaces between walls.
I know you hear me.
No words crossed her lips. She hadn't spoken aloud in years — not since the hush taught her silence was safer. But inside the place where thoughts and roots tangled, she pressed her mind against its sleeping shape.
The floorboards under her thigh quivered like skin goose-pimpling in a cold draft. She heard the hush stir far below, felt it curling around Rafi's bones — but it was her name it rasped first. Not her old name, but the secret name it gave her when she was too young to say no.
She pushed back, hard as she dared: Trade.
A flicker of laughter, hollow and vast as a church without worshipers. It reminded her she was small, breakable, one cracked rib away from being compost in its roots.
Trade, she pressed again, digging nails into her palms to anchor herself here in this filth instead of drifting fully under. You let him come back up. I stay.
The hush coiled warm and soft around her mind, stroking old memories awake. Her mother's hum in the kitchen. The smack of a belt against the floor when she hid under the table. The hush had saved her back then — a favor she never stopped paying for.
Say it, it breathed through the nails and wood and broken glass. Say it out loud.
She flinched so hard she nearly woke the boy. He whimpered but did not open his eyes. She forced herself still again. Her tongue felt like a stone behind her teeth.
She hadn't spoken in so long. Her father's voice was gone. Her mother's voice was gone. Only the hush wanted hers.
But Rafi was worth it. Stupid boy, storm heart, soft where it mattered most. He had always been worth it.
She opened her mouth. Lips cracked. A rusted hinge squealed in her throat.
One word.
"Yes."
A gasp — hers — raw and living in the room like a ghost freed from the walls.
Below, the hush shivered approval through the foundation stones. A promise sealed. A debt called in.
The braid girl sagged back against the moldy wall. Her head lolled to the side. She felt the hush coil tighter around her ribs, but she did not fight it.
Outside, the wind fell silent, as if waiting for what came next.
And in the crawlspace below, Rafi stirred at the roots' grip loosening just enough for him to crawl back toward whatever was left of freedom — if he could still carry it out alive.