Time trickled and tangled in the thorn-wrapped hollow. The world outside the tunnel forgot them — or pretended to. In the dark, there was only the hush and the shivering heat that pulsed off the boy's small body.
Rafi lay flat on his back, the tunnel's chill chewing through his coat, the hush whispering lullabies in a dead woman's voice. He watched the braid girl swab the boy's brow with a scrap of cloth torn from her sleeve. She worked in silence — always silence — but her shoulders trembled with each breath.
Once, the boy's eyelids fluttered. He mumbled for a mother who'd left him behind, for a promise no one ever made. His skin burned under Rafi's palm like an ember that could set this whole cursed tunnel ablaze.
Roots tangled through the cracked concrete beneath them — not just the brambles above, but hair-thin tendrils that pushed up between broken stone, brushing their backs, brushing their dreams. They twitched when the boy moaned, as if tasting him.
Rafi pressed his lips to the boy's burning temple. He whispered without sound: Stay with me. Just stay.
The hush giggled inside the roots. He is already mine, little thief. Let him sink. He is tired.
Rafi's throat clenched so tight he almost choked on spit. He remembered this voice — not the hush exactly, but what it stole to wear like a mask. The same softness that once called him inside at dusk, before the fire, before the silence that devoured his house from the inside out.
He snapped his eyes open. He would not drown in old grief tonight.
Beside him, the braid girl moved closer, curling her legs under her thin coat. Her eyes were wide and bright in the gloom. She touched Rafi's wrist, then the boy's. She didn't need words: He's getting worse.
Rafi nodded. His mind scraped itself raw, searching for an answer. In the hush's throat, solutions twisted like fishhooks:
Abandon the boy, lighten the burden.
Let the hush feed on him, maybe spare the others.
Or carry him deeper — risk everything for a chance at real help somewhere no map could find.
The roots quivered again under his back. He pressed his palm flat against the cracked floor. The hush exhaled, almost sweet: Deeper, Rafi. Let me root you where fear can't hurt anymore.
He jerked his hand back as if stung. He faced the braid girl and forced out a single ragged whisper: We have to move.
She frowned, head tilting in the hush's echoes: Where?
He motioned toward the deeper tunnel — the veins that wound under the city like a spider's web. Some led to old maintenance vaults, some to underground streams. Rumors said other runaways burrowed there once, built fires against the hush's tongue.
The braid girl hesitated. She brushed the boy's damp cheek, then nodded. Her braid brushed his shoulder — a promise she didn't have the voice to speak aloud: We're not leaving him.
Outside the thorn pocket, the hush coiled thicker. Roots flexed through the tunnel walls, finding cracks, probing for warmth. Somewhere deeper, faint lights flickered — or maybe those were just fever ghosts dancing behind Rafi's eyes.
He hooked his arms under the boy's knees and shoulders again. The boy whimpered but didn't wake.
The braid girl led the way, peeling brambles aside with her bare hands until tiny cuts beaded blood on her knuckles. The hush drank every drop.
Behind them, the roots wriggled after, greedy for any warmth left behind.
They stumbled deeper into the tunnel's belly. Shadows thickened, the hush's voice rising to a hymn only the desperate could hear.
Rafi held the boy tight and whispered into the hush's ear: You can have my fear. But you don't get him.
The hush only laughed, and the roots closed the tunnel behind them like a mouth sealing shut.