“Only stories. The wise steer wide of you and grant you peace.”
Her expression shifted, like smoke curling at a wick, intrigued. “Are you a wise man, BroGan Gaayge?”
I shuddered at my name falling frozen from her mouth.
“I would give you peace,” I said in answer.
She shifted, drifting closer to me with a soft clatter.
“So few wise men in the worlds, above or beneath.” Her hand with too many fingers rose, one finger hooked toward me, the others writhing like snakes. “Even fewer wise gods. Yes?”
I knew better than to agree with any creature who had the power to bind with words. The Hush or at least this very powerful Hush, most definitely had that power.
The tales said the Hush were a blight upon the land long gone. Eradicated when technology devoured the wild spaces.
But there were still pockets of wild in the world, even here, along the Route.
Perhaps the Hush were reclaiming old passageways, spaces they had lived in before man invented machines.
“No?” she asked. “You will not speak? Perhaps you are a little wise, BroGan Gaayge. If you wish to live…” All her fingers stilled.
My arms suddenly jerked back, my legs caught in shackles that grew from stone and iron. A vice clamped around my neck and squeezed, reducing me to shallow sips of stagnant air.
“Do not struggle,” a low, male voice said near my ear. “I will keep you safe.” He stood close to me, very close, though I could not see him. He shifted and the vice—his hand—around my neck eased slightly.
“If you wish to live,” Mother Hush sang, advancing with the click of claws on stone. “I will have one thing from you.”
“You cannot bind me,” I whispered.
“Because a god favors you?” She opened her mouth and showed me too many rows of teeth. “I see who binds you and he is nothing to you. His ties are nothing. He is nothing.
“But there is more. A soul binds you. Love binds you. That will be your noose.”
I struggled, but the creature holding me growled, his winter’s breath freezing in the air.
“Be still,” he whispered, “and you may live.”
I stilled, and the shackles on my ankles and arms relaxed a fraction.
“You have the key,” Mother Hush cooed. “You will find the binding, our Strange weave, and return what was stolen from us.”
None of it made sense, but the words burned into me as if they were written in lightning across my eyes.
“The book. Ours. The Strange weave binding. Ours. We would have it.” Her needle sharp fingers reached for me, thin spider-silk webbing dripped from the sharp tip of each finger.
I jerked my head back and lunged against my bindings, but could not move.
“Hush,” she sang. Fast as a wing, her finger drew across my lips. A numbness followed the needle sting, and I tasted blood.
“This one stitch to hold you. To keep you silent. To remind you.” She breathed on me. I smelled rot and tree pitch. “Do not speak of this, un-mortal man. You alone owe me this debt. You alone will pay.”
She pulled her hand back, and I thought I saw a drop of my blood hanging from the thread on her finger.
“And if I do not?” I asked, surprised she had left me with my voice. “If I do not find the St—”
—lightning skipped through my lips, pouring fire down my throat. I was burning—
I gasped, and there was nothing. No pain. But I knew I could not speak of the thing she asked me to find. Not even to her.
