The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner

Author:Skye Melki-Wegner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2015-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

As the last note rolled off her lips, Susannah plunged into the Hush. Darkness swelled around her, cool and thick and bitter on her skin.

She blinked. Fog and rain slipped like lids across her pupils. The room looked sinister now, in the depth of the shadows. Raindrops swirled and danced through the air, teasing this way and that, as darkness danced a silent quadrille across the floor.

The floor.

The floor was still made of glass, glinting and deadly. Chester’s guess had been wrong, then. There was no solid pathway built in the Hush.

‘Up there,’ Chester whispered.

Susannah followed his gaze. It took a moment to make out the shape through the darkness. It was a basket seat, dangling from ropes and pulleys. Above it, a row of metal tracks ran like teeth along the roof, ready to winch the basket across to the platform.

Susannah let out a low whistle. ‘Whatever Yant’s hiding in that chest,’ she said, ‘he’s going to some serious lengths to keep it safe. It’s either very valuable, or very secret.’

‘All the better for us, right?’

She glanced at him, a little surprised. Chester grinned at her, his teeth shining white beneath his mop of black hair, and Susannah felt a strange little surge of pride. Here he was, on his first ever job and already talking like a member of the gang. If the boy was afraid, he wasn’t showing it. In fact, he was the one coming up with good ideas. He was thinking on his feet, even in the heart of the wasp’s nest.

Susannah returned his smile. ‘Right. All the better for us.’

She took a few steps towards the edge of the opaque floor then reached for the seat, swinging it down towards them, letting its ropes extend as a pulley clanked overhead.

‘Not enough room for both of us,’ she said. ‘I’ll go first and send it back for you.’

Chester nodded. ‘Be careful. If you fall onto the glass …’

Susannah felt a little clench in her gut. He sounded genuinely worried about her. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’m our resident cat burglar, remember? If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s keeping my balance.’

She leaped up into the basket seat. It swung wildly at the jolt of her weight, but Susannah grabbed the ropes to steady herself.

A long rope dangled in front of her with a metal contraption on its end. Susannah studied it for a moment. It was a handle to wind the rope, like the handle on a fishing line. She had seen plenty of fishing lines in her youth spent by the sea so it wasn’t hard to figure out how to work the contraption. She wriggled a little to make herself comfortable, then cranked the handle. The rope slipped around the winding device, the cogs creaked, and her basket jolted forwards.

It wasn’t a smooth ride. Her basket jerked and bucked like a drunken horse, as her legs swung high above the glass. She stole a fleeting look behind her, just in time to see Chester vanish into the black.

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