They lowered the anchor and gathered on deck to try and get a better view of what lay through the mist. Even those in their cabins came up to see what was happening.

Not much could be seen other than the warm glow of little lights, and the vague outline of several single story buildings. And although all were quiet, nothing could be heard coming from the beach except the the whispers of the wind.

Amanda turned to Sirius. "What do you think?"

He looked up at their tattered sail, and rubbed his dark bristled chin with one hand. "It's going to take at least a day or two to fix that. And I don't know how sheltered we are here but there's not much point trying to move in this mist. I'd rather know what's out there than risk being surprised later." He nodded at the lights up the beach.

"Time to go exploring then," she replied decisively, as she peered out toward the lights.

Neither moved for a moment. Then Sirius pursed his lips and looked around at the ship.

Shiv spoke. "I can stay here and guard the ship if you like?" He figured his Captain was reluctant to leave the ship without someone dependable in charge.

"Hmm." Sirius had not forgotten about their drinking while driving the boat. Eventually after much thought he nodded his head and replied, “Fine. But I swear if I get back and you’re not more sober than when I left-”

"Can we come?" Gemma asked, interrupting her father mid sentence.

“Yeah, can we?” Bobby added. The intrigue of a strange new place had roused his spirits. He was still tired, but he tried not to look it. His attempt did not fool his mother.

Behind him Sasha looked up with pleading, barely concealed excitement.

Salem, was the least enthused of the lot of them. The sound the wind was making, combined with the barrenness of the beach and the obscuring mist, reminded him of both his father’s story about the bowman, and his recent encounter with the sirens. He had the uncanny feeling there was something out there that he would rather not meet.

Katrina was nowhere to be seen, for she had chosen to remain below deck for some reason or another.

Sirius blinked down at his children. Beside him, Amanda opened her mouth and was about to tell them no, but Shiv got in first.

"Whoever's up there will probably see you as less threatening with children."

“And we’re assuming that’s a good thing?” Sirius raised one eyebrow.

Shiv shrugged. “Chances are they’re probably just a small village. Better they don’t think we’re pirates.”

His words changed Amanda’s mind and she nodded. “He’s right, it’s better we’re not seen as a threat until we need to be. The town might have some spare materiokinetics, someone who can help Sable mend the sail. Besides, I think we’ll have a riot on our hands if we leave them here.” She eyed the eager looks on most of the kid’s faces, then she nodded at the lot of them. “Go get your sister, and grab a small bag with a change of clothes.”

The kids scattered.

At Sirius’s raised eyebrow she explained, “Looks like a bit of a walk and it’s already near tea time. If we get food in the town, by the time we’re done eating, we might as well find an inn if they’ve got one.”

Sirius peered out into the mist, squinting. “What are the chances they have one?”

She shrugged. “Worst case, we take a late night walk back up the beach. But it pays to be prepared.”

“Aye. It does.”

“The kids do look knackered though...”

Sirius nodded. “They’ll be fine.” His tone was reassuring. “I’m gonna go grab Griff. We’ll need to work out where we are and hopefully whoever’s in that village can help us with that.”

Half an hour later the group of nine gathered on the sand. Sirius had talked Amanda out of bringing the bags in favor of bringing Benny, a basic summoner. They left the bags on the ship but let Benny get a look at them first. That way if they needed them later, they had simply to ask Benny to summon them. Sirius had wanted one extra pair of eyes anyway, just in case.

“Aren’t you cold?” Amanda asked Katrina as she climbed down off the ship. The air had a distinctive nip to it now and Katrina wore only a short-sleeved, flowy, black, chiffon top.

Katrina paused as she got the the bottom. “Yeah, maybe a little.” Truth was she hadn’t really noticed until her mother had said something, but now that she did, she wished she’d brought her jacket.

“Do you want to go grab-” Amanda started.

“I got it.” Benny clicked a finger and a moment later Katrina’s black button up cotton jersey hung from one finger.

It wasn’t the jersey Katrina had wanted, but she took it gratefully with only a soft sigh that got lost in the space between them. It wasn’t like anyone here appreciated fasion after all.

As they walked down the empty beach, drawn toward the lights like moths to a flame, Amanda caught up to her eldest daughter.

“Gemma, at some point we need to talk abou-”

“No! No we don’t. We don’t need to talk about anything.” Guessing that the conversation was going to be about the events in Rambandit, Gemma cut her mother off, and quickened her pace.

Amanda sighed and fell back next to Sirius.

"You're worried about her?" he asked, having heard the whole brief exchange.

Amanda nodded. "Her magic is wild and uncontrollable, like mine was once. Took a lot of life and death experiences before I got the control I did. I don't want that for her. Not that way. But if her control doesn't improve she could get hurt or..."

"Or hurt someone else," Sirius finished for her.

Amanda nodded. "I had to kill a boy before I got the control I have. Over and over. The necros brought him back fast so he didn't stay dead and their magic held. But the risk, and the screams. I don't want that experience for her. I'm sure if my parents had known what it was going to be like they never would have sent me to that place. There's got to be a different way."

“We just have to be patient. And hope.” Sirius tried to be reassuring, but his voice caught on that last word.

Amanda could hear his fear. She felt it too, sitting right there in the pit of her stomach.

The group walked in silence for much of the rest of the way.

They reached the town as the sun was setting over the dunes behind and to the left of them.

The first thing they noticed about the town was the quiet that smothered everything. It was just on tea time now. A time when bars should be filled with noisy patrons ready for a drink or something nice to eat after a long day. There should be people running about preparing meals with clings of pots, clashes of cutlery, and the sizzle of cooking. There should be talking, and laughter, and music, especially music. But here there was nothing. Shadows moved behind curtains but they were all deathly silent. Sirius gave his wife a questioning look. She shook her head in her own confusion, afraid to speak aloud.

Only Gemma spoke. In a commanding tone she asked "Why's it so quiet?"

Katrina shushed her. The atmosphere was catching.

In a whisper, Amanda replied, “I don’t know. Looks like there’s a tavern and inn up there.” She pointed further up the street where a sign hung in front of a wooden building. It’s windows burned bright with light. The sign sticking out above the door read,

‘The Ghost’s Retreat

Cold Beer. Warm food.

Vacancy’

The ‘vacancy’ part of the sign was attached to the rest of the sign with rusted hooks. As they approached they could hear it creak softly as it swung in the wind. Scrawled in handwritten chalk on a blackboard in the corner of the front window read the words ‘Food to die for,’ paired with a drawing of a little ghost matching the one on the sign above the front door. Past the sign and inside they could see several tall tables with small smatterings of people drinking and eating. No one noticed them.

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Amanda glanced back at Sirius, who nodded her onward. “Might as well get some food,” he remarked. “I’m sure someone in there can tell us where we are too.”

Amanda wondered at the soundproofing of the building, thinking it must be quite superb for the street to be so quiet. But when she opened the door to The Ghost’s Retreat, she found it was equally as quiet inside as it was outside. It was the quietest tavern she had even been in, and she had been in quite a few taverns. Even the way the people were eating was quiet. Not one fork or knife scraped against a plate. The eeriness of it all made her hesitate. Finally she stepped inside, followed by the rest of the group.

As Griff shut the door behind them all, a roundish brown-haired woman approached them. She was wearing an apron around her waist, and she eyed them warily with greyish-green eyes. She raised her hand and then made some quick signs with it.

Not understanding, Amanda shook her head.

In front of the belt of her apron, the woman, who was likely the innkeeper, twisted her hands together nervously. “Hello?” she finally asked in a hesitant whisper.

Sirius spoke first, keeping his voice soft but not quite a whisper. “Hello. We’d like to order some food.”

“And book some rooms if possible?” Amanda added.

When Sirius spoke, the woman jumped, and when her eyes found Sirius, she blinked as if surprised to see him there. It seemed to happen often, despite Sirius’s towering and bulky height, people’s attention just seemed to miss him until he spoke. Amanda wondered if the jacket he wore had something to do with it, if perhaps it had some kind of camouflage effect they didn’t know about. On the other hand, red hair was eye-catching, and maybe they just noticed her first. Red hair meant something specific for a witch after all. It was the mark of powerful magic. This wasn’t always the case, but the two things went together often enough that the stereotype persisted and Amanda didn’t exactly buck the trend.

The innkeeper nodded and started to back away even before she finished talking. “I’ll just go check, and bring some menus back.” The woman nearly tripped over her feet. Then, while still backing away, and as if she had only just remembered she pointed to two empty tables. “You can sit at those two tables, I’ll be back in a moment.”

Amanda watched her go in wonder. The woman had seemed far too eager to leave.

It was Griff who spoke her thoughts aloud in a whisper that sounded too loud for the room. “That was weird.”

Around them, other people eyed them with wary interest and mild curiosity.

Amanda nodded toward the two tables. Sirius quietly lifted one table and placed it next to the other. Everyone in the group took a seat. As some of the chairs scraped along the floor a few eyes turned their way but none of the group noticed.

After a moments silence, Benny raised a hand and summoned a guitar from the ship. He held it out to Amanda. “Maybe a song while we wait. It might warm the room up?” Benny was a soft spoken man and one of the few who had shaggier hair than Sirius. He was always shaking his head to get it out of his eyes. He was a quick-witted man but he always thought carefully before he spoke.

She took the guitar and glanced around the room. "I dunno...”

“Something soft and gentle, like ‘Long Way Home,’ perhaps? No one hates that song. It’s worth a try.”

She glanced at Sirius. He eyed the room and shrugged.

“Alright." She settled the guitar on her lap then plucked each string to check the tuning. She turned a couple pegs until it sounded right.

Just as she raised on hand to start playing, someone grabbed her wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” a man’s voice asked in a fierce whisper.

She turned to find a white-haired pot-bellied man wearing a white beard and a stricken look. Behind him, stood the innkeeper, holding some menus close against her chest, looking equally wide-eyed. He released Amanda’s hand

“Sorry...” she started to say, surprised at his reaction. “I just thought I’d play a song, nothing too loud. I can-”

He shook his head quickly and held up his hands in a calming motion. His shoulders relaxed a little. He kept his voice low, no louder than a whisper. “No, no, it’s alright. I apologise. You’re not from here. I’m Brutus. Mary, said there were newcomers.” He nodded at the innkeeper. “It’s just, we don’t allow music in this town. Ah...” he glanced back at Mary, who urged him on with her eyes. “It’s hard to explain.”

Amanda shook her head and matched the low volume of his voice. “It’s okay you don’t have to. We won’t play. I’m Amanda.” She slid the guitar down under the table.

He nodded. “Thank you. Um, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You see, we are... well, it’s not just music.” Despite his quiet voice, none of the group had trouble hearing his whispers. Even so they all leaned in a little closer.

His eyes darted to the left and then the right as if checking things were safe. Then he continued. “At night, any sound we make draws them closer.”

“Them?” Salem asked in a trembling whisper.

“Creatures. Or, uh, demons, that live in the dunes and rocks beyond the village. Even now, this conversation we’re having increases our risk. But if you have to, then whispers are okay, just no loud noises, and absolutely no music. The tones and melodies in music draw them here more than anything else.”

Amanda nodded, mouthed ‘okay’ and gave him a thumbs up.

He smiled and nodded a few times himself. “Okay, good. We can talk more in the morning. I’ll let Mary give you the menus then, and err, you wanted rooms yes? For tonight?” His gaze scanned the group, counting heads.

Amanda nodded. “Yes, whatever you can fit us into is fine.”

“Okay. Done.” He smiled, nodded some more. Then he turned to leave.

“Just one question,” Amanda whispered after him. “Where are we? This town, what’s it called?”

He turned and with a genuine smile replied, “Oh, this is Hush. Or at least, that’s what most travellers call us. We don’t get many, and no one really leaves here, so we don’t often have need for a name.”

After dinner they were shown to their rooms. The innkeeper had managed to find one room that fit all five kids plus a spare bed. It contained two sets of bunks and two single beds. The room backed onto an alley, which they could peer out into, and could have even climbed out into had they wished to do so. Their parents got the room next door with a double bed. Griff and Benny, shared the next room after that, with two singles.

On their way out from the tavern, Gemma had picked up the guitar from under the table, and received a warning from her mum not to play it. She had retorted that she was just going to practice her fingering. Now she lay on the bed in the middle of the room doing just that. Although, not being able to play was starting to get to her.

Not far away, Katrina sat on a bottom bunk, near the door, reading the spell book. She had grabbed it from her parents cabin while everyone had been up on deck earlier. Then she had snuck it into her bag so when Benny summoned the pile, it came along as well. All Benny needed to know to summon something was the parameters of the outside shape and what they looked like, plus an approximate location. The pile of bags had actually turned out to be a little too much for him at that distance and he’d accidentally cut Bobby and Griff’s bags in half. Katrina was more than a little relieved that hers had arrived in one piece, but then she had made sure to put it right in the middle at the top of the pile. As an infuser, it was especially important that she understood the limitations and risks of different types of magic, something few witches tended to bother with beyond their own powers

“Didn’t mum take that book off you?” Bobby asked from the bottom bunk across the room. He’d been in a sour mood since the bags had arrived.

Salem was on the bunk above him, playing on his gameboy. But with his back to the rest of the room, only Sasha could see this. She sat on her own bunk, above Katrina, and read her own book, a story about a pack of wolves.

“No, that was another one,” Katrina lied, barely glancing up from the page.

“Really? Maybe I should ask mum about that?”

Katrina looked up quickly. “Don’t you dare.”

On the single bed between them, Gemma rolled her eyes. Then she sat up, eyes glinting mischievously. “What do you think the creatures that guy was talking about are?”

Bobby shrugged. A scowl still marred his face. “Probably just myth. Like a legend that’s become a tradition and nobody knows how it started but they stick with it anyway.”

Gemma grinned. She turned to Katrina, “What do you think?”

Katrina glanced up in thought. Finally she answered, “Maybe a wisp?”

Gemma scrunched up her face and shook her head. “No way. Wisps lure people with visual illusions. They’re not drawn to sound.”

“How do you know?” Katrina asked, half curious, half annoyed that Gemma had brushed her well-thought through answer off so quickly.

“Because, we studied them last year in bio.”

Bobby nodded in agreement. He had just being doing that section last term. It had been a boy in that class that had sold him the dragon egg.

Sasha put her book down and poked her face over from the top bunk. “I think it’s lonely. Whatever it is. It probably just wants to listen to pretty music or go where there’s company.”

Gemma grinned at the thought of a lonely monster. Sasha sure had a nice way of looking at the world.

“They didn’t say what happens when the creatures come,” Bobby observed.

Gemma’s grin widened and the glint in her green eyes sparkled. “That’s cause they don’t know. I think you’re right and there’s nothing out there.” She got to her feet so she was standing on the bed. Her hand hovered over the strings of the guitar. “Shall we find out?” she asked with a wicked smile.

“Gemma,” Bobby warned.

Katrina watched with wide eyes. Sure, she had disobeyed her mother’s orders when she’d stolen the spell book back, but never in her life would she ever consider being so openly defiant as Gemma was right now. A part of her looked down on the behavior as childish, but a larger part of her envied her older sister’s bold rebelliousness, and her entire being was captivated by how this might turn out. She wanted to see what Gemma would do and what the consequences would be. She wanted to both live vicariously through the defiance and feel justification in whatever punishment came.

From the top bunk Sasha smiled and nodded. She wanted to see what the creatures were. She did not think any creature so interested in music could possibly be dangerous. A lot of beasts people thought were dangerous were simply misunderstood.

From the other bunk, even Salem’s attention had been grabbed now. Unlike Gemma and Bobby, he did not think there was nothing out there. He glanced toward the window nervously.

Gemma brought her hand down over the strings in a slow beat, and from the top of her lungs she sang,

“Can't keep me down!

Can't shut me up!

Won't hold me back!

Noooo oh!

I'm one of a kiiind!

And there's no rewind!

On this sooooouuuuul,

Of mine!

I got the rhythm in me!

I got my eyes on you!

And this whole girl is gonna grooooove!

Oooohh oh!

Can't keep me down!

Can't shut me up!

Won't hold me- Ack!”

Amanda had come rushing into the room, jumped up on the bed from behind Gemma and placed a hand over her daughter’s mouth. With her other hand she clamped the strings down. “Stop!” she commanded in a fierce whisper.

She waited a moment to see if Gemma would obey, and when the girl nodded, Amanda removed her hand. She took the guitar from her.

Gemma looked at her mother from beneath her eyebrows with a mixture of anger and sudden guilt.

“What did I say?” Amanda asked, managing to keep her voice quiet without losing it’s firmness. “They requested no singing, so while we are here you will respect their customs. Okay?”

Gemma frowned and her eyes narrowed. "Even if they make no sense?"

"Yes, even then."

"Even if their customs are dangerous or hurt people?"

Amanda paused, just briefly. Then she answered calmly and with direct eye contact, "These don't."

"They hurt me." Gemma scowled. Her voice was now raised above a whisper, and even though the volume was no louder than normal speaking levels, in contrast to the silence that surrounded them, the sound pierced the air as sharply as any shout might have, causing the quiet to crack and ripple. “What harm could a song do anyway?”

As if in reply, somewhere in the sand dunes behind the town, an ethereal, bloodcurdling, howl, shattered the remaining silence.