chapter 7. One-way street

The next morning, the house smelled of silence. Not the peaceful kind of silence that comes at dawn, but a thick, sticky silence, like spoiled honey. Gray went downstairs and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

Elina was the only one sitting at the table. She was drinking tea, staring at the wall. There was a second cup in front of her, already cold and full. Hugh's seat was empty.

"Where's Dad?" Gray asked quietly.

Mom shuddered, as if she had returned from a very long journey. She slowly turned her gaze to him.

—In the workshop," she replied in a voice devoid of any intonation. — He said that there is a lot of work.

They both knew it was a lie. There was no work. There was an escape.

Gray nodded and sat down at the table in silence. He took his piece of bread. It was a little stale, with a burnt, prickly crust. He ate, listening to the sounds of the house. The creaking of floorboards from above was Leo playing in his room. The dull, steady hum of the refrigerator. That's all. There was no familiar rustle of his father's papers, no footsteps, no argument with his mother about making tea.

The wall that had grown overnight was invisible, but it was very real. It divided the house into two territories: the kitchen and the living room, where Elina reigned with her icy silence, and the workshop, where Hugh was imprisoned with his shame and fear.

After breakfast, Gray could no longer bear it. He approached the door to the workshop and stopped. There was no sound coming from behind the door. He pushed the door open.

Hugh was sitting at the workbench. He wasn't working. He was just sitting there, staring at the spotlessly clean surface of the table, where there was only one thing—the same stone from their "lesson" the day before. It was cold and smooth under Grey's fingers. Now it just looked like a stone.

"Dad?" Grey called out.

Hugh jumped and turned around quickly. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and his face was gray and drawn. He tried to force a weak smile, but it came out pathetic.

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— Son. You've already had breakfast.

It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact. A hollow, awkward silence hung between them.

"Mom... she's very angry," Gray said softly, because he couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"She has every right to do that," Hugh almost gasped immediately, turning back to the table. "I've ruined everything. I thought that... that I could control everything. It turned out not to be.

He wasn't just talking about last night. He was talking about something more. About Gray's condition. About Vivan. About my whole life, which was going downhill.

"Can we... can we explain everything to her together?" Gray suggested with timid hope. — About Vivan. That you were trying to protect us.

Hugh smiled bitterly, still staring at the stone.

— The way to real protection, as it turned out, is not through silence, son. But through conversation. And I chose it too late. She won't hear me now.

He was like a shell that would clam up at the slightest touch. Gray knew that words would be useless at the moment. His father had to digest his shame on his own.

At that moment, a sharp, unfamiliar sound came from outside, a metallic screeching and a loud, authoritative voice.

Gray walked over to the dusty window of the workshop and pulled back the edge of the curtain.

In front of their house, at the entrance to a small park where children always played, two city guards in blue uniforms (which for Gray were just uniforms of a dark, official shade of gray) were hammering a new, fresh board into a wooden pole. There were large, bold letters on it.

Gray couldn't read. But he saw the symbols. And he recognized one symbol — a stylized image of a closed eye, the official seal of the guild of Colorists, which was often placed on important announcements.

One of the guards, having finished his work, wiped his forehead and said something to his partner. The other laughed, rudely and loudly. Fragments of the conversation reached Gray through the glass:

“…Vivan’s son of a bitch is right… it’s time to put things in order…”

Gray’s heart sank. The one-way street leading to trouble had just extended its branch to their home. And he stood alone by the window, caught between the silent war inside the house and the looming threat outside, knowing that the bridges had been burned and that his father, the only one who knew what to do, was broken and helpless.

He let go of the curtain. The workshop was once again in semi-darkness. He turned to his father, who was still sitting, staring at the table.

—Dad,— Gray said, and for the first time his voice sounded not like a child's, but like a person making a decision. "You made a mistake. Silence is bad. But pretending that nothing is happening is even worse.

And without waiting for an answer, he left the workshop, leaving his father alone with his stone and his silence. He needed to find Lyra. Someone had to do something. And if the adults were paralyzed, he would have to do it.