Four thirty-three

Chapter 2

The prison was strangely, unnaturally quiet.

Brett could not hear the sound of people walking the corridor outside his cell, even though he had noticed that the walls and the door were not particularly thick. He knew there were other inmates there, other musicians, but he had yet to hear a voice, a whisper, anything indicating there was life outside that room. The small window he had let light and cold enter, but there were no sounds of cars or birds or people coming through it. When they pushed the food trail through a small cat flap on the door, the metallic sound of it was dulled, as if he was hearing it through ear muffs. His own steps inside the room made no noise at all, even though the floor was marble and he hadn't bothered to take his shoes off. The silence was almost tangible, like a fog engulfing him, making it difficult to breathe.

He had always hated silence.

The morning after his arrival there, he had woken up disoriented, his head hurting. He had pushed himself out of the bed, looked around, and remembered everything. Then, he had sat on the tiled floor, back against the wall. There he had remained for three days now, refusing to move or eat or do anything at all except breathing in and out.

His brain had not stopped for a second, though. Fear and anxiety had it on overdrive, and the same thoughts kept repeating in his head over and over and over again.

They had been following him. They had tried to kidnap him. Some people had tried to save him. They had failed. He'd been locked up, probably for the rest of his life, if his previous knowledge about what happened to musicians these days was anything to go by.

But why on earth had they arrested him? He'd been obedient. He'd been compliant. He'd been good. He had not tried to make any music, he had not even hummed a single note, since...

He was not a musician. He had not been one for years.

Not since the day they smashed his flute against his bedroom floor.

He was only 10. He'd been playing the flute for what, four, five years? He wasn't even good. He'd seen what some people could do with their instruments, the magic they could coaxe out of them. His teacher could make air twist and dance and change almost without even trying. She would demonstrate how to play something on her flute and the scores would just fly around the room, taken by a blow of wind, spiraling and twirling until the music stopped and they just dropped slowly. It always snowed music in her lessons, and he loved every second of it.

Some other children could do things like that, too. Control the wind. Or water. Some of them even could create fire out of the blue. He could not. It was alright. Not all people who played an instrument could. It was alright.

That's why they had absolutely no reason to do what they did. He was not a real musician. He would probably have dropped out of music lessons soon enough. But still they came, banging at the door of his house, his parents opening, dread on their faces. They had known this would happen, they'd seen it announced on TV, and they were very, very grateful that their son could not do magic with his flute. He, on the other hand, had not heard a thing, and nobody had wanted to enlighten him, so when they came barging into his home, it had taken him by surprise.

The buildup to that point had been so subtle, and so fast, that nobody had seen it coming. How the newly elected government had suddenly decided that musicians were a threat to society. How every owner of an instrument was expected to surrender it to their town hall within a weeks' notice or they would be considered traitors and sent to jail. How, seeing musicians go into hiding or flying the country instead of complying, they had taken upon themselves to raid every known musician's house, breaking their instruments, burning the place down and, he learned afterwards, killing many of them and sending the rest to prisons like the one he was in.