More silence filled the space around them. Rownie breathed cold silence into his lungs. He stood and stared at his brother, just stared, there in the tunnel underneath the River, under the place where they had always thrown pebbles. He searched Rowan’s face for any flickering sign of recognition or welcome. He couldn’t tell what he saw there. He didn’t know whether any slight movement of the eyes or mouth meant anything at all.

Rownie felt like he was the one who had been hollowed out.

Water dripped down from between the bricks in the curved ceiling. It dripped faster. A droplet struck the side of Rownie’s face. He forced himself to move. He took his brother’s hand and led him out of the railcar wreckage. Rowan followed easily, without resisting, without any will of his own.

Rownie went back for the other two, the ones in fish masks. He pushed them northward. “Go,” he said. “Start running. Don’t stop until you’re out of the tunnel, and after that find some stairs to climb.” They listened to him. He hoped they could both outrun the flood.

Rownie and Rowan went south. They edged around the side of the railcar, stepping over broken birds and broken glass. Air moved through the tunnel’s throat in a low moan. Rownie couldn’t tell what sorts of things it said.

They moved around the circumference of pits and holes where the dirt had caved in beside the tracks. The air around them smelled like wet, dead dogs and rotting fish. Rownie heard splashing from the largest pit. He didn’t look over the edge, but he did call down to whatever splashed there.

“The floods are coming,” he said to the pit and the ghouls and the diggers. “Take care. Floods are coming.” Maybe they heard him. Maybe every haunting thing dug itself to safety, out of the River’s reach—if any place could be out of the River’s reach.

Drips from the ceiling came more frequently now. Water seeped between bricks. Rivulets ran through the dirt under the track and grew wider. The dirt disappeared. The rails disappeared. There was only water, up to their ankles and then to their knees. The burnbug light from Graba’s chant began to fade.

Rownie and his brother trudged through the rising water. They moved slowly. Rownie didn’t think they could make it all the way back to Southside before the tunnel flooded entirely. He didn’t know what to do. He felt useless and helpless and small. He felt like he needed to be something other than himself, so he took out the fox mask and put it on.

In the fading, failing light, Rownie saw the tunnel around them through fox eyes.