The mood on the River bridge approach was strange, quiet, and deeply unsettling. There was no singing, no triumphant cheering. No celebratory ringing of bells from the abandoned chapel towers. The seventy families who had huddled in the muddy street between the blackened brick apartments watched the coalition crews pack their gear with the dazed, hollow expressions of survivors who had just been dragged from an overturned ferry in the middle of a frozen lake.
The physical hum that had shook through the cobblestones for four thousand three hundred and eighty days was gone. In its place was a vast, hollow silence that made people speak in hushed whispers, as if raising their voices might cause the sky shield above them to shatter.
For twelve years, the hum had been the surrounding soundtrack of their misery. It had shook through the legs of their kitchen stools, caused the stale water in their wash-tubs to ripple in endless rings. Then it settled into the marrow of their bones like an incurable chill. Now, with the River Claimant Cabinet cut and the weir turbines idling, the silence felt unnatural, heavy, and fragile. People moved through the mist with cautious, tentative steps, glancing up at the leaden black sky as if expecting an iron hammer to drop from the clouds.
