“Yes.” He heaved a large and rather comical sigh. “Is it the object I fear beyond all others? Is it the dread shape of Mrs. Beech’s mailbox?”

“Aye. And it’s there we must part.”

“If you say we must, we must. Yet I wish—” Just then the wind shifted, as it sometimes did in the summer, and blew a strong gust out of the west. The smell of sea-salt was gone in an instant, and so was the sound of the drunken, singing voices. What replaced them was a sound infinitely more sinister, one that never failed to produce a scutter of gooseflesh up her back: a low, atonal noise, like the warble of a siren being turned by a man without much longer to live.

Will took a step backward, eyes widening, and again she noticed his hands take a dip toward his belt, as if reaching for something not there.

“What in gods’ name is that?”

“It’s a thinny,” she said quietly. “In Eyebolt Canyon. Have ye never heard of such?”

“Heard of, yes, but never heard until now. Gods, how do you stand it? It sounds alive!”

She had never thought of it quite like that, but now, in a way listening with his ears instead of her own, she thought he was right. It was as if some sick part of the night had gained a voice and was actually trying to sing.

She shivered. Rusher felt the momentary increased pressure of her knees and whickered softly, craning his head around to look at her.

“We don’t often hear it so clearly at this time of year,” she said. “In the fall, the men burn it to quiet.”

“I don’t understand.”

Who did? Who understood anything anymore? Gods, they couldn’t even turn off the few oil-pumps in Citgo that still worked, although half of them squealed like pigs in a slaughtering chute. These days you were usually just grateful to find things that still worked at all.

“In the summer, when there’s time, drovers and cowboys drag loads of brush to the mouth of Eyebolt,” she said. “Dead brush is all right, but live is better, for it’s smoke that’s wanted, and the heavier the better. Eyebolt’s a box canyon, very short and steep-walled. Almost like a chimney lying on its side, you see?”

“Yes.”

“The traditional time for burning is Reap Morn—the day after the fair and the feast and the fire.”

“The first day of winter.”

“Aye, although in these parts it doesn’t feel like winter so soon. In any case it’s no tradition; the brush is sometimes lit sooner, if the winds have been prankish or if the sound’s particularly strong. It upsets the livestock, you know—cows give poorly when the noise of the thinny’s strong—and it makes sleep difficult.”