As his voice crumbled on his tongue, the music sliding through them could be heard. He recognised the siren’s song in the same instant that Denaos did not. One clapped his hands over his ears; the other collapsed to the earth. Dreadaeleon spared a glance for his fallen companion before looking up as he felt a presence beside him.

Greenhair’s alien expression was indifference laid thick to try to choke the pity in her eyes, to no avail. Dreadaeleon shot back a scowl intent on conveying all the curses and venom his mouth could not produce. The siren said something he dared not hear; an apology, perhaps, or a brief explanation, or an insult.

Though whatever she said could have only been half as insulting as the fact that she turned from him as she might a gnat and strode away, towards the mouth of the valley.

He snarled, reached out a hand to wrap about her pale ankle and pull her back, only to find the reason for her disregard. No sooner had his fingers stretched out than they were forced to clench. The pain that ripped through him was extraordinary, bludgeoning breath from his lungs, tearing vigour from his body, sending blood from his head as though it were split open. He collapsed into a quivering, curled position on the ground, unable to form even a sentence through the agony.

Through eyes vanishing into darkness, he stared at Greenhair as she walked down the valley, toward his companions, leaving him coiled in a pile of his own uselessness.

Drums dying with leathery gasps. Unseen liquor vapours wafting out on snores. Gohmns chittering to each other in the night.

‘So loud,’ she whispered, clawing at her ears.

Futility. Trees groaning, shedding leaves. Rivers muttering curses to those who defecated in them. Gonwa jaws clenching together in ire.

‘Shut up,’ she fervently whimpered, ‘shut up, shut up, shut up.’

The sounds were impossible to tune out, impossible to ignore. Every last one rang angrily in her ears, the soft ones intolerably loud, the moderate ones deafening. She couldn’t hear her thoughts, couldn’t hear her tell herself to breathe, couldn’t hear herself chant over and over.

‘It’ll pass,’ she was barely aware of telling herself, ‘it’ll pass, it’ll pass. It’s just a symptom, just a symptom, just a symptom.’

It was a symptom, she confirmed to herself, a symptom of the round-eared disease. It had to be, she reassured herself, because it had come from him.

She cursed him, spewed a torrent of verbal venom into the sand as she trudged across it. She didn’t hear her own curses. She hoped they were good ones.

It had been brewing all afternoon in her head, coming in flashes of clarity: a mutter of resentment from the bottom of the valley, a wistful sigh on the breeze, feet dragging heavily on sand exactly four-hundred and twenty-six paces away from her. The sounds, sounds usually too insignificant to be worth hearing, had reached her ears with crystalline clarity.

She hadn’t worried when she had sat beside Asper, heard the twitches in the priestess’ back and felt the blood flowing with ire, with fear, through her body. That was good. Humans were supposed to feel fear around shicts. Shicts were supposed to hear.

But then, Asper had taken her hand. Kataria had heard the muscles in her body relax, had felt the fear turn to concern, the ire turn to some maladjusted form of affection. That was not good. Humans were not supposed to feel that. Shicts were not supposed to hear that. She was a shict. She had heard that.

And thatwas cause for worry, for violence. She hadn’t regretted what she had done to the priestess. It was a natural response. It was treating a symptom before it became an infection. It was a cure.

The noises hadn’t stopped, though. She had tried to dull them with liquor, tried to ignore them with chatter. That might have worked, she reasoned, if not for him.

He had ruined everything by making it all quiet.

Standing beside him, the sounds slowly went soft, became mute. Staring into his eyes, her ears stopped throbbing. Breathing in his liquor-stained breath, smelling the stink of his sweat-laden flesh, watching him smile with crooked sheepishness, she had just begun to stop hearing altogether.

That was not good. She knew it as much then as she did now, but it was difficult to recall why she had not worried at that moment. The noise was so inoffensive, suddenly; the world’s noises ceased to press upon her in intangible walls of racket. No more worries, no more weight, just lightness, just her, and …

And then he had donewhat he had.

And she had heard him.

She had heard things in him that humans were not supposed to feel, that shicts were not supposed to hear. And she had felt …

Well, there was really no other way she couldfeel.

The howl was what had coursed through her, a sourceless noise that did not obey the laws of noise, starting in her brain, clawing its way out and tearing through her ears. It lasted for but a moment, all the time it took her body to realise what she had pressed her lips against, but it hadn’t needed more. It had ripped its way free, rang in her skull.

She had heard him. She had heard the Howling.

And then, she heard everything.

Instinct had told her to run, and she did, fleeing far into the forest, into the night. It was the right thing to do, she knew, because it was the voice of her body. What had happened before, what had made her quiver when he snaked his arm about her middle and press her body against his, what had made her slide her own arms around him and draw him tighter, what had made her think she enjoyed it …

No, not her body’s voice. Something from somewhere else inside her. Not her body.

Her body had told her to run; her body had howled at her. It was a natural defence, a rejection of the disease, of the infection that had plagued her and made her do those things. The noise — the unbearably, agonisingly loud noise —was just a side effect, the lingering symptoms of which were the last go.

That made sense, she told herself as she trudged to the nearby brook. It was a symptom; it just needed to be cured. She splashed the water gently over her face, ears ringing with the ensuing splash. That would pass, she told herself; it would all pass. She had been tested, passed, survived the disease, for that’s what he was.

‘He’s a disease,’ she tried to hear herself say, ‘he’s a disease, he’s a disease …’

The water settled. She stared down at her reflection. The face staring back at her didn’t look convinced.

A realisation dawned on her just as the entire island conspired against her, the forest and creatures all falling silent so that she might voice it and hear it ring through her ears and heart with one painful echo.

‘He didn’t come after me.’

She found herself surprised that the face in the water frowned back at her at that. She found herself surprised that she didn’t bother to lie to herself and say it was because she missed the silence. But found herself surprised it hurt.

What, then, she asked herself as the noises began again, is left? You can’t do this, she silently told the reflection. You’ve tried — I know you’ve tried — but you just can’t do what you need to do, what shicts do. If you could, you would have killed him when you first saw him, when you knew you had to, when you were given no choice. But you didn’t, so what else is left?She leaned forward. No, the water’s too shallow to drown yourself. Once more, what else is left?

But to live with the disease?

Footfalls crunching on sand. Soles sinking with shoulders heavy with dried blood. Breath short and irritated, gasped out.

Him.

She sat up on her knees, pulling her spine erect, staring into the water, saw herself biting her lower lip and forced herself to stop. Dignity, she reminded herself; she could afford a little of that when she said what she knew she had to, what a shict never would. The world fell silent again as the footfalls came upon her; she would hear every word she said. One more cruel joke she resolved to be defiant in the face of.