Would that damned creature ever run down? It had been dying for nearly five minutes now; not even an apprentice actor in a traveling theatre troupe could keep it up that long. Eina rose and went to the door this time, stepping out into the cool evening air.

Her cabin stood in a gentle saddle on a pine-forested ridge that led from the front range of the Tabres down to the plains below. She had built it there for the isolation; most people built closer to the ruined city of Port, at the confluence of the Walmet and Cumbia Rivers some five miles distant. Eina liked looking down on the rest of civilization, and she liked having the mountains at her back, except when some fool invaded her privacy like this. Somehow when it happened here, it was even worse than in town; at least in town you expected it.

The voice was definitely coming from higher up. Probably from the top of the ridge, where the rising slope met the flank of the mountain proper. And now that she was outside, Eina realized it was not a death cry. Someone was singing, or attempting to. It sounded like a wordless hymn of some sort, or a chant for penitent monks caught nipping too much of the sacramental wine. Whatever it was, the singer was dreadful. Off-key, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. But boy, did they have lungs.

“Hey, put a cork in it!” Eina yelled into the night.

The song stopped in the middle of a rising passage, if a transition from moan to screech can be called a passage. Into the silence, Eina shouted, “There are people trying to concentrate down here!”