wren

At 1.35 in the morning the breeze blew, southward, onto the shores of Topaz Cape. Few were awake to notice its salty tang, or the way it coiled through mailboxes and around the lamp posts festooned with "Summer Celebration 1986" banners. The residents of Topaz Cove lay sleeping in cots and beds, up on tents on the cape, and in gently rocking hammocks out on the skiffs of the marina. Some turned restlessly, caught in sleep by a sensation they would not be able to describe upon waking. But Nell, who had been woken by the heavy paws of her golden retriever hopping up onto her bed, felt the breeze on her face as she sat at her open bedroom window. "What is it, Barnstable?" She said. "Did you hear something?" She strained her ears. Just the soft noises of the waves against the sand, and the bells out on the bouys chiming distantly. But then. A faint ghost-light out over the water, in a fog bank moving noiselessly with the wind, and a sound within it. A shiver ran down Nell's back. She waited, motionless, and then it came again, from out across the water. Nell sat bolt upright. A sound from a parched throat. There was no mistaking it. "Avast, ye..." Scrambling to her feet, Nell ran downstairs, through the sleeping house to the phone