You clap once, sharp, in the horn’s doorway.

The shed says clap. The granite wall across the cove thinks about it. Then the wall says clap back, thinner, later. You count in your head the way Tess showed you on the drive in: one-Mississippi is a second if you are honest.

Three seconds. About a kilometer, she said. Sound is a vibration in air. Hard rock is a mirror for it. The “second horn” is the first horn coming home.

You do it again. Same delay. Ghosts with calendars are rarer than cliffs.

Wind finds the throat and makes the vowel without any compressor, a bottle-note big enough to be a legend. When the gust stops, the vowel stops. That is not a keeper who died at his post. That is weather using a megaphone.

You write in the log: echo delay ~3 s. cliff. wind-moan in throat. horn unplugged.

The basement door, back through the cottage, still hides a clock that skips. The weather instruments on the cottage wall—barometer, thermometer, a damp little hygrometer—are doing math whether you look or not.

Tess once marked a chalkboard: sound is a shove that needs a something. In space it would die of loneliness. Here it has fog droplets and a granite wall with nothing better to do than send your clap home. You put your palm on the horn’s throat and feel the next gust as a tremble, not a spirit. The shed smells like rust and old paint and a little diesel that never got invited to leave. A gull laughs in the white, which does not help your nerves and does help the truth: living things are still on the schedule.