Chapter One: The Rock (Free Preview)

Day One A man walks to a rock on the North Island coast at 4:51 every morning. He can name the pitch of any sound he hears. The bird in the third tree sings B-flat. The village calls him the listener. A woman in a blue bus watches him stand on the beach for forty minutes and does not know what to make of it. CHAPTER TWO: THE DISRUPTION Day Two A van parks badly. Inside it, a boy with a guitar and the wrong chords. He plays a melody on the beach that Neel recognises. The melody should not exist in New Zealand. Neel does not say so.