The step smelled of snap bread, and the bread was Araminta Crale’s, cracked in half across their knee while the last of the Easy Night drifted off the pavement. The player who had carried it all night was packing a case at the kerb. A friend clapped them on the shoulder and said, “From the top,” and the player laughed like it was the nicest thing anyone had ever told them.

Beast called Zee leaned on the rail at the east end and watched. They had been watching since the dark went blue. The walls of the Frequency curved round the street like cupped hands, and every small sound came back twice: a blanket shaken out, a cable dragged over stone, the chain at their own neck clinking on the iron whenever they shifted.

The Beast dragging the cable was another Raccoon, older, coiling it over one elbow in loops so even they looked measured. Ozias Grell, the blanket crowd called them on the way past. The order board stood beside the step, chalked for the set at dusk and smudged where sleeves had brushed it. One line near the top had just been wiped clean by a Beast who decided, yawning, to sleep through tonight.

Beast called Zee had spent the hour learning how it went here. You stood near the board long enough and someone asked, or you did. Nobody had asked.

They let go of the rail. “That slot. I’d like it.”

Ozias didn’t stop coiling. “What do you play?”

Beast called Zee held the chain at their throat. “Time. On anything with an edge. Rail, step, a pan.”

“Loudest room you’ve held?”

“Never one this loud. Never here.”

Ozias nodded, as if that were a fair price for something. Behind them, a Hush Beast was folding a grey blanket into neat squares, corner to corner.

“You could leave it empty,” the Hush Beast said, calm and not unkind. “Quiet streets draw fewer Shapes. That isn’t a story, it’s just how they are, and the ones wandering in lately are bigger than anyone remembers. One blank line costs nobody anything.”

“Costs whoever’s name it would have been,” Araminta said, through bread.

Ozias held out the chalk. “Whatever you play goes up beside it. Stays there.” They tipped their head at a line low on the wall, old chalk gone ghostly: a name, and beside it, in someone’s tidy hand, lost the count.

Beast called Zee looked at that a long time. It had lasted. Everything here that lasted seemed to be written down.

Then Beast called Zee took the chalk.

Their name went on the board in plain letters, the space beside it left bare. The Hush Beast tucked the last square of blanket under one arm and walked off without a word, which was its own kind of argument.

Araminta brushed crumbs from their lap and nudged Ozias. “Round of Warm-Ups. Claps at the end.”

“Hums it back,” Ozias said.

Beast called Zee had no idea what they meant. Araminta turned to the empty street, took a breath, and began a song they hadn’t written, every word exactly where someone else had put it. The walls sent it back twice. Beast called Zee leaned on the rail again with their hands very still, and the last line was coming.

“Six out past the last lamp, maybe seven, and they’ve been out there since the stretch went dark,” the Beast from the Crews said, still out of breath. “They can’t see the posts. They’d hear a tune.”

Araminta had stopped on the second-to-last line. Nobody hummed it back. The whole Frequency had turned to the Beast at the step, a Pooch in a Crews scarf with sleet melting on the wool.

Ozias was already coiling cable. “Lamp’s still good on the last post. We’ll run a line out to it.” They looked up at a sky the colour of wet slate. “Sleet’s coming. It takes the hands first.”

Beast called Zee let go of the rail. Their name was on the board beside the step with nothing next to it, and out on the road was something that needed doing. A song needs someone keeping time or it wanders off.

“I’ll keep the beat,” they said.

The Pooch looked at them, then at Ozias. Ozias handed them the end of the cable to carry.

They walked out along the old road with the Crews, past lit posts, then past fewer. The last one stood on its own with a small yellow ring of light at its feet and the dark pressed right up to the edge of it.

Beast called Zee put their palm flat on the iron. It hummed under their hand, faintly, which nobody had warned them about. They counted four, and Araminta started the hook: four notes Tess Ambrose had written, the Crews’ tune. The Crews came in behind them. Breath and song went up together and hung in the cold.

They sang it over and over. Sleet ticked on the lamp glass. The chain at their throat went stiff and cold.

For most of an hour nothing answered. Then a hum came out of the dark, low and a little flat. The Crews didn’t clap. They sang it again, and a Hare walked into the light with sleet on their shoulders and sat down on the road at the foot of the post. Before long there was another, then a third.

By the third hour the fingers had gone somewhere. Beast called Zee could see their hand on the post and couldn’t feel it there. They kept the beat by watching it lift and fall. The Crews were thinning, voices dropping out to breathe and come back, but Araminta never drifted, not by a hair, and the others leaned on them.

The Pooch edged in close. “I can take it. Swap?”

“No,” they said. “This one’s mine.”

Between hooks Araminta turned their head. “You all right?”

Beast called Zee opened their mouth to say yes and found the word wasn’t there to be said. “No. Keep going.”

Araminta kept going.

The fifth walker came in, then the sixth. The seventh hummed from so far off that it barely counted as sound, and for a long while it didn’t get any closer. Beast called Zee kept the beat. Their hand rose and fell on the iron. Then a Koala came out of the dark carrying a lamp that had gone out, humming the last line half a step behind, and walked into the yellow ring.

“That’s seven,” Ozias said.

Beast called Zee lifted their hand off the post. It came away slowly and stayed curled the way the iron had left it. Ozias took it between both of their own and rubbed it without a word, the way you’d warm a cup.

On the walk back Beast called Zee tried to close their fingers on the chain and couldn’t. The Crews were humming the hook, quietly, nobody leading it. At the Open Step the board stood where they’d left it, their name in plain letters and the space beside it bare. The chalk lay in the tray.

Dusk was a long way off. Beast called Zee looked at the chalk, then at their hand, and didn’t pick it up.