Cirrus@Austlit

'The dog was still whining out on Underwood's yard at first light. Its voice sounded like a two-toned bone flute: a pair of long, unearthly notes, low then high, low then high. Alec Stokes, twelve, was bleary and messed in the head from interrupted sleep. No good way to start the summer. When he looked out the window he couldn't see the dog, only a beatenup old caravan, at one look green, at another brown. It had arrived sometime in the night to settle on the nearer part of the yard by the dry-stone wall where Underwood kept a pile of rusted farm machinery. It was more-or-less outside Alec's window...' (Publication abstract)