It begins before it begins, a tremor undergrass underglass undergut, and by lateafternoon the meadow is no longer meadow but soundpit, soundthroat, speakerstack ribcage towering blackblack against the unblinking sky and the bass tests itself thud—thudthud—THUD like a heart too large for its host and she stands somewhere not-centre not-edge and the air thickens into sweatmist and beerfoam and dustspark and the crowd is not people but wavebody surgebody pulsebody and each body brushes and rebounds and brushes again and she cannot tell which contact is accidental and which is rehearsal and the music climbs spinewise and she thinks this is celebration this is harmless this is what everyone wanted and the thought dissolves as another beat slams and the fence hums back in countervoice.

  Faces blur into facelessfaces and laughbursts crack and re-crack and someone shouts something in her ear that arrives as vowelnoise only and the lights strobe whitewhitewhite and in the afterflash every pole elongates and every shadow grows ears and she blinks and the ears shrink back into hatbrims hoodshapes but the blink leaves residue and residue becomes rabbitlong echoform slipping between shoulders and the music insists insistence insistence until it is not heard but inhabited and she feels it in her ribs and lower and lower and the crowd compresspress compresspress and she tells herself this is only physics this is only density but the density has teeth and the teeth are only elbows and the elbows are only air and yet the air feels used.

  A song she knows surfaces through the roar—don’t look down don’t look down—and she cannot remember whether it is from last year’s playlist or from some late-night film where the carnival lights flickered wrong and the heroine walked too far toward the unlit tents and she laughs once too sharply at nothing at everything and the laugh frays midthread and she tastes metal again and the bassline burrows deeper thudthudthud and for a flashsplice she sees grass not waving but flattened and a shoe heel half-sunk and microphone stands bending inward like listening reeds and then someone bumps her shoulder sorry sorry and it is only crowd again only heat and she thinks she should find Callum and she should not lose him in this soundsea and she cannot remember if she moved toward the stage or away from it.

  The noise does not remain outside; it migrates and nests and hums insidebone and insideblood and she becomes partly music partly echo partly the space between beats and the rabbitmask appears not on a face but in the negative gap between two strangers and then it is gone and then it is back and then it is nothing at all and the lights strobe until the world fractures into stillframes and in one frame she is laughing and in one she is alone and in one the poles lean too close and in one the sky is split and she thinks if it gets any louder it will tip the whole field over and yet it only grows and grows and grows until the distinction between song and siren and memory and present collapses into one long unbroken noise that does not stop when she closes her eyes.