“On most nights under the winter moon when we have made our camp, around us echo faint sounds of that other hidden world—the one of meadow and forest in the night. The melody of whip-poor-will, the cry of hunting owl, the scurrying rush of vole and chasing fox.
This night, the land is empty. The silence is deep in stark and open heath. The woods carry no sound. Our horses survive on wisps of straw we pull from the cart.
The oats were used up on the first day. We cooked it long, we ate it rough, and now we have nothing. It is as if some great razor scraped the life from this sheet of white-edged vellum, leaving only blank.”
— from the novel Sinful Folk