As I'm sitting here beside the Christmas Tree, enjoying the warmth of the house looking out my windows at grey skies and dreary Winter weather, I keep thinking about the town Mat and company visit.

Why does this happen to the town?

Thom says that the town is caught in a snag in the pattern. That the town unravels at night, and the pattern tries to snap it back to rights with the dawn.

His explanation makes some sense, more sense than a bubble of evil, but I am not sure if I like it. The town does not unravel, per se... it is still there, all the people are still there, and the only thing that changes are the the people in the Town. Their physical world around them does not change, and their actions do affect the world around them.

The odd thing is that while people die horrible deaths each night, then they wake the next morning with their bodies back in peak condition, while their homes still reflect the damage from the night before. It is almost as if they have been the opposite of balefired.

When a person is balefired, the people around them remember the person and their actions, but the physical actions the balefire victim took no longer exist. In this town, the results of their actions (except to their bodies) remain, and it is the memories that are removed.

Is there another solution, rather than the snag in the pattern suggested by Thom? Should we take Thom's solution as the Author speaking through a character?