I’m back on Joseph’s Rock, staring across the small stretch of sea that separates this island from Lute, which is how I know I’m not really here. The smallest of our four Lute islands is inhospitable—a jagged, unsheltered place, too small, too windy, too deserted for visitors. And the ruins of the old Benedictine monastery pit the ground in hidden traps, where the rock gives way to loose soil. No one comes here. Except me, apparently, in dreams.

It occurs to me, every time I have this dream, really, how strange it is that I never remember it after I wake up. When I’m in the dream, it all comes rushing back, but never in waking life. How is that possible? It’s nice to be here, though. Everything is out of my control when I’m asleep, and I find that strangely comforting. Like being on an ocean liner, a set crossing, the relief of having my life taken gently out of my own hands.

I look around, wondering where I’ve landed this time. Or rather, when.

Sometimes the monastery is here, setting me in the thirteenth century, but not today. I remember it, though, the way the light falls on the kitchen garden, the sound of the bells in the morning and the singing. I remember the feeling of rough linen on my knees and my shoulders, dirt in my fingernails, the glad soreness of service. I like those dreams.

It’s not daytime in this one. The sky is black as tar apart from a smattering pinprick of stars. The wind lifts my hair, my nightgown, in a billowing wave. I pick my way across the bare ground, toes bare, arms outstretched, catching damp gusts from the ocean between my fingers.

It occurs to me that I should stop walking. The island ends on a cliff face. I could drop right off like a pebble, lost to the sea, and no one would ever know.

Like Gran. She died confused. Where had her Nina-girl gone? I won’t go now. Not like this.

I turn, knowing what I’ll see.

Two figures. I can’t say people, only the semblance of a man and a woman, unclothed, standing in the center of a hillock ringed with a—what is it called? A menhir. A dozen or so waist-high standing stones. I’ve gone very far back tonight. A white horse runs wild, tracing the outside edge of the ring, but I keep my eyes on the figures because I feel their eyes delving deep into me—and besides that, I cannot look away.