I had wondered if I’d see something like that ritual on the Day. A less creepy version, I guess. But if they did that today, then tomorrow they’ll do something else.

The Day, the day after today, the stupid Day. I think it might be driving me crazier than anybody else.

I’m back on Joseph’s Rock, gazing out to Lute. Steady lights beam from cottage windows in the village. Electric bulbs. This dream hasn’t taken me very far back at all.

The wind is fierce, circular, like I’m at the center of a cyclone. I look down, expecting to see my nightgown whipping around me, but there’s no nightgown to whip, only bare flesh. I’m naked, entirely, and when I look up in surprise, I see the lights have all gone out on Lute.

Something is glowing here instead.

I turn and see them. The Shining Ones. They stand a pace apart from each other, and something tells me to join them, to form the third point of a triangle. I do it, averting my eyes from them, taking in everything around us so I don’t have to face them.

We’re surrounded by a ring of pyres. There are people milling about, men and women with long braided hair, naked bodies painted in streaks of brown and blue and red. They let out a keening wail that rivets my heels into the cold dirt beneath me, and then they flicker, transparent, and fade away into nothing. The pyre flames vanish, as if blown out, and then in the next blink return, and all the while, the wind gusts around me and the Shining Ones stand unmoving.

Behind me, I hear, but don’t see, the thunder of that wild horse’s feet as it whips past. It’s circling us, calling up the wind.

I see the stone circle for a breath before it’s half-gone, rocks tumbled.

I see a man among them, old, bearded, digging his hands into the soil and weeping.

I see the monastery rising, rock by rock, the monks blurring as they build, fevered. I smell apple blossoms and then fire, and then the monastery is gone.

I watch the chaos around us, and the Shining Ones watch me. They’re waiting for something. For me to understand.

The pyres return. The monastery. The stone circle. Bare ground. Joseph’s Rock flickers like a film reel, endlessly changing, except for the beings in front of me.

They’re constant. And so am I. I am the center.

I wrench my eyes forward and take them in at last.

THE DAY

I’m awake. All at once. I know what time it is. In my stomach, I know. Still, when I finally roll over and see the numbers 12:01 staring back at me, I wish I hadn’t looked.

Has it started, then? No, they say it waits for the dawn. Sunup to sundown.