The dream started with the smell.
Not food. Nothing that smelled like food. Ash, old straw, and the sour metal of people who had gone too long without a feast. I knew it was a dream the way you know it when your feet are bare on a cold floor, and the rest of you hasn't caught up yet.
Duncan had been lying beside me in the dark. His hand was on my hip, warm and heavy, and he was murmuring in Gaelic the way he did when he was tired. Then the hip was gone, and the bed was gone, and I was standing in a hall with a roof so high I couldn't see the beams.
I looked up anyway. I suppose I wanted something to hold on to.
From the rafters I could see everything, and nobody could see me. It was like being a bird that had built its nest in the wrong place.
