THE FIRST THING I noticed was the stink. Wherever I was, the stench of rotting fish and raw sewage was overpowering. Then it was the heat, damp and oppressive, clinging to me like wet canvas. And light. There was light. A universe of it, almost as bright as the light of Gododdin’s sun; perhaps it was that light, cast backward across time to blind me in my childhood, to turn me back. I could not see.
