I Could Read the Sky

An excerpt from Timothy O'Grady's spare and lush 1997 novel, which won the Encore award

This room is dark, as dark as it ever gets – the hour before dawn in winter. I have sounds and pictures but they flit and crash before I can get them. The bedclothes are damp. The ache in my neck is bad. I hold onto myself for anchorage.
Something stirs then, a little wind. It’s very gentle, a lark’s breath, but the thickened air drifts across to cl…