Sorrow opened her eyes. She was back in the desert and she could hear the distant wailing.

She had to know what this dream meant. It wasn’t hers so either it was a message from the Goddess or it had somehow seeped into her head from Number Seven. She was sure that she had to find out more about the weeping woman.

She ran towards the sound but she didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. The sky beyond the distant mountains was already growing lighter. She leapt into the air and flew toward the sound. She tried to remember the Department dream training. There had only been one 2 hour session and that had mainly focused on working with the Benandanti, the Department’s dream specialists. But they had covered something about lucid dreaming and dealing with nightmares.

'Everything in a dream; you, the furniture, the landscape and all the other people in it come from your mind. There isn’t anywhere else for it to come from. You are inside yourself and you have complete control as long as you know that it’s a dream.' The words seemed to float over the landscape towards her as if sent from outside but as the words themselves told her, while they might come from outside this dream they still came from inside her mind.

If the theory was right then she’d be able to remake the whole landscape of the dream even if the dream had started out in Number Seven’s head. She imagined the landscape below wrinkling and folding and bringing the distant compound and the wailing woman closer to her.

And there it was. The dusty buildings were beneath her. She dropped to the ground in the middle of the devastated compound. She was overcome with the stench of petrol and burned bacon. There were many bodies. Most of them were too charred for her to tell if they were male or female. Some of the charring was bone deep. She hoped that they’d all been dead before they burned but she feared that it was otherwise.

She walked towards the wailing figure. The woman was blind to her approach. Grief like that was all consuming. The sound she made was beyond speech, beyond language, a universal communication of loss so profound that it made Sorrow hesitate. The human part of her hated the sound, feared what it meant and wept for anyone who made it. But she could hear the Goddess within her cackling. She couldn’t tell if the Morrigan liked the sound or hated it as much as the human part of her did but it was a sound that summoned her. It was a sound that demanded vengeance.

The woman was bundled up in blue cloth with just a tiny patch of skin showing around her eyes. This was definitely somewhere in the realm of Islam. Not that it mattered to the Morrigan. The keening sounds of grief could summon her anywhere.

The woman was surrounded by bodies. Blackened and burned bodies. Small bodies. The sort of bodies that in Britain might be laid to rest in white coffins with a teddy bear on the gravestone. She was touching each body in turn, shaking them, holding them to her even though she must know they were dead. There was barely any flesh left on them.

'Deirdre.'

Sorrow looked around. There was no-one else here and she knew that the woman hadn’t spoken.

'Deirdre, wake up.' The voice sounded like it came from behind her but there was still no-one there.

'Deirdre!' Someone was shaking her.

#

Number Seven dreamed. For the first time in ages he was dreaming and he was not afraid. For the first time in ages he was not dreaming that he was in the desert.

He was somewhere cool and green. There were trees. The air was heavy and moist and smelled of pine and moss. He sat down beneath one of the huge and ancient trees with his back against the trunk. Seven needed to rest. He was so tired. Tired of the fear and the responsibility and the guilt and the rage. He intended to hold onto this peace for as long as he possibly could.

Someone had other ideas. He could hear a voice calling something but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. Something about the rhythm of the word was familiar. Could that be his name? Surely not. No-one knew his name. He barely knew it. It was irrelevant to him now and would remain so until he died or retired. He tried to ignore the voice but it was insistent. The same syllables repeated over and over in a whining and oddly familiar voice.

Suddenly he was freezing cold.

The cold was so biting that it tore him from sleep. The bedroom was now as chilly as the outside. Someone must have opened a window. Window? There were no windows. That thought woke him all the way up. He was fully alert but completely immobile. He didn’t want the intruder to know he was awake.

'Finally you’re awake you lazy bastard.' The voice was male with a working class London accent and it came from the foot of the bed.

Seven sat bolt upright. 'You’re alright?' he said and realised instantly that he was wrong. Number Five was there, standing at the foot of the bed in his usual slightly rumpled suit and wearing the heavy framed glasses that he didn’t need but wore because he thought they made him look more serious, but Seven could see the fish tank through him. 'You’re not alright.'

'Nah. But I’m not dead yet if that’s what you were thinking,' said Five.

'Yet?' said Seven.

'I am dying. The Department know it they just haven’t told anyone cus they can’t work out why I’m dying. All they know is that I should be getting better and I ain’t,' said Five.

'Who did it? Maybe there’s an antidote?'

'I don’t know. They blew me up and poisoned me, or maybe poisoned me and then blew me up. I didn’t see them do it. I know it’s not a normal poison though. The Department have tried everything to find out what it is but they’re stuck because it’s not from here,' said Five.

'Not from Britain? Not from this planet? What?' said Seven.

'It’s from the place you were when I woke you. It grows there. It’s in the trees. And it’s like a spiritual poison. The Department can’t fix me because it’s killing, like, my soul.'

'You have a soul now?' said Seven.

'I don’t know. Probably. This is guess work. I’m putting it together from pictures in my head. But you could ask her,' said Five, pointing at the sleeping form of Sorrow.

'Her? Why?' said Seven

'Because that place you were dreaming of came out of her head. Right now she’s dreaming your dream. You know, the one you don’t talk about. The one I used to have. All the others too, probably. I know Six dreams about being chased through the desert by the spectre of death because I saw it when I was hanging around my body trying to talk to the dream wizards or whatever that the Department sent in.'

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Seven was torn. He wanted to know what the hell Five meant by ‘dream wizards’ but he was desperate to get Sorrow out of that dream. He grabbed Sorrow’s shoulder and shook her, 'Sorrow, wake up… Sorrow!'

Her eyes snapped open. 'What did you call me?' She she rolled towards him before something soft and unseen smacked him in the face and threw him across the bed.

She rose onto her knees and shouted, 'What did you say?' Then looked confused. 'What are you doing all the way over there?'

Seven sat up. 'I tried to wake you and something hit me in the face. I think you have something on your back.'

'What did you call me?' she said.

'Your name, Sorrow. What else would I call you? I’m not addressing someone I share a bed with by their rank.'

'So not, for example, Deirdre then?' she said.

'No. Can you please look at the man at the end of the bed now?' he said.

Sorrow spun to face the fish tank. 'What man?'

There was just an empty space where Number Five had been and Seven realised that he hadn’t seen Five when the whatever it was had knocked him across the bed.

'It was Number Five. He was just here. But not really because I could see through him.' He got to his knees, looking around the room.

'So he was a ghost then?' said Sorrow.

'No. Not yet. That’s what he said. He said he was dying though. That he’d been poisoned by a tree from somewhere else. From the green place I was dreaming of. He said the green place came from you and you’d know where it was.' Seven inched closer to Sorrow.

'The green place you were dreaming of,' said Sorrow.' Were there lots of yew trees and wild boar and ravens?'

'There were definitely yew trees.' He inched closer still.

'So the desert base in the shadow of the mountains with the weeping woman and the burned corpses of children comes from your head then?' The words all tumbled out at once.

Seven grabbed for the empty air behind her shoulder and found that it wasn’t as empty as it looked. There was something soft and warm in his hand, the texture made him think of her hair, but there was something solid beneath the surface. The thing beat in his hand trying to escape. Sorrow rounded on him. Her face contorted in pure fury.

'Let go of my WING,' she said.

He let go. Their eyes met and he had to fight an instinct to retreat from her glare. The bluish light glinting on her eyes had a greenish, then yellowish look. Her hair was standing on end.

'Do you know that your hair is standing up?' he said. And then regretted it. Those would be terrible last words.

'Yeah it does that. And when my powers activate it goes spontaneously blond.'

'Really?' he said.

'No. Shit, you know even less pop culture than I do.'

'You have wings. Invisible wings. Didn’t you think that might be something to mention to me?' he said.

'I’m mentioning it now,' she said.

'Why do you have wings?'

'I’m a Raven of the Morrigan. There have been others before me. There will be others after me. The Raven thing is not just a metaphor. We get wings. We fly. That’s how I got on your windowsill. The wings are part of the mantle of the Goddess. I drop the mantle when I sleep. When you woke me so suddenly the surge of adrenaline called it back.'

'That’s why the power shoulders in your jacket. And why you went out to secure the house without a coat.'

'Finding clothes is a nightmare,' she said.

'Can I touch them?' he said.

'What?'

'Your wings. Can I touch them?'

'Go on then,' she said.

He put one hand on her shoulder and drew it back and down until he found the wing sprouting from her shoulder blade. He slid his hand along the leading edge of the wing and then down the underside of it. He could feel the individual feathers flex against his hand but he could see nothing.

He looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted back and her hair was lying flat again, flatter even than usual. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks.

He moved closer to her and reached for the other wing. He found it and as his fingertips caressed it he saw her bite her lower lip. His fingers probed deeper, burrowing between the feathers.

Sorrow moaned. Her eyes opened. She stared at him, her eyes wide with a kind of hunger. She lurched towards him reaching, he thought, for his neck. She grabbed him by the shoulders and leaped into his lap, straddling him and locking her ankles behind him.

He felt her fingertips lightly stroke his neck. She cupped his face in her hands then dipped her head for a kiss. Her wings shivered as his tongue slipped between her lips. He spread his fingers wide and dragged them through her feathers. In response he felt her nipples harden against his chest even through her t-shirt. He felt himself harden in reply. She must have felt it too because she started rocking gently against his groin.

She broke the kiss and turned her attention to his neck. She laid soft kisses on his neck and licked the hollow of his throat. When her ear presented itself close to his lips he whispered, 'What about the cameras?'

'We have control over the recordings and the boys can only view the live feed of the heat camera. They don’t even look at that unless they hear something alarming.' She clawed at the neck of her t-shirt, tore it in two and shrugged it off.

He ached to touch her magnificent breasts but he was unwilling to let go of her wings. She seemed to understand. Her thighs gripped harder and she arched her back and brought her breasts closer to his lips. He fastened onto one nipple and sucked hard. Her fingers interlaced behind his neck, holding him there. Her wings curved in until he could reach the primary flight feathers at the very tips. As he stroked them her whole body began to shudder. He nibbled at the nipple and she writhed in response.

He threw his weight forward and pushed her down on the bed. He kissed her and his fingers traced a line from shoulder to breast to navel. He slipped his hand inside her plain and sensible underwear and twined the soft hair there. Her body rose to meet his touch, grinding against his hand. His fingers darted deeper.

She made an impatient growling sound in the back of her throat. She thrust her pelvis up and flexed her wings and threw him onto his back. She sat astride him and tore his underpants open. His erection, now free, nestled between her thighs and against the damp fabric of her knickers. She rocked against it. He felt the cloth and the soft flesh beyond it rubbing against him. She glared a challenge at him, daring him to do something about it. He couldn’t stand it, could not wait a moment longer.

Her sensible underwear would be hard to tear and just moving the crotch aside was inelegant. He reached for her straight razor, still lying on the bedside table, flicked it open, cut the knickers from her body and tossed both knickers and blade aside.

Sorrow slipped his erection inside her. She rocked, slowly at first but with increasing urgency until the sensation overwhelmed him and he could barely breathe. He heard her wings flutter in time with the rocking and the tips of the feathers brushed his body. He felt them on his shoulders, arms, chest and stomach. They twitched against him in time the grinding of her sex on his.

The pace increased. Sorrow had her hand to her face and Seven realised that she had stuffed her fingers in her mouth and was biting down on them to keep from crying out. He reached for her wings, pulled himself upright, pressed his body against hers as he approached climax.

She enfolded him in her wings. He could feel the feathers on his back. Her whole body thrashed. It was all he could do to hold on. She couldn’t stifle the noise any longer. Muffled moans turned to spirited cries of pleasure. He could feel her orgasm approaching. He could feel the bunching and fluttering movements deep inside her.

Time slowed. Sorrow threw her head back. Her wings were flung open. Her thighs gripped Seven so tightly that for a moment he feared that she would crack more of his ribs but only for a moment because then everything stopped. His mind emptied. He couldn’t hear Sorrow though he knew she was screaming. He saw her wings and they were glorious. Black like the night sky and each feather sparkled with a glittering reflection in all the colours of the rainbow. He was climaxing. Her wings beat once, twice, three times and he was still climaxing. It seemed to last forever. Eventually he sank back to the bed, panting and realising that he’d been holding his breath. A moment later she collapsed on top of him.

The very last thing he did before passing out was to grab one of her feathers and pull it out. She didn’t even notice.