Adrian Lim jerked to awareness plunging a butter knife into the eye of a man in a crushed velvet suit that would have seen a lot of mileage in the sixties.

He released the knife, numb to the tips of his fingers and toes, and stared blankly at the man writhing in agony on the carpet.

"—kill you! I'll fucking kill you!" He screeched.

Where the fuck am I?, Adrian wondered, and since when do I lucid dream dark shit like this?

He vaguely recalled nodding off over a stack of test papers as fat as his head—his students, by and large, were not gifted essayists—but when he reached for the memory of actually falling asleep, he grasped only empty air, a light so bright it made his head ache. He looked around to get a better sense of the dream world: oil lamps and ornate scones, fancy carpets and drapes, a long dining table laden with roast meat and sides of varying appeal. There was an overall sense of opulence to the space; a welcoming kind of warmth, undiminished by gaudy gold statues and oil paintings the size of king beds.

It was pretty nice.

Well, except for the screaming. And the blood.

The man he'd…stabbed, apparently, scrambled blindly toward the door, spitting curses, screaming for his guards.

The foreboding gaits of several bodies, moving fast, growing louder, answered.

Adrian realised he needed to be anywhere else right fucking now. He didn't want to die in the dream if he could help it. It was a terrifying way to wake up: gasping for the breath that should have been your last.

A faint breeze tickled his cheek and he locked onto it like a bloodhound.

There. An open window.

He booked it, faintly mystified by how strong and responsive his dream body was, and climbed through the window. He sprinted across the presidential lawn and made for the treeline in the distance; the trees were closely spaced, with dense canopies—the perfect camouflage. He dodged several decorative water fountains, inexplicably ornate multicoloured stone stacks, and what could only be described as a nightmare pond. As he leapt the seaweed-coloured pond, a giant three-headed turtle poked its heads above the water and smiled at him with bloody gums.

Nope, he thought, no no no!

He ran harder, abnormally leggy, breathing easy despite the exertion. He grinned, chest bursting with something that might be euphoric laughter but was probably hysteria. He whooped anyway, wondered what his therapist would have to say about it: well you see, Kim, I'd just got done stabbing this guy in the eye when I was seized by the urge to laugh! I know—crazy! Wait, who're you calling? Who're those guys in white coats?

He was, maybe, twenty feet from the treeline when something whizzed past his ear, close enough to blow his bangs into his face.

Bangs? I don't have bangs…

Another arrow—this one close enough to sting his cheek.

Focus!

He pumped his legs as hard as possible and dove for a gap in the foliage just as a spear rocketed overhead and embedded itself in a tree with a strange wet thunk.

The tree screamed.

Adrian screamed.

They both screamed.

"What the fuck!" He scrambled to his feet and pointed at the tree. "You have a mouth!"

It looked like a regular old elm—if regular old elms had spirals for eyes and gaping black mouths.

The tree stopped screaming long enough to be judgmentally silent. "What the luma am I supposed to have, stupid man? A third eye? I'm not a witch."

"Not a mouth—or eyes," he said faintly, struck dumb by the twisted depths of his imagination.

It occurred to him, belatedly, that his voice was deeper. He might be taller, too, though it was difficult to tell without a point of comparison.

At least no one's chasing you anymore, he thought. The gap in the foliage had also closed behind him, which was…normal, and not at all something out of his deepest Labyrinth-inspired nightmares.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He smacked his head a couple of times, the same way his uncles dealt with glitchy old radios and wheezing TV sets.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up…"

The stabbing and the blood and the guards with weapons he could handle. The talking tree was too fucking weird.

"You're a wizard, then?" The tree asked, apparently done with screaming.

Adrian ignored it. He clicked his heels three times.

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home…"

Nothing.

He pinched himself fierce enough to bruise.

Bupkis.

He groaned and eyed the tree warily. "So are you like my subconscious guide or something?"

"Your what?"

"You know, the guide my brain dreamed up to get me to where I need to go in whatever…I dunno, spirit quest I'm on?"

"Ohhh," the tree said in a tone of great revelation, "you're on a quest. That makes sense."

"It does?"

"Oh, yes. You wizards are always going on quests. Never quite understood it myself. I prefer to stay where I'm planted."

"You can move?" Adrian asked, horrified. Did the thing just uproot itself and wander about wherever it liked? Could this whole forest do that? He checked the other trees, but none of them appeared to have mouths. Or eyes.

Small mercies…

The tree and the three-headed turtle were weird enough. He didn't need more strange creatures crawling out of the woodwork.

"No, dear," the tree said, as though speaking to a particularly stupid child, "I'm a tree."

A tree with wooden eyes and teeth!

Adrian sat on his ass and put his face in his hands.

"I'm just going to sit here until I wake up," he announced to no one…and the tree.

"Well that's all well and good, but do you think you could heal me first? I'm no elder, but I can introduce you to one," the tree said hopefully. "Besides, and begging your, uh, wizardly pardon for saying so, but you were the one trespassing on Lord Marko's land so this is on your honour to fix."

Adrian had no idea what to address first, the misguided idea that he was any kind of wizard, that he was trespassing on some lord's land, or that he was honour-bound to deal with any of it.

He rubbed his face.

Just play along. It's a dream. Maybe if you go along with it for long enough, you'll wake up.

That was how dreams worked, wasn't it?

Sighing, he climbed to his feet and assessed the tree's…injury? It could clearly feel pain, but it wasn't bleeding around the spearhead and it didn't appear to be dying. He grabbed the pole and yanked.

The tree screamed. "What the hell are you doing?"

He jumped back, heart pounding.

The spear hadn't budged an inch.

"What the hell do you mean? You asked for my help."

"I asked you to heal me, not make it worse!"

"Well, how am I supposed to help you if I don't take it out, huh?"

"If I wanted it yanked out, I would have done it myself," the tree snapped. Its canopy rustled, two slim branches reaching down to tap the spear pointedly.

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?"

This time, the tree merely sounded baffled. "You're a wizard—one of Brenahi's—friend of all land, sea and sky creatures."

Adrian recalled all the fish gone belly-up in his childhood; the mice he'd trapped, grown bored of, and left to fester and die in insanity; the ficus barely clinging to life in his living room.

"I'm really not," he admitted. "And why do you keep calling me a wizard? Are all the people here wizards or something?"

Maybe when he got to the part of the dream where the non-arrow-shooting people were his brain would conjure up some really cool characters, like Gandalf or Moiraine. That might actually make this whole thing worth it.

"Not all of them, but I assumed you were." One of its branches extended like Pinocchio's nose and tapped the centre of his chest. "This is Brenahi. You shouldn't wear her if you're not twain," it said, disapproving.

Adrian thumbed the green moon embroidered on his tunic and jumped when it began to emit a haunting vegetal glow.

"Wait, what? No. What's happening?"

"I knew it," the tree said happily, "now, get to it wizard. Heal me. We haven't got all day."

Its eyes closed expectantly.

Adrian stared.

What the fuck does Treebeard here expect me to do? Wave my fingers and make it disappear?

Feeling pretty dumb, he waved his hands around for a bit. Maybe the dream would go along with it.

The tree cracked an eye open, "What's taking so long?"

"Well I don't know what I'm doing, do I? I'm not a fucking wizard!"

"Call your master, then. We don't have time to muck around. I'll die if you don't sort this out, so hurry up!"

"I don't know—"

Evidently sick of waiting around for him, the tree reached into the inner pocket of his tunic, pulled out a heavy pouch and tossed it to the earth. White stones scattered. Adrian squinted. No, not stones…bones.

"Call them, call you master."

"I just said I don't know how to—"

"Oh, just will it so! How green are you? Don't you know anything about magic? If you will it, it is so. Focus your intention, harness your energy and will it."

Fuck it, he thought, might as well try.

He closed his eyes, breathed, and felt for the bones. To his surprise, they were like beacons in his mind's eye, throwing off heat reminiscent of compost. Find my master, he thought, brow furrowed in concentration, contact them.

"Yes," the tree said, satisfied, "now cast them!"

Without thought, his hands collected the stones and scattered them again. They fell into a perfect circle, knuckles to the earth. The centre of the circle began to glow the same green as the moon on his tunic. A moment later, a woman's blonde head poked through the hole.

Adrian yelped, scrambling backwards. The tree hummed happily.

"What mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Jari Alcott?" The woman asked.

Who the fucking hell is Jari Alcott?