Kass turned but there was no sign of any children. The laughter faded. Kass closed her eyes and breathed in. She could still smell the roses. That was alright. She focused on that, something solid, at least for now.

But it didn’t last. The stench turned rotten, like meat left out in the sun for the flies to gather on. Kass opened her eyes. She felt wriggling movement by he feet and she hoped it wasn’t maggots. When she glanced down there was nothing. Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement, a small furry thing darted under a nearby rose bush. She was still in the garden but it wasn’t like her imagined garden. There was something off here. To the eye it looked normal, much like the beach had, but the shadows had no consistency, no origin point. There was light but no sun.

A large dark shape appeared out of nowhere and ran at her from the side. She raised her hands by instinct and sent it flying. Only once it was in the air did she realise it was Sirius. He went flying through a wall with a loud crash. The wall had appeared from nowhere and it resembled the walls inside the house. This one was a pale green tinge with the Fleur-de-lis pattern covering it. Bits of wallpaper had been ripped off and just above the skirting board someone had scrawled on the wall in a thick blue felt tip pen. It was a strange thing to see in the middle of the garden. But then everything here was strange. Kass half expected a talking caterpillar to pop up and start rhyming and smoking a pipe. She might have paused to look more closely at the wall were it not for her friend lying in the remnants of it.

“Sirius!” Kass ran to him. “Are you okay?”

But before she could reach him to see if he was hurt, the whole wall, with Sirius in it, disappeared.

Kass dropped to her knees feeling tired and defeated.

“Mommy?”

Kass froze. She recognised that voice only too well. Theo, her youngest son. How did this place know what he sounded like? How could it dig up something like that from her memory and replicate is so well. Kass gave a sob and she turned with tears in her eyes.

There he stood, as old as the day he died, seven years, and wearing the same clothes. And even though she knew he wasn’t real she couldn’t help but reach out for him. “Theo.”

The child took a step forward. As his heel started to strike the soft grass a dark shape, only a little taller, appeared behind him.

The bat hit Theo’s head with a loud ‘ker-thunk,’ as the dream world mirrored real life. Theo’s older sibling, Marc, stepped from the shadows, baseball bat in hand, as his brother’s lifeless body fell to the ground. A wide grin was plastered across Marc’s face. Blood dripped from the end of the bat.

Kass fell back from where she knelt. Her palms hit the ground hard but she didn’t notice. She sat there in a daze, unmoving as the replica of her eldest child, also long since dead, walked slowly toward her. The bat in his hand changed. It’s edge got sharper as it took on the shape of a butcher’s knife.

Kass leaned back against the ground wishing she could just fall into the earth. The ground gave way behind her, obeying her wish. With a yelp of surprise Kass tumbled backwards into darkness.

Scenes flashed past her eyes. A snow covered earth, with spring buds just starting to appear. Regulation sized boot prints marring the mud. An old friend, teaching her to spar by the coast, with soft arms, and a joyful smile. Her dead sister’s never-grown smiling face as she pushed a small Kass playfully down the stairs. Her middle child, Jesse’s first steps. Her three boys together at a baseball game, her long-buried husband smiling at her over a carton of popcorn. Her parents, home for Samhein, their faces blurred. What had they looked like? Kass couldn’t remember. Not dead, just gone, another world she’d left behind. So much lost.

She reached for a scene and found herself standing by a concrete building in winter, rifle in hand. A friendly street, kids kicking soccer balls in the snow. But Kass knew better. She recognised this road and she knew what was to come. She did not want to stay and watch. A war had waged here.

She wished for somewhere else and once more, to her dismay, her wish was granted. A prison camp. Cold cuffs on her hands. A solider dragged her roughly toward a room. She knew that room, but she’d never been a prisoner here, not at this camp, not in that room. The room with the rats. She struggled and fought. Kicked and twisted, until she had no energy left. They threw her into the pit, too deep for a rat to escape from. She lay there, skin stinging from the cold, elbows bruised from the fall. And then they came.

A bucket of rats was thrown at her. She screamed with her teeth gritted. She’d seen the result of this torture too many times. She’d never participated in this particular brand of horror but she’d watched. She’d stood by, for the greater good. She’d fired bullets, quick and fast, into innocent and guilty alike. To end a war that never should have started.

She pulled her arms in tight. She clenched her fists. Made herself as small as possible, as pile after squirming, hungry pile, was thrust upon her, and darkness encased her whole.

People can control their own dreams. Sirius knew that. Cat had taught him when they were kids. They used to play in the dream world, back before they knew how dangerous it could be. Cat would create worlds. Sirius had requested a tree-house, a swing, a ship, a box of paint. Cat had never liked the ocean so the ship she had made had been small and stuck in the sand, but Sirius had been happy enough with that, even if another part of him had still longed to sail the seas. Their dream tree-house had been plastered with stars and painted with the ocean. A safe place to hide away from their short-tempered father who did not approve of dreams. Back before he realised how useful they could be in transporting items of value. Cat had never been one to be controlled by others, not her own father, not even under the stinging end of a switch. She may have been 2 years younger than him, but she’d taught Sirius a lesson in controlling his own world, every part of it. But while Sirius could control his own dreams, even in the presence of a dreamweaver, he could not control Kass’s.

He tired to find her and pull her back but every time he got close she’d slip from his grasp and Sirius was finding it harder and harder to keep his own surroundings stable. When he’d landed in the garden and it had looked as solid as the beach he’d thought that perhaps for a moment he’d managed to solidify the world. But the garden wasn’t his and Kass in her fear had lashed out with her powers. He was sure she had not meant to but it didn’t make flying through a wall any softer.

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He sat up carefully and stretched each muscle. He found himself bruised but otherwise unharmed. The edges of his world dipped in black and he took in a deep breath. Control of dreams meant control of emotions, especially around a dreamweaver. And if you couldn’t control them then you channelled them. That’s what Cat had always said. You take the fear and you turn it into fury.

Fury may have worked for Cat but that feeling itself scared Sirius. Instead he tried to think of good things, nice things, calm things. Like the ocean, so big that it could swallow everything, that nothing mattered but the steady slap slap slap of the waves against the side of the boat.

That was how Sirius came to be on a small dingy, floating beneath a starry sky. He knew then that he could stay that way for a long time. Long enough for Cat to come and find him. He could control the world in his immediate vicinity, keep the dreamweaver at bay. It was his mind after all. As long as he was calm. He could stay this way and be safe. He could not pull himself awake, but he could stay alive until rescued.

But he wasn’t the only one in here. It was a fine retreat and he’d probably need to use it again, however, once his mind was calm, once he was ready, he needed to venture out again. He needed to find Amanda and Kass.

He wasn’t good at traversing the dreams of others. That was Cat’s territory. But if he was to save them, he had to try. It was possible for a non-dreamwalker to do. He’d never be able to control their dreams like he could his own. Only a dreamwalker could do that. And once he was in their dreams, he would have less control of his own. But it was a necessary risk. If he could find them he could talk to them, try to help. Amanda knew a little of what it was like to dreamwalk, Cat had shown her some. He just needed to find her and remind her.

But Kass had been closer, she was possibly easier to reach, and maybe in more danger given she didn’t know the dreamworld like they did. Sirius stood. He glanced down at the dark ocean, and it’s unknown depths, perhaps the deepest ocean he would ever lay eyes upon. He wasn’t sure exactly how to find them but a part of him knew that was the way. Down into those depths. He took a deep breath and focused on the sky. “Relax,” he murmured to himself. Then he took a step forward and off the boat.

He dropped like a stone, listening, looking for any sign of life.

The sea lit up, as if the sun had suddenly come out and gained more power. Fish encircled him. Large slow pink fish with white stripes, small zappy blue and yellow ones. A whale called in the distance but no other person could be seen anywhere.

Sirius let himself sink down slowly. He felt a tugging at his ankle and looked down. A tentacle had wrapped itself around him. He tried not to panic. There was a chance it would take him where he wanted to go. And if he wanted to get back he just had to imagine the small boat scene again, right?

The tentacle tentacle tugged harder. Sirius was pulled faster. He felt water getting shoved up his nose. Where he had been able to breathe before, he now choked. He closed his eyes.

Just when he thought he was about to drown he felt air on his face again. He took in a large gracious gasp and opened his eyes to find himself in the air.

No, not in the air. Worse. In a plane. And this clearly wasn’t a normal flight. He could see the cockpit, see the air rushing in the front window, hear the captain screaming over the radio. “Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down. Above him the roof ripped away with a horrendous scraping sound as the wind tour metal from metal.

Sirius grabbed hold of a chair leg to prevent being sucked out. This was his worst nightmare.

The plane tilted. His stomach somersaulted. He shut his eyes and braced for impact. Would this be the end? His thoughts went back to the boat, small and calm. Slap slap slap. He let go of the chair leg, focused on the boat. He could hear the water now.

He opened his eyes. He was on his stomach. He could see his hands in front of him. But no boat. Around him, was only inky blackness. This wasn’t where he wanted to be. But at least it wasn’t on the plane.

“Sirius! Help me!”

“Kass?” He looked around but he saw no one.

“Sirius!” A different voice! A different direction! Amanda?

He spun. He must have have gone in circles a full three times before he reaslied there was no one there. Only echos.

And yet, he couldn’t help but hope. He closed his eyes and thought of Amanda. Of her beautiful red hair. Of her kindness. The way she looked up at him with those big brown eyes. The way she would sing in the kitchen in the morning, and drum on the pots and the pans with a beat that made you want to swoop her up in your arms and dance, even though the sun was barely up. He thought of that time they’d had a sick mare in the barn and Amanda had stayed up most of the night caring for it. He thought of that time he’d gotten the flu and she’d spent most of the night caring for him. He thought of how when she was thinking she’d sometimes bite her bottom lip. How whenever she had her hair tied up in a ponytail she sometimes had this habit of pulling a strand over her shoulder and twirling it between her fingers. How she swayed when she walked. How she laughed.

He opened his eyes. She stood right there in front of him.

“Amanda!”

He was about to run to her and swoop her up in his arms but then her expression changed into a scowl. Then it fell apart, into a look that broke his heart. A look of betrayal. The same look she’d given him when she’d walked around a corner a little over a week ago to find Kass and him locking lips.

They had talked about it and it hadn’t even completely been Sirius’s fault. It was Kass who had initiated the kiss. But the problem was of course, that Sirius hadn’t exactly pulled away, not at first anyway. But she’d forgiven him, as he’d forgiven her once before for the same thing. But here she was, looking at him with that same hurt expression in her eyes.

“Why’d you leave me?”

He frowned, confused. “Amanda, I didn’t.”

“You did, you left me for her. We were all in here together and then you left me.”

Before Sirius could reply another voice cried out. Kass’s voice this time. From behind him. “Help me, please. Sirius? Where did you go?”

He spun.

Kass was standing there with tears in her eyes. One dripped from her chin and landed on her white shirt leaving a small wet splotch. “Where’d you go? You left me! You let go of my hand! Why’d you do that?” she spoke between sobs. “Why didn’t you help me?”

“I... I...” he stuttered.

“Sirius?” A small trembling voice asked.

Cat stood to his left. A young Cat, barely a teenager. Lanky and long haired, all arms and legs. Her dark hair wild and unbrushed. Her sleeves were torn. “Where’d you go? Why didn’t you take me with you? You just left me. You left me with him. With that monster!”

They surrounded Sirius. Three voices asking him where he had gone, why he had gone. Telling him over and over that he’d left them.

“I didn’t...” he started but then he turned to Cat, “I mean I did leave you but...” he trailed off feeling guilty and he spun to face Kass instead. “I didn’t leave you. I tired, I tied to reach you.” He turned to Amanda. “And you. I would never leave you. I love you.”

“You leave all the time. You’re gone for months!” she pushed back.

The words were familiar. Echos of conversations had in the past.

He shook his head. “I’m home for longer now, I ...”

Her expression changed to one of fury. Amanda raised a fireball in her hand. That was the moment he knew. The moment he was sure beyond all doubt that none of them were real. And that he was in big trouble.