“No!” Sirius cried. He reached her on his hands and knees and he pulled her body toward him.

  Her cheeks which were normally so rosy were pale and lifeless.

  “Kass? Kass?!” He felt for a pulse but there was none. Her skin was still warm to the touch.

  “Kass! Kass!” He shook her gently, unsure of what else to do. A single line of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth, so perfectly straight it could have been painted on.

  “Kass!” He couldn’t stop saying her name.

  The dent in her skull was obvious and familiar. Flashes of his father and mother fighting from many years ago filled his mind.

  He had done that. His hands. His power. He had been the one.

  Feeling as if he no longer deserved to even touch her, he quickly set her down and moved back. His fists dug into the soil and squeezed the earth. What had he done?

  “If Amanda could see you now.” A new voice filled with scorn. Also familiar. His sister.

  Breathing heavily, his face all contorted in despair, he turned to face the new voice.

  Cat stood there, not far away, in the same black jeans, jacket, and slightly too short singlet she’d been wearing when he’d visited her earlier in jail. With her hands on her hips she looked down at him with a a clear mix of disdain and pity.

  “She’s not real,” Cat said. “See.” She gave a wave of her hand.

  Sirius turned to look back at Kass’s body just in time to see it turning into dust. He sat back on his heels and took a deep breath. Just another part of the dream then. With new suspicion he studied Cat.

  She rolled her eyes at his expression. “Fair question.” she answered, obviously guessing at his thoughts, “but I’m real. I was asleep and I caught the scent of dream magic. The jail’s not far from here, remember.”

  He pulled himself to his feet. “Tell me something only we would know then.”

  Cat rolled her eyes. “Why does everyone always think that works in here? If it’s something you know then it’s something you can imagine too.”

  She had a point but he needed to be sure. “Well, something I wouldn’t think of then, until you say it.”

  Cat crossed her arms. “How about no, because this is stupid.”

  Well, she was acting like Cat. “I guess that’ll do.”

  “Are you looking for Kass?”

  Sirius nodded. “Can you sense her in here?”

  Cat gave her own nod in reply followed by a jerk of the head. “Follow me.”

  As she walked the scene changed. Became lighter, more friendly. The sky turned blue and cloudless and a rolling meadow filled with smatterings of yellow wildflowers surrounded them. It made him feel better. That was something Cat would conjure.

  As Sirius followed her he asked, “Kass has been out for almost 48 hours now I think. You didn’t sense the dreamweaver last night?”

  Cat slowed and sent a worried glance back over her shoulder. She shook her head. “It wasn’t the dreamweaver I sensed. It was that.”

  She was indicating Katrina’s dreamwalking charm. Sirius held it up and she nodded further in confirmation.

  “That’s my magic she infused into that, remember?” Cat said. She turned forward with a sigh. “I was looking for the dreamweaver though. I guess it’s hard to find.”

  “Can you sense it now?”

  “Faintly. Yeah. It’s down there somewhere.”

  They reached the top of the hill. Up ahead lay another forest. It met the meadow at a straight line. It wasn’t like the previous forest he’d been walking through, or any forest he’d ever seen. It was denser. The trees were packed in so close that it was impossible to tell the roots of one from the roots of another. The trunks were thick and the canopy formed one single dark green layer. As they drew closer he noticed something else unusual.

  “They’re growing out of rock.”

  “Yeah,” Cat replied as if it wasn’t something strange at all. She raised her hands and with a concentrated look told the trees, “This is my world.”

  Slowly, as if being pulled apart by giant hands, the trees parted ever so slightly and a small gravel path formed between them, no wider than two feet pressed tight together.

  Sirius could hear the growling sound Cat made under her breath and he got the impression that they hadn’t parted quite as much as she would have liked.

  “You’re sure Kass is this way?” he asked.

  She nodded but she didn’t reply. She just pushed her way forward.

  She’d only gone a few metres however before the roots had formed themselves back over the path.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Cat gave another growl of frustration but she didn’t stop or turn around. She simply scrambled up over the next lot of roots. “Come on. It might get dark for a bit though.”

  Sirius followed. He was pretty confident that they were definitely heading in the direction of the dreamweaver. He just wasn’t sure what they were going to do when they found it.

  As they moved further into the forest it did indeed get darker, just as Cat had said. Not a single ray of sunlight penetrated the canopy above them. Not that there was really a sun up there. All that existed in here technically was all that he could see. Up there was nothing. He tried not to think about it too much. It made the world feel too small. He thought of Amanda back in the real world, waiting for him. At least she was safe. Thoughts of her made the world bigger, no matter where she was.

  For a time they climbed over large roots almost by touch and it was only the sound of Cat occasionally swearing at a tree that let him know he was still moving in the right direction. But after a little while small dots of yellow-green light appeared around him. Fireflies that lit up the dark and allowed him a better visual of where he was.

  The floor was green again. But not grassy green, leafy green. The roots they were climbing over were branches, almost as if the trees were growing upside down. He looked up and was surprised to find the stony floor was now above him.

  Cat was still moving however so he didn’t pause to observe things for too long.

  “Did you make the fireflies?” he asked as he scrambled after her.

  She answered in the affirmative but didn’t slow down.

  Eventually they reached the edge of the forest. It ended just like it had begun, not thinning out of trees, just a sudden stop, right at the edge of a vast and open sky. And Cat was standing on the ceiling.

  The forest was up. The sky was down. He wasn’t sure how gravity worked but he got the impression he was standing the wrong way up.

  Cat turned to look up at him. Or was that down at him?

  “How did you get down there?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I jumped.”

  He looked toward his feet and the open sky that lay in that direction, and then back toward Cat who stood completely the opposite way to him, somehow attached to the earth by her feet. He hair made it look like gravity went the normal way for her. Would it swap direction when he crossed the threshold?

  He stuck out an arm but it felt like gravity was still going the same way.

  Cat was watching him with an amused expression on her face. She’d probably used her magic. Well, he supposed he’d just have to hope she had enough of it for him.

  He looked down toward the sky. Every instinct in his body was fighting with him to keep his feet on the ground. He knew this wasn’t real but people did occasionally die in dreams, especially ones crafted by a dreamweaver. His state of mind was important.

  He imagined the below like a pool of reflected water instead. After a deep breath he leapt head first into the sky. Up, up, up he dove. Then suddenly he was falling down, feet first toward the earth. He manged to land upright, his coat sending a few stray leaves flying out into the air.

  Cat gave a half impressed grunt and they continued on their way without a word.

  The forest seemed more normal now, at least it did for the first few minutes. But slowly he became aware of greenery rising up around them on both sides, until eventually the forest surrounded them, even overhead, like a mirror.

  “I don’t remember the dream world ever being quite this strange,” he remarked.

  Cat shrugged. “I’ve seen worse. You only see it normal because whenever you’ve dreamwalked someone’s been in control and people like things to be familiar. They like them looking like the real world. But they don’t have to be.”

  “Is the dreamweaver doing this?” Sirius tried not to look up. The overhead forest was a little unsettling and although there was light he wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

  Cat shrugged again. “Don’t know. Could be feeding from Kass’s head or maybe someone it already ate.”

  Sirius shook his head. “Not Kass. She wouldn’t dream of this sort of stuff.”

  Cat cocked an eyebrow at him. “You know her that well do you?”

  Sirius scowled. “You’ve walked in her head haven’t you?” He knew she had, Kass had mentioned it once to him before about Cat’s lack of boundaries when it came to dreamwalking, although she’d never mentioned what it was she’d been dreaming about and he hadn’t asked. “Is this something she would dream about?”

  Cat shrugged.

  Sirius shook his head. “She’s too practical.”

  Cat stopped walking and turned to face him. “Dreams are never practical. No one’s dreams are ever practical.” Her tone was almost defensive, as if he’d said something negative about Kass or about the dreamworld. It didn’t fit though, not with what he knew Cat valued nor with how Kass was.

  He gave her a confused look.

  Something in Cat’s expression softened and then she turned and continued walking. As she walked away she added, “Kass is creative. She could dream of this.”

  Sirius frowned. “I...” he started and then he stopped. There was no point in telling Cat that creative and practical weren’t necessarily opposites or in trying to explain why he didn’t think Kass would dream of this. There was of course the possibility he was wrong. He didn’t think so but regardless there was quite simply little point in arguing with Cat. Not over this. Not when she was probably just picking a fight for the sake of it. So instead he said, “I half expected to find the dreamweaver in that dark forest.”

  “I think we’re getting close.”

  Just as she said the words, the forest opened into a clearing and right in the middle was a gingerbread house.

  “That’s creepy,” Sirius remarked.

  Cat cocked an eyebrow at him. “A house made of sugar bread is creepy?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You know the story.”

  Cat grinned. “About the child-eating monster that lived inside. Something tells me we might just find one.” She strode forwards with a look of fierce determination in her eyes, like she was looking forward to a fight.

  Sirius was not quite so eager, but maybe, just maybe, Kass was in that house, so he followed quickly after.

  The pathway was lined with what looked like large gumdrop buttons on candy cane sticks.

  Neither of them touched a single one.

  When they got to the door they found it unlocked. That at least appeared to actually be made of wood while the doorknob looked like some kind of giant ruby. Stepping inside turned what had been a smallish house into one so large that there was no way it fit in the space they had seen from outside.

  The place appeared to be all one big room with curved walls instead of the square ones that had been seen from outside. No longer was anything made of candy or gingerbread. Instead, straw covered the floor and ahead of them on a slightly raised wooden platform lay three single beds. To both their left and right were matching kitchens with matching tables and each one held 3 bowls or what looked like steaming hot porridge.

  Sirius didn’t waste much more time in looking around the room however, for up ahead on one of the beds lay a familiar figure.

  He rushed forward. “Kass!”

  Cat stood in the centre of the room and looked around. They had arrived and yet there was no sign of the dreamweaver.

  Sirius reached Kass and was relieved to find she appeared to be sleeping. Gently he tried to wake her.

  “Kass?” he whispered softly, then “Kass!” a little louder.

  She groaned and shifted but she didn’t wake.

  “That’s not good,” Cat remarked.

  “Not good?” Sirius frowned. “She’s just sleeping.”

  “She’s sleeping in the dreamworld,” Cat emphasized.

  Before Sirius could ask why that was bad, suddenly the entire roof of the house was lifted off and up into the air. No, not into the air. There was no sky or even a canopy of trees above them now. Instead where the roof had been only moments before was a pulsating purple jelly like substance.