What Dreams May Come

"The recurrent dream. Mine is appearing before lecture audiences in my shirttail. A most disagreeable dream."

-Mark Twain

She was in the glowing dome again.

Everything was just as it had been the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that for as many nights as she could remember.

There was a large silver door to the dome, almost indistinguishable in the bright, glowing light. Nine simple cots were pushed up against the smooth, circular walls of the dome so that the foot of each bed faced the center. There was a person in each bed, but each one was deep in sleep, and their blankets covered their faces.

She knew this place, though only is passing, and it maddened her as it always did that she could not remember where she had seen it.

The door opened silently, just as it did every night, and a tall, slim man stepped in. For some odd reason the man always wore a silver mask, and the mask too reminded her of something. The man walked quietly around the dome room, which was bare of anything but the beds, checking each and every sleeping being.

Finally, after he had made sure that everyone was all right, he strode to the center of the dome. "Rise and shine!" he called in a soothing yet powerful voice. The voice was the only thing that was not vaguely familiar to her, but in itself it was a puzzle.

There were moans and groans from those sleeping in the beds. People began sitting up, but their heads were bent towards their laps, blocked their faces from view. Their hair had been tucked carefully into sleeping caps, and so she knew no more about their identities than when they had been sleeping. Suddenly though, as if he had been slapped across the cheek, the man in the bed closest to the door looked up.

For a moment Ana Lowell saw his face, but then she awoke from her dream, and everything was blank.

***September 11, 2011***

It was as if she had been thrown into a brick wall. That was the only equivalent that Ana could think of. Each time she awoke from her dome-dream it felt as though she had been thrown into a brick wall. Her whole body was paralyzed, she was flattened to the motel bed, her limbs were splayed about her in unnatural positions, and she felt like curling up and dying. She ached when she tried to move, and her hair was always lank and stringy with sweat.

Ever since early May she had dreamed the "glowing dome" dream, and nothing else, every single damn night. Nothing ever changed, and she always woke up in the same messy, painful state. It was at the point where she dreaded going to sleep. She dreaded waking up without unlocking the mystery, and yet she felt that she could not tell any of her friends about it.

After all, what would they say?

Amber-Lyn, Ana's cousin, probably wouldn't care. At the very most she would snort and call Ana a "paranoid wet blanket." Adrian, the only boy in the group, would laugh it all off and chock it up to Ana's "sad and dreary past." Liza, Ana's best friend, would analyze the dream to death, and Sugar, Ana's faerie godmother, would blather on and on about all the hidden messages.

In the end she would be no better off, and then all her friends would be worrying about her even more than they all ready did.

It was ridiculous how fragilely they treated her at times, as if she was some sort of basket case under extreme amounts of pressure. Only Adrian treated her totally normally, and even then it seemed like a strained habit. Ana often wished that she had never told anybody about her destiny. It was bad enough for her to know without people being overly easy on her.

By the time Ana was feeling normal again, though her calves would ache for the whole day, the sun had fully risen, and so were her friends. They had come awake as she had been thinking, and it wasn't until all four of them had crowded around her bed that she looked up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a hand coming towards her, and out of some primordial instinct she reached under her pillow and whipped out her dagger. The three stones set in the ivory hilt gleamed in the morning sunshine, and the hand, which she saw belonged to her cousin, Amber-Lyn, jerked back in alarm.

"Damn it, Ana! What the hell did you do that for?" Amber-Lyn's crude language, which she had learned from poker playing dark wizards that had past staid in her old home, emerged only when she was shocked and had no time to think of a scathing remark. She saw everyone wince, and then Sugar, who was the next thing they all had to adult supervision, pointed to a small tin can they kept in the corner of the motel room.

"Put a pound in the Swear Jar, Amber-Lyn. We may be loose around her, but proper ladies do not swear," the small faerie snapped.

"Proper ladies don't pull daggers on their cousins, either," Amber-Lyn growled, and she stalked over to her worn, second-hand duffel bag. She pulled out an equally worn black purse and stuffed a bit of money in the tin jar. By the time she returned to the rest of the group her temper had cooled considerably, but Sugar still told Ana off.

"She's right, Ana. That dagger of yours is no toy! You promised that if I let you keep it then you'd use it only-"

"When my life was in danger. I know, Sugar, I know. But...It just happens."

"Happens?" Sugar arched her dark eyebrows. She seemed both skeptical and interested. "Pray tell, how does it happen?"

Ana ignored the widened eyes of her friends and focused on the tiny sprite. "Ever since we escaped from Blackenvire I feel more alert. I have this...sixth sense; you might call it, which just reacts if something's coming up behind me. I can't stop it, it just happens, and I don't have a clue why it does happen."

By the time she had finished speaking both Amber-Lyn and Adrian looked startled, as if she had said something truly creepy. "I know what you mean," Amber-Lyn said in an awed whisper. "It happens to me too, but I've done it my entire life."

"I'm like Nana," Adrian admitted. "When I got out of Blackenvire then I just started becoming more aware of things. Sometimes I can tell how far behind me a person is walking. And I know if someone's about to open a door or walk into the room I'm in. I can't hear them coming down the hallway, but it's like I can...sense...them."

Sugar seemed doubly surprised that three of her charges had suddenly developed such perceptiveness. She looked at Liza. "And you? What about you? Do you ever feel like these three?"

Liza shook her head. She seemed rather hurt that she couldn't "sense" as they could, rather as if she thought they had planned it all out. "Not at all." She looked at the three of them. "Do you really, though?"

The three friends nodded simultaneously. Ana's birthday had been entirely forgotten, even by Ana. Everyone began looking at Sugar. Usually the sprite could at least make logical guesses as to why odd things happened. She was the provider of answers within the quartet, and she was always able to settle their minds when they were troubled. She seemed deep in thought though, and when she finally did speak it was only to ask a question of her own.

"What do you three have in common?" she asked.

"What?" Amber-Lyn seemed put out, but brainy, studious Liza rose to the occasion.

"They're all...fresh out of a life of servitude?" she asked, quite unsure of herself.

"No." Sugar shook her dark head three times. "If that were the case then I'd have to include you too. You've been a servant all your life, too, and besides, Amber-Lyn only slaved away for six months. Guess again."

This time Amber-Lyn had thought of something. "We're all girls!"

Adrian snorted. "Well, thanks," he muttered wryly. "It's so nice to see that I fit in." Amber-Lyn flushed, an endearing habit that she had only just picked up. She muttered something that must have been an apology, then pretended to be taken with a speck of dirt.

"They're all...related?" Liza asked. This time she seemed to know something that no one else did.

"Related?" Adrian seemed annoyed now. "Is it that no one remembers a thing about me? How am I related to these two? Only they are cousins!"

"I meant distantly related," Liza explained. "As in very, very, very, very, very distant cousins."

Sugar smiled proudly. "Excellent, Liza. You've hit it spot on. At least one, if not both, of your parents were members of the Light, and your families, thousands of years ago, were closely related...Your great, great, a hundred times great, grandmothers were sisters. I can only deduce that, since you all have descended from the original eight families of the Light, that you inherited ancient...birthrights. You know, skills passed down from generation to generation."

"As in Ana's ability to see the past and present, and Adrian's ability to sense feelings." Liza was gloating as she only did when she had answered a hard question. Sugar cut her glory short by launching into another theory.

"I believe that Adrian's ability to sense the way people feel, the basic gist if they're good or bad, is a more recent acquirement. His parents were both guards for the city Lumière et Amour. They were in their animagi forms more than most members of the Light. It seems only natural that, after a few years, that the traits that the Kneazle form gave them became rather a sixth sense when they returned to being human. Maybe it even built itself into their genetic code. It would make sense then that their son would be able to do something of the sort."

Adrian whistled softly. It had become a habit of his over their months of freedom, and Ana found it rather sweet. She could not say the same of his pet name for her, Nana. It made her feel like an old woman, but she'd have hell making Adrian stop. Liza claimed it was his way of telling her he cared, but Ana didn't believe that for a second.

"I never would have guessed," the young boy was saying now, and he looked rather teary. Adrian was an emotional sort of boy, very dramatic, and his bouts of sentiment had only grown greater now that he was in close range to young girls who would soon be entering puberty. Sugar often shivered when she thought of dealing with three PMSing girls.

Suddenly Liza remembered it was Ana's birthday. She launched into a weak, tone-deaf version of "Happy Birthday" before Amber-Lyn's distastefully contorted face stopped her short. Liza was still having difficulties adjusting to Amber-Lyn. Amber-Lyn was still having difficulties forgetting that she was no longer the rich heiress of Pegatha Davies. Both girls clashed daily, but Liza's personality was such that Amber-Lyn always got her way.

"Well, happy birthday then. Twelve and counting, eh?" Liza's smile was fixed and strained.

Amber-Lyn, never one to recognize another's feelings, nodded. "What the brainy one said," she muttered.

Liza's eyes narrowed. Adrian, sensing the trouble, cut in. "Come on now, ladies. It's Nana's birthday. Can't we all get along, for her sake?" His plea did the trick. Amber-Lyn, who considered Ana to be her only true friend in their crowd, nodded resentfully, and Liza, who was like a sister to Ana, also nodded.

"Thank you, everyone," Ana said, and she made an effort to smile graciously at everyone. Her mind was still on the dagger incident, and, as hard as she tried, it would not be pushed away.

Perhaps some simple daily motions would clear her thoughts, and so she got up and made her way to the small, shabby shower room. It was separate from their loo, and it was a cramped, uncomfortable spot, and so she washed quickly. To her relief the pounding hot water brought about a tad bit of clarity, and when she was dried and dressed she was able to concentrate more easily on other things.

Liza wanted to take her out to breakfast. Amber-Lyn was all for that, which was a surprise to Ana until Amber-Lyn mentioned that she wanted to go to the small bakery on the corner that specialized in cinnamon buns. Liza was astronomically allergic to cinnamon, a well-known fact within the band of five friends. Liza frowned deeply at Amber-Lyn, and her caramel cheeks clenched stiffly as they often did when she was working herself into a mood. Ana was not eager to witness another brawl amongst her friends, so she quietly motioned to Adrian to follow her. The two backed towards the door, unnoticed by their fighting friends, and, within seconds, they were standing outside, breathing in the early September air.

Ana and company had been staying in a shabby motel in Surrey. Every day they rose at six in the morning and prepared for a day of performing random street tricks. Though Sugar strictly forbid the use of wands, which only Ana and Amber-Lyn possessed, they four of them were able to use sporadic bursts of magic to add a little zest to their hat and card tricks. Thanks to a few overly impressed mothers who had hired them for birthday parties and the average four pounds they got from impressed onlookers they were able to afford a cramped motel room and live on a steady diet of watery lemonade and seasoned crackers that tasted like sawdust. Sometimes young teenage boys would watch one of the girls with wistful looks and drop in an extra pound in which case they were able to buy some toast.

They did all this from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon. They worked in pairs--Ana and Amber-Lyn worked together, lying and claiming that they were magical twins. It was no surprise, what with Amber-Lyn's developing curves, that they brought in the most money--and at one-thirty they met at the corner of Parker and Hampton.

From there they proceeded to question anyone who would give their time to four skinny preteens if they had ever heard of a married couple named Mike and Sheryl. Oh, really, you have? And do they have any children--oh, they don't? Well, then, thank you for your time. They were searching doggedly for a certain young boy. His name was Nicholas, and he was, supposedly, Ana's little half-brother.

Ana had not ever known her mother, Kaitlyn Lowell, and it would have been fair to assume that, until some time ago, she did not know of Nicholas's existence. Their mother, whom they both shared, had once been a rich heiress. She had come to her ruin, however, by falling in love with two separate men, Ronald Weasley and Draco Malfoy, both schoolboy enemies. Draco Malfoy had embraced the Dark Lord, and Ron Weasley had despised those affiliated with him. So went the story that Kaitlyn Lowell made the ultimate mistake of placing herself between the two. The story ended in disaster, and now, twelve years later, it was Ana's job to correct her mother's mistakes.

It was not an easy task. Ana herself had known none of her mother's past. Up until a year ago to the day she had been under the belief that her mother had abandoned her on the step of a rich Dark Witch, Pegatha Davies. It had all been a sham, though, set up by Mrs. Davies to keep Ana and her two friends, Liza and Rey, from their true destiny. There were prophecies, Ana had been told, that told of one who would 'save them all.' She was chosen, the story went, to play a key role in the downfall of a Dark Empire. She would free the magical world from the evils imposed by one Lord Voldemort.

Such was her destiny.

And it wasn't like she was a superhero. Ana was an ordinary young witch. Perhaps she was below ordinary in that her magical skills were weak and, when it came to throwing curses, which she had tried once or twice, her talent was uno. Her only claim to fame was that she could dream of events, whether they were in the past or the present, that were actually real. Sugar had told her that the events had to pertain to her in some small amount, and they were also of use to her. It was what made her a Seer, Sugar had explained, and it was her key to destroying the Dark Lord Voldemort.

But first Ana needed a team. Behind every true hero there was a group of people. A true hero was never self-made, Ana thought, but made better by their friends. Part of her team was already assembled. Adrian, Liza, and Amber-Lyn were all to help her to pave the road to defeating Voldemort. However, there were some missing in action.

Rey Potter was one of them. Rey had been a close companion of Ana and Liza's back when they all worked for Mrs. Davies. However, one afternoon Ana came back to their shared cabin to find that Rey and Liza had been kidnapped and their home ransacked. After she herself had been taken to another home she had located Liza, and the two had escaped their life of servitude, but Rey was nowhere to be found. Supposedly he was working for another dark magical family, but it had been decided among the five fugitives that after escaping the household of one of the numerous wives of Voldemort that they had best lay low.

And so that's how they had come to stay in Surrey. Ana was sure that her little brother was somewhere within the city limits, and she was also sure that his adoptive parents, Mike and Sheryl, abused him in some way, shape, or form. Liza had, at first, been apprehensive of 'rescuing' Nicholas.

"You said he had been adopted by Mike and Sheryl," the young girl had said sharply one evening. "How do you think they'll react if we just snatch their kid away? That's kidnapping, Ana, and I won't put two people through that."

However, Sugar had formulated a theory to change Liza's mind. "Kaitlyn would never relinquish her child like that," she had reasoned, "so there must be some way to dodge around the adoption. My guess is that someone paid this Mike and Sheryl to look after Nicholas. If we play our cards right and follow my orders we might just be able to get him back."

Liza was still edgy about the subject, but she pitched in and asked if anyone knew a young boy named Nicholas, just as the others did.

But, for once, Ana wasn't thinking of Nicholas. She was instead watching Adrian remove a sock from the pocket of his second-hand jacket. The sock bulged with coins, and when Adrian undid the knot he had tied to keep the coins inside, three bronze knuts fell into his open palm.

"Well, Nan, as you can see, I have my own stash of money." Adrian jangled the sock before retying the knot. He stuck the knuts into his other pocket. "It may be magical cash, but I'm sure the old man in the pawn shop will see them as some old coins. It'll be enough to buy ourselves a decent breakfast down at the café. A bagel for the both of us, maybe."

Ana's eyes widened at the thought of an actual bagel. "But what about Amber-Lyn and Liza?" she asked.

Adrian winked. They began to walk to the pawnshop on 5^th Avenue. "Well, now, Sugar will handle those two. She planned this, and she decided that since I was the only boy that if I took you to a special breakfast that the girls would have no reason to get jealous." He smiled sweetly. "We're going to make this day real special for you, Nana. We've been...saving money...for a bit. We all decided that we all deserve a break from performing and the like, and we all decided that you most of all deserve a break."

They were outside the pawnshop now. Adrian's voice had dropped a few notches, and he was so serious in so short an amount of time that Ana had to stifle a snort of scornful laughter. "You've been under a lot of pressure lately, and we want you to have a day of relaxation. So, after scoping about the scene, we've decided that you'd get a real breakfast, take in one of those muggle...moving pictures...and then you'll go to that zoo and tonight we'll all go to have a real dinner." Adrian stumbled over some of the words.

Having grown up in the magical world all their lives neither of the two preteens fully understood the concepts of the moving pictures that were displayed in the tiny box in their motel room. The hotel manager, a beefy woman of about fifty-five, called it television. When Amber-Lyn asked if there was anything good for people their age to do the manager suggested going to a zoo that wasn't too far from the motel, or they could take in a movie at the cinema. Ever since Ana had expressed interest in doing both. Even so, she had to protest.

"But that'll cost an arm and a leg. I don't want you all to throw that sort of money away on my account." She smiled weakly. "Breakfast will be find. Maybe some soup for dinner. But a zoo and a movie...That's too much."

Adrian seemed to have expected that. "No, it's not. As I said, we've been saving. As long as we keep things moderately cheap then we'll all be able to have a fun day." He seemed to think that he'd closed the discussion because he opened the door to the pawnshop and stepped inside. Ana, not keen to loitering outside the door, had no choice but to follow him. She hated the pawnshop though, with its dusty junk and the old creepy man who ran it, Mr. Pantelli, but it was a good way to get quick cash.

As always, she bargained with Mr. Pantelli, because early on she and her friends had learned that Mr. Pantelli went easy on girls. They got more money than Adrian would have, and, as long as he stuck around to make sure the old owner tried nothing sneaky, they walked away with a bit extra than usual. After they scampered out of the pawnshop they headed down to the small, quaint café that served adorable little biscuits and strong scented tea.

Adrian ordered two croissants and two cups of rosemary tea. They ate and drank quietly, savoring tea for the first time. Ana herself was delighted with the sweet white bread of the croissants, something that she had watched Amber-Lyn do many times but that she herself had been denied. Combining it with the fact that she had not had anything but disgusting crackers fr the past three weeks, dotted with a few slices of strong cheese and the extremely rare piece of chicken, it made for a supreme birthday gift.

After they finished eating they stood, left a small tip for the perky waitress that had got them seated, and strolled down the street and towards their motel. Halfway there Ana began to joke about, and she danced gaily around the sidewalk, and right in front of the entrance to a parking lot. There was a sudden loud screech, and Ana gave a yelp of fright. The woman driving the car swerved wildly to avoid missing her, and, when she pulled to a crooked stop midway in the street she leapt out and began checking the car's body.

Ana didn't blame the woman. Though she didn't fancy herself a car fanatic she could tell that the model of the car the woman drove was one to be coveted. It was probably what Amber-Lyn referred to as an import. Leather interior, a million gadgets that Ana had no idea those use for, and a shiny coat of black paint...Ana was understandably impressed. Such a magnificent car deserved an apology.

"Oh, Ma'am, I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching-"

The woman's head snapped up, and Ana trailed off. Adrian, who was observing his friend and the woman and the car with benign interest, couldn't tell if Ana stopped talking because of the woman's sharp expression and sudden movement or something hidden within her private memory. The two stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment before the woman straitened up.

"You watch out next time you go dancing. You won't always be this lucky." She watched Ana for a few more moments. She was trying to assess something, Adrian could tell, but what there was to assess about her he did not know. Ana had dropped her eyes to the sidewalk, and she remained so until the woman shook her head and got back into the fancy car. The second that the black door slammed shut Ana's head snapped up. She stared after the car, and then she looked at the ground again.

"What's wrong?" Adrian asked. He was worried. Ana rarely got moody, but he half expected it every time she got quiet because of her destiny.s

Ana didn't look up. "I know that women," she said.

"What?" Adrian was startled. "Was she a friend of your aunt's?"

Ana shook her head. "No, I don't actually know her...and maybe it's just wishful thinking, but..." She kicked a pebble into the road. "But I think that that women is Nicholas's mum."