‘You even told me you liked it, you said you wanted it that way,’ he called out from the back of his horse, causing a blush to discolour her wan features before her eyes fluttered and she dropped to the ground with a small, barely perceptible groan.

Sofia did not pause for a moment’s thought. She hurried over to Sally to see if she might help. Indeed, in the dream, she flew quite literally to her side, as an angel might. But no sooner had she taken her eyes off the road agents than she heard a few harsh words and a horse whinnying, just before a sharp, collective gasp from the small gathering and the sudden snap and thrumming of the hanging chain being jerked tight. She was aware, somehow, that the razor wire her father had wrapped around their necks had morphed into thick, rusted chains, each link cruelly barbed with fangs of sharpened bones taken from the bodies of the innocents these men had killed. She turned her head quickly to see the giant troll’s body swinging dramatically and his legs kicking and jerking while her father looked on.

The eldest of the road agents appeared as a desiccated husk, a puppet of dry bones and wolf hide. He laughed at Papa, a sound like thousands of rats scurrying through a darkened basement. And the more he laughed, the stronger he seemed to grow, and the weaker and more translucent became her father. Fading away, fading away until a terror took her by the throat, a fear that he might be laughed out of existence altogether.

It was all too much to understand, and Sofia didn’t know why they hadn’t simply shot these men down like rabid dogs when they first had the chance. She had even offered to do the work herself if the others didn’t have the stomach for it. What was the problem?

If they had just shot them down; if they had just shown these agents the same lack of mercy they had shown the victims. If only she had been stronger. Her father would not be fading away. Papa would not be . . .

In the dream she screamed, but no sound came from her throat. All she could hear was the laughter of the dead man.

In her hospital bed, she screamed, and a nurse came running.

*

Her second awakening, late on Friday night, came easier. She emerged from a dreamless darkness into a soft, drugged consciousness. She remembered, in great detail, but with no feeling, having awoken earlier. Screaming, howling and clawing at her bedclothes, swinging her damaged fist at a male nurse who tried to calm her down. She remembered the sting of a hypodermic, and a sense of panic as darkness rushed up to meet her. But she was not panicking now.