The treeline draws nearer, the air is shuddering with the force of everything. She sees the birds now, small and beautiful, darts of color among the trees. They do not call. They are silent as fish in a pond. The lake falls away behind her and she is in the shadowed place beneath the trees. Pine needles litter the forest floor. It is soft underfoot, soft as grave earth, freshly dug. Overhead the birds glide and dart. Dee comes into the clearing beneath the terrible sky and there it is, the white tree. It is a silver birch, slender and lovely. She remembers that sometimes they’re called paper birches. Strange, the thoughts that come to you in dreams. There is an intricate nest built at the juncture of two branches. A crimson bird with golden eyes and a golden beak lands. She carefully weaves the strand of dried grass she has brought into the soft inside of the nest where she will lay her eggs.

Dee begins to moan. She tries to wake herself because the next part is the worst. But she can’t. Against her will she is drawn closer to the tree, to the nest, to the bird. She covers her dream mouth with her dream hand. Even in a dream, it seems, a stomach can feel sick to death.

She tries to turn, to run. But everywhere she turns there are silent crimson birds fluttering among the trees of bone, bearing in their beaks the wisps of grass that are not grass, lining their nests with her dead sister’s hair.

Dee wakes to a soft tapping on her cheek, her forehead, her nose. When she opens her eyes all she can see is fur and whiskers. The tabby cat is very close; her nose nearly touches Dee’s. The cat taps Dee’s nose once more with her velvet fist, to make sure that Dee has really stopped screaming.

“Sorry, cat,” she says, then starts. “What are you doing in here?”

The cat sits back on her haunches and looks steadily at her. She is thin and ragged, ears torn from fighting. Her eyes are a soft tawny brown. Dee could not call her a beautiful cat. But she is a survivor.

The tabby puts her head on one side and makes an interrogative pprrrrp?

“Really?” asks Dee in disbelief. But the cat continues to regard her fixedly, and everyone knows what that look means, from a cat.

Dee finds a can of tuna in a cupboard in the kitchen. She empties it onto a saucer. The cat eats delicately, stirring the air with her tail.

“Do you have a name?” Dee asks. The cat ignores her. She licks her lips with a small pink tongue and strolls into the living room. Dee rinses the saucer before following. It only takes a moment but when she comes through she can’t see the cat anywhere. It has left.