Lucas did not sleep well that night.
He didn’t know when the dream began.
At first, everything around him was a blur of darkness.
He could hear people speaking somewhere far away, but he couldn’t make out their words.
Then a woman’s voice came suddenly closer.
“We don’t have enough grain left for everyone.”
Lucas tried to open his eyes, but he wasn’t awake.
Instead, the scene before him slowly came into focus.
He saw a spacious room with stone walls and low wooden beams.
A long table stood in the middle, with people of all ages seated around it.
Lucas seemed to be standing in a corner.
He tried to look down at himself, but he couldn’t make out his own body.
All he could do was listen as the people at the table continued talking.
“The harvest was poor to begin with this year.”
“There are too many mouths to feed.
We can’t go on like this.”
“It isn’t only their family.”
Then an elderly woman spoke.
“Now that we’ve divided everything up, don’t come back asking for more.”
Lucas frowned.
Divided what?
He tried to see who was speaking, but though the people were right in front of him, their faces seemed covered by a thin mist.
He couldn’t make out a single feature.
The scene changed.
Someone stuffed a few old clothes into a cloth bundle.
Two sacks stood on the floor, one of them filled with grain.
A woman’s hand pulled its opening shut and tied it with a piece of rope.
Then she untied the rope and did it again.
Someone nearby was crying softly.
Lucas tried to turn toward the sound, but he had no control over what he saw.
The images passed before his eyes one after another.
It was cold outside.
An old wooden cart stood in a yard.
Someone loaded the bundles onto it, followed by a hoe, a blanket, and a chipped clay jar.
He heard children crying.
More than one.
Lucas tried desperately to turn around, but everything went black.
His eyes flew open.
The bedroom was dark.
Clara slept beside him, breathing evenly.
On his other side, Theo lay curled beneath the blanket with his back to Lucas, only a little of the back of his head showing.
Lucas stayed where he was and stared up at the ceiling.
The dream was still clear in his mind—too clear to feel like a dream.
He could remember a deep scratch on the long table.
He remembered that the grain sack hadn’t been tied tightly the first time, which was why the woman had retied it.
But he had never seen that room before.
He pushed against the mattress and started to sit up.
He had barely raised himself when sleepiness washed over him again.
Frowning, he lay back down.
He would tell the others in the morning.
Before long, he was asleep again.
In the next room, Arthur was dreaming too.
His dream was far less orderly.
One moment there was rain, then a muddy road, and then a farmhouse.
He stood in the yard with what seemed like a crowd of people before him.
“It’s already been decided.”
Arthur heard himself say something in reply, but his voice was muffled.
He couldn’t make out his own words.
Then a woman spoke.
“If the five of you keep living here, what are the rest of us supposed to do?”
The five of us?
Arthur tried to see her face, but it remained blurred.
His chest felt tight, weighed down by hurt and frustration that he couldn’t quite explain.
They weren’t feelings he would have had now.
Yet in the dream, they felt real, as though the man whose body he occupied had once stood in that yard and heard those words for himself.
The scene shifted.
Arthur saw a man’s hands, their palms thick with calluses.
An old, healed scar marked the skin near one thumb.
The hands were loading a grain sack, a wooden chest, and several old farm tools onto a cart.
Someone walked past without stopping.
Another person stood farther away, looking as though he wanted to say something, but he never did.
Arthur tried to look up at him.
The scene changed again.
He was sitting on a wooden cart as it rolled along a muddy road.
The wheels creaked from time to time.
Beside him, someone held a child, while two others huddled together.
One of them was crying.
“We’re almost there.”
The person holding the child gently patted their back.
It was Helena’s voice.
Arthur woke with a start.
The window had only begun to grow light, leaving the room gray.
He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, then sat up.
Helena woke almost at the same time.
They looked at each other.
Neither spoke at first.
“You…” Arthur began.
Helena opened her mouth too, and both of them stopped.
Something in her expression caught his attention.
“Did you have a dream?”
She was quiet for a moment.
“You too?” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
They were both wide awake now.
Helena sat up and pulled the blanket back over her waist.
She hadn’t slept well either.
Throughout her dream, someone had been packing.
She had seen a woman crouching on the floor, folding clothes one by one and putting them into a cloth bundle.
Her hands were rough, with tiny cracks across the knuckles.
Three very young children were beside her.
One sat on the floor holding a small piece of wood.
The other two leaned against each other, their eyes red as though they had just been crying.
Helena could never see their faces clearly, but she remembered feeling hurried the entire time.
There were so few clothes and blankets.
No matter how she searched, there was hardly anything else to take.
Later, someone called from outside the door.
“The cart’s ready.”
She heard herself answer, “I know.”
Then she bent down and picked up one of the children.
The child was light.
A terrible ache had come over her in that moment, and she could still remember it now that she was awake.
Arthur listened, then waited a long while before asking, “There were three children in your dream?”
“Yes.”
“And a wooden cart?”
“Yes.”
They fell silent.
If only one of them had dreamed about it, perhaps the cloth bundles and the cart they had seen yesterday had simply found their way into a dream.
But their dreams seemed to show different parts of the same event.
That was harder to explain.
Arthur threw back the blanket and got out of bed.
“Let’s check on the three of them.”
Helena followed him.
In the next room, two of the children were already awake.
Clara lay nearest the wall, her face almost buried in the blanket.
Lucas sat up with his hair in a tangle, looking fully alert.
Theo leaned against the headboard, staring quietly ahead.
As soon as Arthur opened the door, Lucas looked over.
“Dad, I had a dream last night.”
Arthur stopped.
Helena quickly asked, “What did you dream about?”
Before Lucas could answer, Theo spoke.
“Were people arguing?”
Lucas turned sharply toward him.
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
Arthur understood at once.
“You dreamed about it too?”
Theo nodded.
“I don’t remember much.”
His dream had come in fragments.
He remembered someone carrying him while people talked all around them.
One elderly woman’s voice had stood out from the rest, loud and harsh.
“We’ve given you your share.
From now on, you’ll have to manage on your own.”
Theo couldn’t remember what came after that.
Only that he had been on a wooden cart later, the ride was bumpy, and someone beside him was crying.
“I think I might have been crying too,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable.
“I’m not sure.”
Arthur held back a smile.
“It was only in a dream.”
Theo looked up at him.
“That isn’t the point.”
“Right.
I won’t interrupt.
What happened next?”
“That’s all.”
Arthur didn’t know what to say.
Their voices woke Clara.
She stirred, then lifted her face from the blanket.
Before she had even opened her eyes, Lucas asked, “Did you dream last night?”
“Yes,” she murmured sleepily.
The room went quiet.
Clara rubbed her eyes and noticed all four of them looking at her.
“What?”
Helena sat on the edge of the bed.
“What did you dream?”
Clara frowned as she tried to remember.
“Someone was counting things.”
She remembered a table.
A few coins and a small bag of grain lay on it.
Someone had said they were being given plenty.
“But it wasn’t much at all.” Her frown deepened as more came back to her.
“There were two old blankets, and the rest was just odds and ends.
Then someone loaded everything onto a cart, and we left.”
“Where did you go?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see this house afterward?”
Clara looked around the room and thought for a while.
“I think there was a house in the dream, but I couldn’t tell if it was this one.”
All five of them had dreamed, and the pieces fit together.
Lucas had seen the argument and the packing.
Arthur had heard someone say that the five of them had to leave.
Helena had carried a child onto the cart.
Theo had heard that they would have to live on their own from now on.
And Clara remembered the small amount of grain and money they had been given.
Together, the dreams suggested what had happened.
“The bundles and sacks in the other bedroom haven’t been put away.
We may have only just moved here.”
Helena nodded.
“The cart in our dreams might have brought everything to this house.”
Arthur stood beside the bed, his expression growing serious.
“And it doesn’t sound like an ordinary move.”
Clara clutched the blanket.
“So we were thrown out?”
“Possibly,” Helena said.
“But we don’t know who those people were or why the family split up.”
Clara nodded.
None of them could see the faces clearly in their dreams.
A few overheard words weren’t enough to explain everything.
“Did anyone hear a name?” Arthur asked.
The three children shook their heads.
“What about the place?
Did you recognize anyone?”
“Their faces were always blurred,” Lucas said.
It had been the same for Arthur and Helena.
They had learned a little about this family’s past, but they still didn’t know what names to answer to here, or how the people in their dreams were related to them.
Clara pushed back the blanket and looked at her hands.
“At least we might know why so many things still haven’t been unpacked.”
“Might,” Theo said, glancing at Lucas.
“We don’t even know how many days ago they moved.”
Lucas had been about to say it couldn’t have been long.
At Theo’s look, he kept that thought to himself.
Arthur watched them, faintly amused.
Lucas still liked piecing together answers from clues, while Theo still caught every uncertainty in his reasoning.
Being three years old hadn’t changed either of them that much.
Another thought occurred to Helena.
“Do you think we’ll dream about it again tonight?”
No one knew.
“Maybe,” Lucas said.
“Maybe not,” Theo replied.
Clara hugged the blanket and yawned.
“Then we’ll find out tonight.”
There was no use guessing any further.
Arthur went to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
Morning light entered the room.
The three children sat on the bed, each with hair messier than the last.
They had woken up like this yesterday, too.
Back then, none of them had known anything about this place.
There was still a great deal they didn’t understand, but today, at least, they had some idea why the house looked as though they had just arrived.
Arthur turned around.
“Time to get up.”
Clara looked at the edge of the bed, then at him.
“Want me to pick you up?” he asked.
She was quiet for a moment.
“…Yes.”
Lucas was already moving toward the edge.
“I can get down myself.”
Arthur let him and turned to Theo.
Theo held out both arms.
“Pick me up.”
Lucas glanced at him.
“We tried it yesterday,” Theo said matter-of-factly.
“Getting down by myself takes longer.”
Arthur laughed and lifted him to the floor, then came back for Clara.
Lucas was still inching toward the edge.
Arthur stood nearby and watched until Lucas finally said, “Stop staring at me.”
“I don’t want you to fall.”
“I won’t.”
“You nearly did yesterday.”
Lucas paused.
He didn’t argue again, only gripped the edge of the bed and slowly slid down.
Once both feet were firmly on the floor, he let go and looked up at Arthur.
Arthur held back a smile.
“Better this time.”
Lucas ignored him.
The three children straightened their clothes beside the bed.
Helena smoothed Clara’s sleep-tangled hair, then said, “Let’s finish what we didn’t get to yesterday.”
Arthur nodded.
They still hadn’t opened the bundles and sacks, and they needed a proper look at the land outside.
As for the people in the dreams, they would have to learn more before they could work out who anyone was.
Clara had taken only two steps when her stomach growled.
She stopped.
Theo looked down at his own stomach.
“I’m hungry too.”
Lucas said nothing, but he was already looking toward the door.
Arthur opened it.
“Breakfast first, then.”
Clara followed him.
“Is it yesterday’s bread again?”
Arthur paused.
“Probably.”
She sighed.
“I’m starting to think finding out what’s for breakfast matters more than finding out who we are.”
Helena gently patted her head.
“Come on.”
One by one, the five of them left the room.
Daylight filled the window.
It was their second day here.