That night, Ari dreamt that the walls of her house were singing; soft synth overlaid with cello and a whisper in a language that sounded old and unfamiliar. Ari held her breath trying to listen, trying to decipher the words, or were they names? She was so close to figuring it out when a male voice overpowered it. That voice was silver. It moved like a snake. Its shiny serpentine words were clear:

“Come to me, my Beauty.
Come to me, my Sweet.
Daughter mine, I’m waiting.
Daughter mine, no waking.
Come to me in sleep.”

A shadow rose beside Ari. A shadow that had Dee’s shape.

The silver voice continued with the indecipherable chant running beneath it and then the roar of engines, of motorcycles. The bikes were on the main road beyond the woods and then they turned up the long dirt drive that led to houses along the lake. The shadow moved toward the window, open wide to the August night. Ari tried to shake her head, but it stayed straight. She tried to thrash and reach for Dee, but she was frozen in place. She tried to scream, to tell Dee to stop, to stay, but her mouth would not even open.

The motorcycles roared up to the window and Dee stepped straight through, floated into the darkness. Ari, still trying to scream and thrash and shake her head, awoke choking. The room was hot, the sun streaming in through the window, its curtains pulled to the side. The bed next to her was empty.

Ari went to the little house next door hoping that it really had just been a dream and Dee had suddenly decided to go home in the middle of the night, but she found no signs that her bed had been slept in—not a surprise since Dee only slept at home when her aunt grounded her for not doing her chores (all Auntie thought Dee was good for) or being too loud (when Auntie was drinking) or too unholy (when Auntie was praying).

Ari was so worried about Dee that she dared to wake Auntie, who, judging by the bloodshot eyes and stench of gin, was in the drinking part of the cycle.

“Some girls wander,” Auntie said far more dismissively than Gran had and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

Ari tried to call the sheriff’s office for help, but they were unwilling to drive across the county to the little town by the lake when the girl’s own aunt didn’t see fit to report her missing. “Some girls wander,” she was told yet again.

So Ari spent the day searching the woods and their small town for the girl she called sister. She even braved the shack at the outskirts of town where Dee’s friends hung out and found it completely abandoned. They had taken Dee; Ari was certain of that.

She also knew, and had deep down all along, that if she really wanted to find Dee, she would have to venture into the larger world beyond, but the idea frightened her terribly—and not just because she was afraid of the men on the motorcycles. As Dee had teased, Ari didn’t want to leave her little home in the forest. Over the past couple of days, she’d started to think that maybe she could do it with Dee at her side, but she didn’t believe she could do it without her.

Worried and weary, Ari went home to Gran and cried in her arms. “I know that some girls wander,” she said before Gran could repeat her platitude, “but I also know Dee heart and soul better than anyone and she may have been wandering before, but now she is lost.”

Gran stroked Ari’s hair: “If she is and if you want to find her, I know that you will reach within yourself and find the way.”

“I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

“I promise you that you are,” Gran told her. Then she led Ari to bed and kissed her goodnight. “Some girls wander by mistake, but some girls choose this path. If Dee made her choice, you’ll have to make yours, too. Promise to choose well,” Ari thought she heard Gran say, but it sounded distant, almost as from underwater. Gran’s goodnight kisses always made Ari drowsy, and she since she was already exhausted, the effect was doubly potent.

“I promise,” Ari managed to mumble before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.