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could.
    Laura was the only child of Chorley’s dead sister — his only sibling. He loved his daughter, naturally, but Laura was all he had left of Verity.
    Verity and Chorley Tiebold had been inseparable, and so, after they married they combined their households. The brother and sister were support for each other in their mutual peculiar marriages to the great dreamhunters. Grace and Tziga were friends. Friends who went away for weeks at a time, foraging for dreams. When the girls were born their care naturally fell to Verity and Chorley. It had made sense for them all to live together. To throw in together, financially.
    But, when Verity’s marriage was only five years old, and her daughter only four, she became ill, and it became apparent that she wouldn’t recover.
    The family, so dedicated to one another, and to their unconventional lives, had found themselves facing a slow, creeping disaster. They were already financially overextended by Chorley’s ambitions to restore the Tiebold estates, refurbish the Tiebold town house and build a beautiful summer residence at Sisters Beach. They had to struggle to keep up payments.
    Yet, while Grace scaled up her dreamhunting to meet the family’s commitments, there came a time whenTziga would only leave his wife to catch the kind of dreams that might help restore her health. Later, he caught the kind of dreams that might prolong her life. And, at the last, he sought and pursued the kind of dreams that might help ease her dying. Tziga caught and performed for nobody but his wife. Every night, for Verity alone. She and he would disappear together into her darkened sickroom, and into his dreams. Apart from his hurried forays into the Place, Tziga was always with Verity. His savings ran out. Chorley and Grace supported him, and his neglected daughter. To Chorley it seemed that his sister, in dying, was taking her husband with her. He imagined that Verity would die in her sleep — in Tziga’s sleep — and that neither would wake.
    In the end Chorley begged his sister to stop Tziga. He was in anguish, torn in two, but he said to her, ‘Please, dear, you must refuse his help now. You must ask him not to go to the Place again. Please — can you please try to go from us awake? Forgive me. But please, Verity, don’t let Tziga go with you in his sleep.’
    Verity promised to do what her brother asked. ‘But only when my time has come,’ she said. She postponed her sacrifice, while Tziga worked to banish her pain and stave off her death. Little Laura asked her Uncle Chorley, ‘Is Daddy sick too?’ Even the child could see how it was — that her father was desperately active, but fading.
    Tziga went away to get another dream. ‘It’s only overnight,’ he promised his wife. ‘Be brave.’ When he’dgone Chorley told his sister what her daughter had said. Verity asked to see Laura. They had a little talk. Then Verity kissed her daughter, and sent her off to play. She summoned Chorley and Grace. She said she wanted to get up. She put on a robe and they helped her out on to the terrace. She sat watching the river traffic go by in the afternoon sunlight. An hour later Chorley and Grace carried her in, unconscious. They called the doctor, and watched by her bed, and, in the small hours, Verity Hame died without ever coming around again.
    Tziga carried his dream home, and found a hearse parked at his gate.
    Verity’s funeral was held three days later. Tziga stood at his wife’s graveside, his eyes sunken in circles of bruises.
     
    HE REFUSED TO sleep or eat, took nothing at the funeral breakfast and sat in the chief mourner’s chair oblivious to the approaches of friends and relations, who steeled themselves to come up to him and offer their sympathy; oblivious to his daughter, who was ruining her black velvet dress by lying on the floor under his chair.
    When the guests had gone, and the girls had been carried off to bed, Tziga prowled about the house. Chorley got out of bed