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SUMMARY: The good Father is trudging further off the path of his faith while trying to save Roslyn from Carol.

Father Bedford cannot sleep. He has woken from a dream that started with a wife he never had telling him her secret over dinner. Even in the dream it felt unreal. She was an exiled princess, she told him. She was blessed with visions of the goddess, and he was part of those. She had given up all claim to the throne to find him and follow the will of the goddess to make things right again.

The goddess was Serene. That was not so much her name as a description of being in her presence. His dream self spun forward through time and felt that very thing. He became a believer. He allowed himself to float in the golden cloud of her divine presence while promising to build her a "house around a gate" and care for her people.

Roslyn was there, first as herself, then as a steel-hard black woman who was always armed and whose wit was as biting as it was entertaining. There were others, too, some familiar, some not. They looked to him in a way that said they held a high trust in him. With that trust, they asked that he take care of them just like a congregation.

Suddenly, an anxious darkness pierced the dream. It felt as if a presence was there with him. When it moved, the golden peace of the goddess was brushed by darkness and chaos. Wind shrieked through the great hall where the family gathered. A sullen little black girl with blank eyes, bruised by lord knows what, stood on a platform and mumbled strange words. Roslyn strode up to her and struck her down, finally bringing silence to the room. He felt sorry for the girl, but it was such a relief he guiltily accepted the assault.

Then the hall and all the members of the household faded to black. A taller, more solid presence stood in front of him. This one was cloaked, with only shadows beneath the folds of the thick black cloth. "The Rose," it said in a voice that sounded like wind.

He does not know why he turned and fled from the figure. His dream self was scared of it and its message. But running in dreams is fruitless and even more terrifying. It woke him with a scream on his lips.

Even after waking, the memories of goddess worship, golden idols and strange rituals are hanging around in his head as clearly as reality. He is trying to dispel them with a cup of tea downstairs in the kitchen. He is doing so quietly, so he does not wake the other priests. Four of them are rather old and the young fellow is much too chatty for his head right now.

He chooses to keep the kitchen lights out. Young father Eldon is right across the hall. Besides, the incandescent bulb would be a little too yellow tonight. Pagan dreams are going to make penance interesting.

Just before the water boils, he pulls it off the burner. He warms his cup at the sink with it before putting his teabag in for steeping. The window over the sink looks out to the side garden with its rose bushes and statuary. Rose bushes, he thinks, staring into the darkness. There, beside the virgin, stands that same cloaked figure from his dream. Its cowled head is tilted up to the window at him.

Terror freezes him for a moment.