This episode starts with Tess as a kid talking to (her brother?) walking through the woods. They’re talking about mushrooms and kids books.
It picks up with Tess as an adult going to talk to her mother. She needs to talk to her about the bear from last episode, the one they found in the place the boy had been so long ago.
Taka travels with the cultists to go wake his mother up. Everyone in the van is blindfolded but him. He counted the turns they made, but couldn’t see out. Taka is pretty unsettled. The cult members say they all know her mother from dreams, and they all know things about her and him that they shouldn’t. They tell him his mother told them in their dreams.
Burton warns one of his bosses that the other is invading her dreams to make her fall in love with him. He asks for her help in the dream to help his mysterious woman. I’ve just noticed, the creepy boss that keeps showing up in Burton’s dreams’ name is Woody, and the older boy in the forest from the beginning of the episode’s flashback, young Tess called him Woody too. Are they related, or was he one of her mother’s entourage? Is this why they both can enter people’s dreams?
Tess dreams of a dry cleaner’s. She’s picking something up for her mother. It’s a seriously creepy place. She’s picking up the bear. She asks the dry cleaner if she can exit out the back and he cryptically says ‘All roads lead to the middle’. She comes upon her mother in a classroom, and she’s an adult, but acting like a kid. She asks her mother about the bear, and her mother flips out. Then, suddenly they’re dressed, adult, and at a formal (empty) ballroom? Weird. She says, ‘Can you see the dancers?’ Does this have a double meaning?
Taka is with the cult, and they appear to be inserting him into the dream. They meet him there, and it almost sounds like they’re inducting him. He goes to his apartment, and Sabine is there. Sabine disappears, and the cult leader appears.
Burton and the woman confront Woody in the dream, at the bar. They pull him into an interrogation room. Burton tries to intimidate Woody into telling him what Topeka is. He says Topeka is just a name, it’s a good place to dig for roots. Cryptic. He tells Burton he’s just a pawn. That he’s messing with things he doesn’t understand. He explains the mysterious woman was there to give him something to work for. He explains to Burton that Burton is mixing waking and dreaming, and that the mysterious woman is indeed real.
Taka talks with the cult leader, and she explains much the same thing to Taka. It looks like she’s trying to find his size in green sneakers. Those damn green sneakers. Interesting symbol, whatever they are.
Tess is still in the dream with her mother, who seems intent on taking her apart. Yikes. They both acknowledge they’re in each others’ dream. Tess wakes, her mother came to wake her. Tess leaves.
Burton wakes, clearly shaken. There’s a man in the room with him. He’s in unfamilar surroundings. The man says he wants to help Burton find the mysterious woman, and that she’s being held against her will by cultists in green sneakers. He says the cult is trying to release ‘chaos upon humanity’. Hmm. He says it has to do with the boy. Burton has figured out that the land deal he’d been doing before was actually for the boy. The man says he has a clue to finding the woman, but he burns it in the fireplace.
Taka and the cult go out for breakfast in the dream. They seat him at a booth with his mother. His mother appears catatonic in the dream. Taka says its all bullshit, gets angry, and leaves.
Burton and Tess are at a restaurant. They talk about not being able to sleep. It looks like a waking moment, but at this point, who knows? He goes into the bathroom and reaches into the mirror. Yep, definitely dreaming. He jumps through. Everything is backwards. He finds an envelope with a photograph in it with a number written on the back.
Tess dreams she’s in the woods. Her mother pulls her out, and starts examining her again. They have a little bit of push-pull, and she demands to know about her son. Her mother admits she had the baby, but she was never supposed to have known. She admits they lost him. He was taken.
Tess wakes, and talks to her mother on the phone. Her mom acts like nothing happened.
Taka goes back to see his mother in the waking world. He talks to her, but of course, she doesn’t respond.
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JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.