When Jess came home later that day, he was surprised of the fact that his father had offered to take care of his shores today. The reason wasn't exactly clear, but Jack mentioned something about the pendant Monty had showed him, as well as phone call. Apparently, Monty had called his father and told him to take it easy on the boy for a while. Apparently, the pendant had stirred up his mind and awakened some mental feelings once again. The pendant had seemed to have quite a deep impact.

Jess didn't really complain. There was days in which he didn't feel like doing anything that had to do with work, and this day was definitely one of them. He did have the pendant, which felt pretty good, but it was also something that also damaged. Memories could be good and bad at the same time, and this one was definitely a memory of that kind.

When it was time for dinner, he didn't feel very hungry and also fairly tired at the same time. After eating only about a quarter of the food his mother gave him, he reluctantly pushed away the plate, uttering a short ''I'm not so hungry'', followed by leaving the table and heading for his room. Just before he fell asleep, he overheard a conversation between his two parents.

-''Jess' teacher called today.'' He heard his father say shortly.

-''Really? What has happened?'' his mother asked right back, having a fairly surprised tone in his voice.

-''Well, as you might have guessed, it's about Leslie's death. Apparently, the teacher found the pendant I bought for Jess to give her on her eleventh birthday.'' He was interrupted when Mary gasped. ''And when he showed it to Jess, it seemed to have a really deep impact. When is he going to get over it, Mary? The poor boy's life is being ruined.'' Jack then sighed hopelessly.

-''You know that it won't be easy for him to do that, love. Leslie's death was both a heavy as well as an unpredictable blow to him. To be honest, I don't expect him to get over it in the nearest future.'' Mary then said to her husband, a comforting tone in her voice. Jack sighed once again.

-''I'm just worried about him, Mary. She meant a LOT to him, and now that she's gone… he's taking it hard.''

-''You would do that too if someone that was so close to you died, Jack.'' Mary told him.

-''Yup… I would.'' Jack said shortly. Jess then fell asleep.

When Jess woke up again, he felt like he was inside some kind of dream. He would have continued to feel that way, but quickly changed his mind when all of it felt alive, alive like when you are fully awake. He got up and went out into the living room, but found to his own great shock that there was nobody there. He looked around in all the rooms, his parents', his older and younger sisters'. But the whole house was empty. Still greatly shocked, he proceeded outside.

The outside looked the same, but there was still no sign of life whatsoever. Jess checked the place where the bus always picked them up and left them, but the small booth wasn't there. There was nothing. What surprised Jess even more was that in place of the normal asphalt, it was just a normal dirt road.

-''What is going on?'' he asked himself as he went back to his house. He still tried to convince himself that it was all just a dream, but it all still felt so real, so alive, that he couldn't convince himself. He tried to wake up, but seeing as it all felt so real, his mind apparently thought it actually was. He felt really baffled. Where had everybody gone?

An instinct that Jess couldn't quite place told him to head to the Terabithian gate, the rope that had snapped that dreadful day and sent Leslie plummeting down towards her death. After a quick, silent argument within himself, he decided to obey that inner voice and head to the place where the rope was. What he would soon see was going to really make him feel puzzled.

When he reached the creek, the gate and the usual meeting place between the two life-long friends, he saw that the rope was intact. He had built a bridge before, a very elegant bridge that provided safe passage in and out from Terabithia, and the bridge still seemed to be there. But that wasn't what made him feel strange. The rope that should be broken was now whole, and the creek was at the water level it had been before the storm. Jess now tried more than ever to convince his mind that this whole ordeal was a dream, and this time his mind seemed to agree with him.

Jess picked up a nearby branch in the intention of using it to reach the rope in order to make sure it was real and not some kind of trick or illusion that was being pulled on him. After a few futile attempts, he managed to get a hold of the rope with the branch, and then aggressively pulled the rope to himself. When he got a grip on it with his own hands, he was fully convinced.

This was a dream. It had to be.

Jess shuddered as he felt the rough rope in his hands. But if this now was a dream, how come everything felt so real? It was almost as if he had gone to sleep and then woke up just an hour or so later. Jess was indeed really baffled.

Jess pulled slightly on the rope to make sure it was tightly secured to the branch of the tree above him. After a few tugs, he braced himself, hoped up into the air, and then swung across.

He landed safely on the other side. He let go of the rope and landing on the slanting slope that led up into the kingdom of Terabithia. He climbed it up and then proceeded to walk deeper and deeper into the forest. Everything looked almost exactly the same, save for some of the leaves of the trees being gone, seeing as the change in the seasons.

-''Hello?'' Jess voice then called out loudly without Jess commanding it to do so. He clasped his mouth shut as well as he could with both hands, but to his great surprise still, his voice shouted again, just as clear as it had sounded before.

Jess then approached the large tree-house that he and Leslie had built during their days in the great kingdom. It still looked all of the same, except for some minor changes in its appearance. Some of the paintings on the side of the small main room was gone and replaced with simple wood. The map of Terabithia was also different somehow. Jess used his sensitive art eye to see that it had been done with a different kind of pencil. He frowned at it before spotting something else.

The map, the new one at that, was sitting sort of loosely at the wall. Jess spotted something hanging out from behind it, something that looked like another sheet of paper. He carefully wiggled the sheet out from behind the map, minding the map not breaking. He then found that it was folded several times. He undid the folding and looked in awe at the sheet of paper.

This paper was a lot more detailed map, capturing most of Terabithia with the tree-house, or ''The Castle Stronghold'' as he liked to call it, in the very middle. From the small room ran a doted line, in a similar ''Point A to B'' manner. It started in that small room, and ended in a part of Terabithia that neither Jess nor Leslie had been in. He couldn't quite place it, but he guessed it was a quarter of a mile or so further than the farthest place they had been, which was landmarked by a giant log that had fallen over. Of course, there were a lot of fallen over logs in this big forest, but this one in particular was easily recognized by the two creators of the magic kingdom.

Jess then climbed down from the tree-house, letting go to fall the last feet down to the ground. He landed with a thud and recovered quickly. He then glanced at the map in his hands. Apparently, as of now, he was supposed to head south, back towards the bridge and the gate. At least that's where the map guided him.

After a while, Jess had followed the road, which led him all the way back to the creek again. He felt annoyed, but that feeling was quickly swept away when he saw something else, another sheet of paper, pinned to the bark of a tree. He slowly walked up to it, not sure if it was really there. Well, after all, he was already fully convinced that this whole thing was a dream, he thought he might as well check it out. It wasn't like he could get hurt or anything, now was it?

The paper sheet held some words written in a language that Jess didn't understand. When he thought more in dept about it, he recognized one of the letters, and the language written turned out to be Russian. Jess frowned at it as well. Why would there be a completely random sheet of paper having Russian text on it in the middle of nowhere, more or less? Then again, this was a dream, and everything can happen in a dream, now can it not? Jess didn't think for long about it and ignored the paper sheet.

-''This isn't quite a dream, dear Jess.'' He then heard a very familiar voice from somewhere behind him. When he spun around to see what it was, he didn't find anyone. Then, out of the air, everything turned black around him. All the trees, all the bushes, even a nearby building nearby, turned completely black and eventually disappeared. Before long, the black substance had started to climb onto him, and in a futile attempt to shake it off or something at least, he felt his muscles go limp. Before everything around him, including himself, went black and he couldn't see a thing, he saw a very familiar face in front of him.

He then shot up in the air, shouting in a mix of what sounded like both horror and awe.

-''Man, what a dream…'' he mumbled quietly to himself before getting up from his bed and proceeded to say hi to the family. It was just after nine in the evening. Turned out he hadn't slept through the night at all, just a few hours.

Strange.