The Crystal Key

Chapter 7-1

IN THE LIVING room of a small and sparsely furnished apartment, Will Dreycott watched as Case and Fader ran to hug their mother, Ellie Cootes.

Their long-lost mother.

A tiny evergreen tree sat in one corner, clothed in flaking ornaments and flickering lights. Torn wrapping paper from opened presents littered the thread-bare carpet. A typical Christmas morning.

Except it wasn’t Christmas. Not in the real world. There, it was late June.

This was Dream.

Will wore the costume of the Dream Rider, his hood pulled back. At his side, Case and Fader watched with him. Watched themselves—younger versions of themselves.

Will stared at the younger Case in the scene before them. A smiling and happy Case with none of the hardness that so often defined her expressions now. Eight years old, she’d said, when she’d first shown him this in Dream, a memory of hers from just before their mother had disappeared.

The mother that Case claimed she now hated. The mother who’d left her children and never returned. For no reason.

At least, no reason she’d shared with those children. Or, it seemed, with anyone else.

Beside him, Case was hugging herself. “Why are you showing us this?”

He heard the accusation in her voice. He knew this was hard on her. “Because I promised we’d search for your mom—”

“This isn’t our mom. It’s just a memory of her.”

“I don’t remember this,” Fader said.

“You were only four,” Case said, her fists clenching and unclenching, her eyes locked on their mother.

“It’s Case’s memory,” Will said. Before them, the scene flickered, then began playing again from the start.

“Why?” she snapped, turning her back on the display. “Why are we looking at my memory? Why not her dreams?”

He hesitated. He’d been searching for Ellie Cootes in Dream for the past four nights, but he didn’t want to tell them that. “I thought this might help you remember something else.”

“You can’t find her, can you?”

“Well, I’ve just started—”

“Have you found anyone dreaming about her? Have you found any of her dreams?”

anyoneherWill swallowed. “No.”

Fader’s eyes widened. “But if Mom’s not dreaming, doesn’t that mean she’s—?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Will said. He hadn’t wanted the conversation to take this turn. “Stone’s team is searching in the real world, too.” Winstone ‘Stone’ Zhang headed Will’s security and investigation group.

“And?” Case said, her arms folded.

Will sighed. “So far all their leads…” He hesitated.

“Have been dead ends, too,” she finished. “Emphasis on dead.”

“Don’t say that,” Fader said, his voice breaking.

“Case, we don’t know that.”

“You haven’t found her in Dream. Stone hasn’t found her in real life. What else can it mean?”

“It means we haven’t found her yet. We don’t have much to go on.”

yetThat was an understatement. What Stone’s team had discovered about Ellie Cootes was barely a sketch. Her name, home address, schools she’d attended, a list of classmates, her tenure as a professor at U of T, her faculty co-workers, students she taught. That was it, beyond Stone’s contacts in border security reporting no use of her passport in the year she’d disappeared or since.

Her parents—Case and Fader’s grandparents—were dead. Neither Case nor Fader knew the name of their father, who’d left just before Fader was born. And he hadn’t put his name on Case’s birth certificate—something Will would never share with her. Ellie Cootes had no brothers, sisters, or close cousins. And no known friends outside her faculty.

“Stone and I both need to know more about your mom,” Will said.

Case was already shaking her head.

“Case,” he said, as gently as he could, “you’re our best hope. Fader can barely remember her. You have to tell me more about her.”

“No,” she said, turning away from him and Fader, from the family celebration still playing out behind them. “I really don’t.” She vanished.

Fader looked around. “Where’d she go?”

Will snapped his fingers. In the Christmas scene, the younger versions of Case, Fader, and their mother froze, mid-group hug. He dropped onto the sagging couch across from the motionless tableau. Running his hand through his shaggy black hair, he sighed. “She woke up. Or left this dream.”

Fader plopped down beside him. “She doesn’t like to talk about mom.”

“You think?”

“She says it’s because she hates Mom for leaving. But I think it hurts too much. I think Case still loves her but…” Fader shrugged.

“But can’t understand why she left. So she hates her, too.” He could relate. He still loved his parents, or at least the fuzzy memories he had of them. But he also blamed them for whatever had happened to him on that doomed expedition in Peru. For whatever had left him with crippling agoraphobia, left him a prisoner in his own home.

“I’ll talk to her. She’ll do it for me,” Fader said, his eyes on his mother in the Dream sequence before them. “She’s my mom, too.”

“Thanks, dude. And don’t give up. We’ll find her.”

Something caught Will’s eye. On a round wooden table in the middle of the living room, a single sheet of folded paper lay beside a torn envelope, both face up.

“That’s new,” Will said, standing and walking to the table past the hugging family. “I’ve studied this scene for four nights, and that’s never been there.”

“The table?” Fader said, joining him.

“The letter. Case’s subconscious must’ve added it tonight when she saw this memory.”

“You think it’s important?”

“Table’s in the middle of the room. Letter’s in the middle of the table. Nothing else on the table. So, yeah, important. At least to Case. To this memory of hers.” He picked up the envelope. It was addressed to Elenora Cootes. “Elenora? Your family is seriously name-challenged.”

Dropping the envelope, he picked up the letter, then shook his head. “It’s just gibberish. Which means Case never knew what was in it. So her dream memories can’t tell us what it said.”

“But she remembers Mom getting a letter.”

“A letter she connects to your mom leaving.” In his hand, the letter burst into flames. He dropped it. Paper ashes fluttered like wounded birds in the air then disappeared. “And a letter she burnt after receiving.” He frowned. “Who mails letters? Even nine years ago? I mean, a physical letter. Not a video call or text or email? Or even a phone call?”

“Old people?”

“Or someone who didn’t trust electronic communications. Someone who didn’t want anyone else ever to read that letter.”

He stared at the scene, at the reconstruction of Case’s last memory of a happy normal life. Normal? What did he know about normal? With a pair of international dealers in art and antiquities (or thieves and smugglers, if he believed the press) for parents, normal for him had never been normal.

henormalAnd he’d had as much success over the years locating his own missing parents, in Dream or the real world, as he’d had in finding Ellie Cootes. He pushed away the fear that always accompanied that thought. The fear he had never found his parents in Dream because they no longer dreamed.

Because they no longer lived.

Which might be true. True for Ellie Cootes, too. He clenched his fists. No. His parents weren’t dead. Ellie Cootes wasn’t dead. He would keep searching. He would find them. He would—

The back of his neck prickled. He spun to confront what was behind him.

Nothing.

Beside him, Fader was looking around the cramped apartment in all directions.

“You feel it, too?” Will asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like someone’s watching us?”

“Or something.”

thing“Something? Gee, thanks for cranking the creepy.”

thingFader brightened. “Hey, maybe it’s Mom. Maybe she is dreaming somewhere, and we got her attention.”

isWill’s gaze still darted around the apartment. “Yeah, maybe,” he said, not voicing his real thought. This felt anything but motherly. A hint of threat, of malevolence, accompanied the sense of an unseen observer.

The sensation of being watched died away.

Fader must have felt it leave, too. His face fell.

“Probably not your mom, dude. Just some Dream weirdness.”

Fader shrugged.

“Look,” Will said, “I’ve got things to do, places to go tonight in Dream before I wake up. You want to come?”

Fader stared at the frozen scene where his mother still hugged her children. “Can I stay here? I know it’s just Case’s memory, but it’s still my mom. And I miss her.” He looked at Will. “I guess that seems silly.”

Will thought of his own parent memories that grew fainter with each passing year. He squeezed Fader’s shoulder. “No, dude. Not silly at all.” He snapped his fingers, and the Christmas morning began again. “Stay as long as you want.”

Fader smiled. “Thanks, Will.”

Will hesitated. “If you feel you’re being watched again—”

Fader shrugged. “I’ll wake up.”

“So, tomorrow? We keep looking for the Mysterious Shield Thingy?”

His eyes on his mom, Fader just nodded.

Mysterious Shield Thingy. Their name for the unknown source of the astral barrier the monk Yeshe had detected around Will’s tower. Yeshe had thought some object in the building was producing the shield. Will believed it must be something his relic-hunting parents had brought back from their many expeditions.

So he and Fader had begun searching the “Warehouse,” ten floors in the tower containing over a hundred thousand expedition artifacts. Their search was going as well as the one for Ellie Cootes.

Sighing, Will pulled up the hood of his costume, picked up his Dream Rider skateboard, and stepped out of the Dream memory.

WILL NOW STOOD as the Rider on a dreamscape of a stylized Yonge Street strip in downtown Toronto. A Yonge Street that mostly resembled its real-world counterpart.

Mostly.

The buildings, soaring higher than reality into a too-blue daylight sky, were often topped with castle turrets and spires. Neon store signs shone brighter, their colors more carnival than urban street scene. Sidewalks sparkled as if with hidden gems, and stores featured far more comic book shops than did the real strip.

The steady procession of cars moving along the boulevard included two rainbow-striped unicorns. And several cartoon characters mixed with the stream of tourists, office workers, and shoppers.

Dropping his skateboard to the ground, Will kicked off, weaving through the crowd, heading south to where his destination shimmered in the distance. In this dreamscape, Yonge Street ran down to the River of Souls instead of the shores of Lake Ontario.

This past week, he’d been trying to solve several problems, both here in Dream and in the real world.

Well, no. He was trying to solve one specific problem, by taking several approaches. Or guesses, if he was honest. The problem? Simple.

oneCase wasn’t happy.

He knew something was bothering her. He just didn’t know what. Things had been great after they’d taken down Marell and Morrigan and freed the Hollow Boys, thus saving the world. Even if that world would never know or give them props.