By: Tal Boldo

Prologue: The Boy Who Nearly Died

The palace of Agám Kaffú glittered like a giant dewdrop.  The walls seemed carved from gleaming ice, but ice that never melted.  The liquid floors felt dry to the touch, and the curtains looked like waterfalls sown together, though none ever flowed away.  The chandeliers resembled frozen bubbles, the pillars giant icicles, the banisters strings of snowflakes.  It was the kind of palace one might find at the bottom of a frozen pond, if the bottom of a pond could somehow be dryland.  And as with all things watery, everything that was alive there—from trees to people—was a little see-through.

Despite the maze of glittering chambers to choose from, every twilight hour of every dying day would find the reigning King in the same spot, sitting by a barred crystal-ball-window in a narrow room, with chains dangling from the cloud-high ceiling and eerie crossbows lining the glistening walls.  And when a see-through boy with strawy hair and melancholy brown eyes would appear in the wintry garden outside, the plump King would reach his ringed hand to a crossbow so sinister its arrow seemed to drip pale blood eternally.  Then cursing wickedly under his breath, he would take careful aim at the boy’s lucent head.

But the King never fired, and the boy never knew the danger he was in.

One night, a chilling voice startled the corpulent King. 

“Has Your Majesty decided to kill the Prince at last?  Then, may I suggest opening the window first?”

The pudgy ruler jerked back like a giant teardrop coming to life.  “Fortune’s damnation on your light-footed ways,” he snarled at the shimmering dark figure gliding silently into the room, spreading rings on the pond that was a carpet.  “Have you brought me the Royal Shekel?”

“The noose is closing.”  The intruder drew back his misty black hood, a cruel smile spreading over his fish-like face.  “Your old enemy is now on our side.  The Sound, William Cleary, will never reach his thirteenth birthday.  And neither will the Prince.”

“You better hope to Fortune that they don’t, Bram Fallon,” spat the King, in a voice ridiculously shrill for someone so tubby.  Then smirking greedily, he raised his sinister crossbow and once more took cowardly aim at the Prince’s see-through face.

Chapter One: A Strange Glowing Plant

On the shore of a frozen pond deep in an Alaskan wood, a dark house stood alone.  Dead ivy crept up its crumbling porch, mildew blackened its walls, wind howled through its broken windows, stirring the cobwebs and peeling wallpaper inside.  Looking like a haunted house, it lacked only the ghosts that would haunt it.  And yet one thing was irresistibly inviting in this forlorn place: the lustrous crystal-ball-knocker hung on the weathered front door like a pearl on a beggar.

One bleak winter morning, a hand clasped the crystal ball and knocked on the door.

In the musty attic Will Cleary woke up, blinking his melancholy eyes in wonder.  Did he dream it…?  He sat up, listening, as the wind whistled through his broken window, stirring his strawy hair, making him look like a scarecrow as usual.  He must have dreamt it…  But, no!  There it was again—that magical tinkle of wind chimes and harps that only the crystal-ball-knocker could create somehow.   And yet this morning it sounded different.  Louder and more beautiful, as if the knocker could tell that the visitor was important.  In a flash, Will leapt out of bed, fully dressed since he owned no pajamas, and dashed down the groaning stairs to tear the whining front door open.

“Ben…”  He smiled at the lanky boy standing on the doorstep.  “What time is it—?”

“Almost nine.  Just cause it’s Sunday, doesn’t mean you need to hibernate.”  Ben grinned and pulled out the last thing Will expected to see emerging from his best friend’s coat.  From anyone’s coat for that matter.  “Got something to show you.  Important!”

“Creepy…” Will nodded his approval and grabbed his coat off a lopsided hatstand, following Ben into the frosty morning.  “Dead uncle send you a present?”

“Looks real, doesn’t it?”  Ben’s pale green eyes twinkled as he sunk beside Will on the cold porch bench.

The dilapidated house shook behind them, moaning in the wind as Will slid his hand over the white marble slab his friend had brought.  It looked like something stolen from a cemetery, the headstone of a tiny grave.  But, no… it couldn’t be real marble.  It wasn’t cold or smooth enough.  Knowing Ben, it had to be—

“A book?” suggested Will.

“Obviously.”  Ben’s freckles dotted his face like a giant smile.  “See…”  He turned the chilling cover over.

“Disappeared Without a Trace?” Will read the gilded title.  And suddenly he was shivering, but not from the icy gusts freezing his cheeks.  A dark hiding place was opening in his mind, exposing his tucked-away thoughts of his twin sister, Emmy—the sister he couldn’t remember anymore because she disappeared ten years ago, when they were only two years old.  Emmy!  The reason his parents had lost all interest in living and let their home go to ruin and their lives to waste.  “She isn’t in it, is she?” Will whispered.  “Emmy…”

“Not just Emmy.  You’re in it, too.  Will—  This book says you disappeared and came back.  And if you got back, maybe Emmy—”

Instantly Will’s shock writhed into anger.  “Don’t you start!  My Mom’s on the pond—looking for Emmy!  She’s been doing that for ten years!  And my Dad hasn’t stopped looking for clues, either.  The last thing they need is you telling them I know the secret to bringing Emmy back—”

“But if it’s true!”

“Ben!  Emmy drowned!  Unless she’s a mermaid, she’s not coming back—”

“So why didn’t they find her body?”

For a moment only the house creaked and groaned behind them, as if losing its age-old battle with Alaska’s storms.  Then Will said coldly, “Don’t you think my parents would have told me if I disappeared—?”

“But I thought we had, my boy,” said a quiet voice from the wild, snowy garden, and a man who looked like a scarecrow wearing glasses and smoking a pipe ambled up the broken porch steps to shake Ben’s hand in greeting.

“What did you say, Dad?” asked Will, very slowly.

“Didn’t you know, my boy?”  Mr. Cleary wiped a patch of snow off the porch rail and leaned back, untroubled by the wobbling and creaking this produced.  “The day Emmy disappeared, you disappeared, too.”

“I disappeared…?  No, I didn’t know….”  A wave of frustration washed over Will.  He had asked about his twin sister so many times, only to hear his father mentioning the current history volume he was reading in search of clues— As if clues to a drowning could be found in a book….

“It was on your birthdays, Christmas…  Ten years ago, almost eleven now,” continued Mr. Cleary, his pipe glowing red as he puffed on it leisurely.  The chill wind blew the smoke in Will’s face, carrying with it the familiar scent of cherry tobacco that followed his father everywhere.  “You disappeared together, Emmy and you.  Well, we think you were together.  We’ll never know for sure—”

“Because you can’t remember, right?” said Ben, fidgeting in his seat from excitement.

“Why, yes…  It’s all a fog.”

“Exactly!”  Ben rifled absently through the thick book resting in his lap.   “Every page—  a person gone!  Hundreds!  And no one remembers how it happened.”

“Not even Will,” sighed Mr. Cleary.  “Though no wonder—  You were only two years old, my boy.”  He looked sadly at his son, the wind tousling his strawy hair.  “If only we could read your memories…  Or talk to your pets—”

“Open the book!” said Ben suddenly, thrusting the strange gravestone at Will.  “There’s a bookmark—”

“For me and Emmy—?”

“—And your pets!”  Ben’s eyebrows shot up triumphantly.  “That’s another thing the book’s right about, isn’t it?  She’s not a Chihuahua, not even close—”  And Ben pointed at a white animal that had just stepped out of the shadows, looking like a large dog except for its dark-rimmed yellow eyes, which were watching them with an odd glint of amusement.

“You don’t have normal pets like other people,” Ben rushed on, talking a mile a minute in his excitement.  “Damian, of course!  Everyone at school’s seen him waiting for you on the window ledges.  Not exactly inconspicuous, a peregrine falcon surrounded by all those pigeons—  But Deá, the dog you never liked to talk about, never let me see when I came over…”

Will shrugged.  “Wolves have a bad reputation.  Anyway, why are my pets mentioned here?”  He flicked the book open, and the bookmark fluttered away.

“Why, they’re part of the story,” said Mr. Cleary, his melancholy brown eyes widening with regret behind his horn-rimmed glasses.  “Didn’t you know, my boy?”

“Part of the story…?”  No, Will didn’t know!

“Your pets brought you back a week after you disappeared,” explained Mr. Cleary, puffing on his pipe again.  “We were there, your mother and I, saw everything.  How strange…  So hard to believe.  One minute the pond was frozen, the next the center was melting.  And then you popped out, riding a wolf… with a falcon circling over you.  You kept calling out their names: ‘Deá, Damian… Deá, Damian…’  That’s how we knew what to call them.  I thought we told you all about it.  I was sure we did….”

Will’s jaw clenched with mingled sadness and frustration, his own brown eyes looking as melancholy as his father’s.  He could feel his ramshackle home swaying in the wind behind him, as if the next gust would blow it over.  His mind was also swaying in a storm of riddles, waiting for the next shocking revelation to change his life forever.

“Ah, there she is,” said Mr. Cleary, spotting a white figure crossing a frozen pond past the crystallized, thorny garden swaying in the chill wind like dancing skeletons.  “Your mother never let the hole in the pond freeze again.  Kept it defrosted with buckets until I had the water heater installed.  One day Emmy will follow you home, and we’ll be ready, Will.  We’ll be ready—  And here’s Damian,” he added cheerfully, as a dark falcon came circling out of the bleak winter sky, to land on the wolf’s white back.

Will bent his head over the strange book resting heavily in his lap and started reading his and Emmy’s story.  It felt as if he were pulling back the shutters on a window he had been trying to peer through all his life.  And, indeed, everything he read matched his father’s tale—until he reached the third paragraph: William Cleary was naked at the time of his reappearance, but his body was covered in a strange glowing plant.  No such plant is known to grow anywhere on earth.

“They look like they’re talking,” Will heard Ben saying, and he didn’t need to look up to know what his friend meant; his wolf and falcon often looked that way.

Despite extensive laboratory testing, Will read on, it remains unknown why the plant glows at times and not at others.  One unsubstantiated theory is that a chemical reaction results when the plant comes in contact with a yet unidentified type of gas. 

“Dad—?”  Will looked up.  “Was I covered in some kind of plant… a glowing plant, when I came out of the pond?”

Smoke billowed from Mr. Cleary’s face, swirling in the wind.  “Why, yes… a beautiful shade of luminous green.  Though it stopped glowing after a day or two.  But then it started glowing again… from time to time.  Only last month, in fact, I went down to the cellar to water it, and it glowed for me and Deá.”

 Will had no idea his home even had a cellar, but he wasted no time on that.  All he wanted was to see the strange glowing plant that came back with him from that place beyond the pond, where his sister was still trapped.

“You want to see it…?  Why not?” said Mr. Cleary, through his pipe, and he led the way into the cobwebbed, windswept house, past mountains of moldy books in the living room, and stacks of filthy pots in the kitchen.  “Watch your step,” he warned, pulling back a moth-eaten curtain at the back of the dank laundry room.  And then a dark dusty space swallowed them, stairs creaking ominously under their feet, invisible things scurrying away into the cold.  “Where’s that cord…?” Will heard his father muttering, before a faint light came on with a click.

They were in a windowless room lined with iron shelves from floor to ceiling, every shelf stacked full with chests, boxes and papers.  Everything was covered in a thick layer of frosted dust, and the cold air smelled like a freshly dug grave.  And still they could hear the house creaking and moaning in the winter wind.

“You kept the plant in the dark?” asked Will, his heart sinking. 

“It likes the dark,” said Mr. Cleary, wiping cobwebs off a manuscript he found on a bottom shelf by the stairs.  “Ah… my first historical effort,” he sighed with fond remembrance.   “Warts and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.  I was twelve when I wrote it… Emmy’s age.  And yours, of course, Will.  Well… we didn’t come here for that—”  Looking reluctant to surrender his walk down memory lane, Mr. Cleary, nevertheless, reached behind an old wicker chest labeled Our Memory Box and withdrew a jar of leaves floating in water.  “Not glowing, I’m afraid,” he added, securing a lid over it.

But at that moment veins of luminescent green began to spread all through the stringy plant, up its stalks and down its leaves, which started drifting to and fro as if an invisible teaspoon were swirling the water.  And soon the whole jar was glowing like a lantern between Mr. Cleary’s fingers, casting an eerie light on the wolf’s white fur as it pushed past Will, the falcon still perched on its back.

Spellbound, no one spoke—until the distant honk of a car shattered the silence.

Ben glanced at his watch.  “My Mom,” he stammered, already rushing off.  “Promised I wouldn’t make her wait—”

“Take it!”  Mr. Cleary nodded at his son, and Will stuffed the glowing plant in his coat pocket and followed his friend to the front door, the wolf and falcon at his heels.

“Bring the Gravestone Book to school tomorrow—” shouted Ben, rushing to the purple minivan parked outside, its motor running, a freckled woman smiling behind the steering wheel.  “And the glowing plant—”

With a farewell honk the car sped away, and Will was left alone, wind gusting in his face, shaking snow off the trees.  For a moment he wondered if it had all been a dream.  Then he tore the jar from his pocket and saw the leaves still glowing.

“Better this way, saves time!” said a girl’s voice.

Will snapped his head back, startled.  There was no one there!  No one except Deá, the wolf, curled on the porch bench, watching him with her dark-rimmed yellow eyes.

“Yes!  So let’s get on with it!” agreed a young man’s voice.

Will looked around, baffled.  Only Damian, the falcon, was there, perched on the rail, fluttering his speckled wings.

“Who’s there?” cried Will, walking down the creaking porch steps to search the thorny garden. 

“Don’t be an idiot, Will!” the young man’s voice snapped behind him.

Will swiveled—and caught the falcon rolling its eyes at him.  “We have a lot to tell you,” said the bird impatiently, while the wolf jumped off the porch bench and gestured with its paw.

“Maybe you should sit down first,” suggested Deá kindly, and Will could have sworn that his wolf was smiling at him.

Chapter Two: The Echoes

Even in the bleak winter light Will could see the excitement in the eyes of the wolf and falcon waiting to hear his response, now that they had stopped talking. 

“You— can— talk—?” Will blurted out finally, his throat so dry the words sounded like three coughs snatched away by the wind.

“I know it’s a bit of a shock,” said the wolf, nodding kindly, “but there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

Will sunk on the broken porch steps, too stupefied to speak.

“Less and less promising—” muttered the falcon, shaking its head, and to the sound of Mr. Cleary whistling a tune somewhere behind the open front door, the majestic bird spread its speckled dark wings and flew away. 

“We’d better talk in the privacy of the forest,” suggested the wolf.  “Bring two shovels… and don’t forget the Waterweed.”  Pointing a paw at the jar glowing by Will’s foot, the wolf promised to explain everything soon, then galloped off down the snowy path leading to the pond.

If Will weren’t so shocked, the sight of his mother tugging the hot water hose toward a hole in the icy pond would have made him sad, the way it always did.  But now he was running toward the line of trees towering like white triangles behind her, carrying two shovels that he took from the garden shed, and wondering why the Waterweed had stopped glowing the moment his pets had left.

“Where are you?” he called into the silence of the tree trunks.

The next instant, the pit of Will’s stomach turned to stone.

A few feet away from him, his pets were lying in the snow, frozen and stiff, fresh flurries already beginning to cover them as the wind shook the treetops.  The shovels dropped from his hands, and Will dashed forward to kneel beside them.

“No—” he shouted, pounding his fists on the frozen forest floor.

“We’re not dead,” said Damian—but the sound came from above.

Will looked up.

A young man of about sixteen was standing not far from him.  His skin, proud face and curly hair were as dark as coffee; his eyes were darker still, and they glittered with intelligence.  He wore shimmering black clothes, and everything about him was a little see-through, so that Will could see a snowy tree showing right through him.

“Who are you?” marveled Will.

“I’m Damian,” answered the young man, in Damian’s voice.  “And this is Deá.”

He stepped aside, and a beautiful young woman of about fifteen emerged from behind the tree at his back.  Her skin was as white as the snow at her feet, and her shimmering clothes were as white as her skin.  Her long hair and large gray eyes were both so pale that for a moment Will thought that she was made entirely of mist, especially since she, too, was see-through.

The two strange beings exchanged radiant smiles, as if they hadn’t seen each other in years and were trying to make up for lost time.  Then the pale one turned to Will.

“Did you notice how the Waterweed stopped glowing when we left you?  Did you bring it with you?”  She waited for Will to numbly pull out the jar from his coat pocket.  “See, it’s glowing again.  We’re still Deá and Damian, Will—but now you’re seeing us in our true forms.”

A shock of pain returned Will’s sense of reality to him.  “You did something to my pets—”  He shot to his feet.  “Now bring them back to life!”

“We can’t,” said the young woman sadly, daylight glittering on her beautiful white face like sunshine on a lake.  “They’re dead, Will.  They’ve been dead for ten years—”

“That’s a lie!”  Will dug his fingernails into his fists.  “They were talking to me just a few minutes ago!”  

The dark young man chuckled.  “Animals can’t talk—” 

“—Mine could!”

“Yes…  Because they weren’t animals at all.  Look—” the young man lost his smile “—I know it’s a shock for you, Will.  And I wish we had time to discuss this comfortably over milk and cookies—” 

“Oh, how stupid of me!”  Will rolled his eyes furiously.  “Obviously, my pets just turned into Snow White and the black dwarf.  No mystery here.”

The dark young man’s eyes flashed at the insult.  He tossed back his shimmering black cape; the cloth looked like tar trapped in an hourglass, flowing slowly down from his shoulders to his feet.  “The ceiling in your bedroom leaks,” he said to Will, with deadly calm. “You keep a bucket on the floor—”

“You’ve been to my room—?”

“—Yesterday, I stuffed a sock in the hole under your window, to stop the wind.”

“How—?”

The young woman giggled, her long hair fluttering as she moved, her dress shimmering like melted diamonds.  “Haven’t you ever wondered why your wolf was a vegetarian—?”

“—Or why your falcon went with you everywhere, even to school?”  The dark young man kicked snow off his black boots impatiently.  “Did you think I enjoyed sitting on the hood of the school bus like an overgrown ornament?  Or on the windowsill of your classrooms, watching over you, with all those stupid pigeons cooing at me?  Still don’t believe us—?  All right, ask me something only Damian could know.”

Will felt dazed.  He wondered where these see-through strangers got such shimmering clothes; he’d never seen anything like them.  “All right…” he muttered, glancing down at his lifeless pets.  But pain hit his stomach like a punch and confused him.  “All right…” he tried again, his gaze falling on the falcon’s wing, where an old scar showed white between the dark feathers.  “When did Damian meet our school nurse?”

The dark young man chuckled.  “Very sneaky, Will.  You know very well I never met Nurse Bell—or Tinker Bell as the students like to call her, because she’s so short.  The day I cut my wing when the school bus hit a lamppost, you snuck me into the school infirmary when no one was there.  Ben kept watch outside.  And you covered me in bandages until I looked like a bird in a straitjacket.”   

Will blinked, astonished.  He and Ben had never told anyone about this.

“Now, ask me something,” said the pale young woman, almost singing the words. 

Will looked at the motionless wolf, wishing he could bend down and wake his pet with a hug.  Instead, he forced himself to think of another trick question.  “What did Deá bring up to my room on my last birthday?”

The young woman’s large gray eyes grew hazy as she searched her memory.  At last she smiled.  “Not on your birthday…  Last spring— when you were sick, and your Dad was away on a book tour— I brought you a sandwich, and you were amazed because you thought—”

“—That my Mom made me something to eat for the first time ever.  I forgot all about it, Deá, I thought—”  Will shut his mouth abruptly. 

“You called me Deá!  You believe us at last!”  The young woman clapped her misty hands soundlessly.

Will swallowed hard.  Impossible, he thought—and yet he knew that this was the truth, no matter how strange.

*        *        *

“It’s about time,” sighed Damian, and he walked away, his lucent cape drifting behind him, his proud shoulders sagging a little.  He stopped to pick up the two shovels Will had dropped in the snow.  “We have to bury our animal selves,”  he said quietly, and started digging beneath the shadow of a stately cedar.  To stop the tears suddenly stinging his eyes, Will picked up the second shovel and cleared away a circle of frost a few feet away from Damian, amazed to see a  frozen teardrop gliding down Deá’s see-through cheek as she watched him.

“What are you exactly?” asked Will, forcing his mind to start focusing on questions, as he started digging the second grave.

Damian’s shovel struck the frozen ground with a clang.  “First—  Promise you’ll never repeat what we tell you.”  

“Why—?”  Will felt instantly suspicious.

“A small matter of risking our lives.”  Damian’s glance darted anxiously to Deá. 

Will’s shovel froze in mid air.  He still felt protective towards Deá and Damian, even if they weren’t his pets anymore.  “I promise,” he said, “I won’t even tell Ben.”

“Good,” grunted Damian.  “Because if you do, Ben’s life will be in danger.”

“Then what about my life?”

“Your life’s already in danger.  Go on, dig!  We have to hurry.”  Damian waited for the clangs of both shovels to echo through the snowy trees before speaking again.  “Deá and I have come from another realm—”

“—From outer space—?”

“—I said from another realm, not another planet!” snapped Damian impatiently.  “Just dig and listen!  Under the North Pole and the areas surrounding it, down to the 50˚ North latitude, there are other lands… places a lot like here… with light, trees, mountains, lakes—  There are animals there as well as people, cities as well as villages—”  Damian’s breath was coming in gasps from the strain of striking the frozen ground.  “Deá and I— come from there—  We— everyone who lives there— are called— Echoes—”

Will’s shovel banged against a rock.  “You’re Geckos?” he asked, perplexed.  There was nothing lizard-like about Deá and Damian; but they had once lived in a wolf and falcon; he had no idea what else they were capable of….

Damian suppressed a smile.  “Not Geckos, you idiot.  Echoes—as in a sound and an echo.”

Deá giggled, her see-through white teeth glistening in her see-through mouth.  “Have you ever looked in a mirror and wondered if your reflection was actually another person?”

“You mean alive?”  Will ignored the pain from a blister forming where the shovel was chaffing his palm.

Deá took a deep breath.  “What I’m about to tell you will sound amazing, but it’s all true— so just listen carefully.  Whenever a living thing is born on earth, a little bit of gas is released into the air—”

“Gas—?”

“Just listen!” snarled Damian, between thrusts.

Deá started again.  “There’s more to life on earth than you realize.  Every time something comes to life, gas is released into the air.  But it’s no ordinary gas.  This gas is alive.  It is a living being.  And the shape of this living gas is a reflection.”

“Of what?”

“Of whatever released it into the air.  If the gas came to life when a flower began to grow, then the gas-being will look exactly like the flower, and it will grow just like the flower, and open up its petals and bloom just like the flower.  If the gas came to life when a tree sprouted, then the gas-being will be a tree.  And if the gas came to life when a human was born, then the gas-being will be a human.”

Will blinked stupidly.  “So these, eh… gas-beings… always look just like… I mean….”

“Just like the original life that released the gas.  Oh—”  Deá fell quiet suddenly.

A deep grave gaped at Damian’s feet, and he dropped his shovel and walked off, his shimmering black cape drifting gallantly behind him.

“So you and Damian are gas-beings?” asked Will, not really digging anymore.

“Yes…  But we don’t call ourselves gas-beings, just Echoes.  You see, before there can be an echo, there must first be a sound.  That’s why we call the realm of all original life the Sound realm, and we call the realm of all gas reflections the Echo realm.”

“So I’m a… Sound?  Hold on!  That means I have an Echo— a reflection of me— a gas-being that looks just like—”  But Will fell silent at the sight of Damian returning with the wolf and falcon in his arms.  Seeing them together Will knew his pets must be buried together, in one grave.  Deá combed away a cluster of fur from the wolf’s tail and gave it to Will; Damian pulled out one dark, speckled feather and did the same.  Then all three lowered the pets into the dark grave gaping in the shadow of the stately tree. 

Tucking away the fur and feather Will felt as if he were drowning in sorrow.  He wanted to lose himself in the feeling and never come up for air.  And suddenly he understood what had turned his mother into a half mad old woman.  “She surrendered to her pain…” he muttered, not realizing that he spoke aloud.

Deá raised her pale, lucent eyes to him.  “Your pets have only been dead for a few minutes, Will.  Sorrow has its place as well as happiness.  You won’t become like your mother if you let yourself be sad for a short while.”

Will shook his head.  A haze was blinding him.  He started pacing, trying to think of more questions to ask, though none seemed able to penetrate the wall of gloom closing in on him.  Somehow he found himself looking at the Echoes again.  Deá and Damian aren’t dead, he thought desperately, only their bodies are different...  And suddenly, a question shot through his grief.

“How long did you live inside the wolf and falcon?”

Damian was already shoveling earth back into the grave.  He looked up, smiling mirthlessly.  “Ten years—  And before you start showing off your brilliant mathematical deductions, let me explain something.  I wasn’t six years old when I entered the falcon, and Deá wasn’t five.  We were the same age we are today.  An Echo living in a Sound doesn’t age.”

“You mean… you live forever?”

Damian shook his head.  “An Echo inside a Sound weakens gradually and eventually will die.  You can actually see how weak Deá and I are, look at the transparency of our skin.  Normally, we shouldn’t be more see-through than our clothes.  Now, help me finish!  There’s a lot more you need to hear—and we’re running out of time.”

Chapter Three:  The Crystillery

When the burial was done, Damian led the way deeper into the forest, away from Will’s mother, who could still be seen through the snowy trees, laboring by the hole in the middle of the frozen pond, preparing to dive in search of her lost daughter.

“Don’t forget this—” said Deá, slipping the glowing jar of Waterweed into Will’s coat pocket as they followed Damian.

“Is this where you got your clothes?” asked Will, seeing Damian picking up a shimmering black bag behind the tree he and Deá had first appeared by.

“Yes.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Your Echo left it for us.”

“My Echo—?”  Will was stunned.  His Echo had been here?  When?  Why?  His mind no longer groped for questions; they were flying at him like darts.

“Not here!” snapped Damian, before Will could ask any of them.

Gradually the forest grew thick and dark, with very little snow glistening on the frosty ground.  At last Damian signaled for them to sit, and opening his shimmering bag, he withdrew a glittering object.

It was a small dome of polished blue crystal that was as clear as glass.  Water flowed beneath it, and three stones drifted on the waves: a red ruby, a blue sapphire, and a yellow diamond, each cut in the shape of a star that twinkled in the shadow of the trees like a firefly in the night.

“This is a Crystillery.”  Damian started rocking the beautiful object between his palms, awakening a miniature storm inside.  “We’re going to use it to look back at the day you and Emmy disappeared.”

“How?” gasped Will, enchanted by a string of silver bubbles rising to the surface of the blue dome.

 “The Crystillery can read memories.”  Deá’s pale eyes twinkled.

“And thoughts, too,” said Damian darkly.  “Are you ready?”

“Wait—”  Will flinched back.  “You mean this thing’s going to read my thoughts?”  The wall he had built around his grief felt suddenly no thicker than a cobweb.  “My thoughts are private—”

“Not before a Crystillery, they’re not.”  Damian closed his dark eyes, as if remembering something terrible.  “A Crystillery can read you like a book.”

“That’s horrible!”

“A Crystillery can be used for good, too.”  Deá rested her hand on Damian until he opened his eyes again.  “It can show you wonderful memories, to remind you how lucky you are to be alive—”

“—Or it can expose your deepest secrets to your worst enemy and cost you the life of everyone you love.  We’re wasting time,” added Damian darkly, and he told Will to reach inside the back pocket of his pants.  Will didn’t ask why or which pocket; suddenly he remembered that something had pressed against him in the cellar.  He pulled out a photograph of a beautiful woman blowing soap bubbles and smiling.  As soon as he placed the photograph on the frozen ground, Damian lowered the Crystillery over the smiling face.

Instantly a whirlpool rose in the blue dome and sucked the three starry stones down its funnel.  The woman from the photograph floated up to the surface, laughing and blowing bubbles.  Even her voice rose up, like a splash of summer.  And there were other voices, too: the giggles of children and a hiccupping sort of laugh Will recognized at once.

“That’s my Dad…”

Deá nodded.

Still only the woman showed in the dome, her eyes sparkling like diamonds with rain clouds trapped inside them.  “Who is she?” wondered Will, trying to remember where he had seen her before.

“This photograph was taken on Christmas morning, ten years ago…”  Deá’s words sounded like steps taken cautiously over thin ice.

“The day Emmy and I disappeared…?”  Will frowned.

“Yes…  You see, Will…”  Deá sighed.  “That’s what your mother used to look like… then.”

 It took these words a long time to begin making sense to Will, and when they did, he felt as if his world was turning upside down.  “That’s my Mom…?  But she looks like a completely different person…”

“She was—”

A chilling shriek silenced Deá.  Inside the blue dome, Will’s mother was suddenly screaming, terror magnifying her eyes, horror contorting her features.  Will sat paralyzed, as tense as if she were alive and suffering this very moment.

“Take the children inside,” he heard his father’s voice shouting in a panic.  “Lock the—”

But all at once the blue dome cleared, and the three starry stones floated up again.

“Turn it back on—” yelled Will breathlessly.

“Damian and I aren’t expert Crystillery readers.”  Deá shook her head sadly.  “We don’t know how to see anymore.” 

“But there’s another way—”  Damian’s coffee eyes locked on Will.  “You know what happened next—  You were there—  You were one of the children we heard laughing—”
             “—I was two years old!  How can you expect me to remember anything—?”  But as he said this, a sickening sensation started creeping from Will’s heart down to his stomach.

“You remember something—?” cried Deá.  “Quick, Damian!”

A split second later Will felt the chilly bottom of the Crystillery hitting his forehead like a boulder.  Almost at once the smooth crystal seemed to soften and mold to him, squeezing out images, memories, feelings, until he felt sure his whole head would erupt and his brain would ooze out.  “That’s enough!” came a distant yell—and then the pressure faded as quickly as it had began.

Will heard Deá asking if he was all right.  He opened his eyes and saw the world in fuzzy duplicates.  Two Damians were saying, “Don’t worry, you won’t stay cross-eyed for ever.”

“Did it work?”  Will shook his head to stop the buzzing in his ears.

“Yes,” said two Deás—but they were merging into one already. 

Once again Damian rocked the Crystillery, until the waves inside it ebbed and a dark fog overtook them. 

A chilling scream filled the air. 

“Take the children inside— lock the door—” Will heard his father shouting in a panic, as two see-through creatures drifted up inside the blue dome, their motions as smooth as flowing lava.  They looked like fog, but they were men, men whose faces were masks of terror.  Their eyes were dark, fathomless holes; their toothless mouths gaped in eternal, silent screams.  They were taller and thinner than any human, as if they had been stretched on torture racks for decades, and their skins sagged off their skeletal shapes like dirty gray robes.

Children wailed somewhere out of sight.  The two creatures wrapped their sagging, swinging lips around two luminous horns.  Then, with horror, Will saw his mother’s terrified face again, a shower of icy needles pouring down on her from the first of the glowing horns, coating her with a thousand glistening points, until her head looked like a bowling ball of prickly ice.  And as the ball sunk, Will caught sight of another ball, just like it, lying motionless on a wooden floor.  “Dad!” he realized, as a terrified toddler flew past, her pink dress enveloped in the sagging skin of the gray creature, who swung her into a glass coffin that sealed over her wailing, silent face.  “Emmy—” screamed Will, darting for the Crystillery. 

But, at that moment, a glass lid fell over the entire world trapped inside the blue dome.  Silence fell.  And the starry gems floated up again.

“What were those… things?” Will gasped, shaking and fighting to catch his breath.

Damian’s face was rigid and full of pain.  “Fate Sealers.”

“Fake what?”

“Fate Sealers.  They are… or, more precisely, they once were Echoes.  Now they are tortured creatures that live only to inflict pain and misery.  Ask me one day what turns an Echo into a Fate Sealer and I’ll explain.  But not today.”

“What did they do to my parents?” Will forced himself to ask.

“They froze their brains.  That’s how Fate Sealers attack.”

“But my parents didn’t die…”

“Brain Freeze doesn’t kill the brain, it just wipes off chunks of memory.”

“So that’s why they couldn’t remember anything…”  Will thought not only of his parents but of all the witnesses Ben had read about in the Gravestone Book.  “Is it painful?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m told it is.”  The muscles pulsed tensely in Damian’s dark cheeks.

No one spoke for a while.  The distant hum of the water heater helped Will remember that his mother was no longer suffering from a Brain Freeze but was probably still pouring hot water down the center of the frozen pond, in preparation for her dive in search of Emmy.

“There’s a reason,” Damian spoke again, “why Deá and I revealed ourselves to you today, after keeping our identities secret for ten years.  We were sent here to guard you from the Fate Sealers—”

“—Who sent you—?”

“—For the last ten years,” Damian went on, ignoring the interruption, “Deá watched over you by night, staying awake in the corner of your bedroom.  I guarded you by day, going with you everywhere you went—”

“—Why did you guard me?”

Deá laid her hand on Will’s knee; it felt like ice.  “Just listen, Will.  Damian will tell you all we know.”

“In less than three weeks,” Damian continued, “you’ll turn thirteen.  That’s why your life is now in grave danger.  We can’t protect you here anymore.  It’s time you came with us down into the Echo realm—”

Will’s self-control snapped.  “Are you insane—?”  He jumped to his feet.  “Isn’t it enough Emmy disappeared that way—?  Do you know what it will do to my parents if I disappeared, too—?”

Damian stood up also, the tree trunk at his back showing through his dark body.  He extended his hand to Deá and helped her up as well.  “We know where Emmy is,” he said.  “She’s alive, and we want—”

“—No, no, no!  The Fate Sealers took Emmy— The Crystillery showed us— she can’t be alive!”

“Then why are you alive?” said Deá gently.  “Your Dad told you… you disappeared also.  But you came back.”

“That’s different… I—”

“—Do you or don’t you want to know what happened?”

Will wanted to punch Damian for waiting to receive an answer.  The Echo was so tall and handsome, and by comparison Will felt puny and foolish.  He frowned and nodded.

“A party of the King’s loyal servants,” Damian began, “caught up with the Fate Sealer who kidnapped you.  You were saved.  It was decided that Deá and I should take you home and stay with you, to guard you.”

“Then why wasn’t Emmy saved also?”

“Because the Fate Sealer who kidnapped her got away.  The search for Emmy continued for years.  In end, she was found when she was already seven years old… far too old by Echo law to return to the Sound realm.”

“Where was she found?”  Will hardly dared to breathe.

“In…”  Damian’s coffee eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, his lips curled—he seemed to be fighting himself to keep talking.  “In Shadowpain,” he said at last.  “The dungeons of the Fate Sealers.  She’s the only human to survive captivity in the hands of these monsters for so many years.” 

Will felt sick.  “Are you telling me my sister lived with Fate Sealers for five years?” he asked, shaking his head, hoping he had misunderstood.

“Yes,” said Damian quietly.

A frozen tear fell out of Deá’s eye. 

The knot in Will’s stomach grew so tight he thought he would vomit his insides in a minute.  “Where’s Emmy now?” he managed to cough out—but a fearful cry drowned his question.  It came soaring over the trees, piercing the cold air, echoing from afar.  It was the same cry Will was used to hearing on stormy nights, when his mother would mistake the wail of the wind for the cry of a little girl and rush out into the rain in search of her missing child. 

“MOM—”

Will shot forward like an arrow, retracing his steps back to the forest’s edge.  A dark shape flashed past him: Damian moving at a speed no Sound could match.  Branches slapped Will’s frozen cheeks, blinding him with showers of snow.  White trees seemed to dash forward to meet him, everything streaking into a pale, confusing smear.  And then, suddenly, he slammed into a wall of ice, where no wall existed, only a see-through mist—  And out of this mist rose a terrible face, its eyes hollow, its sagging lips curled around the wide edge of a luminous horn.

A Fate Sealer!  Will’s mind spun in a whirl of terror, icy needles shooting into his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth…  And through the never-ending pain, he thought he saw Deá’s see-through body bending over him like an umbrella trying to stop the rain—but then she melted away and everything went black.

Chapter Four:  The Royal Shekel 

It was dark outside when Will woke up shivering on the frozen pond, staring up with burning eyes at the constellation Cassiopeia, his initial W written in starlight on the edge of the vast black sky.  Hearing voices, he tried to sit up.  But pain exploded in his heavy head, and all he could do was lie still and listen, wondering why he couldn’t remember how he got here.

“How can we— just leave him—?” someone gasped faintly.  “What if he can’t—  remember— anything—?”

“The bandage isn’t working anymore, Deá,” answered a firmer voice.  “You’re losing a lot of blood.  If I don’t get you away from here….”  The speaker broke off.  After a moment, Will heard him again.  “The Brain Freeze didn’t last long enough to erase Will’s memory, not permanently.  It’s twelve hours since he lost consciousness.  He’ll wake up soon, then we’ll see.”

Will turned his head gingerly until he could see a young man, dark as the night, crouching quite near him; a young woman, pale as the crescent moon, lay at his feet.  Both looked astonishingly see-through. 

“Woo are yoo?” Will hooted, his tongue feeling fuzzy and frozen.

The dark one turned.  “You don’t remember me?”

“Nwo,” answered Will thickly, though he wondered why this stranger seemed so perplexingly familiar.

“Roll your tongue in your mouth for a bit, it will help.”  The stranger pulled out a blue dome from his pocket as he rose to his feet.  “Remember this?”

When Will shook his head and flinched from the pain, the stranger promised him he would soon feel better, then dashed away in a blur of speed.  He stopped by a large block of ice that looked like a frozen woman, raised the blue dome, and slammed it down into the frosted face.  The shattered ice fell away in crude triangles, exposing a nose, tightly shut eyes, and a silent, screaming mouth. 

“Mom—”  Will gasped, recognition twisting in his stomach like a snake.  And suddenly flashes of memory ripped through his mind: a wall of cold air— icy needles— a face that was a scream of fright—

“A Fate Sealer!”

“Do you remember me now?” asked the dark young man.

“Yes, Damian,” said Will, sadness returning to him alongside his memories.

The Echo helped him to his feet, his cold hands lingering until Will stopped swaying like a tree in a storm.

“What time is it?”  Will looked around at the flat stretch of moonlit, frozen pond, feeling disoriented.

“About four A.M.  It’s Monday morning.”

Suddenly, Will’s roving glance fell on Deá.  She had fainted and was lying in a pool of white liquid oozing from a bandage wrapped around her throat; her face and hands were nearly invisible.

“Deá’s dying.”  Damian bent to lift her gently in his arms.  “The Fate Sealer she saved you from slashed her throat.  I have to take her to the Echo realm.”

Will’s glance shot to his frozen mother.  “But—”

“—You can defrost your mother on your own.”  Damian was already carrying Deá to the hole at the center of the pond.  “Use the hot water hose—  Go slow!  —or she’ll crack and bleed to death…  She’ll stay unconscious for two days, but she’ll be all right.  She won’t remember anything.  Your father might—  His brain was only partially frozen, like yours.  I left him in the house…  If he remembers anything when he wakes up, tell him it was just a dream.” 

Damian stopped by the melted hole at the center of the frozen pond, drops of Deá’s white blood trickling through his dark, see-through fingers.  “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he promised.

Will was fighting to hide his panic.  “What if the Fate Sealers comes back—?”

“It will take hours for news to reach Shadowpain that you survived the attack.  New Fate Sealers won’t arrive before midday.  By then, you mustn’t be here!  Take the Crystillery out of my pocket—” Damian waited for Will to obey “—As soon as you can, go down to the cellar.  Look inside the chest your father hid the Waterweed behind.  There’s a coin in the lining.  Take it to school—  Go see—”

But Damian’s last words were drowned by a desperate groan that rose from Deá’s bleeding throat.  He didn’t seem to realize it, for a second later he splashed into the pond, hugging Deá closely—and the Echoes vanished.

*        *        *

Left alone to defrost his mother on the frozen pond, it seemed to Will that Fate Sealers were watching him through the shadows of the trees, or breathing down his neck with each gust of the freezing wind.  Even when his father joined him sometime later, then drove off with his mother to the hospital, leaving Will behind in case Emmy should finally return, the fear of the horrid creatures stayed with Will, chilling his heart as he entered his creaking, dark home and headed down into the musty cellar.  But there, at last, he remembered the Waterweed and found that the plant wasn’t glowing—a sure sign that no Echoes were around.  Keeping the jar where he could see it, he sat on the dusty cellar floor with the chest labeled Our Memory Box and pulled back the lid.

Looking inside felt like going back in time, for the chest was brimming with photographs, and they all came to life beneath the blue dome of the Crystillery when Will swirled it the way Damian had done in the forest; and the faces smiled at him across the years, telling him stories he wished would never end, of birthday parties and presents, holidays and laughter….  Until his fingers struck something knobby beneath the lining of the chest, and he remembered the coin Damian had sent him to find.  Then, for a moment, he felt so sad to be back in the present that he could barely breathe.  But it was only for a moment, before his curiosity took over.

Two or three hard shoves with his fist, and the mysterious lump snapped free of the wall of the chest and slipped out of the crimson lining.  And now Will could see why the strange object didn’t exactly feel the way he had expected.  A dry ball of chewed purple bubblegum must have held the coin in place.  He plucked the blob off, tossing it into a dark corner where something scuttled away, and raised the coin to the light.

It was fairly small but rather thick, and far more beautiful than any coin Will had ever seen.  He knew at once that it was Echo made, for it was slightly see-through, carved out of polished blue ice, except that it couldn’t really be ice since it felt warm.  Even more amazing, the engravings felt perfectly solid under Will’s fingers, and yet they looked like flowing water, one side cascading in a spiral of strange letters, the other into the bust of a boy—a boy with a sparkling crown on his head, and a face that Will recognized at once; after all, looking like a scarecrow was a family trait.  My Echo?  But the resemblance wasn’t perfect—  Maybe a long lost uncle—? There was only one way to find out.  Holding his breath, Will swirled the Crystillery back to life, then rested it on the dusty floor with the strange coin beneath it. 

The starry gems disappeared in a whirlpool, and a room lined with shelves appeared inside the blue dome.  It took Will a moment to realize that everything looked distorted because he was seeing the scene from below, as if he were lying on the floor looking up.  Still, he recognized the place.  It was the cellar.  The very same room he was in now, the room he didn’t know existed until a few hours ago.

A man dressed all in purple appeared at the foot of the stairs inside the blue dome.

Will gasped.  “That’s not—”

But there was no doubt.

Will knew him as Mr. Drinkwater, his eccentric chemistry teacher.  A recluse who never wore any other color but purple.  A man who was gruff and impatient on his good days, and half mad on his bad.  And though he had only joined the school in the autumn, many predicted he would never make it to summer.  Without a doubt, this was the last man Will would have expected to find visiting his run-down, rotting home.  Yet there he was in the blue dome, the pale light of the cellar reflecting off the lenses of his glasses, making him look more insane than ever.

“You say Will doesn’t even know this crumbling hovel of a house has a cellar?” he was asking, as a dark falcon landed on a shelf beside him, raising a small cloud of dust.

“Damian…” muttered Will, flabbergasted.  A second later Deá was there as well, in the shape of the white wolf.

“But Drinkwater,” she said nervously, “are you sure you can’t keep the coin with you?”

“Afraid not.  What if I’m murdered?  The likelihood increases each day.”

A purple bubble erupted out of Drinkwater’s mouth and burst over his face.  “It’s really you…” muttered Will, watching his teacher peeling the gum off his stubbly chin, the way he often did in class.

“Your Majesty…”  Drinkwater withdrew a see-through ice-blue coin from a hidden compartment in his sundial-watch.  A moment later he was cutting a slit in the lining of the chest labeled Our Memory Box, using a magnificent golden dagger.  The falcon was outraged to see Drinkwater secure the coin in its hiding place with his gum.  But Drinkwater chuckled.  “The Deed is done!”

And suddenly the vision inside the blue dome disappeared, and the starry stones floated up once more.

*        *        *

An hour later Will was walking down a crowded corridor in his school, having seen no Fate Sealers lurking outside his home nor on the bus ride, which had proved a sort of torment, with everyone questioning him about his falcon’s disappearance, and his best friend, Ben, sulking when Will wouldn’t tell him anything, though he wished so very much that he could.

He found his chemistry teacher, Mr. Drinkwater, standing in the doorway of the chemistry lab, looking wrinkled, old and ill-tempered, his purple clothes shabby, his round-rimmed glasses held together by masking tape.  The only fresh thing about him was the purple gum erupting in a bubble from his mouth.

“Pests—  Keep your foul noises to yourselves!” he bellowed at the students banging locker doors in the corridor.  Then he noticed Will, and his scowl deepened.  “Swallowed a slug for breakfast, Mr. Cleary—?”

Will had caught a glimpse of his reflection in the dark school bus windows; the Brain Freeze had left him looking like a dirty sponge.  Stopping beside Drinkwater, he half-whispered, “A Fate Sealer tried to kill me.”

In an instant, he could see that Drinkwater knew all about Fate Sealers.

“In here—” Drinkwater barked and pushed Will into the white lab, past shiny metal tables, test tubes and microscopes, to the small office at the back.  A rusty birdcage hung at the entrance, a dove perched inside it, sleeping.  Creepy, slimy things floated in glass jars all along the walls.  Some even stared back at Will as Drinkwater pushed him into a creaking chair by a lopsided desk piled high with papers, then took the creaking seat opposite.

“So, what makes you think I can defend you against Fate Sealers?” asked Drinkwater, fishing out a thermos from behind the nearest mound of old exams, and pouring two cups of steaming amber tea.

“Damian wanted me to talk to someone at school.”  Will accepted one of the cups reluctantly.  “I think he meant you, Mr. Drinkwater.  I saw you in the cellar.  In my house, I mean.  Hiding this—”  But before Will had finished pulling out the ice-blue coin from his pocket, his teacher was snatching it away.

“What in Fortune’s name—?  But—”  Drinkwater’s wrinkled face suddenly hardened.  “Damian, you say?  Damian sent you to me?  Then Deá was hurt very badly…  There can be no other explanation.  He would never leave you otherwise—”  He sighed but smiled at Will at the same time.   “Well, drink your tea…  Go on, it’s not poisoned.”  And then he sighed again, and his usual gruffness melted away completely as if it had all been an act. 

Will took a sip, and the scent of mangos filled his nostrils, making his stomach growl.

“And eat—”  Drinkwater unveiled a box of cookies, his chair creaking under him as if about to collapse.  “Didn’t bring you here to talk with your stomach.”

“I need to find a place to hide, before the Fate Sealers come back,” said Will, biting into a cookie.

“Yes.”  Drinkwater sighed again.  “They will certainly come back.  But I doubt they’ll come into the school.  Too many witnesses.”  He spat his purple gum into a broken umbrella stand overflowing with garbage, and fixed his pale blue eyes on Will.  “You saw me hiding the coin…  How?”

“Damian left me his Crystillery.”  Will played it safe after what happened with the coin and kept the blue dome in his pocket.

“Ah!  Memory Crossing…” chuckled Drinkwater, tugging at the only desk drawer that still had a handle.  “Yes, I have one too,” he answered Will’s startled expression, pulling out a Crystillery that looked just like Will’s.  “And unlike you, I know how to work mine.”

As if sifting for gold, Drinkwater began swirling his Crystillery over the ice-blue coin, which he rested on his thigh.  “You placed the coin on the cellar floor, didn’t you?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the blue dome.

“Ypes,” said Will, trying not to spit out bits of cookie.

“You saw the Memories of the floor and coin mixed together.  And from an odd angle, would be my guess… as if you were lying on the floor looking up?”

Will nodded, sipping his tea, his eyes locked on Drinkwater’s Crystillery.  Inside, the starry gems were doing things Will had never seen them do before, not even for Damian; they seemed to be tracing out the pattern of a crown.

“Next time keep the object you’re reading in your hand.  The Crystillery won’t mix Memories with you… unless you know how to ask it to—  Though really, when you know so little about Crystillery Reading, all you can expect to see is the most recent, complex Memory.”

“What do you mean?” asked Will between cookies, staring at the starry gems now tracing the pattern of something long and pointy, perhaps a sword or dagger….

“Well, if you tried to read the coin now, what would you succeed in seeing?  Remember:  recent and complex…”

Will shrugged uncertainly.  “You put the coin on your leg… that’s the last thing that happened to it.”

“That would be a recent Memory, yes—  But not a complex one.  The Crystillery will look for a Memory that has several variables: sounds, colors, motion...”

“Maybe, the Memory of me taking the coin on the school bus…?”

“Yes, that’s a possibility.  But, of course, you’ll be limited by perspective.  Remember what happened in the cellar—you saw the Memory from the point of view of the floor.”

“So, this time I’ll see it from the point of view of the coin?” guessed Will.

“Not see.  Hear.  The coin was in your dark pocket, it couldn’t see a thing.  But, luckily, I’m skilled at both Target Acquisition and Perspective Control.  We’ll be seeing the Memory I want you to see, the way I want you to see it.  Here we go—”

The starry stones disappeared inside the Crystillery, and a candlelit chamber rose up in their place.  At its center an old, see-through man lay in a wide bed that looked like a fluffy snow heap, with snowflake-pillows and a waterfall-blanket, though Will guessed that it was probably an illusion, just as the coin wasn’t really carved from ice.  Two see-through men kneeled beside him, both dressed in flowing, watery clothes that sparkled like sunshine on a lake.  And both were armed, the first with a golden rapier, the second with an iron sword.

“Can Your Majesty speak?” asked the Echo with the golden rapier.

“And hear, as well,” answered the old man faintly.  

“Alas!” said the Echo with the iron sword.  “Death shows no mercy—  Better to have seen you die in battle, My Liege, then by this slow suffering.”

“But if suffer, suffer in comfort.”  The old King chuckled dryly, his face turning even more see-through against his snowflake-pillow.  “But enough with insincerities!  You have not come here to visit a dying man.  You have come to learn which of you shall be King hereafter.”

Wheezing painfully, the old King turned to the Echo with the golden rapier and spoke faintly, though majestically, in the manner reserved for royalty, using we when he really meant I.  “Stephen, our brother, should we anoint you King in our place, the royal coffers will glitter from floor to ceiling…  But the people of this land shall die of hunger!” 

“John, our warrior brother…”  The King now turned to the Echo with the iron sword.  “Should you become King after our death, no ocean or mountain shall stem the tide of your army…  But the women of this land shall lose their sons, brothers and fathers!  And with them all happiness.”

Coughing and wheezing, his face transparent, his eyes burning brightly, the King forced himself up.  “We shall not leave so meager a gift to our people,” he hissed, his voice as faint as a sigh.   “Let fate decide between you—this King shall not!” 

With this final promise, the dying monarch withdrew a small ice-blue coin from under his pillow, tossed it high in the air, and cried, “Name your selections ere the coin lands—or forfeit your claims forever!” 

Then he fell back on the snow-heap-bed—dead.

“WORDS!” shouted the Echo with the golden rapier, his brown eyes blazing with greed. 

“KING!” shouted the Echo with the iron sword, his jaw clenched savagely. 

The coin twisted in the air then landed—with the portrait of the once young King facing up.  The fate of the kingdom was decided.  The Echo with the iron sword was now King.

Instantly, the losing Echo lost all color and turned entirely invisible, his sparkling clothes floating on the air as if enchanted.  His invisible hand must have pulled the rapier from its gilded sheath for the blade rose in the air, prepared to strike.  But the iron sword was quicker.  There was a terrible cry, and the Echo with the golden rapier grew visible again in all but his right hand, which lay on the carpet, severed from his body, a milky white liquid oozing from it. 

“We shall not kill you for this, brother—” said the Echo with the iron sword, kissing the coin that had won him a kingdom, “—if you kneel before your new King.”

The Echo with the golden rapier fell to his knees in submission, but his eyes were bright with loathing, and his mouth twisted with agony and hate.  “My Liege,” he snarled and bowed his head, while to himself he whispered, “for now….”

*        *        *

The scene in the blue dome disappeared, and the starry stones floated up again.

“He turned invisible, that Echo—” said Will breathlessly, setting his empty teacup down with a clatter.

“Yes, some Echoes can…”  Drinkwater leaned back in his creaking chair.

“Then this really happened?”

“Oh, yes!  What we just saw is a story every Echo knows.  It’s the story of the Royal Shekel.”

“Shekel…?” wondered Will.

“Think of it as a Dollar, in Echo currency.  Amazing, isn’t it?”  Drinkwater looked thoughtfully at the ice-blue coin.  “Just an ordinary Shekel, like a million others—but this one decided who would be King.”

“But… it’s just a coin.”  Will was finding it all too incredible.

“Not to the Echoes.”   Drinkwater’s faded eyes flashed suddenly behind his taped glasses.  “Echoes are superstitious people.  They believe Fortune rules their lives.  And since Fortune made her wish known through this coin, they expect every king to possess it, as proof that Fortune is on his side.  People have died trying to steal it.  No king has ever been without it—because a king without the Royal Shekel will not remain King for long.”

“But then—”  Will frowned.  “How did you end up with it, Mr. Drinkwater?  You’re not a king… are you?”

“No,” muttered Drinkwater, tucking his Crystillery away.  “I’m not a king.  But one day, I hope, your Echo will be.  And that’s why you must stay alive!  You understand?  It’s very simple really,” he explained, as Will shook his head.  “Agám Kaffú… that’s the Echo land stretching beneath Alaska… is a monarchy, not a Republic like the United States.  They have a King.  And, what’s crucial to you personally… they have a Prince.  And you, Mr. Cleary… you are his Sound.”

“My Echo is a prince?”  Will shook his head in wonder.  “But I’m the smallest kid in class… I look like a scarecrow…  My Echo must look like a scarecrow.”

“Nevertheless, he is the Prince.  And that’s why Fate Sealers have been sent to kill his Sound.  You—”  He pointed at Will.  “All very simple, as I said.”

“To kill me…?”  It was all far from simple in Will’s eyes.  He had a million questions.  But the bell rang, announcing the beginning of first period, and Drinkwater rose, glancing at his odd, sundial-watch and pocketing the Royal Shekel. 

“Come back to see me after last period,” he said, already leading Will back into the white lab, where students fell into dead calm at the sight of their crazy teacher.  “And one more thing,” he added, as Will started walking away.  “Unless Damian comes for you, don’t go looking for him.  If you do, I highly doubt we’ll be sipping tea together ever again.”

Chapter Five: The Law of Death

 Will had never known a day to drag out so perversely.  By lunch time he felt worn out, by last period, a year older.  But when the dismissal bell finally rattled through the school, he realized that watching the clocks in all his classrooms had at least been a distraction.  Now he had to deal with feeling scared again.  And sad too, as he watched Ben shoving books into his overflowing locker, fighting a losing battle as usual.

“Eh… Ben,” said Will uncertainly, taking the Gravestone Book out of his own locker.  “In case I end up disappearing like my sister—”

“I knew it!”  Ben shot up, several textbooks cascading on top of him.  “You are in trouble.  I want to help.”

Will shook his head the way he had done all day, pretending that nothing was wrong.  He couldn’t drag Ben into this—couldn’t risk his best friend’s life just to make himself feel better!  “Just if, Ben—  If I disappear—  Or get kidnapped by aliens or something…”

“Well… what?”

“Then I want you to have my stuff.”

“Your stuff?” Ben slammed his locker door on a sudden avalanche of smelly socks and notebooks.  “Do I look like I need more stuff?”  He rolled his eyes, then sighed.  “What’s going on, Will?”

But Will shook his head again, almost desperately.  “I can’t drag you into this—” he snapped, trying to sound fed up so Ben would leave him alone.  Then he stomped off quickly, visualizing the terrifying face of a Fate Sealer, to stop himself turning back and telling his best friend everything.

“Any Fate Sealers playing hide-end-seek in the corridor?” asked Drinkwater, grinning crookedly as Will entered the white chemistry lab soon after, the rows of shiny metal tables all empty beneath the sickly neon lights.  Will returned a half smile, not sure if this was meant to be a sick joke, and sat opposite his teacher by the front table Drinkwater so often exploded things on during his experiments, to frighten his students.  Two teacups sent their steaming aroma into the air.  A shimmering, see-through bird was fluttering overhead.

“My pet—” said Drinkwater proudly, seeing Will looking up.  “He’s an Echo.  Lives inside his Sound over there.”  Drinkwater gestured at the half open, corner window where the rusty birdcage from his office now stood on a tall, metal stool, the dove still perched inside it as if asleep.  “Strange how Echoes can live inside dead Sounds, don’t you think?”

Revolting was nearer how Will would have described it.  Especially as it occurred to him that if Echoes like Deá and Damian, or like this bird, could live inside dead animals, they could probably live inside dead humans, too…  Gulping a little of his mango tea, he focused his mind on the more immediate threat to his life—  “The Fate Sealers are after me,” he said tensely, “cause the Prince is my Echo, right?  But what’s the connection?  How will killing me change anything in the Echo realm?”

“Have you heard of the Law of Death?” asked Drinkwater reluctantly, as if he wanted to avoid the subject.  “You haven’t...”  He sighed, as Will shook his head.  Then he spat his purple gum into an upturned human skull resting by his elbow, and sipped his tea so long that his taped glasses fogged up.  Finally, he leaned back in his creaking chair.

“In the Echo land of Agám Kaffú,” he explained in a tired voice, “Echoes are not allowed to live a full life.  You could say that every Echo is murdered… when his time comes, that is.”

“His time?”  Will frowned.

Drinkwater nodded gravely.  “When a Sound dies—his Echo is executed.”

Will choked on his tea.  “You mean if I die—” he spluttered between coughs “—the Prince will have to die?”  The words burned in his throat like acid.

Drinkwater nodded again, watching Will with sad, faded eyes.

"But why—?"

“Remember the Memory of the Royal Shekel…?  The brother who lost the kingdom?  It was all his idea.”  Drinkwater tapped the human skull absently.  “Echoes have always believed that if a Sound died, his Echo was bound to die soon after— The life of a Sound and his Echo began together, it should end together, that sort of nonsense.  Stephen V convinced his brother, the King, to turn this nonsense… this ridiculous superstition… into law.  The Law of Death.  After that, he sent a Fate Sealer to murder the King’s Sound, and then the King had to die.  Of course, Stephen V got what he wanted.  He became King instead.  But he was no fool.  He changed the Law of Death to exclude himself and all future kings… so no one could get rid of him the way he got rid of his brother.”

“That’s why so many people disappeared,” Will realized with horror, sliding his fingers down the thick, marbleized spine of the Gravestone Book, which he had placed on the shiny metal table.  “They were all killed— so their Echoes would have to die—”

“No.”  Drinkwater hardly glanced at the book, as if he already knew what was in it.  “Many Sounds are still alive in the Echo realm.  Fate Sealers kidnapped them, yes.  But many were rescued.  Your sister, in fact.  Ah…”  He glanced back to the sound of his pet cooing.  “Ready for some tea?”

Shaking off his gloom Drinkwater rose with his teacup and walked to the corner window, where the dove was alive again in the rusty cage.  With a shudder, Will realized that the Echo had reentered its Sound.  “But how do the Echoes find out when a Sound dies?” he asked, following his teacher, a chill wind blowing in his face from the half open window.

“Let me see your Crystillery,” said Drinkwater cryptically, opening the birdcage to the sound of whining hinges.  “Turn it over,” he added, when Will held out the blue dome.  “As I thought.  This isn’t Damian’s Crystillery.”

“But I got it from him…”  Will watched the dove hopping on Drinkwater’s frayed purple sleeve and begin sipping tea from his cup.

“Damian probably killed the Fate Sealer who attacked you.  This must have been that monster’s Crystillery, look at the emblem.” 

Indeed, Will saw the horrid face of a Fate Sealer etched into the back of the Crystillery.

“Only three types of people are permitted to own Crystilleries,” Drinkwater explained, caressing his little pet with one finger.  “The Fate Sealers, if you can call them people.  The King and his close advisors… in their case the emblem etched into the back of the Crystillery will be a crown—”

“And the third group?” asked Will, when Drinkwater fell silent, the reluctance to speak showing in his wrinkled face again.

“The third group—?  You want to know about the third group?”

Will nodded, his breath catching in his throat.

“The third group—” Drinkwater sighed “—are the people who spy on the Sounds, to see when one of them dies.”

“So they can kill his Echo?”

“Precisely.”

Will just couldn’t fathom how something so twisted could be legal.  “What are they called…  Death Sealers?”

Drinkwater chuckled mirthlessly, the snowy world outside the window reflecting in his taped glasses, turning his eyes more pale than ever.  “An apt name, Mr. Cleary.  But no…  They are called Fortune Tellers.  Their emblem is a crystal ball.  And they don’t just spy on the Sounds.  The Fortune Tellers copy the death… make sure the Echo dies in the exact same way as his Sound.  As if this was Fortune’s wish all along. ”

The dove’s beak was tapping the cup.  The sound echoed through the empty white lab, reminding Will of a ticking time bomb.  “The Echoes will never leave me alone until I’m dead,” he muttered hopelessly, as he shoved the Crystillery back in his pocket.

“—Or until the false King is dead.”  Drinkwater tilted the teacup some more.

“The false King— who’s he?”

“Do you have an uncle, by any chance?  Someone short, ugly?”

Will nodded, confused.  “My Dad’s half brother.  But what’s he got to do—?”

“His Echo is the King of Agám Kaffú now.”  Anger flashed in Drinkwater’s faded eyes.  “The false King.”

“But if my Echo’s the Prince... shouldn’t my father’s Echo be the King?”

“He should.  And he was—  Until his half brother murdered him.  Four months ago.”

“Murdered him…”  The full horror of the truth became clear to Will at last.  “And now the false King is trying to murder the Prince, too—by killing me.”  Will shivered in the chill draft slinking in through the half open window.

“And he doesn’t have much time.” Drinkwater put down his teacup.  “Because in two and half weeks the Prince will celebrate his thirteenth birthday—and become the legal King of Agám Kaffú.  Unless— he dies first.”

So that was the reason Damian had been so anxious in the forest, Will realized.  Time was running out!

*        *        *

“There is a silver lining to all this,” said Drinkwater, withdrawing a fistful of sunflower seeds from his pocket and filling the empty teacup, to his dove’s happy cooing.

“A silver lining?”  Will sounded as skeptical as he felt.

“Aren’t you forgetting something…?  The false King doesn’t have the Royal Shekel.  And without it, he can’t convince the Echoes that Fortune’s on his side.  Until he gets his fat, greedy fingers on the coin, he won’t dare to kill the Prince.  Or you—”  Drinkwater glanced sideways at Will.  “Right now, that see-through coin is the only thing keeping you alive, Mr. Cleary.  But it won’t stop Fate Sealers trying to kidnap you.  Much more convenient for them knowing where you are— in case they need to chop your head off at a moments notice.”

The joke was too sick to be amusing in Will’s eyes.  His teacher looked a little crazy again, like someone who has seen too many terrible things.  Suddenly, Will wished he hadn’t let Drinkwater keep the Royal Shekel.  “I should hide it, then… the coin,” he suggested.  But he knew what Drinkwater would say—

“You—?  Hide it—?  Out of the question!  You’re the last person who should know where that coin is—  What if a Fate Sealer tortures you?”

What if he tortures you? thought Will.  But he said nothing, already contemplating how to get the Royal Shekel back.

And then, as if Drinkwater’s insanity was growing by the second, the old man’s face suddenly split in a glorious smile, all his wrinkles defying gravity and shooting up.  “A miracle!” he shouted, pushing his taped glasses up his pointy nose and blinking at something outside.

Will looked out also and saw a young woman in the gathering twilight of the late afternoon.  She was walking on the far side of the distant, snowy street, beside a group of students, a Siberian Husky padding beside her with a shiny gray bag strapped to its back.

“Deá—”  Will couldn’t believe his eyes.

With an excited twitter the dove took flight, hit the pane of the half open window, and dropped back dazed into Drinkwater’s hand.

“Quick!”  Drinkwater shook his hands excitedly, spilling sunflower seeds.  “Go to her—  Deá will take you to Damian.  They’ll keep you safe from the Fate Sealers.”

But Will hesitated.

“It’s the only way to save your life,” insisted Drinkwater, his eyes positively glittering.  “You must go to the Echo realm.  Hide—  Or, better yet… help your Echo take the throne on his thirteenth birthday.  Once he’s King, he’ll give you permission to return here, I’m sure of it.  With your sister, if you like.  Who knows… in two and a half weeks your life could be happy.  Happy, do you hear me—?  You lucky boy!”

It all sounded insanely, absurdly too-good-to-be-true.  Will pushed his strawy hair back, thinking hard.  He had seen the Fate Sealers; they were definitely after him.  He didn’t know Drinkwater long enough to trust him, but he trusted Deá and Damian—and they wanted him out of here.

“This isn’t the time for daydreaming!” snarled Drinkwater.

“My parents—”  A tornado of excitement was twisting in Will’s chest.  “—Can you give them a message, Mr. Drinkwater—?  Tell them I’ll come back as soon as I can?”

“Yes, yes…  Now, go!  Out the window.  We’re on the first floor.  It’s quite safe.  Oh— don’t leave that book behind—”  Drinkwater waved his bird’s beak at the white lab and the Gravestone Book resting on the shiny metal table at the front.  “Might come in handy….”

Will dashed back and stuffed the eerie book in his belt, to keep his hands free—and suddenly an idea tore through his mind.  That morning Drinkwater had slipped the Royal Shekel into the same pocket he always carried his gum in.  If the coin was still there, Will knew what to do.

“Can I have some gum for the road?” he asked, as he faced his teacher again, the chill, snowy world waiting for him past the window.

Drinkwater nodded.  But his hands were full and he looked around for a place to set down his teacup and dove.

Will stopped him.  “I can get it—”  A second later he was pulling out a packet that smelled like grapes from Drinkwater’s frayed purple vest, holding it firmly—so the flat, round object he was pinning to its back would not fall.

“Take it all.”  Drinkwater smiled kindly.  “I have plenty more.  Now, off you go!”

Will wished he didn’t have to deceive his teacher, but he couldn’t trust someone else with the Royal Shekel, not when his life depended on it.  As he climbed on the windowsill and jumped outside, he could hear Drinkwater calling after him, “Good luck!”  But already the cold wind was blowing away the sound as he ran past the icy courtyard, over the snow-covered lawn, and across the slushy street toward the young woman walking a Siberian Husky, which looked so much like an Arctic wolf that Will thought he was seeing Deá in both her human and animal forms at once.

And all the while the Royal Shekel was jostling in his pocket, filling him with hope that he will survive the strange hurricane of events tearing his life apart… if only he could keep one step ahead of the Fate Sealers.