In a secret land well hidden from our eyes, a great palace rose on a cliff.  Marble halls and velvet rooms spread through it by the hundreds, and lush green gardens sprawled at its feet.  And everything that was alive there—from trees to people—was as see-through as the water splashing in the garden fountains.

Despite the number of rooms, every twilight hour of every dying day would find the reigning King in the same room, a blood red room, decorated with swords and strange crossbows.  There he would sit, waiting by the crystal-ball-shaped window.  And when a boy with strawy hair and melancholy brown eyes would appear through the see-through trees outside, the King would reach his hand to the wall, grab a crossbow, and take 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 King.

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

The King jerked back.  “Fortune’s damnation on your light-footed ways,” he snarled at a black figure gliding silently into the room.  “Have you brought me the Royal Penny?”

“The noose is closing,” answered the intruder, silkily drawing his hood back as he stopped beside the King, a cruel smile spreading over his lizard-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.  Then smirking greedily, he raised the crossbow and once more took cowardly aim at the Prince’s head.

Chapter One:  A Strange Glowing Plant

On the shore of a pond deep in an Alaskan wood, a dark house stood alone, mildew growing in its cracks, dead ivy climbing up its front.  Wind always gusted through its broken windows, stirring the cobwebs and torn wallpaper inside.  Looking like a haunted house, it lacked only the ghosts that would haunt it, for even ghosts seemed to shun the place.  And yet one thing was irresistibly inviting in this ugly place: It was a crystal ball knocker hung on the weather front door, like a pearl on a beggar.

Early one morning, a hand clasped the crystal ball and knocked on the door.

In the upstairs bedroom, Will Cleary tore his melancholy brown eyes open and jumped out of bed, fully dressed as usual since he owned no pajamas.  “Let’s go,” he said to a gray form curled in the shadows by his bed.

The gray form padded behind Will as he rushed downstairs, expertly navigating the broken staircase.  The hinges shrieked like a banshee as he tore the front door open, and a rush of cold morning air swept his strawy hair back as if he were a scarecrow in a field.

“Ben…” he muttered, surprised to find his best friend on the doorstep.

“I have something important to show you,” said Ben, still fingering the crystal ball knocker.  “I came across it last night,” he added, when they settled on the cold porch bench, the gray form, which had followed them outside, now sitting by Will’s leg, looking like a white dog in the pale morning light.

“What is it?” asked Will, frowning at the marble slab Ben was pulling from his coat, a slab that looked hauntingly like something stolen from a graveyard.

“A book.  It just looks like a gravestone.  See…”  Ben turned the chilling book over.

“Disappeared Without a Trace?” Will read the title.

“It’s about people who disappeared from Alaska.”

Will stiffened.  His twin sister, Emmy, had disappeared ten years ago.  That was the reason his parents had lost all interest in living and let their home go to ruin and their lives to waste.  “Is Emmy in it?” he asked haltingly.

“Not just Emmy,” said Ben excitedly.  “You’re in it, too.  That’s what I had to show you.  Will, this book says you disappeared and came back.  And if you got back, maybe Emmy can—”

Instantly, Will’s shock writhed into anger.  “Don’t you start,” he snapped at Ben.  “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 answered hotly.

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

“So why didn’t they find her body?” insisted Ben.

Will had no answer to that, but he rushed on regardless.  “Don’t you think I’d know if I disappeared too?  Don’t you think my parents would have told me?”

“But I thought we did, my boy,” said a quiet voice from the wild, snowy garden, as a man dressed in gray with windswept strawy hair, glasses, and a huge 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?” said Mr. Cleary, clearing a patch of snow off the porch rail before leaning back comfortably, untroubled by the wobbling and creaking this produced.  “The day Emmy disappeared, you disappeared too.”

“No, I didn’t know,” muttered Will, a wave of frustration washing over him.  He had asked about his twin sister so many times only to hear his father mention 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… on Christmas, ten years ago,” continued Mr. Cleary, his pipe glowing red as he puffed on it leisurely.  “The two of you disappeared together.  Well, we think you were together.  It’s hard to know for sure—”

“Because you can’t remember, right?” interrupted Ben, his pale eyes shining with excitement.

“Why, yes.  It’s all a fog….”

“Exactly,” agreed Ben.  “No one can remember.  Thousands of people gone, and not a single person remembers how it happened.”  Suddenly he flipped to where a bookmark was sticking out of the gravestone-shaped book.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Cleary, smiling at the two babies in large, floppy hats topping the page.  “That’s the photograph we gave the police.  Can’t tell who’s Emmy and who’s Will, I’m afraid.”

“The point is,” said Ben, his freckles dotting his cheeks.  “If Will disappeared and got back, there has to be a way back for all these people.”

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Cleary.  “But Will was too young to remember.  He was only two.  If only there was a way to read his memories…”  He sighed to himself.

Tugging the book closer, Will frowned at a second photograph of a dark falcon seated on the back of a white wolf.  “What are Deá and Damian doing in this book?” he wondered.

“That’s another thing the book was right about, isn’t it?” said Ben.  “Your dog’s actually a wolf.”

The white animal seated at Will’s side turned to look at Ben, her dark-rimmed yellow eyes looking oddly amused, as if she understood what he had said.

“They’re part of the story, didn’t you know, my boy?” said Mr. Cleary to his son, his melancholy brown eyes widening with regret.  “Deá and Damian brought you back a week after you disappeared.  Your mother was there when the frozen pond suddenly melted in the middle and you popped out, riding a wolf, with a falcon circling above 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.

“Ah, there she is,” added Mr. Cleary, noticing a white figure crossing a frozen pond nestled between the snowy trees not so far from them.  “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!  Ah, here’s Damian,” he added, as a dark falcon circled in the brightening sky and landed on the wolf’s white back.

Will looked down at the book again, burying his hands in his strawy hair to prop up his head as he read his and Emmy’s story.  Everything matched his father’s description.  But then he reached the third paragraph.

“William Cleary was naked at the time of his reappearance, but his body was coated in a plant that glowed strangely.  No such plant is known to grow anywhere on earth.”

“They look like they’re talking…” Ben was saying, and Will didn’t need to look up to know whom Ben 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 at his father, “was I covered in some kind of glowing plant when I reappeared?”

 “As a matter of fact, yes… 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.  His father agreed readily and led the way into the house.

“Watch your step,” he said, as he opened a door hidden in the laundry room, behind a moldy curtain.  Gingerly, they descended into a musty dark space, the stairs creaking ominously under them, 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 dust, and the air felt clammy. 

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

“It’s a strange plant, it likes the dark,” said Mr. Cleary, wiping cobwebs off a manuscript.  “Ah… my first historical effort,” he said fondly, “Warts and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages.  I was twelve when I wrote it… Emmy’s age.  And yours, of course, Will.”   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 drifting in water.  “Not glowing, I’m afraid,” he said, securing a lid over it.

But at that moment, bright green veins suddenly crept all through the stringy plant, until the whole jar glowed like a lantern between Mr. Cleary’s fingers, casting an eerie light on the wolf’s white fur as she pushed past Will, the falcon still seated on her back.

Spellbound, no one spoke.  Then the distant honk of a car disturbed the silence.

Ben glanced at his watch.  “It’s my Mom,” he realized.  “I promised I wouldn’t make her wait.”  And he rushed up the stairs.

Will asked if he may keep the glowing plant, then stuffed it in his coat pocket as he followed his friend to the front door, the wolf and falcon at his heels.

“Bring the Gravestone Book to school tomorrow,” said Ben, rushing to a purple minivan that was parked outside, its motor running, a freckled woman smiling behind the steering wheel.  “And the glowing plant…” he added, opening the car door.

From the corner of his eye Will caught sight of his own mother emerging through the trees, looking like a sleepwalker in her long, dangling nightgown.  “Yeah, right,” he stammered, wishing Ben would leave already.

After the purple minivan disappeared and Will’s mother pushed past him, hardly noticing that he was there, Will pulled the jar out of his pocket and looked at the glowing leaves again, his head almost spinning with all he had learned that morning.

Then, suddenly, an unfamiliar girl’s voice spoke to him.

“It’s better this way.  Saves time.”

Will snapped his head back, startled.  No one was there; no one except Deá, the wolf, curled on the porch bench.

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

Will looked around.  Only Damian, the falcon, was there, perched on the rail.

“Who’s there?” Will called out, walking down the porch steps. 

“Don’t be an idiot, Will,” the young man’s voice addressed him again.  Will swiveled and saw the falcon staring at him reproachfully.  “We have a lot to tell you,” said the bird impatiently, while behind him the wolf jumped off the porch bench and gestured with her paw.

“Maybe you should sit down first,” she said kindly, and Will could have sworn that the wolf was smiling at him.

Chapter Two:  The Echoes 

The morning sky had grown bright and blue, and even under the gloomy shade of the leaky porch roof, 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 that the words sounded like three coughs.

“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 his head, and to the sound of Mr. Cleary whistling a tune somewhere behind the open front door, he spread his dark wings and flew away. 

 “We’d better talk in the privacy of the forest,” said the wolf.  “Bring two shovels and… don’t forget the Waterweed.”  She pointed her paw at the jar glowing by Will’s foot and promised to explain everything soon.  Then with a final giggle of excitement, she 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 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 moment, the pit of Will’s stomach turned to stone.

The wolf and falcon lay nearby in the snow, looking alive but lifeless, as if something had frozen them stiff.  The shovels dropped from Will’s hands and he dashed forward to kneel beside them.

“No,” he shouted, pounding his fists on the snow.

“We’re not dead,” said Damian—but the sound came from somewhere out of sight.

Will looked up.

A young man of about sixteen was standing a few feet away.  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.  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 she was made entirely of mist, especially since she too was a little 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?” she asked.  “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 hissed, shooting 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 snarled, his fingernails digging 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,” he added, losing 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 cut in fiercely.  “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, 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?” added the dark young man, impatiently kicking snow off his dark boots.  “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 were these see-through strangers got such shimmering clothes; he’d never seen anything like them.  “All right…” he said, 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 Damian’s wing, where an old scar showed white between the dark feathers.  “When did Damian meet our school nurse?”

The dark young man smiled approvingly.  “Very sneaky, Will.  You know very well I never met Nurse Bell—or Tinkerbell 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, lift her head, and she would wake.  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,” Will cut in.  “I forgot all about it, Deá, I thought—”  Will shut his mouth abruptly. 

“You called me Deá!  You believe us at last,” cried the young woman, clapping her misty hands soundlessly together.

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 cape drifting behind him, his proud shoulders sagging a little.  He stopped to pick up the two shovels Will had dropped earlier.  “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 a circle of snow a few feet away from Damian.  A frozen teardrop fell out of Deá’s eye as she watched them.

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

“First you have to promise never to repeat what we tell you,” said Damian, his shovel striking the frozen ground with a clang.

Will felt instantly suspicious.  “Why the secrecy?”

“A small matter of risking our lives,” said Damian, his glance darting to Deá. 

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

“Good.  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 fill the air, then he spoke 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 now 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?” asked Will, trying to ignore 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?” muttered Will, bewildered.

“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.”

A deep grave already 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?” asked Will.  “Hold on!  That means I have an Echo… a reflection of me… a gas-being that looks just like—” 

But he 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 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 sadness 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?” he asked.

Damian was already shoveling earth back into the grave.  He looked up, smiling mirthlessly.  “Ten years… and before you go 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 as we are today.  An Echo living in a Sound doesn’t age.”

“You mean… you live forever?” asked Will, breathlessly.

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 by 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 glanced back through the snowy trees at Will’s mother, who was still laboring by the hole in the frozen pond, and suggested they continue their talk deeper in the forest.

“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 pull a shimmering black bag from behind the tree he and Deá had first appeared by.

“Yes.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Your Echo left it for us,” answered Deá.

“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!” said 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,” said Damian.  “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,” explained Deá, as Damian started rocking the beautiful object between his palms, awakening a miniature storm inside it.

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

Will frowned.  “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,” he blurted out.

“Not before a Crystillery,” said Damian.  “A Crystillery can read you like a book.”

“That’s horrible—”

“A Crystillery can be used for good,” interjected Deá.  “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,” added Damian darkly; then he looked at Will and told him 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 it 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 gems 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,” he said amazed.

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,” said Deá, her words sounding like steps taken cautiously over thin ice.

“The day Emmy and I disappeared…” muttered Will, frowning.

“Yes…  You see, Will… 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…?” he muttered bitterly.  “But she looks like a completely different person.”

“She was—”

A chilling shriek silenced Deá.  Beneath 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,” said Deá shakily.  “We don’t know how to see anymore.”  

“But there’s another way,” said Damian, his 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,” snapped Will.  “How can you expect me to remember anything?”  But as he said this, he felt a sickening sensation creeping from his heart down to his knotted stomach.

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

A split second later, Will felt the chilly bottom of the Crystillery hit 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?” muttered Will, shaking his head to stop the buzzing in his ears.

“Yes,” answered 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 beneath 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 years, 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 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 these… 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,” repeated Damian stiffly.  “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.  It’s also how they make sure their victims won’t remember a thing.”

“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…” mumbled Will to himself, thinking not only of his parents but of the thousands of parents mentioned in the Gravestone Book.  “Is it painful?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’m told it is,” answered Damian, the muscles in his cheeks pulsing with tension.

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 busy 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, and 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 shouted, jumping 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 form.  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...” Will cut him off, rage creeping into his voice.  “The Fate Sealers took Emmy… The Crystillery showed us… she can’t be alive.”

“Then why are you alive?” asked Deá.  “Your Dad told you that you disappeared also.  But you came back.”

“That’s different… I—”

“Do you or don’t you want to know what happened?” snapped Damian.

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.  At last she was found when she was already seven years old… far too old to be returned to the Sound realm.”

“Where was she found?” asked Will, hardly daring 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… 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 in a half whisper.

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 Emmy.  

“MOM!”

Will shot forward like an arrow, retracing his steps back to the forest’s edge, branches slapping his frozen cheeks, blinding him with showers of snow.  A dark shape flashed past him.  It was Damian moving at a speed no Sound could match.  Then a terrible cold enveloped Will, and 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 realized in a whirl of terror, as icy needles shot into his face with agonizing precision.

Then, through the never-ending pain, he thought he saw Deá’s see-through form bending over him, only to melt away as everything went black.

 

Chapter Four:  The Royal Penny

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, who looked as dark as the night, crouching quite near him; a young woman, as pale as the crescent moon, lay at his feet.  Both looked astonishingly see-through. 

“Woo are you?” 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,” said the stranger, pulling 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 at a blurring speed.  He stopped by a long block of ice that looked hauntingly like a frozen woman, raised the blue dome, and slammed it down into the frozen face.  The shattered ice fell away in crude triangles, exposing a nose, tightly shut eyes, and a silent, screaming mouth. 

“Mom!” Will gasped, horror 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,” answered 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?” asked Will, looking around, 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,” said Damian desolately, bending 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,” said Damian, 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.  But 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 icy hole, 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 Sealer 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 do so.  “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, it seemed to Will that Fate Sealers were lurking behind every shadow, creeping out just as he looked the other way, breathing down his neck as the cold wind gusted at his back.  Even when his father joined him at last and carried his mother to the house, then drove her off to the hospital, Will’s fear kept following him, like a living being.  Only when he remembered to check the Waterweed did the nightmarish feeling fade, for the plant was not glowing—a sure sign that no Echoes were around.  Then keeping the jar where he could see it, he settled on the dusty cellar floor with the wicker chest labeled Our Memory Box and pulled back its 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 in the forest; and the faces smiled at him across the years, telling him stories he wished would never end….  But then he felt something knobbly beneath the lining of the chest and remembered the coin Damian had sent him to find—and with this memory the pain of the way life was now struck him like a blow!

He pried the coin loose; a purple bubble gum had glued it in place.

No larger than a cat’s eye, the coin was beautifully minted: On one side, words in a strange language spiraled like a seashell; on the other, Will saw the face of a prince.

‘My Echo…?’ he wondered, seeing a clear resemblance.  Or was he imagining it?

Holding his breath, he swirled the Crystillery back to life, then rested it on the floor with the coin beneath it. 

The precious starry stones were sucked down a white funnel, and a room lined with shelves appeared beneath 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 room; it was the cellar.

A man dressed all in purple walked in.

Will gasped.  “That’s not—”

But there was no doubt.  Will knew the man as Mr. Drinkwater, his eccentric chemistry teacher, a recluse who never wore any other color but purple; who was gruff and impatient on his good days, and half mad on his bad; and though he had only joined the school in autumn, many predicted he would never make it to summer.  This man was now facing Will inside 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 know about this room?” he was asking, as a dark falcon landed on a shelf beside him.

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

“But Drinkwater…” she said, her voice strained, “are you sure you can’t keep the coin with you?”

“I’m 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 peel the gum off his stubbly chin, the way he often did in class.

“Your Majesty…” said Drinkwater, withdrawing a silver coin the size of a cat’s eye from a hidden compartment at the base of his 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 beneath the blue dome disappeared, and the starry gems 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 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 lab, past shiny metal tables, test tubes, and microscopes, to the small office at the back.  A 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 chair by a desk piled high with papers, then took the seat opposite.

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

“Damian wanted me to talk to someone at school,” said Will, accepting one of the cups reluctantly.  “I think he meant you, Mr. Drinkwater.  I saw you hiding this coin in my—”

But before Will had finished pulling out the silver coin from his pocket, his teacher had snatched it furiously from him.  “What in Fortune’s name…?  But… Damian, you say?  Damian sent you to me?  Then Deá must have been hurt very badly…  There can be no other explanation for Damian leaving you like this—  Well, drink your tea… go on, it’s not poisoned,” Drinkwater added, and a strange change came over him, his gruffness melting away as if it had all been an act. 

Will sipped his tea, and the scent of mangos filled his nostrils, making his stomach growl.

“And eat,” added Drinkwater, unveiling a box of cookies.  “I 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.  “They will certainly come back.  But I doubt they’ll come into the school.  Too many witnesses.”  He spat his gum into a wastepaper basket and fixed his pale blue eyes on Will.  “You saw me hiding the coin…  How?”

“Damian left me his Crystillery,”

“Ah, Memory Crossing,” said Drinkwater, pulling out a Crystillery from his desk drawer.  “Yes, I have one too,” he said, as Will patted his pocket suspiciously.  “And unlike you, I know how to work mine.”  As if sifting for gold, he began swirling the Crystillery over the silver 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 cookie crumbs.

“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 am skilled at both Target Acquisition and Perspective Control.  We’ll be seeing the Memory that I want you to see.  Here we go—”

The starry stones disappeared inside the Crystillery, and a candlelit chamber rose up in their place.  At its center, an old man lay in a lush bed of lace and gold.  Two men kneeled beside him, both elegantly clad in velvet tunics and tights and bejeweled with precious stones, the first with a golden rapier tucked in his belt, the second with an iron sword hanging by his hip.  All three were slightly see-through.

“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,” chuckled the old King dryly, his face turning even more see-through against his white pillow.  “But enough with insincerities!  You have come to learn which of you shall be King hereafter. ”

Whizzing painfully, the King turned to the Echo with the golden rapier.  “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 silver coin the size of a cat’s eye from under his pillow, tossed it high into the air and cried, “Name your selections ere the coin lands—or forfeit your chance forever.” 

Then he fell back on the stately 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 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.

“That Echo turned invisible,” said Will breathlessly, setting his empty tea cup down.

“Yes, some Echoes can…” said Drinkwater.

“Then this really happened?”

“Oh, yes.  What we just saw is a story every Echo knows.  It’s the story of the Royal Penny.  Amazing, isn’t it?  An ordinary penny… like a million others—but this one decided who would be King.”

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

“Not to the Echoes.  They 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 Penny 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.  It’s very simple really—your Echo is the Prince and heir to the throne of Agám Yarók, the land of the Echoes stretching beneath Alaska.  That’s why the Fate Sealers have been sent to kill you.”

It was all far from simple in Will’s eyes.  He had a millions questions.  But the bell rang, announcing the beginning of first period, and Drinkwater rose and pocketed the Royal Penny. 

“Come back to see me after last period,” he said, already leading Will back into the lab, where students fell into dead calm at the sight of their dreaded 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.”