Crow - The Awakening (7 page)

His mouth dropped at the sight. He fumbled for his sketchbook and flipped through pages until he found the detailed drawings he had made of his nightmares. The vampire and werewolf were prominent along with drawings of his parents, but he had also sketched what he remembered of the clearing and the ghostly white dead tree in the center of the clearing, which remained the same from dream to dream. Excepting a few details, what he drew matched the snag in the meadow branch for branch.

"No... way!" he exclaimed as he peered out the porthole, straining to see more of the meadow. Most of the view was obstructed, but the lifeless tree was easy to see. Steven sat back, dumbfounded. Memories of the nightmare flooded back and he shivered at the terror and hopelessness he felt, as well as the sense of abandonment that had washed over him. He found it hard to believe that it could possibly be a real tree. But then, his parents were real, so why not the tree? He had no idea what the vampire or werewolf represented but his psychologist friend in town had some constructive input on that. Fear of abandonment seemed to be his predominant theory. That and separation anxiety.

Another beep from his computer distracted him. He glanced over, typed in a few commands and got to work creating a stealthy wireless connection, all the while thinking about the snag. Once he had hacked into the library's network by way of a back door he had created while at Brandon's using his friend's computer, he initialized scripts on their network router that gave him unfettered and unlogged Internet access. "Yes!" He expected it to work because it was so trivial to him, but was always pleased when the pieces fell in place perfectly.

Once finished setting up his surreptitious presence on the internet, he logged into a remote corporate server he had given himself access to and activated his little private network of accounts on various servers from which to conduct his search for his parents. A little web of servers came to life, all completely unlogged and hidden from the owners. The strength of his system was not in his own homemade laptop, but in the distributed computing power he had assembled. Sitting back, he suddenly was at a stopping point. Up until now his entire effort was getting his system to work. Quite suddenly, he had it up and humming quite nicely and waiting to be put to work. Now he had to switch gears and get into search mode. His parents were real, and anyone who lives in this day and age leaves a history that nowadays is logged in one database or another.

But the snag weighed on him. He was split between going out to the meadow or setting up his searches. Steven opted for the middle ground, downloading several census databases to the waiting servers and running a search program on them from the servers he had hacked into. Satisfied, he shut his laptop down and sat back. He could revisit the search tomorrow. It was time to see this clearing with his own eyes. He looked again out the portal. What could this mean? He had never been there that he could recall. And yet he was having dreams of it. Standing up, he put his sketchbook and a handful of pencils back in his backpack, then hesitated. If the tree was real, and the meadow was real, what about the monsters? What if they weren't psychological constructs as Dr. Dougherty had hinted at? He looked out with a little trepidation this time, not sure he wanted the answers. But, it had to do with his parents and he had to know for certain.

As he was about to climb down, the glint of sun through the window momentarily blinded him. The angle reminded him that it was getting late. He stood up and looked out. The sun was getting low. "Oh, man!" he exclaimed, disappointed. Getting in trouble for being out too late was out of the question. Any chance of being grounded from the forest would set his search back significantly and he was so close to getting things seriously underway. He looked at the white snag in the meadow longingly. He really wanted answers, to touch it and know that it was real. But he knew he wouldn't be able to go right away. Disappointed, he opened the hatch and climbed out, glancing at the snag as he climbed down until the rest of the trees obscured its visibility. There was always tomorrow, he thought to himself.

She watched him from behind the trees as he climbed down, staying just out of sight in the boughs of the neighboring trees. The boy climbed down rapidly, very sure of himself. Sometimes it looked like he was falling more than climbing as he just barely slowed his descent by grabbing bark and branches with his hands and bare feet. At some points he was gripping just the bark and crevices of the tree trunk rather than branches, looking like a large squirrel and not slowing his pace as he clambered down the trunk. With nearly twenty feet yet to go to the ground, the boy pushed off and fell the rest of the way, landing on the soft forest floor with barely a thump. Without hesitation he started running, tearing almost silently through the brush as he grabbed his staff in full stride. Then suddenly all was silent except for the birds twittering in the waning sun, getting ready to tuck in for the night.

Looking over at the tree house, the little girl that wasn't quite a little girl admired its construction. Sirel pushed off from the trunk behind which she had been hiding and daintily pulled herself through the branches as she floated weightlessly over to the ingenious domicile that looked as if it was as much part of the tree as the branches. She caressed the exterior, savoring the tight basket weave of the split branches, and tugged at the dense thatch of the roof, which remained solidly attached. She giggled and floated around the exterior, peeking into the windows and feeling around their frames where they were firmly attached to the structure, fascinated at the craftsmanship demonstrated by the ten year old child. She had spied on him back when he was building the tree house and wondered if even Penipe could have done a better job. She noticed the little solar panels, arranged on the branches as if large leaves of a tree. Then there was the odd tin-can antennae the boy had attached to the tree higher up.

Sirel slipped leisurely through the little fan of branches at the bottom of the tree house and found the hatch. It was closed, but not locked - just enough to keep squirrels and other climbing creatures out. No Terran passing by would climb up there, much less notice the tree house that was so thoroughly hidden from view from the ground. But, she wasn't Terran. Smiling, she pushed open the hatch and pulled herself smoothly into the tree house. Once inside, her skin glittered and sparkled, casting a blue glow that illuminated the interior. Contemplatively putting an index finger to her lower lip, she took the interior in. On the wall were hung several drawings of the boy's parents. Curious, she pulled one of the pictures off and inspected it closer. Steven had never seen his parents, and yet here they were, drawn with such skill that they could have been photographs. "Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser," she whispered to herself as she carefully put the drawing back on the wall, making sure it hung just the way it did before. She looked at the drawing for a moment more, cocking her head. Part of the meadow was drawn in the backdrop.

Moving on, her fingers trailed on the counter as she walked lightly around the perimeter of the tree house. Sirel found the woven seat amusing. "Really?" Chuckling, delighted by the fine detail of the craftsmanship, she sat down on it, letting her full weight bear on the seat. It barely gave, just a little springy and startlingly comfortable. The bark of the trunk that made up the back of the seat was worn smooth, hinting at countless hours of use.

In front of the seat on the counter rested a box that was larger and flatter than the rest. It was expertly made of hardwood, dovetailed together and lightly stained with oil. The clasp and hinges were brass and very sturdy. Sirel could sense the technology within the box and tenderly opened the lid, admiring the cobbled together computer contained within. "He's been a busy boy."

There was no power on in the tree house. But the solar panels hinted that there should be, so she looked around and saw the battery setup under the counter. Grinning, she followed the wires to the charge controller and inverter module. Sirel shook her head at the inventiveness of it all and toggled the inverter on. An LED lamp on the counter lit up and she clapped her hands in glee. "What a little genius!" she exclaimed.

She powered up the computer and was impressed at how fast it booted up. It took just seconds, so quick that the screen may have taken longer to power up than the computer did booting up. Lifting the inner cover the keyboard was attached to, she looked at where the boy had bypassed the bios chip with his own programmed chip, part of his solution of getting around the surreptitious hacks that commercial chips have built in. She tittered in amusement, delighted at what Steven had created. She caressed the mainboard components daintily with her fingers, impressed by the ingenuity of it all. She put the keyboard back down and watched the screen. A database scan was being performed, distributed to the many nodes that he had formed on the commercial servers out on the network. "Hmmm, not bad for a kid." She opened another window and began typing, her eyebrows furrowing as she concentrated.

When she was done, Sirel closed everything back down and leaned back against the trunk that served as the back for the seat she sat on. She saw a mushroom resting on the counter next to the computer and picked it up. She sniffed it, then made a face. Penipe really liked these things and was always eating them. Sirel personally preferred her food freshly killed and not picked from fungus growing in the forest floor. She put the mushroom in her pocket and floated up off the seat. Her task here was done. Time to go make a report to her boss.

Steven couldn't get his chores done fast enough this Sunday. The clearing dominated his thoughts as he checked on the chickens and grabbed any eggs he found, then carted a couple more cases of bottled honey to the truck. He went about helping his godfather load up the truck with fresh and dried vegetables, potatoes, as well as copious amounts of gourmet mushrooms harvested from his stacks of logs and collected from the forest, all without saying a word. As they ate breakfast his godparents looked at each other, concerned.

"Are you still angry about not being able to go to Brandon's?" Jonah said between bites.

"Hmm?" Steven looked up, only then realizing someone was talking to him. "What?"

"You haven't said a word all morning," Sally said.

"Oh, I'm just thinking." Steven finished off his egg sandwich. The freshly baked bread was delicious when soaked with the hot egg yolk and he licked his fingers. Then he sat there and thought for a moment. "Is it possible for dreams to be more than dreams?"

His godparents looked at each other again, not sure how to answer. Steven didn't have another nightmare last night. Nothing was broken. It seemed every time he had a nightmare something would end up broken the next morning. Jonah promptly popped a fig in his mouth, preferring to chew on that than take lead on the discussion at hand. Sally gave him a look, then shook her head.

"Honestly, Steven, I don't know." She took his hands in hers. "Did you have another nightmare?"

"No. I was just wondering, that's all." Steven was tempted to tell them about the meadow and snag, but it was awfully close to his tree house and his precious computer. Not a good idea continuing that line of thought. "I was just thinking about how similar my nightmares were to each other."

"Sometimes dreams are trying to tell us about something that is bothering you. Perhaps we could get Dr. Dougherty to help you with this?" Jonah licked his fingers clean of the sweet, sticky sap of the dried fig and grabbed up Steven's and his empty plates.

"Maybe." Steven really liked the doctor, but mostly as a friend and not a physician. "It's nothing serious though. Just something I'm curious about." He drank his freshly pressed grape juice and got up from the table. Time to get market behind him so he could more closely investigate the meadow.

Brandon stopped by the market booth again. Steven had just finished nailing down another commercial contract for his honey and the chef was leaving with a crate full of gallon jars of honey. Grinning wildly, Steven filed the contract away and stuffed the check for the honey in his bag as Brandon pulled up.

"Hey." Brandon looked over at Jonah who was occupied with his own customers. "Did it work?"

"Oh yeah, man. I'm up and online!" Steven whispered excitedly. "I have a search going right now even."

"Cool. You're a super-geek, you know that?" Brandon grinned.

Steven looked at his nails, feigning smug arrogance. "Yeah. I can't help it."

"Any luck yet?"

"I just started! I have no idea how long it'll take." Steven really hoped to have some sort of result when he went out to the tree house, but tried to be realistic about it. It could take a long time.

Brandon sat on the edge of the table and played with a block of beeswax Steven was selling. "What'll you do if you find them?"

Steven hadn't thought that far ahead. "Well. I don't know. I guess it depends on where they are." He swallowed. If they had been abducted, there was no telling where they could be. They had disappeared and not returned, and he had to believe they would have returned if they could have. "They might be in trouble."

"I hope it's not that bad, dude," Brandon said. He couldn't imagine his own parents being abducted.

"Yeah. Maybe they just forgot about me," Steven said sarcastically. He couldn't help but wonder if the worst had happened. If he was looking for ghosts. But he had to believe they were still alive. And if they were still alive, then for some reason they were prevented from coming to him.

Brandon grinned and put the wax down. "You'll find them. Everything else you do works so I know this will too."

"I guess so. It's still been a long time. Ten years, you know. A lot can happen in that time." Steven sighed, then looked at Brandon. "What are you up to?" Steven wondered why Brandon had come over.

"Oh, we're going back to Seattle for a few days. Parents have a business shindig they need to go to." Brandon shrugged.