The Dream Keeper

Chapter 9: The Vaults

It was a vast dark room, with a maze of shelves that ran as far as Parker could see. It was a library of sorts, with rows upon rows of shelves filled with shimmering iridescent keys. Some keys glowed brighter than others and set against a black sky, they were like billons of stars twinkling in a wide universe. Following Felix, Parker continued to walk down the wide steps that led to the base of the vaults.

Parker inspected a shelf that had hundreds of pegs with just one key on each peg, a gold insignia shining above it. He wondered what the words meant until he realized they were names, although not names he’d ever heard. There was Kama Kaothai, and Kanya Kongsangchai, and Mali Kunakorn—names from another country maybe? Each key, like the names themselves, was uniquely different, and Parker could almost swear that if he looked close enough at the keys, he could see faces in their opaque surfaces, like a seer sees future events in a crystal ball. He turned toward Gladamyr, who started off down what seemed an endless aisle of keys. And the thought hit Parker, how on Earth are we going to find three keys out of so many?

***

“Where do we start?” whispered Kaelyn. “There are so many.”

“The vaults are separated into what are called dream zones, then providences, then townships, then names—alphabetically, of course.” Felix pointed to the section of keys Parker was staring at just moments before. Kaelyn saw a gold plate just at the top of the long shelf, and she read as Felix said aloud, “Dream zone 535, Thailand, Bangkok, Ka-Le.”

“What dream zone is the United States?” she asked.

“It actually has about two thousand dream zones.”

“What?” Parker sounded shocked. Kaelyn was shocked too, but there were around 300 million people in the US. That equaled out to well over one hundred fifty thousand people per zone, and that was still a lot of people.

Cerulean came running down the stairs. “We don’t have much time, Gladamyr. What’re you waiting around here for? There is no way they didn’t hear that parade you created up there.”

“She’s right—this way!” Gladamyr said, running.

He turned down the aisle to Kaelyn’s left, and she and Parker followed behind, Felix and Cerulean in the rear. She tried to read the insignias on the shelves as they ran down aisle after aisle, but the words were unfamiliar. All she could make out was the dream zone. It was an endless maze and Kaelyn had no idea how Gladamyr knew where to go. They turned three more corners and skipped about a dozen rows, and then places started to look familiar. A sign read: Portland, Maine, Ya-Z; then Westbrook, Maine, Aa-Ac.

“We’re in the US now,” she shouted.

“Yeah, on the east coast, we live on the west!” Parker said, trying to catch his breath.

Why did Parker have to burst her bubble? But he was right, Maine was a long way away from the brown beaches of the west coast. They passed by several more aisles before Gladamyr came to an abrupt stop and Kaelyn and Parker crashed into his back. The horrible smell of the stihl pierced her nose before anything else. Suddenly the dark room was lit from above by spectacular orange flames, and the stihl soared down upon them.

***

Gladamyr pushed the children back toward Cerulean and Felix jumped high into the air, shifting his arms into large bat like wings. He once again flew into the stinking beast. They collided and crashed into the shelves below. Hooks, brackets, and keys flew everywhere. Gladamyr rolled over and over, trying to pin down the stihl. He managed to pull one of the beast’s wings back, which kept it from turning over, but the creature was too strong and he soon lost his control over it. It kicked him square in the chest and he fell back onto a shelf, its contents crashing down upon him.