The Dagger-Key and The Lost Treasures of Kebadon Read online

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  Later that night the small search party returned empty handed. Zeal reported that they were unable to find any signs of Mekon anywhere. And knowing that he was a prime suspect in the two murders they concluded that he most likely fled to the ruins, which was the only other place on the island that unoccupied shelter existed.

  Shortly afterward Kyhawn sat alone at the edge of camp. Hand over chin, he was lost in his own thoughts. I guess Emaya was correct. Whatever my dreams mean, they are going to unfold soon. He pondered his thoughts. Gray birds, a necklace, that body on the beach today—he was wearing a necklace like the one I found in Room 10. A necklace with a gray bird … it was abstract looking, but it was gray, just like the gray birds in my dreams. He shook his head in wonder. Waterfalls … a cylinder-shaped object …a window … sandcastles … and that dagger-key? There’s so much to take in before I can understand. I wish Emaya was here.

  “Would you like a drink of juice?” Dellyna came up and asked him. She was a kind elderly passenger who had been helping Shellean and Malnur with the sick and wounded.

  Kyhawn reached out for it. “Thank you,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes.

  She stood over him as though she wanted to say something more. He looked up at her. “Thanks again for the juice, but I’d like to be alone.”

  Dellyna bowed and left, respecting his wish.

  That chest, Kyhawn thought. It has something to do with the cylinder-shaped object I saw in my dream last night. Are they one in the same? And Washburrn—I bet my father was a Zac something like him. And Shellean, she’s been deceiving us. That’s why she’s been trying to get me to tell her where the chest is hidden. We are on an island no one can explain. The storm didn't throw us off course according to the stars, but according to the charts it is an uncharted island no one knows about. It's obvious that zacs have lived here centuries ago, and just recently. Yet there's no one here now but ruins on a dome shape mountaintop, a graveyard, these old cabins, and those strange sea-creatures.

  As he left his hidden thoughts for the moment, he looked around and began to take in, once again, what was going on around him. Professor Romeos with a small basket of unusual plant life next to him, was telling everyone more about the plant life growing on the island. “I know it sounds too bizarre to believe. But it’ as if time has preserved some of the plant life. I know my plants. Many of these plant species should have died-out long ago. Yet they exist here. Here on this island… wherever we are.” Romeos, baffled by the thought, reached into the basket admiring an unusual looking purple leaf and continued. “I’m going to take some samples back with us. My colleagues will be amazed.”

  As the nods faded in agreement to Romeos’ find, talk around camp started to focus on Arbra, Gerit and his two sons being gone for so long, and disregarding Dylc’s orders. Soon after Dylc, Alil, and Washburrn made sure guards were posted all around camp, two Zacs at each post, around the clock. And before the hour was out, Dylc, Jayden, Zeal and two others were fast on their way with lanterns and their cabacs full of supplies in the direction of the cave that Gerit spoke so strongly about.