Saffie and her parents had been in the waiting room of the hospital for four hours. When the doctor they had dealt with earlier returned, Saffie shot up from her seat.
“I’m afraid we don’t currently know what is affecting Mr Farrow,” said the doctor. “He is stable, but he is not conscious.”
“He’s in a coma?” said Saffie, and the doctor nodded to confirm.
Saffie sat back down slowly, the cheap plastic creaking in the echoey waiting room.
“Someone did something to him…” Saffie mumbled.
“Darling, speak up, please,” said her mum.
“There was someone outside my window. They said something like, ‘Ultra Sleep.’”
Holly took a deep breath and smiled apologetically at the doctor. “My daughter had a bad day at school. She’s very stressed.”
“I’m not stressed, mum - I mean, yes, I’m stressed, but I swear there was someone outside my window, and they did something to Dax.”
“We’re going home, darling,” Holly said sternly.
Saffie stared out of the window in a daze the entire way back to the house. All she could see was the memory of Dax clutching his head, and all she could hear was the muffled whisper of “Ultra Sleep,” from the tree mixed with Dax’s bizarre instructions:
Give the Onyx to the Oracle.
What was the Onyx, and who on earth was the Oracle?
In the driver’s seat, Saffie’s dad Peter ranted the entire way:
“What do people expect when they’re glued to a computer screen for twenty four hours a day? Let this be a warning to the youth of today… Video games cause brain damage, full stop. We have the proof right here. We need to go back to the good old days… No computers, no phones, no internet… People used to have conversations, ACTUAL conversations! Can you believe that, Holly? We used to sit around the dinner table!”
When they arrived home, Saffie went straight out into the garden and looked up at the branches and bushy leaves that almost connected with her bedroom window. They belonged to the largest and gnarliest of the trees in her garden, Oakley. It was a name Dax had given it when Saffie was around six years old. At the time he had said it was a magical tree that moved and talked when no-one was looking. Saffie stamped out the momentary notion that it might actually be true.
No, it had to have been an intruder, but what could they have done to Dax from that location? The words ‘Ultra Sleep’ made it sound like they were placing some kind of curse on him. But they couldn’t have.
Could they?
As much as Saffie loved all things fantasy, she was quite aware that those things were exactly just that; fantasy. She didn’t believe in things like horoscopes, witchcraft, or voodoo. She especially didn’t believe in curses that could send someone into a coma.
As she surveyed the area, her line of sight travelled away from her windowsill and down Oakley’s trunk until she reached the hollow cavity at its base. It was an opening around the size of a football, in fact exactly the size of a football - a neighbour’s football had actually got lodged in there once. It was also a good place to hide things from her parents, since it was so dark inside you would need a torch to see what was in there, even during the day. As Saffie examined it closer, she realised it would also be the perfect foothold for anyone wanting to climb.
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And that’s when she saw it.
Scratched into the bottom lip of the cavity was a scuff mark.
Someone had climbed the tree.
“Mum! Dad!” Saffie called, waving at them through the patio doors. “Here!” she said as they entered the garden. “Someone definitely climbed Oakley earlier!”
“You’re not still calling it that silly name, are you Saffie?” said Peter. “It’s a tree, not a cartoon character.”
“Just look!” Saffie insisted, pointing directly at the mark.
“Anything could have made those scratches, dear,” said Holly. “A cat… an owl… a…”
“Human being!” Saffie said in exasperation.
“Saffie! Keep your voice down!” Holly snapped. “You’ll have half the neighbours peering over their fences in a moment! This paranoia has to stop, okay?”
“Why won’t you believe me?!” Saffie wailed in as muted a volume as she could manage. “The evidence is right here!”
“Even if an intruder had climbed the tree,” said Peter, “what could they possibly have done to your uncle through your bedroom window? And for that matter, why would they have wanted to?”
“I… don’t know,” Saffie admitted.
Holly folded her arms.
“It’s late,” she said sternly. “I’ve cleaned Dax’s disgusting drink from your carpet. Now go to bed.”
Frustrated, Saffie went back upstairs, but she had no intention of getting into bed. How could she after what had happened to Dax? She wanted to cry. She willed herself to. But she had emptied her tank of tears crying over Beatrix’s selfie prank, which now seemed pretty insignificant in comparison.
Saffie’s bedroom stunk of carpet cleaner, and her mum had disposed of her own frappe, not that she would have enjoyed it at this point. Her mum had also propped Dax’s backpack against the bedroom bin, probably a subtle hint at where she thought it belonged.
As Saffie’s eyes fixated on the backpack, she suddenly remembered something - Dax had said that the key was the first of two gifts. There was something else in that backpack.
Saffie was in no mood for gifts, but what if the second gift was this Onyx he had mentioned? Saffie picked up the bag and thrust her hand inside, but she couldn’t feel anything. She checked its multitude of extra pockets but the entire thing was empty. He had to have forgotten whatever it was and left it at his flat.
Saffie propped the backpack against her wall instead of her bin, and wandered over to her bed to find the original gift:
The key.
She picked it up and twirled it in her fingers. Once again there was the hint of a strange blue glow coming from the letter ‘O’.
Was the key the Onyx? Was that what the ‘O’ stood for?
Dax had seemed so concerned about giving it to her. He had said it was too dangerous. Could it have had anything to do with sending him into the coma?
Saffie pulled out her phone and began typing, but her internet searches for Onyx and Oracle told her nothing more than onyx was a type of black gemstone, and an oracle was a person who predicted the future. She also did a search for ‘old key glowing blue,’ which brought up nothing, then a few more searches for ‘key with O on top,’ ‘dangerous old key,’ and ‘can a key send someone into a coma?’ All of them returned nothing but adverts for key engraving and a news story from six years ago about someone in Florida going into a coma after eating seven key lime pies in one sitting.
Saffie plonked herself at her desk and twirled the key in her fingers, completely baffled.
After a while, she rested her head on her hand, the key still clutched in it, but immediately opened her eyes again after closing them because the key had suddenly begun to glow so bright it was almost white.
She held it away from her face and the glow dimmed once again to a subtle blue.
“Whoa…” she whispered.
Slowly she brought it towards her nose, and sure enough, the intensity of the glow increased as the proximity to her face did.
“Okay, this is weird.”
She waved it carefully in front of her, and as it wafted past her right cheek, there was a distinct hum and the key glowed so bright it made Saffie squint. She hesitantly hovered it over the spot and let the hum and brightness guide her.
As she manoeuvred it around to her right side, she felt a pull on her temple, as though magnets were connecting it and the key. She inched the key closer, and with an involuntary jolt, it suctioned itself against the side of her head, the bow covering her temple and the stem running directly down past the front of her ear.
Saffie let go in shock and strained her eyes trying to see what it was doing.
There was a sharp prick.
An injection.
“What the… ?”
Saffie gripped the stem of the key and yanked, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Get off me!” She said through gritted teeth.
She pulled and pulled, but it was stuck to her like superglue.
Then there was a click, and everything went black.