The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere (15 page)

The Isle of Wight

So many thoughts skittered through Lizbeth’s head that she was unable to funnel any of them through her voice box.  Years ago she remembered asking her mother about her father’s family.  All her mother would say was that they had gone to heaven, but then she’d said under her breath, “or wherever their kind go.”  Lizbeth knew her mother hadn’t intended for her to hear the derogatory comment, but it stuck in her head.  When she’d asked her grandmother what it meant, the older woman shook her greying head and asked, “You know how your mom feels about my occupation?”  Lizbeth’s mother had even less tolerance for Annette Moreau’s ‘voodoo nonsense’ than Lizbeth did.  “Well, some people,” Granma had said, “are afraid of things they don’t understand, and your father’s folks were very different souls.”

Lizbeth was vaguely aware of Zach sitting on the side of the couch and putting his arm around her, but she didn’t acknowledge him.

One thing puzzled her.  If her mother was so leery of Caitlin that she led Lizbeth to believe she was
dead
, why did she agree to let her accompany her in the first place?  She wished she still had her cell phone, wished the phone lines were working.  She’d call Granma and get some real answers.  Then something occurred to her:  she hadn’t had an opportunity to even speak to her mother before Granma and Caitlin packed her up and rushed her to the airport.  Granma told her that her mother was on board with the whole crazy scheme, but maybe that was, as Granma would say, “a rubber-band truth.”

Felicity interrupted her thoughts with a gentle nudge.  “You didn’t know, did you?”

Lizbeth blinked and her memories faded away.  Suddenly, it was the last topic on the crumbling earth she wanted to discuss.  She looked past Felicity into Kevin’s concerned face.  “What about Kevin?  Who were his parents?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity said.

“What?” Kevin burst out.  “But you said – the book-”

She heaved a sigh and closed the album with a musty-smelling puff of air.  “Caitlin knew about Lizbeth, of course, and she knew about Zach.  I suspect the real reason she came to see me was to search through the album for your parents, Kevin.  She met you, you see.”

“I never…oh,” he said.  “Who was she?”

“At the time she was posing as your professor to get close to the project director of the scientific drilling vessel.”

“Bill Masters.”

“Yes.  I gathered she, ahem, didn’t want him to know she was interested in his activities.”

Lizbeth knew it was an inappropriate time to pry, but she couldn’t help herself.  “Were they, you know…”

“Lovers?” Felicity asked, with a teasing gleam in her eyes.  “I believe so.  They had a falling out over whatever project he was working on.” 

Zach’s hand was still on Lizbeth’s back.  He’d been making small circles with his fingers throughout the whole conversation and she’d become rather self-conscious about it.

“She spoke to you, Kevin, in the guise of the professor, of course, and whatever you told her very much piqued her interest.”

Kevin stood and stepped away from the sofa, slipping his right hand into his pocket.   Lizbeth suspected he got some kind of comfort from contact with the nugget.

“Okay,” he said.  “Okay, yeah.  I think I know when she did it.  Right before we boarded the ship, Professor Weinstein was supposed to have been taking a nap in the hotel room, but I ran into him having fish and chips with Bill.  As soon as I started to ask him how he managed to get to the restaurant ahead of me, he interrupted and invited me to join them.  I did notice the conversation got a little weird.  The professor kept asking questions that he should have known.  Bill was answering like he thought Weinstein had Alzheimer’s, you know, and I remember thinking maybe he should have taken that nap.”

Felicity pursed her lips.  “But it was something you said that made her wonder who you really were.”

Lizbeth saw a look of comprehension cross Kevin’s face.  He gave a short laugh, and his cheeks darkened a shade.  “I said…I mean, the professor was talking about the enormity of the project, how he thought maybe we were messing with something we shouldn’t, and I agreed with him.  Then they both looked at me like I spoke out of turn and I got all flustered.  I told them I was, you know, drawn to the idea of exploring Silverpit Crater, but I had a feeling something bad was going to happen.”

Lizbeth frowned at Zach’s snort.  “That’s it?” he asked.  “Caitlin came to see Felicity based on one of your feelings?”

“No.”

Lizbeth heard the mild resentment in Kevin’s tone and it irritated her that Zach had reverted right back to tossing sarcastic remarks his way.  She knocked his arm away to stop the incessant rubbing over the same spot on her back. 

Kevin said, “I don’t think it was what I
said
.  I remember wondering if Weinstein really was sick or something because his eyes looked strange.  Caitlin and Griffey strange.”

“She was reading your mind,” Lizbeth said, “but you didn’t know anything about being descended from shapeshifters.”

Zach got up and went over to the computer again. “Yeah, but Griffey said the strong ones can sense each other. He obviously couldn’t sense us, but I’ll bet Caitlin can.”

“Is that who it was – Griffey?  That sounds familiar.”  Felicity opened the album again, rapidly turning pages and muttering, “Griffey, Griffey.”

Felicity was running her finger down the names on one of the pages.  “Oh, here he is!  Brian, is it?”

Lizbeth squinted at the black and white photo of a short, bearded man with a broad nose.  “That’s not him.”

“You mustn’t assume the person he’s shown you is his real face.”

Lizbeth frowned.  “I didn’t think of that.”

“What does this mean?”  Kevin asked.  He tapped his finger on a notation written in a neat hand next to the photo.  The letters D.O.D. and April 15, 1912 were crossed out.  Next to it was Kevin’s own name.

“Oh, dear,” Felicity said, tapping a finger against the tip of her nose and looking sideways at Kevin’s pouting face.  “I think perhaps she thought you were related to our Mr. Griffey.”

“Yeah, but that would mean Caitlin knew he was still alive,” Lizbeth said.

Zach produced another snort.  “Wouldn’t be the first time she lied, now would it?”

The Isle of Wight

After suffering through the angst of Felicity dropping the ancestral bomb on everyone, Zach was glad when she and Lizbeth went into the kitchen area to make something to eat.  Kevin had stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes, so Zach read more comments and looked at several video clips from his YouTube page.  There were a few in particular that got his attention.

A thin woman with short brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses living in western Washington said she’d experienced the electric-like sensations, too, right before Mount St. Helens blew its top for the second time in recent memory.  An elderly Filipino woman in Manila, with translation help from her grandson, described the “fits” she’d suffered before Mayon erupted.  Her grandson shyly admitted to feeling it, too.  A Japanese man who spoke barely intelligible English gave a serious account of the two major and eighty minor earthquakes that nearly leveled Tokyo.  He claimed to have predicted each one before it hit because, “The ground spoke me it going to shake.”

Zach thought about what Felicity had said, how Caitlin kept track of as many of the children of the underground druids as she could, but there were more out there.  How many could there be, though, if so few of the infants survived?  Still, were these people in the videos like him and Lizbeth and Kevin?  Could they sense the gossamer sphere’s intentions, or were they the crazy ones?  He had to admit none of them seemed crazy.  Heck,
he
had seemed more like a lunatic on his stupid video than the people who’d responded to him. He decided to check out more of Seamus the Bard’s site, but when he clicked on the link his screen told him the page could not be found.  He tried refreshing it, and closed and reopened his browser, but it appeared the Internet had gone down.  Banging his hands down on the desk, he exclaimed, “Augh!”

Kevin groaned and Zach saw him pull a cushion over his head.

“Is that your plan, dwarf-boy?  To hide from what’s left of the world?”

“Zach!” Lizbeth said.  “Leave him alone already.”

Zach was still smarting from her earlier rejection, after she’d slapped his hand away when he only wanted to comfort her.  Now she’d spoken to him with the kind of scorn he got from his mom when he stayed up too late working on his art or didn’t pick up his room.  Lizbeth sure spent a lot of energy defending Kevin, who had curled up in the fetal position on the couch, still hiding under the cushion. 
The wuss
.

Felicity asked calmly, “Has the Internet gone down?”

“Yeah,” Zach said.  “Now we can all just sit here and fester while we wait for Caitlin to tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

As if he weren’t sitting within hearing, Felicity commented to Lizbeth, “Not so level-headed when he doesn’t get ‘is way, is he?”

Lizbeth rolled her eyes and it infuriated him even more.  With a major effort, he stopped himself from going off on her.  Instead, he checked the browser again.  Felicity’s home page, a website for Wolf Hounds, obligingly popped up.  He went straight to Seamus’ site.

 “What are you doing?”  Lizbeth asked.  She’d come to stand behind him.  When she placed a hand on his shoulder, his eyes closed involuntarily as a rush of longing flowed through him.  He endured it for a moment and then shrugged her hand off.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“Is this that bard website?”

“Yeah.”  The banner across the top had changed.  It now said, “Children of the Boar: Cast off your Shrouds and Come Forth.”

“What’s this?” Lizbeth pointed to a heading that read, “The Last Noble.”  He opened the page and read silently alongside Lizbeth:

“In her long life she’s been called many things, but she was named Caetl in the year of her birth 47 AD, the only child of the Chief of a powerful clan and his Druidess wife.  When Caetl was fourteen years of age, a rival clan raided their holdings, taking her hostage.  Her father rallied his people and besieged the enemy, the survivors of whom had no choice but to escape by sea, taking Caetl as insurance.  A storm arose and forced her captors’ vessel ashore at the island of Anglesey, the stronghold of druid priests and priestesses.  Her mother, the Druidess, changed into a pelican and upon seeing where the storm was blowing the raiders, flew ahead and waited on shore to greet them with an escort of armed Druids. 

“Times were dire for the inhabitants of Anglesey Isle.  The captured raiders were given a choice:  die or swear allegiance to the druids, who needed aid against the Roman army poised to cross the Menai Straight.  The raiders were more fearful of the druids than the invading army, so they capitulated.  The next morning, the commander of the Roman legion gave the order and catapults began hurling missiles from one bank to the other as his soldiers crossed on flat-bottomed boats and his infantry swam the low tide.

“The wildly painted Druids and their supporters put on a frightening show for the soldiers, dancing and shrieking and casting curses, but their numbers had been decimated from years of resisting their conquerors.  Those who had not been killed outright had fled, either deep into the Irish countryside like Caetl’s mother, or for parts unknown.  Anglesey was the last stronghold, and it soon became obvious it would not hold much longer against this enemy.  The druids could have abandoned their people and saved themselves, but they stayed, fought and died.

“On the far side of the island, away from the horror of an invader that left no one, not even women and children alive, Caetl’s mother and two other noble High Priestesses bundled Caetl aboard the raider’s boat to escape with the Druids’ most treasured artifact:  the Gossamer Crown.”

“He’s talking about Caitlin!” Lizbeth said.  “Kevin!  Come look at this.”

When he didn’t respond, she went to the couch and lifted the cushion.  He winced and pulled it quickly back over his face, but not before Zach saw his eyes.

Lizbeth swung around, her face horrified, and Zach jumped up to pull her into his arms.

“Don’t tell him,” she whispered in his ear, and he nodded.  Zach may not like Kevin very much, but he never wanted him to die.

The Isle of Wight

Kevin had never been all that fond of bright light.  Huddled on the couch with his face buried in a cushion, he supposed it made sense, now that he knew his ancestors were mine-dwelling, darkness-loving dwarves.  First he’d been sick on the boat, then the earthquake set it off again, and now the interior of Felicity’s house, illuminated with its abundance of skylights, had become too much for his burning eyes to bear.  There was nothing wrong with his hearing, however, and since the cushion wasn’t blocking his ears, Lizbeth’s anguished whisper reached him clearly.

He lifted the cushion enough to ask, “Tell me what?” and then heard an unsubtle, “Shh!” from one of them.

Zach said quietly, “It’s not like he won’t notice when he looks in the mirror.”

Even through his misery, that got Kevin’s attention.  He sat up and replaced the cushion, blinking against the brightness.  “What are you guys talking about?”  His voice was hoarse.

Felicity walked into the room, saying, “I’ve got three kinds of dressing – oh!  Dear Lord, what happened to your eyes?”

Kevin’s empty stomach clenched.  “Are they red?”

“Very much so!  I could imagine Zach here, after the squeezin’ he got from Griffey, having some burst vessels in ‘is eyes, but you…”

Kevin got unsteadily to his feet and put his hand in his pocket.  His fingers automatically caressed the misshapen lump of iridium.  He heard it again, a strange sound that had been plaguing him for the last half hour, a faint buzzing voice in his head talking nonsense, as if his fillings were picking up a foreign radio station.

He squinted at Zach, who was holding Lizbeth in his arms – again.  Both of them looked stricken.

A hand on his shoulder pulled him around and Felicity’s lightly wrinkled face appeared so close he couldn’t focus.  He tried to open his eyes long enough for her to get a good look.

“Must be from the strain of vomitin’,” she said softly.

“It isn’t,” Lizbeth said.  “It’s that nugget.”

Kevin pulled it out of his pocket and let it rest in his palm.  Felicity reached for it, but three voices in unison stopped her, “
No!”

Her eyes went round as she took an affronted step back.  “For goodness sake, tell me what’s wrong.”

Kevin started to slip the nugget back into his pocket, but Lizbeth twisted away from Zach and grabbed Kevin’s arm.

“It’s the nugget.”

Felicity shook her head.  “You already said that, dear.”

“Kevin, stop touching it,” Lizbeth said.  She let go of his arm and crossed her own tightly against her stomach.  “Let’s put it away somewhere safe.”

He made a protective fist around the nugget and immediately heard the strange voice, hissing loudly in his ears this time.  Disoriented, he shut his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.  He didn’t know how long he stood there, but a sudden sharp pain in his forearm forced his hand to open involuntarily.  The noise in his head abated as the nugget clattered across the tile floor.  Had Zach hit him?  He wanted to snatch the nugget back up again, but he was so tired.  He stumbled to the couch and collapsed on it.

Through a haze of exhaustion he heard Felicity say, “So, if I’m understandin’ this rightly, that chunk of metal there is not part of the crown, as Mr. Griffey originally thought, but a bit of the same material it was made from?”

“Yes,” came Zach’s voice.  “And Kevin’s been messing with it for almost 24 hours.”

“That’s got to be why he’s sick, right?” Lizbeth still sounded worried.  “The ritual was to touch the crown.  Maybe prolonged exposure is dangerous.”

Kevin opened his eyes and looked at her.  The room didn’t seem quite as bright as it had before.

“Now that, I can’t say,” Felicity said.  He watched as she went to a curio cabinet on the wall and took something from a shelf.  “Here’s a box you can put the bit into.  It’s got a secure enough latch, I would think.”

Between them, Zach and Lizbeth managed to get the nugget into the box without touching it.  Kevin didn’t see what they did with it after that, because he closed his eyes and must have dozed off.

When he opened them again, it was dark in the room and his stomach was rumbling.  He sat up, waiting for the room to spin, but nothing happened.  He felt fine.  Standing, he turned toward soft voices from the dining area.

“Kevin!”  Lizbeth rushed over and studied his face in the light from the dining room chandelier.  “You look better.  Thank goodness.  How do you feel?”

“Where’s the nugget?”

Zach spoke from the table.  “You’re not getting it back, dude.  Look what it did to you.”

Kevin shrugged one shoulder in annoyance.  “Yeah, alright.  I just – it just…talks to me.”

“Seriously?” Lizbeth asked.

“I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Lizbeth patted him on the back.  “Well, once Caitlin gets here, we’ll ask her about it.  Hey, maybe while she’s gone she’ll find the crown and we can do whatever it is we need to save the world.”

“
Find
the crown?” Felicity asked.  Her downturned mouth hung partly open in shock.  “Is
that
what she’s lookin’ for?”