The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere (19 page)

East of England

Back at the house, Caitlin wanted to get started right away, but Zach flat-out told her he wouldn’t participate in whatever she had in mind unless she washed up, put on fresh clothes and bandaged her head wound.  He expected an argument, but she said, “Wash your own wound,” and disappeared upstairs with the crown still in its box.  He wondered if she was going to take it into the shower with her.

After going to the kitchen sink and cleaning the gouge Griffey had pecked into his arm, he plugged in his laptop and sat at the kitchen table.  While it booted up, his mind conjured an image of Griffey lying in the grass.  Zach knew his blow had killed him, but he also knew if he hadn’t delivered it, the shapeshifter would have killed Caitlin.  Might have even killed them all.  As awful as it was to realize his first kill at eighteen, Zach felt little remorse.  He’d known from a young age that his path would lead him to bloodshed.  As long as the opponent deserved his fate, Zach wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

On his laptop, he discovered to his irritation that Griffey had deleted the file with the digital artwork of the crown.  Not that it mattered anymore, but he’d worked really hard creating it.  Simon’s Internet connection was working, so Zach’s second item of interest was to check his email.  His mom’s computer skills were fresh from the Stone Age, but she’d borrowed a friend’s email account and sent him an update on the family and begged him to respond.  He fired off a quick reply assuring her he was okay.

Lizbeth came and sat next to him as he scanned the remainder of unopened emails in his in box.  He ignored the spam, scrolling down until he found what he was looking for.

“That’s from Seamus,” Lizbeth said.

“I see that.”

The email read:  “Zach, thank you for your email.  I followed the link you sent and watched your video on YouTube.  Only Children of the Boar can feel the pulses.  Your video indicates that you have no idea what is happening, and yet in your email you mention stopping the gossamer ‘sphere.’  What is this sphere?  The lore does not mention such a thing, but if you are indeed in the company of the last Noble, and she is intent on stopping it, I must presume it is the cause of the current state of the world and I am therefore entirely at your service.  You may find me at the Ritz London.  I await further instruction.”

“You emailed him?” Lizbeth exclaimed.

“Yeah.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now we won’t need his help.”

“How’s he supposed to help?  He’s just a wannabe bard who doesn’t even know what the gossamer sphere is.”

“Of course he doesn’t.  Griffey didn’t know, either.  Caitlin didn’t even figure out what it was until recently.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  We have the crown and here comes Caitlin.  Let’s rock and roll.”

Caitlin came down the stairs, wearing a blouse she must have borrowed from Werka’s closet.  The flowered polyester hung almost indecently off her shoulders.  Her wound was neatly bandaged and she looked refreshed.  She tossed a sweatshirt to Lizbeth, who went into the kitchen and changed out of Zach’s shirt.

Caitlin placed the triskele box in the center of the coffee table and said, “It’s time.  Come sit.”

Zach shut his laptop with a flutter of anticipation in his gut.  He had no idea what they’d be required to do, but this was the moment they’d been preparing for since the quest began.  His inner critic scoffed at the picture the four of them made; dirty, exhausted and injured.  It wasn’t at all the dignified ceremony he’d expected it to be.  Without a word, no chanting or singing, Caitlin opened the box and removed the crown.  It looked exactly like he knew it would.  She set it on her head and reached out.  They took each other’s hands, forming a circle.  Caitlin closed her eyes.

He waited for something to happen, but felt nothing.  He heard the breath whistling faintly in and out of Kevin’s nostrils and saw beads of sweat form on Caitlin’s brow, but that was it.  After a few minutes, Caitlin hissed, “Bugger all!” which he knew was some kind of Irish foul language.

“What do you want us to do?” Lizbeth asked in a small voice.

Caitlin opened her eyes.  Zach’s heart sank at the hopelessness on her face.

“I should have known,” she whispered.

Zach met Lizbeth’s and then Kevin’s eyes and saw his worry reflected there.  “What’s wrong?”

Caitlin removed the crown and held it between her fingertips.  Her beautiful features were ravaged by despair.  “How can we contact the sphere – if it’s broken?”

East of England

They tried several more times.  During each attempt, Kevin thought he caught the faintest whisper of something at the edge of his mind, similar to the buzzing he’d heard at Felicity’s house when he was sick.  None of the others seemed to notice it, so he dismissed it as residual iridium sickness, maybe brought on by his continued proximity to the nugget in its box in his pocket.

“That’s it, then,” Caitlin said after the final try.  She put the crown back in its box.

Lizbeth jumped up, fists clenched at her side.  “Is that all you can say?  That’s it?  How do you know?  There’s got to be something else we can do.”

“I know because I am the crown’s guardian.  I know because its creator told me what it can do.  There were three in the beginning.  Three shapeshifters.  A queen and her two subjects, who became fast friends.  Over time, they allowed more to join their ranks, carefully selecting only those they knew would survive.  Most were good.  They became the druidic people, revered by all.  But people are unpredictable, especially under the extraordinary circumstances of gaining immortality and power.  Some of them got greedy.  They misused their power, going outside the Grove and offering their services to the warring clans—for a price.  It wasn’t long before those clans began to envy the peace and prosperity of the Grove.  In desperation, the queen placed the crown upon her brow, and with her two most trusted friends by her side, implored the gods for a solution.  The response was nothing like what they expected, and before the backlash of contacting the sphere killed Queen Wyn, the others saw what it was and knew its purpose.  They buried her under a monumental cairn attributed now to some other queen, and the two remaining friends added the triskele symbol to the crown to commemorate their friendship.

“So, yes, Lizbeth, I do know there is nothing else to be done.  The sphere did not respond.  I would have gladly given my life, as my grandmother did, to accomplish this task.  But it is not to be.”

She pulled a set of keys and a billfold from her pocket.  “We’d best deal with the remaining issue at hand.”

Within moments, she’d shapeshifted into a slimmer version of Werka. 

“Take my rental car to London and get a hotel.  I’ll contact the police as a distraught Werka who was knocked unconscious and woke up to find her husband and his friends murdered.  Dispose of your shoes.  As Werka, I can offer the police a logical explanation for your fingerprints being here, at least.”

The police would find their shoe prints all over the property, so dumping the shoes made sense, but Kevin didn’t understand something.  “Griffey’s car is in the barn.  He doesn’t exactly look like the Chief Inspector anymore.”

“Let the police sort it out.  Given the possible scenarios, Werka is unlikely to be considered a suspect.  Besides, soon they will have better things with which to concern themselves.”

Like staying alive
, thought Kevin.

“You should all make arrangements to fly to your homes if you can.  I’ll call and make reservations at the Marriott on-”

“No, put us at the Ritz,” Zach said.

Caitlin, in the guise of Werka, raised an eyebrow, but the movement must have hurt her wound because she flinched a little.  “If you wish.  I’ll try and meet you there, but if I cannot…know that you each have my gratitude.”

Kevin saw Lizbeth move in for a hug, aborted when Caitlin lifted the triskele box.  “When the police arrive, this must not be here.”  She handed the box to Lizbeth.  “If I do not come, the crown is yours.  Keep it in the box.  Protect it.”

“I’ll try, Grandmother.”

Caitlin gave her a curious look.  “Felicity told you.”

Lizbeth nodded.  “She told us a lot of things.  Except—how could you have been Brian Griffey’s friend?  I mean, he was horrible.”  She shot an apologetic look at Kevin, who twitched his shoulders in a minute shrug to let her know it didn’t matter what she said.  The guy meant nothing to him.

“He wasn’t always,” Caitlin said.  “Immortality tends to change a person.  Brian wasn’t the first to go a little insane—with power as well as from the grief of losing loved ones.  He and I met at the summer solstice initiation two years after the druid stronghold on the island of Anglesey was destroyed.  Before the Romans came, there were many initiates, but that day there were five who touched the crown.  He and I, as the grandchildren of two of the original shapeshifters, were the only survivors.  It bonded us.”

“Let me guess,” Zach said.  “You were obviously the granddaughter of Queen Wyn, which would make Brian the grandson of Tadg the Small?”

Werka’s plain face showed Caitlin’s surprise.  “How on earth did you—Felicity?  I didn’t think I’d ever mentioned them to her.”

“It wasn’t Felicity.  There’s this website that has a bunch of stories about shapeshifters.  There’s one all about someone named Caetl.”

“I haven’t heard that name for a very long time,” she said softly.  “It seems some of the lore survived.  Well, it’s of no consequence now.”

Caitlin, normally so guarded about her privacy, suddenly didn’t seem to care who knew the truth.  Kevin thought,
because there’s no reason to hide anything anymore
.  They were all doomed, and the past didn’t matter.  Still, he had one thing he wanted to know about the man, the
druid
, who was his father.

“Why was Griffey on Titanic with the crown?  You said it was stolen and then you said he was bringing it to you.”

Caitlin smiled sadly.  “It was he who convinced me the crown was untouchable locked up in the safe with the Irish crown jewels.  That turned out to be far from the truth, as the man entrusted with the jewels was quite careless in both his friends and duties.  No one ever found out who opened the safe or where the jewels went.  It was as if a ghost had spirited them away.”

“Or a shapeshifter,” Kevin said.

“Indeed.  Five years the crown was missing.  Victor was long gone by then and with no clues as to its whereabouts, I was unable to even begin to search for it.  I started a new life in America.  Out of the blue, Brian contacted me.  Said he’d purchased the crown from Shackleton and was coming to America on Titanic.  It wasn’t long after the ship sank that I began to suspect he’d lied.  It’s highly unlikely Shackleton wouldn’t have touched the crown if he’d had it in his possession all that time.  It would have killed him.  Later I realized it could not have been a coincidence that the name of the salvage ship that found the crown was
The Gossamer
.  I was unable to determine who had financed the ship’s salvage effort, but it was clear whoever it was knew what they were looking for.  And Brian was the only one besides me who knew where to look.  However, it wasn’t until I met you, Kevin, that I knew for certain he was still alive.”

“How?”  Kevin asked.

“I knew you were his son.  I sensed your power, and you look exactly like his grandfather, Tadg.  It’s uncanny, really.”  She straightened her shoulders then and announced, “It’s time.”

Kevin didn’t know why he expected her to offer Lizbeth some gesture of affection, an acknowledgment of their relationship, but she didn’t.  Instead, she handed Kevin the car keys, a wad of cash, and simply looked at all of them for a moment before saying, “Go.  Be blessed.”

Outside, the sun had disappeared again behind some ominous-looking clouds.  As they walked the gravel drive to the barn, Caw flew down and landed on Zach’s head.

“Not you again,” he said.  To Kevin he added, “Could you get this for me?”

Kevin offered the bird his forearm.  Caw stepped on, making a scratchy sort of noise with his beak.  Kevin had no idea where it came from, but he mimicked the noise back perfectly. 

“We should take him with us,” Lizbeth said.

“Yeah, he’d blend right in at the Ritz,” Zach replied.

“He’ll starve if we leave him.”

“No, he’ll learn to eat roadkill like all the other scavengers.”

Kevin thought about the four bodies lying unprotected in the field behind the house and shuddered.  He made another soft noise and reached tentatively toward Caw, who held still and allowed him to wrap his hand around the bird’s body.  Caw’s feet released their grip on his arm and he lay passively in Kevin’s hand.

“We could hide him,” Kevin said.

“I doubt Len trained him that well.”

Kevin went behind Zach and unzipped his backpack.  He formed a series of squawks in his throat and put Caw inside, partially zipping it back up.  The bird stayed put, poking his head out of the opening.

“So now you talk to birds?” Zach asked.

Kevin shrugged.  He didn’t think he’d actually “said” anything to Caw, but the sounds he’d made did seem to get the bird to cooperate.

Lizbeth bumped into Zach and said, “Quit griping.  Caitlin said Caw is special, like us.”

They piled into Caitlin’s rental car and headed out.  Kevin drove, watching the old house get smaller in the rearview mirror.  The uppermost branches of the oak trees, just visible past the roof, swayed in the wind as if waving farewell.

On the way, they stopped at a petrol station and asked for directions to the Ritz.  Kevin had serious doubts about whether three rather scruffy people would be allowed to register at the upscale hotel, but they didn’t have any problems.  Maybe the concierge was used to the new generation of grungy rich and famous and assumed they were in that class.

Caitlin had reserved two rooms.  They hung out in Lizbeth’s and ordered room service for a late lunch.  Kevin got a hamburger and fries just for Caw.  None of them seemed to want to discuss the failure of their quest, so they watched television while they ate.  Most of the channels had continuous coverage of what some enterprising reporter had dubbed “The Cataclysm.”  The temblors that had rattled the United Kingdom had thus far been mild, but with so many of them, damage was beginning to add up.  Hundreds of businesses had closed shop.  Crime skyrocketed.  A few neighborhoods had been looted by mobs of frightened citizens.  Hardest hit were the home improvement and sporting goods shops as people attempted to stockpile survival gear.  The worst news of all:  Heathrow had finally been forced to stop all incoming and outgoing flights due to runway damage.  Crews were working around the clock to fix the broken tarmac, but each new earthquake just contributed more.

“Well.”  Lizbeth stood and brushed the crumbs off her pants.  “Let’s buy some new shoes so we can dump these ones.”

From his lounging place on the bed, Zach asked, “Why bother?  I doubt the police are even going to investigate.  Didn’t you see the news?  Half the police force has abandoned its post and the other half is busy keeping the riots under control.”

“Let’s just do what Caitlin said, okay?”

“Why?  She’s not the boss of us anymore.  This whole stupid scheme was a bust.  We’ll be lucky to save ourselves now.”

Kevin, who’d been sitting at the little table feeding bits of hamburger to Caw, got to his feet and faced the bed.  “Why don’t you shut up?”

Zach laughed.  “Make me.”

“Why are we here then?”  Lizbeth asked in a raised voice.

Kevin looked at her.  “What do you mean?”

“At the Ritz.”  She glared at Zach.  “You picked this specific hotel for a reason.”

Zach got off the bed.  “Yeah, alright, so what?  Let’s get some new shoes and go find that Seamus guy.”