Adam of Albion (3 page)

When
Adam opened his eyes, he spent a few confused seconds not knowing where he was.
Then it all started to come back.

The
bedside clock read 11:44 P.M. The old house was quiet except for a few creaks
and rustles, and the metronome ticking of the big grandfather clock at the end
of the hall. Outside the windows, the night was just as still.

So
why did he think he’d been awakened by a faint moaning sound like wind?

He
must have dreamed it, he thought. But he lay very still, just in case it came
again.

And
there
—a
few seconds later, it did.

But
it wasn’t really like wind. It was more like—a sob. Soft, quiet, but piercing
right into him.

And
while it wasn’t hard to hear, it seemed to be somehow, well, small.

He
stayed absolutely still, barely breathing and listening hard. The sound rose
every minute or so, quavering sadly for a few seconds, then dying off again.

Weirdest
of all—he could tell by now that it was coming from under his bed.

He
didn’t have any trouble remembering what was there.

Slowly
and quietly, Adam slid off the bed and knelt on the floor. His groping hand
found one of the backpack’s straps, and he eased it to him until it was in a
sliver of moonlight filtering in through the window.

He
let it sit there for a good minute, listening hard. But the sobbing sound had
stopped cold.

Adam
swallowed hard, then inched open the pack’s zipper. Way down in a bottom
corner, he could just see the lump that had banged against his back on the
bike.

It
looked like a rock—pretty much the same as the rock Jason had used as a decoy.
Cautiously, he slipped his hand inside and touched it. It felt like a rock,
too, rough and solid.

His fingers
closed around it and he lifted it out.

It
was
a rock. There was no doubt about it—just a plain old ordinary rock.

He
was hit by sudden panic that almost made him dizzy. He’d made a terrible
mistake—he’d been so scared and frazzled in the old church, he’d goofed and
somehow ended up with the decoy rock instead of the real thing.

But
no—he’d seen the woman throw the other one against the wall, heard her scream
at the gunman for failing.

And
then she’d shot him.

He
took a couple of deep breaths, getting hold of himself—something he was
starting to get used to. He
had
heard that sobbing sound, and it was
coming from the pack, and there was nothing else in there.

He
stood up, taking the rock to the window for better light. As he examined it
more closely, he noticed that maybe it wasn’t quite an ordinary rock, after
all. The surface was cool, but his fingertips seemed to feel a subtle warmth
coming from the core. It seemed heavier than it should be, not like steel or
lead, but like it had its own gravity.

Then,
as he turned it slowly in his hands, he realized that it was shaped like a
miniature human head.

He
even thought he could see a face. The nose, mouth, and ears were rough like the
rest of the surface but in exactly the right places, and so were two small
ovals that could have been eyes, although they were dark and blank.

Adam
touched his index fingertip to the nose, and very lightly, rubbed it. The rough
rock surface started crumbling like sandstone, revealing what looked and felt
like smooth skin. Then he remembered what the gunman had said when he’d pulled
the rock out of Adam’s pack:
So you’re in disguise, my little friend—we’ll
get you cleaned up soon enough.

Adam
tugged loose a corner of bedsheet and used it to rub off more of the grit,
gently and carefully cleaning it away.

With
every swipe it became clearer—a man’s head, intricately fashioned, perfectly
proportioned, and disguised as a rock!

Suddenly,
he understood why Jason had stopped at the heads on the graveyard crosses. He
was trying to hide this one where it would look just like all the others.

Adam
stared at it in wonder. The face looked ancient and young at the same
time—handsome, even noble, with shell-shaped ears, a bit of slant to the eyes,
a long straight nose, and a slightly cleft chin. The skin was dark, a weird
shade that wasn’t human or really even a color, but more like it was blending
in with the gloomy room around it. There was about an inch of neck, solid and
smooth on the bottom. The skull was capped by curls like you saw on Greek and
Roman statues, which softened to the feel of human hair as Adam brushed the
grit out.

But
except for the very faint warmth he could feel, it seemed lifeless.

Heed
the head.
Was that really what Jason
had said? If it was, did that mean it could talk?

Or—he
thought with sudden sick suspicion—was this all a colossal joke being played on
him? Jason hadn’t been shot at all, the whole thing was just a show, and the
head was some kind of toy like a doll that could cry.

But
who would go to that kind of trouble? Especially over Adam?

Well,
whatever it was, he figured he might as well try talking to it. If he made a
fool of himself, at least there was no one else here to see.

Kneeling
on the floor, he cradled it in both his palms and held it in front of his face.

“Can
you hear me?” he whispered.

Not
a twitch.

“Do
you have a name?” Adam tried.

No
luck with that, either.

He
kept staring at it, racking his brain for what to do. Then something obvious
occurred to him. The sound he’d heard was sobbing, right?

“You’re
sad, aren’t you?” he whispered. “I know what that’s like.”

It
almost seemed like he felt the head make a tiny quiver! He held his breath—but
nothing else happened. He’d probably just imagined it.

“Come
on, maybe I can help,” Adam went on softly. “Why were you crying?”

Quick
as a lightning flash, the eyes filled with a golden blaze and stared back at
him! The look was fierce, intense—and
mad.

“Crying?!”
the head demanded furiously, with the nose emitting a moist snort of outrage
that misted Adam’s chin. “
Crying?
Why, you scurrilous young rodent, you
sniveling child—you dare to accuse
me
of crying?”

“YAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
Adam yelled—so shocked and scared that before he could stop himself, his hands
tossed the head up in the air like it was red hot.

He
scuttled frantically backwards on his butt, gasping like a big-mouth bass,
while the head thumped on the floor and bounced away under the bed.

Dizzily,
Adam decided that he was still dreaming. That explained it—this was one of
those dreams within a dream where you kept thinking you woke up and everything
was normal again, except then it turned out to be stranger than ever.

Which
was exactly what happened. The head was still as mad as a swatted hornet, and
it kept right on fuming at him from under the bed.

“Oh,
so then you just toss me aside, with absolutely no concern for my feelings, let
alone my brain-pan,” it roared. “Young varlet! Cretin! Ye gods and demons, what
have you done to me, thrusting me into the palsied hands of an idiot boy?”

Adam
tried the old trick of pinching himself, hard. He felt it, all right. The dream
theory was wavering.

The
voice, somewhat muffled now by the thick hanging comforter, was small like the sobs
had been—but at the same time rich and deep, like an actor booming out lines in
a Shakespeare play. Between that and Adam’s own yell a few seconds ago, there
was plenty enough noise to wake somebody up. Dream or not, he figured he’d
better play it safe and clamp the lid on.

“Shhhh,”
he hissed, dropping flat on his belly and lifting the comforter. “We’ve got to
be quiet.”

The
head shut up, although whether because it was going along with him or now it
was giving him the silent treatment, was anybody’s guess.

Adam
lay still for several seconds, listening hard in case someone was coming. But
the old house slept on under its blanket of calm.

He
looked under the bed again. It was really dark in there. He could barely make
out a few shapes that might have been the head, or some really buff dust
bunnies—he couldn’t tell.

“Look,
I don’t know what’s going on,” he whispered. “I—”

Ouch!—there
was a sudden stab of pain in his right earlobe! It stung like a horsefly bite
and he instinctively started to swat at it. But he caught himself. Horseflies
didn’t feel as heavy as a bowling ball hanging from your ear, and they didn’t
growl at you like an insane hummingbird.

The
head had snuck up on him and attacked!

Adam
managed to keep his cool. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear—I was just
scared. I want to help, I really do.”

“Nnnrrrrggghhh.”
It shook his earlobe like a terrier worrying a bone, slapping against his
cheek.

“Come
on, we can’t do this,” Adam pleaded. “If anybody else sees you, we’re screwed.
Let’s at least talk, and if you’re still mad, you can bite me again.”

The
head hovered there a few more seconds, but then grudgingly let go and thumped
back to the floor. It glared up at Adam through narrowed eyes.

“Truce—for
now,” it muttered.

“Is
it okay if I pick you up again, so we don’t have to stay here on the floor?”
Adam asked, and added hastily, “I’ll be really careful from now on.”

The
head gave a curt nod, chin bobbing down on its stub of neck and almost touching
the floor. Adam gingerly cupped it in his hands and set it on the bed, then sat
crosslegged facing it.

Doing
his best to ignore the fact that he was about to have a conversation with a
miniature head that not only talked, but had an amazing vocabulary for chewing
people out, he decided the best way to start would be to smooth its ruffled
feelings.

“I’m
sorry I had to carry you in that pack,” Adam said. “I didn’t have any choice.”

“Well,
I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I’ve had worse rides,” it answered grumpily. “Try
spending sixty-seven years as a gilt eagle head on the prow of a Roman war
galley. Especially when you’re seasick the whole time.”

Adam
felt his mouth gaping open again. A Roman war galley? He was pretty sure there
hadn’t been any of those around since, well, the Roman Empire. And how could
you be seasick if you didn’t have a stomach?

He
decided to let that go. “We should probably introduce ourselves. I’m Adam
Keane, from Montana.”

The
head somehow managed to preen itself grandiosely, like a politician stretching
to his full height as he stepped up to deliver a speech. Even though it didn’t
have a body, it
acted
like it did, Adam was starting to realize.

“Since
great antiquity, I have been known by many names,” it intoned. “I am the
Apotheosis of Algorithms, the Brandisher of Benevolence, the Consummation of
Cerebration, the Decimator of Demagoguery, the—”

Adam
stared, fascinated. Man, this little guy did not suffer from low self-esteem!
The routine sounded well practiced and like it could go on for quite some
time—all the way through the alphabet, for sure.

He
cleared his throat politely. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s a lot I want
to know about you, and we don’t have much time tonight—how about if we save all
that for later and you just give me one name for now? Something short that I can
pronounce?”

The
head subsided, obviously a little miffed at having its act shut down.

“Very
well—I bow to the exigencies of the moment,” it said, with the noble and
slightly tragic air of taking one for the team. “You may call me—Orpheus!”

“Like,
the
Orpheus?” Adam said excitedly. Orpheus had been a famous musician in
ancient Greece, and he’d done a lot more besides—sailed with the Argonauts on
the Quest for the Golden Fleece, and tried to rescue his girlfriend from the
realm of death itself.

That
Orpheus had a body. But then, Adam remembered, he’d been torn apart by a bunch
of crazy women—and his head had lived on! Was this
it?
If it was, he’d
either been a lot smaller than Adam had imagined or his head had shrunk
somehow.

This
Orpheus sighed, now looking nostalgic. “No, that was another chap. I knew him,
of course—taught him everything he knew about music. But the Greeks started
spinning their legends and got the two of us confused. If there’s one thing
I’ve learned over the past thousands of years, it’s that you can’t trust a poet
for a straight story.

“I
got along fine with the Greeks, all in all—wonderful taste in art and
architecture, very sharp in mathematics, and pretty fair wine, considering the
times. But their imagination tended to run wild, and in the end they were too
dramatic for their own good.

“Anyway,
let’s just say I’m the original Orpheus. You’ve probably heard some garbled
stories.”

“But
you’ve really been around that long?” Adam said.

Orpheus
snorted, like, Are you kidding? “I could write a book,” he declared.

Once
again, it started to dawn on Adam how insane this conversation was, and again
he pushed the thought firmly aside.

“So—I
don’t mean to pry, but—are you, like, a cyborg?” he asked.

Orpheus
frowned. “That’s not a word I’ve ever heard.”

How
could anybody not know what a cyborg was? Hadn’t he ever seen a
Terminator
movie?

“It’s
a lot like a human, but it’s really kind of part computer, part robot,” Adam
said.

“Never
heard of those, either.” He was starting to look miffed again, and Adam
realized what the problem was. Orpheus was something of a know-it-all, and he
wasn’t happy about somebody else—especially a mere boy—having the edge on him.

“I’ve
been asleep for a while,” Orpheus went on. “Since the French Revolution, to be
more precise.” His eyes narrowed dramatically. “
That
was a wild time,
let me tell you—heads rolling all over the place, I was just one of the crowd.

“But
tonight, I woke up—I don’t know how or why. Anyway, I’ve missed everything
since then and whenever now is.”

Asleep
since the French Revolution? That made Rip Van Winkle’s twenty years seem like
a catnap!

“Maybe
we can get you online,” Adam said. “You can learn everything there.”

Orpheus
scowled, and Adam almost bit his tongue. He’d screwed up again! Obviously, Orpheus
wouldn’t know what the Internet was, either.

“Look,
I’m not trying to show off, honest—I know you’re a lot smarter than I am,” Adam
said hastily. “Those are just things that people talk about all the time these
days. We need to get you caught up.”

Orpheus
nodded, a little gruffly, but seeming mollified.

“Let’s
start with the basics,” he said, glancing around the room. “Where are we?”

“It’s
called Blackthorn Manor. In Cornwall, England.”

“Cornwall,
is it?” Orpheus’s voice took on a tone of fond musing. “Lovely place, and very
mysterious. Spent some time questin’ for the Holy Grail here, back when. Never
did find it, but got to know the locals quite well. Always makes me remember
Tristan and Isolde—nice young couple, but a sad story. He had to sail away
without her, and never came back.”

A
faint shadow of doubt was starting to creep into Adam’s mind as to whether
Orpheus might be stretching the truth somewhat. First ancient Greece and Rome, then
the French Revolution, and now the Holy Grail? That was a lot to buy.

Then,
without warning, Orpheus began to sing—a melody that was hauntingly beautiful,
enhanced by his rich baritone voice.

“
The
water is wiiiiiiide, I cannot get o’er;

“And
neither have I-I wings to-oo flyyyy—

“Give
me a-a booat, that will carr-yyy twooo,

“And
both shall row, my love and I-I-I.
”

Adam
was knocked out! Even if Orpheus was a fibber, he sure could sing!

But
suddenly, the melodious voice stopped as sharply as if it was cut off by an
axe. Orpheus’s eyes flared with alarm, staring at something across the room.

Adam
spun toward it.

An
opening was appearing in the wall—just like in an old spooky movie, a bookcase
sliding silently aside to reveal a dark, narrow passageway.

And
sitting on the floor just inside was a girl, dressed entirely in black, with
her knees tucked up to her chin and her head resting on her folded arms. Her
eyes were closed, she had a dreamy smile on her pale oval face—

And
her long, wild hair seemed to float around her like a cloud of moonlight.

She
opened her eyes and raised her head.

“Oh,
drat,” Artemis said. “These bloody clumsy boots. I must have hit the button by
mistake.”