Adam of Albion (6 page)

Adam
didn’t need an alarm clock to know it was time to get up—Barry came barging
through his door at 9 A.M.

“Yo,
dorko, this is your lucky day,” he chortled. “You’re about to meet the freak.”

Now
that Adam had met Artemis, he bristled at hearing Barry call her that again.
The way he used the term was nasty in itself, and completely unfair to her.
True, Artemis wasn’t exactly normal, but normal was completely overrated. 

Adam
threw a pillow weakly in Barry’s direction, but remembered, as he clawed his
way out of his deep sleep, that he had to play this cool—like he hadn’t yet
even seen her.

“Who?”
he said, stumbling out of bed. “Oh, you mean your cousin?”

“No,
idiot—I mean look in a mirror. Who else besides my cousin?”

Barry
had a point. There were no other kids around, and although the grownups were
weird in their own ways, you wouldn’t think of them as freaks.

Adam
rummaged around in his duffle for fresh jeans and a sweatshirt to replace last
night’s dirt-stained duds, and managed to come up with some that were wrinkled
but at least clean. While he pulled them on, Barry made his usual tour through
Adam’s stuff, treating it like it was his own.

And
with the kind of radar that Barry seemed to have for anything that Adam wanted
to keep private, he spotted a strap from Adam’s backpack—which was really
Jason’s
backpack—sticking out from under the bed. Adam tensed for a second as Barry
grabbed it and started messing around with it, but luckily, Orpheus was safely
hidden in the secret passageway.

“Where’d
you get this pack?” Barry demanded.

“What
do you mean? I’ve had it all along.”

“Get
off it, liar. The other one has that stupid logo.”

Oh,
no!
Adam hadn’t thought about that or even noticed the difference. Both packs were
black nylon and the same size, but Adam’s was emblazoned with a wolf head, his
high school mascot emblem, while Jason’s was blank. It was also better quality,
Adam realized, with the look of being specially made.

Which
was exactly the  kind of thing Barry would notice—he was keenly aware of
things like brand names, always checking out other people’s possessions and
comparing them to his own. There was no use trying to convince him that he was
mistaken.

“I
kept it in my duffel so I’d have an extra, just in case,” Adam bluffed. “Good
thing I did—my other one got torn up when we dumped the bike last night.”

Barry
gave him a suspicious glance, wondering how Adam had managed to keep it hidden
from him. But his attention stayed on the pack as he checked it out, somewhat
jealously. It
was
pretty cool looking.

“What’s
the brand? I’ve never seen one like it,” Barry said.

“I
don’t know,” Adam muttered. “My dad bought it for me.”

To
his relief, Barry tossed the pack aside, bored with it as quickly as he’d
gotten interested.

“Come
on, I’m starving,” he urged, not that Adam needed any pushing—the breakfasts
here at Blackthorn Manor were great.

The
two boys half-ran through the long stretch of hallway, then down the stately,
curving main staircase, which seemed five times as big as it needed to be, like
everything else in this house. It made Adam feel like a dwarf, and with the
grownups gone on their drive along the coast, it was even emptier than usual.
On Sunday mornings, the cook set out breakfast and then took the rest of the
day off, and so did the butler and Reg. The only one left was Sophie, the
kindly maid, who would stay long enough to clean up and then go home, too.

The
morning was foggy and chilly, and the huge stone fireplace in the drawing room
was lit with a roaring blaze. They hurried on past it to the dining room, where
a sideboard was loaded with thick slabs of bacon and sausages called bangers,
fluffy scrambled eggs with cheese, scones and crumpets, and tea with sugar and
rich cream.

And
there at the table sat Artemis, picking at a bowl of fruit and cereal. She
looked as calm as if this was just like any other ordinary morning, and she was
going shopping or to school.

“Hullo,
Barry—lovely to see you again. And you must be Adam,” she said, offering her
hand politely. Her regal manners clashed somewhat with her repeat of last
night’s outfit, black ripped up skinny jeans and long tee.

Adam’s
own manners weren’t so refined, and things were a lot different in Montana than
in England, but his mother had taught him the basics. He took her hand, bowing
slightly, and told her it was nice to meet her.

Barry
watched it all with an expression of disdain—but Adam noticed that he wasn’t
making any snide remarks about Artemis to her face. After seeing her in action
last night, it was easy to understand why—she’d verbally skewer Barry so
thoroughly he’d end up like a pincushion, and no doubt he knew that from
experience.

Adam
noticed that Artemis not only ate like a bird but she seemed to be a
vegetarian. But the two boys piled their plates high with the luscious food. He
wasn’t just starving—he was dying to get breakfast over with so he and Artemis
and Orpheus could pick up where they’d left off last night.

Then,
as they slid into their chairs, they realized that the morning’s local
newspaper was spread out in front of their places.

Violence
Erupts at Watching Druids Concert,
the main headline read, and beneath that, a subhead:
Several injured in
Dearth-head near riot—rumors of gunfire.

The
headlines were circled in red ink, and accompanied by a stern note from
Artemis’s father, Lord Geoffrey: “Hope this makes it clear to you lads why you
weren’t allowed to attend this debacle. Bunch of hooligans—shameful! High time
for you to learn that adults aren’t
always
wrong.”

Adam
worked on swallowing a lump in his throat that was becoming familiar. At least
Geoffrey wasn’t here to lecture them in person—the note was plenty bad enough.
Barry scuttled into his seat and started eating, keeping his gaze on his
plate—probably afraid that Artemis would see right through him.

“I
think that’s rather unfair of Daddy—of course you two never even went near that
place, now did you?” she said innocently.

“How
could we?” Barry muttered through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “It’s miles
from here.”

“Precisely—it
would have been impossible unless you’d had some kind of motorized
transportation.”

Barry’s
fork froze in place halfway to his mouth.

“But
I’m sure you never gave it a thought, anyway. Oh, well,” she added with a sigh,
“sometimes we just have to put up with the P’s, same as they do with us.”

Adam
figured she was deliberately making Barry nervous so he wouldn’t want to hang
around with them this morning. But it made him nervous, too. He didn’t see any
way for those thugs to find them—they hadn’t even known that the boys were
there, besides which there’d been thousands of other young people wandering
around—but he still didn’t like thinking about it.

Nobody
talked during the rest of breakfast, which only took a couple of minutes
because Barry and Adam were shoveling it away as fast as they could and Artemis
was barely eating at all. When they finished, they took their plates to the
kitchen to rinse and leave for Sophie.

As
Barry forged ahead, Artemis held back and caught Adam’s eye. “Remember, play
along,” she whispered. He nodded.

“Well,
cousin and guest, any special plans for the day?” she said, with a bright
smile. “Because I could really use some help—the stable where I keep my horse
needs to be mucked out. It’s not the most pleasant job, but with three of us it
shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

Barry’s
face got an expression like somebody was trying to hand him a hot brick.

“Sorry—I’m
not feeling well,” he mumbled.

“Really?
It didn’t seem to affect your appetite.”

“It’s
not my stomach, it’s my back.”

Right,
Adam thought. He knew older men who really did have bad backs, usually from
years of hard work at things like ranching or logging. But this was the first
time he’d ever heard Barry mention it.

“I don’t
mind helping,” Adam said. “I do it at home all the time.”

“Lovely,”
she said. “Barry, you’ll probably want to spend the day studying in our library
as usual. What’s your current passion—philosophy, history, literature?”

“Yeah,
you bet, that’s exactly where I’ll be.” Then, like a naughty child, he threw
out the taunt, “
Artie,
” and dashed away up the stairs.

She
shook her head with adult resignation. “He thinks it nettles me when he calls
me that. I don’t quite have the heart to tell him I don’t mind it. I really
feel kind of sorry for him. He’s unhappy, deep down, and he tries to cover it
with all that blustering and sneering.”

Adam
thought exactly the same thing—although seeing as how Barry had just about
everything a kid could possibly want, it was hard to feel
too
sorry for
him. Anyway, they wouldn’t have to worry about him for a few hours—he’d hole up
in his room with TV and video games, and avoid the work like the black plague.

“So
are we really going to the stable?” Adam asked, lowering his voice in case
Sophie was somewhere nearby.

“Yes,
but don’t worry, it’s clean—the horse has been out to pasture for weeks,” she
whispered back. “Meet me in the front garden in a few minutes. I’ll bring our
little friend.” They reached the top of the stairs and split off to their own
rooms.

Then,
as Adam was stepping into his, he was startled by Barry poking his head out of
the door across the hall.

“See
what I mean about her being a freak?” he demanded.

“No,
I don’t,” Adam said coolly. “And quit calling her that, okay? Just because
somebody’s got brains and doesn’t dress like a cheerleader, that doesn’t make
them a freak.”

“Yeah,
sure—one freak sticking up for another,” Barry said sarcastically. “You two
should get along fine—we’ll have a regular freak
show
around here.”

Adam
tried to follow Artemis’s example and not get mad, although it wasn’t easy. He
shrugged and started to turn away.

But
then Barry surprised him again, this time in a way that Adam never would have
expected in a million years.

“You’re
good with girls and I’m not,” Barry said, suddenly redfaced—then ducked back
into his room and slammed the door.

Adam
hurried down to the back garden and got there just as Artemis was coming out of
the house. She’d put on a wool shawl against the chill—black, of course—which
spread around her like wings and gave her a vaguely raven-like look. The two of
them started walking toward the stable, a hundred yards or so from the main
house.

As
soon as they were sure they were out of view, she opened her oversized tote bag
and lifted up Orpheus, setting him in a pouch just inside the top rim. He gave
Adam an affable nod and squinted around at the foggy morning, seeming in a good
mood.

“How’s
it going with the Internet, Orpheus?” Adam asked, thinking that might have something
to do with it. He was right.

“Plodding
along, plodding along—that’s
it
doing the plodding, not me,” Orpheus
bragged, and explained that he’d quickly figured out how to bypass Adam’s
netbook and connect himself online directly, wireless. He
was
a supercomputer,
after all.

“I’ve
just about absorbed the contents,” he went on. “There’s not much I didn’t
already know anyway, except in the last couple of centuries. And there’s a lot
I know that it doesn’t, I don’t mind saying,” he added—obviously, not minding
it a bit.

Adam
and Artemis both blinked in astonishment.

“You
absorbed
the whole Internet in, like, a few hours?” Adam said.

“I’d
have done it in, like, a few seconds except it’s so slow to download.”

The
kids exchanged glances, rolling their eyes. With Orpheus already tossing out
terms like “download,” what came next?  He’d start calling them “dog?”

Suddenly,
Artemis drew in her breath in a little gasp, with her head swinging sharply to
stare out across the field ahead.

“Oh,
dear—
duck,
Orph, quick!” she hissed.

With
survival instincts honed fine over thousands of years and countless narrow
escapes, Orpheus didn’t either ask why or try to see for himself—he dove down
into the tote so fast he actually seemed to vaporize.

A
figure had appeared out of the fog, walking toward them—a woman, tall and
spare, with long iron-gray hair. She was dressed in an ankle-length robe or
cloak, and she carried a gnarled, polished walking stick like an Irish
shillelagh.

“She’s
known as Rainy Jane, because she’s always out walking the countryside, even if
it’s pouring,” Artemis whispered. “Some of the older people believe she has
powers—second sight, healing, that sort of thing. They don’t exactly call her a
witch, although it’s what they think. But she’s never harmed anyone—only
helped. And—well, this is silly, but some even think she’s friendly with the
little folk.”

“Little
folk?” Adam whispered back, gazing wide-eyed at the stately apparition coming
toward them. Rainy Jane didn’t appear to be hurrying, but she was covering the
ground fast.

“Oh,
you know—fairies, elves, like that. I must say, I find it rather hard to
believe in them—but then, who’d believe in Orpheus unless they saw him?”

Some
connection was tugging at Adam’s brain, trying to get his attention. But before
it could, Rainy Jane was within speaking distance.

“Good
morning, Miss Jane,” Artemis said—respectfully, and even a little timidly. It
was easy to see why. The older woman wasn’t exactly fierce looking, but there
was something about her steady gaze that made you want to be very careful not
to say anything stupid. She wasn’t pretty, but not ugly, either—not at all like
a wrinkled old crone with a hooked nose and long chin. But she was definitely
unusual looking, with a face that was all planes and angles, like skin
stretched over bones. The rest of her almost seemed composed of the elements,
with her cloak a blend of the muted grays, greens, and browns of the fields,
and even her eyes the same color as the fog.

“Hello,
my dears,” she answered. “Fine morning for a walk.”

Artemis
and Adam nodded agreement, although his idea of fine weather wasn’t exactly the
same. Rainy Jane probably meant anything this side of an all-out blizzard.

Then
things got weird. No—weird
er.

Rainy
Jane turned and raised her walking stick, pointing west toward the coast, and a
little north—precisely in the direction of the Watching Druids concert last
night.

“Do
you know why those great stones face the western sea?” she said. “It was there
MaelTarna lay, and the stones here and the stones there called the tidings back
and forth.”

MaelTarna!
That was the place where Orpheus had been created—an ancient land that sank
into the sea. Neither of the kids had ever heard of it before last night—even
Artemis, who’d lived here all her life and knew all the legends and lore.

But
now Rainy Jane was talking about it as matter-of-factly as if it was a village
down the road—and saying that stones like the Watching Druids were like a
telephone system, sending messages back and forth.

Her
steady gaze didn’t change as she watched their surprise. It took Adam a couple
of seconds to absorb what she’d said, and he just had time to start wondering
why
she’d said it—it didn’t seem possible that she’d just shown up here by
coincidence, and picked a topic like MaelTarna out of the blue. But then she
spoke again.

“The
night that you were born, child—the spring rite of Beltane—I heard the stones
singing,” she said to Artemis. Then she turned her gaze to Adam. “They sang for
you, too, young voyager from the land of mountains and ice—just half the year
before her, when Samhain leads autumn into winter.”

This
time, Adam was so stunned his hair almost stood on end, and he saw Artemis’s
mouth drop open. He didn’t know what Beltane or Samhain were, or the date of
her birthday. But his was November 1, and if you had to pick a time when fall
started really making the turn toward winter, that was a pretty good call, at
least in Montana.

Where
there were plenty of mountains and ice.

But
the other thing Rainy Jane had said—that the great stones were
singing
when both kids were born—that was beyond mind-boggling!

Artemis
managed to recover herself enough to talk, although her voice had a tremor in
it.

“What
does that mean, Miss Jane?”

The
older woman’s face seemed to soften a little, with sympathy—or worry.

“It
means you have more journeys ahead, my dears,” she said gently. “The stones
have been singing again. Seek out the thin spots—like the field where the
Watching Druids stand.”

Then,
without another word, she turned and walked back the way she’d come. The kids
stared after her as her shape faded into the fog.

“Were
you really born on Samhain—the day after Halloween?” Artemis asked
breathlessly.

Adam
nodded, still feeling dazed. “Yeah—what is Samhain?”

“An
ancient Celtic festival. So is Beltane, May first—and she’s right about that,
too. You’re exactly six months older, and we’re exact astrological opposites.”
She frowned. “I can see how she’d know
my
birthday, with both her and me
living right here. But how would she know yours?”

“Maybe
she Googled us.”

“Somehow
I don’t think so,” Artemis said. “Could it be true? That she does have second
sight, and the stones really did sing?”

“But
why for us—just because we were born on those days? A lot of other kids must
have been, too,” Adam said. He was thinking uneasily about the worry he’d
sensed in Rainy Jane’s face—and getting the feeling that the reason she’d come
here was to warn them about something, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them
what. Just saying they had more traveling to do didn’t help much.

“Let’s
ask Mr. Know-It-All,” Artemis said, opening the tote bag and peering inside.
“You can come up now, Orpheus.”

“Are
you sure?” sounded a small, suspicious voice.

“Quite
sure.” She reached inside, rummaging around, and found him burrowed under a
packet of tissues. He’d turned himself as dark as the bag’s interior, but when
she lifted him up to the pouch again, he quickly started taking on the color of
the misty outside air.

“You
must have heard what Rainy Jane said—what do you think?” Artemis asked.

Orpheus
didn’t look happy, probably because he was back in a position where he didn’t
have all the answers.

“Yes,
well, very interesting,” he muttered—trying to dodge the issue, it sounded like
to Adam. “I can hardly believe she knows the name MaelTarna—it faded away so
long ago, I haven’t heard anybody else use it for a couple of thousand years.
As for the stones, I just don’t know—like I told you, I was kept in a
laboratory, completely out of touch with the outside world, until the place
sank.”

“Do
you think she
could
have second sight?” Artemis asked, as they started
walking toward the stable again. “Do you believe in it? Psychic powers, magic,
all that?”

“Most
of what people call magic is one of two things—pure hokum or science they don’t
understand,” Orpheus said promptly, with the tone of starting a lecture. “Go
back to early times and even simple technology, like gunpowder, seemed magical.
And remember, science didn’t really take hold in any big way until a few
centuries ago.

“Even
a genius like Galileo—he was a little on the crotchety side, but a good
heart—if he saw a computer accessing photos from the Hubbell telescope millions
of miles out in space, what would his first thought be? Angels and demons!
Suppose my old pal Will Shakesepeare walked into a Cineplex 20 with
Surround-Sound and 3-D? It could only be a miracle. Whereas we, my young human
pets, realize that it’s science.”

Pets?
That had the same ring as boy. But Adam let it go—it was just Orpheus preening
and getting a little snooty. There was no use getting mad about it every time
it happened, because it was going to happen a lot.

“But—”
Orpheus let the word hover dramatically for a few seconds— “that doesn’t mean I
just dismiss magic out of hand. I’ve seen too many strange things that even my
intellect can’t explain rationally.” His eyebrows knitted together darkly and
his voice dropped to a hush. “Like when I was working as an advisor to King
Saul, and he insisted on having the Witch of Endor raise the prophet Samuel’s
ghost. I tried to talk him out of it. ‘You’re not going to like the message,’ I
warned him.

“But
did he listen? Oh,
noohhh
—like so many other humans who thought they
were so superior to me just because they had arms and legs, as if
that
had anything to do with it—”

He
was practically sputtering with indignation by the time they got to the stable.

“Yes,
of course, we understand—but here we are,” Artemis interrupted soothingly.
“Let’s all get back on task, shall we?”