The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere (13 page)

The English Channel

Zach didn’t know which was harder to believe, that Bill had risked his life for love, or that Caitlin left him standing in the lab with only two handfuls of sand to show for it.

She wanted them to leave right away, but Lizbeth begged her to stop by the onboard laundry room so they could get their own clothes.  Caitlin waited outside while they hurriedly changed; Zach and Kevin in the laundry room proper, and Lizbeth behind an open closet door.

Zach raised his eyebrows at Kevin.  “Do you believe what he did?”

“What he
thinks
he did.”

“He must really love her.”

“Can you imagine loving someone enough to die for them?” Kevin asked.

Zach thought of Lizbeth and almost said yes, but balked.  He didn’t love her; he hadn’t known her long enough.  No, he was just fascinated with her because she was different, like him.  He said, “Nope.”

Lizbeth appeared from behind the door, expression haughty.  “Oh, really?”

Zach hadn’t yet put on his shirt, but he didn’t think she was in the mood to appreciate his sculpted chest and abs, so he quickly pulled it over his head.  He offered her a grin and replied, “It’s hard to imagine something you’ve never experienced.”

“You’ve never been in love?”

Pleased that he’d so effortlessly distracted her, he let his gaze linger on her face for a moment before saying, “Not yet.”

Her shoulders relaxed a bit.  “Neither have I.”

“Hurry up,” Kevin said in a gruff voice.  He joined Caitlin in the corridor, followed by Lizbeth.

On the way out, Zach noticed the wad of paper he’d pulled out of his pocket the night before.  He’d set the sopping wet pages of
The Gossamer’s
crew manifest on top of the dryer before tossing his pants in the washer.  Even though he supposed the ink had melted away and the pages would be stuck together like a lump of paper mâché, he reached for it on the way out.  In the heat of the laundry room, it had dried into a solid clump.

Bill was nowhere in sight when they descended the ladder to board a motorized yacht not unlike the one Zach had tried to convince Lizbeth to steal from the marina.  After detaching the mooring lines, they went down into the cabin.  It was paneled from floor to ceiling in a rich, dark wood and had been designed to fit all the amenities of home into a very small space.

Caitlin took the helm and started the powerful motor.  Zach noticed she had a key. 

“There’s food in the cooler,” she said.

Lizbeth beat them to the mini-refrigerator and handed out a six-pack of soda and several prepackaged deli sandwiches.  Conversation was light as Zach and Lizbeth devoured the meal.  Kevin didn’t eat much.

Replete, Zach leaned against the cushions backing the bench seat and looked out one of the narrow rectangular portals.  The yacht was moving at a rapid clip, hugging the coastline.

“Where are we going?” Lizbeth asked.

“To see a friend,” Caitlin replied.  She twisted around and said to Kevin, “Let me see it.”

Zach wasn’t surprised Caitlin knew about the iridium.  In the lab, he’d been certain Caitlin and Kevin were communicating telepathically.  What would have been amazing and unbelievable to him a week ago, he now took in stride.

When Kevin stood in the swaying cabin to show Caitlin the lump of metal in his pocket, instead of holding it out to her, he slapped his hand over his mouth and made a sound like, “Urgle.”

Caitlin pointed.  “The head’s there.”

Kevin nodded vigorously and rushed into the tiny bathroom.  The noise of the motor and the drumming of the waves against the hull almost blocked out the sounds he produced.  Zach looked at Lizbeth and they both started laughing.  It provided a much-needed release from some of the strain they’d been under, but he felt bad for doing it.  Which kind of surprised him.

Lizbeth stopped snickering first.  “Poor Kevin.”

With mild censure, Caitlin said, “His people were miners.  He’s someone you’ll want to have with you if you’re ever in a cave.”

Rather than putting a damper on their merriment, the statement set Zach and Lizbeth off again.  By the time Kevin came out, though, looking sheepish and rather green, they were inspecting what was left of
The Gossamer’s
crew manifest.  Lizbeth’s nimble fingers had separated the pages, revealing two dozen or so still-legible names.  Zach hoped he’d have access to a computer wherever they were going so he could research the names, even though the chance any of them meant anything was slim.

Caitlin slowed the engine and turned the steering wheel toward the rocky coast.  “I need to understand something.  Why didn’t you stay with Simon, as I asked?”

Zach said slowly, “Be-cause he told us to leave.  Told us you’d been ‘taken’ and that we had to hide.”

She looked over her shoulder with the faintest trace of bewilderment.  “Exactly what did he tell you?”

“That’s pretty much it, but Len told us-”

“
Len
?”

“Yeah,” Zach said, not sure by her reaction if she knew him or not.  “Horizontally challenged?  Raven for a pet?”

“Where did you meet him?”  She fired the question at him.

“Simon told us to go to his pub.  Len took us to London in his toy car.”

Caitlin abruptly shifted into neutral, letting the engine idle as she left the helm.  She stood before them without speaking for a moment, eyes shifting around as if chasing her thoughts. 

Finally she sighed and said quietly, “Simon reveals his true affiliations.  I’m surprised they didn’t kill you.”

Zach suppressed a flash of dread.  “Who is he?  Len.”

She took a deep breath.  “He’s Guild.  During the centuries when the church held Inquisitions, if the folk weren’t careful enough, they were caught and accused of heresy.  Torture was often sanctioned.  When one of us was clapped in irons, confessions were obtained.  The existence of the crown became known.  Members of the Guild continue to this day to hunt us down.  They profess to want to keep the crown out of the wrong hands.  I had a run-in with Len soon after Bill and I began our salvage efforts on Titanic.  Suffice it to say, if Simon sent you to Len, he’s no friend of mine.”

“So this Guild wants the same thing as you.  To protect the crown,” Lizbeth said.

“No.  I was its guardian, to make sure it didn’t fall into the hands of someone like, say, Hitler.  The Guild wanted to remove the crown from
anyone’s
influence.  They would destroy it, if they knew how.”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Lizbeth said.  “The gossamer sphere crashed into the earth, right?  Sounds like it’s not that easy to destroy.”

“There is one element that the biometal is vulnerable to.  It’s why I presumed the sphere was meant to strike a different planet in our solar system.  This planet is rife with it.”

Zach thought about high school chemistry.  He’d done poorly memorizing the periodic table of elements.  He’d been too busy doodling pictures in the margins during class.  If his teacher had tested him on mythology and fairy tales, he would have gotten an “A.”  There was only one element fabled to injure mythical creatures; the main element presumed to be at the core of the earth, and the one Caitlin told them iridium was attracted to.

“It’s why they talked under torture instead of shapeshifting and escaping,” he said.  “Chains are forged out of iron.”

Caitlin nodded.  “Yes.  It prevents the biometal from joining the grid, effectively containing it, and it disrupts the abilities the biometal gifted us with.  Chained, we cannot shift, we cannot read minds.  The Guild knows it hurts us.  Whether there is some way to use iron against the crown itself, I do not know, and I pray it has not already been accomplished.”

Caitlin sat back in the drivers’ seat and reached for the controls, but Kevin asked, “So today, when we—talked—how did that work?”

“Just like the sphere controls the earth’s magnetic gossamers,” Caitlin replied, “we simply harness the magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain.  I’ve tested it using an MEG, a magnetoencephalography machine, on my own head.  Most people have very weak fields that can be measured with MEG.  Mine were more like the gossamers, stretching as far as ten meters, reaching out towards my assistant’s head.  When I read his mind, the MEG showed my magnetic fields merging with his.”

She shifted out of neutral and eased the throttle forward.  Zach noticed Kevin swallow convulsively a few times at the renewed movement.  He’d been exposed to the biometal.  Zach thought about the story they read, about Tadg the Small, and how six of the ten miners died.

“Caitlin?” he asked.

“Yes, Zach?”

“I get it that descendants of shapeshifters are more likely to survive the biometal, but how did their ancestors become shapeshifters in the first place if they were just normal people?  Why didn’t it kill everyone?”

In reply, Caitlin said severely, “I will say only this:  there are some things it is better you do not know.”

The Isle of Wight

If Kevin hadn’t experienced the same level of nausea on the drill ship this summer, he’d think he was dying.  After kneeling miserably in front of the john on his third trip to the tiny bathroom, he struggled to stand on shaky legs and blearily inspected his eyes in the mirror mounted over the sink.  The whites looked inflamed from the strain of repeated vomiting, but they weren’t blood-red like Astrid’s.  He didn’t know how soon after exposure she’d developed symptoms. 

In the main cabin, Zach seemed to avoid him while Lizbeth kept casting sympathetic looks his way.  He sat at the bench and tried to limit the movement of his body, as if that would somehow offset the relentless bumping and bouncing of the speeding yacht.  Zach must think he was a flaming wimp. 

When Caitlin announced that they’d almost arrived at their destination, he cautiously lifted his head from where he’d anchored it to the table and looked out the front windshield.  A green island rose from the sea.

Caitlin got on the radio to contact the “lock control tower,” but Kevin was too miserable to pay much attention to the procedures for gaining entrance to the harbor.

“Where are we now?” Lizbeth asked.

“The Isle of Wight,” Caitlin replied.

A car waited for them in the marina parking lot, and after a short drive, Caitlin pulled into a circular gravel driveway lined with hedges that had been trimmed into fanciful dragon shapes.  The stone house looked very old to Kevin, something like a castle on a much smaller scale.

Before they got to the age-darkened and scarred front door, a huge, mangy-looking dog galloped around the side of the house and jumped on Caitlin.  Its paws hit her in the shoulders and nearly knocked her to the ground.

The door opened, and a lavender-haired old woman in a velour jogging suit appeared on the stoop.

“Wolfdogge!  Leave it.”

The dog immediately dropped to a sitting position, its head rotating so adoring brown button eyes could take in both Caitlin and its mistress.

“Still getting out of the kennel?” Caitlin asked.

The two women hugged, and Kevin sensed a strong affection emanating from Caitlin.

“I’m so tickled you called,” the old woman exclaimed.

“How are you, Grandmother?”

The old woman laughed, a merry cackle that brought an answering smile to Caitlin’s face.  “Dinna call me that, now, or you’re sure to confuse the young ones.  They’ll think me your real granny and get their minds all in a boggle.”

The old woman shaded her eyes from the afternoon sun and looked them over.  Her lips turned down when she saw Kevin.

“Ooch, laddie, you’re lookin’ mighty peaked.  Come in, come in!”  She stood aside as they obediently trooped into the cool foyer.  “I’m Felicity.  Caitlin was married to Victor O’Connor, me great-grandda, many, many moons ago.”

Kevin didn’t have time to absorb that statement, because Felicity kept on talking.

“There’s no telly, but the radio says once some of the satellites from the southern hemisphere are realigned, things will get back to normal.  Shame about the space station, all those brave astronauts.”

“Is the Internet working?” Zach asked.

Felicity gave him an incomprehensible look.  “The what now?”

Zach’s horrified expression set her off into peals of laughter.  When she got control of herself, she wiped a tear from her eye and said, “That was precious, and so worth it.”

Zach didn’t hide his disgruntlement very well, but it didn’t last.  Kevin saw his mouth drop open when Felicity led them into a large room interspersed with wide, carved beams that held up the wooden roof, also beautifully carved with scrolling Celtic patterns.  Natural light from leaded glass skylights flooded the room and hundreds of hanging crystal figurines sent sparkling rainbows everywhere.  From the furnishings, the area served as living room, dining area and kitchen.

Felicity pointed with an arthritically crooked finger.  “Computer’s there, young man.  Top o’ the line, have at it.”

Zach made a beeline for a heavy old desk against one wall.  Lizbeth spun in a slow circle and said, “Do you mind if I look around?”

“Please, by all means, do.  No point constructin’ a showroom if no one looks at it.”

She put her hand on Kevin’s arm.  “Come, lad.  Seasickness, is it?  I’ve just the thing.”

In the kitchen, she set a copper tea kettle to boil and made some foul-smelling tea.  He’d already begun to feel better once he’d stepped off the boat, but he sipped the tea and tried to look freshly hale and hearty.

“This isn’t a social call,” Caitlin said.

Felicity rolled her eyes.  “Oh really?  I hadn’t noticed the world’s gone crazy.  What are you goin’ to do about it, then?”

For the first time, Kevin saw something in Caitlin’s eyes that belied her perpetual air of assurance.

“We’re looking for something that was stolen from me.  Its power is the only thing that can stop the destruction.”

Felicity nodded once, sharply.  “You’ll be needin’ the hounds.  I can send them straight away.  Do ya have a photo of the thief?”

“I don’t.  This isn’t a task for Wolfdogge’s kind.”

“Then why come to me?”

“I escaped from jail.  There’s a warrant out.”

Kevin thought Felicity didn’t look surprised in the slightest.

“Ah.  And how was it?”

“I preferred the Tower,” Caitlin said, straight-faced.

“You’re welcome here, you know that.  Anythin’ you need.”

“I need to get back to the mainland.  The police will be looking for my car.”

Felicity pressed a set of keys into Caitlin’s hand.  “Take mine to the ferry.”

“Thank you.  My boat’s at the marina, but it’s a risk to continue using it, as well.”

Lizbeth wandered into the kitchen area and wrinkled her nose in the direction of Kevin’s cup of tea.

“Just one thing,” Caitlin said to Felicity.  “The next time you see me, ask me about Victor.  If I don’t know who he is…sic the hounds on me.”

Felicity’s eyes widened.  “You’re not the last after all?”

“No.”

“Hey!” Zach called from the living room.  He was looking at the monitor and had a finger pressed to the pages of
The Gossamer’s
crew manifest. “What’s Simon’s last name?”

Caitlin said, “Why?”

“It must be a popular name in England.  There’s two of them on this list.  One named Simon Finster and one Simon R. Allen.”

The air left Caitlin’s lungs as if she’d been punched in the gut.  She whirled and ran for the door, throwing over her shoulder, “Change of plans.  If Simon was on
The Gossamer
, he knows where the crown is.  Keep them safe!”