The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere (2 page)

San Francisco, California

On a secluded patch of grass in an exclusive neighborhood park, fourteen people ranging in age from maybe twelve to eighty slid into various versions of the Tai Chi pose “snake creeps down.”  They followed the slow, controlled movements of their instructor, a muscular black man whose sweaty bald head reflected the morning sun.

Zach Wong sat on a park bench, studiously ignoring the class.  If he watched, he’d have to actively suppress the urge to wander through the group offering advice and correcting stance, posture, everything.  Even for the instructor – especially the instructor – who kept entreating his class to keep their “joints soft” while his own technique was stiff and his movements jerky.

Zach focused on his laptop, which had a tenuous link with the Internet half a block away from home.  He’d rather sit out here and watch poorly executed Tai Chi and deal with a spotty connection than listen to his parents argue.  Although they called it a “discussion,” as if his mom and step-dad screaming at each other in Chinese was
that
civilized.

His email service provider took forever to load.  While he waited for his cursor to stop spinning, he read the news headlines, “Massive Aurora Blankets Alaskan Sky,” “Interview: North Sea Tsunami Survivors,” and “Electromagnetic Pulses Predict Earthquakes.”  He clicked on the last one and waited for the story to come up.  A glance at the fumbling Tai Chi class and he couldn’t help but laugh.  The instructor, who should have been in a meditative state of mind, gave him a dirty look.  Zach shook his head and looked back at the earthquake story.  Some scientists were claiming that a series of strange electromagnetic signals had been detected in and around the city.  Apparently, similar signals had appeared just prior to earthquakes in the past, and they were anxiously watching the sensors along the San Andreas Fault, hoping to link the occurrences.

Electromagnetic pulses?
  This morning he’d been awakened by a strange sensation, like all the hair on his body was made of metal and some unseen hand had passed a huge magnet over his bed.  He’d burst from under the quilt, ready to fight, but tripped over his sheets and landed in the kind of undignified heap he didn’t often find himself in.  It had affected him that strongly.

The story didn’t say anything about people being able to feel the pulses, so Zach shrugged it off and read his email.  Then he pulled his tablet out of his backpack and opened a graphic file he’d been working on.

Within minutes he was completely engrossed in the drawing.  It wasn’t for school – although technically he could submit it for his portfolio class – but for a girl he knew online.  She’d written a story and wanted a picture of her main character, a warrior princess.  For trade, she was writing an essay for him for his English class.  It annoyed him no end that to get his degree he had to take boring courses like English that took time and energy away from his precious art.

He’d sketched, scanned, outlined and colored the drawing.  Now he was working on the details of the character’s costume, an elaborate strappy leather thing with buckles and about a dozen sheaths with ornate knife handles sticking out every which way.  The “princess” bristled with armament, but his challenge was to make her appear feminine.  He did this through the exaggerated curves of her body and the flowing waves of her long red hair.  On her head, he placed a silvery crown.  It was this that had his concentration, as his virtual pen stroked back and forth with feathery lightness to get the complex pattern on the crown just right.

As absorbed as he was, he still knew when the Tai Chi class ended and the instructor approached him.  Zach looked up, mind still on the drawing. 

“You find something funny about me and my class, boy?”  The instructor spoke in a southern accent.

“No.”

“Because folks who exercise instead of spending all day playing video games do a helluva lot better in life, hear?”

Zach clicked on the save button and set his laptop on the bench.  He stood and faced the instructor.  They were about the same height, six foot, but Zach was much leaner.

The man opened his mouth wide and let out an uproarious laugh.

“You want to take me on, grasshopper?”

Zach bowed.  “I have no wish to fight, Sensei.” It wasn’t true.  Zach was itching to get into it with this joker, but he would do nothing to instigate it.

The instructor wiped a finger under his eye and shook off an imaginary tear of amusement.  “Well, I have no wish to swat a fly, but if it irritates me enough, I’ll roll up my newspaper.”

Zach held himself still.  Six of the instructor’s students were still around, two in Zach’s line of sight, two in a car parked at the curb ten yards behind him at 7 o’clock and two walking south on the sidewalk.  The grass was damp with dew and would be slippery.  The sun was shining in the instructor’s eyes, and his skin would be slick from the sweat of his exertion.   Earlier Zach had noticed that the older man favored his left leg at the knee.

“You think you picked up enough Kung Fu moves from watching cartoons and playing your little Xbox?”  The instructor asked.  “I’m a third degree black belt, son.  My hands are registered as lethal weapons.”

Where Zach came from, they didn’t use the belt-ranking system.  He’d used the Japanese word “Sensei” because after a few minutes observing the instructor, it was obvious he’d trained in the U.S. under the highly westernized martial arts.  Zach wanted to shut the guy up and then shut him down, but he bided his time. 

“You know,” The instructor said, raising an arm.  “I think I’m going to give you a free lesson.  Something to help you out when the bullies come calling.”

“Do not touch me,” Zach said.

The instructor’s eyes shifted from left to right, looking, Zach knew, to see if anyone was around to witness his next move.  Then the moron shifted position so slowly a kindergartener could anticipate the strike.  Zach easily avoided the simple karate punch aimed at his shoulder, but otherwise didn’t react.  He was beginning to feel guilty for stringing this guy along, playing him.

He just had time to register the surprised look on the instructor’s face, when Zach’s body suddenly stiffened involuntarily.  From his scalp to his toes, he felt as if waves of electric energy were passing through him, like being struck by lightning once, twice and then a final time.  The last shock left him gasping, but he still saw the instructor’s next punch before it reached him.

Zach caught the man’s arm and with a quick twist threw him to the grass.  Two steps and he closed his laptop and shoved it and the tablet into his backpack.  He left the instructor babbling on the ground like an idiot.  Zach didn’t think he’d done permanent damage, but that wasn’t important now.

Right now, he had to warn San Francisco that the big one was coming.

London

Every chair was occupied, forcing the remaining travelers to stand or wander about or sit on the carpet in the newly refurbished terminal.  Hours ago, Kevin had given his seat to an elderly woman who seemed content to sit next to Dr. Weinstein and chat him up.  Kevin was worried about the professor.  The excitement of the last few days had put bruised-looking circles under the old man’s eyes, and the tremor in his hands had increased.

Their flight to Houston was postponed, as were all flights in or out of Heathrow, due to a series of violent electrical storms coming out of the North Sea.  After recent events, instead of irritation, the general mood among the stranded travelers was somber.

As thrilling as it had been for Kevin to witness the birth of a tsunami at its origin, the aftermath had been sobering.  The countries bordering the North Sea, including Sweden, France and the United Kingdom, had been forewarned just in time to evacuate before waves up to fifteen meters in height swept the coasts.  To the panicked confusion of scientists worldwide, seismic sensors hadn’t been able to pinpoint an epicenter.  Speculation placed the instigating event at Dogger Bank, a vast undersea accumulation of glacial debris, kilometers from Silverpit Crater.  Most of the scientists aboard the drill ship felt otherwise, but they had no proof.  The ship had been briefly disabled until the crew disengaged from the broken drill, then they’d raced to the English coast to assist the crew of an overturned fishing vessel.

Kevin wanted to stay with the ship, which was now anchored offshore while rescue efforts continued and cleanup of the harbors began.  Dr. Weinstein’s health, however, required that he accompany the professor back home.  He didn’t know how he was supposed to focus on his studies, go back to life as usual in the quiet Texas university town.  Call it the spirit of adventure, the call to action – whatever – but his desire to brave the elements and his seasickness and zoom back out to the crater got stronger the farther away he got.  Leaving the site had been one of the most painful things he’d ever been forced to do.

“Me cousins are off on ‘oliday,” said the old woman sitting with Dr. Weinstein.  “You know where?  Sumatra.  Isn’t that a strange coincidence?  We haven’t ‘eard, but their cottage is right on the beach down at Scarborough.  I ‘ope it’s still standin’.”

Kevin shifted from one buttock to the other on the cold carpet and leaned back against their stacked luggage.  He looked at the old woman.  She’d said her name was Caitlin, said it was old Irish for “pure,” but then she’d winked.  Sitting on the chair, her feet hardly touched the ground she was that petite, just the right size for Dr. Weinstein, who seemed oblivious to how attractive she was.  Caitlin was beautiful.  Her burnished copper hair floated in loose ringlets over narrow, alabaster shoulders.  Large, heavy-lidded eyes, and skin so smooth and clear Kevin swore he saw her spirit shining through, a delicate, effervescent halo.  She rose from the chair and walked towards him with such dainty grace she seemed to float.  All the time holding his gaze with her mesmerizing deep blue eyes, deep as the North Sea.

“Kevin?”

He blinked at Dr. Weinstein’s voice, and Caitlin became an old woman again, seated demurely, beady blue eyes looking at him with mild curiosity. 

Must have been… dreaming or something.
Kevin shook his head to clear the cobwebs.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” Dr. Weinstein said.  He stood and shuffled towards the men’s room.

The old woman patted Dr. Weinstein’s seat and said, “You’d best sit in it, or it’ll be taken by one of those circlin’ sharks,” she gestured to a few people who did look like they were eyeing the abandoned chair.  Kevin got stiffly up off the floor and parked himself on the still-warm vinyl. 

“So yer a student of geology, then?” Caitlin asked.

“Yes.”

Through the wall of windows overlooking the tarmac, a thick, jagged bolt of lightning lit the night sky.  A collective exclamation went up from the crowded terminal, immediately drowned out by the crash of thunder.

After the echo faded away, Caitlin said, “That’s some display.”

Kevin nodded, staring out with the after burn of the lightning on his retinas.

“A man of few words, are you?”

He smiled and glanced at her, then did a double-take.  She was beautiful again.  Young.

Kevin rubbed his eyes and peeked out from between his fingers.  Still young.  The fingers went back to rubbing.  He knew he was tired, but not so tired he’d be hallucinating like this.  He felt her hand on his arm and jerked away, not from surprise but from fear.  Her touch sent a shock through him, a zing.  He jumped out of the chair and faced her.

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

He looked to his left and to his right.  Had anyone else seen it?  Seen the old woman drop fifty years?  A few people nearby
were
looking – at him, as he stood over Caitlin with his fists clenched.

“Sit down,” she said.

He straightened and took a breath.  “Are you for real?”

“Depends on your definition of real.  Sit.”

It was an order, and he sat.  Dr. Weinstein was nowhere in sight.

“The storm is going to let up soon, so we don’t have much time,” Caitlin said.

 “What’s happening to me?” he asked. 
Why do I feel like I know things that don’t make sense?  Why do I have all these strange electric sensations?

“Nothing’s happening to you.  Something’s happening to the earth, and we have to stop it.”

Fairbanks, Alaska

There was no sky, just low, grey clouds.  No rain, just the misty kind of drizzle that made an umbrella useless.  It hissed softly against the windshield every time the driver got the old bus over thirty miles per hour.

Two children who’d gotten on at the last stop with their mother had turned around in their seats and were staring at Lizbeth.  Even her long puffy coat couldn’t disguise the neon purple and orange harlequin-patterned Clowntastic Pizza uniform.  The children, a boy with a buzz cut that showed off the bumps in his skull and a girl whose mousey brown hair was so messy it looked like she was working on some dreads, seemed to be waiting for Lizbeth to do something.  She wanted to inform the children that it would be a colder day than today before she’d willingly serenade them with the Clownee Birthday Song.  Nothing could induce her to sing the smarmy song, with the exception of her pathetic paycheck. 

The children had looked miserable, though, when they’d gotten on the bus in their second-hand coats and dollar-store plastic galoshes.  Their mother had dragged them up the steps and down the aisle and ordered them to sit quietly, which they’d done admirably.

Lizbeth pulled her hands from her warm pockets and showed the children a quarter pinched between the thumb and forefinger.  She palmed it, pretended to put it in her other hand and “found” it behind the boy’s ear.

“How’d you do that?”

“Prestidigitation,” Lizbeth said, waggling her eyebrows at them.

They demanded she do it again, so she did, over and over.  They giggled throughout, but became almost hysterical with laughter as Lizbeth began finding coins all around the back of their mother’s head.  When the woman figured out she’d been the butt of a joke that her children were really enjoying, instead of going along with it, she glared at Lizbeth and forcibly made her kids sit facing front.

What a crab.

Lizbeth caught sight of their sad faces reflected in the window and she wanted to box their mother’s ears.  Instead, she leaned her head against the cold glass and began singing under her breath.

At her stop, she waved and smiled to the children, who waved back.

It was a half mile to Granma’s cabin, a cold, wet half mile.  Normally, she enjoyed walking past the Hunt Family pasture, but the friendly horses usually looking for a nose rub were all in the warm barn tonight.  She wished she’d brought her MP3 player, because she sure could use a distraction from her thoughts.  She had her cell phone tucked away in an inside pocket, but she’d been ignoring Steph’s texts.  All Steph did was rave about college, how much fun she was having, how many cute guys she’d met – not topics Lizbeth was feeling charitable about at the moment.  Especially when her hair and skin stank of greasy, inedible pizza.

She opened the cabin door to see Granma sitting on the armchair across from the couch.  A woman sat facing her, a thin, black, strangely familiar woman.  As soon as Granma turned to look at her, Lizbeth knew with a strong sense of dread that something had happened.

“Is it Mom?” she asked.

“No, baby.  Your mother’s fine.  Everything’s fine,” Granma said.  She hadn’t called Lizbeth “baby” since Lizbeth had
been
a baby.  No lit candles meant this woman was not a client.  Besides, she didn’t have that wide-eyed look about her that screamed, “Believer.”

“Caitlin, this is my granddaughter Lizbeth.”

Lizbeth moved forward and shook the older woman’s hand, murmuring an apology about her own cold hand.  She looked at her grandmother for permission to leave the room, go hide in her bedroom and sulk some more about not being able to afford college, but Granma said, “Have a cup of tea, dear.  Sit with us for a few minutes, please.”

Her earlier dread resurfaced, but she sat on the couch next to her grandmother’s guest.  Granma handed her a cup of tea in the antique china that was only used for special occasions.  Lizbeth’s face had begun to thaw in the heat of the room, but the cold outside must have affected her vision.  When she looked directly at this Caitlin woman, everything was fine, but every time she sipped the tea, her peripheral vision wavered, giving Caitlin a strange glow.

“Caitlin worked with your father,” Granma said.

“Really?”  Lizbeth’s interest went from zero to sixty.

“You look very much like him,” Caitlin said.

“I would if I were a little whiter.”

“Lizbeth!” Granma said.

Lizbeth shrugged.  “It’s true.”

“Trust me when I say that you are more like him than you know,” Caitlin said.

Oh-kay.
  Lizbeth reevaluated Caitlin.  Formal speech, formal manner.  Definitely a believer.

“I’ll have to trust you, since you knew him and I didn’t.”

She looked on as Caitlin exchanged a look with Granma, both of their faces impassive.

Granma said, “How was work today, Lizbee?”

“Horrible.  Sucky.  Same as ever, why?”

“I’m here to offer you a job,” Caitlin said.

“How much does it pay?” Lizbeth asked.

“If we’re successful, the reward will be great.”

Lizbeth absorbed the statement without scoffing, but it was difficult.

“Successful at what?”

“Preventing the destruction of earth,” Caitlin said.

Lizbeth laughed.  She stood and said, “I’d love to save the world, but I need to change out of my uniform and get a shower, so I’ll take a rain check on that ‘job’ of yours.  Good luck.”

She started out of the room, but Caitlin spoke again, and it wasn’t what she said, “Luck has nothing to do with it,” but how she said it.  The words had been spoken calmly, quietly, but Lizbeth felt them reverberating in her skull as if she were in a cavernous, echoing chamber instead of the tiny cabin.  She put her hands to her head and turned to Caitlin,
who’d completely changed appearance. 
Black hair pulled back in a bun had been replaced with red curls; milk chocolate skin was now plain milk.

Lizbeth looked around the room.  The performer in her knew the trick was possible, but the realist wondered why Caitlin and this new woman, probably her assistant, would go to so much trouble.

“What are you trying to pull?” she asked.

“I told you she was a tough nut,” Granma said to the assistant.

“I’m a shapeshifter, Lizbeth,” the assistant said in Caitlin’s voice.  “Like your father.”

Lizbeth rolled her eyes.  “My father was a magician.  I’ve read every article and seen every bit of footage on him.  He never once changed shape.  They call it a magic
trick
because the trick is what’s real.  I don’t know why you’re messing with me, but I don’t appreciate it.”

Caitlin’s assistant stood and walked over, placing her hands on Lizbeth’s shoulders.  She was shorter by several inches.  Lizbeth found it difficult to maintain eye contact – there was something very weird about the woman’s blue eyes, like looking into some kind of bizarre swirling galaxy.  A shaft of fear went through her.  She tried to think of it as irrational, but wasn’t quite convinced.

“Is it real, this incarnation?” The woman asked.

Lizbeth sucked in a breath.  She’d heard that phrase a hundred times, watching her father’s clips.  It was his greatest magic trick, the one where he changed a person from the audience into a white jaguar.  The woman, it
was
Caitlin, wavered right before Lizbeth’s eyes.  Her nose flattened out and the transformation spread quickly down her cheeks, to her mouth, forehead, ears.  It wasn’t like a computer morph on television.  The change was fast, but Lizbeth saw each hair sprout, whiskers grow, teeth become thin and pointy.  The eyes, though, they didn’t change at all.  The white jaguar gripped Lizbeth’s shoulders with her claws, blue swirly eyes staring out of a sleek, spotted face.

In her mind, Lizbeth heard the rest of her father’s incantation, “
Or is it prestidigitation
?”