The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere (23 page)

The Following is Chapter One of The Triskele Galaxies, Book Two of The Gossamer Sphere

County Wicklow, Ireland

Under grey winter groundcover, shoots of spring growth gave a tinge of green to the Irish countryside. The cloudless sky would have been blue today if it weren’t for the lingering haze of volcanic ash polluting the atmosphere since the Cataclysm. The spring season worldwide had been delayed this year from the resulting temperature drop. The Cataclysm had effectively halted global warming, but the cost was incalculable.

Kevin Guzman waited in his parked rental car, partially shielded from the road by a copse of evergreen bushes. Once the old man in his rusty red truck went by, Kevin pulled back onto the narrow country road and turned down a dirt driveway. He drove through a cloud of dust and exhaust from the old man’s passing to a wooden gate marked “Private,” which stood open and unattended.  Under a thin canopy of bare, interlaced branches, the car bounced over ruts and through potholes. He stopped in the circular gravel driveway of a sprawling, one-story farm house. 

With the old man gone, Kevin figured there was no one to answer his knock, but as a courtesy, he rapped on the iron-strapped oak door anyway. Then, following his compass and a mental map, he walked a thin footpath around the house to the northeast section of the property.

This was the sixth location he’d scouted in as many days, after three weeks of studying the geology of the region and poring over historical maps of the mines of the Emerald Isle. He saw what he was looking for behind a chest-high tangle of bracken that clung to an exposed cut of buckled sandstone and shale at the base of a low hill.

 Scattered in the vicinity were overgrown piles of “tell,” artificial mounds of cast-away rock. Partially buried nearby he found a smooth stone, the kind you’d see on the shore of a lake or beach; out of place here in the hills. Examination of the stone revealed a worn groove, or “rill,” where it had long ago been tied to a stick or bone for use as a hammer.

He unfolded his new portable axe and took a few whacks at the bramble, surprised to find most of it was loose. He looked closely at the severed stem of one; it was still a greenstick—someone had recently cut the bushes down and then replaced them against the rock wall. With an uneasy feeling, Kevin pulled the bushes away until the sandstone face was revealed.

Beginning in the Bronze Age and continuing up until explosives were invented, “firesetting” was an effective method of mining. Fires were set up against the rock face to heat it, and then doused with water to fracture the stone for extraction of the ore. The process left telltale depressions in the hillside.

In this day and age, an active mining society prowled Ireland’s mines - big, small and insignificant. Even so, he’d heard about the existence of this place yesterday in a pub in the small village of Hollywood.

He’d been driving back to Dublin from a mine site when traffic had been stopped by the security guards for a film crew, of all things. In a broad field dotted with trees, a horde of painted men spurred their horses at a signal from the director. The scene must not have been pivotal to the plot, because all they did was ride a short distance, sweeping past one camera on a dolly at ground level and another up on a platform. Security waved the stopped cars on as the horsemen rode back to the start point for the next take.

The unscheduled delay prompted Kevin to stop for lunch at a pub in the mosquito-sized village. When the chatty waitress heard he was interested in historical mines, she told him about a crotchety old farmer who came in nearly every afternoon and stayed until he was blotto. The old guy had been complaining about the historical mine society salivating over an ancient opencast mine on his land.

“He won’t let nobody go see it, though,” the waitress said. “He’s not very sociable, if you know what I mean. Makes a person wonder exactly what it is he grows on that farm of his, besides potatoes.”

Now at that very farm, Kevin didn't see any suspicious-looking plants that would explain the farmer’s unfriendliness, but he took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching. Other than bare trees swaying in the mild breeze and a flitting brown bird or two, nothing moved. The tunnel was low even for his stocky, 5-foot 4-and-three-quarters frame, and deeper than it should be. It might have begun as an opencast mine, but successive generations must have used better techniques to get deeper to the ore. Bending down to enter, he ran an eye over the walls and floor for evidence of recent habitation. He was no tracker, but if it weren’t for the pre-cut bushes at the entrance, he’d think the cave hadn’t been visited by humans since the erstwhile miners had abandoned it.

His eyes adjusted quickly as he went further in. A normal person would have needed a light, but Kevin had recently come to terms with how very normal he wasn’t.

Almost from the moment he entered, he knew this mine on the south side of nowhere was what he’d been searching for. At the end of the tunnel was a small cave, not much roomier than the tunnel itself, but at least he was able to stand upright. He couldn’t imagine living in this claustrophobic space for six years, but that’s what the lore said his grandfather had done.

Tadg the Small had been banished from the clan for his part in the deaths of six miners who were exposed to the very substance Kevin now sought. In this place, this
historic
place, not that anyone would ever know about it, Tadg had become the very first shapeshifter.

Kevin shivered a little as he imagined his grandfather’s ghost haunting this seemingly insignificant cave. Unlike others of his kind, Tadg had lived only a few hundred years before his enemies took an axe to his skull and dumped his body in a bog. Kevin had seen what was left of his mummified, distorted torso on display in Dublin just weeks ago. While he’d bowed his head in respectful silence, mourning a man he’d never known, a British tourist loudly explained to his wife and two kids that Clonycavan Man had been sacrificed to appease pagan Celtic gods.

Not one to speak up under most circumstances, Kevin had to clamp his lips shut against a hot denial. Tadg had been a respected druid, and despite what the Romans two thousand years ago would like everyone to believe, druids did not sacrifice anyone. It had been a clan enemy who’d struck the fatal blows and disposed of the evidence in a most convenient and popular place—one of the peat bogs that peppered the British Isles.

Kevin didn’t have to examine the rock walls; he sensed the exact spot where his grandfather had found the iridium biometal that was used to craft the gossamer crown. He ran his fingers over the rock, feeling the chisel marks in the stone. Even if the bushes out front hadn’t given him a clue, he could see someone had been here, and recently. They’d taken samples from several spots inside the cave, and that was a very, very bad thing—exactly what he’d come here to prevent.

He took in a deep breath of the stale air, closed his eyes and spread his hand over the rock.

“To me,” he murmured, the same phrase he’d instinctively uttered the first time, when he’d drawn the microscopic biometal out of a deep-sea core sample, leaving behind nothing but sand. That was nine months ago, at the start of the Cataclysm.

Kevin didn’t understand the biological mechanism that allowed him to pull the iridium out of solid stone. Caitlin would probably know, or at least, as both a shapeshifter and a scientist, she’d have a better idea how he accomplished it. He suspected he was able to employ some kind of magnetic field through his palm, since Caitlin said iridium was attracted to magnetic fields.

When he’d removed every last trace, he tucked the resulting sunflower-seed-sized kernel of metal into his pocket and, with a last look around at his grandfather’s former living quarters, bent down and headed for daylight.

The tunnel entrance was darker than it should be, so he craned his neck to look up. A chill of apprehension ran through him—someone stood there. Lit from behind, the shadowy figure looked menacing.

Kevin reached out with his gossamers, but before he could connect with the intruder’s mind, a female voice with a mild Irish lilt said, “You’re not one of the others.”

He dropped into a squat. It was too late to shapeshift now that she’d seen him, but he decided on a dog in case it came to that.

As to what she said, Kevin presumed she was referring to whoever carved those chunks out of the cave. “How do you know?”

He could see her face now. Huge eyes dominated the rest of her delicate features. She wore some kind of patterned bandana over her hair, and one of her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. “Because
they
were stylin’ Hazmat suits. So what’re
you
doin’ on my land?”

“Your land?”

“Ah,” she said with a backward tilt of the head. “You’ve met me grandfather. He spins a fine tale when he’s had a few, doesn’t he now? Are you here to catch sight of a leprechaun then? Or maybe one of the wee fairies known to flit about these parts?”

“I’m, uh-”

“American. Yes, I can tell from your accent. We’re not savages. We do get cable out here.”

“I didn’t-”

“Well, you didn’t have to say a word, did you?” She swept an arm to indicate the wild beauty of the land. “We may not live like kings as you do in America, but we’ve got an amenity or three.”

Kevin clamped his mouth shut. She tilted her head, and he thought at first that she was waiting for him to speak so she could interrupt again, but then he heard it—the distinctive whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades. The pointed ends of her bandana blew forward in a sudden breeze.

“They’re back,” she said.

Kevin didn’t ask who. There was more than one organization interested in the biometal, but he supposed only the British government had the funds to fly to remote sites by helicopter.

Over her shoulder, he saw it drop into view, engine whining loudly not a hundred yards from where they stood. In the copilot’s seat, dressed in a Hazmat suit without the head gear, he spied a familiar face: Bill Masters, former head of the scientific drill ship that recovered the first sample of the biometal from the North Sea.

After Kevin’s last encounter with Bill, he suspected things were about to get unpleasant fast. Speaking loudly enough to be heard over the noise, he told the girl, “If they find me here, it won’t be pretty. Do me a favor. Hide my clothes.”

She gave him a strange look before shielding her eyes with a hand and turning to watch the helicopter. Kevin didn’t wait for her to agree; he put the biometal kernal under his tongue and within seconds, shifted. He shook himself out of his clothes and trotted to the girl’s side. She looked down at him and then her head swung around to the pile of clothes. She met his doggy eyes with her own, and Kevin spared a brief moment to wonder how her eyes could possibly get any wider. But she bent and quickly rolled his shoes, socks and shirt into his jeans, lifting the bundle and clutching it to her chest as the chopper blades slowed.

Kevin sat back on his haunches as Bill got out and approached, the loose fabric of the older man’s orange Hazmat suit flapping in the wind. He was followed by a man dressed like a soldier in fatigues, holding a rifle at the ready. The man stopped several yards behind Bill, looking at the girl as if she were a threat. Kevin felt a growl build in his throat.

“What are you doing out here?” Bill asked. “Your family was told specifically to stay away from this area. It’s for your own safety.”

She laughed. “Me grandfather was given a cock-and-bull story about unexploded ordinance from some war or another. Could ya not come up with somethin’ a bit more intelligent? I don’t see how your thin little suit’s gonna protect ya from a bomb blast, Mister..?”

“Masters. And it’s not safe out here, despite what you think.”

“I’m not afraid to die, Mr. Masters. For that matter, maybe I’m interested in fast-tracking it.” She wedged the bundle of Kevin’s clothes under one arm and reached up to pull the bandana from her head, exposing white skin stretched so thinly over her skull Kevin could see the meandering trails of blue veins.

Bill stepped closer, his handsome features a menacing mask. “It wouldn’t be a quick or a pleasant death.”

“Neither is leukemia.”

Kevin desperately wanted to read Bill’s mind right then, but couldn’t take the chance. If Bill noticed the girl’s very large “dog” staring at him, and then noticed something was not quite right about said dog’s eyes, Kevin’s cover would be blown. In fact, the longer the girl stood there arguing, the more likely it was Bill would get suspicious.

Kevin stood on all fours and leaned his body into the girl’s leg. She looked down and he gave a little “whuff,” and trotted a few yards in the direction of the house. For a moment, he thought she was going to ignore his prompt, but she said, “Fine, then, Mr. Masters. I’ll leave you to your mysterious business.”

She took one step and Kevin, with his enhanced canine hearing, caught the sound of a small, dusty thud, knowing right away it was his wallet, which must have slipped out of the pocket of his jeans and landed in the dirt. He spun around with the intention of getting to it before Bill—but Bill was already bending with extended arm.

Kevin’s heart began hammering in his chest as Bill straightened up, flipped the wallet open and saw Kevin’s driver’s license. His surprised brown eyes went straight to Kevin the dog, who dug his claws into the ground and shot off into the bushes.