The Granite Key (Arkana Mysteries) (10 page)

Chapter 17
– Old School

Cassie was venturing into unknown territory. She had been driving for over an hour in a northwest direction.
 
There was a map spread open on the passenger seat along with a page of hastily scrawled driving directions that Faye had given her over the phone. She was outside the metro area and off into farm country only this didn’t look like any part of
Illinois
that she’d seen before. Instead of flat cornfields, everything was hilly and wooded. “The place where the last glacier melted” was the way Faye had described it. The place where mountains of ice had carved hills and valleys and lakes and rivers into
Illinois
’ otherwise dull topography.

She passed through villages that might have been thriving a hundred years earlier, then crossed railroad tracks and bridges over rivers. The scenery became more wooded the farther she traveled, the roads became narrower and the traffic sparser. Eventually she was driving on roads with no center line, and then roads with no shoulder and finally on a road that was unpaved. Trees arched overhead, blocking out the sun. The underbrush on either side scraped against the doors of her car. In a small clearing, the dirt road ended abruptly. Noon sun flooded the glade with light and at its center stood a two-story white frame building. There was a bell tower over the front entrance.

Cassie didn’t see a “No Trespassing” sign to keep intruders away so she pulled her car over to one side of the clearing, got out, and walked toward the building. It looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting
—
an old fashioned country schoolhouse. The structure was at least a century old though the age was hard to guess because it was so well-maintained. The exterior had been recently painted and the grass was neatly trimmed. Hyacinth bloomed around the foundation. Cassie couldn’t see any other cars. Nobody seemed to be around.

The girl began to feel troubled. She still wasn’t entirely sure why she was going along with this or what she was going to see here. She felt defensive and on guard. “Proceed with caution,” she instructed herself.

Cassie walked up the three stairs leading to double front doors. Just as she touched the handle, the doors swung open. A young man in his early twenties with curly brown hair poked his head around the side and came to stand in front of her.

“Come in, please, come in. We’ve been expecting you. My name is
Griffin
.” He spoke with a British accent. “And you must be Cassie.” He held out his hand and shook hers briefly. “Faye has told me all about you and may I say how pleased I am to meet you at last!”

Even though his words were cordial, something about the reserved tone of his voice put Cassie a bit further on her guard. Maybe he was just being British, or maybe he felt uneasy in her presence for reasons she couldn’t quite figure out.

There was an awkward pause while they looked at one another for a few seconds. Cassie thought he was kind of good looking if a person could get past his twitchiness. She saw that he was dressed more formally than she was. He wore navy blue trousers, a white shirt, V-neck sweater and a striped tie. She felt as if she ought to be wearing a dress and heels instead of jeans, a sweater, and hiking boots.

“Right then,”
Griffin
forged ahead. “Please do come in. Maddie was taking an important phone call or she would have come down to meet you herself. This way, if you will.”

They walked through a small vestibule and on into the main room. The ceiling was about twelve feet high with globe chandeliers suspended from heavy chains. Tall stained glass windows took up the top half of each side wall. They ought to have given the building a churchlike quality but the scenes depicted in the windows all came from nature. Bright green forests, azure waterfalls, silver lilies and golden birds cast prismatic light across the center of the room. Right below the windows were several tiers of what looked like box seats. “I thought this was an old schoolhouse from the outside,” Cassie said as she took stock of her surroundings.

Griffin
bobbed his head in agreement. “Yes, you’re quite right. This was a schoolhouse about a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“Kind of big and oddly furnished for an out of the way rural schoolhouse,” the girl observed.

“It doubled as the town hall, when there was a town out this way. That’s all vanished now, of course. Railroads took the place of river transportation and the towns around waterways disappeared. And we’ve done some remodeling as well. The stained glass is new.”

Cassie’s attention turned to the center of the room. She expected to see rows of student desks but there weren’t any. Instead she was confronted with a polished round table big enough to seat thirty people. She counted the chairs just to be sure. There were thirty of them.

“You hold Renaissance Fairs here?” she asked dryly.

“I beg your pardon?”
Griffin
looked confused.

“You know, King Arthur, Knights of the Round Table, and all that stuff.”

“Oh, I see.” He laughed self-consciously. “No, not as such. Actually Arthur and his knights were not Renaissance figures.” He pronounced “Renaissance” like “ReNAYsonce.”

“They were most probably sixth century but there is no scholarly consensus on the exact date. In point of fact, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are more closely associated with the Middle Ages than with the Renaissance. I suspect because Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae was written in the twelfth century and popularized in the courts of
Europe
at that time. Of course Welsh and Breton folktales about King Arthur do predate Mallory’s book. And then you have Chretien de Troyes adding the legend of Lancelot and the Holy Grail, well, as you can see…”

He trailed off when he noticed the dazed expression on Cassie’s face. “Sorry, more information than you could possibly require. I have an unfortunate tendency to provide irrelevant detail. I do beg your pardon.” He checked his verbal torrent and stood looking at her in mute embarrassment.

Cassie turned away to glance around the entire room. “So this is it? This is the giant vault Fay was telling me about? An empty schoolhouse with fancy bleachers and a big table?”

“Hardly.”
Griffin
gave her a thin smile.
 
“Faye thought it best to introduce you to us in stages. Today you’re here to learn about the organization not the vault. Don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. This way please.”

Their footsteps made the oak floorboards creak as they crossed the main room to a door at the opposite end. It led to a short corridor that ran widthwise across the back of the building. At either end were exit doors and stairways that led up to the second floor.
 

Cassie followed her guide upstairs to stand in a short hallway that mirrored the one below. To their left was a corridor that ran the length of the building. As they walked down the hall Cassie glanced through the open doorways on either side. There were conference rooms and offices with desks but they were all empty. Nobody else was about and none of the rooms gave a hint of the kind of business that was conducted here.
  

Griffin
continued walking to an unmarked door at the far end of the corridor. Cassie guessed it must be positioned right above the entry vestibule.

“Just a bit farther,” he said reassuringly. “In here.” He opened the door to reveal a spiral staircase. “We’re going up to the bell tower.”

They could hear a voice echoing down to them. It was a gravelly female voice and it was raised in anger.

Griffin
smiled nervously. “That’s our Operations Director. Don’t worry, her bark is far worse than her bite. You have to take some of what she says with a grain of salt.”

“And let the chips fall where they may?” Cassie asked wryly.

“What?”
Griffin
looked puzzled.

“I thought we were swapping clichés.” She laughed.

“Oh, yes, of course. How stupid of me.” He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes. “Very amusing.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Cassie felt instantly guilty.

“No, certainly, you didn’t.” He rushed to reassure her. “It’s me. I always…” He trailed off and then changed the subject. “Well, up we go.” He tried to sound cheerful as they climbed to the top of the staircase.

Chapter 18
– The World According To Maddie

Cassie peeked above the final spiral stair. To her surprise she found herself emerging in the middle of the bell tower. It was a bell tower in name only because the room had been remodeled and there was no bell anywhere to be seen. The open air tower had been fitted with glass picture windows. It was a bright, airy space, or it would have been if not for the smell of cigarette smoke. The atmosphere was thick with it. Cassie was about to make a comment but
Griffin
anticipated her.

“She would resign if we didn’t let her smoke somewhere in the building,” he whispered. His tone was apologetic.

The room was comfortably furnished with chairs and couches and tables.

“Is this her office?” Cassie asked in disbelief.

“No, her office is downstairs. This is a lounge area.”

“A smoker’s lounge?”

“That wasn’t our original intention but you’ll discover it’s very hard to say no to Maddie.”

They advanced into the room. There was a woman seated on a sofa near the front window. She was talking on the phone but gestured for them to draw closer. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Well you can tell him from me that he’ll get paid when he delivers. No, that’s not negotiable. Just tell him, all right?” She slammed down the receiver, looking irritated.

Griffin
stepped forward. “Cassie, allow me to introduce Maddie, our Operations Director.”

Maddie rose to greet them. Her bangle bracelets clanked. She towered over Cassie and matched
Griffin
’s height which was about six feet. She looked to be in her fifties with an olive brown complexion and bushy hair that had been dyed a burgundy shade of red. When they shook hands, it made Cassie wince. Maddie’s grip was as powerful as her physique.

“My name’s Madeleine but everybody calls me Maddie.” There was a piercing quality to her eyes. Sharp and dark like obsidian arrowheads. “Have a seat.” She indicated a spot next to her on the couch.

Griffin
remained standing. He looked at Maddie questioningly. “You’ll show her out when you’re done?”

She nodded.

“Right, I’ll leave you to it then. Until next time, Cassie.”

“Bye,
Griffin
.”

Maddie was scrutinizing a piece of paper and apparently wasn’t pleased with what she saw. She muttered something under her breath and tossed the page face down on the coffee table next to the phone.

“Like my work space?” She laughed ruefully. “My real office is downstairs but I needed a cigarette break so that’s why we’re meeting up here.”

She reached for a lighter that was balanced upright on an end table. Cassie noticed her fingernails—long red talons.

“Sorry about the smoke. Nasty habit. I keep trying to quit. Been trying for about ten years. I keep thinking it’ll be easier when the pace slows down around here.” She lit a cigarette and blew a puff of smoke up toward the ceiling. “Except that it never slows down around here.”

Cassie didn’t know exactly what to say. She must have looked sheepish because Maddie tried to put her at ease.

“Lots to take in, isn’t it? Your sister. Us.”

The girl nodded uncertainly. “I guess that’s why Faye sent me here. To get some answers.”

“Then you came to the right place, kiddo. I’ve got answers for everything. At least that’s what my colleagues tell me. Sometimes they don’t like my way of putting things. What do you want to know first?”

“That’s easy. It’s the thing I’ve been asking for weeks now. Who are you people?” The words were spoken before she could catch herself. Out loud, the question sounded abrupt and rude.

Maddie threw back her head and laughed. “You know, I ask them that all the time.”

“Maybe I should rephrase that. What is the Arkana exactly?”

“You’re not gonna start with something easy like what’s my favorite color?” Maddie teased. “It’s red in case you hadn’t guessed. But never mind that. Faye told me to give you the big picture and to give it to you fast. You’ll get down to the nitty-gritty soon enough.”

The Operations Director settled herself back into the couch cushions. “How much has Faye told you about the name Arkana itself?”

“Nothing.” The girl shrugged.

“Arkana comes from the Latin verb ‘arcere’. It means to shut something up so you can to keep it safe. The noun is ‘arca’ which means a chest or strongbox.
 
In English, ‘arca’ became ‘ark’ as in Noah’s ark, the ark of the covenant.”

“So you guys call yourselves the Arkana because you’re locking up all these old artifacts to keep them safe?”

Maddie paused a long moment, considering the question. “The artifacts aren’t the real treasure. They’re simply the physical proof that we haven’t always been the way we are now.”

The older woman glanced as Cassie. Noting the girl’s perplexed expression, she elaborated. “You have to sift through layer after layer of myth to get to the real truth. Let me explain by telling you a little story about a goddess names Gaia. Do you know who she is?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of her,” Cassie answered readily. “She was some old Greek earth goddess, right?”

 
“Some old Greek earth goddess.” Maddie snorted in disgust. “That’s pretty funny. Here’s your first lesson in mainstream mythology, kiddo. Nothing is ever what it seems. By the time the Hellenes started writing their origin myths, they’d already done some creative editing to the story that came before theirs. You see once upon a time there was a single creator goddess. She gave birth to everything. Life wasn’t a straight line back then. It was a circle. What came from the goddess went back to the goddess.

“Being straight line thinkers, and trying to set up a new heavenly hierarchy with Zeus at the top, the Hellenes didn’t like her very much. So they started chipping away
—
splitting her into lots of different pieces as a way to weaken her power. The part of her that was love and beauty was called Aphrodite. The part of her that was wisdom became Athena. The protector of wild creatures and the hunt was Artemis. Hera became the guardian of motherhood. The part of the goddess that ruled the fertility of all living things was called Gaia.

“Now, even to the Hellenes, Gaia was the oldest of the old ones. They admitted she had created everything out of herself before their gods arrived. Her name translates to something like Grandmother Earth but to the people who worshipped her before the Hellenes took over she was a whole lot more than just a nature goddess. She was the creator of the universe and she lived in and through every part of her creation. Olympian mythology tried to tame her and make her play nice with the new kids on the mountain. The Hellenes told stories of how she defied their gods and got trounced by them but they were never able to get rid of her completely. She was in the hearts of the people who worked the land.”

“Like the Pythia,” Cassie said softly.

Maddie stared at her in surprise. “Did Faye tell you that story?”

“Yeah, and that they couldn’t write the Pythia out of their mythology either.”

“You’re exactly right, kiddo,” Maddie nodded approvingly. “Gaia remained a thorn in the side of Zeus and his cronies. They loosened her hold but couldn’t uproot her. In the end they had to tolerate her existence even though she’s the exact opposite of everything they valued.”

“What do you mean?”

The frown lines around Maddie’s mouth deepened. “Gaia is nothing less than the principle of creation. The overlords valued destruction because that was how they acquired land, wealth and power. All the people who came before them valued creation and creation was originally viewed as female.”

“Why is that?”

The older woman rolled her eyes impatiently. “It should be obvious. When you talk about building life, biologically speaking, we all know which sex does the heavy lifting. The ancients knew it too. That’s why the earliest origin myths tell of a primordial goddess who gave birth to everything. There might even be some science behind the notion of parthenogenesis. At least a few researchers are convinced that the female sex evolved long before the male. After all, there are lots of species on this planet that are all female, but none that are all male.”

“What?” Cassie was stunned.

Maddie blew a final puff of smoke and ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. “The basic template for the human body, for all mammal bodies, is female. Until they’re seven weeks old, all embryos start out being proto-female. It doesn’t take a huge change for a fetus to grow up to be a girl. That’s what it does naturally. But with little boys, at seven weeks, the Y-chromosome kicks in and testosterone turns a “she” into a “he.” How else can you explain nipples on a male body? I mean, for crying out loud, what’s that about?”

Cassie was speechless. This theory had never been discussed in her Biology 101 class.

“And it isn’t just physical creation that’s associated with the female sex. It’s the creation of the necessities of life. Things that have been around for so long that we take them for granted: clothing, houses, cooking, not to mention agriculture, domesticated animals, and, oh yes, art and writing. All invented by female humans.”

“But…but…” Cassie stuttered. “How can that be? Didn’t men come up with the ideas for all that stuff?”

Maddie noted her expression and grinned. “Nope. Shocking, isn’t it, when you realize how much you’ve been brainwashed by overlord values. I make some of my associates cringe when I get on my soapbox but they know I’m right.”

She seemed to realize she had roamed far afield in her explanation. More softly she said, “It isn’t simply the artifacts that the Arkana is protecting. The people who crafted those artifacts had a different way of looking at life. A more constructive way. That’s what we’re really protecting, until the day comes when the overlord system loses its shiny appeal.” She smiled ruefully. “I guess I’ve beaten your first question to death. Now you know why we call ourselves the Arkana. What else do you want to know?”

Cassie was silent for several seconds, trying to wrap her brain around the rush of radical ideas Maddie had just thrown at her. When she had time to recover she asked, “If this is an international organization, what made you pick
Illinois
of all places to set up your operation? There can’t be many artifacts here.”

“Good one,” Maddie commented approvingly. “Actually the Arkana started out centuries ago in
England
right after the witch hysteria that swept
Europe
in the 1600s. You’ve heard about that, right?”

“So you’re all a bunch of witches?” Cassie asked warily.

Maddie let out an exasperated groan. “We don’t have enough daylight hours left for me to set you straight on all the popular misconceptions about witches. The short answer is ‘No, we’re not.’ The point I was trying to make is that a lot of valuable information was lost during the witch craze. Women and men who were the herbalists, midwives, and healers of their day died at the stake and their knowledge died with them. Once the last fire burned itself out, whoever managed to survive went underground. A small group of them banded together to preserve what they knew about healing, about the natural world, and about the old deities of the earth.”

“Things stayed that way for a long time until
England
expanded its empire to
India
,
Africa
, and the rest of the world. And the Arkana expanded too. We reached out to include other cultures whose origin myths turned out to be a lot like our own.”

She leaned back further and looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. “We kept our headquarters in
Britain
until things got a little dicey during the Second World War. When the Germans started bombing
England
, nobody thought
Europe
was a safe place to keep headquarters anymore. Even though
America
joined the war, it wasn’t being invaded so we moved the vault here during the 1940s.”