As if Gaelan would tell her. But Anne had figured it out. Not that it was difficult if you knew Gaelan’s real story.
Serial karyotypes with an emphasis on the telomeres. He was looking for clues. What made him . . . him. Infinite tissue regeneration. He’d learn nothing solely by examining the telomeres. He would need to comprehend the underlying mechanism that caused his DNA sequence to perpetually renew itself. And that was beyond even the best karyotype image. “All that horrid publicity. Poor man,” Anne said finally.
“Crazy stuff. A lot of people around here thought he was some kind of superhuman mutant or something. A real X-Man.”
“Did you?”
“Nah. I know too much about tissue regeneration to believe it.”
The bus stopped. “We’re here. Welcome to the Gold Coast of Chicago. Lunch awaits after a short walk down to the pier.”
They followed the shoreline along the breakwater. How much calmer the water seemed down here. It lapped gently, the steady “glub-glub” against the dock.
“Restaurant is down there.” Dana pointed to a spot at the far end of the pier.
Anne looked up, shielding her eyes against the sun. “What a fab Ferris wheel. Reminds me of home.”
“And I quote, ‘The original wheel was created for the Chicago World’s Fair.’ The Columbian Exhibition of 1893. That exposition? It set the stage for the brave new world of the twentieth century more than almost anything else at its time: from Daniel Burnham’s White City of the future to electric lights and the zipper on your handbag. God, I’m sounding like a tour guide. Sorry. Born and bred. Can’t help a little bit of Chicago pride.”
“I have sheer terror of heights, so I’m not begging for a ride on the wheel!” Anne smiled. “But it is quite cool.”
“Obviously, it’s not the original. The fair was a few miles down the beach. One of the few structures remaining from it is our Museum of Science and Industry. Never knew about a connection between the museum and the World’s Fair. Gaelan’s the one who told me about it. Been going there since I was a kid and I dragged Gaelan with me to see it. Knew he’d get a real kick out of it. But when we got there, he had the strangest reaction. Started talking about the World’s Fair, how it had been ‘right there.’”
Anne fidgeted with her phone. “Well, I’m certain he loved the place. He loved anything to do with science. I know that much, at least.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Dana stopped, turning to face Anne. “No. Like it was deeper than that. The way he talked . . . as if it was some sort of . . . He went on and on about the magic of that moment. That how the people who’d brought their inventions there risked their reputations for all the potential benefit. It was a real visceral reaction. I don’t know. Strange. I’d never seen those coal-black eyes light up like that. Like I said, he was some sort of history genius.”
“He never taught a course or gave a lecture about it?”
“Never. At least not as far as I know. Like it was something for him only, I guess.”
She’d seen his eyes blaze like that—as he deciphered that healing book with but one goal in mind. To create a means to end his life—and Simon’s. He’d been so delighted that morning he’d exited the makeshift laboratory in Simon’s bathroom, stoppered bottle clutched in his fist. A great success, he’d hoped. She could picture it as if . . .
Anne gasped as something occurred to her, hitting her full force in the stomach. “I need to sit a moment, please.”
“Sure.”
No. Not one vial. There had been two of them. He’d created a second dose! Of course he had done. How had she not remembered that? Gaelan was meticulous as any scientist, and when the result could never be duplicated—ever—he would have created a backup. He’d given her one vial and kept the other to himself.
The realization hit her with the force of a thousand kilograms of steel pressing in on her chest. Gaelan Erceldoune was not off the grid, holed up in hiding, run away to Antarctica or Tahiti. He was dead. Really dead. She whispered his name, realizing she’d said it aloud.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so . . . I miss him too, I guess.”
“I’m sorry, Dana. I think the last few . . . Haven’t had much sleep, and it’s hit me full on just now. Where’s that pizza place? I could use an espresso right about now. And something to eat.”
“Their coffee sucks. But the beer’s pretty fine. All local craft beers.”
“That’ll do.”
They found a table in the nearly empty restaurant; the quiet of early afternoon while school was still in session, Dana explained.
“Medium cheese, deep dish. Caesar salad for a start,” Dana said to the server, glancing at Anne for confirmation.
“I’m fine with whatever you order. Like I said, I’m famished. Besides, I’m the visitor to your city.”
“Great. And a chocolate stout for me. You?”
“Pellegrino. Orange if you have it. So, was this a favorite place for Gaelan?”
Dana shrugged. “It’s a big drinking place at night. Gaelan never drank—at least not when he was out with me. I think he was more into good weed.”
The collection of empty Lagavulin bottles in his flat suggested otherwise.
“He wasn’t really a hang-out type anyway. I don’t think he was really comfortable in crowds unless it was in front of a lecture hall. And even then . . . He was hard to find, except by email—or in his shop—sort of on his own turf. I think he was, on the whole, a troubled soul.” She lifted her glass just as the pizza arrived. “To Gaelan, wherever he may be.”
Anne nodded tightly, trying to change the subject before she lost all composure. “Erm . . . The pizza. It’s delicious. I’ve never had anything of its like. Pizza is usually flat, not—”
“Chicago style. The best. But don’t tell New Yorkers that.” Dana smiled.
“So . . . This place is called Navy Pier?”
“Yeah. Oh, and there’s one other connection I forgot to mention. I mean about the World’s Fair. So, there’s an exhibit down the pier a bit. Stained glass from the Columbian Exposition . . . the World’s Fair. It’s enormous, takes up the entire lower level beneath the Great Hall, way at the end. It was closed for a couple years, but just reopened six months ago. Apparently, someone, some organization, I suppose, procured almost all the surviving stained glass from the exposition. It’s pretty spectacular, but no one knows who funded it. Completely anonymous. So it’s just called the rather prosaic Glass Museum of the Columbian Exposition. Mostly Tiffany stuff. Gaelan cajoled me into going with him just after it opened. He had a real thing for glass.”
Anne nodded. It sounded like him.
“I’d love to see it. Is it open today?”
“Should be.”
The pizza was more food than she was used to eating, especially the past month. She finished her Pellegrino. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Shall we?”
The Grand Hall was nearly a mile down the pier, past tall ships, excursion boats and yachts, attractions, and market kiosks and stalls. Finally, they reached the great domed building with its twin Byzantine towers, standing guard over the waters.
“Through here.”
Down a dim stairway and through a darkened corridor until they came to a black curtain, which opened just as they stepped on the welcome mat. From the dark into the light.
Stunning was inadequate to describe the hall. The brilliance of glass and light, colors that matched every hue and tone, set into lead, set into stone and wood. The room’s only sign suspended from the ceiling, set in stained glass: “It is a kaleidoscope of the world that furnishes a passing panorama of life in every zone—John Eastman, 1893.”
It was as if they’d stepped through the looking glass and into the barrel of a giant kaleidoscope, every move, every breeze, every step representing an altered perception, a changed perspective.
Tucked away in a corner of the room was a small unfinished display of glass tubes, bent an
d twisted into strange shapes mounted into large black boxes. Beside it a small sign: “Coming soon: Tesla’s Tubes—Magical Neon of the White City.”
Where had Gaelan been in 1893? London? Edinburgh? The Highlands? Or had he been here in the States? Anne stopped before an enormous stained-glass panel.
The center of the panel was a three-dimensional labyrinth, bathed in moonlight. At its center, Dionysus and the Minotaur in fierce battle; beyond the fray watched Ariadne, cloaked in silver and gold. The top third of the panel was in shades of indigo, solid but for the moon and a constellation identical to the one Gaelan pointed out to her in the night sky above the lake—Ariadne’s Crown—the Corona Borealis. No wonder Gaelan had a fascination with this place. She imagined him spending hours staring at this one panel, the inner complexities and colors of the panel to him a representation of his life, bearing the name of his and Eleanor’s daughter, Ariadne.
Her gaze drifted to the artist’s signature at the base of the panel. It was tiny, barely legible in the far-right corner. “G.E., 1893.”
Anne sucked in a breath, losing her balance and finding it as she lowered herself to the carpeted floor, inches from the panel. Gaelan a glass artist? Admittedly, the notion hadn’t crossed her mind, but why not? Why not be in Chicago at the turn of the century? Or was she reading something into the stained glass, placing Gaelan right in the middle of it, when it might well have been not Gaelan Erceldoune but George Edison, or Gregory Eastlake, or any one of a thousand “G.E.”s?
“Are you okay?”
Dana Spangler. She’d forgotten she wasn’t alone.
“Yeah. Fine. This is amazing. Brilliant. Thank you so much for bringing me here. I never would have . . .”
Anne turned, and there it was, proof. Another panel, and an exact copy of the page from the healing book. The Diana’s Tree Gaelan had shown her to demonstrate his theory about how the book worked. And again, the initials “G.E.”
She rested her fingers over the inscription, her eyes closed.
“Gaelan.”
SCOTLAND, PRESENT DAY
CHAPTER 20
A whisper borne upon a faint breeze wended its way through the prisms as Gaelan sat on the dirt floor of the crystal room. “Gaelan.” He was certain he’d heard it.
“Anne,” he called out, almost involuntarily, knowing the voice was hers. Impossibly. An overactive imagination at play, part of the grand delusion in which his life was now enmeshed. The strangeness of the visions, his presence in these particular catacombs. Conan Doyle’s journal.
Shaken, fingers trembling, he turned to a random page. A distraction.
They dwell in a high castle, which stretches to the heavens, glittering crystal, bounded by turquoise streams and emerald rivers, waterfalls and trees adorned with lacy mosses, intricate as filigree.
Gaelan had observed no castles, no palaces, only a desolate place, permeated by a foreboding air of desperation, of fear. Certainly, there had been no sight of a river, turquoise or otherwise. Everything he’d seen had been desiccated, colorless.
I have always believed the fairy folk to fly like birds or dragonflies, lithe and graceful as they hover above and move swiftly. Leastways, that is how they have been in my mind depicted, perhaps fueled by the fairy stories told me in my youth here in the Borders—a magical land, if ever there was. Indeed, they do fly, their wings neither flesh nor feather. Nor aeroplane.
Besides their ability to fly, they much resemble humans, yet perhaps more perfect specimens of our best selves. Unblemished, perfect skin. All carry with them a lithe youthfulness incongruent with their melancholy. A heavy weariness that might only be borne after a long life of disappointment and tragedy. They are waiting, I’d heard them say so very many times, but for what? For whom? I never learned, only just ‘We wait.’ An answer, but to what question?
Gaelan wondered if Conan Doyle had been projecting his own lifetime of disappointment, despite the success of his career: the death of his beloved son, the ridicule at his belief in fairy folk, in spiritualism. His falling out with their mutual friend Houdini because of those beliefs. Conan Doyle’s account ended:
My only regret in this adventure is that although I see them at play, at tea, at conversation, and can quite clearly hear them, they do not acknowledge my presence amongst them. They seem quite real as you or me, yet not quite corporeal in nature. I reach out and my hand passes through all in their world—as if I am the ghost and they the haunted.
It quite pains me, for I long to have even one conversation with their kind, so many years I have longed for it. To learn more of their world. Perhaps I am not adequately skilled in wielding this glass bauble—the apparent key to their singular plane of existence.
I was quite right, however, in the end, to choose this place—amongst the hills of Eildon—for my search. I have long believed that if any place on Earth would hover close to the world of the fairies, it would be here in the Borders. These hills have ever been a place of enchantment, the stuff of legends and ballads, the spark of brilliance in poetry, prose, theatre. Arthur, Nimue, Morgana, Merlin, the Lady of the Lake, and the Rhymer.
That is one fellow I should like to meet, for his descendent I count amongst my most treasured friends. It was he, after all, some quarter-century past, who sparked this small quest of mine to finally come face to face with the fair folk and their extraordinary world.
And now alas it is time for me to return to Southampton and home, lest I cause undue worry amongst my dear family once again. I do hope to return, to complete this chronicle and at last to meet them, not simply observe as if from afar. Yet, I cannot help but believe this is the end for me; I shall not return. I leave it to the next sojourner who might find his way here, to this chronicle, and the glass key to a magical world beyond our imaginings. Bon voyage to you, my friend. —ACD
Gaelan rubbed his thumbs into his closed eyes, trying to chase away the ache that had taken hold there, surprised to notice the finger he had earlier nicked still stung quite painfully beneath its makeshift bandage. Unwinding the fabric from around his index finger, he winced as he came to the site of the wound, which stuck to the material. He yanked at it, and blood trickled from the gash. He stared at it for some moments, following the narrow trail of blood with bewildered fascination as it wound down his finger and around his wrist. It had not healed.
Light-headed, Gaelan let his eyes drift closed as he leaned against the cool black of the cave wall, taking hold of the opalescent tear drop as if it would keep him upright.
“Ah, there you are! I wondered where you’d got to! Thought I’d lost you—out there.” The same young woman he’d spoken with earlier gestured toward the back of the tiny, bare room in which they now stood. At least they were indoors, and no longer in the gray desert. And it was bright enough to see clearly.
“Stand still and the . . .” Her voice was blotted out by a loud whirring; gray dirt mounded all around him in small piles. “There. That’s better. Don’t worry about the floor, it’s self-cleaning.”
Scooping up a handful of the substance, he now realized it wasn’t gray after all. In here, it sparkled in every hue. Fine as diatomaceous sand, yes, but it seemed to be a sort of ground glass. Infinitesimally tiny grains, worn down and ground as if by time and the harshest of conditions.
“I’m sure you have so many questions, but not as many as we have. Gaelan Erceldoune, aren’t you?”
Gaelan could only nod, confused . . . by everything.
“Good. Be terrible if we got the wrong guy. Almost did, like a hundred years ago.”
“But—”
“Patience.”
She removed a dirty green velvet cloak, revealing a long flowing tunic of silvery silken fabric. She placed it on the floor, which was now completely bare, no trace of dust or sand but what he clutched in his hand. She touched the wall and it slid open to a new room. The fine grains slipped between his fingers, vanishing as if by magic into the floor beneath him as he followed the girl.
They were in an enormous hall as spacious as the first was claustrophobic. Graceful beams arched up and up until they vanished into a glare of light many hundred feet from where they stood.
“Imposing, isn’t it? But it’s an illusion, created by a precise placement of mirrors and colored glass.”
“What is this place?”
“You will find out. Promise.” With her index finger, she drew an invisible “x” over her heart. “But not yet. After.”
“After . . . what?”
“You’ll see. Sorry I can’t be more forthcoming. It’s way above my pay grade. Come on; you’ll see.”
Gaelan had a vague notion this all was a dream, that he was still asleep in the crystal chamber. Or was it the sea cave? Or . . . in his confusion, he couldn’t quite recall where . . .
No context to tether him to even the slimmest notion of reality. The opalescent glass piece still glowed within his hand, warm to the touch. An anchor into the past. Was that any more real than anything else surrounding him?
Once again, his head began to throb, which only added to the entropy of his thoughts. He was desperate to ask the girl, “Is this death? Are you my escort?” But the logic of inquiring escaped him. If she answered “no,” what then? He’d be in the same place, following behind the same strange girl through a stranger place set into an even stranger dreamscape. One he seemed unlikely to escape. For now.
Gaelan’s last reliable memory was when he consumed the poison; everything afterwards was shrouded in a surreal fog. Like LSD, but not quite as colorful. Had the poison caused this aimless drift between memory and imagination braided together in his mind, familiar, yet vastly different than remembered?
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