The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere

by Conway, Melissa

  The female announcer said, “Normally, tectonic plate movement over the course of a year is measured in centimeters, but geologists say the latest satellite measurements of the Pacific Plate show that it has moved almost a meter in the last week alone. Earthquakes have literally been too numerous to count, but there have been more than seventy volcanic eruptions along the ring of fire in the last twenty-four hours, more than would normally occur in a month, with hundreds more volcanoes showing signs of activity. Now word has come in that even volcanoes considered long extinct are reawakening. Authorities in the U.S., Canada, the Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia – indeed, most of the affected countries – are calling for mass evacuation in some coastal areas. Ash clouds are interfering with air travel and causing health hazards. Damage has been immeasurable, with whole towns lost, and the death toll–”

  The cabbie switched the channel then, muttering something about finding local news. Kevin met Zach’s eyes and then Lizbeth’s. As Caitlin had warned, the situation was getting worse. He set his jaw, grimly determined to find a way to help, with or without Caitlin.

  Not long after, the cabbie announced that they’d reached the shopping center. “I’ll drop you here on the pavement.”

  The building that housed the mall had a tall, windowed central structure over the front entrance. As soon as Kevin paid the driver and they exited the cab, Lizbeth asked, “Why did you tell him to come here?”

  “Where else are we going to go?” Kevin asked. “At least we can buy what we need now that our luggage is gone.”

  Lizbeth made a beeline for a door on the left, framed with the familiar golden arches of a McDonalds. Once they’d eaten, they wandered into the indoor mall. The store names were mostly unfamiliar. Kevin pointed to what looked like a department store, a place called Marks & Spencer.

  As soon as they stepped inside, a saleswoman approached.

  “May I help you?”

  “Um, pants?” Zach said.

  “Blokes or ladies?”

  “For me.”

  She led the way up the aisle and after a few turns, pointed to the men’s underwear section. Zach started to correct her, but Kevin interrupted with a quick, “Thanks.”

  After the saleswoman was out of earshot, he said, “Things are different here, dude. ‘Pants’ probably means ‘underpants.’ Besides, I’m guessing you could use a fresh set of drawers.”

  They selected socks and underwear for Zach, and after a short discussion, decided each of them needed a new shirt. The police would have confiscated their luggage; therefore any description of the three fugitives released to the media would include their current attire. As Kevin was making the purchase with the stolen cash, Lizbeth took off. She returned moments later to set a stick of deodorant on the counter. She and Kevin changed into their shirts and waited on a wooden bench while Zach escaped to the men’s room to wash up in the sink and change.

  Kevin watched her face as a wet-haired, fresh-smelling Zach emerged in his new blue, long-sleeved shirt, appearing confident and, not that Kevin spent a lot of time evaluating other guys’ looks, handsome. There was a softness around Lizbeth’s eyes when she looked at Zach that reinforced Kevin’s suspicion that something was developing between his two companions.

  Zach said, “I guess we should look for a hotel and hide out until Caitlin finds us.”

  “How?” Lizbeth asked. “Hotels need I.D. and credit cards, right?”

  Kevin thought back to the beginning of summer, when he’d first arrived. He’d spent less than twenty-four hours in England before he’d boarded the drilling vessel. Dr. Weinstein had checked into the hotel for them, so he had no frame of reference to offer advice. Then something occurred to him.

  “I know where we could stay. Getting there might be a problem, but I’m sure he’d put us up.”

  Lizbeth looked relieved. “Where?”

  “On the drilling vessel.”

  Zach and Lizbeth said in unison, “What?”

  “Bill Masters is looking for someone to work the iridium, and we need a place to hide out.”

  “Great idea.” Zach’s tone said the opposite.

  “I think that’s the last place Caitlin would want us to go,” Lizbeth said.

  Kevin snorted. “Even if we do manage to find a safe place to stay, are we really going to wait for Caitlin to somehow break out of jail and find us before the police do? And before the gossamer sphere destroys the world?”

  “Nice speech,” Zach said. “I agree with you, though. We should take some kind of action instead of hiding like cowards, but I’m not going to walk up to Caitlin’s enemy and ask him for help.”

  “If they worked together looking for the crown, then they weren’t always enemies.” Kevin looked out at the passing shoppers. No one seemed to be paying them any attention. “What do you think we should do?”

  “We need to find survivors from The Gossamer, the ship that salvaged the crown from Titanic. Time is running out. We need to find that crown.”

  “And do what with it without Caitlin?” Lizbeth asked. “We don’t even know what it’s for. No. Caitlin was looking for the survivors when she got arrested. Maybe the police set a trap for her.”

  “Come on. She dropped us off at Simon’s and he told us to run like an hour later. How long do you think it took the cops to catch her? She didn’t have time to find any of the survivors.” Zach stood and swung his backpack, bulkier now with the addition of his soiled clothes, onto his back. “If we can’t get a hotel, let’s at least find an Internet café. I need a connection.”

  He said it like he needed a fix, and Kevin smiled.

  The mall was huge and the directory confusing, since the first floor to Brits was the second floor to Americans and on up. Still, it didn’t take them long to find a cybercafé. There weren’t many patrons, so they had their pick of tables. Zach chose a secluded spot near the back and sat with his back to a faux brick wall.

  Kevin escorted Lizbeth to the counter to order coffee and scones, leaving Zach to boot up his laptop. When they got back to the table, Zach was hunched intently over his keyboard, rapidly tapping. Lizbeth sat next to him and scooted her chair close to look at the screen.

  “Whatcha doin’?” she asked.

  “Not having much luck, that’s for sure. Can’t find anything else about The Gossamer or her crew.”

  Kevin said, “If they all died from contact with the crown, maybe you could search for the symptoms.”

  Zach glanced up briefly. “We don’t know what the symptoms are, do we?”

  “Fever, agitation, flushed skin, bleeding conjunctiva,” Lizbeth supplied. When Zach gave her a look, she shrugged and said, “What? You saw that lady scientist.”

  Zach twisted his lips, but began typing again. “Okay, here. Looks like we have Ebola or Dengue Fever.”

  “Try searching for the symptoms plus the word shapeshifter,” Kevin said.

  Zach’s expressive face told him what he thought of that suggestion, but he tapped the keys, waited a second and said, “Hm, that’s weird.”

  Lizbeth leaned closer, and Kevin noticed their shoulders were now touching.

  “What?” she asked.

  From across the table, Kevin couldn’t see what Zach was pointing at on the screen, so he got up and came around.

  “I just looked at this website this morning,” Zach said, clicking on the link.

  When the site loaded, Lizbeth said, “Seamus the Bard, huh? Oh, look! What’s this? Click on ‘The First Shapeshifters.’”

  Zach obliged, and a long block of text appeared, with illustrations in the border that looked like woodcut prints from a classic fairy tale storybook. Lizbeth read aloud in her soft voice:

  “Wyn of the Grove was a young queen who ruled a minor clan in the land that would come to be called Ireland. Just outside the Grove’s border was an abandoned mine, feared by all. Legend had it that a deadly affliction struck any who extracted the ore. The old mine had become lair to a vicious wild boar with blo
od-red eyes and tusks the size of a man’s forearm. The boar had encroached upon the Grove, so Aedn, the clan’s bravest warrior, requested permission from the queen to subdue it. Although the beast attacked in an erratic, agitated manner, the fight was long and fierce, and Aedn lost two of his finest hounds. Just as the monster gored Aedn in the leg, the warrior defeated it with a spear-thrust down through the heart. That night, the queen’s household feasted on succulent wild boar.

  “Tadg the Small convinced his queen if the boar could live in the mine, the danger was only superstition. She agreed to let him lead a group to scout it for workable veins. When the party returned with reports of great wealth to be had, elation soon turned to sorrow. Six of the ten men who’d gone to the mine grew gravely ill. At first they thought the boar meat had been tainted, but none of the sick men ate at the queen’s table. The clan shaman concluded from their symptoms that they suffered the same illness as the boar, with feverish skin and bleeding eyes, and the affliction was brought about because they offended the evil spirit haunting the mine. Tadg was charged with the miners’ deaths and banished to live within the mine one year for each of the dead. Alone in the mine, it wasn’t long before he unearthed a strange lump of metal, surrounded by iron hematite. He spent much of his penance carefully experimenting with the metal, deducing that it imbued unique and wondrous powers to whatever living thing survived its touch.

  “At the end of six years, Tadg returned to his clan. He approached Aedn, whose injury had robbed him of his warrior livelihood and left him an artisan by trade. Under Tadg’s guidance, Aedn painstakingly formed the silvery stuff into a crown and crafted an iron-lined box to hold it. The two men presented it to their queen with the warning that there was something very special and very dangerous about the gift…”

  Lizbeth trailed off and then said, “Oh, my gosh.”

  “He’s talking about the gossamer crown.” Zach hit his browser’s back button and they all studied the photo of Seamus the Bard. Other than the long, black hair pulled back to reveal a sharp widow’s peak, he looked perfectly normal.

  “I wonder if Caitlin knows him,” Lizbeth said.

  Kevin thought about Simon and Len, Caitlin’s highly colorful acquaintances, and figured this Seamus guy, with his flamboyant website and imaginative story-telling, would certainly fit in. As Zach clicked on another link to further explore Seamus’ site, something niggled at the back of Kevin’s mind. He looked up and scanned the cybercafé. It had gotten busy fast. The café’s computers were all occupied now and many of the tables had sprouted laptops. He looked out into the mall through the green fronds of a wall of potted plants and saw a security guard who seemed to be looking right back at him.

  “I think we better get out of here,” he said.

  Zach looked up at the plump security guard and made a face that said he’d taken his measure and found him wanting, but he shut the laptop and popped up out of his chair. They left and walked quickly towards the mall exit, weaving in and out of the shoppers. They paused in the bright sunshine by a line of grumbling, exhaust-spewing buses. By unspoken mutual decision, when the guard stepped outside, too, they got on the nearest bus. Kevin thought it ironic that when the bus pulled out of the parking lot and got on the highway, it took them back towards London.

  Just in case it wasn’t paranoia and the security guard really had pegged them for fugitives, they decided to switch buses. They did so two more times, meandering all over the outskirts of London, talking little and looking out the windows at the city’s strange little cars and unfamiliar road signs. Finally, when the sun was getting low in the sky, they alighted in an industrial area near a marina on the Thames River.

  The marina was big, with several buildings that were not quite seedy-looking, although it seemed he and Zach and Lizbeth landed far from the nearest upscale yacht club. At least the three of them could wander into the restaurant off the street without looking out of place. Kevin did all the talking in his faux English accent and wondered if he was fooling anyone. It might be called English in both countries, but there were so many differences between the languages he probably gave himself away with every other sentence he spoke. He doubted American tourists were all that common in this area, though, and it was the best disguise he could come up with.

  The friendly waitress called him “duck” and showed them to a booth. Even though Kevin had been sitting on buses for the last three hours, he collapsed onto the bench gratefully. The view out over the Thames was partially obstructed by boats moored in their berths. He’d learned a bit from his time at sea, and it looked as if the marina housed all kinds, from twenty-foot fishing boats to forty-foot yachts to one hundred-foot luxury cruisers.

  Lizbeth fiddled with the condiments after they ordered their food. “I feel like a broken record, but – what now?”

  Kevin bit his lip and shifted his eyes to the boats. He hadn’t seen one person out there since they’d arrived. Other than some gulls, the docks appeared to be abandoned. “Do your skills extend to breaking and entering?”

  She nodded. “I can pick just about any lock. Are you thinking about breaking into someone’s boat and sleeping there?”

  He remembered the nauseating nights aboard the drill ship and reconsidered, but Zach said, “That’s a good idea, but what about security? How do we do it without getting caught?”

  Kevin shrugged. “You tell me. I’ve committed more crimes today than I’ve committed in my entire life.”

  After they finished their meal, they found a path that paralleled the river and walked along it as dusk began to fall. They hadn’t settled on a plan. Kevin felt helpless and dejected.

  The river was wide here, and he supposed it must be deep, because a huge commercial vessel slid silently downstream. When they reached the outskirts of the marina, they stopped near the farthest dock and eyed the boats there.

  “What about that one?” Lizbeth said, pointing to a classy-looking yacht.

  Zach gently slapped her hand down. “You want to draw security a picture about what we’re thinking about doing?”

  Her bottom lip came out in a childish pout. “My feet hurt and I – I want to go home.”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows as Zach took yet another opportunity to put his arm around her shoulders. Zach said, “Yeah, home and bed sounds real inviting right now, I know, but we’d probably have to spend a few weeks or months or years in a nice foreign jail bed before we’d get to go home, remember? Not to mention that home and bed might not be there if we don’t figure out how to fix things.”

  Kevin turned away when Lizbeth sighed and leaned against Zach. He took a deep breath of the fresh, cool air and looked out across the water again, aware suddenly of that strange anticipation, the sensation that something was going to happen. In the dying light, he peered at the boats on the water. A barge that looked like a garbage scow moved slowly upriver, a few sailboats headed for the marina, and a big cruiser floated downstream. He focused on the cruiser. It was just close enough for him to make out the name painted on the bow.

  The Gossamer.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Thames River

  Lizbeth saw Kevin’s face when Zach put his arm around her – saw his eyebrows disappear into his shaggy bangs and his eyes roll a little. As self-conscious as that made her feel, she couldn’t help relaxing against Zach, enjoying his nearness. It was getting cold, and he seemed to radiate warmth, like a furnace. A tall, handsome furnace with an incredible body.

  A wave of heat swept up her neck and settled in her cheeks and ears. She was glad of the near-darkness; it hid her flushed skin, but if she didn’t get a grip on her heart rate and breathing, he was bound to notice her reaction. Why it was important that he didn’t, she couldn’t really say. He didn’t frighten her, but his effect on her certainly did. This was not the time or place for a flirtation.

  She’d just gathered her wits enough to move away from temptation, when Kevin said, “Look, the ship!”

  “What ship?�
� Zach asked.

  “The Gossamer! Right there.” Kevin pointed to a boat on the water.

  Lizbeth knew a little about boats growing up in watery New Orleans, but this one was much bigger than any of the craft she’d piloted on the bayou. The hull of the ship had once been white, but now streaks of rust attested to its age. Like all the boats on the river, it was traveling slowly, and she wondered if there was some kind of speed limit. Even so, if they didn’t do something soon, the ship would continue on out to the open sea and be lost to them.

  Without conscious thought, she found herself running down the grassy bank. By the time she reached the dock, long-legged Zach had caught up to her. Their footfalls hammered hollowly on the wooden slats as they ran, passing boat after moored boat until Lizbeth reached her goal.

  Out of breath from the second unaccustomed sprint of the day, she put her hands on her hips and examined the motorboat she’d chosen. Zach scowled down at it and stepped over to the yacht she’d pointed out earlier as a potential place to sleep.

  She shook her head. “That one’s too big, I can’t drive it. This one’s small, it looks fast, and it’s so ugly maybe no one will miss it. Get the lines.”

  Before Kevin had even caught up to them, she was on board and in the driver’s seat. She rooted around in her bag for her tools before realizing she hadn’t had the foresight to remove the kit from her luggage. It was getting darker. She estimated they only had about half an hour before they’d need a light to see out on the river. For now, there was enough light for her to see that the owners of the boat hadn’t left any lock-picking devices lying around.

  Zach and Kevin’s low voices reached her, as they engaged in a brief argument about how to unfasten the mooring lines. The boat dipped as they climbed in and then rocked as they struggled over who would sit shotgun.

  “Will you two knock it off?”

  Pointedly, she asked, “Zach, how much do you know about boats?”

  Zach conceded the seat to Kevin. The boat began to drift backwards.