“Yeah.” The banner across the top had changed. It now said, “Children of the Boar: Cast off your Shrouds and Come Forth.”
“What’s this?” Lizbeth pointed to a heading that read, “The Last Noble.” He opened the page and read silently alongside Lizbeth:
“In her long life she’s been called many things, but she was named Caetl in the year of her birth 47 AD, the only child of the Chief of a powerful clan and his Druidess wife. When Caetl was fourteen years of age, a rival clan raided their holdings, taking her hostage. Her father rallied his people and besieged the enemy, the survivors of whom had no choice but to escape by sea, taking Caetl as insurance. A storm arose and forced her captors’ vessel ashore at the island of Anglesey, the stronghold of druid priests and priestesses. Her mother, the Druidess, changed into a pelican and upon seeing where the storm was blowing the raiders, flew ahead and waited on shore to greet them with an escort of armed Druids.
“Times were dire for the inhabitants of Anglesey Isle. The captured raiders were given a choice: die or swear allegiance to the druids, who needed aid against the Roman army poised to cross the Menai Straight. The raiders were more fearful of the druids than the invading army, so they capitulated. The next morning, the commander of the Roman legion gave the order and catapults began hurling missiles from one bank to the other as his soldiers crossed on flat-bottomed boats and his infantry swam the low tide.
“The wildly painted Druids and their supporters put on a frightening show for the soldiers, dancing and shrieking and casting curses, but their numbers had been decimated from years of resisting their conquerors. Those who had not been killed outright had fled, either deep into the Irish countryside like Caetl’s mother, or for parts unknown. Anglesey was the last stronghold, and it soon became obvious it would not hold much longer against this enemy. The druids could have abandoned their people and saved themselves, but they stayed, fought and died.
“On the far side of the island, away from the horror of an invader that left no one, not even women and children alive, Caetl’s mother and two other noble High Priestesses bundled Caetl aboard the raider’s boat to escape with the Druids’ most treasured artifact: the Gossamer Crown.”
“He’s talking about Caitlin!” Lizbeth said. “Kevin! Come look at this.”
When he didn’t respond, she went to the couch and lifted the cushion. He winced and pulled it quickly back over his face, but not before Zach saw his eyes.
Lizbeth swung around, her face horrified, and Zach jumped up to pull her into his arms.
“Don’t tell him,” she whispered in his ear, and he nodded. Zach may not like Kevin very much, but he never wanted him to die.
Chapter Thirty-seven
The Isle of Wight
Kevin had never been all that fond of bright light. Huddled on the couch with his face buried in a cushion, he supposed it made sense, now that he knew his ancestors were mine-dwelling, darkness-loving dwarves. First he’d been sick on the boat, then the earthquake set it off again, and now the interior of Felicity’s house, illuminated with its abundance of skylights, had become too much for his burning eyes to bear. There was nothing wrong with his hearing, however, and since the cushion wasn’t blocking his ears, Lizbeth’s anguished whisper reached him clearly.
He lifted the cushion enough to ask, “Tell me what?” and then heard an unsubtle, “Shh!” from one of them.
Zach said quietly, “It’s not like he won’t notice when he looks in the mirror.”
Even through his misery, that got Kevin’s attention. He sat up and replaced the cushion, blinking against the brightness. “What are you guys talking about?” His voice was hoarse.
Felicity walked into the room, saying, “I’ve got three kinds of dressing – oh! Dear Lord, what happened to your eyes?”
Kevin’s empty stomach clenched. “Are they red?”
“Very much so! I could imagine Zach here, after the squeezin’ he got from Griffey, having some burst vessels in ‘is eyes, but you…”
Kevin got unsteadily to his feet and put his hand in his pocket. His fingers automatically caressed the misshapen lump of iridium. He heard it again, a strange sound that had been plaguing him for the last half hour, a faint buzzing voice in his head talking nonsense, as if his fillings were picking up a foreign radio station.
He squinted at Zach, who was holding Lizbeth in his arms – again. Both of them looked stricken.
A hand on his shoulder pulled him around and Felicity’s lightly wrinkled face appeared so close he couldn’t focus. He tried to open his eyes long enough for her to get a good look.
“Must be from the strain of vomitin’,” she said softly.
“It isn’t,” Lizbeth said. “It’s that nugget.”
Kevin pulled it out of his pocket and let it rest in his palm. Felicity reached for it, but three voices in unison stopped her, “No!”
Her eyes went round as she took an affronted step back. “For goodness sake, tell me what’s wrong.”
Kevin started to slip the nugget back into his pocket, but Lizbeth twisted away from Zach and grabbed Kevin’s arm.
“It’s the nugget.”
Felicity shook her head. “You already said that, dear.”
“Kevin, stop touching it,” Lizbeth said. She let go of his arm and crossed her own tightly against her stomach. “Let’s put it away somewhere safe.”
He made a protective fist around the nugget and immediately heard the strange voice, hissing loudly in his ears this time. Disoriented, he shut his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. He didn’t know how long he stood there, but a sudden sharp pain in his forearm forced his hand to open involuntarily. The noise in his head abated as the nugget clattered across the tile floor. Had Zach hit him? He wanted to snatch the nugget back up again, but he was so tired. He stumbled to the couch and collapsed on it.
Through a haze of exhaustion he heard Felicity say, “So, if I’m understandin’ this rightly, that chunk of metal there is not part of the crown, as Mr. Griffey originally thought, but a bit of the same material it was made from?”
“Yes,” came Zach’s voice. “And Kevin’s been messing with it for almost 24 hours.”
“That’s got to be why he’s sick, right?” Lizbeth still sounded worried. “The ritual was to touch the crown. Maybe prolonged exposure is dangerous.”
Kevin opened his eyes and looked at her. The room didn’t seem quite as bright as it had before.
“Now that, I can’t say,” Felicity said. He watched as she went to a curio cabinet on the wall and took something from a shelf. “Here’s a box you can put the bit into. It’s got a secure enough latch, I would think.”
Between them, Zach and Lizbeth managed to get the nugget into the box without touching it. Kevin didn’t see what they did with it after that, because he closed his eyes and must have dozed off.
When he opened them again, it was dark in the room and his stomach was rumbling. He sat up, waiting for the room to spin, but nothing happened. He felt fine. Standing, he turned toward soft voices from the dining area.
“Kevin!” Lizbeth rushed over and studied his face in the light from the dining room chandelier. “You look better. Thank goodness. How do you feel?”
“Where’s the nugget?”
Zach spoke from the table. “You’re not getting it back, dude. Look what it did to you.”
Kevin shrugged one shoulder in annoyance. “Yeah, alright. I just – it just…talks to me.”
“Seriously?” Lizbeth asked.
“I don’t know how else to explain it.”
Lizbeth patted him on the back. “Well, once Caitlin gets here, we’ll ask her about it. Hey, maybe while she’s gone she’ll find the crown and we can do whatever it is we need to save the world.”
“Find the crown?” Felicity asked. Her downturned mouth hung partly open in shock. “Is that what she’s lookin’ for?”
Chapter Thirty-eight
The Isle of Wight
Felicity seeme
d like such a kind-hearted and wise woman, despite her familiarity with the shotgun, that her distressed pacing around the big room made Lizbeth uneasy.
“That horrible thing!” Felicity cried. Lizbeth had never seen someone literally wring their hands before.
Zach leaned towards Lizbeth and asked quietly, “What, the crown?” but Felicity heard.
“Yes, the crown! It ruined her life. Everything she does is in service of that bloody crown. I thought she was finally rid of it, but now you say it has enslaved her again-” She broke off, stomped around a bit more and then stopped in the middle of the room. She inhaled and let it out slowly.
“If only we knew who had it, then the Cú faoil could help her find it.”
“What’s the Cú faoil?” Zach asked.
Felicity took another calming breath and said, “Let me tell you a story.”
Lizbeth was looking at Felicity and projecting an air of polite interest, but she suspected Zach had performed his signature eye-roll, because Felicity said, “Don’t fret, it’s a short one, and it might help you understand why Caitlin likes to go it alone.
“Wolfdogge’s kind are the Cú faoil, bred for their bravery in battle and cunnin’ at huntin’ wolves. It’s said his ancestor was the Cú Sith, a monstrous, red-eyed supernatural dog from the Scottish Highlands, dreaded by all. Me family’s been raisin’ these hounds for centuries.
“Wolfdogge doesn’t need to get the scent off what he’s searchin’ for, you see, because unlike other dogs, he hunts by sight, and because of his ancestry, his sight is keener than what he can see with his eyes, if you know what I mean.
“The Cú faoil were bred for kings – by law, none other were allowed to keep them. When he was a young man, Victor raised a fine specimen from a pup. Ooch, how he loved that dog. But the dog was meant to go to a noble household, and go it did.”
As Felicity’s “short” story stretched on, Zach shifted from foot to foot next to Lizbeth.
“The great estate that got the dog was nearby Victor’s ancestral lands, and the dog, well, he kept escapin’ his pen, much like Wolfdogge. They’re hard to contain, they are, bein’ as how they’re so intelligent. At any rate, one day Victor was leadin’ the dog back to its home when he saw a certain beautiful young redhead runnin’ across a field, chased by an armed man on horseback. Victor didn’t know what she’d done, but he feared for her, and told the dog to attack. It pulled the horseman from the back of ‘is mount midstride, for that’s what they were bred to do in battle, don’t you know.
“The nobleman was furious, as it turned out Victor had set his own dog on him. ‘Get her, you fool, she’s a thief!’ he shouted, but when Victor set the dog to follow her, it went barkin’ after a poor sheep mindin’ its own business in a nearby field. Victor had never seen the dog do such a thing, and the nobleman thought it had gone daft and told Victor to take it back, which he was quite pleased and willin’ to do.”
Lizbeth noticed that Zach was no longer fidgeting. He’d given Felicity his rapt attention.
“All that week, Victor thought of nothin’ but the beautiful girl, wonderin’ who she was, what she’d done, where she’d gone. He was so besotted that he even sketched her likeness, rememberin’ every detail of her face and hair. Then he sat with the dog and showed it the drawin’ and set it the impossible task of huntin’ the girl down.”
Felicity went into the kitchen and began washing dishes as if she’d finished the story.
“Is that it?” Zach asked.
“Well, you know me great-grandfather and Caitlin ended up together,” Felicity said, and Lizbeth saw her lips curl in a devious little smile.
Zach yawned and ran a hand through his hair. “What’s the point of the story, though?”
“The point is: Wolfdogge can find anyone.”
“And Caitlin knows it,” Kevin said.
“Exactly.”
“So why didn’t she take you up on your offer to have Wolfdogge help her?” Lizbeth asked.
“As I said, the Cú faoil are sight hounds,” Felicity replied. “It’s a special kind of sight, but they need to know who to look for. Caitlin wouldn’t be likely to ask for help anyway, for the same reason she’s gone and left you three here with me. She knows how much I love Wolfdogge and wouldn’t want to put him in danger. The stubborn wretch. Please understand that Caitlin has seen so many of her friends and family die, many of them to violent ends, like-”
She stopped and concentrated on scrubbing a dish that looked perfectly clean to Lizbeth.
“Like Victor?” Kevin asked.
“No. Me great-grandda was an old man when he passed. Caitlin stayed with ‘im ‘til his final hour, aging herself to match him wrinkle for wrinkle.”
Lizbeth had a feeling she knew who Felicity had been about to mention. “How did my father die? Mom told me it was in a car crash.”
Felicity bobbed her head up and down several times. “With the crown at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, she was finally free of that crushin’ obligation. Then they began salvagin’ Titanic, and she became obsessed with findin’ it before anyone else, for obvious reasons. She asked your da to help her. He did die in a car wreck, on his way to the airport. Your mother never forgave her.”
“Mom told me she was dead.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m sure your mother had her reasons, but I still remember how she treated your granny, her own mother, at the weddin’. Your granny dressed herself in a perfectly lovely gown, quite colorful, it was. I overheard your mother beratin’ her, shamefully, about how her choice of dress was too flamboyant. And this from a daughter of the fae.”
“What do you mean?” Lizbeth asked.
“Caitlin was certain your granny’s got a bit o’the blood in her. Makes you extra special, I think.”
Lizbeth thought about her grandmother, recalling the other evening when Granma, too, felt the electric sensations from the aurora. Granma had always said Lizbeth was destined for great things.
She looked over at Zach, who’d picked up a dishtowel. He selected a plate from those Felicity had set in the rack. As he dried it, he asked, “When Caitlin mentioned to you that something had been stolen, didn’t she say it could stop the destruction? Wouldn’t that tell you what it was?”
Felicity’s lips puckered in offense. “Not at all, young man. The crown has no other power but to turn ordinary souls into fae folk. None that I’m aware of, that is.”
Lizbeth felt sorry for Zach as he sputtered an apology, but Felicity’s good nature prevailed and she said, “Never you mind. We all know Caitlin keeps to herself. If she withheld information, we’ll just assume she felt she had a good reason.”
After the dishes had been washed and dried and the food put away, Kevin mentioned he was famished. It was the sort of awkward thing Lizbeth had come to expect from him. When he’d eaten and his dirty dishes were resting unwashed in the sink, Felicity assigned them each a place to sleep. Kevin got the couch, where he’d taken his restorative nap. Zach got an inflatable twin mattress that was too short for his height and was located in a spare bedroom jam-packed with junk. Lizbeth, to her discomfort, was told she’d be sleeping next to Felicity in her musty queen-sized bed. It was apparent from Felicity’s casualness about the arrangement that she didn’t see any reason why Lizbeth would balk at bunking with her.
“Here’s a nightdress for you, dear,” she said, handing Lizbeth a long, white cotton gown. “The loo’s right through there.”
Lizbeth took the opportunity to take a quick shower. When she removed her jeans, she felt something in her pocket and remembered Kevin’s nugget. She’d tucked the little box Felicity had given them into her pocket for safe-keeping. She pulled it out and set it on the back of the toilet, then turned on the bath faucets, adjusting the hot and cold until the water was comfortable.
She hadn’t ever really gotten a good look at the nugget. Figuring there was no harm in looking, she lifted the box and flipped the tiny hook. The lid came open faster than she’
d anticipated, and the box slipped between her wet fingers. In a reflex reaction, she jerked her hand to keep the box from falling and the nugget popped out. Her free hand shot out and caught it before it dropped into the open toilet bowl.
With shaking hands, she placed the nugget back in the box, fastened it, and set it back down before closing the toilet lid and stepping under the shower spray. She scrubbed her hand with a bar of Felicity’s sweet-smelling soap until it hurt.
Once she joined Felicity under the crisp white sheets, she laid face up, stiff and uncomfortable until the old woman began to snore softly. Even then she couldn’t relax, not because of the incident in the bathroom, which she’d firmly blocked from her thoughts, but because her mind insisted on poring over the other events of the day. Not that she blamed it.
So much had happened. So much had changed, illustrated by the fact that Zach had been in a life-or-death struggle today and they hadn’t even talked about it. And who knows what would have happened to Kevin if they hadn’t realized the nugget was making him sick? The truth was, while she was safe in this strange bed, people all over the world were dying. Lizbeth, Zach, Kevin – any one of them, or all three at once, could be next.
Caitlin was out there trying to carry the weight of the whole world on her shoulders, while the three of them just…waited. Suddenly it became essential that she convince the others to go find Caitlin. What if she was in trouble? Were they going to just passively wait for her until the world ended?
Lizbeth slipped out from under the covers and made her way down the dark hallway to the spare bedroom. The door knob made clicking noises and the hinges squeaked as she entered. She stubbed her bare toe on a box and swore under her breath. She heard the soft sound of Zach’s laughter.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She shut the door and felt her way in the dark to the mattress on the floor. It was chilly in the room. “If Caitlin isn’t back by morning, we need to go find her.”
“I know. I was just thinking the same thing. Is that your teeth chattering? Sounds like you’re typing on a keyboard. Come here.”
The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere Page 15