The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere

by Conway, Melissa

  He didn’t want to look. “No. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Yes! Don’t you get it?” she practically shouted the last few words.

  Zach reached out for her, but she ducked away. In an unexpected move, she began to run, not for the house, but toward the trees.

  Kevin and Zach exchanged perplexed looks. Zach shrugged and loped after her while Kevin called out to Caitlin. She looked around. With a sweeping wave of his arm, he gestured to the oak grove. Lizbeth had just disappeared into the shadows, with Zach close behind.

  Caitlin made her way back to where Kevin was standing, weariness in every step. Together, they walked across the field, navigated the tree roots, and came out on the far side. Kevin had a sense of déjà vu when he saw the place. It looked the same: the four stones marking where the old church had been, the line of trees along the creek. More powerfully than ever before, he felt the sensation that something was going to happen.

  Lizbeth and Zach had pulled the clumps of sod away again and were standing next to Richard Allen’s gravestone. As Kevin got closer with Caitlin, she suddenly gasped and pressed a hand to her breastbone. Her steps quickened into a hopping, stumbling gait. Concerned, Kevin stayed right on her heels in case she collapsed.

  At the gravesite, she fell to her knees and pressed her face to the stone.

  In addition to Caitlin’s powerful presence, Kevin felt what he’d felt before, something emanating from Richard Allen’s grave. He and the others had wrongly assumed that the long-dead occupant of this plot had been a shapeshifter. As soon as Lizbeth had pointed out to Kevin that he couldn’t feel Griffey anymore, he should have realized.

  “It’s here,” Lizbeth said. “The crown was here all along.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  East of England

  Richard Allen’s gravestone was too heavy for even the four of them together to lift, so Lizbeth waited with Caitlin in the overgrown graveyard while Zach and Kevin went to look in the barn for digging utensils. The boys had been treating Lizbeth like a porcelain doll. She’d seen violence before, and not just on television or at the movies. Once, a gator attacked a deer on the bayou not ten yards from her boat, and on two occasions Granma gave refuge to the neighbor lady whose husband regularly beat her to a pulp. Even so, Lizbeth had never seen a dead person, much less watched someone die.

  It wasn’t Griffey’s death that made her so fragile, though.

  Shapeshifting had been a horrifically disorienting experience. She’d been standing there, helpless to contribute to the awful scene being enacted before her. Caitlin had fallen for Griffey’s ruse and changed back into herself. Then Griffey began to take on the guise of a griffin. In all Lizbeth’s seventeen years, she’d never felt such an overpowering desire to be someone else – someone stronger, faster – not a useless spectator. She’d focused intently on the way Griffey changed. First, pointy pinfeathers appeared all over his head and arms as his hair receded, fur began to coat his legs and a tail budded. Then he rocked forward onto his toes as his feet elongated and his thighs shrank into the flanks of a lion. The pinfeathers on his arms grew long and thin and suddenly popped open into full-fledged feathers while his eyes migrated down the sides of his face and his jaws expanded forward into a huge, curved beak.

  It all happened so quickly that she’d had no idea the change was occurring simultaneously in her own body until she heard the sound of her own clothes ripping. Thinking about it now, it bothered her. How could she not feel something that traumatic? Was she going to start morphing uncontrollably at random without even realizing it? Caitlin had talked her through the process of changing back by saying, “Lizbeth, you must listen to my voice! Imagine you’re looking in a mirror. See your face, see your body, see your arms and legs and hands and feet.” Changing back had been effortless.

  “Caitlin?”

  A wasp whizzed by and a songbird warbled. The sun had broken through the hazy clouds and shone down on the pretty glen as if the brutality of the day had never happened.

  “Yes?”

  With all the questions Lizbeth had, about shapeshifting, about Caitlin being her grandmother, about the crown, the one that came out was, “How could I become a griffin when there is no such thing?”

  “They used to exist,” Caitlin replied. “Like a lot of other things. Brian always did enjoy using that form. It was his family crest. What I would like to know is how you shifted without touching the crown.”

  “Kevin’s nugget. It was an accident. I just held it for a second. The guys don’t know.”

  Lizbeth waited for Caitlin to chastise her, but she didn’t. The silence stretched. Lizbeth wanted to sit down, but there wasn’t enough room next to Caitlin and she knew from the prickers in her socks that the weedy grass wouldn’t be comfortable. In the distance, she saw Zach and Kevin hurrying back, each carrying a shovel.

  Another wasp, or maybe the same one, buzzed by. It advanced and retreated in that drunken way wasps have, hovering around Caitlin’s head. She seemed unaware of it, so Lizbeth shooed it away with a few waves of her hand. The wasp persisted, however – there was something about Caitlin that was really attracting it. Just as it occurred to Lizbeth that it was the blood in her hair and on her shirt, a black ball of feathers shot past, snatching the pesky insect out of the air.

  The raven glided up and around full circle before flapping back toward them. There wasn’t any place flat for it to land, so it came straight for Lizbeth. Instinctively, she held out her arm and braced for impact. The bird landed easily, turned around to face forward and settled its wings, glossy black feathers fluffed up as if it were ill. It stepped sideways up her arm, foot to foot, stopping only when it reached her shoulder.

  Lizbeth didn’t need to see the blue eyes to know it was Caw. “This is Len’s bird. He looks so sad.”

  “It’s hungry,” Caitlin said.

  Caw snuggled up next to Lizbeth’s cheek, his feathers tickling her.

  “Well, I think he’s special,” Lizbeth said, watching Caitlin out of the corner of her eye to gauge her reaction. “I read that ravens are kept at the Tower of London because there’s a legend that if they ever leave, the tower and the kingdom will fall.”

  Caitlin gave a weak laugh. “Who do you think started that legend?”

  Lizbeth shrugged, disturbing Caw, who uttered a small squawk.

  “We did,” Caitlin said, and Lizbeth assumed she meant the druids. “There’s an old Irish poem that goes, ‘The raven lit upon the crown, its eyes went red as fire, but when the fever cooled, it sang a song and played the lyre.’ Humans were not the only ones who had contact with the crown. We used the ravens at the tower for centuries to keep track of who was imprisoned.”

  “What about Wolfdogge?”

  “The hounds, too.”

  “So can they talk? The ravens?”

  “They communicate to some extent. Just like us, it’s who your parents are. I’m surprised Len would keep one, but perhaps he was unaware of Caw’s heritage. We don’t know the extent of the Guild’s knowledge of us.”

  “Kevin said Len was dead. And Simon.”

  “Brian couldn’t let them live. Had the advantage been Simon or Len’s, rest assured they would have killed him first. I wish I had known.”

  “How did they hide the crown from him? Didn’t he read their minds? Wouldn’t he have found out where Simon hid it?”

  “Be wary of what you learn from someone’s mind, Lizbeth. Since we merge our brain’s magnetic field, our gossamers, with theirs, we can only pick up what they are currently thinking. We cannot distinguish between truth and lie, even in thought. Brian was able just now to convince me he truly had given in. Len and Simon, as Guild, would likely know it was possible to fool a shapeshifter.”

  Zach and Kevin arrived with the shovels and four plastic bottles of water. Kevin loosened the lids and handed a bottle each to Caitlin and Lizbeth. Zach was wearing a shirt that looked exactly like the one she’d first seen him in. Smelled like it
, too.

  “Check it out,” he said, pulling a backpack from his shoulder. He unzipped it and inside, Lizbeth saw his laptop.

  “That’s your backpack? Where did you find it?” she asked.

  “Griffey’s car is in the barn. He must have rescued it before the ship went kablooie.”

  Caitlin moved off the gravestone and said, “Dig.”

  Using the shovels as leverage, Zach and Kevin were able to flip the heavy stone onto the grass. Surprised bugs wiggled frantically away from the sunlight. The boys began to dig and within minutes, they hit something. Kevin tried to pry a square, wooden box out of the soil with his fingers, but it was held fast by a root of some sort that had grown around and around the box. Lizbeth’s eyes were drawn to the nearest oak tree. Zach lifted his shovel, but Kevin stopped him. He touched the stubborn growth and closed his eyes. Moments later, he lifted the box easily and handed it to Caitlin. She brushed the dirt off the top, revealing a Celtic triskele carved into the wood.

  “Let’s go,” she said, turning toward the house.

  “Wait a minute,” Kevin said, holding up a finger. “Something’s going to happen.”

  Zach scrunched his face. “I feel it.”

  The ground began to rumble and shake. It was probably a coincidence that another earthquake hit moments after they found the crown, but Lizbeth shivered anyway as she waited for the ground to settle.

  Now that they had the means to stop it, would the gossamer sphere, an entity that had controlled the earth’s magnetic field for millions upon millions of years, cooperate?

  Chapter Forty-five

  East of England

  Back at the house, Caitlin wanted to get started right away, but Zach flat-out told her he wouldn’t participate in whatever she had in mind unless she washed up, put on fresh clothes and bandaged her head wound. He expected an argument, but she said, “Wash your own wound,” and disappeared upstairs with the crown still in its box. He wondered if she was going to take it into the shower with her.

  After going to the kitchen sink and cleaning the gouge Griffey had pecked into his arm, he plugged in his laptop and sat at the kitchen table. While it booted up, his mind conjured an image of Griffey lying in the grass. Zach knew his blow had killed him, but he also knew if he hadn’t delivered it, the shapeshifter would have killed Caitlin. Might have even killed them all. As awful as it was to realize his first kill at eighteen, Zach felt little remorse. He’d known from a young age that his path would lead him to bloodshed. As long as the opponent deserved his fate, Zach wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

  On his laptop, he discovered to his irritation that Griffey had deleted the file with the digital artwork of the crown. Not that it mattered anymore, but he’d worked really hard creating it. Simon’s Internet connection was working, so Zach’s second item of interest was to check his email. His mom’s computer skills were fresh from the Stone Age, but she’d borrowed a friend’s email account and sent him an update on the family and begged him to respond. He fired off a quick reply assuring her he was okay.

  Lizbeth came and sat next to him as he scanned the remainder of unopened emails in his in box. He ignored the spam, scrolling down until he found what he was looking for.

  “That’s from Seamus,” Lizbeth said.

  “I see that.”

  The email read: “Zach, thank you for your email. I followed the link you sent and watched your video on YouTube. Only Children of the Boar can feel the pulses. Your video indicates that you have no idea what is happening, and yet in your email you mention stopping the gossamer ‘sphere.’ What is this sphere? The lore does not mention such a thing, but if you are indeed in the company of the last Noble, and she is intent on stopping it, I must presume it is the cause of the current state of the world and I am therefore entirely at your service. You may find me at the Ritz London. I await further instruction.”

  “You emailed him?” Lizbeth exclaimed.

  “Yeah. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now we won’t need his help.”

  “How’s he supposed to help? He’s just a wannabe bard who doesn’t even know what the gossamer sphere is.”

  “Of course he doesn’t. Griffey didn’t know, either. Caitlin didn’t even figure out what it was until recently. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We have the crown and here comes Caitlin. Let’s rock and roll.”

  Caitlin came down the stairs, wearing a blouse she must have borrowed from Werka’s closet. The flowered polyester hung almost indecently off her shoulders. Her wound was neatly bandaged and she looked refreshed. She tossed a sweatshirt to Lizbeth, who went into the kitchen and changed out of Zach’s shirt.

  Caitlin placed the triskele box in the center of the coffee table and said, “It’s time. Come sit.”

  Zach shut his laptop with a flutter of anticipation in his gut. He had no idea what they’d be required to do, but this was the moment they’d been preparing for since the quest began. His inner critic scoffed at the picture the four of them made; dirty, exhausted and injured. It wasn’t at all the dignified ceremony he’d expected it to be. Without a word, no chanting or singing, Caitlin opened the box and removed the crown. It looked exactly like he knew it would. She set it on her head and reached out. They took each other’s hands, forming a circle. Caitlin closed her eyes.

  He waited for something to happen, but felt nothing. He heard the breath whistling faintly in and out of Kevin’s nostrils and saw beads of sweat form on Caitlin’s brow, but that was it. After a few minutes, Caitlin hissed, “Bugger all!” which he knew was some kind of Irish foul language.

  “What do you want us to do?” Lizbeth asked in a small voice.

  Caitlin opened her eyes. Zach’s heart sank at the hopelessness on her face.

  “I should have known,” she whispered.

  Zach met Lizbeth’s and then Kevin’s eyes and saw his worry reflected there. “What’s wrong?”

  Caitlin removed the crown and held it between her fingertips. Her beautiful features were ravaged by despair. “How can we contact the sphere – if it’s broken?”

  Chapter Forty-six

  East of England

  They tried several more times. During each attempt, Kevin thought he caught the faintest whisper of something at the edge of his mind, similar to the buzzing he’d heard at Felicity’s house when he was sick. None of the others seemed to notice it, so he dismissed it as residual iridium sickness, maybe brought on by his continued proximity to the nugget in its box in his pocket.

  “That’s it, then,” Caitlin said after the final try. She put the crown back in its box.

  Lizbeth jumped up, fists clenched at her side. “Is that all you can say? That’s it? How do you know? There’s got to be something else we can do.”

  “I know because I am the crown’s guardian. I know because its creator told me what it can do. There were three in the beginning. Three shapeshifters. A queen and her two subjects, who became fast friends. Over time, they allowed more to join their ranks, carefully selecting only those they knew would survive. Most were good. They became the druidic people, revered by all. But people are unpredictable, especially under the extraordinary circumstances of gaining immortality and power. Some of them got greedy. They misused their power, going outside the Grove and offering their services to the warring clans—for a price. It wasn’t long before those clans began to envy the peace and prosperity of the Grove. In desperation, the queen placed the crown upon her brow, and with her two most trusted friends by her side, implored the gods for a solution. The response was nothing like what they expected, and before the backlash of contacting the sphere killed Queen Wyn, the others saw what it was and knew its purpose. They buried her under a monumental cairn attributed now to some other queen, and the two remaining friends added the triskele symbol to the crown to commemorate their friendship.

  “So, yes, Lizbeth, I do know there is nothing else to be done. The sphere did not respond. I would have gladly given my life, as my grandmother did, to accom
plish this task. But it is not to be.”

  She pulled a set of keys and a billfold from her pocket. “We’d best deal with the remaining issue at hand.”

  Within moments, she’d shapeshifted into a slimmer version of Werka.

  “Take my rental car to London and get a hotel. I’ll contact the police as a distraught Werka who was knocked unconscious and woke up to find her husband and his friends murdered. Dispose of your shoes. As Werka, I can offer the police a logical explanation for your fingerprints being here, at least.”

  The police would find their shoe prints all over the property, so dumping the shoes made sense, but Kevin didn’t understand something. “Griffey’s car is in the barn. He doesn’t exactly look like the Chief Inspector anymore.”

  “Let the police sort it out. Given the possible scenarios, Werka is unlikely to be considered a suspect. Besides, soon they will have better things with which to concern themselves.”

  Like staying alive, thought Kevin.

  “You should all make arrangements to fly to your homes if you can. I’ll call and make reservations at the Marriott on-”

  “No, put us at the Ritz,” Zach said.

  Caitlin, in the guise of Werka, raised an eyebrow, but the movement must have hurt her wound because she flinched a little. “If you wish. I’ll try and meet you there, but if I cannot…know that you each have my gratitude.”

  Kevin saw Lizbeth move in for a hug, aborted when Caitlin lifted the triskele box. “When the police arrive, this must not be here.” She handed the box to Lizbeth. “If I do not come, the crown is yours. Keep it in the box. Protect it.”