by R G Peterson
AJ looked at Nick and scrunched up his face. Nick could see AJ mentally going through the names once more, ticking off each on his fingers. “I only get eleven.”
Nick smiled, “Did you count yourself?”
Realization shown on AJ’s face. “Oh yeah, twelve. So what’s GG making this year?”
Nick gave him a dubious look.
AJ smiled before answering his own question. “Swiss steak, smashed potatoes and kernel corn, as always.”
“I think it would break her heart if I asked her to make anything else,” Nick said.
“Excuse me, but why would you? Man, that’s the best thing about your birthday. Well at least until this year. Sweet sixteen. And you know what that means?”
“Hey, I’ve been kissed,” Nick said with a knowing smile.
“No, man, more important than that.” AJ pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and shoved his driver’s license six inches from Nick’s face. AJ had acquired his in late August. “This makes you feel like a grownup. You know what I mean?”
“A rite of passage.”
“Huh? Nah, it means freedom. Independence. Liberty. Liberation.”
“For you maybe, but I think the only thing Grandpa Henry is going to let me use his car for is if he needs me to do an errand. And even then I’m not so sure.”
The doorbell rang prompting Grandma Gayle to call upstairs, “Nick, your guests are here. Come down and greet them.”
Nick and AJ took the stairs two at a time and skidded to a stop in the foyer. John and Mary Walker stood in the doorway with their daughter Grace directly behind them. Nick and she locked eyes and smiled. Nick and Grace had officially established their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend a few months earlier despite being virtually inseparable for the past three years, starting when Nick saved Grace’s life when she fell through the local pond figure skating.
As they greeted each other, Terry, Nick’s twin brother, who he had been separated from at birth, and his paternal grandfather, Red, came through the door. Nick, at 6’5”, looked over their heads to see Anthony and Miriam walking up the Ericson’s front stairs.
“That only leaves Maddy,” Nick remarked to AJ.
“Hey, I’m right here,” Maddy said, sounding as if she had been slighted. The others parted and Maddy, a shade under five feet tall, stepped through like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Nick laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t see you among the sea of taller people.”
Maddy smiled, extended herself up on her tiptoes and kissed Nick on the cheek. “Happy Birthday, Nicholas.” She turned to Terry and kissed him on the cheek as well. “And ta yeh as well, Terrence, darlin’.”
“Hey, hey. What about me?” AJ playfully chastised her.
“I gave yeh yers last summer, Arthur. That’s it ‘til next year.”
AJ feigned disappointment, knowing full well he would be showered with his own later that night. He and Maddy had been dating for close to two years.
“When are we going to eat? I’m starving,” AJ announced to the room.
“When aren’ yeh hungry?” Maddy playfully chastised him.
GG shooed everyone out of the way and grabbed Terry giving him a huge hug, patting his cheek when she let go. “Happy birthday, Terry. We’re so happy you’re back in our lives.”
Gayle started to tear up, causing Terry to become visibly uncomfortable. He leaned away from GG, folded his arms across his chest and dropped his eyes to the floor.
Terry had been stolen from his incubator on the night he and Nick were born and brought to Tristan Warrington, who raised Terry as his adopted son. It wasn’t until last year that Nick told his grandparents what he had discovered – Terry was alive. When Tristan Warrington died trying to kill Nick in an attempt to ensure Terry would be the One Spoken of in an ancient Mayan prophecy, it freed Nick to tell his grandparents about Terry. Warrington had always been cold and aloof in his affections toward his adopted son. It was the main reason Terry had such great difficulty adjusting to Gayle fussing over him and touching him at every opportunity.
“Nick, get everyone’s coats and hang them up, please,” Gayle said, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I have snacks in the front room and tell Henry what you would like to drink and he’ll be happy to get it for you.”
“I’ll have a beer,” AJ responded before laughing. Seeing Henry wasn’t the least bit amused, he added, “Just kidding. Dr. Pepper, please.”
Everyone spread around the front room. Nick and AJ grabbed places on the floor in front of the couch where Grace, Maddy and Miriam rested. Red and Terry sat on folding chairs next to one another in front of the fireplace, while Mary sat in Henry’s favorite chair and John chose to stand behind her. Anthony plopped himself down in a folding chair across the room from Terry.
Grace broke the uncomfortable silence that had enveloped the room, “So, Maddy, how was choral practice?”
“Splendid. I think everyone’ll enjoy the show.”
Everyone lapsed back into silence. The teenagers, who were so relaxed around one another – having shared numerous and often-dangerous exploits – were not as comfortable being themselves when the grownups were present.
A minute later Gayle saved everyone, “Dinners ready.”
The boys had double helpings of everything. AJ had thirds. GG brought out a huge pineapple upside down, triple layer cake and a tub of vanilla ice cream. After she placed it in the middle of the table directly in front of Nick, she turned and went back into the kitchen. A few seconds later she brought out a red velvet triple layer cake and placed it in front of Terry.
“How’d you know, GG?” Terry asked surprised, catching him completely off guard.
“That’s my little secret. I hope you like it.”
“Ah, wow, yeah, sure.” Terry looked up at Grandma Gayle with wet eyes and said, “Thank you.” He looked away trying to shield his discomfort from the others.
Gayle put her arms around his shoulders and gave him a grandmotherly hug before starting to light the candles. Mary grabbed a second extended lighter and helped light Nick’s cake. Soon, the room was aglow with the flickering wash from the thirty-two candles.
“AJ, why don’t you do the honors and lead us in song?” Gayle prompted, knowing AJ would otherwise sing off key. Better to have everyone try to match him then to have him drown everyone with his singing.
When everyone had their fill of cake and ice cream, the party moved back to the living room where presents were eagerly opened. The twins alternated unwrapping their gifts so everyone could see what they received. With wrapping paper strewn over the floor, Grandma Gayle started to hand the twins the last two presents. She held out a small rectangular box to Terry and a small square one to Nick. She pulled them back and switched. As the boys began to reach for them, she pulled them back one more time. Inside, GG was struggling with an overpowering feeling that what she was about to do would have major ramifications on future events.
“Oh, I don’t know. You decide,” she said to Nick and Terry trying hard not to show her trepidation.
Nick nodded at Terry, motioning for him to choose. Terry shook his head and motioned for Nick to make the decision. Nick just sat there.
“Oh, here, let me do it,” AJ announced. He took the square box and gave it to Terry and the rectangular box to Nick. “There,” he proclaimed and sat back against the footrest of the couch.
The twins opened their gifts at the same time. Nick extracted a multi-layered leather bracelet with Voynich symbols carved into it. The bracelet had what appeared to be a stud punched through the leather to hold the layers in place. Terry removed a ring with a wide silver band with more Voynich symbols raised above the shank. The band ended with bars closed on a circular piece of silver holding a blue topaz stone. There were two Voynich symbols on one side of the stone and three on the other.
The twins looked from one to the other and, after a brief moment, at their grandmother.
“Being your sixteenth bi
rthdays I thought you should finally have these. They were your mother’s. She had them with her on the night you were born.”
Chapter 2
“What do these symbols stand for?”
“Thanks, Grandma. This really means a lot. You mind if we go upstairs to my room?” Nick tried to keep his voice steady, showing none of the surprise or emotion he felt.
“No, of course not, dear. We’ll sit down here and talk. You teenagers go and have a nice time.” As she watched the teens stand to leave, GG had a sense of déjà vu and flashed back to her dream of the night before.
“Does anybody want some more coffee?” she asked as she stood and rushed off. As she entered the kitchen she staggered three steps, leaned heavily on the table then lowered herself onto one of the chairs and began to cry as quietly as is possible.
The seven teenagers hurried off to Nick’s bedroom and took up places around the room and on his bed.
“Wow, what happened here?” Grace chided Nick when she saw his room. Nick turned three shades of red before looking once more at the bracelet.
“So what does it say?” Maddy asked when she saw Nick staring at it.
“Nothing. That’s what I was trying to figure out. The symbols look as if they are in random order. This symbol here stands for our letter O. The next one is the letter W. This is an M. Then comes O, M, N, I, A, T, I, E and finally L.”
“O, W, M, O, M, N, I, A, T, I, E, L?” Grace asked as confirmation.
He nodded.
She added, “I don’t know how you do that. They all look identical to me.”
“Yeah, well there are slight variations, but they’re like the 3-D pictures we found in the Minoan archives. They seem to jump out at me and I have no idea why.”
Grace and the others nodded accepting Nick’s explanation.
He went on, “When I saw the first few letters I thought maybe it was some sort of anagram like we came upon when looking for the Templar treasure. But then I realized there are way too many.”
They sat and pondered the symbols, each trying to decipher the letters. “Ow Mom Tie Nail.” AJ shouted.
“Which would be…what” Maddy pointedly asked.
“Um, you know those things that hold a tie in place,” AJ said.
“Darlin’, they’re called tie tacks.” She smiled up at him and placed her head on his shoulder.
Anthony said, “Hey, maybe AJ’s on to something. Maybe it is an anagram? We just have to figure out by unscrambling the letters.”
Nick offered, “There could be a million different words and combinations. Unless we find something in my…our mom’s diary, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to what it could be.”
“How about, woman omit lie?” Terry said. “Or something like that.”
Once again AJ was astounded at how fast Terry seemed to be able to solve riddles. “Wow, how do you do that? Man, that’s unbelievable.”
Grace smiled when she saw AJ gape at Terry as if he had just solved some complex mathematical formula that had stumped man for ages. She turned to Nick and gently took the bracelet from his hand and turned it over, examining its underside.
“Why are there so many layers? I count three of them. And the stud is flat on the inside with only a small ridge to hold the leather together. See?”
She held the bracelet so Nick could examine it. “Yeah. Let me see if I can remove it.”
Terry spoke up. “These must have been important to her. Otherwise why would she have had them with her? I’ll ask Grandpa Red if she always wore them.”
He turned the ring over in his hands as he spoke. It slipped from his fingers and landed on a part of the floor not covered by the area rug. One of the raised symbols popped off the ring and landed on the rug.
“Did it break?” Anthony asked.
“I don’t know,” Terry said examining the place where the symbol had been. “It looks like there’s a place where the symbols slide off and on. What do these mean any way?” He took his eyes off the ring and gazed at Nick. “Nick, Nick.”
“What?” Nick asked as he looked up from the bracelet as he tried to pull out the stud.
“What do these symbols stand for?”
“Here let me do that?” AJ said taking the bracelet from Nick.
Nick took the ring and said, “These are the symbols for Earth, Water, Aether, Fire and Wind.”
“Ether, as in what they used to give you before surgery?” AJ asked as he grunted trying to pull the stud out of the bracelet.
“Let me try,” Maddy said and took it from his hands. “Sometimes these things need o gentle touch.” She began to turn and pull the stud at the same time as she continued to explain, “And no, Aether was believed ta be o rare element that held the universe and everything in it tagether.”
The stud came loose and the bracelet unraveled. They gathered round and studied the long piece of leather. There were more symbols etched into it and spread out unevenly along the length.
Nick studied the symbols before turning to Grace and asking, “You mind writing these down?” When she was ready he went on, “O, W, M, O, M, N, I, A, T, I, E, L, S, H, N, L, T, E, D, E, R, R, S.”
“How many letters is that?” AJ asked.
“Twenty-three,” Miriam said. “I would think it has to be an anagram of some kind. Don’t you?”
They spent the next twenty minutes trying to figure out the anagram, but with no success. The last five minutes of which Terry played with the ring trying to get the symbol for Earth back in place.
“Been sitting in a box for sixteen years and the first thing I do is break it. Some Chosen One I am,” he mumbled.
The others froze and stared at him.
He looked away and apologized, “Sorry. That just slipped out.”
With the exception of AJ, everyone else in the Clan was an Element. Grace and Anthony were Wind. Miriam was Earth, and Maddy, Water. Each had the ability to control their Element as well as change into an animal within their nature. Grace often chose to turn into a red tailed hawk, as did Anthony. Miriam would choose her animal based on the situation, although she said she was partial to cats. Maddy, being a water sprite didn’t need to change into an animal (although she said she could if need be) to swim long distances or breathe underwater.
Nick and Terry were those rare Elements who controlled more than one element. They each received Water on their thirteenth birthday. 360 days later they each received Wind. After another 360 days, Fire/Energy. According to the prophecy, the One Spoken of in the Prophecy would receive Earth 360 days after that. Terry did. Nick didn’t. Thus they came to the conclusion that Terry was The One. Furthermore, it also fulfilled one of the tenets of the 8th Mayan prophecy – ‘one will surpass the other.’ None of them had spoken openly about it until that moment. The atmosphere in the room grew uncomfortable. Nick stared at the floor, Terry at the ceiling. The other five glanced nervously at each other.
Anthony finally broke the tension. “Okay, so now it’s out in the open. Let’s talk about it.”
Terry shook his head. Nick never moved. Anthony shifted his attention to Terry, a flicker of love infusing his look.
“Didn’t you say you thought you and Nick would work well together? One being the sounding board for the other? That by doing so, you’d be able to make sure you didn’t misuse your powers? Sort of a checks and balance type of thing?”
Terry nodded.
Nick hadn’t moved. He mumbled, “Um, there’s something I haven’t told any of you. Except Grace, of course.”
They turned to look at him, waiting in anticipation.
He raised his head, “I’ve lost all my powers.”
Chapter 3
“So you’ve seen this before?”
Returning to his lakeside mansion after the party, Terry and Red were greeted by Gabriella, the Shining One.
She glanced knowingly at Red before she addressed Terry. “He’s waiting for you in your father’s study.” She glided away and swept past the study w
ithout a glance toward the man waiting inside.
Red stiffened, his face flushed crimson. He took a menacing stride toward the study, but Terry reached out and grabbed his arm.
“I think it’s best if I handle this. Why don’t you go for a walk?”
Red remained fixed in place staring at the door of the study, debating whether or not to confront the man who tortured and tried to kill him a few short months back. With each passing second his resolve diminished. He swung his attention to Terry and gave a quick bob of his head and left. Terry watched until the front door closed before heading for his father’s study.
“So how was your birthday party?” Thanatos greeted Terry as he stepped into the room. He sat behind Tristan Warrington’s mammoth desk as relaxed as if the place and everything inside belonged to him.
“You’re in my chair,” Terry announced.
He glared at Thanatos, holding his eyes until Thanatos stood and moved around to the other side. Terry continued to stare at Thanatos as he took his time making his way around the enormous desk. He gave a slight nod toward the chair across from him ordering Thanatos to sit.
Once Thanatos had lowered his massive frame into the chair, Terry said, “What’re you doin’ here? You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know, after what you did to Red. The Clan thought we made it clear that you’re no longer welcomed…or wanted here. Maybe you forgot that we have some really nasty stuff on you?”
Thanatos offered up a weak smile. “As for Red, it is what would and will happen to any of my World Council members who are disloyal to me. After all, he did join us before you were even born. He was well aware of his fate the minute he failed the duties I entrusted to him. I assure you it was nothing personal. If I make an exception for even one person, can you image what might happen? The discipline and allegiance I require from all of our members would be greatly compromised. And who knows where that would lead. I suspect it would not be good.
“Anyway, as for what the Clan stole from me, I can easily prove it is nothing but lies made up by teenagers to discredit a wealthy and influential businessman and world leader. Besides, who would take the word of mere teenagers over a man of great wealth, character and prestige?”
