Griffin continued walking to an unmarked door at the far end of the corridor. Cassie guessed it must be positioned right above the entry vestibule.
“Just a bit farther,” he said reassuringly. “In here.” He opened the door to reveal a spiral staircase. “We’re going up to the bell tower.”
They could hear a voice echoing down to them. It was a gravelly female voice, and it was raised in anger.
Griffin smiled nervously. “That’s our operations director. Don’t worry. Her bark is far worse than her bite. You have to take some of what she says with a grain of salt.”
“And let the chips fall where they may?” Cassie asked wryly.
“What?” Griffin looked puzzled.
“I thought we were swapping clichés.” She laughed.
“Oh, yes, of course. How stupid of me.” He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes. “Very amusing.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” Cassie felt instantly guilty.
“No, certainly, you didn’t.” He rushed to reassure her. “It’s me. I always…” He trailed off and then changed the subject. “Well, up we go.” He tried to sound cheerful as they climbed to the top of the staircase.
Chapter 18 – The World According to Maddie
Cassie peeked above the final spiral stair. To her surprise, she found herself emerging in the middle of the bell tower. It was a bell tower in name only because the room had been remodeled, and there was no bell anywhere to be seen. The open-air tower had been fitted with glass picture windows. It was a bright, airy space, or it would have been if not for the smell of cigarette smoke. The atmosphere was thick with it. Cassie was about to make a comment, but Griffin anticipated her.
“She would resign if we didn’t let her smoke somewhere in the building,” he whispered. His tone was apologetic.
The room was comfortably furnished with chairs and couches and tables.
“Is this her office?” Cassie asked in disbelief.
“No, her office is downstairs. This is a lounge area.”
“A smoker’s lounge?”
“That wasn’t our original intention, but you’ll discover it’s very hard to say no to Maddie.”
They advanced into the room. There was a woman seated on a sofa near the front window. She was talking on the phone but gestured for them to draw closer. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Well, you can tell him from me that he’ll get paid when he delivers. No, that’s not negotiable. Just tell him, all right?” She slammed down the receiver, looking irritated.
Griffin stepped forward. “Cassie, allow me to introduce Maddie, our operations director.”
Maddie rose to greet them. Her bangle bracelets clanked. She towered over Cassie and matched Griffin’s height which was about six feet. She looked to be in her fifties with an olive brown complexion and bushy hair that had been dyed a burgundy shade of red. When they shook hands, it made Cassie wince. Maddie’s grip was as powerful as her physique.
“My name’s Madeleine, but everybody calls me Maddie.” There was a piercing quality to her eyes. Sharp and dark like obsidian arrowheads. “Have a seat.” She indicated a spot next to her on the couch.
Griffin remained standing. He looked at Maddie questioningly. “You’ll show her out when you’re done?”
She nodded.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it then. Until next time, Cassie.”
“Bye, Griffin.”
Maddie was scrutinizing a piece of paper and apparently wasn’t pleased with what she saw. She muttered something under her breath and tossed the page face down on the coffee table next to the phone.
“Like my work space?” She laughed ruefully. “My real office is downstairs, but I needed a cigarette break, so that’s why we’re meeting up here.”
She reached for a lighter that was balanced upright on an end table. Cassie noticed her fingernails—long red talons.
“Sorry about the smoke. Nasty habit. I keep trying to quit. Been trying for about ten years. I keep thinking it’ll be easier when the pace slows down around here.” She lit a cigarette and blew a puff of smoke up toward the ceiling. “Except that it never slows down around here.”
Cassie didn’t know exactly what to say. She must have looked sheepish because Maddie tried to put her at ease.
“Lots to take in, isn’t it? Your sister. Us.”
The girl nodded uncertainly. “I suppose that’s why Faye sent me here. To get some answers.”
“Then you came to the right place, kiddo. I’ve got answers for everything. At least that’s what my colleagues tell me. Sometimes they don’t like my way of putting things. What do you want to know first?”
“That’s easy. It’s the thing I’ve been asking for weeks now. Who are you people?” The words were spoken before she could catch herself. Out loud, the question sounded abrupt and rude.
Maddie threw back her head and laughed. “You know, I ask them that all the time.”
“Maybe I should rephrase that. What is the Arkana exactly?”
“You’re not gonna start with something easy like what’s my favorite color?” Maddie teased. “It’s red in case you hadn’t guessed. But never mind that. Faye told me to give you the big picture and to give it to you fast. You’ll get down to the nitty-gritty soon enough.”
The operations director settled herself back into the couch cushions. “How much has Faye told you about the name Arkana itself?”
“Nothing.” The girl shrugged.
“‘Arkana’ comes from the Latin verb arcere. It means to ‘shut something up,’ so you can to keep it safe. The noun is arca which means a ‘chest’ or ‘strongbox.’ In English, arca became ‘ark’ as in Noah’s Ark, or the Ark of the Covenant.”
“I’m guessing you call yourselves the Arkana because you’ve locked up all sorts of artifacts to keep them safe?”
Maddie paused a long moment, considering the question. “The artifacts aren’t the real treasure. They’re simply the physical proof that we haven’t always been the way we are now.”
The older woman glanced as Cassie. Noting the girl’s perplexed expression, she elaborated. “You have to sift through layer after layer of myth to get to the real truth. Let me explain by telling you a little story about a goddess named Gaia. Do you know who she is?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of her,” Cassie answered readily. “She was some Greek earth goddess, right?”
“Some Greek earth goddess.” Maddie snorted in disgust. “That’s pretty funny. Here’s your first lesson in mainstream mythology, kiddo. Nothing is ever what it seems. By the time the Hellenes started writing their origin myths, they’d already done some creative editing to the story that came before theirs. You see, once upon a time, there was a single creator goddess. She gave birth to everything. Life wasn’t a straight line back then. It was a circle. What came from the goddess went back to the goddess.
“Being straight line thinkers, and trying to set up a new heavenly hierarchy with Zeus at the top, the Hellenes didn’t like her very much. So, they started chipping away—splitting her into lots of different pieces as a way to weaken her power. The part of her that was love and beauty was called Aphrodite. The part of her that was wisdom became Athena. The protector of wild creatures and the hunt was Artemis. Hera became the guardian of motherhood. The part of the goddess that ruled the fertility of all living things was called Gaia.
“Now, even to the Hellenes, Gaia was the oldest of the old ones. They admitted she had created everything out of herself before their gods arrived. Her name translates to something like Grandmother Earth. But to the people who worshipped her before the Hellenes took over, she was a whole lot more than just a nature goddess. She was the creator of the universe, and she lived in and through every part of her creation. Olympian mythology tried to tame her and make her play nice with the new kids on the mountain. The Hellenes told stories of how she defied their gods and got trounced by them, but they were never able to get ri
d of her completely. She was in the hearts of the people who worked the land.”
“Like the pythia,” Cassie said softly.
Maddie stared at her in surprise. “Did Faye tell you that story?”
“She did, and that they couldn’t write the pythia out of their mythology either.”
“You’re exactly right, kiddo,” Maddie nodded approvingly. “Gaia remained a thorn in the side of Zeus and his cronies. They loosened her hold but couldn’t uproot her. In the end, they had to tolerate her existence even though she’s the exact opposite of everything they valued.”
“What do you mean?”
The frown lines around Maddie’s mouth deepened. “Gaia is nothing less than the principle of creation. The overlords valued destruction because that was how they acquired land, wealth, and power. All the people who came before them valued creation, and creation was originally viewed as female.”
“Why is that?”
The older woman rolled her eyes impatiently. “It should be obvious. When you talk about building life, biologically speaking, we all know which sex does the heavy lifting. The ancients knew it too. That’s why the earliest origin myths tell of a primordial goddess who gave birth to everything. There might even be some science behind the notion of parthenogenesis. At least a few researchers are convinced that the female sex evolved long before the male. After all, there are lots of species on this planet that are all female, but none that are all male.”
“What?” Cassie was stunned.
Maddie blew a final puff of smoke and ground out her cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. “The basic template for the human body, for all mammal bodies, is female. Until they’re seven weeks old, all embryos start out being proto-female. It doesn’t take a huge change for a fetus to grow up to be a girl. That’s what it does naturally. But with little boys, at seven weeks, the Y-chromosome kicks in and testosterone turns a “she” into a “he.” How else can you explain nipples on a male body? I mean, for crying out loud, what’s that about?”
Cassie was speechless. This theory had never been discussed in her Biology 101 class.
“And it isn’t just physical creation that’s associated with the female sex. It’s the creation of the necessities of life. Things that have been around for so long that we take them for granted: clothing, houses, cooking, not to mention agriculture, domesticated animals, and, oh yes, art and writing. All invented by female humans.”
“But… but…” Cassie stuttered. “Everybody assumes men invented all those things. Didn’t they?”
Maddie noted her expression and grinned. “Nope. Shocking isn’t it when you realize how much you’ve been brainwashed by overlord values. I make some of my associates cringe when I get on my soapbox, but they know I’m right.”
She seemed to realize she had roamed far afield in her explanation. More softly she said, “It isn’t simply artifacts that the Arkana is protecting. The people who crafted those artifacts had a different way of looking at life. A more constructive way. That’s what we’re really protecting until the day comes when the overlord system loses its shiny appeal.” She smiled ruefully. “I guess I’ve beaten your first question to death. Now you know why we call ourselves the Arkana. What else do you want to know?”
Cassie was silent for several seconds, trying to wrap her brain around the boatload of radical ideas Maddie had just thrown at her. When she had time to recover she asked, “If this is an international organization, what made you pick Illinois of all places to set up your operation? There can’t be many artifacts here.”
“Good one,” Maddie commented approvingly. “Actually, the Arkana started out centuries ago in England right after the witch hysteria that swept Europe in the 1600s. You’ve heard about that, right?”
“Are you saying that you’re all a coven of witches?” Cassie asked warily.
Maddie let out an exasperated groan. “We don’t have enough daylight hours left for me to set you straight on all the popular misconceptions about witches. The short answer is that we’re not. The point I was trying to make is that a lot of valuable information was lost during the witch craze. Women and men who were the herbalists, midwives, and healers died at the stake, and their knowledge died with them. Once the last fire burned itself out, whoever managed to survive went underground. A small group of them banded together to preserve what they knew about healing, about the natural world, and about the old deities of the earth.
“Things stayed that way for a long time until England expanded its empire to India, Africa, and the rest of the world. And the Arkana expanded too. We reached out to include other cultures whose origin myths turned out to be a lot like our own.”
She leaned back further and looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. “We kept our headquarters in Britain until things got a little dicey during the Second World War. When the Germans started bombing England, nobody thought Europe was a safe place to keep headquarters anymore. Even though America joined the war, it wasn’t being invaded, so we moved the vault here during the 1940s.”
“Why not New York or LA?”
“Because Illinois is right in the middle. Easy to fly to either coast if you have to, and it’s not going to be the first target in an invasion. Remember who got hit on September 11th?”
“I see your point. You’ve got centuries’ worth of valuables collected. But why are you hiding all of it and hiding yourselves? Isn’t it about time you went public and set the record straight?”
Maddie seemed uncharacteristically silent. She looked down at the coffee table before replying. “That may be your best question yet, kiddo.” She sighed. “Every generation or so we rehash the issue about whether the time is right.” She made air quotes around the last four words. “Even though the world isn’t changing fast enough to suit me, it is heading in the right direction. For now though, there are still loads of people out there who would be scared out of their wits by our version of history. And it’s the kind of scared that leads to killing. They would try to eradicate us and destroy everything we’ve recovered.” She shook her head. “No, it isn’t quite time yet for us to take center stage and brag about our finds.”
Both of them remained bleakly quiet for several moments, contemplating how traditional minds might react to the Arkana. Then a new thought occurred to Cassie. “I haven’t seen much of it yet, but if this is a global operation, how do you afford it? I mean, who pays for everything?”
“I do,” Maddie replied grimly. “I keep this merry little ship of fools afloat.”
The girl looked at her blankly, and she relented. “Forget that part. That’s just me feeling pinched when I have to sign checks. I hate letting go of money. That’s why they put me in charge of it.” She grinned. “Truth is, we have hefty cash reserves. Sometimes we come across artifacts that don’t interest us but are worth a fortune to collectors. We sell them on the private market or to museums. It’s enough to fund our operations and then some.”
Maddie reached for her lighter again. “Sorry,” she said, a cigarette dangling between her lips. “Can’t help myself. If I didn’t smoke, I’d be three hundred pounds by now.”
Cassie’s brain was beginning to feel overloaded with too many new facts. She didn’t want to ask about anything else that required a major explanation, so she settled for something small. “One last thing. When I came in, I noticed a huge round table in the middle of the schoolroom downstairs. Griffin didn’t really explain what it was for.”
“That’s for meetings of the Concordance.”
“An answer that leads to another question,” she thought to herself ruefully. “And what is a Concordance exactly?”
“It’s the governing council for the whole global enchilada. Sort of like the United Nations except that we actually get stuff done.”
“I counted thirty chairs. That’s a lot of people. Isn’t it a free-for-all if everybody starts talking at once?”
“Thirty is only a fraction of the peop
le involved. The wall seating is for the rest. As for a free-for-all, Faye keeps things moving.”
“What’s her title?”
Maddie chuckled. “She’s the glue that holds everything together. The lynchpin of the entire operation.”
Cassie waited silently.
“Oh, all right. If you insist on being so serious, her official title is the Memory Guardian. We think of ourselves as a collective. We don’t like the idea of somebody at the top barking orders, but if the Arkana had a leader, Faye would be that person.”
“Who appointed her?”
“The memory guardian gets elected by the rest of the Concordance.”
“And how long does she keep the job?”
Maddie shrugged. “Until she decides to retire or if she loses the confidence of the Concordance, and they vote her out. I really don’t see that happening. Everybody loves her.” She was about to elaborate when she noticed the look on Cassie’s face. “Are you all right, kiddo?”
The girl rubbed her temples. “I’m starting to get a headache. If I tilt my head, I think some of this new info will leak out of my ears. Can we stop now?”
The older woman laughed. “You think this was bad, wait until Griffin gets started.” She hesitated for a moment, weighing her next words. “Before you leave, I’ve got a question of my own to ask.”
Maddie reached out for the paper on the coffee table and turned it over. A sketch of a man’s face stared up at the two women. “Is this your guy? Faye said you saw what he looked like when you dreamed about Sybil’s death.”
Cassie felt the breath catch in her throat. It was the cowboy, or almost. “How did you figure out what he looked like?”
“Erik caught a glimpse of him when he followed him out of the apartment.”
The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set Page 9
