Legend of the Gypsy Queen Skull: The Devil's Triangle - Book 1 (4 page)

Fall, 1687 ~
Gypsy Camp ~ Romania

All around, the trees’ leaves had turned to
the brown, orange, and yellow hues of autumn. In the distance, the
picturesque Retezat mountain peaks were beginning to snow cap. The
Dorian family and their Romanian gypsy clan would break camp for
the winter in a month’s time. Their father, Fonso, was tending to
the family’s horses, checking their shoes in advance of their
upcoming journey. The horses would be used to pull the family’s two
covered wagons to the southern coast of Albania, on the Adriatic
Sea.

The Dorians were nomads and traveled with
the seasons. Like all gypsies, their wagons were their home. The
five family members traveled everywhere together along with their
clan. Fonso and his wife, Tilda, lived in one wagon and their three
daughters shared the other.

Fonso was a stocky man with powerful arms
and shoulders built up over the many years of working as a
carpenter. He made everything from wagons to barns, and also did
masonry work from time to time. During the winter months, he
usually worked as a shipbuilder at the port of Sarandë. A quiet
man, he enjoyed relaxing around the campfire at night listening to
his girls talk while he smoked his Calabash pipe.

~*~

At the moment, his three daughters were
toting fresh water from a nearby stream. They each carried two
wooden buckets and had extra bota bags slung over their
shoulders.

Erika was in the lead as they headed down
the forested dirt trail. At 18, she was the oldest of the sisters
and was like a second mother to the other two.

Directly behind her was 14-year-old Adriana,
the youngest Dorian girl. Adriana was the chatty one, and on this
morning she was especially full of energy. She loved nothing more
than spending time with her sisters.

Bringing up the rear was the middle
daughter, 16-year-old Elena. As much as Adriana loved to talk,
Elena liked to ignore her and the rest of the family, for that
matter. She found them, and nearly everything else, to be a major
annoyance.

~*~

Back at camp, Tilda had been called over to
her sister-in-law’s wagon in the next clearing over. One of her
boys had stumbled over a log and seriously injured his knee. The
young boy’s mother was beside herself when she arrived.

“Please help him. It’s broken,” she
tearfully pleaded, leading Tilda over to her crying son.

Carefully examining her nephew’s bruised and
swollen knee, she lightheartedly said, “Looks like you did a real
job on your knee there, little man.”

With tears streaming down his face the boy
slowly nodded.

“Well, no worries. I’ll have you all fixed
up in a jiff, okay?” she said with a warm smile. Her presence alone
was enough to begin calming them both down.

Taking a seat next to him on their wagon’s
staircase, she stroked his head and said, “This is gonna get hot
and hurt some. So be a brave boy for me.”

The boy, wiping the tears from his face,
nodded back to her.

Closing her eyes, she began to silently
meditate while rubbing her two hands together.

A few moments later, she raised her open
palms to the sky and then laid them down on top of his knee. Taking
a deep breath, she quietly chanted a Dorian spell of healing in
their ancient witch tongue.

“Quisque culis finibus meting sed accusan.
Nulla id velit, nisi id libero.”

From underneath her cupped hands a faint
white light began to glow.

Repeating the spell over and over again, her
voice grew louder with each incantation as the light shined a
little brighter.

“Mommy, it burns!” the boy cried out, his
eyes welling up again as his mother squeezed his hand.

Before long, the pain was nearly unbearable
as he writhed and moaned.

“Ow-w-w-w!

“Almost there, honey,” his mother encouraged
him, when suddenly they all heard a loud-
POP.

Opening her eyes, Tilda said, “There now,”
and withdrew her hands. “Give it a minute.”

The boy’s knee was glowing white hot, fading
shortly to a yellowish shine, and then to a warm reddish color.
When the glow subsided his knee looked like it was sunburned with
Tilda’s handprints on it.

Blowing on her own steaming palms, she said,
“That’ll clear up in a couple of days.”

“Can I get you anything?” the boy’s tearful
mother asked.

“Water would be great.”

Her sister-in-law leaned over, and unhooked
an animal bladder hanging near her and poured the water out over
Tilda’s reddened hands.

“Ohhhhh, that feels so good,” she commented,
rotating her hands underneath the steady stream.

Having gathered themselves Tilda made a
suggestion to the boy.

“How about you try out your knee before I
leave?”

Standing up, the boy wobbled some, and took
a few tentative steps. Turning, he smiled wide and then walked over
to his mother and buried his head in her apron. Except for some
bruising and the reddened handprints on his knee, it was as good as
new.

“What do you say to auntie Tilda?”

“Thank you,” the boy said in a muffled tone
and then turned around to face her.

“Now, give her a hug,” his mother said.

Walking over to Tilda, he gave her a quick
squeeze then bolted off to join his brothers.

“Take it easy for a couple of–” Tilda tried
to say but the boy had already disappeared down the forest
path.

“Wanna trade one of yours for him?” his mom
asked jokingly.

“I’ll come by tomorrow to check on him,”
Tilda said with a smile and then hugged her.

“Thanks again.”

~*~

Walking back to her own camp, Tilda appeared
to be carrying on a conversation with herself.

“Yes. I know. I know. Can we talk
later?”

Every so often her long departed mother
would arrive in her mind and begin to vent. It appeared that
grievances, both real and contrived, were still very much a thing
in the afterlife. Her mother was still upset at her father for
remarrying so soon after her untimely death … six months to be
exact. She especially loathed his second wife, or
the
concubine
as she snidely referred to her as.

Usually it was best to let her mother get it
out of her system, but today Tilda was tired and in no mood to
listen.

“No, not now,” she said. “Uh huh, well get
over it. Goodbye.”

Though her mother was a little neurotic and
could be a real bear at times, deep down she was a kind soul.

~*~

Returning to camp, Fonso gave Tilda a peck
on her cheek.

“So, how’d it go?”

Halfheartedly she turned and flashed him her
reddened palms.

“That good, huh,” he said with a chuckle as
she climbed up the stairs to their wagon.

Once inside she collapsed on the bed and
quickly fell into a deep slumber.

At times even the life of a good witch could
be an exhausting one.

Present Day ~ Third Week of July ~ Bismarck’s
Home ~ Alexandria, VA

Sunday morning breakfast was in full swing
in the Bismarck kitchen when Paul entered and joined Margie and the
kids.

“Good morning!” he said cheerfully, walking
up behind his wife who was fully engaged with the waffle iron.
Giving her a hug, he kissed her on the cheek too.

“Hi boo,” she said, reaching up, caressing
his face.

Margie was in her full Sunday-morning garb,
wearing a baseball cap on backwards, a pair of furry pink slippers
and a fuzzy, baby-blue bathrobe. On the back of which it read,
Mom-A-Tawk Missile
in sparkling letters. It was a cherished
Christmas present from the kids and spot on to her active
personality.

Margie was truly the glue that held the
Bismarck’s together. She was always buzzing around doing something
or involved in some sort of project. If she wasn’t at work with
Paul at the magazine, she was doing yoga, driving the kids to one
of their activities or organizing some sort of charity drive or
another. Having recently turned 40, she was still as youthful and
vibrant as ever.

~*~

“Hey Dad,” Tinnie greeted him. She was just
finishing up one of her Kung Fu moves next to the kitchen
table.

“Key-Aye!” she cried out, karate chopping an
invisible foe in the side of the neck. Pivoting around, she
finished off her imaginary foe with a spinning back kick.

Coming to attention, she pulled her hands to
her sides and then reverently bowed to an imaginary group of Kung
Fu masters. Turning to face her, Paul bowed to her as well.

“Dad!” she chirped. “I was bowing to the
judges, not you.”

Stepping toward her, he gave her a quick
combo of a one-armed hug and a kiss to the forehead.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

~*~

Tinnie was the oldest of the Bismarck’s
three adopted children. She was of Asian descent and on the shorter
end of tall for a girl.

Her quick reflexes, slender build, long legs
and arms made her a natural in the combat sport. Her grandfather,
who was once a Shaolin Kung Fu master himself, had introduced her
to the discipline when she was a young girl.

Along with her drive to excel in martial
arts, if you looked up the words
serious
and
anal
retentive
in the dictionary, there’s a good chance you’d find
Tinnie’s picture next to both of them.

Her room alone was a shrine to the
perfectionism that drove her to achieve. On one wall she had
numerous framed outstanding attendance and student council awards.
Each of these framed odes to her achievement was precisely level
with one another, with exactly six inches of space between them.
Her other shelved wall displayed her many martial arts trophies,
which were of course, all lined up in the order of the place she’d
finished in.

Any other open wall space was dedicated to
numerous posters of her favorite boy band,
New Emotion
. She
especially had a crush on the lead singer, the teen heartthrob
Harry Banes, and often referred to him as her
FH
, short for
future husband.

Paul and Margie had adopted Tinnie from an
orphanage in Hong Kong when she was five years old. They were told
she was born somewhere in northeastern China, and that her mother
had died during childbirth. There’d been no information on her
father, but they believed him to be deceased. Tinnie’s maternal
grandfather had raised her until he was forced to give her over to
the orphanage. He was a secretive man who was constantly on the
move, and he feared his old adversaries might kidnap her as a ploy
to capture him.

Her grandfather, Ying Li, was the Grand
Master of the secret Shaolin society known as
The Order of the
Emerald Tigers
. The group was truly the last of its kind.
Legend holds that their Kung Fu was infused with the mystic
practice of channeling spirits, and that they used this magical
practice to defeat their opponents.

There was a time when the Shaolin had earned
an almost demigod-like status among Chinese martial artists. Then a
schism erupted within the ranks of the Emerald Tigers, with some of
its members forming a new splinter group known as
The Black
Dragons
.

The Dragons had become corrupted by their
power, and they turned to the dark forces at their disposal to try
and become even more powerful. Ying Li desperately tried to get his
prodigal disciples to denounce their evil ways, but his efforts
fell on deaf ears. The Black Dragons grew even more hostile toward
their former master and soon declared war on their former brothers.
It was rumored that many of them, by then, had infiltrated the
government, where they expanded their treacherous powerbase even
more.

After years of fighting, the Emerald Tigers
were either dead or unjustly incarcerated, except for Ying, who
went into hiding.

In memory of her grandfather, Tinnie kept a
faded black and white photo of him in his black silken Kung Fu
outfit on her nightstand. Every night before bed she would say a
prayer and goodnight to him. Like him, she one day aspired to
become a Kung Fu master.

~*~

Circling around the kitchen table, Paul
high-fived Manny, the Bismarck’s middle son. Sitting next to him
was Heinz, their youngest.

“How are my boys today?” Paul asked, nudging
Heinz’s shoulder.

His son completely ignored him, never
looking up from the science article he was reading on his
notepad.

“OK Sport,” Paul said as he backed away from
Heinz, who continued scrolling down the web page.

Although small for his age, Heinz made up
for what he lacked in size with his superior intellect. Though just
13, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy had already amassed an
impressively long list of academic accomplishments and was on
course to graduate two years early from high school. Several Ivy
League schools had already sent him letters of interest, and more
were certain to follow.

Heinz was the president of the local quantum
physics chapter, but his real passion was the art of problem
solving. Recently, he’d led his school’s math team to a state
title, and no less a periodical than
Mathematical Journal
had called him
one of the most ferocious mathletes
they’d
ever seen.

At the tender age of eight, Heinz became a
member of Mensa, the exclusive club reserved for those who test in
the 98th percentile or higher on an IQ test. His IQ, which was
found to be in the 160s, put him well into the genius level.

All of this was no surprise to Margie and
Paul, who’d briefly met his mother, a 19-year-old German woman,
just after his birth. The young woman was something of a genius
herself and a graduate student in astrophysics on a full ride
scholarship at MIT. She too had been a child prodigy, fluently
speaking eight languages and graduating Summa Cum Laude from
Harvard.