Sir Tristan's Estate (Legends Unleashed Vol.1) by Heather Beck Page A

his
seat. “I guess they made an exception for you.”
    Skye settled back in her seat, glad they were
finally on their way, but confused about her situation. “Why have
they closed the estate to the public?”
    “It’s a pretty amazing story,” the driver
replied, glancing at Skye quickly in his rearview mirror. “During
an independent tour with his family, a ten-year-old boy discovered
an old document in a desk which presumably belonged to Sir Tristan.
The boy didn’t inform his parents about the discovery; instead, he
placed it up his t-shirt and tried to exit the estate with it.
However, as he was leaving, the document slipped out from under his
t-shirt. The boy’s parents, who thought he had stolen it from the
gift shop, scolded and lectured him. Meanwhile, the woman at the
exit was in shock. Being a fifteen year employee of the estate, she
was flabbergasted at the boy’s find. She knew it wasn’t a fake; it
was a real document containing unknown knowledge.”
    “Really?” Skye leaned forward. “What kind of
document?”
    “It was a birth certificate.”
    “Whose?”
    “Miss Kathleen Tristan.”
    Skye looked at the driver’s reflection in the
rearview mirror. Her mind raced as she tried to fit together the
broken pieces. “Who was Miss Kathleen Tristan?”
    “No one knows.”
    Then I shouldn’t feel so bad for not being
able to figure it out either , Skye thought. “You haven’t
explained why the Sir Tristan Estate has been closed for tourism,”
she reminded.
    “Although no one knows who Miss Kathleen
Tristan is, there are suspicions that she is Tristan’s daughter
from an affair he had with a peasant girl.”
    “I thought he didn’t have any children, and
having an affair isn’t a common trait that martyrs share.”
    The driver shook his head. “We didn’t know
that he had a child either.”
    Skye got the feeling that the driver was
purposely ignoring her last comment about Sir Tristan’s sainthood.
She quickly promised to keep her opinions to herself. After all,
the residents of Virginia were very proud of Sir Tristan and his
humanitarian work.
    “So, why is the estate closed?” Skye was
tired from the flight and wanted nothing more than for everything
to make sense. She was confused, frustrated and felt as if her head
may explode at any given moment.
    “If there is a living descendant of Sir
Tristan, the estate belongs to that individual.”
    Skye leaned her head against the window and
closed her eyes. She thought about what the taxi driver had just
said in regards to the estate’s closure and wondered why she hadn’t
been informed about this earlier. What if she, like the public, was
locked out of the estate? Where would she stay?
    She opened one eye and saw the taxi’s clock
state 9:12 in a bright green color. Closing her tired eyes, she
gave into the temptation of sleep.
    Skye woke suddenly as the taxi began to
shake. She looked anxiously out the window to see that they had
turned off the highway and were now traveling down a dirt road.
Skye felt herself being thrown around in her seat as the taxi
bumped over the small stones that lay on the ground. She winced as
the coarse seatbelt sliced into her stomach.
    “I thought this was a tourist attraction.
Don’t tell me the government didn’t have enough money to pay for a
paved road,” she muttered, more to herself than the taxi driver.
Nevertheless, she received a reply.
    “The government wanted to keep the estate
authentic.”
    “Yet they were willing to add a gift shop,”
Skye commented.
    “I’m not a politician,” the driver said,
obviously tired of Skye’s questions and complaints. “Therefore, I
have no say in what happens at the estate.”
    Respecting the driver’s wishes to a certain
degree, Skye remained quiet while entertaining the thought of not giving him a tip. In fact, she considered running out of
the taxi and not paying him at all. No, that would never work. For
one reason, he knew where she was