Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (33 page)

“And what happened to you when you did it?”

“I started to flicker, and then I completely blinked out for a few minutes.”

“Right. Messing with Time is dangerous and unpredictable. I’ve always thought that, if we overdid it, it could actually cause us to disappear completely and permanently. Why would you do something so careless?”

“How am I supposed to explain something I haven’t done yet, genius?”

“It was a rhetorical question,
doofus
. I was attempting to get you to consider the gravity of the situation. What would be so important that you would risk your existence for it?”

“Not only my existence but my niece’s as well.”

“Niece? What niece?”

“Hannah, Sam’s daughter from the future. Yeah, future Mara sent her back to us along with a book of haiku hints on what I should be doing, and it doesn’t say a thing about Abby, at least not directly. It also tells me to ignore the dragon that shares Ping’s existence in this realm.”

“Dragon?”

Mara nodded.

The other Mara shook her head, as if clearing cobwebs from it. “You need to be careful taking advice from your future self. Time doesn’t necessarily have to play out the same way every time. Just because future Mara remembers something happening a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how things will work out for you.”

“How can it not happen that way?”

“If your path was set in stone, what would be the point in your future self attempting to influence the past? She has no more idea of how events will play out, how her tinkering with Time will affect the course of events, than you do. You can’t blindly follow these hints, thinking future Mara knows what’s going to happen. She has already changed things, and, as we both know, you can be somewhat unpredictable. So she has no idea what’s about to happen, and her advice might not be correct.”

“If all that is true, why try at all? What would be the point?”

“If it were me, the only time I would do something like this is when I was all out of options and I had nothing to lose. Right? Maybe taking advice from someone with their back against the wall isn’t the smartest thing.”

“I suppose. So what am I supposed to do? Just ignore the messages from her?”

“I know we look the same and we share some of the same traits, but it seems to me that you are spending too much time letting other people do your thinking for you.
Ping says this. Future Mara says that
. I’m sure everyone means well and is trying to help, but you are the one who must live with the consequences of what you do, no one else.”

“You’re telling me to grow a pair.”

“Something like that,” her counterpart said. She looked up at the bubble around them and added, “What a mess.”

“Thanks. I figured that much out on my own. I appreciate the chat, but if you’re done delivering the bad news, how about giving me my brother back and being on your way? To be honest with you, I’m getting tired of looking at your face, and hanging out in this bubble is beginning to give me the creeps.”

She held up her hands. “I understand. Just one more thing and I’ll go. You said this Aphotis thinks it’s in a battle with you for the fate of existence. What if it is? What if the fate of existence depends on what you do about Abby?”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what exactly are you trying to say?”

“Do you understand what the realms actually are?”

Mara sighed. “Yes, they are a part of the creation process. Each realm is a potential or prospective design for how reality might actually be created. We’re all in one big beta test, creation by trial and error. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. And what would happen if this Aphotis were to attack the one viable realm and somehow disrupt it?”

“One viable realm? Is that a thing?”

“If the universe is a big trial-and-error experiment at this stage, isn’t the point to isolate the realm that’s viable, upon which creation will be based?”

Somewhere in the distance Mara heard a familiar knock at her bedroom door, followed by her mother’s voice. “Mara! Are you and Sam in there?”

“Oh, no. She’ll freak if she sees Sam looking like that,” Mara said, pointing to her counterpart’s chest.

The other Mara said, “Yeah, gotta go! Think about what I said.”

The translucent bubble collapsed, and, as its static wall passed over the other Mara, her body exploded into a cloud of pixels that scattered for a second and reassembled themselves into Sam’s familiar form. He tensed up, as if startled, and raised his hands to his chest as the copper medallion stopped rotating in midair and fell into Mara’s palm.

Diana opened the door and smiled. “There you guys are. Glad to see you’re staying out of trouble.”

The next morning Sam followed Mara into the shop. While she took off her jacket and hung it up, he continued to argue the point he had been making since they had left Oregon City nearly half an hour earlier.

“You’re right. Your future self has already changed the past, by sending Hannah and by giving you the book of haikus, but that is no reason to completely ignore what she’s trying to tell you. She’s still in the future, so she must know how things are being affected,” he said.

Mara flipped on the lights and held up a hand. “Hold on for a second. I’ll be right back.” She walked into the office and retrieved the cash drawer for the register. When she returned, she went behind the counter, punched a button on the register and slid the tray into the drawer that popped out. Slamming it closed, she looked up and said, “The point my counterpart was making is that they can’t know how things are going to unfold, if they are changing.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “She’s on the other side of the changes.” He pointed to a screwdriver sitting on a shelf behind the counter. “If you stabbed me with that screwdriver and I died, she would know it, but, if you don’t, she will know that too.”

“That’s ridiculous. If I killed you, then how would Hannah have been born and sent back? Would she just disappear, or would she have never arrived? Would our past be rewritten because we changed the future?” Mara shook her head. “You are giving me a headache.”

“What if the reason the haikus appear at different times is because your future self is adjusting them as things unfold. Did you ever consider that?” he asked.

“Look, we could go around in circles with this stuff until we
are
our future selves. The point I was making to you is that I need to start doing what I think is right. The only thing all this advice from the future is accomplishing is making me doubt my own judgment.”

“Fine, use your judgment, but that doesn’t mean you should do something contrary to what the book says. There are plenty of options without doing that.”

“The book doesn’t say anything about not helping Abby or Cam.”

Sam poked the air with his finger. “Yeah, but it says to ignore the dragon’s folly, and I know you. That’s what you are talking about, when you say you want to use your own judgment, especially now that you’ve got a Chronicle. You think you might be able to get rid of the dragon somehow.”

“I’m not going to deny, if I thought I could get rid of the dragon, that I would, but the reality is I’m not sure how I would go about it. I wouldn’t want to hurt Ping again, so you don’t have anything to worry about.” She sat down on her stool and rummaged below the counter. “Anyway don’t you have to get to Mrs. Zimmerman’s for tutoring?”

Sam pushed a finger against the edge of the billiards light fixture above the counter, making it swing, sending shadows careening around the shop. “Yeah, she’s giving me a bunch of placement tests to see if I’m ready to start high school next year. It’s going to take all day, so I’ll be getting back to Ping’s late. Can you check in on him, before you take off for the day?”

Mara frowned and reached up to stop the light from swinging. “Check on Ping? Why? Are you concerned about something? Has he been acting weird?”

Sam walked toward the front door and grabbed the knob. “No, he’s not acting weird. Unlike this place, the bakery has been crazy busy because of the holidays, and it hasn’t helped that he’s missed a few days. I was thinking you might be able to give him a hand, if he needs it.”

“I don’t know how much help I could be, but I am stopping over for lunch after I close up here, so it’s no big deal if he needs some help,” she said.

“Even you can run a register or bus tables or make some coffee,” Sam said, as he walked out the door. He closed it with a loud rattle.

Mara sighed and looked around the empty shop. It felt particularly empty and isolated. Bending over to glance at the back of the bare shelves under the counter, she found no pending orders waiting to be done or even repaired items needing to be picked up. As usual, business had completely dried up after Thanksgiving and would be that way at least until after New Year’s. She picked up the handset of the black rotary phone and dialed to check for voice mails. No messages. She hung up and drummed her fingers on the edge of the brass cash register.

She put her elbows on the counter and placed her chin in her hands. She had been thinking about doing something about the dragon, but she really didn’t know what. Having a working Chronicle might help in sending the creature back to its own realm, but that didn’t solve the conundrum of how to separate it from Ping. If she simply opened the Chronicle in front of Ping, she knew from experience that two of the nodes would hover in front of him. She had no way of knowing what would happen if she opened one of them. Would it suck the dragon from Ping and send it home? Or would it turn the two of them to mist and draw them in? Or maybe nothing would happen.

Standing up, she walked past the counter and the glass display case at the end of it, and headed toward the coat tree next to the front door, where her jacket hung. Fishing in the left-hand pocket, she found what she was looking for and pulled it out: a round green crystal. She had used the demontoid on the Oregon City Bridge the night she had battled her mother’s counterpart, that helped her extract the consciousness of Diana, the reptile cult leader, from the body of her mother. She gazed at it, as she walked back to the counter, slowly turning it in the light. Emerald reflections swept over her eyes, and she found herself back on the bridge that night.

“This crystal used to mean something to you. You taught me something about it. Do you remember?” Mara asked, gazing at it.

“Yes, I told you that I don’t use my crystals to talk to dead people. The mother you knew is dead. Gone.” She kicked at the pile of bones and ashes on the ground. A thighbone skittered to the edge of the bubble. Soot floated into the air.

“
My
crystals. You’re still in there, Mom,” Mara said. She nodded toward the garnet. “You told me that I had a lot of facets and that I decide which ones shine, remember?” Mara raised both hands to the spinning crystal, now three feet above their heads.

The garnet shattered, emitting sheets of green light that sliced into the night, sheering the space around Mara, as if its facets had expanded to encompass her. She squinted into the scintillating walls.

And saw herself in the light.

A shrill ring pierced the foggy night on the bridge, and Mara snapped awake. The green demontoid levitated in the air in front of her face, slowly rotating. A second ring from the old black phone made her jump, and the crystal dropped next to it with a loud clatter. Mara’s gaze followed its descent and locked onto the phone right before she picked it up. She glanced at one of the clocks through the top of the glass display case to see what time it was as she put the receiver to her ear. It had been more than an hour since she and Sam had arrived.

“Hello?”

Ping’s voice sounded a little tinny but recognizable on the old phone. “Mara? It’s Ping. I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel lunch today. There are simply too many things that need to get done for me to take the time.”

Mara could hear people talking and moving around in the background. “Sam mentioned you’ve been slammed. How about I close up over here and come over to give you a hand? I won’t be much help in the kitchen, but I can run interference for you out front and run the register.”

“I’m not too proud to take any help, as long as you won’t get in hot water with Mr. Mason,” he said.

“If it were up to Mr. Mason, the shop would be closed completely until after the holidays were over, so I don’t think he’ll be complaining. Let me get things packed up here, and I’ll be over.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Mara walked into the bakery to see a knot of people clustered in front of Ping’s counter and display case. Two women and a man sat sullenly at the tables out front, clearly waiting for something that didn’t appear to be coming very soon. Mara weaved through the tables without looking at them and edged around the crowd to pass through the gap at the end of the counter. Standing behind it next to the register, holding a cheesecake, Ping nodded tiredly to a large woman. He was pale and covered with a sheen of perspiration and flour. His grease-stained apron hung loosely around his neck, its strings flapping as he gestured with his unencumbered hand.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Haden. It will be just another ten minutes, and your pumpkin pies will be ready to go. They just need a few more minutes to cool and set up. If you’ll have a seat, we’ll bring them out to you,” Ping said.

“But you told me on the phone they would be ready this morning,” the woman whined.

Ping nodded and said, “I know. I underestimated how many orders I would get this morning and came up a little short.”

“So you are saying you baked my pies, but you gave them to other customers earlier this morning? That is completely unacceptable!” The woman’s voice built to some sort of crescendo, as she tapped the counter with a fingernail.

The muscles in Ping’s jaw flexed, as he gritted his teeth. A red haze passed over his eyes, and Mara gasped. He leaned forward, clearly getting into the woman’s personal space. He opened his mouth to say something, when Mara cut in and put a hand on his shoulder.