Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (41 page)
Read Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Online
Authors: D.W. Moneypenny
Tags: #Contemporary Fantasy
She wiped his cheek and said, “Don’t be sad. You will always be my daddy.”
Something shifted in the light coming from the door frame, and they looked up. Standing in the distance, seemingly yards away, a silhouette stood, almost lost in the brilliance. Hannah leaned forward, kissed his cheek and said, “I have to go now.”
“Okay, bean,” he said.
She playfully bounded up the stairs and jogged across the porch into the door frame. As Sam watched, she disappeared into the light. He waited for a few seconds, expecting the light to dissipate, but it continued to flood the porch and steps without diminishing.
“Daddy?” Hannah stepped out of the light and walked to the head of the steps where she stood, looking at him.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked.
She extended her hands and said, “Mar-ree says I need to prompt you.”
“Your aunt Mara told you to come back and prompt me? Prompt me to do what?”
“It’s a secret.”
Sam squinted into the light, where he saw a clearly defined shadow, a woman. Her head tilted almost imperceptibly, a nod, maybe. Stepping onto the bottom stair so his head was at the same level as Hannah’s, he said, “Okay, go ahead.”
Hannah placed her hands on each side of his face. Bending forward she whispered into his ear, “Endure.” A shock ran through him, and everything went black.
From the driveway, Mara and Diana watched Sam fly ten yards through the air, as if he’d been hit by a truck. He landed on his back in the rim of the crater in the middle of the yard. Looking as if nothing surprising had occurred, Hannah waved one last time in their direction, turned and walked into the illuminated doorway. Before they got to Sam, the light was gone.
“Sam! Are you okay?” Diana patted him on the face and shook his arm.
Mara leaned in closer. “Is he breathing?”
Diana put a hand on his chest and felt his ribs rising and falling. “Yes, but his heart is racing.”
With a start, Sam snapped awake, grabbing the ground as if he was afraid of sliding deeper into the hole. His head swung back and forth, until he seemed to accept he wasn’t going anywhere. He exhaled and rubbed his hands over his chest. “Ouch, that really hurt.”
“Are you all right?” Diana asked.
He sat up. “Yeah, I think so, but I feel like I was just electrocuted. Every pore in my body is tingling.”
“What did she do to you?” Mara asked.
“She prompted me,” he said.
“To fly across the front lawn?” Diana asked.
Sam shook his head. “She said it was a secret, but, when she prompted me, she said
endure
.”
“
Endure
? What does that mean? Endure what?” Mara asked.
Sam shrugged. “Beats me. You told her to do it.”
Mara extended a hand and pulled her brother to his feet. “Take it up with her in about twenty years or so. I’m tired of taking the blame for things I haven’t even thought of yet. Let’s get out of here.”
Ping’s bungalow sat on a corner a couple blocks off César E. Chávez Boulevard in a neighborhood near Reed College, less than two miles from the bakery and the shop. While Sam had lived there for a short time after his arrival in this realm, Mara had never visited Ping at his home, which struck her as odd, considering all they had shared in the past few months. She knocked on the front door, intending to wait for him to answer, but Sam reached around her and opened the door.
“That’s kind of rude, don’t you think? What if he’s in the middle of something?” Mara said.
From inside, Ping said, “There you are. I hope you don’t mind. I ordered pizza instead of cooking a meal.”
Sam walked past her, and Mara poked her head through the door to see Ping standing behind a counter that divided the kitchen at the back of the house from the living room at the front, adjacent to the alcove. Mara stepped inside and closed the door.
“Pizza’s great!” Sam said, swinging his book bag off his shoulder. He took Mara’s from her and pointed to the wall. “You can hang your coat on those hooks.” He disappeared into a hall that opened across from the kitchen.
“Thanks for putting us up,” Mara said.
He waved her over to bar stools in front of the counter. “It’s the least I could do, considering my complicity in destroying your home. How is your mother holding up?”
“She’s being very Zen about the whole thing. If she can get most of her crystals out of the rubble, the rest of the house can be replaced, as far as she’s concerned.”
“Yes, but there must have been family heirlooms, records, photographs, things of that nature that were lost,” Ping said, while setting plates and napkins on the counter.
“Nothing she’s too concerned about.”
“You said she was heading down to Eugene until Monday?”
Mara nodded. “Mom’s sister lives down there in a huge farmhouse. When she heard about the fire, she insisted we come down. Mom almost dragged us down there, until Sam mentioned he didn’t know who Aunt Jeanne was.”
“So your mother hasn’t told her about Sam.”
“Not yet. And with the fire and everything, I think she just didn’t feel up to explaining the whole thing. Jeanne will take some convincing, so springing Sam on her without any preparation wouldn’t be the best approach.”
Ping nodded as he divvied out pizza slices onto the plates. Lowering his voice, he asked, “How’s Sam taking Hannah’s departure?”
“I think he’s okay. Emotionally he really seems able to roll with the punches.”
“He is quite resilient, isn’t he?” Ping nodded and glanced over Mara’s shoulder.
Sam sidled up to the bar stool next to her and said, “Did you tell him about the new haiku yet?”
“So the book survived the fire?” Ping asked.
“Just one page, but it had a new haiku on it,” she said. She stood, went to the alcove and dug into her jacket pocket. Returning to the counter, she handed the charred page to Ping.
He read it aloud, without pausing at the line breaks: “
Continuity now travels through other realms. Therefore, so must you
.” He looked up at Mara. “Unlike the previous haikus from your future self, this one seems rather clear.”
“I don’t see what’s so clear about it. I thought maintaining Continuity had something to do with future Mara trying not to mess up the past.”
Ping handed the sheet back to Mara. “She obviously was attempting to alter the course of events by sending you the book and your niece. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say she was attempting to take the issue of the dragon off the table, so that you would be able to deal with something else, something more important.”
“Like this Aphotis business with Abby,” Mara said. “And the disappearing passengers from Flight 559. But I kept getting distracted by the dragon’s folly.”
“It appears your future self was unsuccessful at getting the outcome she wanted or needed. Since circumstances have changed, this haiku intimates that the solution you should pursue lies in other realms.”
“Assuming all that is true, out of the millions of realms out there, which ones should I be booking a ticket to?” Mara asked.
The phone in her pocket vibrated and emitted a loud hum—an incoming text message.
“Maybe that’s Mom letting us know she got to Eugene,” Sam said.
Mara slipped the phone from her pocket. When she looked at the screen, her face went pale.
“What is it?” Ping asked.
She turned the screen toward him.
“Cameron Lee?”
“Cam’s the guy from the robot realm whose head we lost to the Aphotis,” Sam said.
Mara tapped the name, and the message displayed:
Help me.
Author’s Note
Thanks so much for taking the time to read
Broken Dragon
. I hope you enjoyed it. If you find yourself with a few free minutes, please consider writing a short, honest review of the book on Amazon. It not only helps other readers discover the book, but gives visibility to a new writer.
Thanks again.
_______
The Chronicles of Mara Lantern
on Amazon:
Broken Realms
(Book 1)
Broken Souls
(Book 2)
Broken Dragon
(Book 3)
Broken Pixels
(Book 4 - Coming Soon)
Learn more about the books at my website.
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