Paradigms Lost (61 page)

I glanced up. “That,” I said, “is Arischadel.”

Around the corner of the chimney, a little narrow black head was looking, with smoky-crystal eyes. It peered nervously out at the group of us, visible in the darkening twilight because of the faint light in the eyes and a slight luminous edging to the shadowed body. When no one made a move—the Plunketts were all staring—Aris edged hesitantly out from behind the chimney. He was a perfect little dragon, about two feet from nose to tip of tail, glittering crystalline scales making him look like a sculpture in dark quartz, huge eyes blinking uncertainly in what was, to him, the brilliant light, batlike wings twitching with caution.

It was Lizzie who spoke first. “Oh my God, he’s so
cute!
” she said.

Aris gave a questioning burble, a sort of trilling whistle.

“Are you really the same thing that scared me in my bedroom? You can’t be!” Lizzie started forward.

Dave stretched out a hand. “Hold on . . .”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. I guarantee it. She’s doing exactly right. She likes dragons, I take it?”

Jenny gave a strained laugh. “Her room is almost completely wallpapered with them. When she was a baby, she had a stuffed dragon that went with her everywhere.”

Mitch was following Lizzie, staring raptly at Aris.

Aris scuttled in half-eager, half-fearful steps to the edge of the roof, looking down at Lizzie. I could just sense the emotions he was radiating, hope but fear at the same time, fear that this would end the same way, that there would be a moment of caring and then total loss.

Lizzie seemed to feel it too. “No, no, it’s okay. Really. I’m not mad at you now.”

Dave and Jenny tensed as the tiny dragon of shadow plucked up courage and dropped down towards their daughter. I couldn’t blame them; small it might be on a relative scale, but it still had sharp-looking teeth and claws.

But it curled up into the girl’s arms like a satisfied kitten and radiated such incredulous contentment when those arms hugged back that even Dave broke into a broad smile. “So that’s it?”

“In a way. You guys have to promise to come here regularly. Aris needs people. But the right
kind
of people, which you are, but not everyone is. You might have to come here more often than you used to. He’s stuck here, so he can’t come back with you. Maybe one day he will be able to move around, but there’s no telling if that will ever happen.”

Dave and Jenny looked around at the settling evening. The threat was gone from the darkness; it was a calm and untroubled evening in the Adirondack woods. “Can you guarantee it won’t . . . go back to what it was?”

I nodded firmly. “You’re talking about a being so loyal, it hasn’t left in over . . . well, lots and lots of years. If you choose to be his friends and, I suppose, new masters and companions, he’ll stay by your side—as much as he can—forever. I know it’s weird and scary in some ways, but you guys also seem to be the kind of people who can handle things pretty well. Hell, you came back and faced him a second time, which is more than most people would be able to manage.”

Dave nodded slowly. “How . . . where’d you learn all this, about him?”

“Like they say on TV, there’s things you don’t want to know. It’s up to you what you do. I’ll buy the camp if you don’t feel it’s something you can handle.”

Mitch had cautiously extended his hand, which Aris had nuzzled.

“Well . . .” Dave rubbed his beard, staring at the little creature. “I guess it’s better than a dog. Nothing to clean up.”

Jenny knelt next to her daughter and looked at Aris. The little draconic spirit looked back and I felt it radiate a tremendous feeling of apology and sorrow mixed with hope and pleading.

That worked. The truth of those emotions couldn’t be denied, not by anyone who was reasonably honest with themselves, and the Plunketts were definitely that. Jenny gave a little smile and reached out to gently pat the smooth scaled head. “It’s okay. I accept your apology.”

When I left a little while later, I could see Lizzie and Mitch laughing in amazement as Aris put on a shadow-show. The little
thansaelasavi
saw me walking away, came flying through the night air and hovered there, radiating thankfulness and apology for the hell it had put me through.

“That’s all right. I’m going to be fine.” The walk up the hill had hurt like hell, but it was all going to work out. “You just watch over them. You know that there’s other forces out there waking up. Keep an eye on them. They’re not wizards. And they don’t know the truth, and shouldn’t.”

It radiated iron determination. I smiled and nodded. “Good enough.”

I watched as the spirit-dragon flew back to the family that had adopted it, after all that time of fear and darkness, and grinned.

“Finally, a real happy ending.”

I turned and headed downhill, toward my own happily-ever-after.

CHAPTER 86

Answers of Mystery

“Well, it all worked out well enough,” Syl said as we sat down to dinner.

“Just glad you’re really back. Sorry we haven’t had time to talk the last couple of days.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry about it, Jason! Good
lord
, you were half-killed and then trying to get everything fixed up between Arischadel and the Plunketts.”

“Still, I didn’t even ask you about what happened with Samantha and her friend,” I said, cutting her a slice of pork roast and putting it on her plate. “How
did
it go?”

She served herself some mashed potatoes, while screwing up her face in an “I’m trying to figure out what to say” way. “It went . . . kinda funny.”

“How do you mean?” I reached out, found I hadn’t filled my own glass, got up and went to the kitchen. “Go on, I’m listening.”

“Well . . . you’re going to be getting some big bills coming in.”

“Big bills?” I honestly hadn’t expected this to be an expensive handholding. “Why?”

“I found out when I got down there that Aurora’s first problem was getting
home
. Samantha was trying to arrange it, but while she’s not hurting for money, honestly, I didn’t want her blowing a couple grand.”

“Where
was
she? I thought she disappeared from New Jersey?”

“That’s where she disappeared . . . but she called Samantha from Cairo.”

“Cairo . . . you mean
Cairo
. As in, Egypt?” That
was
. . . funny, in the strange-funny sense. A girl disappears in America and ends up in Cairo. “What the heck was she doing
there
?”

Syl smiled wryly. “She wishes she knew.”

“
Amnesia
?” This was starting to sound like a bad thriller plot. “Aurora disappeared about a year ago. Does she remember
anything
?”

“Almost nothing,” Syl said. “And she’s not faking it, I could tell. She’d had a big fight with her parents, then saw Sam at the library; Sam almost calmed her down but then Aurora lost her temper again and ran off. She says that the last thing she remembers is realizing that she’d somehow gotten lost, and walking down a road without any houses in sight, just lots of trees, mostly pines.” Syl took a sip of her wine, then another bite of pork.

I knew the general area Aurora must live in, given she was walking to the library Samantha worked at. “Wait a minute. There’s just no way there’s
anything
around there that looks like that.”

“We know that, Jason,” Syl agreed. “And in one of her other last memories she says there was a
castle
at the end of that road. So we’re not even sure if those are connected memories. Aurora
thinks
they followed right after she left the library, but if you ask me, I think she’s remembering a couple of things from whatever happened to her after she disappeared.”

I gazed off into the distance, thinking. “What do you think happened? Fugue state?”

Syl shrugged. “Honestly, Jason? I think something very strange happened to her. I don’t think she just blanked out and ran off, if that’s what you mean. Physically, she shows no signs of hardship; no diseases, no injuries, no signs of accidents, abuse, or anything else. She even showed up in Cairo wearing the
exact same outfit
she was wearing when she disappeared. And she wasn’t carrying anything she
didn’t
have on her before, either.”

“Her parents must have been ecstatic at her return, anyway.”

“Actually, that’s one of the weirdest parts of this whole thing,” Syl said. “Her parents hadn’t panicked much when she disappeared, and they’d apparently said to the police and to Samantha that they
expected
her to disappear one day, and that they were sure she’d be back.”

“What?”

“That was
my
reaction too, Jason. Her parents are a little . . . odd. From what I could gather, they drifted around the country quite a bit even after Aurora was born—Deadheads, I think. They still have that . . . aging hippie vibe, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean, the kinda spaced-out look that
you
sometimes use to make people underestimate you?”

She laughed. “Exactly. But in their case, it’s mostly not an act. That was one of Aurora’s problems; she hated bouncing from one state to another, and her parents apparently told her some stories about her past and such that . . . weren’t exactly sensible, so when she finally went to regular school, she got laughed at a lot. Samantha didn’t give me a lot of details and Aurora didn’t want to talk much about that.”

She leaned back, looking pensive. “But . . . whatever happened, it
did
change her, according to Samantha. She went back to her parents and didn’t have a single word of complaint about them—and Samantha says that she
always
complained about them.”

I shook my head. “Well, that’s a heck of a mystery. But at least you’re done with it.”

We finished dinner and started cleaning up; then the phone rang.

“Wonder who
that
could be?” I muttered as I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Mr. Wood,” came a familiar, slightly rough voice. “Glad I could catch you at home.”

“Given your resources, I’d be surprised if you didn’t
know
I was home before you called, Mr. Achernar.”

“Spying on you would be rude. I try to avoid that when I might ask the people in question to do work for me. I called because I thought you might like a quick informal update of what we’ve learned.”

“Hold on, I’ll put you on speaker.”

Achernar’s voice came from the speakers set in the corners of the room. “Ready?”

“We’re ready,” Syl said. “Hello, Mr. Achernar.”

“Hello, Sylvie.”

“So what did you find?”

“Completely ruled out any natural cause,” he began, “unless I start including magical effects as ‘natural,’ which isn’t going to fly in most departments. There was no known natural phenomenon, or for that matter deliberately designed human phenomenon, which could make such a crater yet leave that one column intact as it was. I had the Jammer and half a dozen other modeling experts try every possible combination and we got exactly nothing.

“Blast effects and stress directions also showed that the detonation emanated directly above that preserved column, in a sphere just slightly wider than the column, while the material directly below was somehow completely untouched.”

I whistled. “I knew that’s what it
looked
like, but really, that’s pretty unbelievable.”

“The whole
thing
is unbelievable. We subjected the area to the most intense analysis possible, and there isn’t a trace of any chemical or radiological contaminant. People like myself and Sylvia, of course, sensed a huge amount of lingering mystical power. So internally, the explanation is that there was an almost pure magical explosion of physical force that lacked most of the thermal and luminance effects we associate with explosions and which prevented concussive transmission at the center.” I could
hear
the ironic smile in his voice as he continued, “Of course,
officially
we haven’t even got a clue as to what really happened, since there’s nothing on file that can cause this.”

“What about the thread?” Syl asked.

“Ahh, the
thread
. Now that turned out to be
very
interesting. Since we discovered it during the initial investigation, it’s also not on the official files, at least not yet.”

Achernar’s voice dropped to a confidential tone. “We analyzed that thread every possible way we could, and we know, or deduce, a lot of things about it. First, it’s part of a larger garment, probably a pair of loose pants, and it was pulled out by a thorn that almost certainly was snagging a thread that had been damaged earlier.

“We guess the latter because the thread itself is extraordinarily strong. It’s a kind of silk and extremely tough . . . but no type of silk we have ever seen before.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not a bit. This thing is a goldmine of questions, but not so good with answers. It’s dyed black . . . but we can’t identify the precise dye used. There were traces of some kind of pollen on it that don’t correspond to any pollen we know.”

“Any clue on the person wearing these clothes?” I kinda doubted it, but it was worth asking.

“Only that it was probably a man, based on traces of sweat and its composition, but that’s still only a guess.”

“Anything from the pictures?”

“The Jammer managed to extract a little bit more,” Achernar answered. “There were signs that the brush and other plant life on that untouched piece had been pressed down in a pattern that fits a human figure of moderate size. There was also a mark that looked like part of a footprint, right on the edge of the column.”

Interesting
. “So there was a
person
there, on the protected portion . . . and they just somehow up and walked away.”

“Wearing clothes made of an unknown fabric, dyed by unknown materials, yes.”

“Almost certainly this would be the same person who wiped out the evidence I saw—”

“—and knocked the column down to try to wipe out
that
evidence too, yes,” Achernar agreed.

Syl pursed her lips. “Do you
know
that part?”