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

by D. W. Moneypenny

  “Mrs. Murray’s a gardener? She tended your plants?” Bohannon asked.

  Reuben waved a hand dismissively. “No, she was the office manager, but she had developed this remarkable ability to revitalize sickly plants. It was absolutely miraculous. I have been in the business since I was a child, and I have never seen anything like it.”

  “I see.” Bohannon nodded, pretended to take notes in a pad.

  “No, I don’t think you do see! She practically resurrected these poinsettias from the dead!” the nursery owner said.

  Mara raised an eyebrow. “Exactly how did she do this?”

  Reuben rattled his head back and forth frenetically. “I don’t know. She would never let anyone watch. That’s why I left her alone in the greenhouse, so she could do her thing.”

  “Did Mrs. Murray do this often, heal your plants?” Bohannon asked.

  “I didn’t become aware of her talents until a couple months ago. Occasionally she would work with a particular plant that was not doing well. Then one day she fixed up a whole vanload of plants, ferns and whatnot, going to an office building downtown. When we had the power outage last week and the poinsettias were damaged, I asked her to come in to see what she could do. And look! She did it, and then she disappeared.”

  “When you say disappeared, you mean, she left, correct?”

  “If she left, I surely don’t know how. She had tied the door closed, from the inside, and her car was still parked out front.” Reuben pointed to a frayed piece of nylon twine hanging on a peg next to the door. “It took me ten minutes to get the door open.”

  “You’re saying, she was locked inside?”

  “It would appear so. How could someone tie the only door closed and then leave? One of the back walls of the greenhouse will slide open, but that is secured with three padlocks, and they haven’t been disturbed.”

  “Was there any sign of a struggle? Any damage to the greenhouse—a fire or explosion or anything like that?”

  “Heavens, no! Look around. This is just how we found it. Although the flowers are going to be moved out later today.”

  Bohannon paced to the far end of the row in which they were standing, bent down to look at the dirt floor and decided there was probably too much traffic in the greenhouse to determine if any footprints belonged to the Murray woman. He did see a tiny piece of fluff on the ground next to a pallet. He blew at it, and it took to the air, landing on a poinsettia leaf. It melted away. Bohannon squinted at it and shook his head. He circled back in the parallel row, approaching Mara and Reuben from behind. They turned to him, and the detective held out his hand. “Thanks, Mr. Stills. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.”

  * * *

  Once they got into the truck again, Bohannon backed out of the gravel parking lot and spoke without looking at Mara. “What do you make of that? A woman disappearing in the middle of a locked-up greenhouse?”

  “I’m not sure. It doesn’t look like she inadvertently touched something that belonged to her counterpart, or there would have been evidence of an explosion. Maybe it’s a setup of some kind. Maybe she wanted people to think she disappeared.”

  Bohannon leaned forward to see if any traffic was coming on the highway. Not seeing any, he took a right and shook his head at Mara. “People who want to disappear don’t set up weird scenarios that don’t make sense which draw attention to the fact that they’ve disappeared. They usually just skip town, hoping no one notices for a good long time—the longer, the better. That way they are more likely to get farther away.”

  “Maybe someone took her.”

  “I suppose it’s possible, but there’s no sign of that.”

  “What? You think she just vanished into thin air?”

  “Well, she was a passenger on Flight 559, so I’m not ruling anything out. We’ve had at least one case in which a passenger disappeared with no evidence of an explosion.”

  “Really? Who?” Mara asked.

  “Sandoval, the pilot of the flight,” he said, turning to gauge Mara’s reaction. “His wife never explained what happened to him, although I get the feeling you might know something about that.”

  “I can assure you that there’s no connection between what happened to Matt Sandoval and Elizabeth Murray.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Matt Sandoval was dying, because the air in this realm lacked some chemical or substance he needed to live, so I sent him back to his own realm. His wife was standing right there when it happened.” She paused for a moment and added, “Believe me, if I had sent Mrs. Murray back, I would have told you by now.”

  Bohannon’s eyes widened. “You have the ability to send all these people back where they came from, and you aren’t doing it?”

  “What? I’m supposed to hunt everyone down from Flight 559 and cast them out of our realm, whether they like it or not? Who’s going to explain to their families that their actual loved ones are dead? Me? How long do you think it would be before I ended up in prison or a mental institution? Also don’t forget the video you watched of the guy in Arkansas. These people are not just in Portland. They are spread all over the country or even the world.”

  He raised a hand in surrender. “Okay, I get it. You caught me off guard. You and Mr. Ping had never explained to me that sending someone back was an option.”

  “Well, it’s not really anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember we told you about my counterpart on the flight having a device that allowed those people to cross over?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, it’s called the Chronicle of Creation. Think of it as a GPS device, a 3-D map of all the realms. It can be used to move between realms. I used it to send Matt Sandoval back to his realm, but I no longer have it. I lost it during the fight with the darkling wraith last week.”

  “The darkling what?”

  “Prado. Remember Juaquin Prado, smoky black vapor, taking over people’s bodies?”

  “So you no longer have this device?”

  “Right. It’s gone, probably for good, along with my best friend.” Mara’s face reddened. She looked down at her hands. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I still can’t believe she’s gone, and I’m running around dealing with hibernating men and missing plant healers.”

  “You okay? I just have one more question about this, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “If you no longer have this Chronicle, could someone else be using it to nab people?”

  CHAPTER 15

  Muffled laughter came from the kitchen as Sam and Hannah washed dishes after dinner. Diana sat in a lotus position on the circular throw rug in front of the fireplace, her eyes closed and her head tilted upward slightly, meditating. She could catch more than half an hour of solace, because, when her son and granddaughter did the after-dinner chores, they spent as much time playing as cleaning. Mara sat in one of the armchairs off to the side of the fireplace, staring down at her knees on which sat the book, the Chronicle of Continuity. Light from the fireplace dappled across its cover.

  Mara had meant to talk to Ping more about the book and the new haiku that had appeared, but their argument about the dragon had derailed that. For the moment she felt like she was on her own. She reread the first haiku. Ping was right; that was a statement of the book’s purpose: to provide clues to guide her. The second one struck Mara as a sort of to-do list. Seek out the passengers, check. Ignore the dragon’s folly, easier said than checked. Find the trails of mist, definitely not checked. She and Ping had not even discussed that one; they kept getting stuck on the dragon stuff. What are the trails of mist?

  And why was her future self sending cryptic little passages back in time in the form of a haiku? Does Time have some kind of limitation, like Twitter? I can only send seventeen syllables into the past. What’s that about?

  She looked at the next page. The newest haiku. Forget all the fears / Preventing you from learni
ng. / Exchange memories. She stared at the passages for several minutes, trying to figure out what each line meant. Ping has mentioned contrasting ideas or phrases, and this one had “forget” in the first line and “memories” in the last, but that didn’t really tell her much. It meant nothing to her. She couldn’t even guess what it was talking about.

  “You get a new haiku?” Sam asked.

  Mara looked up with a start. Her brother stood at the entryway to the living room, drying his hands on his jeans. Her mother was no longer in the room.

  “What? Oh, no, just the one from the other day. I was attempting to decode it, but it makes no sense. To be honest, the whole thing makes no sense.”

  Sam took a seat on the couch. “The whole thing what?”

  “This book, haikus, Hannah. None of it sounds like anything I would do,” Mara said. She tapped the page in front of her. “And the clues in here are either completely incomprehensible or seemingly idiotic.”

  “What’s idiotic?” he asked.

  “Ignore the dragon’s folly. Clearly Ping is losing control of the dragon. How am I supposed to ignore that, and spend my time finding passengers and trails of mist?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe there’s nothing you can do about Ping, or maybe the other stuff is more important.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  “By reading the book.”

  “That’s just a logic loop. The book makes sense, because the book says so. That doesn’t help much.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “You’re always looking for an explanation for how things work. Why can’t you just accept things at face value? Clearly the book came from the future, delivered to you by your own niece. It’s written in your own handwriting. It’s basically you attempting to help you.”

  “Let’s say that’s true—”

  “Saying it isn’t going to be enough, if you don’t believe it.”

  “Well, I have my doubts. I can’t believe—”

  “Can’t believe what? Your own niece, your own handwriting, what?”

  Mara looked away and didn’t say anything. She slammed the book closed and glared at her brother. He looked at her and said, “What?”

  “I can’t believe, if I knew what was going to happen, that I would save myself … and not Abby.” She hid her face in her hands. “There’s not a damn word in that book to help her.”

  “You can’t know that,” Sam said. “If you could help Abby, you would. That’s something you can believe in, isn’t it?”

  Mara rubbed her palms into her eyes, squeezing away the tears before they ran down her face. “I do now, but, judging by these stupid haikus, God only knows what I’ll believe in the future. Why couldn’t I just send a plain language instruction manual back from the future? That I could work with, not these silly hints.”

  “You should really stop beating yourself up about Abby. If just spelling it out would have worked, I’m sure you would have done it—or will do it, whatever. Like Ping said, it’s about maintaining Continuity. Things have to happen in a certain way, in a certain order, for them to work out. If you just did an info-dump from the future, your present self would cut to the chase and mess everything up. Right?”

  Mara’s mouth dropped open. “That actually makes sense. How do you come up with this stuff?”

  “I’m not limited by your metaphysically myopic view of reality.”

  “Don’t get cocky. The last time you got high and mighty about your metaphysical superiority, you prompted me to make a bunch of disembodied spirits visible.”

  Sam chuckled. “Yeah. Anyway we probably haven’t heard the last from your future self.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He pointed to the book, “There are still lots of blank pages. If you weren’t going to use them, you probably would have sent a note, not a book.”

  “Again you make sense. Twice in one day—you’re on a roll, and you even worked in a vocabulary word, myopic. Mrs. Zimmerman would be so proud.”

  “You must be feeling better, because you’re back to being condescending,” he said. He pushed up from the couch, but Mara raised her hand. “What?” he asked.

  “Have you talked to Hannah about anything? You know, about the future or why she’s here?”

  He sat back down and said, “I learned my lesson about asking about the future when she turned me into an old man, so, no, on that score. She did that after I asked her what kind of father I was.”

  “You weren’t that old. You looked like maybe early thirties.”

  “Whatever. I’m not asking any more questions about the future. I don’t want to know more than I know right now.”

  “Have you asked her what her mother’s name is?”

  “No, and don’t you dare. My brain is full of information. I don’t need any more. I’ll meet her mother when the time comes. That’s good enough for me.”

  “Okay, it’s your life, but what about why Hannah’s here? Has she said anything?”

  Sam shook his head. “Just that you sent her back in time with the book and to make you shine. Why don’t you talk to her? She might respond differently to you, since you’re the one who sent her here.” He pointed toward the stairs. “The bean’s upstairs with Mom, getting ready for bed. Maybe you should go read to her. Then you can ask her yourself.”

  “The bean?”

  “She likes it when I call her jelly bean.”

  “’Cause she’s so sweet,” Mara said, mocking.

  “Hey, she’s five years old. She likes it when the old man teases her.”

  “I think I’m getting nauseated, old man.”

  * * *

  Hannah had been sleeping in Diana’s room since she had arrived and was already tucked into the right side of the bed. Apart from indirect light from the hall, the only illumination in the room came from a shaded lamp on the nightstand next to where Mara’s niece lay propped up by a large pillow. Mara stood at the door and watched her mother crouch on the opposite side of the bed, rummaging through the bottom of the other nightstand.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to read about bumblebees instead? That one is really funny. You said you liked it,” Diana said.

  “No, you promised dragons. I want you to read the one about the dragons,” Hannah said.

  Diana looked up at Mara and rolled her eyes. “She’s so much like you were at that age that it is spooky. I’m going to have to run downstairs and see if I can find the dragon book. I think we might have left it down there yesterday.”

  “If you find the dragon book, I’ll be glad to read it,” Mara said.

  “Deal,” Diana said, as she exited the room.

  Hannah patted the side of the bed, inviting her aunt to take a seat. Mara did so, then brushed a lock of hair from the little girl’s eyes.

  “You look sad, Mar-ree. What’s wrong?” Hannah asked.

  “I’m just a little tired. It’s been a long day—a long week actually.” Mara forced a smile.

  Hannah held out her hands toward Mara’s face. “I can make you happy.”

  Mara leaned away and said, “No, no, don’t do that. I don’t want you to prompt me.” Mara took Hannah’s wrists and guided her hands down to her lap. “Don’t your mom and dad have rules about when you should prompt people? You know, when it is good and when it is bad?”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to do it without permission. That’s the rule.”

  “You mean, you have to ask the person before you do it?”

  “Nuh-uh. I’m s’posed to ask my dad first, before I prompt anybody.”

  “That sounds like a good rule to follow. So, before you came here, he gave you permission to prompt me the night you arrived?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Daddy didn’t know I was coming here. It’s a secret.”

  How can Sam not know she was coming back in time if she was coming to his past?

  Mara raised an eyebrow. “Who knows this secret?”

  Hannah tapped her own chest and Mara’s ar
m. “Me and you.”

  “Hannah, do you understand where you are, that you went backward in time?”

  “Nuh-uh, that’s wrong. The merry-go-round doesn’t work like that. It only goes one way, not backward.”

  “You’re saying that Time is like a merry-go-round, and it can only go in one direction?”

  She nodded eagerly. “You sent me on an extra spin of the merry-go-round, and I stopped here, before it went all the way around again.”

  “Aren’t you afraid your father will be angry when you get home? You’ve been gone a long time.”

  Hannah giggled. “He knows I’m here now, silly. He’s downstairs. When I get back, he’ll remember I was here.”

  Mara rubbed her temples. “You are saying, when you left, he didn’t know you were coming, but, when you get back, he will know that you came here?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You told me.”

  “Did I tell you why you needed to do this?”

  “To bring you the book and make you shine. Remember? I told you that already.”

  “But—”

  Diana rapped her knuckles on the door frame behind them. In her other hand she held a thin colorful children’s book. “Time for reading and sleeping. Question time is over.” She looked at Mara with an expression of mild disapproval.

  * * *

  A half hour later, Mara stood at the stove, tapping her finger on the counter, impatiently staring at the teakettle. Diana, who was sitting at the table, pushed out a chair from under the table with a foot. “For heaven sakes, have a seat. The kettle will let you know when it’s ready. What are you so worked up about?”

  Mara sat down and scooted up to the table. “Can you believe that I not only sent that poor little girl back in time but I did it without telling her parents? I practically kidnapped her. What in the world could I have been thinking?”

  “From what I heard, it sounds like you might have actually sent her forward in time, not backward,” Diana said. “She just went forward so far, that she looped back around.”