Below, the obelisks glowed and pulsed urgently. Dying flames licked up from the arch and balustrades, outlining the structure of the bridge from bank to bank, emitting thin streams of smoke into the misty air.
Diana stood in the middle of the roadway in front of a pile of rubble. Mara could make out Sam as well, lying off to the side near the walkway. From this altitude, it was impossible to discern what was happening.
A blue light erupted from the arch atop the bridge.
It emitted waves of static accentuated by brilliant bolts of lightning. Beams shot out from the obelisks into the air above the arch, merging into a blinding starburst that collapsed to a point of light somewhere within the archway. Seconds later the translucent blue bubble exploded into the night, engulfing the bridge once more.
The dragon dived at the bridge. Digging her own talons into the flesh of the creature, Mara screamed until the downward pressure on her chest choked off the sound. Wind pulled her face taught and stung her eyes. Her insides shifted as the dragon dipped its left wing, arched toward the Oregon City side of the bridge and picked up more speed. Unlike her fall from the bridge, this descent did not slow her perceptions of what was happening. Life flashed by this time.
As they were about to collide with the bridge, the dragon spread its wings, catching a cushion of air. It lifted and slowed, reared back and thrust its feet forward. Its talons opened, flinging Mara to the roadway.
She tumbled onto the pavement, rolling until her shoulder met a curb. Facedown, trying to catch her breath, she hoped the stinging she felt from head to toe came from bruises and abrasions, and not broken bones. Pain radiated from her right hip.
Diana stood on the road a few feet away, inside the bubble.
“Perhaps I underestimated you. Once my followers and I are settled, you can explain to me how you turned my guardian.” Her eyes tracked the faint silhouette of the dragon now perched on the elevator observation deck. “Assuming you survive the evening.”
Mara pushed against the pavement, ignoring her screaming joints. As she brought her knees forward, pain radiated from her right hip. She cringed and slid her hand into the pocket of her jeans. She pulled out the demantoid, her mother’s green garnet.
“One of your mother’s baubles. Quaint,” Diana said.
Mara shifted her gaze from the garnet to Diana’s face, looking for something familiar, for some guidance. If her mother were here, she’d have some little gem of advice, an ambiguous piece of wisdom. Mara remembered the last time she had watched her mother use this crystal, the night they had discussed the divorce, when her mom had flashed green hues all over the living room.
“Mom, tell me what to do,” Mara said under her breath.
“What’s that you’re mumbling?” Diana looked down at her. “Whining was always one of your least endearing facets.”
Mara straightened. She lifted the garnet, stared at it and then back at Diana. She held out her hand before her. The stone began to roll around on her palm. Wobbling at first, it gained momentum and lifted onto its pointed base into a full spin, like a top. Accelerating, it hovered above her open hand, glimmered and rose even higher.
“We don’t have time for parlor tricks. The crossing is about to commence,” Diana said, eyeing the crystal as it spun above their heads just outside the static blue bubble.
“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.
Mara nodded her head. The reflection did not.
Behind her reflection, another Mara bent forward, trying to see around her counterpart to where Mara stood.
“What are you doing here?” Mara asked to the reflection immediately to her right.
“You brought us here. You tell us,” her counterpart said.
The walls of light, the expanded facets, collapsed, imploding into a starburst that winked out, replaced by the floating green garnet still spinning above their heads.
From within the bubble, Diana stared back, wide-eyed.
Mara looked down at her chest, trying to find what had spooked Diana. Movement to her right drew her attention.
Another Mara stood next to her.
Behind her was another. Two more Maras. They were not quite solid, but they were there.
The one closest gave a short wave and smiled. Without saying anything, she pointed over Mara’s shoulder. She turned.
Two more versions of herself stood to the left.
Five of them stood side by side, facing Diana through the Chronicle’s blue barrier.
Diana raised her arms to the obelisks. Lightning shot down, striking Mara’s counterparts, passing through them.
“How do I help my mother?” Mara asked.
The counterpart immediately to her right, said, “Facets.”
“I don’t have time for cryptic. A little more detail, please?”
“Two facets of Mom’s consciousness exist in this body. Use the crystal to refract her consciousness. Split them apart and send the other Mom back.”
“How?”
“Just will it.”
From behind her another Mara said, “She doesn’t know what she is doing. Look at her. She’s almost spent. She’s one step away from sputtering into oblivion.”
Mara held up her hands and looked down at herself. She was flickering so rapidly she appeared more transparent than her counterparts. “I’m not leaving without my mother,” she said.
“She is not prepared for the consequences, and we should not be interfering.”
The other counterpart said, “Her realm, her mother, her consequences. If she wants, we will help.” She turned to Mara. “There are no guarantees this will work, Mara, but there will be consequences. The element of Consequence is always affected when you alter the other elements.”
The bridge quaked, heaved a foot into the air, throwing the Maras to the ground. Something was crossing over through the passage beneath the arch. Something big.
“What do I do?” Mara stood up.
Her counterpart nodded to the floating, spinning garnet. The reflections raised their right hands to it. Mara followed suit, unsure of what to expect.
A cone of green light burst out of the gem and engulfed Diana. It shimmered and emitted a shaft of spinning light over her. She reached up and pressed against its edges with her palms, unable to reach beyond. She was bound within.
The light split into two bands, separating from the center. As they diverged, Diana’s serpent tattoo slid across her forehead, then jumped into the air. A transparent image of Diana appeared behind it.
Mara glanced to the left. No tattoo remained on her mother’s face. The transparent Diana screamed, raised her arms, resisted. The ghostly image slipped back into her mother’s body.
“The joining cannot be undone. This is my body now,” Diana screamed, gritting her teeth, flailing her arms at them. Sweat coursed down her face.
Mara looked at her counterparts who raised their left hands to the spinning crystal. Another light, this one more brilliant, flooded down on Diana. Again, the light refracted, tearing Diana’s consciousness apart, dragging out the tattooed one screaming and flailing, kicking at the air.
Diana begged her counterpart, “Raise the Chronicle. Call me b
ack.” She flung herself toward Mara’s mother but could not pass beyond the band of light that held her.
“Can we send her back to her realm?” Mara asked, glancing sideways to her counterparts.
“Not without the Chronicle and it’s in there,” her counterpart said, nodding toward the blue bubble in front of them.
“Then what do we do?”
“Her consciousness must be bound to her body and Mom, your mom, must touch her. That will send her back.”
Mara nodded to the pile of ash and bones on the ground inside the bubble. “She destroyed her body from the other realm.”
One of the Maras to the left said, “That does not matter. Rejoin them. The consequences are hers.”
Her counterpart to the right nodded.
Mara grimaced. “Okay.”
She lowered her arms from the floating, spinning crystal and extended them toward the remains. Ashes floated into the air, swirling above the bones, forming a loose spiral as they gained speed and power. As the soot accelerated, bones rose from the ground, were sucked into the whirlwind forming in front of the broken altar. After the remains had been swept up, Mara pointed to the ethereal Diana. The tornado of soot and bones spun at her, engulfing her, tearing her spiritual form into misty tatters, blending it with the cremated remains. A bolt of light flashed out of the vortex. A skeleton screamed from the maelstrom.
“Mom, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need you to reach out and touch her,” Mara said.
Her mother cringed from the swirling, screaming nightmare. She drew her arms up, hugged the Chronicle to her chest. She faced Mara and blinked slowly trying to clear her vision, trying to make sense of the daughters before her. She staggered forward a step, reaching out for help.
“No, Mom. Don’t come to me,” Mara said.
Her mother stopped, wavered on her feet as she gazed from one Mara to the next.
On the walkway, Sam slowly lifted his blood-soaked head. He raised himself up on one arm. “Mom!” he yelled.
Mara froze.
Her mother turned and locked eyes with him.
“Jump,” he prompted.
Diana, still holding the Chronicle, straightened and flung herself into the funnel of ash and bone. Her hand grazed the jaw of the skull.
A blinding blue light erupted.
The imploding bubble yanked Mara forward and swept everything inside it to its center beneath the arch of the bridge. Leaning against the vacuum rushing to fill the void, she stumbled as the road fell out from under her. The two still-smoldering arches on each side of the road separated from the span, spreading like wings as they cascaded into the river. The road peeled away from the infrastructure, revealing the water below. Folding in on itself, the center of the bridge crumpled, collapsed into a single point of light and exploded into shards of brilliant blue.
Then darkness and silence came.
CHAPTER 68
MARA AWOKE AND saw stars.
Then some of them disappeared.
Something blotted them out of the predawn sky. Raising herself up, she squinted and made out a silhouette circling above.
The dragon.
It glided downward in a lazy spiral coming closer with each pass. Her heart sped up, not out of fear, but with the realization it wasn’t a nightmare.
She glanced to the left. The arch, the center of the bridge, was gone. The rising roadway ended in a cliff just before the water’s edge.
A chill ran up her arms when she placed her hands on the ground, realizing she was on top of a corrugated aluminum roof off to the side where the bridge had been. Unsure of her sore limbs, she stood, trying to get her bearings. She kicked something that clanked loudly as it skidded on the metallic roof. She bent down and picked up the Chronicle.
“Like a bad-luck penny,” she said to herself, tucking it into her pocket.
She felt a breeze waft down from above. The dragon descended closer, now just forty feet away. Since it wasn’t diving at her or blowing fire, she didn’t think it was attacking. Still, it was a dragon. It would be a good idea to get on the ground, just in case. Leaning over the edge of the roof, she saw no quick—and safe—way down.
The sky was getting lighter. She could see some of the scaly detail of the creature sailing above as it held its wings open and lazily swished its massive tail back and forth. After another moment, it tensed and reared back its head. The wings flicked, the dragon hovered in one spot like a giant hummingbird. It tensed again, waved its head skyward, screeched loudly enough to shake the aluminum Mara stood on and exploded into a cloud of dust.
Mara raised her hands over her head anticipating dragon fallout.
There was none.
The cloud of dust floated still for a moment, then gathered, instead of dissipating with the wind. Particles swirled and flowed downward toward Mara. It hovered over the corrugated roof, swirling faster, becoming denser, spinning like a mote of dust. It began to take form, the form of a man. It grew solid, and its features grew familiar.
“Ping!” Mara ran across the roof and hugged him. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
“I’m somewhat amazed myself,” Ping said.
“What happened? Where did the dragon go?”
Ping patted his chest with both hands. “He’s in here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I completely understand myself. It appears the dragon and I now share this body. Two consciousnesses in one body.”
“One body that can take the shape of a man or a dragon?”
“Something like that. During your battle with the dragon, his remains and mine fused. Remember Sam’s pixel analogy? This realm is just pixels, an interface to actual consciousness? The Dragon and I have separate consciousnesses, but we now share pixels in this realm.”
“Did I do this to you?”
“Obviously your abilities played a role in the fusion during the battle, but it would be overly simplistic to say you did it. My own physiology came into play as well.”
“Oh, Ping, I am so sorry. Let’s see if I can undo—”
“No, no. We don’t fully understand the consequences of trying to undo this. We could make things worse.”
“You can’t live with a dragon inside you.”
“I believe I can. We’ve come to an accommodation that I think will work. I get this body for the balance of my natural life, and then he gets to have it. Dragons, you see, live for hundreds of years. For the few decades I have left, he’s agreed to basically take a nap. I don’t bother him. He doesn’t bother me.”
“So when you die, you turn into a dragon?”
“My body will. That’s the deal.”
“I don’t think bequeathing a dragon to the world will be much of a legacy. You can’t just check out and let your pixels loose to ravage the countryside.”
“We don’t have to figure this out now. We’ve got time to consider what to do,” he said.
“So that was you, when I fell from the bridge.”
He nodded.
“Might be handy to have a dragon around.”
“Don’t count on it. I’m not waking him up. Let’s get down from here and go.”
“First we have to find Mom and Sam,” she said.
Ping turned somber. “Mara, I’m certain they are not here. I saw the bubble collapse from up there.” He pointed to the sky above the bridge. “Everything—and everyone—inside the bubble was swept away and disappeared. They are gone, I’m afraid.”
“No, I saw her. Mom was herself again. Sam was alive. I am not going anywhere without them.” She fixed her eyes on the ruins of the bridge hanging out over the river. “You said I could shape reality. What good is that if I can’t help them?”
“You need to consider the repercussions of what you do and how it may affect things. If you alter this realm—”
“I know, consequences. Ping, this realm has already been altered. There are still dozens of people from the flight, from other realms, ru
nning around out there. Who’s to say what I’m doing isn’t supposed to fix things? And isn’t it just as likely that doing nothing will have as many consequences as doing something?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Come on. There is a big truck over here. We can jump down on its hood and get to the ground without breaking a leg. We need to get up to the bridge before it gets too light out. I’m surprised this place isn’t already swarming with cops.”
*
Mara climbed up a sloping alley that paralleled the base of the bridge and rose to Main Street, ending at a pile of rubble, one of the shattered obelisks that marked the span’s on-ramp. Ping trailed a couple steps behind. She turned to walk up the fractured ramp toward the river. He grabbed her arm.
“Please tell me what you are about to do.” He looked around, worried the destruction had drawn attention. Thanks to the lingering smog of moisture, smoke and dust, downtown Oregon City remained shrouded in darkness despite the first rays of dawn overhead. Streetlights were still out, and no lights shone from buildings.
“There is no time to discuss it,” Mara said. “Just watch and wish me luck.”
She turned away from him before he could respond. She faced the rubble of the bridge’s approach, bowed her head and closed her eyes. She thought back, remembered the collapse of the Chronicle’s bubble. Played it back in reverse in her mind, willed it to unimplode, envisioned it unsweeping everything away.
The ground rumbled, rending steel screamed while rock and sand ground against each other. Mara felt grit blow across her face.
“Mara, what are you doing?” Ping asked.
“The element of Time,” she said softly, keeping her eyes closed, concentrating.
“Oh, my—”
Dust swept over him as the shattered bridge reconstructed itself in front of him. He ducked and sidestepped as fragments slid along the ground and took to the air, stacking and interconnecting like a jigsaw puzzle. Cracks healed themselves as masonry and cement fused once more. The obelisk next to him and its twin across the road stood up so quickly they appeared to be straightening from a bow.
“What about the element of Time? Tell me,” he said.
Broken Realms (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 1) Page 36