The Sister Paradox

by Jack Campbell

  Kari? Where had that come from? I didn’t know anyone named Kari. “Ms. Meyer, I really don’t—”

  “Come along.” I didn’t have any choice but to follow Ms. Meyer into the waiting area.

  And there she was, jumping up from a chair and smiling at me like she hadn’t done anything. “Liam? You are Liam! Greetings to you, dearest brother!”

  “Kari?” How did I know her name? How did I know her? I’d never seen her before. But as I stared at her, my mouth hanging open, I also knew that she was my sister. Which was crazy, because I didn’t have a sister, but there she was standing in front of me, looking like somebody who had just left a Renaissance Faire or Live Action Role Playing game.

  She had on a loose, long green shirt pulled in at the waist with a broad, leather belt that had a big metal buckle on it. The buckle was embossed with a unicorn’s head, which should have looked very girly, but instead had this tough aspect that felt more grrly. Her pants were leather. Not shiny, stiff black leather, but light brown stuff that looked soft. Some sort of circlet running across her temples and all the way around held her hair in place. The circlet was made of braided threads that shone brilliantly white like metal even though they also looked soft. She was okay looking, I guess, though I didn’t dwell on that with a girl I somehow thought was my sister. Ms. Meyer had called her my younger sister, but she couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than me.

  Kari stood there like she owned the world, one thumb hooked in her belt, grinning at me. “My dearest brother,” she said again.

  I wanted to yell “I am not” but all I could manage at the moment was “uh…”

  The girl who couldn’t be my sister, even though she sure felt like my sister, lost her smile as she turned toward Ms. Meyer and spoke like one adult to another. “I would like it returned now, if you please.”

  Ms. Meyer looked amazed. “Certainly not.”

  Kari’s face tightened. “It is mine by right, given to me freely and entrusted to my care. You cannot take it.”

  “Young lady, it has been confiscated and it will not be returned.” Ms. Meyer, obviously mad at the questions, glared at me before Kari could say anything else. “Take your sister home, now,” she ordered, then stormed out of the office, probably looking for some kids to terrorize in the halls.

  I could see Kari’s eyes shifting around as if she were studying the area and the office assistants and vice principals standing around. Before I could think of anything else to say Kari beckoned to me and darted out the door of the waiting area.

  “I hate it when you do that,” I hissed at her when I caught up. I couldn’t remember her ever doing it before, but I knew I didn’t like it. “Who are you?”

  She lost that angry, intent look for a moment as she smiled at me again. “Your sister.”

  “I don’t have a sister!”

  “Dearest brother. Of course you do, for am I not here? Now, follow me. We must act and then talk.” More confused than ever, I followed her out the door of the school and around the corner of the building.

  We stopped at the outside window to the principal’s office. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting back something which is mine.” Kari peered inside. “There it is. We must hurry before she comes back, as I sense we should not create too large a disturbance. Give me a boost, dearest brother.”

  “I’m not your dearest brother!” But she was already pulling herself up and without even thinking I made a stirrup with my hands for her foot. Up close, I saw that her boot was leather, too. Very nice leather and really well made, with what looked like hand stitching and everything. “Mom and Dad give me such a hard time about how much my shoes cost, and then they get boots like this for you.” No. Wait a minute. Who was this girl?

  Kari glanced down at me before she went through the window. “These boots were crafted by the folk of Caderock, given to the White Lady as tribute and hence to me.” She disappeared inside while I gaped up at where she had been, wondering why the sister I didn’t have dressed and spoke like someone from a fantasy movie.

  Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I almost jumped out of my skin. When I came down, James was laughing at me. “What’re you doing here?” I demanded.

  “Physical education. I’m doing some independent walking until I get caught. So, what happened? Why’d you have to go to the office? Why are you so nervous?”

  “She’s in there.” I pointed to the window.

  “She? She who?”

  “My…I don’t know! She’s some crazy girl who thinks she knows me!”

  James gave me a funny look, and just then Kari swung herself out of the window. James looked up at her and grinned. “Oh. What’d Kari do this time?”

  I grabbed his shoulders. “You know her?”

  “Yeah. She’s your sister!” James said, giving me a baffled look.

  “I don’t have a sister! You know I don’t have a sister!”

  “Um…” James frowned, looking more confused. “Yeah. But, isn’t that Kari?”

  “How do you know her name is Kari?”

  “Because she’s your sister,” he protested.

  Kari smiled as she dropped down from the window to what even I had to admit was a graceful landing. “I have it!” She raised her right hand to show off her prize.

  A sword. A real long sword, not a toy. Three feet long, or maybe a little longer, the scabbard made out of leather that had been dyed deep blue, and decorated with lots of golden fittings and ornaments. The bright metal of the sword’s guard shone in the sunlight, and the grip ended in a big, smooth stone more deeply blue than the scabbard.

  James started laughing. “Oh, man! You brought a sword to school?”

  Kari smiled wider as she fastened the sword scabbard to some leather straps and then slung it onto her back so the hilt stood up over one of her shoulders. Now Kari really looked like someone from a role-playing game. She reached up and back experimentally to grasp the sword, nodded to herself as if satisfied and tightened the straps. “Yes. Of course I had my sword with me. I could not believe that woman sought to take it. Is there no law in this land?”

  “Old Lady Meyer is the law inside that building,” James told her.

  “A tyrant! But I have no time to deal with her now. It is well that I have recovered the Sword of Fate, for Liam and I shall have need of it.”

  “We will?” I asked.

  “Of that I am certain, dearest brother. There is a task of some urgency which we must complete.”

  “A task?” Just what I needed. A sister I don’t have shows up and starts telling me I have to do things. “With a sword?”

  “Of course!” Kari insisted, then she frowned and looked at me in a puzzled sort of way. “Where is your sword? Did that woman take yours as well?”

  I was still trying to come up with an answer to that when James pointed to Kari and laughed. “You nut case!” James turned to me, still laughing like crazy. “They go crazy if we bring in fingernail clippers to school, and your sister brings a sword!”

  I didn’t think it was all that funny. “She’s not my sister!”

  “Come on, Liam. It’s Kari!”

  “Are you saying you’ve met her before?”

  James managed to stop laughing, instead looking confused. “Well, I…um…Hey, you better get out of here before Meyer finds out that Kari took that thing back.”

  “Yeah.” That made sense at least, even if nothing else did. “James, you’d tell me if they were doing one of those reality TV things on me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “Nobody told me about anything like that.”

  “But this has to be—” But it couldn’t be. Even if everyone else had decided to play along with some punk joke, how could it be a set-up if I also thought Kari was my sister even though I didn’t have a sister? How could the TV people have messed up my mind?

  I could only be sure of one thing: it was past time I took control of the situation. I’d risked getting
into even more trouble by letting this girl lead me around here to break into Meyer’s office. Now she was wearing a sword on school grounds and somehow I just knew I’d get blamed for it all if we got caught.

  “See you, James. Come on, uh, Kari.” This time I led. We had to go past the front of the school to get home, but I walked quickly, hoping no one would look out and see Kari and her sword.

  Kari followed without a word of complaint and didn’t object to walking fast, keeping up easily. “Do you fear encountering Lady Meyer again?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Aren’t you worried about that?”

  “If she tries to take my blade again, I shall not be fooled and act with courtesy,” Kari said. “Lady Meyer shall face the sharp edge of my steel instead.”

  This just kept getting better. I stopped for a moment and turned to face her. “No, she won’t. Don’t you dare point that sword at her or anyone else. What are you doing? Is this some kind of LARP thing?”

  “LARP?”

  “Live Action Role Playing. But they don’t use real swords!”

  Kari looked puzzled. “Why would anyone use a fake sword?”

  “Because—Why do you always do this? Stirring up trouble, getting me involved, and then—” I tried to remember any times she had done that. Why was I so certain she had when I had never seen her before today?

  “I did not start this quarrel with Lady Meyer,” Kari said as she looked back at the school. “She is the ruler of that place?”

  “Ruler?”

  “Yes.” Kari squinted. “I can read those letters! This is wonderful!”

  “Yeah. Great. You can read.”

  “Hillcrest. It says Hillcrest,” Kari announced. “She is Lady Meyer of Hillcrest. She is an evil overlord?”

  I stopped walking again and looked at her. “Why don’t you drop the act?”

  “Act?”

  “The whole dungeons-and-dragons thing!”

  Kari frowned at me in puzzlement, then her expression lit with understanding. “She has a dungeon! Well, of course. But I see no trace of dragons near here.”

  The girl was hopeless. Or crazy. “Look, she is Ms. Meyer, principal of Hillcrest.”

  “Principle what of Hillcrest?” Kari asked.

  “What?”

  “You said this Lady Meyer was principle of Hillcrest. Principle means primary. But primary what?”

  Definitely crazy. “No! No! You’re doing this on purpose. Not princi-ple. Princi-pal. She’s in charge.”

  “You had already told me that.” Kari looked back at the school. “While inside I saw that she holds many in her thrall. They should be freed, but we have no time for that now.”

  I stared again. “Where did you come from, anyway?”

  “I have always been here, Liam. In a way.”

  “No. No, you haven’t. I might be a little confused right now, but I’m sure you haven’t been here. I don’t have a sister. I’ve never had a sister.”

  She smiled at me. “You have always had a sister, Liam.”

  “All right, then, if you’re my sister, where’ve you been living? I know you haven’t been living at my house.”

  Her expression became very serious. “I have been in Elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?”

  “Yes. So the Archimaede says, though for all my life I thought Elsewhere was simply Here. But for me, it is Elsewhere, because I was supposed to be in this Here,” Kari explained, apparently thinking that she was making sense. “But something slipped, you see, and I ended up in Elsewhere instead. That’s what the Archimaede told me, and Archimaedes know a great deal about such things.”

  “What’s an Archimaede?” I asked.

  “You have never met one?” she asked, surprised.

  “No.”

  “How strange!” Kari twisted her mouth as she thought. The expression reminded me of someone else, but I wasn’t sure who. “An Archimaede is much like a Dyrac.”

  “A Dyrac?”

  “Yes. Though an Archimaede is much, much smarter than a Dyrac, of course.”

  “Well, that explains everything,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Kari didn’t notice my sarcasm. “You are most welcome. What is that growling sound? Are there many angry beasts near? Does the evil Lady Meyer keep them penned nearby?”

  “Growling sound?” All I could hear was the traffic on the nearest road. “Look, let’s just—” What? Take her home? The crazy girl from Elsewhere? But what else could I do? “Let’s go on home.”

  “Home?” she said the word slowly. “Home. That would be delightful, if you would so honor me.”

  “Yeah. Delightful.” I pointed off to the side and started walking again, not bothering to look at her. Maybe if I didn’t look at her for a while I’d stop thinking she was my sister, or at least people who saw us wouldn’t think we were together. “We’ll take the shortcut through the park.”

  I didn’t think it was all that much of a park, just a few acres of trees and some open areas with picnic tables and a playground and junk like that. I’d played there when I was younger, but for the last few years I’d only walked through the park on my way to other places. The big advantage of going through the park now, from my point of view, was the very small chance that anyone I knew would see me with Kari. If we had walked along the street plenty of people would have seen us together, which was the last thing I wanted. Right now I’d rather be seen in public with my parents than with Kari, and that was saying something.

  “As you suggest,” Kari agreed. “Have we far to travel? We must talk of our quest.”

  “Our quest?”

  “Yes. I spoke of it earlier. It is very urgent.”

  “Uh…right.” This had to be a TV show, or something on the internet. Sort of a LARP prank show. Though why Meyer would have cooperated with it, I couldn’t imagine. “Home’s not far, only a few minutes’ walk.”

  “Minutes?”

  “You don’t know what minutes are?” Of course not. Fine. I’d play along for a while. “A very short time.”

  “Excellent! Lead on, dearest brother. Once there I shall explain the situation and we shall make our plans.”

  “Riiiight.” Even if this girl hadn’t been my sister (which she wasn’t) I didn’t think I’d want to make “plans” with a crazy girl who would bring a sword to school.

  We strode along and soon enough were in among the trees. Kari had seemed a bit uncertain while we were surrounded by buildings, but now looked around with a big grin on her face. Some birds flew past, and a moment later I heard one trilling right next to me.

  Nope. Not a bird. My crazy not-my-sister Kari, doing a really good bird impression.

  I was about to make some comment when one of the birds suddenly flew down, perched on her raised arm, and started singing to her. I couldn’t believe it.

  Kari sang back to the bird. At least, that’s what it sounded like. A conversation. Kari. Bird. Kari. Bird. They both sounded seriously happy, which started to really rub me the wrong way, because this was now crazy as well as weird.

  “You know,” I said darkly. “I have a pretty happy life right now and I don’t need it messed up.”

  Kari paused in her talk with the bird to nod sympathetically to me. “I understand, dearest brother.”

  “No, I don’t think you do, because otherwise you wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be pretending to talk to some bird while people can see us. You’re already in trouble, you know.”

  The bird chirped something that didn’t sound very nice at me, then flew off in a huff while Kari turned a once-more serious face toward me. “Oh, yes. I am quite aware of that! We are all in great trouble! After the Archimaede told me what I must do to preserve the walls between worlds I knew I must seek you out.”

  I blinked several times and focused on her again. “What?”

  “The trouble. You were speaking of the trouble.”

  “I was talking about this!” I pulled the envelope from school out of my backpa
ck.

  She just looked curious. “What is it?”

  “A letter to Mom from Principal Meyer telling her you took that sword to school and probably saying you’re going to be suspended for who knows how long!”

  “Really?” Kari walked a few more steps, looking ahead as she thought. “Suspended? Is this how Lady Meyer punishes her victims?”

  “Usually, yeah.”

  “How does she suspend them? By rope or chain or on a platform? And just for having my sword with me! How else was I supposed to travel? Unarmed against the perils of the road? This Lady Meyer of Hillcrest really is an awful tyrant, it seems to me.”

  Great. The sister I don’t have shows up from Elsewhere and doesn’t have a clue. “Yes. That’s right. You’ve got it. Now let’s drop that subject.”

  “Very well, dearest brother. But you brought it up, after all.”

  “I didn’t…never mind.”

  Kari gave me a questioning look, then shrugged. “Very well. How much longer do we expect to be journeying?”

  “It’s just a little ways farther. To my home.”

  But she didn’t get my rather broad hint, of course. Instead, Kari suddenly smiled again. “Home.” She said the word in kind of a funny way, like it was special just to say it. “We shall be there soon?”

  “Yeah. I guess we’ll just have to wait there until Mom gets back and then I’ll hand you over to her.” This definitely fell into Mom’s area of responsibility. I had to wonder how Mom would react to my suddenly having a sister, but if I did have a sister then Mom must have had something to do with it, right?

  Funny she had never even mentioned it though. You’d think a mother would bring up something like a sister.

  “Mom? You mean Mother!” Kari seemed momentarily lost for words, then she started doing that bird-singing again and it sounded like every bird in the area chimed in. Some more of them flew down and perched on her arms and shoulders while they all sang together.

  My friends will sometimes talk about how strange their sisters can be. I didn’t have much personal experience with sisters, having only acquired this one about half an hour ago, but I didn’t remember any of my friends ever saying their sisters did anything like the stuff Kari had been doing in the very brief time since I’d met her.