Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (9 page)

The older woman tried to open her eyes but could only peer out swollen slits. “Alice? I don’t think I will make it, baby. This malaria will be the death of me.”

Dr. Lantern leaned closer and said, “Janette, there is no malaria. You had a case of dermatitis that got a little out of control. See? The swelling is already going down. The salve is working.”

With the redness and puffiness diminishing, Janette blinked some of the salve from her eyes and scooted up against the headboard. In less than three minutes, she looked more like a sweaty jogger than someone who had suffered a recent pyrotechnic event.

She shook her head at Dr. Lantern. “No, you don’t understand. You didn’t see the swarm and how they attacked us. They infected us with malaria—I know it. Just ask Polly Clancy—if she’s not in her deathbed too.”

“There are no mosquitoes. It isn’t possible for you to have contracted malaria. Even if a malaria-carrying mosquito could find its way here and bite you, the disease has an incubation period of more than a week. There is absolutely no way you have malaria,” Dr. Lantern said.

“Well, it must be something else. I can feel it running through my veins,” Janette said. A shiver visibly ran up her body. “I can feel it burning through me like acid.” She shuddered and held out her arms as if the evidence was clear. Flames leapt from her arms, and the sleeves of her nightgown caught fire. She pulled them into her chest, and the front of her garment went up in flames. Her body began that strange distortion again, all skewed and stretched like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

Sam stood frozen, holding out the open jar of salve, not knowing what else to do. He figured more fire might require more salve. While the flames shot up from the woman’s skin and clothing, they didn’t consumer her. With the weird distortions and the woman’s continued gyrations in the bed, the effect was almost cinematic, like a mish-mash of B-movie special effects. Smoke accumulated below the ceiling and made its way into the air Sam inhaled, causing him to choke.

Alice had grabbed a blanket to smother the flames, but Sam’s father stopped her and pointed her toward the foot of the bed. “Please stay down there and out of the way. I think I should try a more aggressive procedure before she does permanent damage or burns down the house.”

Waving smoke away from his face, Sam cringed as he watched his father turn back to his patient and reach into the flames, grasping the distorted sides of Janette’s face. He pulled hers toward his own and yelled, “Look at me! Look into my eyes.”

Through the roiling smoke and flame, Janette’s gaze locked onto his.

He stared into her face and said, “Listen to me, Janette. You don’t have a disease. Do you understand?”

A slack look swept over the woman as she nodded.

“You had a minor case of dermatitis, a little flare up, nothing more. But the salve I gave you cleared it up, and you no longer have any symptoms. Understand?”

The flames died away, and the last wisps of smoke dissipated.

“Now, for the time being, I want you to forget about that little incident with Mrs. Clancy. There was no swarm, no discussion of malaria or any other illness. If you remember the incident, it was just how a little dust blew by. You follow me?”

Janette nodded.

“You feel perfectly fine. Now you will take a nap, and, when you wake up, you’ll feel wonderful, completely rested.”

She curled up in her bed, the sheets and blanket and her nightgown showing no evidence of the fire. Her eyes closed, and a light snore filled the room.

His father stood and looked at the foot of the bed, at Alice, and said, “She’ll be fine when she wakes up. Just don’t bring up this morning’s events with Mrs. Clancy and definitely don’t mention anything about malaria.”

Alice held up a hand as if she were taking an oath. “Believe me. I won’t.”

Sam picked up the medical bag and walked from the room with his father. Alice lingered with her mother for a few moments, straightening blankets and fluffing pillows, before joining them in the small living room.

As she entered, she asked, “What exactly did you do to calm her down?”

“I got her to focus her mind on something other than the malaria. Just call it the power of positive suggestion,” Dr. Lantern said.

Sam snorted to himself.
More like the power of positive prompting.

Mara took Ping’s question—about whether she had other abilities he should be aware of—to be rhetorical, so she didn’t bother to answer. Instead she continued examining the board of lightbulbs.

He must have felt slighted and leaned down far enough for Mara to see his expression. He was waiting for an answer. “What is the nature of these abilities of yours, and what kind of threat do they pose to us?” he asked.

Mara straightened. “You think I’m some kind of threat?”

He indicated the fading chasm in front of the light board and the shattered glass from the minor explosion caused by Mara’s fingertip lightning-bolt experiment. “I don’t think it’s an unreasonable concern, considering the circumstances. What if you had tried that by a cylinder of kerosteam?”

“I don’t even know what kerosteam is.”

“Exactly,” Ping said. “So please answer the question. What other abilities do you have that I should be aware of?”

Mara felt defensive, but she didn’t want to come across that way. Instead of replying with a sarcastic retort, she pointed to the beaker on the counter she had picked up earlier and said, “I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version of the way
my
Ping explains my abilities.”

She held out her hand, and the beaker disappeared in a cloud of steam. A spinning vortex of light mist appeared above her hand and coalesced into the beaker. She frowned at it for a moment and then said, “While that looks a little different than usual, … Ping says I have the metaphysical ability to alter Reality. This is accomplished by manipulating what he calls the four elements of Reality—Consciousness, Time, Space and Consequence. For example, moving the beaker across the room illustrates altering the element of Space. You follow?”

Ping’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he nodded, saying nothing.

This Ping is a little less talkative and a little more nervous.
She shook off her internal observations. “Ping says that Reality consists of Consciousness, sort of the basic building block of everything that exists. For example, I could take this beaker”—she held it up, and it dissolved into a cloud of steam—“and turn it into a glass bowl.” The vapor swirled into a half sphere and solidified into an empty bowl in her palm.

Ping gasped. “Remarkable.”

Mara smashed the glass bowl into the floor, sending glass shards flying across the room.

Ping jumped and looked at her like she had gone mad.

Mara raised a finger when he looked about to say something. “The element of Time …” she said.

The pieces of shattered bowl reassembled themselves, and the intact bowl leapt back into her hand.

“Amazing,” he said. He took the bowl from her and examined it. “What about Consequence? How does that element manifest itself through your abilities?”

Mara shrugged. “I’m not sure. As far as I know, I haven’t demonstrated the ability to manipulate Consequence. But I’m new to all this. It’s only been a few months since I realized my abilities.”

“And the electricity from your fingertips? Where does that fit into all this?” he asked.

“As a progenitor, I not only can manipulate Reality but Perception, its elements being Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. I think the lightning bolts are an extension of that. But, to be honest with you, there is a lot I don’t understand. Like why steam is the underlying material of everything in this realm. It must have something to do with how Reality is perceived here.”

She took back the bowl and held it up. Again, it evaporated into a cloud of vapor, flowed back into the shape of the beaker and solidified into its original form.

“How is it different in your realm?” he asked.

“In my realm, it’s pixels. Pixels seem to be the building blocks of Perception, not steam. Don’t ask me why it’s steam in this realm. It’s so odd,” she said more to herself than to Ping as she stared at the beaker.

Ping took the beaker from her hand and set it down on the counter. “I think I can answer that one,” he said. “Although I must tell you the Inception Tale for it to make any sense to you.” He chuckled and leaned his backside on the counter. “Imagine
me
telling
you
the Inception Tale.”

“I assume that’s how this realm came into being.”

He nodded and pointed to a stool tucked nearby under the counter. Mara slid it out and took a seat, resting an elbow on the counter.

“For the progenitor’s tenth birthday, before she entered a state of stasis in her receptacle,” Ping said, as if recounting an oft-repeated bedtime story, “her father gave her a tiny flower, plucked from the ground of the physical world, roots and all. He had it encased in a glass vial and told his daughter to keep it with her as a reminder of the beauty of life. So, when she entered the receptacle, she took the encased flower with her and thought about it as she fell into her deep slumber.” Ping noticed the skeptical expression on Mara’s face. “Something the matter?”

“No, not really. I’m just wondering how long it will take for this fairy tale to get to the part about why this world appears to be made of steam.”

“I’m getting there,” he said. He slipped into his storytelling voice again. “Within minutes, she stood in a vast emptiness filled with no light and no darkness. It had no substance, no beginning or end. And then, before her, a single disk of light appeared and, at its center, was a copper staff, its sides engraved and adorned with crystals. At first she thought it was a small flute, but, after she picked it up, she could see lenses mounted at both ends. It was the Chronicle.” He said the last sentence with awe.

Mara frowned and rubbed the outside of her jeans pocket, feeling the outlines of the copper medallion it held. “The Chronicle of—what did you call it?”

“Cosms. The Chronicle of Cosms,” Ping said.

“Cosms? You said that word before.”

“Yes, Cosms, as in microcosms or macrocosms. It’s the root of the word
cosmos
. I tried to get Mara to name it the Chronicle of Context or even the Chronicle of the Cosmos, but, even as a ten-year-old, once she made up her mind about something, there was no changing it.”

“Okay. She found this staff with lenses mounted on each end. Assuming it was hollow, that makes it a telescope. Right?”

“It will be easier to answer your questions if you let me finish the tale.”

Mara gave him a relenting nod and said, mocking his awestruck storytelling voice, “I believe you stopped at …
It was the Chronicle
.”

“Peering through the eyepiece, she pointed this device into the void. And she saw steam—roiling, formless clouds swirling endlessly. In one moment she stared at the vapor. In the next she traveled through the Chronicle and found herself surrounded by steam. For days she walked through the mist, lost and confused, not knowing where she was or how she could find her way back to someplace familiar. In her despair, she visualized the flower her father gave her, and remembered the beauty of life and the world she came from. The clouds of steam surrounding her pulsed with energy, giving off brilliant hues of blue and green, and they shifted and swirled—taking form and gaining substance, filling the void with land and sky, air and water. In an instant, the sun ignited, and the forest sprang alive. Our home—our realm as you call it—was born.” He paused.

Mara thought he was taking a breath, but when he failed to continue the story, she realized he had finished. “That’s it? She went into stasis and woke up in a foggy void, found a telescope and somehow turned the fog into this realm. Is that what you are saying?” she asked.

“
Steam
. Mara always described the undifferentiated material in the void as steam, not fog,” he said.

Mara rolled her eyes and said, “I stand corrected.”

“I don’t understand your dismissive tone. The Inception Tale is not any more preposterous than the metaphysical nonsense for which you have an affinity. You say you believe that everything is composed of this so-called Consciousness. What does this Consciousness look like in its natural state? Is it possible that, to a scared ten-year-old girl, it might look like endless clouds of steam?”

Doubt crept across Mara’s features. “I don’t know.”

“So you admit it might look like steam.” He pointed to the beaker on the counter. “You say you can alter Reality, but, when you do so, its transitory state is steam. The beaker turned to steam before turning into a bowl. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t. You might have a point. Maybe Consciousness looks like steam. Maybe it looks that way just in this realm. Who’s to say?”

“And who’s to say it doesn’t?”

“I said, you might have a point. I shouldn’t have been a jerk about it. Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Speaking of transitory states, I assume that your Mara can alter this Reality in the same way I can. I mean, she created this place, so it makes sense she can alter it. Right?”

“In a manner of speaking but not the way you do. You make it look like some kind of magic trick. The progenitor uses the Chronicle of Cosms to isolate steam and infuse it with the properties necessary to shape aspects of this Reality—like she did with the flower, using it to infuse the steam with the qualities of life. She can’t just will it to happen. It takes work, concentration and experimentation.” He raised his arms to the surrounding space, the large laboratory in which they stood.

“Yeah, back to that in a minute. When Mara was in this void, where did this Chronicle come from? Who made it? How did it get there?” she asked.

“Those are unanswerable questions. Mysteries that will persist forever.”

Definitely less inquisitive than the Ping I know.
“Mara never wondered where this Chronicle came from or why someone would just send it to her in a—what did you call it?—a disk of light?”