Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) (11 page)

“Good. That’s normal. Focus on the fibers. Get a feel for them.”

“What does that mean,
get a feel for them
?”

“Extend your senses. Don’t just observe the glass. Feel it. Smell it. Touch it. The goal is to understand what makes it glass, particularly what makes it clear. Understand?”

“For a guy who turns up his nose at metaphysics, you’re sounding fairly metaphysical at the moment,” she said.

“Concentrate on the sample. You need to have a thorough understanding of its makeup for this to work.”

“All right. Concentrating …”

She let her mind go blank. Silky strands wavered into sight, coalescing as if an unseen spider wove a web around here. Soon it felt more confining, more claustrophobic, more like a cocoon. Denser. Translucent strings wound around her, growing closer until Mara felt them brush across her skin. A flutter passed through her body, something shifting and tickling inside. It was a part of her now. She could feel it.

“Mara?” Ping said, a tremor in his voice. “Mara! Look away from the eyepiece.”

She snapped her head around to stare at him. “What is it? I think I was just getting the hang of it.”

Ping’s eyes were wide, and his face was pale.

“What’s wrong?” Mara asked.

He pointed a shaking finger at her chest. Looking down at herself, she couldn’t see anything. Bringing her hands to her chest, she could feel her ribs. She was there, but she wasn’t. She could feel her hands and body but not see them. Her movements shifted the material of her shirt and caught some light, reflected it. Like glass.

“Can you see me? Am I invisible or what?” she asked, spinning around, still patting her torso.

“Incredible,” Ping said. “
Invisible
? No. I’d say
transparent
would be the correct description. How on earth did you do that?”

Ping held up the mirror he had retrieved from across the room. Mara stared into it, shifting and tilting her head at various angles until her features caught the light.
There she was, clear as a bell—just like
an animated Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup bottle, except she wasn’t as brown
. She was transparent, not invisible, just like Ping had said. She gave him a look of desperation that he discerned despite her condition.

“On the bright side, you isolated the transparency characteristics of the glass sample. That’s something, I suppose,” he said. “What I don’t understand is how did you incorporate it into your body?”

“
I
didn’t. That doodad Cosm-thing of yours did,” Mara said. She pointed at the device on the counter.

Ping shook his head. “That’s unlikely. You didn’t even touch it. I’ve worked with the progenitor for several years, and nothing of this sort has ever happened. Isn’t it possible you did this through some accidental application of your own abilities?”

“I don’t think so.” She pondered it for a second and then looked up. “What was supposed to happen? How does your Mara use this thing?”

“She observes the sample like you did, absorbs as much about it as she can. Then she uses the Chronicle to alter the steam to incorporate the characteristics of the sample.”

“We were making transparent steam? What use is that?”

“This was just an exercise to show you how the Chronicle worked. I never said the result would be something with a practical application. Given the circumstances, I should have listened to my first impulse and discouraged you from coming in here. There’s no point in continuing. We might just make things worse.”

“Oh, no you don’t. We are not quitting now, not until I figure this thing out. I’m not staying like this for the rest of my life.” She stepped up to the Chronicle of Cosms. “What do we do next?”

Ping sighed and squinted at her. “You’re lucky I didn’t suggest we look at a sample of chocolate. That was what my Mara and I used as a sample the first time we worked in the lab together.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’d be a giant candy bar instead of a living pickle jar. I need more instruction and less commentary, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“Very well, but please be careful. I don’t want you to make things worse for yourself.”

She growled in frustration.

He raised a hand to calm her, pointed to the turntable and said, “Rotate the glass sample in this direction and remove it. Then line up the sample container with the steam so it may be viewed through the Chronicle.”

She complied and held out the tiny globe with the glass shards to him. He shook his head and said, “You must take that with you. Just keep it in your left hand for now.”

Dropping it into her left palm, she asked, “Take it with me where?”

He pointed to the container of steam on the turntable. “In there.”

She gave it a sidelong glance, then looked back at Ping, frowning. “I’m not following you. What are you saying?”

“It might be easier to show you than explain the process. Just follow my directions, and you should be just fine,” he said. He placed a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face the eyepiece. “Look through the Chronicle just like you did before. Remember to concentrate on the steam and think about the characteristics of glass as you saw them during your earlier examination.”

Mara leaned forward and peered through the top end of the device. As before, she saw the steam roiling before her. “Okay. I see the steam. Now what?”

“Grasp the end of the Chronicle as if you were adjusting the focus on a microscope,” Ping said.

Since she still held the sample globe filled with broken glass in her left hand, she raised her right and put her thumb and forefinger on each side of the tube. A shock ran through her fingertips, up through her arm and throughout her body. She felt herself falling. Startled, she dropped the sample container and reached out for something to hold on to. She found Ping’s arm and dug her fingers into him. A spinning blue light filled the periphery of her vision and stretched out below her, forming a long brilliant tunnel through which she sensed herself falling.

Behind her, she still had a grip on Ping’s arm, and she could hear him screaming, loudly echoing. He too was falling, but the pressure of air whipping by kept her from twisting around to see him or from catching her breath. It made her wonder how he could do all that screaming if he couldn’t breathe either. Lightheadedness pressed in on her as the bright blue light surrounding them faded to black.

Her head snapped forward, and she found herself standing in clouds of steam, staring at Ping’s back several feet away. He spun around, panicked. What looked like a stick fell from the air above, landing between them with a series of metallic clangs as it bounced end to end, settling with a tinny drum roll.

Mara approached it and saw it was the eyepiece, the Chronicle of Cosms, unmoored from its stand in the laboratory. Bending over, she picked it up, and a blue sheen glinted over its surface and disappeared.

It’s the same blue light my Chronicle gives off.

Ping ran up to her. “What have you done?”

She pointed the engraved, gem-encrusted tube at him and said, “I did exactly what you said. You said nothing about this thing sucking me through a tunnel without warning.”

He swatted at a thick bank of steam. Bug-eyed, he said in a hissed whisper, “I’m not supposed to be here.” He looked down at her hands and added, “You didn’t even bring the sample with you. How are you supposed to impart the characteristics of glass … Oh, forget the experiment. How did I get here?” He turned in a circle, scanning the steam that swirled around them.

“Where is
here
?” Mara asked. “And why are you whispering?”

Awestruck, he said, “The Chronicle has transported us into the microcosm, into the world of substance and constituents, where the basic elements of Reality are revealed to the progenitor.
Here
, we exist as part of the steam.”

“Microcosm? What microcosm?” she asked.

“Inside the sample container,” he said. He held up his arms. “This, this is our steam sample.”

Mara gasped, inhaled a few tendrils of vapor. “You’re saying we’re inside that little plastic sample ball? That’s impossible.” She stared down at the copper eyepiece, at its familiar crystals and symbols.
Well, maybe not impossible.

Ping didn’t respond, just paced around, looking amazed.

Mara narrowed her eyes as she watched him. “That’s why you were screaming all the way down. You’ve never done this, taken a trip through this Chronicle. Have you?”

“No. I didn’t even know it was possible,” he said.

Mara picked up on the reverence in his voice.

“I only wish you had brought the sample. What an opportunity it would have been to see you impart the characteristics of the glass into this sample. Assuming you could have done it.”

“Maybe I don’t need the sample,” she said. She held up her transparent hand and examined it. “Maybe I
am
the sample. What do you think?”

“Mara always brought a physical sample with her. She thinks it was necessary, to infuse its qualities into the undifferentiated matter, into the steam.”

“I suspect it was only necessary because she thought it was.”

“She spent a lot of time experimenting, a great deal of trial and error, to develop this process. I wouldn’t recommend that you attempt anything outside the parameters she has set forth.”

“You’ve never been here before. How do you know what she did after she traveled into a microcosm? What’s the procedure she followed once she was here?”

“She infused the steam with the sample.”

“How so?”

He gave her a blank look.

“That’s what I thought. You don’t know what she did or how she did it. Do you?”

“Not precisely but I know she always brought a physical sample and always returned with an empty sample container. It must be necessary for the process to work.”

“Having shared similar experiences in my life, I’m confident your Mara didn’t know everything about the Chronicle, not in the limited time she spent with it. I’d bet there’s more than one way to do these things. The key is believing in what’s possible.”

“How can you say that? She’s the progenitor of this realm, not you.”

“She didn’t know that you could travel through the Chronicle with her. Did she?”

“No.”

“So her way may not be the only of way of doing things here in the microcosm.”

He gave up. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to sit down.” She bent over and waved her arms to clear away some of the steam. There was too much of it, so she gave up and plopped down to the ground, crossing her legs and placing the Chronicle of Cosms across from them. A moment later a wall of vapor blew past, and, when it cleared, she saw Ping sitting across from her, looking impatient.

She tapped the floor with a knuckle.
Maybe they were sitting on the bottom of the plastic egg sample container
.

“How will you do this without a sample? More metaphysics?” he asked.

“Something like that. I’m guessing your Mara has similar abilities to mine, but she uses the laboratory and the samples as her talismans—physical objects on which she focuses to channel those abilities. Even this”—she held up the eyepiece—“is a talisman that channels her abilities.”

“Talismans, as in lucky charms or magical objects?”

“Think of them as tools, like paintbrushes. In the hands of someone with talent, art can be created. In the hands of someone without, well, not so much.”

“Yes, but you’re suggesting that you can create art without a paintbrush.”

“Let’s just say, unlike your Mara, I’m a finger-painter. We use different tools, but we both make art.” She crossed her still transparent fingers. “That’s what I’m betting on anyway. Understand?”

“You are very clear.”

“Funny. Now let me concentrate for a moment.”

Closing her eyes, she visualized the gossamer strands that wove through the thin vapor of the glass sample she had observed through the eyepiece, recalling the shift and drift of the fine fibers as they had surrounded her, became a part of her. She concentrated on the shimmering strands and imagined them being lifted, as if by static, pulled away from her by an unseen force.

She heard a muffled gasp, and she opened her eyes.

Translucent threads, thinner than hair, floated and swirled around her, an expanding cocoon that fed on the roiling steam. The more it expanded, the more it dispersed into the clouds, the thinner the clouds grew until she and Ping were flanked by an ephemeral tapestry of vapor and thread that moved in waves, like a translucent sheet in a gentle breeze.

Her gaze rested on Ping.

Amazed, he said, “It worked.” He reached out and touched Mara’s arm. It was now opaque, the color of flesh. “You
were
the sample. Incredible.”

“I only have one question,” she said.

“Yes?”

“How do we get out of here? And don’t tell me that you don’t know.”

He smiled at her. “Given your ability to ascertain how things work, I’m surprised you haven’t guessed.” He nodded to the Chronicle of Cosms. “You use the eyepiece. Instead of traveling to a microcosm, we should go to a
macrocosm
. Correct?”

She nodded.

“How do you suppose that would work?”

She held up the copper tube and examined it. Then it occurred to her. “You look through the opposite end.”

Standing atop a ladder outside the front of the hotel where he and Sam had stayed for the past few days, Ping attempted to insert a bulb into the streetlight. Reaching inside the open glass panel of the lamp’s rectangular compartment, he slid the softball-size bulb into the socket and gave it a quarter-turn. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed, and he retracted his arm, glancing at the burned, tight skin alongside his index finger—evidence that dropping one of these bulbs could have dangerous consequences. When he had a free moment, he intended to ask someone why they would use such a volatile gas to produce light. The hotel owner, Mr. Martin, had called it kerosteam and had reminded Ping to be careful when changing the bulbs.