Ping raised a hand and said, “No, Mara, she’s got every right to be angry. I’ve made a complete mess out of this entire episode, and, while I can’t undo the damage to your home, I can promise you that the dragon will never again be a threat to you or your children.”
“How can you say that?” Diana asked.
“The dragon is gone.”
“What?” Mara asked, turning to face him. “How can the dragon be gone?”
Smiling, he reached down and lifted Hannah’s chin with two fingers. “Because the dragon was touched by its counterpart in this realm. That is why the dragon exploded.”
Sam pulled Hannah closer and said, “I don’t understand.”
“In this realm, Hannah is a little girl. But in some other realm, she’s a dragon, the dragon that shared my existence for a time.”
Understanding swept over Mara’s face. “That’s why she showed up in the crystal when I tried to separate the two of you.” Pointing at Sam, she said, “It’s probably why your Mara brought the dragon back to your mom in the first place—it was not only a meaningful symbol for her cult, it was her own blood, her own granddaughter.”
Ping added, “It explains the danger and jealousy I sensed from the dragon as well. It saw Hannah’s presence as a real threat. It’s also the reason you felt you had to send Hannah back in time—she was the only person who could send the dragon back to its own realm. That’s why the Chronicle of Continuity told you to ignore the dragon’s folly—a solution was already in place.”
A fire engine swung up to the curb in front of the house just a few feet away. Firemen sprang from every side of the vehicle and unloaded hoses and equipment. Within seconds, they were running across the front lawn attacking the fire. An older fireman approached and asked Diana if everyone had gotten out of the house. When she answered in the affirmative, he said a second engine was a minute or two away and asked them to stand across the road out of the way.
CHAPTER 59
Late the next morning, Mara’s Outback pulled up to the curb in front of the house, or rather, in front of the lot where it used to be. Now there was just a pile of wet blackened debris standing on top of a concrete foundation. All that remained were the front steps leading up to a platform that used to be the front porch and, oddly, the frame of the front door, though the door itself and the front wall of the house were gone. It stood like a portal, mocking them to enter the devastation that used to be the only home Mara ever knew.
Shifting the car into Park, Mara glanced over to the passenger seat at her mother and asked, “Are you sure you’re up to doing this?”
Diana nodded and smiled. “It’s just a house, Mara. Once we get the insurance squared away, we’ll build another one just like it. To be honest, you look like you’re dreading this more than I am.”
“Not really dreading, just mourning, I guess,” she said. “All the memories we have of this house, it’s almost like we’ve lost our entire past.”
Diana opened the car door, turned back to her daughter and nodded toward the backseat where Sam and Hannah sat. “The memories weren’t lost in the fire, sweetie. Besides, you’ve got a lot more memories ahead of you than behind.”
“Even so, I still wanted to look around and see if anything was salvageable,” Mara said.
Sam exited the backseat on the driver’s side, as Mara did too, and said, “You think the book survived the fire? The Chronicle of Continuity? That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?”
She looked doubtful. “I don’t know, but there were still a lot of blank pages in it, a lot of haikus that hadn’t been revealed yet. Maybe with a little practice, I could actually get some guidance from them.”
They all got out of the car and stood at the curb, staring at twenty-foot-wide crater in the front yard and the lonely door frame. Without saying anything, they walked up the driveway and took the path to the front steps. Mara stomped her boot on the first step, and it sounded solid, so she took the rest of the steps in rapid succession and walked onto the remains of the porch, kicking some charred wood and shingles out of the way.