The Sister Paradox Read online

  Kari barely parried the dragon’s latest strike as I raised the shield. Toss it to her? I raised the shield, my hand on one edge, and realized it was a lot like a really heavy Frisbee.

  No way I could hit the dragon’s head, which still almost blurred as it moved. So I brought my arm back, took careful aim, and slung the shield forward in my best championship Frisbee throw, aiming at the base of the dragon’s neck.

  The effort of throwing the heavy shield made me pitch forward to my knees, but I kept my eyes on the disc of metal as it spun in a smooth arc straight into the dragon. It hit with a very satisfying thunk just above where the neck joined the body, staggering the dragon to one side. The head wavered slowly, the eyes looking unfocused, and in that moment when the dragon was dazed Kari screamed something and lunged forward, holding her sword like a spear. Driven by Kari’s full weight and the momentum of her charge, the point of the sword went deep into the center of the dragon’s chest.

  The monster hissed like it was about to explode, rearing and tossing Kari off to the side, then fell sideways to the ground. I ran to her as the dragon flailed about, its neck coiling and writhing, scattering and splintering the bones littering the ground.

  Kari had already scrambled to her feet when I reached her, but she stayed in a crouch, breathing as heavily as if she had just run a five-hundred-meter dash, her eyes fixed on the dragon. She had somehow kept her grip on the sword when she was thrown by the dragon’s convulsion, but her hand holding the sword shook and she couldn’t seem to raise the point from the ground.

  “Can we run now?” I asked.

  She managed to stop gasping for breath long enough to shake her head. “There is no need. The dragon is in its death throes.”

  I stood and stared again, seeing that the struggles of the monster were growing less wild as it lost strength, blood pouring out from the wound in its chest. “You killed it?”

  “With your help.” Kari turned a labored grin my way. “I have never seen a shield used as a weapon that way. You must show me this trick.”

  “Sure thing, but all I did was distract the dragon.”

  “That was what I needed, Liam. And you found the means to stun the creature long enough for me to deal it the death blow.” She straightened up as if the effort were painful. “I could not have done it without you.”

  “Well…thanks. I couldn’t have done it at all. Are you all right?”

  She smiled again. “I am weary and will bear many a bruise from this fight.” She flexed her sword arm experimentally, then took a cautious swing with the blade. “However, I have taken no serious harm. You are well?”

  I checked. All my arms, legs, fingers, and toes seemed to be present. “Yeah. I think so. Thanks to you.” Relief at still being alive made me blurt out something I might never have said otherwise. “You are some kind of awesome, dragon-slaying Amazon.”

  Kari actually looked embarrassed, sort of like a typical girl, if a typical girl happened to be holding a sword smeared with the blood of a dragon she had just killed. “I…I thank you, my brother. You call fighters in your world Amazon?”

  “The ones who fight really well, yeah. Women, that is. Amazons are female fighters, you know.”

  “I did not know.” Kari knelt to scrub her blade clean using handfuls of dirt. “Dragon blood would eat away the metal in time if not removed,” she told me. “The dragon’s struggles will continue for some time, but it is already dead.”

  “Really?” It hadn’t actually sunk in until then. I had pretend-killed plenty of things in games, but had never played a part in killing anything real, let alone something like a dragon. “Dragons aren’t an endangered species, are they?”

  “A what?” Kari squinted at me in puzzlement. “Are you asking if dragons are dangerous? Surely you already saw the answer to that.”

  “No, I mean, are they, like, dying out?”

  Kari’s puzzlement increased. “Dragons breed rapidly. They kill each other when no other prey is to be found, but even so their numbers would grow to consume the world if not kept in check.”

  That was a relief. “So, killing it was a good thing.”

  “Of course it was.” Kari shook her head at me. “Look around you. This dead land we see is what happens when dragons are not stopped. They kill everything. Now, we must waste no more time. Let us go into the beast’s cave and search through its plunder. Somewhere in there must be the final object we seek.”

  “Uh…” I wasn’t really thrilled at the idea of pawing through stuff that dragon had been squatting on for years, and my legs were still feeling more than a little unsteady from my somersaults down the mountain and the aftereffects of almost being eaten alive. But we had gone through all of that to get access to the dragon’s hoard, so I just nodded. “Okay.”

  Fortunately, even though the cave stank of dragon, it didn’t stink too badly, so apparently dragons didn’t use their caves as litter boxes. I had to wait a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dimness inside, but the cave wasn’t too deep, so even its back got a little illumination from light filtering in from the entrance. Kari and I walked forward cautiously toward mounds of stuff on the floor of the cave, which slowly became identifiable as our eyes adapted to the gloom.

  Lots of treasure. Lots and lots of treasure. Jewels and coins. Paintings slowly moldering away. Swords. Some of them looked almost as cool as Kari’s Sword of Fate. “Can I take one of these?”

  Kari eyed the blades warily. “The weapons may well be enchanted. Dragons favor such arms.”

  “That’s not a good thing?”

  “Not if you do not know what the enchantment is.” She toed one of the weapons, a long sword with what looked like a big ruby set into the blade near the hilt. “These could well be accursed, like the mirror in the keep.”

  “Oh.” I instantly lost interest in the shiny swords. “I don’t think any of the swords are from my world, anyway.”

  We dug through the mess, Kari offering up an occasional cup or bracelet for my inspection, but all of them looked to me like they belonged here. “I have no idea what we’re looking for,” I grumbled. “With my luck the object is a penny or some other coin and we’ll have to go through the dragon’s hoard coin by coin to find it.”

  Kari tossed aside a gleaming gold piece. “That is certainly elven coin. Are the coins from your world gold or silver?”

  “Um, neither, usually.”

  She frowned at me. “What are your coins made of?”

  “Mostly zinc nowadays, I think, though pennies are still copper.”

  “Zinc.” Kari shook her head. “I do not think a dragon would bother with coins of zinc. What is your most valuable currency made from?” she asked sarcastically. “Iron?”

  “No. Paper.”

  “I was joking,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  Kari sat back in despair. “What then would a dragon desire from your world?”

  “I don’t know. Video games? Auto parts? A skateboard? Soy cheese?” I made a baffled gesture. “Though none of those things could be described as not being of any world. Well, maybe soy cheese could fit that description.”

  “What kind of animal is a soy?”

  I was trying to figure out how to explain that when my fingers ran across something with a straight edge where I couldn’t really see anything. “There’s something here.” I concentrated on that spot, sweeping carefully, and Kari knelt nearby to feel around in the mess as well. “There. Hold on. Yeah. It’s sort of cube-shaped.” I held up the object, squinting in the gloom of the cave. “It’s mostly transparent.”

  Kari touched one side, frowning. “It is not glass, though it seems like glass.”

  It hit me then. “You’re right. It’s not glass. It’s Plexiglas. There’s something inside it.” I held the block of Plexiglas up close to my eyes. “A rock. It’s a block of Plexiglas with a rock inside it.”

  Kari had her own eyes up close to the other side of the block. “It does not look li
ke a special rock. Can this be what you seek?”

  “I don’t know. Plexiglas is definitely of my world.” I turned the thing over, checking each side, and finally found some words engraved in the Plexiglas. I squinted in the low light, trying to read, and finally made out the biggest words. “Apollo. Apollo Twelve. Wow.”

  “What does Apollo Twelve mean?” Kari asked.

  “It means this is a moon rock. A rock from the moon.”

  Her eyes widened in wonder. “From the moon. Truly?”

  “Yeah. The Apollo space missions went there and brought back some rocks.” I grinned and held up the block of Plexiglas. “A moon rock. From my world, but not of any world. This is it.”

  We left the cave, blinking against the brightness of daylight. Kari took the Plexiglas cube, staring at the rock within it. “How often do the people in your world visit the moon?”

  “Uh…to tell you the truth, nobody’s been there for a while.”

  Her stare shifted from the rock to me. “You could go to the moon, and you stopped? But why?”

  “I don’t really know,” I admitted.

  “To have such a wonder, and to give it up.” Kari shook her head. “I do not understand.”

  At the moment, neither did I. “Maybe it’s like when we talked about mer-people and you sort of said, they’re just fish people. Like, no big deal. Maybe people don’t appreciate the wonders that are right in front of them.”

  Kari thought, then nodded, and gave me back the moon rock. “That may be so.” She looked up at the sun. “But if we are to save the wonders of both of our worlds, we must hasten back to the Archimaede.”

  “I thought we’d already been hastening.”

  She gave me another one of those encouraging smiles. “I shall pace you. Are you ready?”

  “You know the way?”

  “The sun shows me the way. Onward!” She started off at a jog and I hurried to catch up, my sore feet throbbing as we went up the slope. Behind us, the dead dragon still twitched feebly as we entered the trees. “I will take us past the place where your fone was sacrificed to save us. Perhaps the elves will have tired of it and left it.”

  Kari kept us jogging for a while, then slowed to a fast walk, then started jogging again. As the dead trees slowly gave way to scorched trees and then living trees I managed to keep up with her. Barely.

  As we slowed to a walk a second time, Kari gave me a look. “Why do you not have any girlfriends, Liam?”

  I cleared my throat and spoke as carefully as I could while gasping for breath. “I’ve got some girls who are friends. Sort of. I guess. But I don’t have a girlfriend. Right now, that is.”

  Kari nodded. “You are still evaluating their suitability?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “I can help,” Kari offered. “I can see how good they are at hunting, and at use of sword and bow, and—”

  “I’m not sure any of the girls I know use swords,” I said.

  Kari stared at me. “You said that once, did you not? That people in your world do not use swords? But when two people get together they must know that their partner is able and willing to guard their back and stand by their side against any peril.”

  “That’s true. I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but you’re right.” I shrugged, my breathing getting a little easier as we walked instead of jogging. “I guess in my world real partners do that without swords. You know, they still stand by each other and everything.”

  “I shall have to learn,” Kari sighed. “Do girls in your world play music?”

  “Oh, yeah. A lot of them are in bands, and lots of them sing.”

  “Wonderful! What else do they do?”

  What did girls do? “They go shopping.”

  “Shopping?” Kari nodded, her face intent with thought. “You have market fairs, then?”

  “Oh, yeah. Permanent ones. Big ones. Lots of clothes and jewelry and stuff. We call them malls.”

  She looked skeptical. “To maul something is to inflict serious damage.”

  “It’s spelled differently. Malls in my world only inflict serious damage on credit cards.”

  “You will have to show me this.” Kari bit her lip. “What else?”

  “Um, well, sports. Soccer, track. Tina plays lacrosse. She’s really good at it.”

  “La-cross?”

  “Yeah, it’s this sport where they use big sticks to fight over the ball and try to get it into the opposing team’s goal.”

  “Big sticks?” Kari asked. “How big?”

  “About this big around and maybe this long.”

  “And they fight another group? A team?” Kari smiled. “I think I would enjoy that.”

  “You’d probably be really good at it, too,” I said. “I think you’d be good at any sport. Kari, it may take a little while for you to fit in, but I’m sure you’ll do fine. I mean, there are no dragons to slay, but there’s other stuff you can do.”

  Her expression brightened. “Like overthrowing the evil Lady Meyer!”

  “We’re going to need to talk about that.” Yeah. Having Kari in my world would create some problems. But how many little sisters could whack a dragon?

  Maybe being known as “Liam, brother of Kari” wasn’t such a bad deal after all. Maybe it wouldn’t even be a bad deal in my own world.

  Kari waved forward and started jogging again, so we fell silent as I concentrated on breathing, running, and not collapsing.

  The universe hadn’t been saved yet.

  Chapter Eight

  Between the Wall of Worlds to Home

  Even though my lower body was one big ache by now I managed to keep up as Kari led the way across open fields. Despite a few close calls, I miraculously didn’t turn an ankle as we alternately ran and fast-walked over hill and dale, nervously watching the sun sinking toward the horizon. It would be totally harsh if we defeated both guardians and got both objects and then didn’t make it back to the Archimaede before something very bad happened.

  We went past the elven forest, searching the ground as we ran, but my phone was nowhere in sight. I thought maybe I heard some faint guitar notes far off in the forest, but there was no way I wanted to go in there even if we’d had time. And we definitely didn’t have time.

  Maybe that worry helped both of us keep going. I could finally see some signs that Kari was starting to get seriously tired, too, but we still made pretty fast time back to the river even though it seemed to take forever. The world is awfully big when you can’t cruise across it at sixty-five or seventy miles per hour.

  The Archimaede was standing near his beaver house when we saw him again, nervously chewing on another stick. He took it out of his mouth and waved it in greeting as Kari barreled down the river bank and gave him a hug. “Your quest is successfully completed, Kari and Liam brother of Kari?”

  “Yeah.” I held out the watch and the Plexiglas-encased rock. “What do we do with them? Carry them back ourselves?” Could I keep the moon rock if we did? That would be seriously cool. How many guys had a moon rock?

  But the Archimaede shook its head and reached for the objects. “I must send them back. If Kari and these two objects were together as you returned home, the combined strength of their wave functions might tear a hole through the weakened walls, a hole beyond any means to repair.”

  “That would be a bad thing,” I agreed. “But there’s a third, uh, object now. My phone. We left it back near those woods’.”

  The Archimaede listened carefully as we described our encounter with the elves, then nodded. “It is unfortunate that you were forced to leave another object behind, but given the need I can’t fault your actions. Don’t worry. Kari was right. The fone is newly arrived here, so its effect on the walls is still weak. The walls will heal to almost their full strength, and then I will inform White Lady of this fone of yours, and she will demand the return of the object. Even the elven court would not defy a command of that nature from the unicorns. Once I have it, I will send it
back to your world.”

  “I’ll get my phone back?” That I hadn’t expected.

  “Unlikely,” the Archimaede replied. “I can send it back to your world, but I have no idea where in your world it will appear.”

  So much for that. “Maybe it’ll show up on the top of Mount Everest or something like that, and somebody will find it and it will be one of those “Believe It or Not” things.”

  “I cannot make any promises, Liam, brother of Kari,” the Archimaede said with a grin.

  “Yeah, you have to be careful about making promises,” I agreed. The Archimaede reached for the watch and the moon rock, and I passed them over. As he took them, I felt the Archimaede’s fur for the first time, as well as the strength in his hands. Very soft and very strong. I could see why Kari liked being hugged by the Archimaede so much.

  “The returning has to be done properly,” the Archimaede continued, “and it will have to be done soon. Very soon. I cannot wait until you are home, Kari, because by then the damage would irreversible. I must return them as quickly as possible, which means the walls will be healing as you try to reach home.”

  He gave Kari’s head a pat with one giant beaver paw. “You must return to your true home quickly, Spirit Daughter of White Lady.”

  Kari sat back, blinking away tears as she looked at the Archimaede. “What will I do without your wisdom, Archimaede? How shall I learn all that I must know?”

  The Archimaede chuckled. “Dearest Kari, wherever you find things to learn, there will you feel my presence. I have given you the tools to learn, and from that you can carry on without me. I shall miss you, but when you spark with the wonder of a new thing learned, I shall feel your joy even across the walls between worlds and know all is well.”