Read The Origami Dragon And Other Tales for Free Online Page B

consumes all of his time.
He and Dr. Adanta have come up with the perfect solution to your
problem.”
    He turned to
face me, placing a box in front of me. The box itself was
unremarkable, just one of the many thousands used to house and
transport Noah’s tiny animals. I peered in and shuddered at what I
saw, my knees suddenly weak and my heart racing. I fell to the
floor, and I remember yelling at Noah. I left then, slamming the
door behind me. Noah chased after me, but I ignored him. He was a
madman, and I could have nothing to do with him.
    Inside Noah’s
box were two perfect figures asleep next to each other. I instantly
recognised them as miniature Homo sapien . One was a man and
the other a woman, and both were perfectly formed in every way.
     

 
Rob Echosoul And the A.lice
I.nvestigation
    -from the
notes of Dr Whenson
    It has now
been three decades since the day I met Rob Echosoul, that
remarkable man who lived such a dangerous life and had such strange
friends. I kept my knowledge of Rob to myself for many years to
protect both his life and my own, but his exploits were never meant
to remain hidden from the world. You may have first heard of him
during the time of the red canary drug busts, or his vendetta
against the London wing of the magical mafia. He gained worldwide
fame for his work as a mediator when the dragons returned to the
world, but my story predates all these and is set in a time when he
was a simple freelance hunter trying to make his way in the world,
pitting his wits and strength against the world and all that’s in
it.
     
    I found him
lying dead on my lawn. It was an inauspicious start for a
relationship, but a memorable one. I gave his body a cursory
examination, but his injuries were too terrible for him to be
alive. He looked like he had been attacked by a pack of bears and
then dragged through a field of barbed wire. He looked quite, quite
dead, but I nevertheless checked him for signs of life and pulled
out my phone to call for help. He had no signs, and I had no
signal. I ran inside to use my home phone. At my daughter’s
request, I had recently bought one of those home tablet phones, and
I grabbed it. Instead of the normal screen of icons and numbers,
there was a single white sentence against a blue background.
    “Take him
inside and treat him”, I read aloud. I remember thinking that was
odd, at the time. The phone wouldn’t let me make a call out. I
heard a knock on the door, which startled me. I opened it and found
the previously dead man lying against the wall. He appeared to be
gasping for breath, but otherwise unconscious.
    I should have
called for help. I should have gone to the hospital, or the police,
or even just to my neighbour’s house. That would have been the
smart thing to do, but then I would never have met Alice and my
life would have remained completely normal. Instead of going for
help, I somehow dragged the man inside. Like all country doctors, I
had a black bag of all the necessary tools sitting by my front door
for emergencies, so I went to work.
    I checked my
telephone again. Its screen had the word “ Good ” written
across it, and it still wouldn’t let me make any calls.
    I had served as
a doctor in Afghanistan for many years, treating both soldiers and
civilians as part of the N.A.T.O. alliance, so I don’t shock
easily. He may have been dead, and then alive, but he was my
patient and it was my job to heal him. I dragged him into the spare
room, made sure that he was safe, and ran to my car. It was a
technologically advanced Land Rover, a self-driving model that
refused to start. The on-board computer flashed “ Fix him ”
repeatedly, stubbornly remaining despite my pressing every button I
could find.
    “ OR
ELSE !” the screen flashed as I exited the car.
    My little
cottage is a kilometre from my nearest neighbour, a distance I
could easily run, but I didn’t want to leave my patient alone. I
went back inside.
    He was still
alive, although all my