Return To Lan Darr (17 page)

“What, tell me what you see.” Rubic strains to see something, anything.

A flair of light erupts from the left side of the dome. It’s like someone turned on some floodlights.

“Your Allan is very resssourceful,” Jibbawk mutters.

“Give me a play-by-play. Or somethin’! I’m crawling out of my skin over here.”

“That’s it! He’s inssside the dome.” Jibbawk presses a button on his goggles and the lenses retract. He takes them off then places them back in his damaged backpack.

“What is it?” Rubic feels like grabbing Jibbawk, shaking it by the shoulder and smacking it across the face—though he would never do such a thing because it would probably be the last thing he would do.

Jibbawk’s eyes glare at Rubic, their fire-red hearts beating rhythmically. “Where will Allan go? I brought you along to help me find Allan, now where will he go?”

Rubic could feel the intensity of Jibbawk’s words like the heat of flames. “He… he wants to go back to Lan Darr. That is his ultimate goal. He wants to see his friends again. And to see you, I presume.”

“Then we will go to Lan Darr now.”

“Why? What did you see?”

“They were rioting down there. Crowds lit fires along a major ssstreet and sssoldiers had to sssubdue the insssurrection. Marvelousss job they did. I watched them put down the rioters then turn to the dome and infiltrate it.”

“So Allan got inside the dome?” Rubic’s heart is full with pride at how strong Allan is, how smart he is.

“Yessss. They ssstore Hubbu pollen there. Every color. Allan will be able to find the pollen to take him to Lan Darr. I am sure of it.” Jibbawk pulls out his tin of pollen. “We will go to Lan Darr and head off Allan.”

Rubic knows the routine and moves close to Jibbawk, careful not to impale himself on the quills. “Yeah, let’s go. He’ll be so surprised to see us.” Energy returns to Rubic’s veins, and a second wind awakens his thoughts.

Jibbawk sprinkles the blue pollen over their heads, and the sparks ignite like a thousand falling stars. 

Chapter
18

Return to Lan Darr

Allan stares up at the top of the crate that holds the Hubbu pollen he needs to get to Lan Darr. It’s a huge crate, the size of a semi-trailer, with a ladder on one side. He’s never attempted to pull himself up a ladder like this, and it seems impossible. To weaken his confidence further, his muscles are fatigued and feel like well-kneaded dough.
I can do so much more than I ever thought possible,
he reminds himself and reaches for the first rung. His fingers shake. 

Down the aisle two crates away, a door crashes inward. A dozen soldiers march through. Allan backs around the corner to hide, but another squad has entered a door down this aisle.

Allan rolls back to the ladder. Good-bye chair. I’ll miss you. He slams the brake on, seizes the first rung, pulls himself off the chair, and starts up the ladder. His arms tire immediately, and after four rungs he pauses, hanging and gasping for breath. He just can’t find the strength to go higher.
Looks like I’m gonna get a job picking Hubbu flowers for the rest of my life after all.

“Allan Westerfield!” a soldier roars a few feet away. He’s not wearing armor like the other soldiers. He’s sporting a funny hat that looks like a stuffed grocery bag and a bright red coat that has so many medals and ribbons there isn’t an empty spot left. “You will come back down and stand trial for desertion.”

“What!” Allan rolls his eyes. His fingers slip. He falls and lands on his chair. “You have no right. This is kidnapping!”

“By decree of the Articles of Katonaay, you will repay a debt incurred during the welcome celebration in the palace. Once you repay what you spent you will be released.” 

“That’s a steamy pile of bull crap and you know it!”

Four soldiers in armor draw swords and march toward Allan.

“Psst,” someone above Allan whispers.

Allan looks up. One of the homeless children has climbed to the top of the crate. “Going to Lan Darr they say?” The boy winks one of his glowing eyes.

“Yes.”

“You up there! Stay where you are! Get that boy!” a soldier yells. Four large soldiers sprint toward the crate.

“I hope you never come back,” the child says with a toothless grin, then sprinkles the blue pollen above Allan. The pollen swirls down, opens a wormhole in space, and folds Allan into it.

Allan moves painfully through a familiar darkness. When he feels solid again, he opens his eyes and looks up. Three sliver moons hang in the sky. Allan raises his hands. “Yeahhhh!” He tips back in his chair and whoops as loud as he can. “Thank you, homeless kid, with no teeth and glowing eyes! Thank you.” 

Allan digs out his flashlight. The light illuminates sparse dead trees reaching into the night like skeleton hands. It reflects off dust that swirls and falls through the light like a dance. Boulders and rocks litter a rolling landscape, but most of what surrounds him is dirt. He recognizes where he is. He’s on Lan Darr now, and it makes him smile wide. It’s been a long while, but the place is as familiar as a favorite summer home. He’s near where the Lithic Furies lived. He has seen this landscape during the day and knows it pretty well. The air smells familiar. The moons overhead crown him in their astral glow.

Allan reflects on the mechanical legs Mizzi had made for him. They were powerful exoskeletal legs that carried him through this area and gave him twice as much power as normal human legs. If only Laura would believe what he did here a year ago. He had snuck by all the towering rock monsters, lassoed the tooth of the Lithic Fury Baroon, and swung from its mouth like Tarzan. That tooth popped off, and Allan was able to recover the key inside it; the key that Mizzi used to lure Jibbawk out into the open. It was so difficult and scary then. Now, Allan reminisces, discovering a pride that had nestled deep into his bones. According to Mizzi, it was his Testing— a way to prove himself worthy of tackling seemingly insurmountable obstacles and an ultimate quest for his soul. Even though he was stuck in a wheelchair, he wasn’t useless.

Allan rolls himself through the dusty but firm ground toward a glow on the horizon. That glow is the city of Dantia. Dantia is a little scary with its towering buildings and hordes of strange creatures carrying out strange customs. Allan pauses, considering his plan. He can’t roll into town any more than he can open up a halo shop in hell. He has to find Asantia or Mizzi first. And since Dantia is so huge, Mizzi’s treehouse seems an easier find. It is on the outskirts of the mushroom forest, which isn’t far away at all.

Allan rolls across the dry landscape for a few hours and comes to an incline. He tries to muscle his way up but finds that his arms are too tired. He shouldn’t use the electric motor because it isn’t an emergency. There’s no way to tell how much charge it has left, but considering how many times he used the motor, it’s probably on its last power cell. Since there are no creatures or soldiers after him, now is a good time to rest.

He looks around. It’s dark, but he can see that he’s in a shallow basin. It will be a perfect resting spot. The slopes all around will help keep him from being seen.

It doesn’t stop all the wind, though. A cold breeze manages to swoop down into the depression. Allan digs out his jacket, but it isn’t thick enough to stop the chill. 

He collects a handful of dead branches, which there are plenty of. Allan snaps the branches into short pieces and places them in his lap.

“Oh, Lan Darr. Here I am again. I knew I could find you,” Allan says. He hums a song while he works. When he has enough fuel, he slips out of his chair. He places stones in a circle and arranges the twigs into a small tepee. With a lighter he’d brought, he tries to light the twigs. The wind is too strong. A dozen times he tries but fails. “Come on, Lan Darr. Do me a solid and hold the wind off me for a moment.” But the wind continues. It blows out the flame every time. Allan finds more stones and builds the fire ring up higher.

After a considerable struggle, the tinder catches fire and burns bright. Allan quickly adds larger pieces of wood and blows into the flames gently. The fire takes hold of the wood and is soon tall and warm. Allan uses his backpack as a pillow and lies down. Three moons shine down on him in sideway smiles, their pitted surfaces visible.

Allan feels safer here on Lan Darr than on the other planets. He knows which plants are dangerous, which are not. Jibbawk isn’t lurking in the shadows hunting innocent beings anymore. The Lithic Furies aren’t here, and there are no enemies after him. He relaxes and his eyelids get heavy.

Lights appear in the night sky, looking like slow moving planes. The planes move steadily closer. No, they don’t have planes here, they’re airships like Asantia’s. Large round shapes creep closer, black against the moonlit sky, except for their lights. Fifteen ships total. The ships line up in a horizontal line and are hundreds of feet off the ground. Maybe Asantia pilots one of them. Allan sits up, wondering if they can see him or his fire. If the ships belong to Killian Crow, being seen would be a bad thing. Killian Crow is the evil leader of Dantia and had bent over backwards to find Allan when he was here one year ago, and he might still hold a grudge on Allan. Killian certainly went to the ends of the planet while hunting Asantia.

But Allan isn’t as young as he was. Allan’s voice is deeper and he’s even grown a little facial hair.
Surely they won’t mess with me now? Would they?
For a moment, Allan’s hand twitches as he considers dousing his fire with sand.

The fire was too difficult to start, so Allan chooses not to put it out. The ships are really high up so maybe they can’t see him. He watches the flotilla of airships coast gently through the sky. The lights are placed sporadically over the ships, and they flicker like candle flames. In their glow, Allan can see some details. None of the ships has the style of Asantia’s old ship, but they are stunning in their own ways. One ship looks like the steering wheel of a car. It has a circular ballast connected to an oval cockpit in the center. One ship has four separate balloons tied together by fat metal beams. Another ship has an oblong body and a decorative dragonhead made from cut metal plates. Allan studies each of them as though they are floats in a parade.

The airships move toward the faraway lights of Dantia, and Allan loses sight of them. If they saw his fire, they don’t care.

Allan lies back down feeling the weight of his eyelids and closes them. “Ahh, just a little rest,” he mutters.

The ground rumbles lightly. He hears stomping.

Allan sits up. “Every time I try to get some sleep something crappy happens! I just need a few solid hours.”

People armed with rifles approach from the direction the airships had come from. They’re marching in a straight line. Allan tenses up and scoots close to his chair. He flips out his pocketknife and hides it under his thigh. Whoever messes with me will get it in the guts.

The soldiers wear gray wool suits with long sleeves. They have large backpacks on and round helmets. Their rifles are long and half-wooden, similar to the flintlock rifles of the 1800s. Instead of bayonets on the ends, they have shock poles, which spark occasionally.

The soldiers step around Allan like a stream flows around a boulder. Fifteen rows of soldiers six deep pass without saying a word to Allan, like he’s some inanimate object. Some are bird-like, similar to Jibbawk. Others have short snouts, and a few have large noses, protruding jaws, and thick fangs pointing up. When the last soldier crests the top of the hill, the night becomes silent once more.

Allan considers the soldiers for a long time. Were they off to war? Doing drills? Are they from another city? Another planet? Allan shivers and puts more wood on the fire. As long as they leave him alone, he’s happy. The flames grow tall and hot, and he bathes his stiff hands in the heat.

After getting comfortable again, he lets his eyes close and he listens to the fire speak in crackles and snaps. Unless more soldiers come, he can sleep in peace. In the morning he’ll find Mizzi and get some answers.

His body melds to the sand as it relaxes. Allan looks at the moons. They’re lower now. He wonders about them, about the stars. How many planets mingle with Lan Darr? How many moons? Allan’s father had given him his first telescope, and it was a big one. The moon was crisp and clear and so were Jupiter and Saturn and Mars, but they were so far away. It seemed to Allan that he would never get to go to another planet or to another star system. The telescope remained unused, dusty, shoved in the closet and forgotten.

Allan wanted to explore Earth’s mysteries and faraway places. He’d forgotten about space and, instead, dove into documentaries and adventure stories. He dreamed of exploring the jungles of Peru, the mountains of India, or even the depths of the sea.

The accident took away that possibility, but his All-Terrain chair and the van gave him back a slice of that dream. Then the Hubbu flower changed his life forever. And he wasn’t the only one. How many people found their way across the galaxy to Lan Darr, or to Peebland, or the other worlds? Martin and Bella took advantage of their new world and carved out a wonderful home. There were a few humans on Katonaay, too, and even on Lan Darr.

But still, Earth seems largely in the dark about Hubbu travel. Why is that? Because these worlds are a treasure. Those that travel here don’t want to share their little secret with the other Earthlings. They don’t want these worlds commercialized, abused, or overpopulated.

Allan thinks about his friends and schoolmates. Some of them deserve to see these places. It isn’t right to decide who gets to experience these sights and sounds and oddities. It’s selfish.

Adam Boldary was selfish for keeping it a secret. Though he was also trying to help the new worlds too. He taught them English, brought them some technology. In his books,
Morty’s Travels
, he was even introducing kids to the creatures he met. Maybe his way was the best. A slow, methodical introduction to each other, starting the conversation off with pleasantries. Maybe Adam Boldary had it right.

Maybe it was up to Allan to continue Adam’s work.

“Hey, you. Yeah, you, with the knobby knees!”

“I’m just lying here, trying to get some freaking sleep!” Allan’s eyes snap open. He sees the tip of a large sword hovering over his nose. “Sorry, so sorry. I don’t need sleep. Not at all. I’m just…”

“Oh relax. You’re such a weenie,” Asantia says.