Return To Lan Darr

by Anderson Atlas

  Allan drops his chin to his chest and looks at his hands. “I felt things. Mizzi built me mechanical legs that took me into the Lithic Fury desert. They were so much more than just tall rock creatures. They had souls, every one of them did. Jibbawk came after me. I ran from it. It was real.” Finally, the flood of tears and sobs burst out.

  Rubic hugs Allan for a long time.

  When Allan is able to speak, he pushes away from Rubic. “Laura stole my diary, but… but I don’t hate her. I’m mad at her, but I still want to see her.”

  “You’re so young, man. You’re only fifteen. You’ll be sixteen in six months, I know, but you’ve got a long way to go in life. Friends will come and go.” Rubic tries to smile, but Allan can see anger on his face. “I thought she was better than this. I can’t believe she’d steal from you.” Rubic finds a seat on the edge of the couch.

  “It wasn’t like that. She stole my diary and was going to take it to Dr. Brooks because she wasn’t sure my therapist knew what I was thinking about, dreaming about. The diary fell out of her bag at school. Someone found it, copied it, and posted it online. She was trying to do a good thing. Now everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

  “Not everyone.”

  Allan’s eyes narrow. “Yes! Everyone! I’m a massive joke!” His arms flail outward and then lower.

  Rubic retrieves some tissue and hands it to Allan. “Aw, bud. I’m so sorry this is happening.”

  The intensity of his feelings reminds Allan of how he felt after his parents’ deaths. Now, as the emotion builds behind his rib cage, feeling like angry, writhing snakes, he wishes to be in his mother’s arms. I can’t wait to see my mom again. If I have to die to do so, then I wish death would hurry things up. The thought is fleeting, but the feeling buries itself deep in his body. It’s a dark feeling, a secret feeling, and he knows that buried is where it must stay. It frightens Allan to acknowledge its existence, but it is evident when he’s low and feeling vulnerable to the tauntings of hopelessness.

  Allan wonders if Laura had read the whole thing. If she did, then she knows how Allan feels about Asantia. How beautiful Asantia is to him, though she is tough and weathered by hardships. Embarrassment swells inside Allan, and he wants to turn back time and wishes it was as simple as pushing the hour hand back. She will have read that Allan dreams of Asantia at least two times a week. Allan’s cheeks redden like overripe apples. She’ll learn that after the first dream, where Asantia came crashing through his window during the raging storm, he didn’t let Rubic wash the comforter where she sat for over two months.

  She’ll learn about the night Asantia rescued him from the top of a building in Dantia. He had escaped a mob by diving into the canal holding onto a glowing snail. Allan dove under the buildings and found a stairwell. With only one working mechanical leg, Allan managed to get to the top of the stairs. Then the working leg died and left him crippled on the rooftop. He felt hopeless then, lost and so tired, but there Asantia was. Her cable shot from her airship and buried itself in the wooden roof, and she came down from that ship like a guardian angel. Allan wrote in the diary how she almost glowed like a neon sign and how close her cheek came to his when she was helping him remove the mechanical legs.

  I wonder where Asantia is now. Allan wishes he could contact her so she can come rescue him from his horrible existence. He desperately wants to be somewhere else, to live a different life, to burn this one and all the trappings that keep him here and in misery.

  Rubic returns from the kitchen with pudding cups and hands one to Allan, the lid already ripped off. Allan waves it away.

  “Come on. Try and take it easy. When I get home from work we’ll eat some junk food and watch a movie. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Brooks for tomorrow, and you can talk it out. Let’s get past Lan Darr completely, then you can work on getting over the embarrassment.”

  Allan cringes and fresh tears come to his eyes, and then he retreats to his room.

  He sleeps the day away, and when he wakes, the house is dark and silent.

  A loud car roars down the street, its sporty muffler ripping the silence to shreds. Allan gets into his wheelchair and rolls to the living room. The streetlamps outside illuminate the edges of the thick curtains. They are slightly parted and are the only source of light in the home. Allan rolls to the window and reaches for the gap in the curtains.

  A shadow passes over the light. Allan jumps. The shadow dashes away, followed by a crash. Allan freezes and listens. “I can’t believe I’m so jumpy.” He sweeps open the curtains and looks to the front yard. He expects Jibbawk to be there, waiting, armed with razor-sharp swords, but instead sees a black cat dashing away from an overturned flowerpot.

  Allan rubs his eyes. Jibbawk isn’t real, isn’t hunting me. Get that into your thick head and stop acting crazy. Allan remembers the fishing trip with Rubic. That night, at the fire, Rubic had told him a story about Jibbawk. How did Rubic know that name? It would seem that everyone was right, Allan’s quest was nothing but a drug-induced hallucination.

  Car lights turn from the street and hit Allan’s pale face. Rubic’s home.

  Rubic steps from his truck holding two large pizzas.

  That night the two devour the meat lover pizzas, an entire bag of cheese balls, and a package of cookies while they watch a couple of movies.

  Allan hardly watches them. His mind is distracted by his internal doubt. He remembers all the sessions he spent with his therapist. One session in particular stands out.

  Dr. Brooks was talking to Allan about Lan Darr. “So, your experience in the other world is what we call a schizophrenic delusion. It’s less like a hallucination and more like a dream.” The doctor switched her crossed legs. She always sat across from the therapy couch with her legs crossed. Her skirt left her smooth calves exposed, and she always wore shiny leather mid-heel shoes of varying colors. That day she’d worn a long black skirt with a white top. Allan thought she was pretty for an adult. Her makeup was delicate and her short hair cropped to her chin. She was so nice and always set Allan at ease, but she wasn’t always right.

  Dr. Brooks continued, “There are things we can remember that will tell our brains we are dreaming. Once we prove to your psyche that you did indeed dream of Lan Darr and the city of Dantia, then you might be able to remember what really happened. Focus on what happened after the flash flood on the mountain and how you ended up in the old dam. Now, you’re not supposed to make up your answers. You’re supposed to remember them. If you can’t remember them, simply say that you cannot remember.” She set a ticking clock on her desk and lowered the light. “I’m going to hypnotize you so your answers will come from your subconscious.”

  Allan nodded and obeyed all her promptings and listened to her soft, feminine voice. He felt like he’d fallen asleep.

  For the next forty minutes Allan answered question after question regarding Lan Darr. He remembered every single answer as though it had happened yesterday.

  “Hmm,” the doctor said after waking him from the trance. “Typically, subjects don’t remember their own bodies in these dreams.”

  “I do. I remember peeing by the wall and the plant that shot me in the neck with some poison dart. It only stopped hurting after I washed away the dart in the river. And I remember my… body parts. Including my hands.”

  “Could you fly?”

  “I wish.”

  “Did you instantaneously arrive anywhere?”

  “Nope.”

  “Were your mother or father in any aspect of your experience?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, normally, in a dream state you might seem disfigured, have different hair styling or missing teeth. Your physical body will be different somehow.”

  Allan shook his head. “Nothing about me was different. I’m telling you, there was nothing about Lan Darr that seemed like a dream.”

  “You had the strength to steal the key from the Lithic Furies,” the doctor reasoned.

  “Yeah, but not without
Mizzi’s metal legs. He created the leg contraption in his workshop and powered them with an energy crystal.”

  “Ah,” she said smiling. “That is a sure sign you’re dreaming. Energy crystals are impossible, fantasy things.” She seemed proud of her answer, and that ended the discussion.

  Allan left her office that day thinking, What does she know? She can’t know everything.

  Now, as Allan tries to watch a movie with a broken heart and scattered thoughts, he remembers how stumped the therapist had been. Allan had real, solid memories. He didn’t have super powers, distorted body images, or time sequence errors typical of dreams or even delusional trips. He is most certainly not crazy. As the credits of the second movie roll, Allan falls asleep.

  When the morning light peeks through the blinds, Allan awakes and sits up on the couch. The light is golden, illuminating the dust in the air. The dust. It is so thick in the shaft of sunlight.

  Allan’s stomach aches from binging on the junk food. He tries to remember if he dreamt during the night, but can’t. “I know when I’m dreaming.” The dust swirls as it passes through the light. “The dust is always there. It only needs to be illuminated in order to see it.”

  His eyes widen and his back straightens. “I’m not crazy.” He feels like yelling that declaration but thinks better of it. Rubic sleeps next to him with crumbs strewn about, a wadded-up napkin tucked into his half-open hand, and his mouth agape and snoring.

  As quietly as he can, Allan reaches for his chair and parks it in front of himself. He moves his knees to the side and hops into his chair. That pin-up-girl pin still confuses Allan. How did it get in the dam? It was in his pocket on Lan Darr. The therapist often pointed to that pin as evidence Allan was in the dam. In Allan’s memory, he hit the gravel after Lyllia of Meduna sent him home. He didn’t appear inside the dam. But the experience was confusing and traumatic. He could have slid down that pipe and not known it.

  Allan rolls to his bedroom. In his closet is a box of old clothes. He finds the pants he wore one year ago and reaches into the pocket. He pulls out the lining. There was a hole as large as a quarter.

  Every shadow of a doubt fades from Allan. He rolls to the bathroom to take care of business, packs his backpack with water, lunch meat, some chips, a few apples, a sweater, and a flashlight. He calls the Handi-Taxi, a taxi service for customers in wheelchairs and wrenches open the bottom lid on his piggy bank. Inside he finds a crammed wad of cash. He pulls out one hundred dollars and tucks it into his wallet. He pulls the plug out of the wall that charges his All-Terrain wheelchair and rolls the chair out of its parking space in his closet. He hops on and hangs his backpack on the back then pushes his normal wheelchair to the wall.

  Allan tosses his cell phone on his side table and heads out the front door to wait on the curb. “I’m going to find Lan Darr, and I’m not coming home until I do.”

  Chapter 5

  The Big ‘Duh’

  The yellow and black Handi-Taxi pulls up to the curb, and a platform lowers. Allan rolls onto it and lets it lift him into the spacious van. He knows the driver. “Hey, Charlie.” Charlie is a large-nosed Italian man with thick eyebrows and a brain full of bad jokes.

  “Allan, ciao, my main man. Where you goin’?”

  “Somewhere kinda far.”

  “No problem, anythin’ for you.”

  “I’m going to Blue Mountain.”

  “Whoa, by yourself?”

  “Yeah, I’m meeting friends for a hike.”

  “You hike?” Charlie eyes Allan in his rearview mirror.

  “Yeah, I’ve got an All-Terrain Apex Chair 690. It can take me anywhere.”

  “Rock and roll! Or should I say, roll over rock. Pun intended.” The driver chuckles and hits the gas.

  An hour later and a dozen bad jokes, the cab pulls off the freeway exit ramp and hangs a right on Pine Road. Only a few more miles, past some shops and a large visitor center, which houses a well-staffed ranger station, before Pine Road ends and the Blue Mountain Road heads up and into the dense forest.

  Allan needs to find the flower. He needs to prove to Laura he’s not crazy. He takes out a map of the canyon. All the safe trails are marked in green, and the sections of the canyon he’s explored are crossed out in red. The only section of the lower canyon left to explore is the lower field by the Boy Scout camp. If he fails and cannot find the Hubbu, he’ll start to make his way back up to the dam. It’s only five or six miles total. If he has to, he’ll make a bed out of pine needles and sleep overnight.

  A delivery truck blocks Pine Road, and the taxi driver slows to a stop. He honks.

  “Hey, get outta the road!” He honks again.

  The driver opens the truck door, hops out, and waves the taxi around. She’s a larger woman with the most colorful patchwork dress Allan has ever seen. A gray parrot perches comfortably on her shoulder.

  The Taxi drives around the disabled truck. “You can’t pull to the side? Eh?” He mumbles.

  Allan turns and looks out the back window. The truck sits crooked on the road, the front tire flat. The woman inspects the tire and climbs back inside at which point the passenger, a man, hops out with a tire iron. He starts to remove a spare tire off the back of the cab.

  Allan notices the truck’s logo above the cab. It reads, ‘Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things’ and is surrounded by graphics of roses, tulips, orchids, weird statues, and symbols Allan doesn’t recognize.

  The woman leans out the window and speaks to the man. The man stands up and throws his arms out over his head and yells something at her. The woman throws her shoe out the window, and it hits him in the head. Allan laughs at the fighting couple.

  The light turns green, and the taxi continues down Pine Road. Blue Mountain Road is only a couple miles up ahead. He stares at the dark green of the pine trees and knows he is making the right decision. The forest beckons him. The Hubbu wants to be found.

  A block before the mountain road, Allan sees a small strip mall with a post office, a hardware store, and Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things. He wonders what kind of ‘odd things’ she has. “STOP!” Allan calls out.

  The taxi driver hits the brakes and pulls off the road into the strip mall parking lot. “What’s wrong? I yeye yeye, you make my heart explode.”

  If Allan was in a cartoon, he’d have a glowing lightbulb over his head. For months he’d gone to the mountain to look for the Hubbu flower. Even though he didn’t find it, he kept looking instead of trying something new. Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere.

  “Go to the flower shop, and can you wait for me?” Allan asks.

  “Not a problem, anything for you.” Charlie pulls to the front of the store and stops. Allan unhooks his chair from the support pole and rolls to the platform. The taxi driver hits the button, and Allan is lowered to the sidewalk. The flower shop is still closed, but he knows they’re on their way, having only to change out a flat tire.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Morna’s Flowers and Odd Things delivery truck pulls into the parking lot and drives around back. The interior lights of the shop flick on, and the woman unlocks the door, wearing only one shoe. Her bird is still on her shoulder.

  “Hello, lad,” she says after she opens the door. “What’ll it be t’day?” She has light skin, is covered in freckles, and has bright orange hair. Long beaded earrings dangle from her ears and a necklace, made of the same style of beads, hangs around her neck. She smiles bright and has kind eyes.

  “Uh, I’m looking for a very special flower.” Allan rolls himself through the tight doorway. The woman lets him pass and follows him into the shop. The shop is packed with flowers in pots filling the shelves and cut flowers petal to petal in the coolers. Allan sees birdhouses made from beer cans, wind chimes, mugs, beaded lanterns, chocolates, candies, T-shirts, and strange statues. It overwhelms Allan’s senses.

  “Who’re the flowers for now, lad?” The woman digs into her hip pack and pulls out a pinch of seed. She raises her hand and feeds the large
gray parrot that happily sits on her shoulder. She kisses the bird on its large gray beak.

  “My, uh, girlfriend.”

  “Oh, I’ve some lovely roses. Roses, red ones, tell ’er ya love ’er.” She walks to the nearest cooler stuffed with roses.

  “No, I’m looking for a special flower. I only know what it looks like, but it’s her favorite. I’m not interested in any other kind of flower.”

  “Is tat so? Yer girl knows what she wants now, does she?” A smile crosses the woman’s face.

  Allan takes a deep breath. “It can be many colors…”

  “Can it now.” The bird picks at something inside the woman’s ear. The woman strokes its back, returning the grooming favor.

  “Any color will do.”

  “Any color. I see. Colors are very important, ya know.”

  Allan nods. “Yeah. It’s the type that matters. It’s large like a sunflower with small petals, lots of petals. And a huge bulb of pollen in the middle.”

  The smile on the woman’s face relaxes. “Odd that you might be lookin’ for such a flower.” She shrugs. “I’ve just been brought such a plant, not even a week ago. Never seen such a breed meself. The grower tells me ’tis a new hybrid. Sunflower mixed with Dahlia Pompons. Tis a strange one, not a fan of the huge bulb of pollen. I can-na a think it’d be too popular, what with allergies ’n such.”

  “Show me. I must see this hybrid!”

  The bird turns to Allan and shrieks, reacting to Allan’s intensity. The woman’s eyebrows lift high on her forehead. “Keep yer skirts on.” She turns and walks to the back of the shop, passing the cluttered shelves and the sales counter. “Ye comin’ lad?”