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  He had no idea what else he would see, but watched anyway. The calibrut slowly made its way to the camp. It inspected serpent bones strewn about. Allan’s stomach clenched because the bones were covered in maggot-like worms and dark blood. Jibbawk’s quills were shed about in the depression lined with small round stones that made up its bed. Allan gasped as the calibrut zeroed in on the fire pit. The blackened stones that circled the fire pit had scratches on them. They read, ‘Kill the boy’ carved over and over again. ‘Kill Asantia’ was carved into others. Another read, ‘Eat them for dinner’.

  Allan’s heart turned icy cold. When he handed the box to Asantia, she took it and tucked it into her pack. She did not smile or react in any way, allowing the realization to sink in. Allan was in danger.

  Asantia put her pack on and stood. The gloom of the rainy night and the dim bedroom littered with shattered glass and sopping leaves surrounded her, punctuated her hard, serious stare. She reached out for Allan’s hand, but he didn’t take it. He stared at the dirt under her fingernails and the scars across her hand. She didn’t shake or move in any way. She was a buoy in a chaotic sea, one that Allan could grab ahold of and survive the storm. Finally, after a long while, Allan took her hand and stood.

  “You will help me hunt him,” she said.

  Allan knew he would. It wasn’t about right or wrong or if he could really help her. It was because he had no choice. “What do we do first?” he finally replied.

  “Find me.”

  #

  The alarm clock shrieks and jolts Allan from his dream with the gentleness of an orc wielding a baseball bat. He pounds the alarm off and moans. The room glows from the morning sun seeping through the slats in the blinds.

  Allan’s head aches, and his vision is blurry for a few moments. He stares at the white, popcorn ceiling and breathes until his heart stops racing. It had rained during the night, but the window is intact and so is the tree in the front yard. Allan sighs, he was just dreaming. It seemed so real, so full of emotion and texture. Place and time are so fluid during dreams, but there was nothing fluid about last night. It was a solid experience, like yesterday or the day before.

  Allan can see Asantia’s face clearly: her vivid golden eyes, her silky reddish-brown hair, and the small scars on her cheek and neck. He wishes he could fall back asleep and join Asantia on her hunt for Jibbawk.

  But it was just a dream. Jibbawk hasn’t escaped from Plethiomia, which means Jibbawk isn’t coming for Allan or anyone else. Mizzi, that long-tailed inventor, is clever. He wouldn’t send Jibbawk somewhere that wasn’t secure. Plethiomia is supposed to be ten thousand light years away with no more blooming Hubbu plants.

  The dream was as exciting as it was scary. It hadn’t been that long since Allan had been lost on Lan Darr, surviving a quest he never asked for, nor wanted. Returning to Lan Darr and Asantia and the Lithic Furies was a strange dichotomy. On one hand, Allan loved to remember his adventure. On the other, he knew there were violent creatures and slavery and ruthless rulers. Either way, Asantia promised she’d come for him when he turned eighteen. That was only three years away. Ahhh! I have to wait three years before seeing Asantia again.

  Allan flings the covers aside, bursting with heat. He stares at his legs. They lay folded to the side, useless, numb, and thin.

  He should be glad that he’s not in danger and that Jibbawk isn’t coming after him. He almost wants to face Jibbawk again and beat it again. He misses Asantia and Mizzi and the strange city of Dantia.

  Of course, the rest of the world doesn’t know his version of the story. To them, he’d simply been abducted by a crazy woman named Alice and locked in a strange lab she’d built in an old, abandoned dam. Only three people know what really happened, Rubic and Allan’s therapist.

  Allan slides onto his wheelchair wishing he could return to sleep. Every day is a struggle for Allan. Every moment he wonders what to do with himself. Movies aren’t as interesting, and video games pale in comparison to actually traveling to an alien planet. Even today won’t match up to his adventure on Lan Darr. Today is Allan’s fifteenth birthday, but he isn’t excited about it at all. What he wants — his legs, his parents, a way to visit Lan Darr—cannot be given to him in a box with a bow.

  He rolls to a poster by his closet. It is a NASA poster with illustrations of all the rockets NASA has ever created. The largest one, the Saturn Five, took the astronauts to the moon. How did they return to normal life after such an experience? Didn’t they want to go back? Were they dying to leap around in the light gravity and hike up the dusty mountains of the moon?

  Allan runs his fingers along the tall rocket. “It’s going to be a long three years,” he mumbles.

  He remembers how Asantia stumbled on his dirty floor. Just in case the dream was some kind of premonition, Allan pulls a long pole from his chair’s back pouch. The pole has a gripping claw at the end that he uses to pick up out-of-reach items. Immediately, he picks up dirty clothes, a squishy ball, papers, and other knickknacks until his room is tidy. The last thing he picks up is the textbook that Asantia had stumbled upon. Allan holds the book close and inspects the binding at the edges. It was as though he was expecting it to be bent at the corner or have Asantia’s boot mark. It didn’t. There was nothing wrong with it.

  Chapter 2

  The Best Gift Ever

  Allan rolls to the kitchen at the behest of his hungry stomach. Rubic hunches over a tablet, watching cooking lessons.

  “Baste? What the heck does baste mean?” Rubic turns to Allan. “Hey, do you know what baste means?”

  Allan shakes his head and rubs sleep crumbs out of his eyes.

  “This free cooking video sucks.” Rubic groans and shuts off the video. “I’m gonna try and cook this turkey, but no promises. If it explodes in this weird pan of your mom’s, you can’t blame me. I don’t know anything about cooking.”

  “Fine.” Allan opens the pantry and takes out a box of cereal.

  Rubic hands him the milk. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Something wrong? You’re gonna get stuff, and everyone’s coming to see you, and there will be cake. Oh, and you might get a homemade turkey with mashed potatoes for dinner, just like your mother used to make. That deserves a little smile.”

  “Sorry, bad dream. No, it was a good dream, but bad at the same time.” Allan splashes milk on the crispy flakes.

  “About Lan Darr, or whatever it was called?” Rubic pours him a glass of orange juice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your appointment to see Dr. Brooks is in two days. You wanna try and go today?”

  “No. I’m fine. I’m tired of talking to her. I just need to move on.”

  “I hear that.” Rubic’s eyes twinkle, and he isn’t succeeding in suppressing a smile.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Allan says, mouth full of food.

  “You want your present now?”

  “Really?” Allan has to think about it. He can’t get what he truly wants, but the curiosity fire is properly stoked. “Okay.”

  Rubic runs to the garage door and holds the handle. “Close your eyes.”

  Allan obliges.

  “Now pretend you’re unwrapping something.”

  Allan grunts.

  “Go ahead, just hold your hands up and unwrap the air.”

  Allan follows orders, unenthusiastically.

  Rubic flings the door open, “Ta-da!”

  Allan’s eyes pop open and behold another wheelchair with a bow tied around it. His brow scrunches and his lip curls. “Uh, thanks, I have one of those already.”

  Rubic grabs the wheelchair and pulls it into the kitchen. “Not like this you don’t.”

  Allan rolls closer. The chair is bulkier, and the armrests are a deep red. Everything else looks the same, but something hangs underneath, between the wheels.

  “This thing rocks. It’s really expensive, but worth every penny.” Rubic points out the features, giving a sales pitch. “The
main wheels are all-terrain, carbon construction, no-flat. Its frame is lightweight with a low center of gravity.” Allan isn’t getting excited yet. “But wait, there’s more. The real function of the chair is under the hood, so to speak.” Rubic kneels down. “Between the wheels is a powerful, battery-operated motor. It drives the big wheels if you ever need a hand going uphill or down the beach and the sand is deep.” Rubic spins the chair around. “But look.” There are tracks under the motor. “The tracks can lower with the touch of a button and assist you in uneven terrain. You can even go up stairs! They extend over ten inches. Which is as tall as most steps. It has a boost that will get you over rocks and sticks and curbs. The battery will last over six hours.”

  Allan’s eyes widen. He gets closer. The tracks are solid metal and glossy from grease. They wrap around a triangle of smaller wheels. “Wow. How did you get this?”

  “I used some of your parents’ settlement money.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to get that until I was eighteen.” Allan runs his hand along the frame and inspects the buttons on the side of the armrest.

  “I petitioned the court, had to fill out a form. Me filling out a government form? Crazy, huh?”

  “That is impressive. The chair is really awesome.” Allan’s mind races. He could go anywhere. He didn’t have to ask for help to go over curbs or into the older buildings that weren’t ADA compliant. “Oh my God, we can go hiking.”

  Rubic straightened up. “You want to go hiking? After our utterly disastrous fishing trip?”

  “Yeah, I do. Just like Dr. Brooks told me. Face the things that you fear. You let me drive the van in parking lots and on back roads to help me not be freaked out by driving. Hiking can get me over the fear of that mountain.” Allan smiles wide and bright. Now that he can go places he never thought he’d be able to go, he will do everything in his power to find the Hubbu flower and go back to Lan Darr. He doesn’t bother telling Rubic that’s the real reason he wants to go hiking on the mountain.

  The Hubbu Flower is a strange, almost magical thing. The pollen has unique properties that can create some kind of wormhole in the fabric of space. Asantia and Mizzi thought that it was how the flower reproduced and spread its many varieties across the galaxy. Each variety of Hubbu, according to Asantia, connects to a different planet in a different corner of the Milky Way Galaxy.

  When Asantia and Allan were sailing across the sea, Asantia had told him all about the Hubbu plant and how it worked. She used the pollen to travel to dozens of planets in her airship.

  Allan remembers the first time he ran across the flower. It was after the flash flood. Rubic lay pinned under the boulder, unconscious, forcing Allan to crawl and get help. That’s when Allan had run into the flower. It was large and resembled a sunflower. The difference was the middle didn’t have sunflower seeds but a powdery pollen, and surrounding the pollen bulb were hundreds of little, glossy petals.

  Allan had sneezed on the pollen, and the swirling motion activated the spores and opened the wormhole. It sucked Allan through the wormhole so fast he didn’t quite realize he’d even left Earth.

  That morning Allan developed a plan to find the Hubbu, collect as many as he can, and pay a visit to Asantia. They surely exist on the mountainside; all Allan has to do is find them.

  Chapter 3

  Pointing, Snickering, Betrayal

  Six months pass. Allan’s world rebounds in so many unexpected ways. He’s a new person, excited to greet the day, and often wakes before his alarm clock fires off.

  Every Saturday, Allan dragged Rubic up to the mountain and they’d go hiking.

  The All-Terrain wheelchair was perfect for every occasion. It could roll over debris and rocks, and push through sand. It was Allan’s baby, his connection to independence and adventure. He hadn’t gotten stuck on a single trail on the mountain. Only once did he have to find a way around a fallen tree, but that was his only trouble. He didn’t find any Hubbu flowers, but hadn’t given up. Not by a long shot.

  Allan invited Laura, his best friend, to hike with him and Rubic. It made the trips even better. The three continued hiking the mountainside, Laura and Rubic oblivious to Allan’s real intentions. Allan never shared his experience on Lan Darr with Laura or told her about the Hubbu’s ability. He didn’t want to freak her out, and honestly, was still in shock that such a pretty girl would want to spend time with him anyway.

  A few weeks after the car accident that paralyzed Allan and killed his parents, Laura had stopped by and dropped off a box of chocolates. Allan didn’t eat them, and they sat on his desk, collecting dust. She tried again a month later, this time bringing a medley of hard and sour candy to the door.

  Rubic made Allan answer her visit. “She’s trying to be nice,” Rubic said.

  Allan, who wasn’t speaking at the time, answered the door and tried to smile.

  “Hi, Allan. How are you?” Laura said. She wore an ankle-length skirt with black and pink stripes and a white tank top with spaghetti straps. Her blonde hair was in a tail. She smiled and handed a wrapped box of candy to Allan.

  Allan typed on his iPad and showed her the message, ‘thanks’

  She fidgeted with her fingernails. “I miss you at swim practice. You and I were the fastest in the whole school. Our times were so close. I really wanted to beat you.”

  Allan typed, ‘don’t remind me’

  “Sorry.” She took a step back. “I want you to feel better, the whole swim team does. Coach says you could still swim with us. They have state competitions for… people in wheelchairs.”

  ‘no thanks,’ Allan responded.

  “I’ll see you later.” Laura turned and jogged down the walkway to her mother’s yellow MINI Cooper.

  Allan remembers slamming the door. But she was so sincere. It was as if she not only had pity for Allan but respect as well. She knew how fast he was in the water, how good he could have been, and admired it.

  It wasn’t until Allan returned to Earth from his adventure that he opened the candy and ate it. He’d think about her often as he savored the sweets. They were a great reprieve in a time when the news reporters camped outside his house waiting for him to come out. Allan had munched on the Caramel Bites during the police interview. The Sour Heads kept him going when Rubic removed the telephone because every five minutes someone would call, wanting an interview or exclusive.

  Alice was never found, the story got old, and Allan ran out of sweets. Eventually, Allan worked his way back into the world by attending a swim meet. Everyone was glad to see him, especially Laura. She shared her new freestyle time with him, which was still slower than Allan’s best time, but she was gaining on him.

  The next day, she’d brought over another box of chocolates. Allan invited her inside to sample the chocolates with him.

  Ever since then, he and Laura have been hanging out. She isn’t like other girls. She’s the lead in most of the school plays, still the fastest girl swimmer, and the top of her class. She has a five-year plan and a ten-year plan and practically expects to be President of the United States one day.

  Allan shares most things with her, except his experience on Lan Darr. He desperately wanted to tell with her what really happened, but chickened out every time.

  Finally, two days ago, he opened his mouth and didn’t stop talking until she knew it all. Initially, she listened in silence. Allan worried she would think he was crazy. When his story was done, the sound of crickets filled the room. However, her warm smile came back, and she became eager to talk about the adventure.

  When Allan didn’t see or hear from her yesterday, worry climbed around his heart and stayed there. He wondered what she really thought of him. He texted her, but knew her mother limited her texting and she wouldn’t get it until after school. If Laura thought he was crazy, he’d implode. Maybe he should have kept it all between him, his diary, and his therapist.

  #

  Allan did not sleep well. He wakes before the alarm and slides off the bed to his chai
r. The light bothers his dry eyes, and his mouth is so tacky he can’t open it. He needs to see Laura today, to ask her if all is well.

  Allan rolls to the kitchen, finding Rubic whistling and cooking omelets and bacon. He’s gotten quite good at the whole cooking thing, which Allan is grateful for.

  “Morning, bud.” Rubic takes one look at Allan. “You look like you fell out of a building, smashed through the sidewalk, landed on the subway track, and got electrocuted. Have some bad dreams?”

  “Morning,” Allan mutters as he rolls himself to the breakfast table and puts his brakes on. He pours himself some orange juice from the carton left on the table and chugs it. “No dreams. I barely slept.”

  “Sorry ’bout that. Anything you wanna talk about?” Rubic finger combs his thick beard then sips his coffee.

  “I told Laura about Lan Darr two days ago and haven’t heard from her since.”

  Rubic’s face hardens. “Oh no.” He sets down his mug. “How did she react initially?”

  “I thought she believed me,” Allan said. “Now, I’m not so sure.” Allan knows that Rubic doesn’t believe him. How can he expect Laura to? On many occasions, Allan had tried to tell Rubic about Lan Darr and how he got captured by the ratty-bird and almost sold to Killian Crow. How the elephants hid him from Killian, and Mizzi dragged him to safety through the mushroom forest. Allan had described the mechanical legs Mizzi made that allowed Allan to walk again. No, to run again. He described the city of Dantia and its canal system and Asantia’s airship. But Rubic never really listened. Rubic would rush Allan through the conversation saying it was all a dream, a drug-induced fantasy, and it wasn’t healthy to obsess about it.

  Rubic slides the omelet out of the pan and onto Allan’s plate, sprinkles a cheese blend on top, and piles the bacon next to it. He returns to the stove and starts to make his own. “You guys are best friends. She’ll come around. I think she like, likes you.”

  Allan feels a heat in his cheeks and responds by cramming bacon in his mouth. The salty, fatty flavor absorbs all the thoughts in his head. In truth, he thought about asking her to be his girlfriend on many occasions.