As you know my father was a novelist. He called me into his study one day, it was raining, the air in the house smelled of cinnamon and walnuts. I had just come home from school, a typical Tuesday for a high school student. I had ran the mile in second period, so my clothes all had the latent stink hanging about them as if I had suddenly discovered homelessness that day. My girlfriend at the time was out of town with her parents for their Thanksgiving holiday already, and my best friend had marching band practice, so I had come home immediately after sixth period. There was no reason to stay at school hanging out in my own cloud of old perspiration fighting the mutually exhaustive battles of hormones and skin bacteria.
“Adam is that you?” My father yelled from his study. His voice carried a slight edge of panic. Just enough for me to notice.
“Hey, Dad. Yeah, just me.”
“What are you doing home?”
A scramble behind a closed door, papers shuffling, a hastily closed drawer. I set my bag down, oddly paying attention to my dad when a normal day would have me focused inwards, thinking about what snack to grab or what video game I should play as I ignored my homework.
“Are you ok?” I called out. Walking the stairs timidly. Would I find my father having a secret girlfriend over? My mom had died years ago, and as far as I knew, my dad did not date. Or would it be something worse? Drugs? Would I find my dad tripping balls or staring at invisible dragons only he could see? He was an artist after all. An artist of words, but an artist all the same. Creative people were known to do that sort of thing. I wasn’t creative myself, so I wouldn’t know how that felt.
“Oh, fine. Come in, come in. You just surprised me that’s all.” His voice was timid now, like he had made a decision that he was afraid of. Hindsight is 20/20. Now as I sit here, writing this down, I remember it so vividly. I remember the sounds, the smells, the touch of my fingers at his door, and his face. It was going to be the last time I would see his face that year, and I remember every detail of it. The harsh gray of his beard against the salt and pepper long hair that he would pull into a messy ponytail. His eyes lined and creased against the tops of his cheekbones, the hidden smile lines underneath belying of a life well lived and well loved. At least before mom died. I remember the cut on his hand, at the edge of this wrist. Not an attempt at suicide, just a clumsy fumble with the cheese grater on taco night. His shirt was plaid, under a light gray coat, lined with a contrary color that made him look like he was about to hop on a motorcycle at any moment and ride off. He looked at me over his glasses, still shuffling the papers back and forth, tossing them in drawers without really looking where they were landing. In front of his desk was a duffle bag, packed. The zipper was taut against the contents fighting to be free.
“Going on a trip?” I asked.
“Yes. You are going to stay with your Aunt Laurie for a while. I am going out of town.”
“Last minute book tour? I thought your agent promised not to do that anymore,” I sighed. Aunt Laurie was my dad’s sister and she was awesome. Some people say they had cool aunts, but I actually did. Probably what made me so accepting of my father’s erratic schedule.
“No… actually… something that I have been meaning to talk to you about,” he pushed his glasses up on his face and sniffed like he was about to cry. I had only seen him cry a couple times, and none of them were good.
“Uh… you ok?”
“I already said yes to that, son,” My dad said, grabbing a couple pens and a stack of moleskine field journals from his supply stash in the big folder drawer behind him.
“What’s going on then?” I felt a sense of exasperation already, and had only been in his office thirty seconds.
“So you have read my books right?”
That was the strangest question he had ever asked me. Ever. Like in my entire life, the strangest by far. “Of course I have. All of them. Not every kid has a bestselling fantasy author for a dad.”
He waved his hand. “Uh. So the first book… about Todd. The beginning with him falling into another world…”
“Yeah, Dad. I read it, as you know. You read it to me yourself when I was little.”
“What if I told you that it was all real?” He stopped, as if the world had shifted sideways, and everything was on pause. I felt like the rain outside the window had stopped falling, the drops hanging in the air around this moment. “All of it… all of it was real.”
My face scrunched up in response, my eyebrows meeting each other over the bridge of my nose in confusion. “What do you mean its real?”
My first thought was that my dad had finally hit the brilliant artist’s inevitable mental breakdown or he was having a crisis of another sort that I would not be able to understand.
“I mean it’s autobiographical, not fiction,” my Dad let his shoulders loosen, as if a great weight had just been released. His back looked straighter.
“Hold up. You are telling me that Mokokia the Wise, the greatest magician of the Esti tribes of Ux, transported YOU to their planet to counter the forces of evil that your father brought into their world accidentally?” I said incredulously. “Dad, I have met Pop-Pop. He is in a nursing home downtown, barely able to function since his stroke when I was little. I mean come on… What is really going on?”
My dad stood straighter, appearing to gain resolve in his words and his physical form at the same time. “It was all real. I came back for you and for your mom. I had to be a dad.”
“So Pop-Pop, my grandpa, is an evil villain?” I laughed at the thought of the infirm man in a wheelchair who had a hard time not drooling being an evil magician. In my dad’s bestselling debut, ‘The Tides of Ux’, a young man is transported to Ux to fight the Fury, a dark magician of woeful power and destruction seeking to dominate all intelligent life across the planet of Ux. The Fury is the villain of all villains, acting both in secret and in the open to control every aspect of life on the beautiful and amazing world of Ux. A world full of life, intelligent races, and magic. The magic was awe inspiring. The young hero learns this deep magic from the Esti wizard that brings him to the world, and uses it through trial and tribulation to unknowingly fight his father, and set everything right.
“Yes. I did that to your Pop-Pop. I… struck him down and made him that way. I brought him back to care for him… and you, and your mom. And I have done all that. You are graduating this year, I have set aside a trust fund for you, you are all set. I am proud of you, Adam.”
“Dad, where are you going?”
My father sighed and shoved his journals and pens into his messenger bag. “I am going back to Ux. They need me.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled. My anger came from nowhere.
My dad grabbed his floor lamp in the corner. It was a custom made lamp that looked like his main character’s staff of power, a limb of the Alltree, a branch of the cosmic force that held the universe together. In the story, the staff served as the focal point for a magician’s power. A person that was trained and could harness the raw power of the Alltree could manipulate space, time, and matter as long as they had the focus, the understanding, the will, and the energy to do so. My dad curled his hand around it, and yanked the lampshade from the top, pulling the cord and light bulb assembly from it. I had never noticed but the cord did not go up through the staff, it had been cleverly taped to be hidden behind. “Maybe in time, you can come visit. But you should finish your school first. Laurie will take care of you in the meantime.”
“Why do you think you can just leave!?” I continued, ignoring the weirdness unfolding as my dad picked the sticky tape dietrus that represented the real world off his staff.
A throat being cleared sounded from behind me. I turned my head in fear, coming to the realization that we were not alone. The door to the study swung shut slowly, the hinges creaking, squealing, as the door headed towards its frame. A small creature, which would not even reach my waist bowed carefully, keeping its large expressive purple eyes on me.
“Adam,” the creature said, it’s voice deeper than it should have been. “I am Mokokia, and I have been sent by the Council to bring your father back.”
My eyes were wider than saucers, and if my eyelids could go any higher, they would push my eyeballs clean out of their sockets. “Holy shit.”
Mokokia rose from his bow, placing his hands on his own diminutive Alltree staff that stood before him. “I need your father’s help.”
Nevermind. I thought at the time that this is where I suffer my mental breakdown and a crisis of a different sort myself. Mokokia approached me calmly, his bald head was the hue of a bluebird’s wing, shifting from blue at his ears to white around his mouth and nose. He simultaneously was entirely contrary to what I imagined the great Mokokia to look like, yet at the same time, matched my father’s description to the letter. He laid his blue three fingered hand on my shaking arm.
“Adam, you can visit. I will ensure you see your father again. Perhaps you will have his gifts for the Alltree Speech. Perhaps you can sing to the bones of the mountains and the wings of the sky, and come to know the spirit of Ux personally. Perhaps?”
“Your english is very good,” I squeaked.
“Much practice. But your father, is good teacher. Walter, are you ready to go?” Mokokia asked my father.
“So you were… you are… Todd the Worldbreaker?” I finally understood what my dad had been telling me.
He walked around the desk, tossing his duffle over one shoulder and his messenger over that. He grabbed his Alltree staff and laid a single hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye.
“Actually, the title is Walt the Worldbreaker. Be strong. I will send for you later.”
Mokokia touched his staff to the ground, said a word, and as if nothing had ever happened, I was standing alone in my dad’s study, with the destroyed bits of the corner lamp strewn across his desk.
“Wow that is quite the story, mister,” my girlfriend Amie laughed.
I shrugged, trying to keep the jest going. It was my nineteenth birthday and we were eating alone at my Aunt Laurie’s place on the west side.
“Your dad has been on his tour for a year now… he should be back any day,” Amie continued. “You should write that down and let him read it when he gets back.”
“Well that is why I wanted to have dinner with you actually,” I paused. I pulled an Alltree seed from my pocket and set it on the table.
Amie’s eyes sparkled with the light of the seed pulsing in the dim light of her dining room. “Wow. Did you get that at Comic-con? It looks just like what I imagined an Alltree seed would look like!”
“Uh. No. This was on my pillow went I got home from work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And this.” I handed over the note.
“Prepare? Tomorrow.” Amie looked over the simple parchment and flipped it over in her hands to look at it from every direction. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I think I am about to go on a trip,” I grinned.
“Oh my god. You are kidding right?”
I shook my head. “I have been packed for months…”
“And you have obsessed over rereading all your dad’s books… I thought you were just a loving son who missed his dad.”
I shrugged again, admitting it plainly. “I did. My dad is Todd! I can’t wait to see the Citadel of the Thousand Wings and the Water Spouts of the Arcan Sea. I can’t wait.”
“Wait,” Amie said deadpan.
“Yeah?” I responded.
“You wanted this dinner… not for your birthday… You are breaking up with me.”
“I figured I might not come back,” I nodded furtively. I took the Alltree seed and shoved it back in my pocket. “And it is not like I can email you from Ux.”
Amie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. I could tell she was either deciding this was the most elaborate break-up ever imagined or that I was telling the truth.
From my bedroom, I heard the clearing of a throat and then a familiar voice ask, “Ready to go?”
Mokokia stepped out from the dark doorway of my bedroom.
And of course, Amie fainted.