Sean Robin Hughes

The shaman coughed into his hand, and laid his udanta stick to the side of the fire. He rubbed the spittle between his blackened palms, flicking a bit of ash from the ring of stones to absorb it all before he use the pestle to scrape his palms clean. Mata sat, his hands folded carefully in his lap, watching with great interest as the old man worked his magic. Mata’s question still lingered in his mouth, even after asking it, as if the question was a bird that needed to be freed at the next opportunity. The shaman pulled a leaf from his dream satchel and crushed it with the pestle against the mortar. Nodding with a grunt, he lifted the mortar to his brow and prayed under his breath to the great sky gods for guidance for his spirit self. Hoping his prayer was lifted on the smoke of the fire, the shaman dumped his mortar into the fire, inhaling the flash and thick gray fumes before they left the cave.

Mata sat very still, like a rock on a beach, wondering what the answer to his question would be.

The shaman held his breath, and exhaled with a grimace. As his eyes opened, Mata saw the shaman’s pupils had consumed his eyes, with nothing but endless black beneath his lids. The darkness was fathomless, ending in the whirling sparkles of galaxies undiscovered and stars unseen. In the shaman’s eyes laid a window to the depths of creation, and the old gods looked back at Mata, constraining themselves to this old man in a dark cave on a planet they had never seen.

“SPEAK, CHILD.” The shaman’s voice was not his own, it was the voice of a god.

Mata let his question fly again, finally releasing the flurry of words from it’s prison within himself. “Where do the spirits of the dead go?”

“SPIRITS OF THE DEAD ARE SPIRITS NO MORE.” The shaman’s head tilted like a bird’s, a sudden movement with a sudden stop.

“They live again?” Mata asked. The shaman had warned about multiple questions, but Mata felt he had to know. He had to find his Seka again.

“THEY LIVE ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE OURS.”

“Can I go Elsewhere?” Mata tried. He felt panic in his stomach at the question. It was bordering insult for a god.

The shaman’s head tilted the other way, and the shaman’s lidless eyes flashed with a dark energy. “PERHAPS. WHAT CAN YOU GIVE US?”

Mata looked at his thin, yet strong hands, thinking of the little he had to offer. He had nothing… an orphan, barely a man now, with only his leather skins, his axe, and his hunting gear. He could survive in this world, but he had nothing to offer, and his heart had nothing to feel since Seka had fallen ill.

“I can only offer myself,” the young man answered.

“WE DO NOT PROMISE YOU WILL FIND THE SOUL YOU SEEK.” The shaman’s face almost was one of conciliatory worry. As if the god felt pity for Mata.

“I am willing to take that chance. I have nothing here,” Mata answered.

“SHE WILL NOT KNOW YOU.”

Mata’s eyes flicked upwards and he felt the connection with the god. He felt like the god had reached into his heart and pulled it open. He saw strange things as the god whipped its tendrils of dark energy over his mind, shoving knowledge and experiences in the folds of his brain. His eyes rolled up into his head as he started to convulse, the madness of the god’s touch on Mata was unavoidable. He felt his bladder release, and the warmth spread across his thigh.

A flash in his inner eye. A young woman laughing with her friends. She had red hair, not the jet black of Seka, but Mata knew it was her. He could see her delicate fingers wrapped around a strange white bowl, in the shape like a small vase, a white spout that Seka drank from. He heard her friends laugh with strange words, a language he had never heard before. Another flash, and his different-but-same Seka was sitting in a dark cave, a fire brightly lighting her face, booming noises coming from all around, rows and rows of people behind her, their faces alighted the same. The fire that must have been in front of them must have been huge. Another flash, and his Seka-that-was-not-Seka was dressed strangely, in a second skin that was not animal leather, on boards strapped to her feet, flying down a snowy mountain, her breath escaped her lips in a cloud, being left behind in the snow as it drifted down. Her face was covered in a see through water that did not move, her eyes flicking left and right, her body shifting on the boards at her feet, plowing the snow upwards in the opposite direction. Mata’s confusion only grew, the changes flashed in his vision, and he saw Seka again, her hair tied on her head, straining on a strange thing that moved the ground underneath her feet. She ran, but did not move forward, sweat poured down her face as she smiled in her exertion.

The god removed his fingers from Mata’s mind, and Mata felt both empty and full after this strangeness retreated. “EVEN NOW? DO YOU WISH IT?”

Mata smelled his urine in the cave, mixing with the strong smell of the wood smoke, and the shaman’s body stink as he strained under the force of a god pushing itself into the shaman’s shell. He felt naked and disconnected from himself. Mata the Hunter of the Long-Tooth smelled the place of the first Seka-that-was-not-Seka, felt the noise of the other memory, heard the rhythmic pounding of her feet on the strange machine, all these things were his memories now. Mata knew his answer as it was already leaving his lips, “I wish it.”

“MATA, YOU WILL SERVE OUR DESIRES AND YOU WILL BE OURS FOR YOUR LIFETIME IN SEEKING HER. WISH IT.”

Mata swallowed. “I wish it still.”

The shaman’s neck broke as his head swung around backwards and the corpse fell forwards into the fire, the shaman’s lifeless eyes looking at the ceiling as the fire took to the hair and necklaces. If the shaman had been present at his own death, he would have been surprised to see that his cave was empty, and Mata was not sitting in front of him. Only the skins, the spears, the ax, and the bag remained, but Mata was no more.

---

Mata’s eyes snapped open in shock, and he stood up suddenly, scaring the people around him. He reached out for a pole nearby to steady himself as his mind reasserted itself in a panic. An elderly lady on the bench across from Mata smiled at his reaction.

“Are you alright, young man?”

Mata felt the strangeness of the words in his ears, hearing a language that he felt that he should not understand, yet he did. It was English. What language had he spoke before? It almost escaped him. It was El-am. He spoke El-am. Not English.

“Bad dream?” Mata-that-was-not-Mata replied, his mouth forming strange words, he ran his hand down his front in embarrassment, feeling strange clothes and fabrics under his fingers.

“I thought so. Sit down, you dropped your backpack, by the way,” the old woman smiled. She lifted a crooked finger and pointed underneath the metal bench.

“Thanks,” Mata returned, ducking his head thankfully, his senses finally returning to normal. He released the swaying metal bar and sat down, grabbing his backpack and setting it on his lap. He was on the metro. A tunnel deep underground that had a metal cart travel through it, a subway? The words filled his mind as he unlocked the knowledge as he needed it.

The old woman leaned forward, and her eyes blinked to a deep black void, unending, unknown stars wheeling in the depths. In a whisper that only Mata could hear, she uttered, “YOU KNOW ALL THAT YOU DID AND ALL THAT YOU WILL NEED AS YOU WILL SERVE US HERE AS YOU WISHED IT.”

With another blink, the old lady’s eyes returned to normal and she leaned back to read her magazine(?).

Mata felt it all. The strangeness and the familiar fighting each other viciously. A short faced cave bear and long tooth (sabretooth tiger?) fighting each other on the moor slopes above his village, the growling and high pitched scream of the great ones seeking dominance as the village burned their fires high to keep the beasts away. He had lost Seka not long after, the fires could not keep illness away, and the spirit of death had found her. He felt the subway rock and tilt as it took a slight curve, heading for midtown. He felt his letter jacket on his arms, the backpack full of coursework and textbooks in his lap. His name…

His name was Matt Johnson, and he was a junior in high school. Mata closed his eyes tightly, and he saw Seka-that-was-not-Seka in his memory, a hand holding a Starbucks(?) coffee, her red hair framing her face. She took a drink from her latte, and he saw her name.

“Sarah,” Mata said under his breath. He grinned. He had to find Sarah.

Down at the other end of the train car, a blond man in a suit grimaced behind his newspaper. He felt the presence of an Emissary nearby… which was strange, because a competitor would not just appear without warning. Something had changed. He lowered his hand to the small caliber handgun under his jacket for reassurance. He adjusted it and lowered the newspaper. The train car was typically full for this time of day, and nothing looked out of place. He felt the whisper in his ear, the light touch of his Sponsor.

“ITS THE BOY IN RED AND WHITE, UTU HAS CHANGED THE GAME,” it said and then his Sponsor was gone.

The man leaned forward looking down the train car, and saw an young black man in a letter jacket holding a backpack, looking at the crowd around him in awe. He was definitely new, and an easy kill.

Detective Ethan Ness leaned back in his seat, deciding he would follow the young man for now… and see how the gods laid it out. It was their will after all, who was he to contest it? An Emissary had a place, a part to play, and the Game was the only thing that mattered. He would follow his Sponsor and do his part.

Kids got shot all the time. He would be careful.

As Jaskueli had in every lifetime so far.

The darkness was pervasive. It was a living thing, oozing and sucking about among the trees, working its fingers through the underbrush and around the tree roots. It was also in the air, flicking and flying lightly around the boughs and in the crowns, silent birds nestled into their hallows paying the dark no mind. There was a dichotomy of the dark being both the tentacled monster of the ground, and the mist in the air, both present and harmonious, yet acting so different. They were the same.

I saw the dark for what it was. Not an absence of light, but a living thing.

As a child, the darkness would come every evening, and my father and mother would shutter the house, stir the hearth, and go about their business. In the winter, we were further removed from the dark, even though it lasted longer through the day and night. The house would stay shut, and I foolishly thought the dark ‘out there’ would have a harder time getting ‘in here’. The summer was scarier for me. My parents would keep the windows open long into the night, and the screens would only keep the bugs out. It would not keep the dark ‘out there’. My nightmares were always the worst in the summer.

When I went to camp as a preteen, I saw the darkness eat for the first time. I was at the camp fire with fifty of my classmates, and we sat laughing and talking in our ring of fire light. I was uncomfortable being out in the dark, and I thought I was outgrowing the fear of the dark. I thought I was finally maturing to the point where I would leave such childish things behind. But as I sat there, watching the sparks travel upwards in one of those inevitable lulls in conversation and carrying on, I saw an owl sitting on a branch watching me. Not the group. Me.

It’s eyes were tawny brown, nestled in the white and brown speckled feathers of the plumage of a common barn owl. Next to it, another owl, made of inky blackness. I thought at first it was the firelight shadow of the owl, but it was not. It was a simile of the owl… a shifted copy of it. As I watched, the brown owl faded, becoming less and less real. And the dark owl, the fake, it became all the more solid. It was but a shadow, but as it formed, it gained depth and mass, and its eyes went from an absence of dark to a deep black, reflecting the fire below.

I screamed in terror. My scream wrenched my throat, tearing at my vocal cords, my breath exploding out of me so fiercely that I was a bomb in detonation, my lungs felt near collapse with the violent expulsion.

My classmates startled and shrunk away, some falling off their perches on logs and timber, others standing, readying themselves for flight or fight. My mouth remained open as the scream faded to nothingness and my body finally remembered it could move. I shot upwards and ran like a lightening bolt to the cabins to cower under my covers fully clothed until morning.

Two things happened that night with the owl. My nickname became Screech, and my hair turned completely white. I was twelve when that happened, twelve. When my parents were called, I had to deal with years of therapy afterwards. Years of telling nodding old men and crotchety women what they wanted to hear.

I would like to say that was the last time I saw the darkness for what it was. Or I should say, see what hid in the darkness. As I got older, the therapy helped me realize I only had one chance in all this. Ironically, it was the therapist studying me that opened the realization to me. I could study the darkness, understand it, and perhaps fight it… or I could cower to nothingness. I could do something about it, or fail to do anything. I took the nickname as a reminder of what I was meant to do. It became a part of my identity.

I was Screech. My arms slowly became covered in tattoo sleeves of owls in all shapes and sizes. I never let my white hair grow out, keeping it closely cropped, the white stubble looking more blond than anything. Now being 24, and studying the darkness that I see, I can tell you what I have found.

The darkness is not some ancient evil. It is not a demon, or Satan, or some form of destruction and death. It is not an incomprehensible strangeness that would drive men mad. It is none of these things. It is in need of someone to understand it.

I was chosen to be that person. So I stand here, at the edge of my parent’s old cabin in the tangled old wood of British Columbia, watching the darkness approach between the trees. I extinguished all the lights long ago, waiting for the sun to set far behind me in the west. I stood a few paces from the porch, in the open area where we usually parked the family truck when we drove out here to vacation away from the hustle of Vancouver in the summers. I always was in fear of the darkness as it approached through the trees. Tonight, I stood before it.

I would like to say I was defiant or courageous. I was neither. I stood waiting my guest as a death row inmate would the executioner. I was resigned to it. After all my study, all my reading, and all of my thought about this, I knew that the confrontation was inevitable. I would have to not only face my fears, I would have to face the source of them as well.

The darkness was tentative, flicking in among the trees, running its fingers over the underbrush, moving from shadow to shadow, pushing itself towards my open area. It reached the edge of the grass and hung in the air like a curtain. Night within night. But the hesitation belied of something else, as it seemed that the fear may have been a two way street.

“I see you,” I called out.

“I see you,” the voice mimicked. It was soft, gentle, like a soft caress of a lover.

“I am not afraid,” I tried. It was…

“A lie,” the voice finished my internal thought for me.

“I am afraid. But I am not going to let that fear keep me from this,” I corrected.

The curtain waved lightly as if a breeze moved over it’s surface. There was no wind tonight, it was still. It was if the darkness regarded me. I smiled inwardly at the thought of it studying me.

“I am Screech,” I said.

“I want to know your real name,” the voice returned.

“Why?”

Silence.

“My name is Brian.”

“Why did you not like my owl, Brian? I made it for you.” The voice sounded sad.

“The owl that you killed?”

“I did not kill anything. That owl was my friend. Her name was Saskeneah. She died years later of old age, and I carried her to her ancestors on the highest branches of the forest.”

“I…” I did not understand. “Why did you make an owl?”

“I wanted to show you that I saw you, Brian.” The curtain lowered itself to the edge of the grass and folded around itself until a woman stood at the edge of the grass. Her skin was like moonlight, with hair of molten evening, stars dancing within it. Her eyes were luminous, with dark black irises that could see through anything. Including me.

And I realized that the thing that I had feared for most of my life was beautiful. She stood, draped in what was the curtain, only her hands, her bare feet, and her neck were visible from the shifting robes that adorned her lithe frame.

“You did not tell me your name,” I asked furtively. I ran a hand over my shaved head absentmindedly. I felt suddenly out of place, my feet shifting in the grass.

She grinned at my discomfort. “It is very long in my tribe’s mother tongue. But you can call me Unnuaq.”

“Unnakwok?”

“Close enough, Bareen.”

“You are teasing me,” I felt a smirk turn the corner of my mouth. “Say it again?”

Her voice was light, not a whisper, like the quiet slice of a wing on the air. “Unnuaq.”

“Unnuaq.”

She smiled widely at her name falling from my lips, her own parted to reveal perfect teeth. “Yes.”

“Why?” I finally asked. The question that I had held on to for fourteen years, and I was finally able to ask it.

“Why does the sun rise and the wind blow? Why do things grow and die?” She murmured. “I do not know. I know that I came to be, as you know you have come to be. We were birthed from parents who loved us, we were raised to observe and understand, so we can survive ourselves. We are no different from each other.”

“But I can see you, Unnuaq.”

“And I can see you,” she smiled gently. “Don’t ask why. Seeing is enough.”

I started to chuckle, and it shifted to a laugh. It surprised me. “All these years. All this time… I was afraid. I was… oh nevermind.”

“Me too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I had a boy see me. See me! I… showed you a gift. An owl that I made from myself, a precious gift for my kind. And you screamed in fear. It broke my heart. I have been waiting all these years to ask you…” Unnuaq demurred.

“Why?” I finished for her.

“Yes,” her eyes focused on my face and she stepped closer, her bare feet barely touching the grass. She was not standing on the ground, she was deigning to alight her feet upon it.

“Don’t ask why,” I replied in kind, mirroring her own declaration. “I was a child that did not understand. And I will be honest, I still do not understand… this… but I would like to.”

“As would I,” she nodded, and her hair shifted forward, twinkling in the light. She raised a hand and pulled it behind her ear. Again, I suddenly felt very much out of place. “I, uh… would you like some tea?”

“I would love some tea,” Unnuaq laughed. She seemed as uncomfortable as I was.

I offered my hand.

Unnuaq took it.

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.