Land Beyond Summer

by Brad Linaweaver

  He looked out the window at the blue patch of sky. “Night for all the universes.” He wasn’t laughing now.

  “Forever.”

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  The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.

  Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  QUESTING AROUND

  “I won’t fall back in love with you!” Mother’s voice addressed his father from months ago, captured and released again to renew Clive’s pain. He’d eavesdropped on that particular argument; he knew Mom was talking to Dad. But hearing it again, ripped from its original context, he felt that she was talking to him.

  “Mother?” he asked of the sky. Or had the sounds come from the great green expanse that was Mrs. Norse’s backyard? It was as green and flat as a pool table, stretching out farther than the eye could see with a perfectly kept row of hedges on the right, and a white stone wall on the left, both stretching to the horizon.

  “Bad memories are like germs, waiting to reinfect the unwary” said Mrs. Norse. “Clive, you don’t have to mow the lawn if you don’t want to. But I think you’ll find it’s just what you need, and the grass could use it.”

  His mother’s words had shaken him badly. The only benefit he could derive was a redoubling of his desire to rescue his parents, to save them from dangers … and perhaps from themselves.

  But as she had done before, Mrs. Norse seemed to read his mind. “You’re in a good position to achieve reunion with your family, Clive, but not if you try too hard! There is a rule of indirection you should observe. If you try to achieve your heart’s desire by a direct approach, you will fail.”

  “One of your rules, I’ll bet!” he snapped.

  She was annoyingly calm as always: “Real rules set themselves. False rules aren’t rules but lies.”

  Wolf came over and licked his hand. Clive could be back home as far as that went because the dog hadn’t said a word since he’d come out into the back yard. Mine is not to reason why, mine is to cut the grass, he thought. If she wanted him to do this, there must be a reason. But the lawn was already so neatly trimmed that the idea seemed preposterous. Oh well, mine’s not to reason why….

  He gave the lawnmower a thorough going-over. It wasn’t the old fashioned model he would have expected, the kind with blades in a spiral that turn only with an unseemly exertion of muscle power. It was a power motor, but with a cord instead of a switch. The only item missing was the gas tank.

  He could feel the smile in Mrs. Norse’s words: “It doesn’t require fuel.”

  Looking at the seemingly infinite vista of lawn, he could only shrug. There would never be enough fuel for all that anyway. How long he would hold out was anyone’s guess, but he’d be good for twice as long with grass that didn’t need cutting! He was only sure of one fact: the sooner he started, the sooner he could stop thinking about it.

  Yanking the cord, he found it only took one try for the lawnmower to sputter to life. Real life, that is. The motor purred as though a hundred cats were inside, all in unison the way the cats had done earlier. He could feel the handlebars throb under his grasp as if blood coursed through them. Wolf made a slight whining at what could not be a pleasant experience for him.

  “It won’t talk, will it?” Clive asked.

  Mrs. Norse laughed. The largest Persian there commented, “That would be ridiculous.”

  Wolf chose this moment to express an opinion: “Hey, the kid doesn’t know. He’s still getting over listening to me yap. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear anything talk around here.”

  “Thanks, Wolf,” said Clive, feeling better as he took the mower out of neutral and started his chore, his task, his impossible labor…. The mower moved quite easily as was to be expected with no thickness of grass underneath. The object was to see how long it would take to reach the end of the lawn so he could turn around and come back. Drifting over to the hedges, he had the notion that he might as well do the job in straight lines, starting on the right side and going up and down until he was up against the wall opposite.

  The mower wasn’t the kind that pulled you along. He had to push, but that was no problem. Except that as he proceeded, the grass was becoming imperceptibly thicker. A very little spray of green was coming out of the mower at last. He was glad that she didn’t use a bag to catch each blade.

  He hadn’t mowed any grass recently except when Dad asked him to do the family yard. That was a lot harder than this. First of all, there were all the trees and bushes to go around. Dad didn’t do the best job of keeping all the branches trimmed, but he didn’t trust Clive or Fay to manicure his beloved greenery. Inevitably, Clive would come in from the yard covered in scratches.

  Then Mom would fuss over him and get out the bandaids and ointments. He hardly noticed the scratches but what he hated about working in the yard was that he’d pick up insect bites. He never noticed getting them at the time but suddenly they’d be all over his arms and legs — big, ugly welts itching like crazy.

  Now as he pushed the red lawnmower up the incredible length of Mrs. Norse’s backyard, he concluded that what he liked best about this world was the apparent lack of insects. At least he hadn’t seen any yet. Whether or not he would count something like the monster that had attacked Fay was an open question.

  For a moment, he thought he saw an insect flitting at the periphery of his vision; but he turned his head quickly to see that it was a speck of yellow pollen floating on the air. As he watched, it drifted down and touched the grass a few feet to the left of where he was mowing. As it made contact, there was a little pop as of a soap bubble bursting.

  Again he heard his mother’s voice: “We try to be fair to both of you but it’s not Fay’s fault that she’s a better student than you are.”

  God, he’d almost succeeded in making himself forget that conversation; but now old memories, sharper than a wasp’s sting, came drifting down out of cool Autumn air. Where was all this stuff coming from? Maybe he could follow the “pollen” to its source. Another landed with its load of joy from Dad: “You’re not very good, son.” At least his parents had been able to agree on something.

  The grass was finally growing thick enough to require some effort on his part; and the whole lawn was subtly tilting upward, making it harder to just push the mower along. Added to this was the unpleasant prospect of more pollen drifting into view, always coming from in front of him. Another popped and he heard Dad’s voice again, but discoursing on a different subject: “A man needs one place in this lousy world where he can be as big a jerk as he wants and not pay a price.” Clive had never heard that one before, but all he could think was that Dad was a jerk to talk that way.

  The next one popped and it was Mom again: “You don’t treat me like a real person; you’re as sensitive as an episode of Championship Wrestling.” He didn’t remember Mom ever making jokes when she and Dad argued, but maybe that was something she reserved for rare private moments. Clive wondered why if wives thought it was so important that husbands treat them with respect that they didn’t set a better example in how they regarded their children. Personhood was apparently a restricted commodity.

  Subversive thoughts were interrupted by half a dozen of the small yellow timebombs coming to rest right in front of the lawnmower. Mom and Dad’s angry voices were intermingled and chopped up along with the grass. He grabbed the control on the mower and put it on maximum. Now he was looking for more of the pollen so he could run it over. Grandfather must be behind this, seeding the sky with malice.

  The ground tilted up again, and he had to start pushing really hard to keep it going forward. He could feel the pressure in his wrists and it was harder to get traction. There was pollen up ahead, but he couldn’t get to it in time to stop from h
earing new torments. First, there was Dad saying: “I swear I’ll never lose my temper like that again. You have my word.”

  Then there was Mom saying, “I know I promised I’d never leave you, but there comes a time when you have to face that it’s over. You need to get on with your life.”

  Clive shouted, “Shut up, both of you!” He was louder than the mower, louder than the hollow words from the past, louder than all the promises ever made. He turned the mower off and collapsed on the soft grass, still telling the blue sky with its flecks of yellow to leave him alone. Other pollen was drifting all around him.

  It didn’t seem that he’d been mowing that long, but he was already out of sight of the house. There was nothing behind him but a vast sea of green and the gigantic totem pole, so tall that it seemed to hold up the sky. As the voices started up again, he decided to get back to work, if only in hope that the purring noise would drown out yesterday’s recriminations. Everything was Mom and Dad criticizing and accusing, finding fault with everyone and everything, as if some manic editor had sifted out every fine thought and sentiment they’d ever had, leaving only the bile.

  Starting up the mower again, he regretted that it wasn’t noisy enough to overwhelm the talk, talk, talk; but there were so many random sentences flying around that they succeeded in obliterating each other’s meaning. The saving grace of too much carping was that it changed itself into white noise.

  The mowing was becoming harder and this distracted his attention, as well. The exertion produced thick drops of perspiration on his brow. Wiping his head with the back of his hand, he felt dull pain in his ankles as he pushed up an ever steeper incline. He was just about to call it quits when the mower slipped out of his hands and started rolling back toward him. Grabbing for the handle, he only succeeded in knocking the machine on its side, where it skidded a few feet before coming to a stop.

  He felt sick when he saw what was underneath. The mower had no blade but rather what appeared to be several rows of teeth and fangs. He wanted to quit and just walk away from his “chore,” but he wasn’t about to defy Mrs. Norse at this stage. Besides, he was curious about just how much longer it would take to reach the end of the lawn. From the top of the stone mountain, he hadn’t been able to see as far into Autumn as his current location. He was dying to see more.

  The grass was very high now and the pollen was still drifting up ahead. When he lost his footing, he grabbed at the green tendrils and they supported his weight. At least the mower wasn’t drifting back. Perhaps the teeth were holding on as desperately as he was. Craning his neck, he could see what might to be the end of the lawn, a great mound of weed covered earth, beyond which was the blue of heaven. He dreaded that it might only be the top of a hill with another vista of grass beyond; but he was encouraged that it would at least be downhill if he could reach that point.

  He hurried the rest of the way and stopped as he reached the summit. Catching his breath, he looked over the edge. Only there was no edge, only an unbroken surface of more grass descending and gathering itself into a huge ball that hung out in space beyond where the wall and hedge terminated, as if sliced off by a giant cleaver. Below the ball was yellow mist, the same mist he had witnessed in his vision, that Fay had seen in her dream, that was the distant fog they’d both seen from the stone mountain. The yellow pollen was drifting up from the mist, yellow dots separating themselves from yellow space.

  While he was contemplating this new marvel, another problem reared its head… literally. The huge mound that seemed to hang in space began to move. It lifted itself up and the piece of earth on which he clung shifted and moved as well. Then the ball turned and faced him.

  He was looking into the blazing red eyes of a dragon. There was no doubt about it. Just because the monster was covered in grass instead of scales didn’t make it any less of a dragon. As the leviathan opened its jaws wide, he saw gigantic teeth that didn’t resemble in the least your standard lawn features.

  There was a morbid fascination in staring at a dragon, the same nervous excitement a bird experiences in the presence of a snake — a prickly skin feeling that goes along with the idea you may be someone’s next meal. Fortunately, the yawning abyss of the jaws came no closer but swung back and forth as the creature spoke.

  “Why have you stopped the treatment?” it asked.

  “Hello,” Clive responded stupidly.

  “It felt so good, the trim you were giving me. Uh oh, you better stand back, I’m going to sneeze.”

  Clive wouldn’t have known any greater terror at that moment if he’d been told he was going to be eaten instead. Fortunately, the dragon turned his head. The sneeze had the force of an earthquake, and that’s what it was. Clive hung on to the weeds, or whatever they were, for dear life, as the sticky wind escaped the dragon’s nostrils, releasing the odor of damp earth and roots.

  “That’s better,” said the dragon. Clive saw more yellow pollen in the air, drifting up from the fog below, and obviously the cause of the leviathan’s sneeze. “The trouble maker’s still making trouble,” lamented the dragon.

  “You mean my grand… I mean, Malak,” Clive corrected himself.

  “He wants to screw up my environment, yank the chain on my eco systems, and give me a hard time in general.”

  “He hates dragons?” Clive let himself use the word, but he felt nervous about it. He’d used the word dwarf around a dwarf at a state carnival and let himself in for a speech about how little people didn’t like the term. He’d called Fay a girl at school and received a lecture from one of the teachers, Miss Mims, about the unadvisability of that term. For all he knew, dragon might be considered a pejorative in this neighborhood.

  The dragon didn’t mind being called a dragon. He did, however, suggest a problem having to do with plurals as opposed to singulars. “Hey kid, let me clue you: there is only one dragon. All else are reflections of myself. If I get sick, then your earth dragon comes down with a bellyache, too, and your seasons are adversely affected — but as I say, the earth dragon is just another extension from the old sod.”

  This was not what Clive expected to hear from a dragon, but then he’d never expected to be engaging in a conversation with an ambulatory lawn. He pictured dragons in caves where they guarded hordes of treasure and ate princesses when hungry for a snack. He couldn’t imagine this dragon doing anything so uncouth but wondered over its relationship with Mrs. Norse, besides sharing her most annoying trait: the mind reading business.

  “I only collect real treasure,” it said, “what grows and dies with the changes of Life. But I know what you want to see: fierce looking swords with jewel encrusted hilts…”

  “Well, I…” Clive began.

  “Or an Egyptian sarcophagus covered in gold and silver, or a Roman bowl of exquisite workmanship, or a Viking’s sturdy helmet with maybe a touch of dried blood on the horns…”

  “How is that you …” Clive began again.

  “Or a Persian warrior’s burnished shield, or Sumerian goblets and arm rings, or diamonds which are a girl’s best friend, or how about American Express traveler’s checks — don’t leave home without them…”

  “I get the idea,” said Clive.

  “Sorry about that. The Lady didn’t send you to me just so I’d have a captive audience. You were doing a favor for me, and I’m supposed to do something for you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Didn’t you want something a short time ago?”

  Clive felt like a ripe idiot. Here Mrs. Norse was trying to help him in her subtle way but he was too dumb to notice. For all he knew, he was talking to the most powerful being he would ever meet. Time for a wish!

  “I want to be with my sister again.”

  “You got it.”

  “And I want to save my parents.”

  “That’s harder, because they have a say in their own salvation; but I can help you try. Anything else?”

  How many wishes did he have? The traditional three? Or was it unlimite
d? Should he ask for riches? A lack of money had been the root of much evil back home. Should he ask for wisdom? If he had that, he could solve other problems that would come his way. And there was good health to consider, but he couldn’t rightly ask for that without including the rest of his family.

  He forgot that the dragon could read minds: “Excuse me for interrupting this exercise in megalomania, kid, but when I asked if there was anything else, it was a figure of speech, you know. You’re in this world now, and you have to deal with these problems. If you ask me, your whole family could use a lesson in the importance of the here and now.”

  “Leave them out of this,” said Clive, feeling stupider than ever. There must be a limit to how many times you could defy a dragon before he put you on the menu.

  Amazingly, the dragon apologized: “I take it back for one member of your family, only. Fay has her head screwed on straight. And I think it is time you were with her again so you may benefit from her good example.”

  And with that, the dragon suddenly lowered its head so suddenly that Clive lost his hold and fell straight into the yellow fog. He was prepared to scream all the way down … but once he was in the fog, he didn’t seem to be falling anymore. Rather, he was experiencing a floating sensation. This lasted for a long time and he became used to it.

  He was not alone in the fog, not exactly. Thanks to free floating pollen, Mom and Dad’s voices continued to bedevil him. Only now they were not selections from the past but an amalgam of both giving him a hard time: “So you’re having a big adventure,” the dual voice taunted him, “but how long will it be before you start to stink? You didn’t bring any deoderant along, now did you? No change of clothes? No toothbrush? First your underarms will reek and you didn’t even bring chewing gum to fight bad breath. Then the perspiration will dry from all your exertions, such as mowing the grass, and every square inch of your skin will have a nasty, musty odor, that will seep into your clothes. We’re just as glad you’re not home but floating around. If you were home, you’d take a shower instead of a bath and you always let the water run too long, and too hot. You were never frugal with water or with anything else. Every spot of mildew in the bathroom was your fault. We should have never had you. Who can afford children today? Fay wasn’t much better, but at least she didn’t drain our hard earned money as quickly you did, you ungrateful….”