by D K Drake
The only cool feature about him was his ragged jet black hair that dangled just above his intentionally boring brown eyes, covered the tips of his ears and brushed the back of his neck.
If he revealed the true color of his eyes, though, Julianne would certainly notice him.
No, he thought, shaking the idea out of his head. He’d rather be a background geek than a front and center freak any day.
Disappointed with football and heartbroken over Julianne, Javan traded his football helmet for his bike helmet, unlocked his bike from the bike rack outside of the gym and pedaled the five back road miles home as fast as he could go. Classes didn’t start for another two weeks, but he was already anxious to be done with the school year.
The August heat in Montana wasn’t brutal, but it was hot enough to have him drenched in sweat by the time he rode under the iron arches of the Rickman Family Ranch. This was the place he called home, but even here he was a second place kid.
Nobody knew who or where his parents were. Unlike the other parentless kids who came to stay here, he wasn’t eligible for adoption. His parents claimed they would be back for him.
That was fifteen years ago. He had stopped believing in their return the day he turned double digits.
The couple who owned the ranch and raised him treated him like their own child, but he never really belonged. He was always second to their biological children, the three older girls he called his sisters. He knew the truth, though. They all did.
Javan bypassed the main house and rode straight to the barn behind it. He propped his bike just outside of Storm’s stall. The sight of the black stallion eased the frustration that had been building up all day. “Good to see you, buddy. I hope you’re ready for a long ride. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
He reached for the latch on the stall door but was stopped by the sound of his own name. “Javan! I need you up at the house. Now!”
Javan closed his eyes and dropped his head. “Figures.” He shook his head, then looked up and rubbed his horse’s neck. “That’s Mama Sandra. Better not ignore her. We’ll ride later.”
Storm snorted his displeasure.
“I agree.” Javan looked to his right and left. No one else was around. “Tell you what.” He unlatched the door and led Storm to the front of the barn. “Stay here. Don’t move until you hear me whistle. Then you know what to do. Right?”
Storm shot Javan that wicked horse’s smile only Javan would recognize, neighed and batted his head up and down.
“Good boy.” Javan laughed and walked up to the house to obey the call of the woman who raised him as her own.
◊◊◊
“There he is.” Tears filled Esmeralda’s eyes as she watched Javan walk across the yard to the house. “There’s my boy.”
“He looks nothing like me,” Kenton said, standing at the window beside her.
“There are quite a few generations between you and him.”
“I guess growing up in this dimension didn’t help.”
“Shh.” Esmeralda elbowed Kenton and nodded toward the plump gray-haired woman waiting for Javan at the door.
“Right,” he whispered. “Staying on script now.”
“Good.” Esmeralda dried her eyes and cleared her throat as Javan ascended the five wooden steps leading to the back porch. She didn’t want his first impression of her to be of a weeping woman who croaked when she spoke.
She wanted him to recognize her. Hug her. Forgive her.
As she would soon find out, however, reuniting with him was not going to be that easy.
Chapter 2
The Unexpected Guests
The last thing Javan wanted at the moment was to answer questions about football or girls. So despite his miserable mood, he forced a smile and a jovial attitude as he entered the living room from the back porch door. “Yo, Mama Sandra!” He toned down his voice when he practically ran into her upon opening the door. “Oh. There you are. Whatcha need?”
“I need for you to meet your guests.”
“My guests?” That was odd. He never had visitors.
“Yes.” Sandra closed the door, put her arm around Javan’s shoulders and introduced him to the two people staring at him across the room. “This is Kenton and Esmeralda Kaesemeyer.”
The young woman in the yellow sundress seemed strangely familiar, yet he knew they had never met. She was a touch shorter than his 5’5” height and had the same jet black hair as he did. Only hers was braided, slung over her shoulder and hung just past her waist. With her perfectly tan skin and angelic complexion, she didn’t appear to be a day over fourteen, but something about her penetrating blue eyes made him believe she was much older than she looked.
The old man in the button-downed beige shirt, brown pants and leather boots seemed an odd companion for the woman. He was a good six or seven inches taller than Javan and hid a wild batch of white hair under a black cowboy hat. Javan couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was sizing him up. For what, though, he didn’t know.
“Hi. Nice to meet you.” Javan lifted his hand and offered a wimpy wave. He turned to Mama Sandra. “This was fun. Can I go ride Storm now?”
“No. Your guests have something important to discuss with you.” Mama Sandra walked him to the couch and sat him down in front of the two standing Kaesemeyers. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”
He bounced back up. “What?” He whispered through gritted teeth into Mama Sandra’s ear. “You’re going to leave me alone with these two?”
“You’ll be fine.” She pushed him back into a seated position and walked out of the room.
Silence followed Mama Sandra’s exit.
Javan stared at Kenton, willing him to speak.
He didn’t. Instead, Kenton stared at Esmeralda.
She wasn’t speaking either. She simply stared at Javan, making him squirm and reinforce his focus on Kenton.
After what seemed an eternity, Kenton’s deep voice broke the silence. “Oh, just tell him who we are and why we’re here so we can get on with this. Moments matter, and we don’t have enough left as is.”
“Patience!” Esmeralda turned her attention to Kenton, giving Javan some needed relief from the intense stare down. “He needs to understand what we’re asking of him, and that’s going to take time. It has to be his choice whether he comes with us or not.”
“He has no choice. He’s coming with us, and we need to leave. Now.”
“Whoa!” Javan jumped up. “I don’t know what kind of family dispute you have going on here or how I got in the middle of it, but I agree with the girl. I have a choice, and my choice is to stay right here. Goodbye.”
Javan stepped between them, but she grabbed his arm and looked into his eyes. “When I said goodbye to you fifteen years ago, you had the most beautiful emerald eyes. You’re hiding them now, though. Why?”
Javan tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Could it be? Was he really looking at his birth mother?
Impossible. She was entirely too young. And the man was entirely too old to be his father. Who were these people? How did she know about his eyes?
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you’re freaking me out and you need to leave.” Javan walked over to the window, opened it and whistled. Storm would be in to rescue him in thirty seconds flat.
“We’re leaving,” Kenton said, “but you’re coming with us. I’m your great-great-great grandfather, and this is your mother. You, young man, are the last of the Collector Bloodline and the only hope the people and dragons of Zandador have left.”
“Collector bloodline? Dragons? Zanda what?” Javan laughed. “You, old man, are crazy.”
Just then, the door flung open and Storm charged in. Javan used the couch as a springboard, leaped onto the rearing horse and rode bareback toward the hills.
◊◊◊
“Great,” Esmeralda said. “You did it your way, and he ran away.”
“No need to sugarcoat the truth.”
&nb
sp; “I wasn’t going to sugarcoat--”
A breathless Sandra ran into the room, interrupting the conversation. “Did I just hear a horse in my house?”
“Yes,” Esmeralda said. “Wait. That door was closed, and nobody opened it. How did that horse get in here?”
Sandra shook her head. “That Javan. He’s always teaching that horse to do the strangest things. Apparently it now knows how to open doors.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. That kid has a way with animals I have never seen before. He was riding our dog before he could crawl, riding ponies without a saddle before he could walk and taming the wildest of horses—including that Storm he just rode out on—by the time he was five. He’s got a true gift, but it comes so naturally to him he doesn’t even realize it.”
Kenton and Esmeralda looked at each other. They silently agreed that this was a better-than-expected development.
Maybe Javan really was the one of whom the prophecy spoke.
Chapter 3
Lightning and Smoke
“U
nbelievable!” Braced on Storm’s back and pushing the horse as fast as he could get him to go along the river that ran through the ranch nestled near the foothills of the Columbia Mountains, Javan yelled his frustration to his best friend. “I hope I haven’t waited my whole life for those crazies.
“That man put one too many ‘greats’ in front of grandfather to sound sane, and if anything, that girl is my sister, not my mom. There’s no way she’s old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son!”
She knew about his eyes, though. He’d hated his eyes since he was three and the kids in his preschool class wouldn’t play with him because of his “scary eyes.” So he wore his dad’s dark sunglasses everywhere he went.
That had lasted about a week. The only way Mama Sandra could convince him to take off the shades was to get him colored contact lenses. His eyes had been a boring brown ever since.
Maybe Esmeralda had been one of the preschoolers in his class. Maybe that’s how she knew about his eyes. Still, that didn’t explain why she showed up today claiming to be his mother.
“Storm, if they were my family, I’m better off not knowing where I came from. I’m better off running away with you. Let’s ride!”
Javan prodded the horse with his heels, encouraging Storm to quicken his already fast pace. Soon they would be off the ranch property and into the mountains. He knew the area well. He could easily hide over the weekend.
He would return on Monday and hope the Kaesemeyers were gone. Or he could just stay lost. Start over somewhere else. New high school. New football team. New girls. Except the whole food, shelter, clothing and caring for a horse without any money to his name could prove problematic.
“We’ll figure something out, Storm. Just keep rid—whoa. What…is…that?”
Apparently Storm didn’t care to stick around to study the giant grey scaly creature with pointy wings and a spike on the top of his massive head lurking in the water just ahead of them. Instead, Storm stopped in his tracks and reared back, throwing Javan onto the bank of the river.
By the time Javan stopped himself from rolling into the cold river water, Storm was gone.
The creature remained. Javan’s initial reaction was to describe it as a dragon, but he wasn’t insane. Dragons didn’t exist.
Whatever this creature was called, it spanned nearly half the width of the fifty-foot wide river and stood with the top of his body showing in the twelve-foot deep water. Its long neck swiveled its head in Javan’s direction. Its nose was the size of Javan’s head and was almost close enough for Javan to touch. He didn’t.
He also wasn’t sure if he should stay flat on his stomach and wait the creature out or jump to his feet and take his chances with an all-out sprint towards home.
The creature lifted his head and snorted a lightning bolt into the blue afternoon sky.
“Staying put,” Javan decided. If he was going to die by a bolt of electricity from the mouth of a monster, it wasn’t going to be while running. Running was the one activity he hated most in life; he certainly didn’t want that miserable feeling of forcing one foot in front of the other at an unnaturally fast pace to be his last memory.
Silverspike, stop scaring the kid. The ground rumbled as a similar creature landed a few yards away from Javan. Only this one was smaller, spikeless and sported round wings on its grey, scaly body.
I don’t trust him. Silverspike splashed the water with his long, pointy tail. Something’s wrong with his eyes.
“Really?” Javan smacked the ground. “Even these bizarre creatures know about my eyes. Why do I even bother with these color contacts anymore?”
No way. The land-based creature crouched to Javan’s level. You can hear us?
“Of course.” Javan cocked his head toward the creature, half-expecting it to open its mouth and bite his head off. “I mean, I can usually sense what animals are thinking. Can’t everybody?”
No.
“Oh.” Javan gulped. “Well, it is a little weird that I can understand you so clearly. That’s definitely new.”
“You can understand the dragons?” The human voice of Kenton—who arrived on the back of Izzie, one of the ranch horses—joined the conversation. “You can hear their thoughts?”
Javan winced. Like his bright green eyes, his way of communicating with animals made him a freak. So he preferred to keep his peculiar communication skills between him and the animals. “It’s no big deal.” At least it wasn’t until Kenton’s description of the creatures sunk in. “Hold on.”
Javan rolled over and slowly stood. “These guys are dragons?”
“Dragon Stalkers to be exact.”
“Dragon Stalkers? Are they stalking me? Do they want to eat me?”
“Relax, kid. This here is Skylark, a Noon Stalker,” Kenton said, pointing to the smaller dragon. “And that is Silverspike, a Midnight Stalker. Skylark only eats around noon, and Silverspike only eats around midnight. It’s just past four o’clock, so you’re good.”
“That makes absolutely no sense to me.”
Skylark chuckled and puffed a cloud of smoke in Javan’s face. Sorry, she said. I tend to smoke when I laugh.
“It will make more sense once we get you to Zandador.”
“To where?”
“The Land of Zandador. Where you’re from. We had to hide you on earth to protect you. Now that you’re old enough to fight for the throne, you’re needed.”
“The throne? You want me to be king or something?”
“Exactly.”
“I was joking.”
“I’m not.” Kenton, still sitting on the horse, crossed his arms. “The current king needs to be overthrown. The only way to overthrow him is for a Collector such as you to collect all four Dragon Stalkers by the end of the year.”
“Dude, stop talking. The more you say, the crazier you sound.”
“It only sounds crazy until you step through that portal and experience life in the dragon dimension for yourself.”
“Portal? Dragon dimension? Now I know you’re crazy.” For the first time in his life, Javan actually wanted to run. But with Kenton in front of him, the dragons beside and behind him and Esmeralda approaching on horseback, he was stuck.
“Thanks for taking off without me, Kenton,” she said as she trotted up…on a calm Storm. “So glad we’re in this together.”
“You’re riding Storm?” Javan couldn’t believe his eyes. Storm was letting someone else ride him, and he wasn’t even fidgeting at the sight of two dragons. “I’m the only one he ever lets ride him.”
“Now we have something in common.” Esmeralda gracefully slid off the back of the horse and walked up to Javan. “I assume Kenton has told you by now why we need you back in Zandador.”
“He mentioned something about overthrowing a rotten king by collecting dragons. As fun as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”
“The people need you, Javan. The dragons need you.” She
put his hand on his cheek. “I need you.”
In that moment, he almost wanted her to be his mother. But she wasn’t. They had the wrong kid. “Look,” he said, pulling her hand away from his cheek, “you’ve made a mistake. I’m not the guy you need. I’m only fifteen. I can’t even make the starting lineup on my JV high school football team, so there’s no way I can take on an evil king and win. You people just need to go back to wherever you came from and leave me alone.”
Javan hopped on Storm’s back, but Esmeralda grabbed Javan’s ankle before he could ride away. “Three days,” she said. “Come with us for three days. See the land. Meet the people. Then make your decision. If you choose to return, I’ll bring you back myself and promise to never contact you again.”
“Three days?”
“Three days.”
Javan took a deep breath in and slowly exhaled. Having a tale of adventure to share at the start of school sure would help increase his cool factor. And he needed all the help he could get in that department. “You promise to bring me back if I don’t want to stay?”
“Promise.”
“Okay, then,” Javan said. “I guess we’re going to the Land of Zandador.”
Chapter 4
Feeding Time
Saying goodbye to Storm proved to be the most difficult part of Javan’s departure. Sure, he would miss Mama Sandra and Papa Tim, but they were so busy keeping up with the ranch, their kids and grandkids and all the foster kids that constantly came and went, that they never really had much time for him anyway.
Although he had guys from school and church he talked to, none were his buddies that he hung out with. He even doubted any of his football teammates would realize he wasn’t there if he missed a practice or two.
Storm was his only constant companion, his only true friend. He was the only one who would miss him and the only one he didn’t want to leave. Javan had tried to convince the Kaesemeyers to let Storm come along, but they said they had no way to transport him.