by D K Drake
“But it’s not activated until I dial the numerical address of the other end of the portal in Zandador. I have to dial the right number the same way you dial a number when you use your phone. The number is always changing, however, to prevent unrestricted interdimensional travel. Only Dragon Protectors like myself know how to operate the portal by deciphering the code that contains the current correct number. I have three tries to get it right.”
“And if you still get it wrong after the third try?”
“We’ll drown in an acid shower.”
Javan gulped. “That’s not good.”
“So it’s a good thing I know what I’m doing.” Esmeralda turned her attention back to the dial. She tapped a grey scale twice, a white scale once, the other grey scale nine times, the other white scale six times and the first grey scale three times.
The giant circle blinked off and on and off and on. Then the lights of the scales began flickering again. “Oops.”
“Oops?” Javan and Kenton asked together.
“I know where I messed up. I’ll get it right this time.”
She tapped the scales in the same pattern but started with a white scale. When she finished, the giant octagon blinked off and on and off and on.
And off.
The three of them stood in silent darkness for several seconds. Until the lights of the scales surged on, ten times brighter than before. The lighted scales began whirling around like a pinwheel. The whirling slowed and the scales seemed to melt together, creating a watery rainbow in the wall. Esmeralda smiled and hooked her arm around Javan’s. “Ready to go home?”
“We’re walking through there?”
“It’ll feel like you’re walking through a vat of Jello in the middle of a windstorm in the dead of winter,” Kenton said, “but it’s a quick trip. Just keep moving until you get to the other side.”
Javan swallowed. “I’m not so sure about this.”
“You’ll be fine.” Kenton slapped Javan on the shoulder. “Send for me when you’ve collected your final dragon. Good luck.”
“This is too bizarre.” Javan unhooked his arm from Esmeralda. “I want to go back to the ranch.”
“You promised me three days,” Esmeralda said, “so three days is what you’re going to give me.”
She reclaimed Javan’s arm and tugged him with her into the watery wall.
Chapter 6
The Land of Zandador
Sticky darkness. Cold wind. Uncontrollable laughter. Javan experienced all these sensations as he was transported through the portal with his mother by his side.
He had no idea what was so funny. He certainly didn’t enjoy blindly moving forward in the overwhelming darkness while a brisk, chilling wind pushed at him from behind. But he just couldn’t stop laughing, and he noticed Esmeralda couldn’t stop sneezing.
He kept laughing and Esmeralda kept sneezing even after they exited the portal onto the shore of a river moments later. Javan turned around and watched as the shimmering rock wall they had just stepped through returned to a solid colorful glowing octagon just like the one on earth.
They both stood on the sand in the dead of night laughing and sneezing and shivering for a good five minutes.
When Javan’s laughter downgraded to giggling and he could once again feel his toes, he spoke between giggles. “Why…am…I…laughing?”
Esmeralda sneezed. “It’s a side effect of interdimensional travel.” She sneezed again. “There. I think I’m done. I sneeze. Some twitch. Some laugh. Some cry. Some get mad. Some get sad. You never know until you step through the portal. You are obviously a laugher.”
Javan took a deep breath and found himself in control of his emotions once again. “Better than crying, I guess.” He walked around, observing his surroundings. From the light of the normal-looking moon and stars, he could see a wide river in front of him and a forest behind him. “Are we really in another dimension? This looks just like earth.”
“The landscapes of earth and Zandador look similar; the same God created them both. Although we have our own unique quirks, this dimension mimics your pre-flood earth. God created this dimension to preserve the animals that couldn’t survive in the post-flood earth’s atmosphere. Here, the oxygen is much higher and purer, allowing everything—plants, people, animals—to live about ten times longer than the average lifespan of things on earth.”
“So how old are you?”
“I’m only 147.”
“Only? That’s old!”
“Not here, not when you consider that most people live to be between 900-1000 years old.”
“People live to be 1000?” Wide-eyed, Javan realized Kenton really could be his great-great-great grandfather. “Then how old is Kenton?”
“He’s 699.”
“Whoa.”
Esmeralda chuckled. “You’ll get used to it. Just don’t tell anyone you’re fifteen; fifteen-year-olds here are pint-size kids. You look more like 150.”
“I look older than my mother? That’s too weird to even think about.”
“You’ve had a long day and have a lot to think about. Let’s get to the village. You could probably use a good night’s rest.”
“Yes, I could.” Javan followed Esmeralda along the moonlit path through the woods, but he didn’t think he was going to be able to sleep tonight. Too many questions and not enough answers were keeping his mind too stimulated to rest.
◊◊◊
Javan kept expecting himself to wake up. Walking through increasingly dense woods after midnight in another dimension with his mother seemed too far-fetched to be real. Oddly enough, riding a dragon, traveling through a portal and walking in another dimension seemed more plausible than connecting with his family.
Could Esmeralda really be his mother? Could she really be leading him to a place where he belonged? Could he really be an important person with an important role to play? These were things he wanted more than anything, but he wasn’t used to getting what he wanted.
What he was used to was feeling like an unwanted, insignificant outcast. That was his painful, yet comfortable reality. If this walk through the woods wasn’t a dream, he was going to have to rethink what was real and reshape everything he believed about himself.
Only he wasn’t ready to change his entire identity. He’d rather remain an unpopular, invisible, girlfriendless high school student athlete who rode the bench during football games.
“Esmeralda,” Javan said, halting in his tracks, “I’m turning around. I want to go back home.”
She paused and pointed straight ahead. “Home is this way.”
“No.” He crossed his arms. “Home is in Montana. I’m going back with or without you.”
Esmeralda ignored his empty threat and kept walking forward.
Javan tapped his foot and waited for her to come back. As he waited, he began to notice the eerie sounds of the woods and imagined the eyes of murderous animals watching him, coordinating their attack and preparing to strike.
Perhaps he should follow Esmeralda now and wait until daylight to make his way back to the portal. “All right. I’m coming.”
He sprinted to catch up with Esmeralda. When he reached her, he made her stop and asked, “Were you really going to leave me by myself?”
She tilted her head. “Were you really going to try to activate the portal without the keys or knowing how to decipher the code?”
“Oh. Guess not.”
“If you still want to leave in three days, I’ll take you back just like I promised. Until then, I expect your cooperation just like you promised.”
“Okay.” Javan nodded, took a deep breath and proceeded forward on the path. He only made it three steps before ramming into an invisible wall. He faltered backwards and would have fallen if Esmeralda hadn’t caught him. “What was that?”
“You just found the invisibility shield that protects Gri, our village.”
He worked to regain his balance, then asked, “Why do you need a shield to prot
ect your village?”
“Let’s just say we don’t agree with the way the king runs his kingdom.”
“Does that mean you’re a bunch of rebels?” Javan wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Something like that. Our choices are hide, enslavement, imprisonment, banishment or death.”
“I can see why you went with hiding.”
“Glad you approve.” She reached into her purse and tossed stalker dust in the air. When it landed on the shield, it created an opening. “After you.”
Javan bit his lip and walked through the makeshift door. He found himself on top of a wooded hill that overlooked a village in the valley below. With the aide of the moonlight, he could see that three large buildings formed the hub of the village, and dozens of streets spanned out from the hub like spokes on a wheel. Small, flat-roofed homes lined each of the streets. He could also make out several farms and ranches on the outskirts of the village.
“Which one’s your house?”
Esmeralda stepped beside Javan and pointed to one of the ranches on the far left end of the village. “That’s us. Ready to go home?”
Javan nodded. “Ready.”
They walked side-by-side down the hill. No lights were on and no people were milling about as they entered the quiet streets. With the size and shape of the stone houses and the quaint layout of the village, Javan felt like he had stepped back in time to medieval England.
He was just starting to relax and enjoy the experience when three men ambushed them at the village edge. One tore Esmeralda away from him. One grabbed him from behind by the throat. And one stood in front of him holding a sword to his forehead.
The sword-holding villain was the only one to speak. “Don’t move,” he ordered.
With the tip of the sword pressing into his skin and causing a trickle of blood to run down his nose, Javan felt inclined to obey the order.
Chapter 7
Ravier and Red Rain
“R
avier!” The intensity of Esmeralda’s shriek surprised Javan. She knew this man? “Put that sword down this instant.”
“Esmeralda?” Ravier lowered his sword a few inches so that it was hovering just above Javan’s right eye. He was a bear of a man with slicked-back, shoulder-length brown hair, intimidating green eyes and a wild beard that covered half his face.
“Yes.” She shook off her captor and lunged for Ravier’s arm, forcing his sword to the ground. “Are you trying to poke your grandson’s eye out?”
“You found him?” Ravier looked Javan up and down. “He’s scrawny. The first dragon he meets will snap him like a twig.”
“Hey!” Javan yelled in his own defense. “I’ve already met two dragons, and neither one of them did any snapping of this lean and trim body.”
“He’s tough,” Esmeralda said. “Now let him go.”
Ravier nodded to the man holding Javan. The man released Javan and stepped back. While Javan coughed to recover from the stranglehold, Esmeralda introduced the men. “Javan, this is your grandfather Ravier. Ravier, Javan.”
Ravier grunted at Javan.
Javan glared at Ravier. Some grandfather. First he threatened Javan’s life. Then he insulted him. Now he couldn’t even say a proper hello.
“Great. We all know each other,” Esmeralda said. “Ravier, please be a good host and take us home.”
“Fine,” he said and started walking toward the farm.
This wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy greeting Javan had hoped for, but it would have to do. He was tired and wanted sleep.
◊◊◊
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
Javan covered his head with his pillow, annoyed by the unusual sound of his alarm. It normally made an obnoxious beeping noise, not an irritating tapping one.
Why was his alarm going off anyway? It was Saturday, his day to sleep in. After the dream he’d had last night that left him feeling physically exhausted, he needed a little extra sleep.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
“Enough!” Javan sat up and threw his pillow at the night stand to silence the alarm.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
“Aaaahhhh!” He rolled over to smack the alarm, but the only thing he found to smack was thin air. His nightstand wasn’t where it was supposed to be. As he looked around, he realized he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
Instead of lying in his bed in his carpeted room and poster-covered walls, he was lying on a cot in a tiny room with a wood floor, bare yet textured stone walls and a ceiling also made with planks of wood. Either he was still dreaming, or that entire experience last night was real.
He hoped he was still dreaming.
Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
Javan slapped the bed and stood. “What is that noise?”
He looked under the bed. Nothing.
The room had no closet, so it couldn’t be coming from there.
The window. Something had to be tapping on the window. Javan walked across the empty room, opened the wooden shutters and looked outside to get his first glimpse of Zandador in the daylight.
He stood a good three stories up and could see miles of rolling hills with gorgeous green grass interspersed with extravagant patches of flowers and spots of blue where lakes and creeks broke up the land. Beyond the hills stood a vast mountain range that he had a sudden itching to explore.
Only he had no Storm with whom to ride and explore.
Javan dropped his head, closed his eyes and said a quick prayer for his favorite friend.
Tap, tap, tap.
Javan jerked his head up and found himself in a staring contest with what looked like an overgrown dragonfly three times the size of an eagle. It had six skinny little legs underneath its sleek, beautiful black body, and it hovered in the air by way of its luminous blue wings—all eight of them, four on each side with one shorter pair stacked atop a longer, thicker pair.
Its face, however, was not as pleasant to behold. The creature’s face was disturbingly ugly with bulging brown eyes the size of basketballs, a tiny white nose the size of a baseball and a mouthful of toothpick-sized teeth. Two long antennae that curved over its eyes were tapping the glass of the window.
“Now I know I’m dreaming.” Javan closed the shutters and jumped back in bed. “Wake up, wake up, wake up,” he muttered over and over as he squeezed his eyes shut and curled into a ball.
After a few minutes, he peeked out of his left eye to see the same barren room he had just tried to escape from. “Great. I’m stuck in Zandador.”
A soft knock on the door confirmed his new reality. “Javan,” Esmeralda said, “if you’re awake, I’d like to take you to lunch.”
Javan checked his watch, then wondered if time worked the same way in this dimension. His body didn’t care. According to his time zone, it was nearly noon. And his stomach was rumbling. “Yeah, I’m awake. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He was going to lunch with his mom. That was something worth getting up for.
◊◊◊
Javan dressed himself in a fresh t-shirt and shorts, popped in a clean pair of non-prescription lenses to cover his freaky eyes and met Esmeralda downstairs.
He couldn’t see anything when he walked through the dark place last night, but now that the sun was streaming through the windows, he liked what he saw. All the walls in the spacious first floor room were made of varying shapes, sizes and colors of stone ranging from bold colors such as jade, indigo and amber to the more subtle white, gray and black. The wood floors and ceilings added to the rustic look.
The winding staircase in the back left corner of the room wound over top of the bathroom and stood opposite the fireplace that dominated the front right corner. Cabinets lined the walls of the back right corner.
The only furniture in the room was a long table with benches for seats in the front left corner opposite the cabinets. Esmeralda was sitting at one of t
he benches drumming her fingers on the table.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“Great.” She hopped up, looking more unnerved than a dog who just discovered a bee’s nest. “Let’s…ummm…go to town. Your grandmother will want to meet you. She runs the restaurant.”
Javan didn’t question the fidgety Esmeralda as they walked the mile into town on the dusty pathway. He did notice her seeming inability to speak, as well as the constant darting of her eyes in every direction.
What had her so on edge?
Once they made it to the village streets, Esmeralda picked up her pace. He nearly had to sprint to keep up, not giving him any time to drink in the sights and sounds of the village or observe the people watching them from their yards and windows.
They went straight to the first building in the middle of the village with a sign over the door that read, “Eat Here.”
Esmeralda stopped at the door and froze.
“Aren’t we going in?” Javan asked.
“We should. We will.” She looked at Javan, terror in her eyes. “Will you go in first?”
“Okay. But only if you tell me what has you so freaked out.”
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Your father’s mother is in there. She blames me for your father’s banishment to the Land of No Return.”
Javan flinched at the first mention of his father. He’d hesitated to think or ask about him because he feared he would learn the man was dead. “Banished? So he’s still alive?”
“That’s my hope.”
“Well…was it your fault?”
“In a way. We got married illegally.”
“How do you marry someone illegally?”
“According to King Omri, marriages are not permitted until age 200, and then you’re only permitted to marry the person his Marriage Council assigns you.”