by D K Drake
“I don’t belong here,” Javan said. Of course, he didn’t really belong in Montana either, but at least that place was familiar. “It’s time for me to go back.”
Hannah wrapped his left hand in both of hers. “Please stay.”
Javan looked at his grandmother and was surprised to find tears in her eyes. He almost wanted to give in to her plea, to find out what it was like to be part of a real family. But this family wanted him to be someone he wasn’t. He couldn’t meet their expectations, so he needed to return to a place where no one expected anything from him.
“I can’t,” he said, standing. He had to get out of here before he started crying, too. “Thanks for the food. It was all really good.”
“You’re welcome, dear.” Hannah stood as well and gave him one final hug. “And you’re always welcome here if you ever change your mind.”
“Thanks.” He wouldn’t be changing his mind, but she already knew that.
Blinking back a few tears of his own, Javan grabbed his backpack and walked outside.
The bright afternoon sun gave him an excuse to shield his eyes, a good thing since his mom was sitting on the porch steps.
“You look like you’re ready to go,” she said.
“I am. I told you I’d give you three days. This is my third day, and I don’t want to stay.”
“Fair enough.” She stood and slung a leather bag over her shoulder. “We’ll say goodbye to your grandfather and be on our way.”
“That’s not necessary. He doesn’t like me very much, and he’s probably just going to get mad if he sees me again.”
“Then let him get mad, but you’re going to say goodbye.”
“Fine.” Javan hung his head and followed Esmeralda to the garden behind the barn.
At least Javan was thankful for this final chance to walk through the head high nectar-producing plants the okties fed on. He recognized many of the flowers, but he had never seen them so big, so colorful and so breathtaking.
He took deep breath after deep breath as he walked through the rows of bright orange butterfly weeds, deep purple and bright white bushes, copper and brass marigolds, red and yellow milkweeds, velvet and lavender lilies and golden dandelions. Half a dozen okties flitted from bush to bush, drinking in the nectar.
This would be one of his favorite memories from Zandador.
Then Ravier, who was pruning some of the bushes, ruined it. “What are you still doing here?”
The snippy tone of Ravier’s voice sparked Javan’s temper. He made no attempt to keep the anger and sarcasm out of his own voice while pointing at Esmeralda. “She wouldn’t let me leave without saying bye to you, dear grandfather.”
Ravier sighed and put down his pruning shears long enough to huff one word. “Goodbye.”
“There,” Javan said, turning around. “We can go now.”
“No we can’t,” Esmeralda said, spinning Javan back around. “Hug him. Then we’ll go.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s not necessary, Esmeralda,” Ravier said.
“Yes, it is.” She took the sharp shears out of Ravier’s hands. “Whether you like it or not, you two are family. You’re never going to see each other again, and the last memory you have of one another is going to be a pleasant, loving one. Now hug!”
Javan and Ravier both jumped at the shrill command and complied. Javan wrapped his stiff arms around Ravier’s stiff body for the briefest of seconds. They backed away from each other just as quickly.
“There,” Esmeralda said, handing the shears back to Ravier, “now we can go.”
“Finally.” Javan gladly followed Esmeralda out of the garden, through the village and into the woods past the protective shield.
He much preferred walking through these woods during daylight hours. He was able to drink in the pristine beauty of the odd-shaped trees and enjoy watching the birds and squirrels and other cool creatures he couldn’t identify scurry about rather than being able to see nothing in the dark and feel like he was about to be attacked by packs of wild animals at any second.
The more they walked, though, the more Javan realized this was the last chance he would ever have to spend with his mother. And he knew almost nothing about her. The time they had spent together on Saturday evening was focused on her and Hannah learning about him and his world. He hadn’t bothered to ask many questions about her.
If he didn’t ask now, he would have nothing to hold on to when he returned to Montana. He wasn’t sure where to start, so he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. “Where did you grow up?”
Esmeralda paused, then talked as she walked. “I grew up in the region of Madai in northeast Zandador in the city of Oer.”
“Is that close to here?”
“Not really. We’re in northwest Zandador right now in the region of Gomer. It would take about half a day by okty to get there.”
Javan wanted to know if he had aunts, uncles, cousins and another set of grandparents somewhere in this dimension. “Is your family still there?”
Esmeralda halted. Her whole body went rigid, and her single word reply sounded robotic. “No.”
Trying not to hound her but wanting to know the story behind her answer, Javan whispered, “What happened to them?”
Minutes passed.
Javan waited.
Finally, she started walking and talking again. “First you have to understand what growing up in Zandador under the rule of the Dark King is like. As a child, you’re required to spend the first twenty years of your life in school learning what the King wants you to know about Zandador and all the countries of the Great Rift to the north and south of us.
“Then you spend the next eighty years away from your family working in assigned apprenticeships that each last a decade in areas like government work, teaching, farming and ranching; you’re only allowed to return home to visit for the final two weeks of each year.
“Once you reach the age of 100, you’re tall enough and strong enough to fight, so you’re required by law to spend the next century of your life serving in the king’s army. Fortunately, you can still come home at the end of each year to visit your family.
“One thing you’re never allowed to do is worship God. The Dark King sees himself as god and is the only authority he allows anyone to serve. He thus banned religion and had all churches demolished. He tried to burn all the Bibles brought here from earth, but those of us who believe in God have done a good job of preserving our Bibles. Remnants of other religions remain as well, but I digress.
“Once you complete your century of service, you’re either assigned to a lifetime of work as a soldier or to a job that you showed the most aptitude for during your apprenticeship years.”
“That’s a rotten deal. You mean nobody gets to decide what they believe or what they want to do?”
“Exactly. You’re told who to be, where to live, what to wear, what to do, who to marry and how many kids you can have. The king doesn’t tolerate people who think for themselves and has worked hard to erase and retell the true history of Zandador.
“He wants to rid the land of all dragons except his own and wipe out the Collector and Protector Bloodlines.” Esmeralda took a deep breath before continuing. “My parents were both Protectors. Despite the Dark King’s mandate, they refused to deny their heritage and passed on everything they knew to me and my younger sister, Merissa.”
Javan had an Aunt Merissa! He wondered if he looked older than her, too.
“My sister and I both loved to sing,” Esmeralda said, plucking a golf ball-size blackberry from a shrub, “but that’s also something that’s forbidden under the Dark King’s rule. Unless, of course, you’re singing for his entertainment.” She bit into the berry and handed Javan the other half.
He popped it into his mouth before the juice had a chance to drip all over his hand. The warm, sweet liquid drenched his tongue. “That’s good,” he murmured between chews.
&
nbsp; “They’re called gooey globes. Here. Have another.” She picked two more, giving one to Javan and keeping one for herself.
They walked for a few minutes in silence as they enjoyed the gooey treats. Then Esmeralda resumed her story. “Anyway, when I was 129 and Merissa was 118, we did what we usually did when we arrived home for our yearly visit: we sang. We sang hymns of praise to God. We sang romantic ballads. And we sang songs of our true Zandadorian history taught to us by our parents.
“What we didn’t know was that the king’s youngest son Micah—who, by the way, is only a few decades older than me—was patrolling our city at that time. Reports of our singing by those loyal to the king made their way to Micah, and he reported us to his father.
“The next night, I snuck out of the city to collect shed noon stalker scales from the dragons my family protected.” Esmeralda was starting to choke on her words. She stopped at a fallen log and sat down. “I returned just past midnight to the sight of my city being ravaged by the king’s midnight stalker. My house had been leveled, and only pieces of my family remained.”
Tears streamed down her face. Javan had no idea how to help his crying mother tell this terrible story. He just sat awkwardly beside her, hoping that would somehow help.
“I had never been filled with so much pain and rage and anger and guilt,” she said. “I knew that dragon was sent as punishment because of me, and I was determined to send that dragon home with a scar before it destroyed me and the rest of my city.
“I dug through the rubble, found my sword and marched through the street after that black dragon. It was about to devour my father’s best friend, so I did the only thing I could think of: I ran my sword through his back claw, temporarily tying him to the ground. That dragon screeched, dropped his snack and turned on me.
“I was prepared to die.” Esmeralda reached for Javan’s hand. “I would have, too, if your father hadn’t shown up riding his own midnight stalker.”
“My dad saved you?”
“Oh, yeah. Dartez was my hero that night. He and his dragon Kandorg fought off Drak, the king’s dragon, before Drak could kill any more people. After the battle, your father returned for me and took me to the safety of his home.
“I left shreds of my clothing so that I would be presumed dead in the attack; had I remained, I would have been carted off to prison. Ironic since I ended up a prisoner anyway, but not before I fell in love with your father, married him and became pregnant with you.” Esmeralda squeezed Javan’s hand and stood. “We’re almost to the portal. It’s time to return you to the safety of your home.”
Javan wanted to learn more about her and his father. But he shouldn’t get too attached. This wasn’t his world. These weren’t his people. So he refrained from asking any more questions as they walked the rest of the way to the portal.
The windy path they took led them downhill and to an open shoreline with a rocky cliff wall to his right and acres of trees to his left that dead ended in another span of sheer rock walls.
Now that Javan could see the portal area in the full afternoon sun, he could appreciate the beauty of the spot. The same wide, clear blue river he crossed by boundaroo yesterday stretched before him. He could barely make out the flat, grassy shoreline on the other side and felt small compared to the cliff he found himself standing beside.
The end of the cliff jutted inland at a sharp right angle and had a slanted overhang that looked like a fun challenge for a skilled rock climber. The tricky part would have been climbing up the first thirty or so feet that was as slick as glass and thus offered no sort of hand or foot holds.
The slick part of the cliff was where Javan expected the portal to be, but he didn’t see the colorful octagon glowing in all its dragon scale glory. “You sure this is the right spot? I don’t see the portal.”
“It’s here,” Esmeralda said, laying her bag on the ground. “The portal on this side is cloaked and only appears when you insert the four scales in the proper place on the wall.”
“How exactly do you know where that is?”
“I can’t reveal all my secrets.” She winked at him, took the four scales out of her bag and tossed a handful of stalker dust on the rock wall. “Ah! Found it!” Esmeralda began inserting the scales into the newly revealed circle on the wall. Once she added the fourth scale, the octagon appeared.
“That is so cool,” Javan said, admiring the shimmering wall.
“It is beautiful.” Esmeralda spun the dial to the left, to the right and back to the left again. She was paying attention to the number of clicks as she turned the dial, but Javan didn’t bother counting. He was too distracted by a dull buzzing sound and looked around to try to figure out where the noise was coming from.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
“The clicks? Yes.”
“No. The buzzing. It’s getting louder.”
“Buzzing?” Esmeralda looked over her shoulder and pointed to three dots over the river flying toward them. “Okty riders. Great. The king’s soldiers patrol this area. We have to hurry.”
When she finished all the necessary spinning and clicking, she pushed the dial in. Javan recognized the hum and the flickering scales. He couldn’t make out any sort of pattern between the flickers, but his mother apparently could.
“What happens if they catch us?”
“Activating the portal is a crime punishable by death.”
“They’ll kill us?” He could now make out the figures of the three men.
“Not here.” She tapped a grey scale once, the other grey scale three times, and both of the white scales six times. The scales whirled and twirled and eventually melted together to create the watery rainbow of the activated portal. “They’d take us back to the capital city of Japheth and make an example of us there by chopping off our heads in the middle of the city.”
Javan gulped at the prospect of losing his head and instinctively protected his throat. “Then you have to come through with me.” He grabbed Esmeralda’s hand and stepped toward the portal.
“No.” She jerked her hand away. “My home is here; yours is on the other side. I’ll be okay, but you have to go. The portal will only stay active for a few minutes, so they shouldn’t be able to follow you. I love you, my son.” She kissed his cheek, quickly wrapped her arms around him and walked straight toward the men who landed on the shore fifty feet away.
The leader was a tall, muscle-bound black man with deadly brown eyes and dreadlocks that cascaded past his shoulders. He wore a sword across his back and a belt with all sorts of handheld weapons around his waist. To Javan he only looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, but age was a hard thing to gauge in this place.
The other two men were also tall and ripped and carried weapons, but they weren’t nearly as intimidating.
“Boys,” the leader said, approaching Esmeralda, “we have come across a prize that will earn us a feast tonight.”
“Stop right there, Micah.” Esmeralda pulled a dagger out of her boot and held it to her throat. “I won’t be much of a prize if you don’t return me to your father alive. I will slit my throat this instant if you even think about touching that boy.”
Micah stopped, crossed his arms and studied Javan. “The King doesn’t need to know about some skinny boy who slipped through the portal.”
“You’re going to let him go?” One of the sidekicks was not happy.
Micah turned to the sidekick. “Do you have any idea who that kid is?”
“No.”
“Me, either.” He pointed at Esmeralda. “Do you know who this woman is?”
“Of course. She’s Esmeralda, the escaped prisoner with the biggest bounty on her head.”
“So would you rather take a dead Esmeralda and a live nothing boy back to the King or present to him one live, prized prisoner?”
The sidekick hung his head and shuffled his feet. “The live, prized prisoner.”
“Good answer.” Micah turned his attention back to Esmeralda. “Put th
e knife down, come with us and we’ll let the boy go.”
Esmeralda looked at Javan. “Go,” she said and dropped her dagger.
“No!” Javan charged toward his mother, but he was too late. Micah already had her in his grip. “Let her go!”
“Javan, this isn’t your fight,” she yelled. “Go home!”
“Not without you!” He rammed into Micah, trying to make him loosen his grip. It didn’t work.
With his free hand, Micah latched on to a handful of Javan’s hair and pulled him back. Javan was forced to look up as Micah spoke. “This woman just saved your life. But if I ever see you again, I won’t hesitate to kill you on sight.”
He released Javan’s hair, punched his nose and kicked the back of Javan’s knees, sending him crumpling to the ground. Micah gave Javan one final kick in the ribs before he carried Esmeralda to his okty and flew away with his buddies.
Chapter 14
The Decision
Javan coughed away the warm blood that oozed into his mouth from his busted nose and grimaced from the pain that shot through him as he stood. He had to get word back to Ravier.
Ravier had to save his mother.
But Esmeralda said the portal would only be active for a few minutes. If he didn’t go through it now, he might never have another chance to return to earth.
Javan stumbled to the portal. One more step and there was no turning back.
Comfort or challenge?
Obscurity or purpose?
Loneliness or family?
Family. He was part of a family. A family who lived here. In this dimension. A family who needed him now.
Could he really turn his back on a mother who willingly surrendered her own life to save his? Is that the kind of man he wanted to be? A selfish coward who only protected himself?
She did, however, give herself up so he could go back home through the portal. Would he be letting her down by staying here?
What if he couldn’t save her? Then she would be dead and he would be stuck.
Unless he did what she brought him here to do in the first place: collect dragons and overthrow the Dark King.