The Treasure of Ladora Shores

With only two exceptions, the unexpected encounter with a basilisk guarding the riverfront, and fighting against playful water nymphs determined to drag me to a watery grave, crossing the Lorelai River was the easy part. Orphans, like me, who are mistakenly left at the doorstep of a covenant rather than a convent at 6 years old and, subsequently, raised by 18 witches, don’t scare easily. Most orphans, however, have never crossed the woodlands separating Navaria and the Ladora Shores.

“It’s suicide,” my mothers would say. “We’ll ward these doors and you’ll never leave!” They would never imprison me, that much I knew. Despite their bluffs to ward the house and bar my windows, I never stopped thinking about the Ladora Shores, or the dragon rumored to be there. Hoarding troves of treasure, they said. Enough gold to make every pauper and his kin rich for generations.

It was said there wasn’t only one dragon at the shores but a thunder of them! And, like the fabled hydra of Lerna Lake, they had several heads, each filled with fangs big enough to tear chunks out of mountains! Because they telepathically detect any living creature miles out, they cannot be caught off-guard. Even Milanese Plate is useless against their psychic attacks, and no sword is sharp enough to even scathe a single scale. Drunken barfly rumors at the corner tavern told over friendly pints of ale, starting as seeds of truth and blossoming into tales and hearsay, did nothing to stifle my desire to travel to the shores.

One may label me a madman for leaving the way I did. With overprotective witches for moms, any unfavorable trips must be planned and executed flawlessly. At the market, I filled a hidden knapsack with supplies before abandoning my work post. On the path to Lorelai River, at Hangman’s Oak, I recovered my hidden broadsword and sheath. Old and worn, it wasn’t my first choice and certainly not optimal for the trip I was to embark, but resources were limited, and I bargained the sword for loafs of bread and bags of fish.

It was rumored no man had ever returned from the Shores, but I had an advantage over every man that travelled to Ladora Shores to slay the three-headed dragons and procure the treasure of every king’s fantasy. I had seen the dragon myself, and I knew something that no one else did.

It took hours to dry from my near-drowning in the Lorelai River. Having never seen a water nymph, I took no stock in the belief they existed outside man’s imagination. Folklore, at best. Of the tales I’d heard, that water spirits inhabited bodies of beautiful women and sang with voices of angels, that they lure men from their boats to lay with them on the river’s cold black floor, none of it had an air of truth. On firsthand account, I can tell you that water nymphs do exist, and they are not alluring women with beautiful bewitching songs. Rather, they are child-sized scaly creatures with small puckered faces. Their eyes, bulbous and far apart, burn like lanterns beneath the dark dirty water. Swept and webbed, their large ears allow them to hear, and pinpoint with precision, every wave, ripple and break in the water’s surface. With thready hair and scales veiled in kelp, they may appear as debris from some poor bloke’s sunken fishing boat tangled in moss drifting at the current’s mercy. And the sounds they make— like the haunting screech of barn owls, the rumored angelic voices of water nymphs are nothing short of demonic. The foolish feeling of being followed on land by the water devils had finally eluded me when I came upon the infamous tree line of Fallen Grove.

A place where the sun never shines, over which bluebirds never fly, where neither doe, squirrel, nor rabbit dare to bed. No, this was not a place for docile woodland creatures. This place, a glimpse into dark Hell itself, exuded with an overwhelming presence. Within minutes of crossing the threshold between the evening twilit Skybane Territory and into the Fallen Grove, a curtain of humidity soaked into the pores of my skin and, with it, side effects of oppression and self-doubt. Like an anchor shackled to my soul, every trace of unshaken confidence became weighted and smothered in uncertainty. The sound of a twig snapping underfoot seemed so far away. The hissing of wet leaves beneath my leaden feet sounded from every direction. The forest floor whirled. Fighting the sudden vertiginous fog and numbing pinpricks in my head, I struggled to find my balance. From every direction, mimics of my mothers’ voices echoed.

You’re going to die out here!

Worthless, disobedient boy!

You should have died in that fire!

I gripped the bark of the nearest tree and retched. Bile seared the lining of my throat. I hadn’t eaten much since the beginning of my journey. As nervous as I had been, I hadn’t really wanted to. A regrettable decision. Folding at the waist, I retched again. The caustic bitter taste threatened another round, but I managed to straighten myself and breathe. My addled mind cleared gradually, and the spinning forest floor stilled.

In these woods, the Fallen Grove, and not interchangeably, was both hot and cold. As my skin oozed with sweat in the thick sweltering heat emanating from the black smoldering trees, embers ablaze in the bark like cindering red eyes of Hell’s sentries, my nauseated and palpitating insides panged with a chill. Catching my breath before moving on, I thought about my mothers’ voices. Trickery. The work of devils! My mothers would never say such things as they had loved me unconditionally since I was a child. It was in that moment I questioned my motives for continuing. What if I go all this way and the Ladora Shores were just as made up as most tales told amongst drunken men and imaginative kids? On the other hand, what if the Ladora Shores were as made up as the water nymphs? What if I make it out alive only to find nothing but beachhead? No dragon. No treasure. A vast nothingness beneath an unforgiving sun, surrounded by hot white sand and salty sea. Then, I thought about her, my reason for this adventure since the day I laid eyes on that nightmare of a dragon. There was no going back, and there was not a damn thing this forest could do to change my mind.

For days, I travelled on foot. My length of stay in the Fallen Grove could only be measured by the stubble on my chin. Apprehensively, I slept, albeit in restless intervals on a knobby forest floor in beds of ash and bones of lost animals and unheeded, or determined, travelers such as myself, perished from exhaustion, starvation, and maybe even madness.

It seemed I was welcomed in the belly of the forest, not as a guest but as a plaything. An audience of beady yellow-eyed crows perched high in their bare emaciated branches, cawed down to me with promises of my death. That my flesh would be their feast and my picked-over bones would serve as foreboding relics to the next brave traveler. That every warm heartbeat is a stone’s throw from the reaches of death in the wood of the damned.

At my back came a sudden terror. My feet lumbered before sprinting forward. Chased by the screams of Hell’s brides, banshees starved for a taste of my ripened soul, I drew my sword, steel stained by basilisk blood, and fled quickly in, what I prayed to the Almighty, was the way out. Whether my gnarled and uncertain path led me to the shores or back the way I came, I didn’t care. I knew that the sword clutched in my hand had no purpose in those woods, as every danger was incorporeal. The only warm pumping heart for miles was my own. I sheathed my sword once more and continued to gallop.

To their earsplitting wails, I pressed my hands tightly over my ears. To their ghostly flashes of charred faces, snapped necks and disjointed bodies, mutilated and grotesquely disfigured wispy white specters with their spindly arms outstretched with fingers clawing at my back, I forced my eyes shut. Their power would be lost to the blind and deaf. In the soundless black, I ran. Slamming into trees, whipped by the brush, and stumbling over uneven terrain, I ran.

Stench and decay all around, my chest tightened, pulse drumming in my cupped ears. I ran until my feet numbed from pain and my legs puttied, until the cool caress of night touched my face and the gentle glow of moonlight lit a path of sand and rock. Salty sea air and a timeless stage of sand and sea, this was my salvation from the tribulation of the Fallen Grove. The Ladora Shores.

The shoreline was my guide for several miles until my aching back and rumbling stomach pleaded for a moment’s rest. Where water meets sand, I sat and admired the fading night sky. Playful waves lapped the sandy shore. Cradled in the soothing wet grains of sand, the soles of my pained feet welcomed the merciful strokes of seafoam. Rhythmic whispers of black waves steepled in moonglow melodically rushing the shore coaxed my tired eyes to shut. Peacefully, to the flirtatious touch of coastal breeze through my hair, I sighed.

It may have been minutes to an hour when I next opened my eyes to the warm bath of light. I sat up from my bedding of golden sand and looked out at the orange glow on the horizon knitted with threads of pink and violet, casting silver-laced reflections on the shimmering sea. The indescribable beauty of dawn, when the colors of night and day bleed together. Vibrant pillars of daylight soaked the farthest reaches of the sea. Swells of crashing waves pulsed with blinding strands of light. Closing my eyes once again, I took a deep breath and fell back into the sand with a thump. From behind closed eyes, the daylight darkened into shadow. The warmth on my face cooled. It was the thunderous sigh that snapped my eyes open. Directly above me, blocking the hues of sunrise, a massive angular face of ruby red scales and blazing spheres set like precious gemstones in the hollow sockets of her eyes, stared down at me. Rows of prehistoric ivories gleamed down in a gritted snarl. “What are you doing here, boy?”

In one fluid motion, startled, I was on my feet and suppressing a scream. Swallowed in her shadow, I held my breath. Talons like obsidian harpoons on leathery webbed feet clicked impatiently. Head rocking back, I slowly took in her majestic form in awe. Her tough skin, canvassed in thick plated scales, shimmered like the ocean’s crest beneath the diamond kiss of sunlight. Crowned by granite corkscrew horns, her head stooped down to me. She snorted once, sending the sand pirouetting around me. “I said, what are you doing here?” Flanked on either side of her calcified spine, her pleated wings stretched flat against her waist.

“Y-you!” I answered. “I came seeking you!”

“Is that so?” her forked tongue hissed, and clubbed tail swept behind her, irritably.

Stumbling back, my sword detached from its sheathe and hit the ground. The dragon growled. A sliver of smoke gyrated from her nostrils.

I gasped and kicked the sword away. “Th-that isn’t for you!” I raised my hands in honest surrender. “That was meant for the journey here. Not for you, Dragon. I come in peace!”

“No one comes in peace, boy!” she tossed her head to the side. By the entrance of a cave down the shore lay a scatter of bones. Air caught in my lungs. “Foolish boy! Come to slay the dragon with your little wooden sword and paper clothes! Treasure is what you seek, boy, not me!”

“You’re wrong!” I shouted. “I have no desire for gold or jewels. But you are right about one thing, Dragon. I have come for something you have in your possession. Something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Her plated brow lifted with curiosity.

“What is your name, Dragon?”

“My name?” she scoffed. “Go ask your dead! They will tell you my name! Firestarter! Chaos! Oblivion!” she roared. “My name is Death!”

My hair billowed beneath her breath.

“No, it isn’t!” I bravely replied. The dragon snorted that she had nothing of mine before she turned towards the sun. Scales gleamed in the light, such dangerous beauty. I hit the ground before I felt the tip of her tail sweep beneath my feet. She was walking away! I had come too far, endured too much, for her to leave without answers.

“I was there that day—the day you found your… treasure,” I called out. She stopped and slowly turned back around. Her silence cued me to continue.

“I was in the cornfield, 6 years old, when I saw the fires rage. I was so close, the heat alone burned my face!” I showcased the old burn scar down my left cheek for her to see.

“I listened in horror to the screams. The smell of burning flesh and hair and wood was…” I paused. There was no word to describe the atrocities of that day. I scurried to my feet with renewed passion. “And you! I saw you at my family’s cabin. I saw you take something just before you sliced the heavens with your razorblade wings. When, at last, my village dwindled to kindling, I found my way home. Charred to the bones, my friends and neighbors and every home and building in my small village was burned to cinders! I found my mother first, then my father, skeletons in a pile of our furnishings reduced to ash! But Annette…” I shook my head slowly. “I scoured the gravesite for her tiny bones. I never found them. All that remained in the splinters and soot of her crib was this!” With trembling hands, I reached into my knapsack and withdrew the cauterized teddy bear with its one fixed eye and singed smile.

“This, Dragon, has been my hope, my drive, and my passion. This has been my treasure!”

There were unmistakable pools in the dragon’s narrowed eyes. Probably the one thing more valuable than a dragon’s head is its tears. I reminded her gently, “I do not care for gold, but I am here for the treasure you stole 18 years ago.”

A single tear, blood red, slipped down the ridges of her face. She whispered quietly to me, “Be gone, boy.”

“Kitala?” a shy, quiet voice called from behind the dragon. Shorter than I had imagined, and with long curls of honey bouncing around her thin shoulders, a beautiful young girl trotted to the dragon’s side, her deep brown eyes stationed on me.

“Annette?” I gasped.

The girl shook her head. “My name is Emra. And you are my brother?”

Burning tears blurred my vision. “Yes,” I said. “I’m Lane. I’m here to take you home.”

Emra looked up at the dragon with silent question, and her eyes were met. “Had I known,” the dragon whispered. “I would have taken you both.”

“Lane,” Emra looked at me. “I am home. My mother told me everything of that time, long ago. She’s remorseful of the unspeakable things she’s done. She burned towns to ruin for the same reason your sword is tipped with blood. My mother’s brood was slain by power-hungry men under Frederick’s rule, and her brother’s head was taken as trophy. Before then, there was a kinship between man and dragon until Frederick took the throne and put a price on every dragon’s head, big or small. Dragons that burned villages, iced crops and flooded the capitals, were provoked to do so. Man became the dragon’s monster. Then the dragon became man’s monster. My mother heard me crying in my crib as the village burned beneath her siege. She took pity on me, as no human had ever taken pity on her hatchlings. She rescued me from her own devastation, and my mother has never harmed another man since that day. I, on the other hand—” she turned toward the piles of bones behind them. “—do not take nicely to anyone threatening my mother.”

“Enough, child,” Kitala spoke softly to the girl. “I admire your bravery, but I will not allow her to go back with you to the kingdom of barbaric men. Being a dragon’s daughter, she will be harmed instantly.”

“Frederick’s reign has ended!” I said. “The bounty on dragons is over. She will be safe with me and my mothers.”

“No,” she said. “I cannot—will not let her go.”

“What about what I want?” Emra asked. “I want to experience the land of my kind and spread the word that dragons are not monstrous beasts. I want to tell your story. Our story.”

Tears in her fiery eyes, Kitala lowered her head sadly and nuzzled the girl with her long stubby snout. “My baby,” she whispered. “My precious joy, my treasure, I have nothing without you.”

Emra stroked the sides of her scaled face, catching tears the size of her hand. She whispered, “You are my mother, and this is my home. I will be back. Educating the people, this could be the beginning of a new era for dragonkind.” The girl sighed and dropped a kiss to her mother’s snout. “You have to let me go, Kitala.”

* *  *

The trip to Navaria was peaceful, as the Grove and spirits held respect for Kitala and her human whelpling. Earning an audience with King Heinrich, Emra became the spokesperson for dragonkind, and the face of a revolution. But that story is for another time. In the end, the rumored three-headed gold-hoarding dragon shared her treasure, not just with me but with the entire kingdom.