The Ugly Misfortune of Being Lucky

THERE WEREN’T ALWAYS dragons in the Valley. That’s the only thing anyone in town could agree on. After all, Lucky Olivier (the barman’s apprentice) had only spotted the ominous figures that morning—100-feet high, brilliant white, chiseled like the gods’ own etchings into the rocky cliffs around the town. If they’d been there all along, most people reasoned, someone probably would have noticed.

This much made sense to almost everyone.

Every other question fostered ugly debate and a creeping aura of hostility. Waterdown was, at the best of times, a place utterly rampant with superstition, prophecy, ghosts, omens, and a neurotic skepticism about the world outside. The appearance of massive, unexplained monstrosities on the side of their treasured cliffs had the town in something approaching hysteria. As the morning wore on, the heat rose, and answers failed to present themselves, the mood threatened to get downright grotesque.

Further clouding matters was the omnipresent hangover, brought on by the previous night’s festivities. Arbor Day, celebrated yearly around mid-July, was an invariably wine-soaked occasion. Fueled by a local passion for quality grapes, the party went all night. Dancing and fires on the hills around town. New loves and old scores settled in the street. A genuine debauch. The morning after Arbor Day was traditionally reserved for seething headaches and quiet sleep. It was a bad day for excitement, and a worse day for complicated, sinister questions.

Who could have carved such immaculate drawings at that size? What did they mean by it? And how, in the name of all that was holy, could they have done it in a single night? The loudest voices were repeating these questions ad-nauseam. With absolutely no evidence to go on, everyone was equally likely to stumble ass-backward into the truth. So anyone with visions of grandeur, of perhaps becoming the latest known seer, was proudly proclaiming their theory to anyone who would listen. All the rest were gnashing their teeth and groaning quietly, while thinking the same things.

The rest, that is, except Lucky Olivier, the barman’s apprentice, the most patently cursed soul in the Valley, who was quietly pondering how long it might be before someone suggested burning her as a witch.

Lucky had already cultivated, in her first 20 years of life, an astounding reputation for misfortune. After 2 decades of broken glasses and toppled ladders, lost kittens and spilled milk, it was widely understood that Lucky was simply cursed. She held an understood position in town as something like a magnet for bad luck—destined, through some scheme of the gods, to act as a conduit for the town's collective misfortune.

So all in all, Lucky wasn't unpopular. She was a curiosity—marveled at for her apparent closeness to the ineffable will of the gods. Her position as apprentice at Jojo Petit's public house, the unofficial hub of community life, made her a known, even beloved, figure in the lives of the town's drinkers and carousers. Some in town, when they were experiencing bouts of misfortune, even consulted her, looking for an opinion from the town's leading expert on the subject of bad luck.

But, she supposed, all the goodwill in the world wouldn't mean much when someone, anyone, tied her propensity for misadventure to the mysterious appearance of the three monstrosities now decorating the cliffs.

So she was in a bind. And given that bind, she fretted internally as to whether it might be best to come clean about the shadowy group of strangers she’d encountered the night before.

She was, admittedly, not entirely clear on what she had seen. It had been dark, and she'd been stupendously drunk. When she shut her eyes and tried to remember, her memory swam like a paralyzed goldfish through a bowl of pudding. She’d certainly seen something. As she’d wandered through the streets back to Jojo’s, at what must have been 3 am or later, she’d been surprised and alarmed to see other figures milling about near Father Girard's small hut—the furthermost edge of the village, near the shadow of the waterfall that ran down from the cliffs.

She'd watched them for some time. It was a group of six, all tall and slender. They wore long, dark clothes of a kind that Lucky had never seen. Through the cool air, over the rush of the falls and the distant music from the party, she could hear them twitter in a musical language she could not recognize. It sounded almost like singing, high-pitched and melodic. Still, she sensed their anxiety, their excitement, in their frenzied movements and shining eyes.

Each of them carried curious instruments, seemingly made of glass and metal, with which they apparently studied the lines in the mountain. Each of them but one: the tallest, most sinewy of the figures. He alone stood apart, in what Lucky immediately recognized as a position of some importance.

As Lucky watched, swaying with her wine-soaked brain, she figured, numbly, that these were ghosts. Arbor Day ghosts were hardly a new phenomenon, although Lucky herself had never seen them. It was natural that, on the most festive and exciting day of the year, past grandfathers and grandmothers would take their chance to join in.

Even then, though, with her mind addled and her vision blurred, it had struck Lucky as odd that these ghosts seemed so solid. They moved through space as people moved through space—casting long shadows in the light of the moon.

And it was here, as she'd gazed at those figures so intently, that something had happened. Something that made Lucky's already pickled memory even more shrouded and opaque. Surely, though, she was not misremembering the way they'd noticed her—the cold chill she'd felt as each, in turn, had raised their hooded eyes and peered at her, saying nothing, standing still.

And surely she didn't imagine the ice that had pooled in her veins as the tallest figure stepped forward, eyes blue and bright, and raised a single, boney finger to his lips.

Lucky bumped into a wall. The colossal crash of clattering trays brought her back to the present. As she'd agonized over frightful visions of the night, she was still performing her regular duties at Jojo's pub, scurrying about with drinks and trays, serving what seemed to be the entire population of the town, who'd crammed into the familiar haunt to discuss omens, signs, and dragons.

Lucky bent to collect her tray, and the bucket of ice she'd tipped across the floor. No one paid much mind. Lucky Olivier running into a wall was not headline news. Besides, the crowd had more pressing matters. Cyrus the Seer and Rosa Mendoza, the town's preeminent repositories of mystical knowledge, had now joined the tumult. As the pipe smoke, the frantic babble, and the stench of sweat filled the cramped air, the tenor of speculation turned naturally to the occult.

Clearly, the dragons were a kind of sign. No matter who had made them, how, or why, the simple reality of their existence must be some message from above. This came naturally. Like a windstorm on the second day of the year, which meant 6 months of rebellion in the youth, or a sterile sheep, which always led to a family sickness, it was simple reasoning that dragons foretold something.

Cyrus, who could read the future in cards, had a theory: he said the lines were an omen, but not in a direct way. The gods spoke in oblique communiqués, he said, and the crowd nodded at these long and unfamiliar words. Cyrus continued. In more learned places, dragons were considered a harbinger of wealth—likely due to their penchant for stealing and sleeping on gold. Thus, he said wisely to the crowd, these carvings boded well for anyone in town who was currently in the god's good graces.

Rosa, who saw visions in the tea leaves, viewed it differently. She disagreed with Cyrus on almost everything. As he shared his insights and predictions, she scoffed loudly and looked to the heavens. Dragons, she whispered knowingly, were much better understood as a portent of coming disease—their fondness for raw meat being one possible explanation. Often, she claimed, dragon signs were accompanied by plague, warts, and even (here she paused to look to Cyrus) infertility in older men. She concluded with a warning: when dragon signs appeared, they were invariably followed by lawlessness and evil deeds.

Naturally, this terrifying interpretation proved far more popular. As Rosa finished speaking, a nasty and pernicious quiet fell over the room. Furtive eyes flicked toward neighbors and loved ones. The nasty rank of suspicion was in the air.

Lucky panicked. As she continued to rove the room with her trays, her hands shook and her knees quaked. She was now the only soul moving, and she felt eyes on her neck. At any moment, the bill would come due. Someone, anyone, would point out that hadn’t she, Lucky, actually disappeared first from last night’s party? And, come to think of it, hadn’t she, in the throes of her delirious drunk, loudly and rashly proclaimed to anyone who would listen that the coming year would be the most blessed and fruitful in the Valley’s history?

Her hand slipped, and the contents of the mug she carried spilled directly on Cyrus’s head. He yelped, and quickly stood up, knocking over his table in the process and dumping three more drinks onto nearby onlookers.

This time, every eye in the room turned to look. Cyrus, indignant and dripping, flailing on the ground. Lucky standing over him, frozen.

"I agree with Cyrus!" Lucky blurted. She felt the need to deflect attention. She pointed to the old medium as he clambered to his feet. "Maybe we should go see the dragons up close."

Cyrus was befuddled, and his face gave it away. Not one to be embarrassed without his own involvement, he puffed his chest and prepared to return fire.

"I did not—" he began.

Lucky cut across him. "You're so right" she continued, desperate against the mounting pressure of a silent crowd, "maybe we could figure out who made them."

This was the winning ticket. With the promise of labeling a perpetrator, Lucky’s words caused an uproar. The crowd cheered. In the fervor to assign blame and meaning, not one person had made an effort to actually examine the dragons. Now, it seemed the obvious way to find a guilty party. The town’s illustrious leadership, who had felt their grip slipping all morning, all leaped to take charge.

“We'll find the culprit and we'll get the truth!” squeaked Jean-Baptise Durand, Waterdown's small and wizened mayor. Consummate politician, he'd spent the last hour telling all who would listen that the lines were doubtless the work of foreign agents, and now sprung on an opportunity to prove himself correct.

“It was my idea. I'll lead,” growled Cyrus, who only a moment before had been disavowing that he'd said any such thing.

“We'll need drinks,” nodded Jojo, gravely. She moved to the back room and began collecting bottles.

Within minutes, the entire population mobilized. There was commotion throughout the village as all rushed to arm themselves with shovels, walking sticks, rulers, lamps, hiking boots, picnic baskets, and magnifying glasses. By noon, every man, woman, and child was trudging up the hillside in little groups to investigate the cliffs, hangovers in tow.

It wasn't clear what they were looking for. No one in town had ever constructed anything larger than a two-story building. The idea of somehow carving hundred-foot high dragons into sheer rock was unthinkable. How could humans make such a thing? Were they looking for humans at all?

Before long it was obvious that if humans were responsible, they would have needed a group. For one thing, the climb was treacherous, and a single culprit would have likely succumbed to sheer exhaustion. Moreover, while the three dragons were visible clearly from below, once one clambered down to investigate them closely, the overall pattern disappeared. It was like staring at a pebble with a microscope, and trying to determine from the marks on the rock if you were in Canada or Greece.

From this, Jojo Petit (the town's most experienced builder) proclaimed with confidence that the project could not have been spontaneous. It would have required planning, and at least 4 strong workers, as well as someone to oversee the work.

Lucky, increasingly agitated by Jojo's words, cast her mind back to the group she'd seen—and the tall, powerful figure who'd stood start apart.

Soon, a more sinister hint came to the fore. All about the cliff-top, wherever the people wandered, an acrid stench wafted in the air. It was a sweet, sickly smell that stung noses, something like the powerful polish Rosa Mendoza used to paint her nails—but more powerful, and more hideous.

With some investigation, it was clear the smell came from the dense thicket of dark trees that grew near the edge of the cliffs. Standing close to the outermost edge of the underbrush, the bravest souls in town found the smell nearly overwhelming. It was an odor that poured into one's lungs like a poison. There was coughing and retching. And then Cyrus, the supposed leader of that expedition, pointed to Lucky and said what many were thinking.

"Little witch—you have to go first."

It was a logical choice, and one Lucky had been expecting. It went without saying that her terminal misfortune would counteract any spells, hexes, or bewitchments. It was equally clear that whatever caused such a fetid stink was sorcerous in nature. And if one thing was known to spoil magic, it was an abundance of personal chaos such as Lucky brought with her everywhere.

She pushed forward.

For several minutes, they battled through the trees and the brush. It was a hellish trudge, made worse by the increasingly thick air. Lucky was lightheaded with the effort of simply breathing. As she glanced around, she saw her companions with straining faces that indicated similar struggles.

Finally, they reached a clearing...and a black smoke crept through the trees, the apparent origin of the evil stink.

Lucky pushed back a final clutch of branches and stepped into the dell. Behind her, a small cluster of townspeople remained—not more than ten, with Rosa, Cyrus, and a trembling Mayor Durand among them.

In the coming days, she would thank the stars that so few had been there to see what they saw.

Strewn all about were strange cloaks and odd metal instruments, piled haphazardly hither and thither as though their owners had made a quick departure. All were smoldering with small blue flame, and producing the awful smof now billowing into the forest.

"What's that?" piped Mayor Durand, his voice horrified, his little finger quivering as he pointed to the dark stains that spattered the cloak nearest to him.

It was blood. Great spats of blood, not only on the cloak but across the clearing. As Rosa Mendoza noted, it was far too much blood for any one person to bleed.

Many recoiled. It was a grisly scene, made grislier every moment one looked, and with every detail one observed. Lucky made to turn around—only to bump against the immense bulk of Cyrus.

"We should follow," he rumbled, and pointed to the splattered trail of brown that led up a craggy, narrow hill at the center of the clearing.

So Lucky, vibrating in her bones, once again stepped forward.

It was a steep rise, covered with rocks, bramble, and roots. As they battled their way up, Lucky wondered to herself what could possess so wounded a soul to make such a perilous climb.

Her musings were interrupted as they crested the hilltop, and the strong, stoic Rosa Mendoza gave a horrifying scream.

There, splayed against a crooked and solitary tree, lay a cloaked figure---her face frozen in abject terror, a long, clean cut across her throat. In her hand, a knife—evidently the tool she'd used to carve her final message. And it was the message that drew the eye of every member of the little group.

Scratched in jagged letters, a crude dragon, wings outstretched. Below it, two words:

Find Lucky.