The Two Shades of Luck

It was a warm spring night in the forested plain three miles north of the Free City of Enceröss.

Blustering westerly winds rustled the trees surrounding the riverside glade where the academic Vabriel Shuno parked his wagon. Hitched to the wagon, his stalwart mule brayed nervously.

“Easy, Cavalier,” the Mulzunite soothed, adjusting his parchment and inkwell on his desk.

Cavalier snorted.

An oil lantern wobbled above from a high hook to spill light over him and the wagon. Vabriel worked diligently at a collapsible desk built into its side. He wore an ankle-length bleached tunic bordered with elaborate tassels with a round neckline of soft wool. Two layers of colorful shawls swathed his body. Lost in concentration, Vabriel stroked his thick Bandholz-style beard until he recorded the results of mathematic equations.

Languidly, the turtle dragon caged in the back of his cart stirred, snapped its beak, and hissed at him.

“Bahhh,” Vabriel growled. He swiped at the cart to silence the creature, and it glared at Vabriel with sleepy contempt.

Vabriel’s cart was burdened with many cages. The largest housed the baby dragon. Around it, his cages held a pair of white rabbits captive, along with a jackalope, a brownie, and a fairy. Stowed on the floor was a wooden box filled with live crickets, a lidded clay pot of scarab beetles, and a tin water pail containing one koi fish.

Yet there was one small cage, an empty cage, that Vabriel Shuno’s eyes fell morosely upon. He scowled and angrily continued writing.

“Free us, fiend!” raged the fairy. He fluttered madly in the cage and sent sparkling dust raining over the rabbits.

“I will not,” Vabriel grumbled, refocusing on his work.

Grimacing, the Mulzunite went to the back of his wagon to withdraw a sextant from a case. He distanced himself from the cart and pointed the device to the sky to obtain measurements. Back at his desk, Vabriel finalized his computations and held the paper up against the light to re-read his work.

It was then that Maedrey Puck, a Child of Yondalla, emerged on the riverside trail. She was an old halfling, well into her sixties, and walked hunched with a limp, relying on a sturdy juniper wood staff. Her green travel jacket and elk fur trousers fluttered in the wind. A sparkle of fireflies buzzed around her head to light her way.

Maedrey groaned when she saw the cart parked on the road. “Mulzunites,” she muttered. “Rot in the wood. Worse than termites.”

Walking lamely against the wind, Maedrey approached Vabriel Shuno’s cart. “A storm’s comin’, Mulzunite. You an’ your animals ought take shelter.”

“I cannot, smallfoot,” Vabriel insisted, glancing at Maedrey before returning to evaluate his work. “I am collecting.”

“Collectin’ what?” Coming to a standstill on the road adjacent to Vabriel’s cart, Maedrey’s eyes narrowed to determine what was in the cages.

“I collect creatures purported to be lucky,” he said confidently. “Two years of tedious scientific endeavor has culminated in this final moment. Tonight, I seek the most elusive and luckiest of all.”

“A unicorn?” Maedrey asked casually, leaning on her staff.

“No,” Vabriel groaned, waving dismissively at the notion. “A fool’s errand.”

Thinking, Maedrey squinted at the Mulzunite and asked, “One of them flyin’ horse dragons, er, a kirin?”

“No,” he guffawed.

Gesturing to the sky, Maedrey guessed, “An albatross?”

“No!” Vabriel grumbled and, exasperated, threw up his arm with the paper and exclaimed, “Can’t you see I’m busy?!”

Maedrey’s pocked face came alive and she snapped her fingers. “A leprechaun?”

And when Vabriel Shuno didn’t respond, Maedrey chuckled, for she knew that was the answer.

“So you’re hunting leprechauns?” Maedrey smiled. It was almost too good to be true.

“There is one in this glade,” the Mulzunite argued. “My analysis proves it. Its burrow is to be found here, in the stump of a fallen tree.”

Maedrey shifted her weight, pointed her finger at him, and said, “Now, knowin’ where a leprechaun is is different from catchin’ one, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I am guaranteed success!” Vabriel pronounced, shaking his parchment of calculations. “Thus far, every acquisition has had a measurable, cumulative influence on probability.”

“That so?” Maedrey asked, removing a handful of sunflower seeds from her pocket.

The Mulzunite gestured to the wagon. “Indeed. The luck bestowed on me by capturing the crickets made it much easier to acquire the scarab beetles.”

“Uh-huh,” Maedrey replied, idly tossing a couple of seeds into her mouth to suck on them.

“When I came to possess the beetles, capturing the koi and rabbits came easier than expected. Thereafter, luring the fae was child’s play. And finally, the beast. The dragon I found purely by happenstance, nested under a bridge. The universe simply handed it to me.”

“Help us!” squeaked the imprisoned fairy. He desperately pulled at and rattled the wooden bars.

Trapped next to the fairy in its own cage, the brownie with its elongated nose and droopy ears looked sullenly at Maedrey.

Vabriel went to the back of his cart to assemble supplies. “The pinnacle trophy, a leprechaun, awaits me, and as I’ve come to possess and control these creatures, I cannot fail. I’m too lucky not to!”

Maedrey was taken aback. Mulzunites were known for their misguided logical fallacies, but this one took the cake. She asked, “Alright. Say you catch a leprechaun. Then what?”

Vabriel busily prepared his foraging gear at the back of the wagon and shouted over the rising wind. “Study. I’ll take them to Enceröss, and under my knife, I’ll determine what gifts them their good fortune.”

Maedrey slammed the butt of her staff to the ground and growled, “You damned Mulzunite! You’ll dissect them? You’re expectin’ to find organs that secrete luck?”

“It only stands to reason,” the Mulzunite refuted, “and I will harvest their juices for my lifelong advantage!”

Upon hearing their fate, the pair of rabbits looked at each other as rabbits do and were expressionless as rabbits are. The beetles, crickets, and goldfish didn’t seem to care, either, and the brownie didn’t understand language, so it remained dumbfounded and uncomprehending. Where the dragon turtle lazily regarded Vabriel, the fairy, on the other hand, whizzed around in his cage in a desperate frenzy, trying to escape.

Spitting the spent sunflower shells to the ground, Maedrey chortled, shook her head, and turned to retake the trail. Maedrey’s box braids whipped behind her in the wind, and nearing the mule, she scritched Cavalier behind his ears.

“What a loon,” Maedrey snickered, laughing to herself. She whispered in Cavalier’s ear and fed him the remaining sunflower seeds in her hand. The mule appreciatively neighed and bobbed its head.

Satisfied, Maedrey patted Cavalier’s mane reassuringly and cried, “Do as you please, Mulzunite. I’m off to find shelter.”

“As for me, not until I’ve acquired my prize,” he yelled back.

“Please!” begged the fairy. He pressed his face against the bars. “Save us from this madman, lady halfling! Help!”

Ignoring the fae’s urgent plea, the halfling pressed on with her entourage of fireflies, hobbling against the wind.

Pleased to finally see the halfling witch leave, Vabriel Shuno grabbed his lantern and marched purposefully into the clearing carrying his cage and a satchel of supplies. The harsh wind roiled and blustered. He teetered, stumbled, and stopped at times but kept his feet.

Holding out the lantern, he reviewed his calculations on his parchment while he hiked uphill. He passed through an outcropping of thorny bushes, wandered around a copse of pine trees, passed a tall tree covered in lush, climbing ivy, and wound up at a dead, hollowed-out stump of an oak tree.

Setting the lantern on the ground, he removed a gold coin with a hole punched through its center. He took twine, looped it through the hole, and tied it firmly to the coin. Leaning, he dangled the coin into a dark recess in the stump and held it there as if he were fishing.

It wasn’t long before Vabriel felt a tug once, a tug twice, and then a prolonged pull. The string tightened in his fingers. When he spooled the twine, the coin was embraced by a wrinkly old man the size of a thimble wearing a pointed red cap that flopped behind its head. It had a beak of a nose, tall pointed ears, wispy white hair and beard, a gray nightshirt, and tiny naked feet. The little man grappled the coin through its center, refusing to let go, and it ferociously bit into its side; Vabriel could see its serrated teeth gnawing the gold. He dropped the twine, the coin, and the leprechaun into the cage and locked it tight.

Vabriel Shuno was unsurprised by his good fortune or the rapidity by which he recovered the leprechaun. After all, he sincerely believed it was the most likely outcome, given the cumulative effects of luck manipulating his probability of finding it. The outcome was exactly as he expected.

“Success,” he reported smugly, resting the cage in his wagon beside the fairy.

“You are a terrible, wicked man,” the fairy seethed.

“Perhaps, but forever endowed with luck and prosperity,” Vabriel countered. “My theories vindicated, I shall return to Enceröss. I will be celebrated. I will make speeches. I will be asked to deliver scientific lectures. I will be the envy of my peers. A fruitful life of advantage awaits.”

The old leprechaun watched Vabriel from within its cage and absently chewed on the gold coin.

Vabriel closed the desk, meticulously draped a tarp over his treasures, and secured the wagon with rope.

The rain began shortly before he could leave. The Mulzunite stepped into a wooden stirrup to launch himself into the wagon’s forward seat when his foot, caked in mud, slipped, sending him head-first into the buckboard.

“Ugh!” he groaned, covering his nose with his palm. A steady stream of blood drenched his mustache and coursed through his beard.

Using his other hand, he struggled to pull himself into the settee. Catching his breath and blowing out the blood to clear his airway, he gripped the wagon’s reins.

It was less than an hour’s travel to Enceröss, and Vabriel was determined to get there before the gates closed at midnight. He had so much to do in the morning.

Hitching the reins, Cavalier lurched forward in the harness, pulling the wagon that bumped, jolted, and jostled to roll steadily south on the muddy road. The significant weight of the dragon turtle made the cart very heavy, but Cavalier the mule felt invigorated, powerful, strong.

Within minutes, the rain turned into a tumultuous downpour, drenching Vabriel Shuno to the bone. He was soaked through, cold and trembling. He retrieved an oiled burnoose stowed under the pilot’s seat, but after he’d managed to put it on, the rainwater inundated his lantern and extinguished the light.

“Cavalier, we keep going,” Vabriel insisted, striking the reins. “It isn’t far.”

The mule snorted, strained, and pushed itself along the mud, pulling at its harness to drag the wagon behind him.

Ten minutes passed. The wind gusted. The rain fell in thick sheets. The sky rumbled with distant thunder. When the Mulzunite could see the outline of the bridge that would take him home, the wagon struck a deep hole and shattered two spokes in the wheel. The wagon careened to the right, and Vabriel had to grip a handle to keep from falling out.

Swearing, he pulled back on the reins to slow Cavalier and exited the pilot’s chair. Marching to the back of the cart, he retrieved a toolbox and rounded the wagon to inspect the damage to the wheel. As he bent over to repair it, the rain turned to sleet and punishing marble-sized hail. Vabriel struggled to repair the wheel but gave up after he realized the extent of the damage.

“Let’s go,” he grumbled, seizing Cavalier by the bit to walk him. The mule jerked and reared away from him, but Vabriel was astonished by his vigor. “What’s gotten into you?”

Vabriel yanked at Cavalier to bring him under control. He walked alongside him to lead the mule on the road. The wagon precariously rocked, wobbled, and leaned with every rotation of the broken wheel; the dragon turtle severely overweighted the cart and destabilized it. The storm’s fierceness intensified, and Vabriel wandered through the darkness, shielding his eyes from the sleeting hail with his arm.

And as they closed on the bridge's shadow, they encountered a fallen tree on the road, blocking their path.

“No, no, no,” he barked furiously, kicking at a muddy puddle. “I’m so close! Enceröss is right there!”

Anguished, Vabriel stomped to the back of the wagon to retrieve an ax. Portions of the tarp escaped the rope, and it fluttered and ripped in the wind.

Hail rained heavily from the sky. Coming around to address the tree, Vabriel threw the ax behind his head and hacked furiously at the wood. The blade cut into the meat of the tree over and over, sending splinters of debris sailing into the air.

A sudden lightning strike across the river caused Cavalier to buck and bray. Fearful, the mule’s wrenching motion, combined with his newfound strength, caused the buckles on his harness to stretch and snap, and the animal’s momentum turned the cart precariously in on its bad wheel. Freed from the hitch, Cavalier bolted down the road to run faster and farther than he had before. However, incapable of bearing such extraordinary weight, the wheel of the wagon shattered, toppling the cart, and all of the cages were sent crashing into the mud.

“No!”, Vabriel screamed, ragefully clutching the haft of the ax with both hands. Two years of travel and intensive study evaporated before his eyes, and he was powerless to stop it.

The pail was first to launch from the wagon, spill, and fling the koi to the grasses along the riverside. It flip-flopped and wriggled until it plopped safely into the river and swam away.

Released from their cage, the pair of rabbits and jackalope bounded for freedom found in nearby shrubs.

Thrown free, the fairy helped the brownie to its feet and, gripping under its shoulders, took to the air. Both burst into a stream of shimmering starlight that raced into the trees and disappeared into the darkness.

Giggling insanely, the old leprechaun hoisted the gold coin in its arms and sneered disdainfully at Vabriel. Its red cap flopped wetly behind its head, its eyes were glowing yellow beads, and it smiled venomously through a row of sharp teeth.

On impact, the turtle dragon’s cage exploded into pieces. The creature rolled, hissed, and croaked. It awkwardly rolled to its feet, stomped around, and smashed the cricket box and the ceramic jar holding the beetles. It clawed at the muddy road and drug itself forward, snapping its beak menacingly at Vabriel.

Raising his ax high into the air, the Mulzunite roared to bring it smashing down onto the young dragon.

That, however, did not happen.

Instead, a searing, brilliant burst of lightning errupted out of the ground and splintered into the sky from the head of the ax. In an instant, Vabriel’s body was scorched and burned. His facial hair caught fire; his heart stopped; his breathing seized; his limbs violently shook; his eyes bulged. And when the lightning discharged, his smokey, seared body collapsed dead to the ground.

“Luck,” whispered the leprechaun from the center hole in the coin, its voice ominous and grainy, “comes in two shades.” Chortling, it went to Vabriel’s still body and removed its cap to soak it red in his blood. Trudging past the dragon, cradling the gold coin, it said, “He’s all yours.”

Emerging from the relative safety of its shell, the dragon turtle sniffed at the charred remains, nipped at Vabriel’s forearm, and dragged his carcass into the river.