NADIA

The dragon tore through the clouds, fire spilling from its jaws.

Below, a castle burned against the night.

Shadow creatures were climbing the walls.

Soldiers scattered across the battlements.

Nadia leaned forward over the dragon’s neck, her crown almost disappearing into the wind.

“Lower.”

The dragon folded its wings.

And dropped.

The ground rushed toward them.

Nadia tightened her grip.

Closer.

Closer.

At the last moment, the dragon opened its wings.

Fire swept across the battlements.

The creatures scattered.

Below, soldiers raised their swords.

“THE QUEEN!”

Nadia smiled.

The dragon climbed again, carrying her above the castle, above the mountains, above a kingdom that apparently could not survive one night without her.

Another shadow rose through the smoke.

Larger this time.

Nadia turned the dragon toward it.

“Again.”

The dragon roared.

Nothing in the world could—

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Nadia opened her eyes.

No dragon.

No army.

No burning kingdom.

Just a hotel room in Poland.

Grey morning outside the window.

One sock on the floor.

A half-open suitcase.

And a paper bag containing two pastries she had bought the night before because she had not understood what the woman in the bakery was saying and had panicked.

Nadia stared at the ceiling.

The kingdom would have to manage without her.

She reached for her phone and silenced the alarm.

On the bedside table lay an old folded piece of paper.

That was the real reason she was here.

It was a drawing her grandfather had made many years ago.

A road.

A small house.

A church tower in the distance.

A crooked tree beside a wall.

Nothing remarkable.

Except that whenever her grandfather spoke about his childhood, he drew the same place.

Never from a photograph.

Always from memory.

The details changed.

Sometimes the house had two windows.

Sometimes three.

The road grew wider as he grew older.

The tree moved slightly from one drawing to the next.

But the church tower always stood in the same place.

And the stone wall always bent at the same strange angle.

When Nadia was little, she had assumed it was a treasure map.

“What’s there?”

“My home.”

“That’s all?”

Her grandfather had laughed.

At seven, Nadia had found that answer deeply disappointing.

Years later, after he was gone, she kept the sketch.

And one evening, while looking at it again, she had wondered whether the place still existed.

That was how Nadia ended up in Poland.

Searching for a house drawn from the memory of a boy who had left it decades before she was born.

Finding the place turned out to be much harder than expected.

Roads had changed.

Village names had changed.

Buildings had disappeared.

Her grandfather had also neglected several practical details, such as street names.

Nadia showed the sketch to a café owner.

He sent her east.

A woman in a grocery shop sent her west.

An elderly man studied the drawing for so long that Nadia briefly suspected he intended to keep it.

Finally, he pointed toward a road outside the village.

Nadia drove there.

Wrong road.

She came back.

Tried another.

Also wrong.

By noon she had passed the same field three times.

On the fourth, she pulled over.

“This is ridiculous.”

The sketch remained unsympathetic.

Nadia unfolded it across the steering wheel.

She could go back.

She had tried.

Then something beyond the field caught her eye.

A church tower.

Small.

Partly hidden behind trees.

Nadia looked down at the sketch.

Then back up.

Same shape.

Same position.

She sat very still.

Then started the car.

The road became narrower.

The houses fewer.

And then Nadia saw the wall.

Old stone.

Weathered.

Bending at exactly the wrong angle.

Exactly as it did on the paper.

She stopped the car.

For a moment she didn’t get out.

Finally, she opened the door.

The house was gone.

Not abandoned.

Not renovated.

Gone.

Only an empty patch of ground remained behind the wall.

Nadia looked at the sketch.

Then at the empty space.

She had imagined this moment differently.

Perhaps there would be a house.

Perhaps a door.

Perhaps somebody would open it and somehow know why she had come.

Instead there was grass.

Stone.

Wind.

And a place that had continued existing perfectly well without waiting for her.

For a few seconds, Nadia felt foolish.

She had crossed countries for this.

Then she noticed the church tower beyond the trees.

Still there.

And beside the wall stood a crooked old tree.

Not exactly the tree from the drawing.

Perhaps not even the same tree.

But close enough.

Her grandfather had stood here.

That simple thought changed everything.

Before he became the grandfather she knew.

Before the stories.

Before the family photographs.

Before Nadia herself existed.

He had once been a child here.

He had known this road before it became a memory.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

An elderly man was walking slowly along the road carrying a small shopping bag.

He glanced at Nadia.

She glanced back.

And something inside her stopped.

His eyes.

For one impossible second, they were her grandfather’s.

Not the face.

Not the smile.

Just the eyes.

That same quiet warmth.

That slight amusement at the edges.

Nadia stared longer than politeness allowed.

The man stopped.

His gaze dropped to the old drawing in her hand.

Then moved toward the empty ground behind the wall.

Something passed across his expression.

Recognition, perhaps.

Or maybe Nadia simply wanted it to be.

He looked at her again.

Then gave her a small nod.

Nothing more.

No miraculous conversation.

No revelation.

He continued walking.

Nadia watched until he disappeared around the bend.

She nearly followed him.

Nearly asked whether he remembered the house.

Whether he remembered a family who had lived there.

Whether he remembered a boy who had eventually spent a lifetime drawing this road from memory.

But she didn’t.

Some moments became smaller when explained.

Nadia walked along the wall.

At the far end, she crouched and placed her hand against the earth.

Ordinary soil.

Dry at the surface.

A little cold underneath.

Nothing magical about it.

And yet her grandfather had once run across this ground.

Fallen here, perhaps.

Been called home from here.

Looked at that church tower.

Complained about the rain.

Dreamed of leaving.

Maybe dreamed of returning.

Nadia looked again at the sketch.

All those years she had thought he was drawing a house.

Now she understood.

He had been drawing a way back.

She took a small handful of soil.

Not enough to matter to the ground.

Enough to matter to her.

She wrapped it carefully in a tissue and placed it beside the old drawing in her bag.

Then she sat on the wall.

No photographs.

No messages.

No map.

Just Nadia and a place that was both gone and still there.

The wind moved through the branches above her.

For once, she did not need to know anything more.

That night, Nadia slept.

And the dragon was waiting.

The same black scales.

The same enormous wings.

The same impatient fire glowing behind its teeth.

Nadia climbed onto its back.

The dragon lifted into the clouds.

Mountains opened beneath them.

Far below, kingdoms appeared and disappeared through the mist.

The dragon turned its head as though asking where next.

This time, Nadia didn’t look toward the horizon.

She looked down.

Far beneath the clouds was a narrow road.

A crooked wall.

A church tower.

And a small piece of earth that had somehow travelled all the way into a dream.

Nadia smiled.

The dragon carried her higher.

This time, she didn’t ask where they were going.

She knew.