D:L&L - Part 7 | Narrator: Treasure Seekers

The clouds had cast long shadows across the road all day. Thus, the old man didn’t notice the peculiar shapes thrown down upon the dusty trail in front of him until it was too late. Powerful hands caught his arms, dragging him kicking and screaming away from the cart, the only world he’d known from one end of the Yellow Brick Road to the other.

From Shiz to the Emerald City, from Center Munch and Dragon Cupboard to Qhoyre in the Quadling Country, he’d seen it all with the world safely under his feet. He was taller than most, even more so in Munchkinland, where he was an oddity to be ogled and sometimes feared, the perfect compliment to the wonders on his cart. He could see the terror in the eyes of the children, hear the whispers of the women – they died away when they came to barter for his treasures.

The wind howled in his ears as the ground fell away.

There were still rumors of dragons now and again – he heard all the gossip in his travels. And once he’d heard the story of the great Balloone that had been swept away on the wind, taking the Wizard to the far-off land of Kans. He’d marveled at the stories his father had told when they’d walked the Road together with the cart – stories of witches and magic, of talking Animals, of flying monkeys. None of them had, of course, been true.

The last thing he could see before the monkeys dropped him was the tiny shape of his cart and similar beasts rifling through it. ‘Whatever treasure one sought,’ he was always apt to say, ‘one could find it on the Travel Kart.’