Directions

by Rudi Dornemann

A. The front door of your hovel

1. Take the goat path down the mountain . . . . . . . 240 steps

2. Follow the royal city road . . . . . . . 12 stadia

3. Continue to the spot where an old woman who isn’t really an old woman will need your assistance . . . . . . . 8.53 stadia

4. Continue to the spot where highwaymen will rob you of everything but the magic flower the old woman gave you, which they’ll snatch from your button hole and trample into the mud . . . . . . . 6.1 stadia

5. Climb until you’re exhausted from shimmying up the stalk of the giant plant that grew from the flower . . . . . . . 0.27 stadia

6. Run across the fields of the cloudland, away from the dragon, into the fog-cave . . . . . . . 763 steps

7. Stumble through the cave passages . . . . . . . 94 steps

8. Veer left at the first fork . . . . . . . 32 steps

9. Veer right at the second fork . . . . . . . 82 steps

10. Emerge into sunlight, and wander the upper cumulus plateau . . . . . . . 102 steps (approx.)

11. Run to that wispy castle-like structure up ahead (the tracking ability of dragons is generally underestimated) . . . . . . . 289 steps

12. Up the stairs to the drawbridge lever . . . . . . . 11 steps

13. Up many more stairs to the top of the tower, since dragons are more solid than cloud-drawbridges . . . . . . . 200 steps

14. Run in panicked circles, searching your pockets for anything with which to defend yourself, and discovering only petals from the old woman’s flower . . . . . . . 54 steps

15. Soar back to your mountainside hovel, on the magical wings into which the petals bloom . . . . . . . 24.3 stadia

16. Run, this time in a panicked straight line, right through your goat pen. (Dragons: no slouch at the soaring thing themselves.) . . . . . . . 289 steps

17. Cower, while great whooshes of fire explode everywhere . . . . . . . 0 steps

18. Crawl out from under the crispy goat. . . . . . . 2 steps

19. Cavort, in the heaps of gold doubloons. (Who knew dragons’ scales were actually layers of hoarded coins? Or that they were so allergic to goats?) (Apparently fairytalemaps.google.com did.) . . . . . . . 330 steps

B. Your destiny.