Coins of the Realm

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But as everyone knows, dragons are notorious hoarders of treasure. Is it any wonder they flocked to this yearly event on the eastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains?

The North Carolina Numismatic Association’s annual convention and coin show for 2027 took place at the Asheville Municipal Auditorium, towards the north of the city. Coin dealers from throughout the Southeastern United States set up tables to sell their wares, and hopefully, to discover a rare find for their own collections. In fact, the coin vendors were notorious for keeping the best pieces among themselves, buying and selling within their own ranks.

Dragons and their treasure.

In the modern world, dragons had their ways of fitting in, of not drawing attention to themselves. For centuries, they had shared amongst themselves the artifice, the legerdemain, the wizardly art of passing unnoticed among true humans. In short, it was magic. In the 1500s, in Ireland, the necromancer Ímar Ua Donnubáin traded a magic spell to the dragons, in exchange for the secret of turning flax into gold thread. Ua Donnubáin’s spell gave dragons the ability to walk among humans in their own guise, indistinguishable from mankind.

That spell was the reason dragons still walked the earth in the 21st century. Without it their noble race would be extinct. Not all coin vendors were dragons, it should be noted. But with their proclivity for seeking out treasure, the profession was largely dragon-led.

No, there weren’t always dragons in the valley. But once a year, for the NCNA’s annual coin show, they filled the hotels and B&Bs of North Carolina’s small cities, on a yearly rotation. And luckily for Mathew Sanders, this year was Asheville’s turn once again.

Luckily…

If he happened to meet the right dragon.

***

Mathew Sanders, age fourteen, was a nerdy teenager. And isn’t it always that kind—the geek, the dork, the outsider—who gets into these situations? It’s never the jocks or the popular kids who get abducted by aliens or cross a portal between dimensions. No judgment. But they have earned their little adventures, nerdy teens, through the suffering they’ve endured as outcasts. Mathew had certainly earned his moment of fame.

Mathew’s mother, Mrs. O’Malley-Sanders, was one of the premier antiques importers in Asheville. She still had family in the Old Country, that being Ireland, where the O’Malley family was legion. Every year she returned to her homeland, often with her son in tow, on a buying trip to restock her shop in the Biltmore Antiques District.

Unfortunately, Mathew hadn’t been able to go with his mom that year. He had a field trip to the Cherokee Ruby and Sapphire Mine with his geology club scheduled for the same weekend that Mom would be in Ireland. He’d been looking forward to it all semester. In his secret fantasies, he was sure he’d dig up a massive gemstone and sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars, enough to put himself through college. That was his plan, anyway.

He needed to find a treasure.

The O’Malley-Sanders family—Mom, Mathew, and his younger sister Brianna—were mostly living off his late father’s military pension, supplemented by the profits from Mrs. O’Malley-Sanders’ antique shop. Captain Sanders had died in Afghanistan, when both of his children were just toddlers. He’d started a college fund for the kids, but there wasn’t much there, maybe enough for a single two-year degree. And since Mathew was the oldest, that meant his sister wouldn’t get to go to college at all, not without racking up huge student loan debt.

Unfortunately, the trip to the gemstone mine did not result in Mathew making the find of the century. He missed going along on his mom's buying trip for nothing. But there was still hope for making his fortune, after all.

One of the pieces Mrs. O’Malley-Sanders brought back to the United States was a Davenport-type desk, one with lots of small drawers and cubbyholes. Mathew was there at the shop when it came in, helping to unload the crates which had just arrived from Ireland. He loved the mystery of the thing, opening all the little drawers to see if anything had been left inside by some long-ago owner.

He found an old journal-book, with records of sums in pounds and pence, paid to tradesmen and servants. Pretty boring. He found a couple of old letters, sent from some guy fighting for The Empire in India, during Colonial times. Those were more interesting, but still kind of cringey. But it was what he found when one of the very bottom drawers got stuck halfway that made Mathew’s heart pound.

Using an antique letter-opener from the shop, he carefully freed a lump of gravel or metal which had fallen down behind the drawers, catching the slider so that it wouldn’t open all the way. With his slender fingers, he wormed his hand in behind the partially-opened drawer and finally managed to pull out the impediment. Nondescript; just an old coin, the face caked with corrosion. But heavy.

Mathew tucked his find in the pocket of his jeans and finished cleaning out the desk drawers, leaving the rest of the stuff he found on the glass counter near the cash register for his mom to decide what she wanted to do with it. And then he took a break, heading out the back door to sit on the crumbled edge of the sloping concrete entry to the loading area while he gulped down a bottle of spring water.

He pulled the indistinct coin from his pocket to examine it more closely in the bright light of the late-spring Carolina sun as he swigged from the bottle. Then he poured some of the water onto his find, picking away at the encrusted bits of dirt with his thumbnail. Once it was fairly clean, he pulled out his phone, snapped a photo, and did an image search on Google.

And then he smiled.

***

Chlodomer Amulius stepped back into the aisle at the 69th NCNA Annual Convention & Show to peruse his setup. He was rather pleased with the new display cases he’d purchased in an online auction, the sleek chrome and pristine glass showing his wares to perfection, while protecting them from sticky fingers.

Not that he worried much about theft. With all of the other vendors there—most of them brethren—anyone who tried to steal from one of them wasn’t going to try it twice. There was that hedge-fund manager with an unfortunate meth habit, two-three years ago, who’d tried to steal an Athens Dekadrachm from the booth of his old friend, Reccared Decimus. But there wasn’t enough left to identify the corpse once the dragons had finished with him.

For, indeed, Chlodomer and Reccared, and many of their fellow rare coin vendors at the show, were descendants of those original dragons, the ones Ímar Ua Donnubáin had traded his magic spell to so that they could pass for human in a shrinking world. It proved only natural that over the intervening centuries, many dragonkind had gravitated to the numismatic trade, buying and selling rare coins to increase their hoards.

“Good morning, Chlodo!” Maganhar Cicero, at the table across the aisle, greeted him cheerily. “Expecting a good turnout this year, I hear.”

Chlodomer grinned, his slightly-too-sharp teeth gleaming in the florescent overhead lights of the auditorium. “Yes, indeed, Mag,” he returned. “I’m hoping to find something very special this year. I can feel it in my bones.”

Another of the coterie of elite coin traders came up behind him, putting an arm around his shoulders in a gesture of camaraderie. Usually dragons didn’t make physical contact, but these had been in human guise for so long that it fit with their slightly-nerdy personas.

Cathasach Deusdedit squeezed Chlodo’s shoulder before pushing him away again and taking a sip of his cooling coffee. He raised the paper cup and gestured at the crowd of civilians beginning to fill the aisles. “Maybe this year one of them will have one of our Holy Grails in their pocket.”

Cath Deusdedit and Chlodo Amulius had grown up together in the Old Country, their families occupying adjoining territories in the Derryveagh Mountains of Ireland’s northwest. Ever since they were hatchlings roaming the green hills together, Chlodo had his heart set on just one thing.

His Holy Grail was one of the rarest of rare coins. Only three of the 1343 Edward III Gold Florins were known to exist, two of them in the collections of the British Museum, while the third was found by a man with a metal detector. Known as the Double Leopard, it depicted England’s King Edward III on his throne with two leopards’ heads on either side. That last one sold at auction for about $850,000 in 2006. It would now be valued at nearly $10,000,000.

Not beyond what Chlodo could afford, but pricey, to be sure. The dragon coin dealer had been saving to buy one of these rarest of coins—if one ever again came to market—since the early 1700s. He'd missed the auction in '06 and been kicking himself ever since. If one ever came to light again, he would own it. He would sell his entire hoard if need be, to possess an Edward III.

Someday…

As the day went on, trade was brisk. This was traditionally one of the best-attended coin shows in the Southeastern United States. Collectors bought, yes, but they also sold coins from their personal collections, knowing they would get a fair price. And then they turned around and bought more coins.

Near the back of the auditorium, a rotating staff of volunteers manned the appraisals booth, offering free estimates of coins’ values for people coming in with their grandmother’s old coin collection, or the penny-folders they’d filled with wheat pennies as a child. Occassionally something from the Civil War era showed up at the appraisals table, an 1861 Charlotte Half-Eagle, or an 1862 Philadelphia Double Eagle. When Chlodo Amulius happened to glance over and see a rush of vendors to the appraisal booth, his senses went on high alert.

“Here, Marcinius,” he said to his assistant trainee, handing over the keys to his new display cabinets. “Take over.” He rushed out from behind his table and headed for the back of the auditorium.

Pushing in next to Seachnall Ectorius, yet another of the dragon-vendors he’d known for centuries, he peered at the coin lying beneath the magnifying light on the black cloth-draped table.

Behind the table, Eberulf Gabinus, one of the oldest of the dragons still working in the 21st century, turned the coin this way and that in white-gloved hands. “Mmmhmm,” he mumbled. “And this…mmmm. Here,” he pointed to one of the edges. “And this…”

In front of the table stood a teenage boy. Weedy was the only way to describe him. A shock of unruly red hair stuck up above a pale face that saw far too little sun. He was trying unsuccessfully to grow into his body, his limbs not fitting his torso. Give him a few more years...

The boy's eyes were intent on the coin, and he flinched nervously away from the crowd of grown men—or rather, unbeknownst to him, dragons—pushing in behind him to catch a glimpse of the treasure he’d brought in for an appraisal.

As they caught sight of Chlodo, however, they each pulled back, shaking their heads. They knew what the coin was worth, its rarity, and the condition—

But they also knew that Chlodomer Amulius had dibs on it. Each of them had their own Holy Grail and when it came around, the others—in the true spirit of a dragon’s honor—would step away. Chlodo had been searching for a 1343 Edward III Gold Florin for centuries. This coin was his.

Eberulf Gabinus looked up, searching the crowd behind the boy. He smiled, wickedly sharp white teeth gleaming. “Chlodomer Amulius, please meet Mathew O’Malley-Sanders. From Ireland, your old stomping grounds. Mathew, my boy, this is Chlodo Amulius. He’s about to make you a very wealthy young man.”

Chlodo stuck out his hand. "Very pleased to meet you."

***

Mathew’s college education was completely paid for by the money put in trust for his family by the dragon coin vendor, as was his little sister’s. And when he graduated, he moved to Ireland to serve as his mother’s in-country buyer while he wrote high fantasy novels for young adults.

Every book he wrote, for some reason he never explained, had a sympathetic dragon character, a mentor to the young protagonist.

Did Chlodo somehow inadvertently reveal his secret identity to Mathew? That was never known. But the two remained friends for the rest of Mathew’s comparatively short life.

Dragons, on the other hand, live a very long time. A very long and happy time, when they find the one treasure they desire more than any other.

And Chlodomer Amulius finally found his.

***

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Author's Note: I have challenged myself to write twenty-seven dragon prologues/stories for the Vocal.media Fantasy Prologue Challenge, one for each day the challenge runs. Here's a link to my next entry: