Bob Tickletorch

My name is Bob.

Bob Tickletorch.

Yes, that is my name.

No, I did not choose it.

And yes, I have heard every joke.

“Bob Tickletorch? What kind of name is that?”

“Are you a dragon or a children's toy?”

“Does your torch tickle?”

“No, thank you, I already have a dragon.”

That last one doesn't even make sense.

Humans are strange.

I should know. I have spent most of my life among them.

I am a luck dragon.

Not a dragon who breathes fire, sleeps on mountains of gold, and kidnaps princesses. That is a completely different department.

My kind deals in probability.

Fortune.

Coincidence.

Those tiny, invisible nudges that make the difference between a person finding a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk and stepping on a piece of chewing gum instead.

We are not supposed to interfere directly.

That is Rule One.

Rule Two says we must never accept payment for good fortune.

Rule Three says that if somebody asks us to make them rich, famous, immortal, beautiful, or romantically irresistible, we are to pretend we suddenly have an appointment somewhere else.

Rule Four says never, under any circumstances, let a human name you.

I broke Rule Four when I was seven.

That is how I became Bob.

And, in my defense, I had no idea what I was doing.

Luck dragons are not born in the usual sense. We hatch from eggs formed out of improbable things.

Mine formed inside an abandoned clock tower.

The egg was white with gold veins running through it. Nobody knew why.

When I hatched, I emerged into a world of ticking gears, dust, moonlight, and one extremely surprised old watchmaker.

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

I sneezed.

A gear fell from the ceiling, bounced off a beam, landed on a shelf, knocked over a tin of screws, and somehow caused the grandfather clock beside him to start working again.

The old man blinked.

Then he laughed.

“Well,” he said, “you certainly are lucky.”

I liked him immediately.

He was called Elias.

For several years, Elias was my best friend.

He taught me about humans.

Humans, he explained, were very complicated creatures.

They wanted things.

They feared things.

They loved things.

They worried about things that had not happened yet and regretted things that had already happened.

They invented clocks because they were afraid of running out of time.

I thought that was terribly sad.

I asked Elias why humans didn't simply stop worrying.

He laughed so hard he had to sit down.

“Bob,” he said, “if humans stopped worrying, half the world's businesses would disappear.”

That was the first time anyone called me Bob.

I liked that too.

The name stuck.

I never told him I was a luck dragon.

He already knew.

He had known from the moment he saw me.

“You're not exactly subtle,” he said.

I was offended.

I was extraordinarily subtle.

At least, I thought I was.

I was about the size of a large dog, with long ears, soft golden scales, four paws, a ridiculously long tail, and a pair of tiny horns that curled backward from my forehead.

My wings were not large enough to fly properly.

Luck dragons don't fly in the conventional sense anyway.

We drift.

We glide.

We ride currents of possibility.

If I wanted to reach the roof, I could simply step off the ground and become slightly more likely to be there.

It sounds complicated.

It isn't.

Being lucky is mostly about refusing to accept that something is impossible.

For example, if I jumped off a roof, there was a very small chance that I would land safely.

So I simply made that chance slightly larger.

Then slightly larger again.

Eventually, the universe sighed and said, “Fine.”

That is how luck works.

You don't command reality.

You negotiate with it.

Elias taught me that.

He also taught me that humans were capable of extraordinary kindness.

That lesson became important later.

Very important.

Because humans can also be extraordinarily cruel.

I learned that when Elias died.

He was eighty-nine.

He died peacefully in his sleep.

I remember sitting beside his bed that morning, watching sunlight creep across the floor.

There was a little brass clock on his bedside table.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

I hated that clock.

For the first time in my life, I wished I could stop time.

I tried.

I couldn't.

That was when I learned the first great limitation of luck.

Luck cannot undo everything.

Sometimes a door closes.

Sometimes a person leaves.

Sometimes all you can do is sit beside the empty chair and remember who used to occupy it.

I stayed in the clock tower for three days.

Then I left.

For the next fifty years, I wandered.

I met kings and beggars.

I helped farmers find rain.

I helped sailors find their way home.

I caused a runaway carriage to miss a child by approximately two inches.

I once made a crooked old woman win the village lottery.

She bought a new roof.

That was good.

I once accidentally made a duke lose a fortune.

He had been planning to use it to invade a neighboring kingdom.

That was also good.

I began to understand something.

Luck wasn't inherently good.

Or bad.

Luck was simply opportunity.

What people did with it was their choice.

And that meant luck dragons had to be careful.

Very careful.

Then I met Clara.

She was twelve years old.

She lived in a city that had grown around the old clock tower where I had been born.

She found me one rainy afternoon hiding beneath a bridge.

I had been trying to avoid a group of drunken men who had decided that catching a dragon would be an excellent way to become rich.

They had nets.

I had dignity.

The dignity was losing.

Then Clara appeared.

She was small, soaked to the skin, and carrying a red umbrella.

She looked at the men.

Then at me.

Then back at the men.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Catching a dragon,” one of them said.

Clara frowned.

“That isn't your dragon.”

“It will be.”

She planted herself between us.

“No.”

The men laughed.

One of them stepped forward.

His boot slipped.

He fell into the mud.

The second man laughed at him.

Then his boot slipped.

The third man decided that perhaps this was a sign.

He left.

The first two followed.

Clara turned around.

“You okay?”

I stared at her.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

She held out the umbrella.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“My house.”

“Why?”

“Because you're wet.”

I looked at the rain.

Then at her.

“I'm a dragon.”

“I noticed.”

“I don't belong in houses.”

“You're not very big.”

“I am an ancient creature of fortune.”

“You're about the size of a Labrador.”

I was deeply offended.

She smiled.

“Come on, Bob.”

I froze.

“How do you know my name?”

She pointed at my collar.

Elias had made it for me.

A little brass tag hung from it.

BOB.

I looked down.

“Oh.”

She giggled.

And that was how I met Clara.

Clara grew up.

She became a teacher.

Then a mother.

Then a grandmother.

Then a great-grandmother.

I watched over her family for generations.

Not constantly.

That would have been against the rules.

But occasionally.

A missed train here.

A lucky scholarship there.

A flat tire that happened conveniently two minutes before a bridge collapsed.

A stranger arriving at exactly the right moment.

Little things.

I never wanted them to know I was there.

Until Clara's great-grandson, Daniel, ruined everything.

Daniel was twenty-three and spectacularly unlucky.

He had the sort of luck that made people suspicious.

If he carried an umbrella, the rain stopped.

If he didn't carry an umbrella, it rained.

If he bought a sandwich, the filling fell out.

If he bought soup, someone bumped into him.

If he arrived early, the appointment was canceled.

If he arrived late, everyone had already left.

I followed him for a week.

I discovered something strange.

His luck wasn't bad.

It was blocked.

Something was interfering with it.

Something magical.

I found him one evening sitting alone in the same old clock tower where I had hatched.

He was staring at the floor.

“I give up,” he whispered.

I stepped out of the shadows.

“You shouldn't.”

He looked up.

His eyes widened.

“Holy—”

“Yes.”

“Are you—”

“Yes.”

“Are you a dragon?”

“Yes.”

He stared.

I stared.

“You're real.”

“Apparently.”

He stood slowly.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Your luck is broken.”

He laughed.

Not happily.

“Of course it is.”

“No. I mean literally.”

He stopped.

“You're telling me my luck is magically broken?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fix it?”

I hesitated.

That was dangerous territory.

“I can try.”

“What do you need?”

“Your trust.”

Daniel nodded.

“Okay.”

It turned out the curse had been placed on his family nearly two hundred years earlier.

An ancestor had cheated a powerful sorcerer.

The sorcerer had cursed the bloodline.

Every generation would experience a lifetime of small misfortunes.

Nothing catastrophic.

Just enough to make life difficult.

The curse fed on frustration.

The more the family complained about their bad luck, the stronger it became.

I knew what had to happen.

Daniel had to choose differently.

Instead of cursing his luck, he had to accept it.

That sounded easy.

It wasn't.

For three months, Daniel tried.

He stopped complaining when his bus left early.

He laughed when his coffee spilled.

He helped an old man pick up groceries after slipping on a wet sidewalk.

He congratulated a friend who got a job Daniel wanted.

He even smiled when his laptop died five minutes before an important presentation.

“It's okay,” he said.

I watched from the corner.

The curse weakened.

A little.

Then more.

One night, Daniel sat in the clock tower beneath the enormous frozen hands of the old clock.

“I understand now,” he said.

I looked at him.

“What?”

“Luck isn't about getting what you want.”

I smiled.

He continued.

“It's about what happens after you don't.”

I nodded.

“Exactly.”

The curse shattered.

Not with thunder.

Not with lightning.

There was no dramatic explosion.

It simply vanished.

Like a knot coming undone.

Daniel blinked.

Then laughed.

I felt something inside me change.

For the first time in centuries, I felt light.

Almost weightless.

Daniel looked at me.

“You did it.”

“No.”

“You didn't?”

“You did.”

He smiled.

“Bob?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I'm lucky now?”

I considered the question.

Then I looked at the clock.

One of its hands moved.

Tick.

I smiled.

“I think you always were.”

Years passed.

Daniel married.

He had children.

His children had children.

And I remained.

Bob Tickletorch.

Luck dragon.

Guardian of improbable things.

I learned that humans don't really need miracles.

They need chances.

A chance to meet the right person.

A chance to take the right road.

A chance to begin again.

A chance to say, “I'm sorry.”

A chance to say, “I love you.”

A chance to wake up tomorrow and try again.

Those are the things I protect.

Not fortunes.

Not kingdoms.

Not treasure.

Possibility.

Every morning, I wake before sunrise.

I climb to the highest roof I can find.

Then I sit.

I watch the city awaken.

A baker opens his shop.

A nurse walks home.

A child catches a butterfly and lets it go.

A businessman misses his train.

A woman finds a letter she thought she'd lost.

Two strangers reach for the same book.

A dog escapes from a yard and somehow finds its way into the arms of the person who has been missing him for three years.

A thousand little things happen.

Most people call them coincidences.

They don't know me.

That's fine.

I prefer it that way.

Every once in a while, however, somebody sees me.

Usually a child.

Sometimes an old person.

Once, a very confused police officer.

They point.

They blink.

They ask, “Are you real?”

I always give them the same answer.

“Does it matter?”

Because maybe I am real.

Maybe I'm a dream.

Maybe I'm a trick of light.

Maybe I'm a forgotten myth that wandered into the modern world and never bothered to leave.

But when someone finds exactly the amount of money they need to buy medicine...

When a stranded traveler meets a stranger who knows the way home...

When a person who has almost given up receives one unexpected reason to keep going...

When two people who were supposed to miss each other by five minutes somehow meet at exactly the right moment...

That's me.

That's my work.

I'm Bob.

Bob Tickletorch.

And I have learned something after all these centuries.

The universe is enormous.

It is chaotic.

It is unfair.

Bad things happen to good people.

Good things happen to people who don't deserve them.

There are storms.

There are losses.

There are doors that close forever.

But there are also mornings.

There are second chances.

There are unexpected friends.

There are cups of hot tea on cold nights.

There are songs that make people dance.

There are old photographs.

There are babies laughing.

There are dogs who believe every human is their best friend.

There are cats who believe every human is their employee.

And somewhere, always, there is a tiny bit of possibility hiding in the cracks.

Waiting.

Hoping.

Whispering:

Maybe.

That is where I live.

In the word maybe.

Because maybe the bus will come.

Maybe the doctor will have good news.

Maybe the lost dog will find his way home.

Maybe the job application will work.

Maybe the person you love will love you back.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Maybe you will survive today.

And maybe—just maybe—you will wake up one morning and realize that the thing you thought was terrible luck was actually the road that brought you somewhere wonderful.

I have seen it happen.

Thousands of times.

Millions.

And every time, I smile.

Then I nudge the universe.

Just a little.

Not enough to control anything.

Just enough to open one tiny door.

Sometimes that's all anyone needs.

A door.

A chance.

A little luck.

And if you happen to walk through it...

Well.

You're welcome.

After all, that's what Bob Tickletorch is here for.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

And somewhere in the great machinery of the world, possibility turns another gear.

I grin.

I spread my wings.

And I step off the roof.

For one glorious second, gravity remembers that it is supposed to win.

Then probability clears its throat.

Gravity sighs.

And I float gently into the golden morning.

Another day.

Another thousand possibilities.

Another chance to make the world slightly luckier.

My name is Bob.

Bob Tickletorch.

And, believe me—

I'm very glad you found me.