“You’ll end up dead like your daddy.” That’s what grandpa said about the living room. He could have chosen nicer words at least. Nathan’s grandpa wasn’t nice though but he had a lot of cool stuff or “junk” as his mom called it, all throughout the house. The clutter in the living room was at least a few feet taller than himself, columns of books standing like towers over a dark and gray landscape. Nathan was sure there was treasure in there somewhere, under all the stuff, somewhere below it all.

Whenever he was dropped off by his mom in the scary part of town, where scary people did scary things, appearing more like trolls living under bridges and gremlins hiding under trash bags, Nathan thought that he would be used to the gross toilet smell in his grandpa’s house, the kind of smell that stung his nose and made him feel sick inside, but he wasn’t. The other third graders, his friends at school, would never come to a place like this, let alone stand the smell that oddly dissipated the longer he smelled it. It was neat to walk through the place, to see all the boxes, books, and newspapers stacked up like a wizard’s den full of magical items, both ancient and mysterious. And it was the fact that he couldn’t get into most of the rooms that made his grandpa’s house even more mysterious.

But it was the living room, a room that little Nathan had never actually seen in its entirety, that drove his curiosity wild with imagination. He only knew that it existed from what his grandpa had said, “You don’t want to go in there. Things’ll topple.” and “Stay in the kitchen. Too many vermin in the living room.” The smell was even worse in the kitchen so Nathan usually ended up standing in front of the hallway, where one wall was made of boxes, books, lightly-stacked newspapers and magazines. This wall blocked his view of the living room and only provided fuel for his fantasies. He imagined mounds and mounds of artifacts from a bygone era, stacked and strewn loosely across the room, like an abandoned vault or, similar to a book he read recently, like the golden hoard of a mystical dragon, lying dormant in an underground cave or crypt.

There was a squeak that came from the other side of the hoard wall. A damsel in distress! A small gnome perhaps, trapped under a book or toy. Grandpa would be asleep watching his favorite show in the other room. He had to try and save them! If he got caught Nathan would just say he was trying to be a hero. That’s what his grandpa said he was back in the war. A hero. A real hero. Heroes saved the less-fortunate from “up-evil” and termites (or was it “termoils?”)

He was already halfway up the boxes, using the books as steps, surpassing his own three-foot height, before he realized what he was doing. His curiosity was too strong. Oh what wonder he might find over there, deep in the hoard –what gold and gems and toys. Straining his arm high he reached for the top box and tried hard to keep his gaping mouth shut to prevent the dust from going in but he couldn’t help it, as he winced, comparing himself to some heroic knight on a journey against fate, against the odds, and against an evil force that sat on a creaking, mechanical chariot in the other room. Finally he lifted himself up over the edge, his foot pressing most of his weight on the top box and, as the tower started wobbling, and he fell down over the other side, tumbling into the hoard below, never getting a full glance of the living room.

Dust cut into his eyes. Old magic, he supposed, that would prevent anyone from seeing the hoard. An object fell on his chest and after rubbing his eyes he realized the object was alive as it squirmed down his leg and dove into an open book, its tail wriggling about. A fairy gremlin! He eagerly pulled the creature from its hiding place and lifted it up. Furry, very furry. A long snout with whiskers tickled his nose and pink hands reached out, as if pleading. He put the gremlin on his shoulder and let it sniff his neck and then, with wide-eyed surprise, noticed the little doors and windows the gremlin must’ve made in the boxes magazines. They were small and too numerous to count but it was cute to think the little fellow made a house — no, a mansion! — out of the “junk”. How creative! A piece of art almost. Creativity that would have been scolded by his grandpa. “Self-expression makes you weak,” he would say. “Makes you overly sensitive and childish.” Inside the holes were little brown pellets. Hmm, thought Nathan, the gremlin was making his own hoard.

Nathan turned and tried to stand on the uneven terrain of the books, nearly slipping, and became frozen with wonder and astonishment at the things that lay about the room, unseen and untouched “for forty years” or so he’d been told. The walls of the house weren’t even visible anymore against the obstruction of the pillars of black bags, stuffed to the point of exploding, boxes of toys, figures, and games, all with their price tags still attached, various papers, rugs, shelves, furniture and chairs stacked clumsily in one corner, other objects and boxes stacked on them, and more towers of books that were twice the size of himself. Everything was so old and dusty. It was like looking at all the stuff in a museum but lumped together loosely and without much care. 

He could spend hours here, days even, lost in this magic kingdom of ancient relics. A dungeon or mountain cavern with stalagmites rising from the dangerous craggy floor. All the items here, covered in a layer of brown or light brown grayness, were all older than he was. He crawled on hands and knees toward the far corner, where three large book towers were stacked high. The biggest one had two pillars of books colliding into one tower, some pages hanging over like crumbling masonry. He gave a name to the gremlin mouse and gave it a piece of a hard biscuit from his pocket. “There you go, Reggie. Come on, you think we’ll find a sorcerer’s tome in there? Let’s have a look!”

Reggie squeaked as Nathan’s hand trembled, grabbing the thick book in the middle of the large column. It wouldn’t budge but had gold leaf pages. He touched the pages and felt a tingle up his spine. What other treasures could await! Ah, another book at the top of the pile with the same thick binding with gold pages. If he could reach –he’d have to stretch — he could get to it. He just needed one step on the books below and another foot up if —the book tower shifted in the middle and became loose, falling slowly towards him, which caused the books behind that, on the shelves, to also fall. A sudden dread filled his chest, that dread he usually felt when falling backwards accidently off a bed or another high place, that feeling of hopelessness converged on him, like the other two pillars of books now also collapsing, falling tumbling, burying him with dust, heaviness, and ancient things long forgotten. A heavy volume struck his forehead and made the world go away and fade to black.

The black was cold and numbing but it slowly grew into a white light that changed to gold, magnificent and shining. Gold coins, gold scepters, gold chalices, gold armor, and gold-plated books were all around, a plethora of gold scattered across a cavern floor, lit by a pillar of sun shining through a hole in the cave roof. He became a casual viewer as the vision unfolded, the numbness giving him the sensation of being an omnipresent godlike figure who saw all and reacted with indifference. So much gold. It was glorious yet somehow expected, like he knew the gold hoard was meant to be here and had been for some time. Time was like a flood of water rushing down a long and never ending river.

But it wasn’t the gold that drew his focus. There was an object under all the gold, he could sense it, old as time itself, something that must’ve belonged to the ancient ones. He could feel it pulsing with primordial energy. Suddenly, as time continued along its stream, the hole in the roof collapsed with an explosion of rock. A sole explorer came down a rope from the ceiling and down to the golden hoard. The explorer, a nobleman from the surrounding town, used a shimmering compass and found the location of the object and dug it out after some time. The totem, a wooden figure of a man partially painted and of primitive design, was retrieved as gold jingled all around. This totem of wood, and not gold, seemed to mean more to Nathan than anything else in the hoard, for it seemed to be something he himself made, eons ago, in another life, in this alternate realm. Despite being numb he still perceived a sense of pride for this totem.

The object was taken to a town where the explorer built a church around it, giving it an altar and surrounding it with decoration. But as the river of time continued the generations of the explorer kept watch over the totem, eventually leading to jealousy among the neighboring goblin tribes who found the totem trivial but knew that it had come from the golden hoard. The goblins had their own hordes but these hordes were made of thousands of army troops and mercenaries that came from the swamps and washed away the explorer’s town like a flood. The townsmen fought bravely although they were not warriors and it seemed to Nathan that they would never be, watching the town fall to flame, green hordes, and a sea of red.

As the stream continued the town fell to dust and the totem sank below the sands of time, under wood and cinder. The landscape changed and the totem was forgotten. The mountain hoard, where so much gold had been kept, was ransacked by the goblins and their lineage, spreading the wealth across the land. The gold from its hoard was gone and yet provided untold bloodshed for the next several eons. While the artifact remained untouched.

One day, a lowly shepherd came upon a dirt mound and pulled what he thought was a stone from the dirt. The totem was colorful and interesting, light blue paint on the shoulder chipping. With an eager step in his boots the shepherd went back to his hovel and gave the totem to his daughter, who received the gift with welcome arms and a strong smile. Nathan smiled too, knowing that despite all the cruelty and violence surrounding the totem –it was a work of art and although the gold was beautiful it would never have the same value, the real honest value that such an object would provide. Nathan couldn’t decide which one of them was happier, the girl or himself, at seeing her joy and knowing that despite the object may be passed to another child, the figure would provide inspiration and joy over several lifetimes, compared to the death and destruction that the gold wrought. Everything else seemed worthless.

There was a tug at his shoulder. His eyes opened to painful heat, burning white, and a wrinkled hand rubbing his arm. “Oh, dear god. Nurse, he’s awake! Don’t move your head, Nathan. There’s been an accident.”

He did as instructed, or tried to, but still squeezed his eyes shut when the pain did strike his head like a war hammer. “Grandpa, I got lost in your treasures, in the living room. The golden hoard.”

“Oh, Nathan, I don’t have riches. I just have trash and old things. I am the opposite. I am broken. Not golden.” said his grandpa, his gaze becoming distracted.

“It’s not junk. I found something amazing in there. A new way to see things. Shiny things are not as bright as they appear.

“You shouldn’t focus on that now.”

Nathan, having seen the generations of another world pass by so quickly, sat in quiet reflection and finally said, “I think you should try.”