The Dragon and the Firefly

by Keanan Brand

  Minoru frowned. He drew his sword and nudged his horse forward.

  As Arashi passed, he too stared down at Genji, but guided his mount in a wide arc, as if afraid of the former blindman. He signaled the soldiers. They drew swords, looking from side to side as if the gardens and buildings harbored an army. War had emptied them. All the students were scattered or killed.

  Ryu stood alone beneath the One Tree, an apple in hand.

  “Stand back, my lord,” warned Arashi, reining his horse several paces away from the tree. “The serpents in the apple—”

  Minoru lifted a gloved hand for silence. Then he rode a circuit around the tree and halted near Ryu. “I see a great tree but no thorns. No fruit.”

  “It is there for those who seek.”

  “The emperor spouted such gibberish before I killed him.” Sweat slid down Minoru's face. He stabbed a finger toward Genji still standing beside the gate. “How? How?”

  “The One Tree.”

  “But how? How did you know he died? He lay in the palace garden. How did you bring him here?”

  “He walked.”

  “Impudent—” The shōgun grimacedand slumped forward.

  Ryu held out the apple.

  Minoru's eyes narrowed.

  The apple writhed in Ryu's hand. The One Tree's song hummed through the ground. Heat flared along his bones.

  Pale, Minoru dismounted and took the fruit. Studied it. Rolled it in his hands. Tossed it from palm to palm. “Ah, my emperor,” he murmured. “This you would not share? For this you gave your life?”

  His laugh ended in a groan, and he bent, gasping. Arashi stepped forward to help, but the shōgun waved him off. Minoru straightened slowly. “A tree for an apple, dust for a serpent, tales for children—and medicine for the dying.” He discarded his gloves, drew a knife, peeled back a slab of rind, and took a bite of the pale flesh. He spoke as he chewed, “Harvest it all. Burn the tree.”

  While one soldier knelt with his flint and a pile of tinder, striking a flame, others unslung their packs and untied torches wrapped in oil-soaked rags or fisted with pitch-filled pine knots. A handful of soldiers remained with the shōgun, but the rest emptied their packs, shed their weapons, and climbed the tree.

  Ryu had expected this, but it made his heart no less heavy. He stood away from the tree and watched the harvesters' progress, marked by trembling leaves and swaying branches.

  He glanced at Minoru. On the far side of the apple, a rope of lithe blue-green unwound, and a flat arrow-shaped head swayed up. Minoru stared, forgetting to swallow.

  It was not a serpent's sting, however, that took the shōgun.

  With a great creaking rumble and groaning thunder, the One Tree bent down, tumbling the soldiers from limb to limb and depositing them in the dirt. Then branches curved to embrace Minoru. He shrieked and struggled, but the tree did not loosen its clasp.

  Some soldiers fled. They may have seen battle, but never a tree come to life. Genji did not close the gate after them, but stood staring, wide-eyed and fixed. The harvester soldiers slowly regained their feet. Limping, dropping their apples, most followed their comrades.

  Still ahorseback, Arashi drew his sword to hack at the limbs, but the blade bounced off without leaving a mark. “Tatsuyoshi!” he shouted, slamming his dented sword against the tree.

  The tree swayed, and Minoru's feet dangled off the ground. Ryu closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. The song crashed against him—how could the others not hear it? It was not a song of anger or hatred, but a song of pleading. Surrender. Turn back. Be free of the greed that has stolen lives beyond count. The greed that can never possess. The greed that bores a hole in your belly. Surrender.

  “Noooo!” shouted Minoru. “I have come too far—”

  Arashi's blade broke and careened off into the grass.

  In that instant, Ryu saw his folly. The One Tree did not need him. He needed the One Tree. Arashi and Minoru were not the only greedy ones. Ryu's pride, pain, and anger had sought revenge for the wounds inflicted by a brother. He had called forth death from life. Not the One Tree but his own fear sent the serpents to kill his enemies. He was no better than they, rationalizing his deeds against their blacker deeds, twisting good into evil. The scars on his face were nothing to the scars on his soul.

  Forgive me. Ryu bowed to the tree. Forgive me.

  The apple fell from the shōgun's slack hand, and the serpent returned to its place. With a great sigh, the One Tree released Minoru, gently placing him on the ground before straightening back into place, rustling and creaking. The shōgun lay blinking at the sky and catching his breath.

  Arashi dismounted. As he strode toward Ryu, he unslung his bow and nocked an arrow.

  Ryu stood once more with his back to the ribboned trunk. Heat coiled his limbs, and his heart beat an uncertain drum. The tree's song became a mournful lullaby.

  Silence lengthened. Arashi's arm shook with the strain of pulling the bowstring.

  Ryu waited, unflinching.

  “Why do you not run? Why not call forth the serpents and save yourself?”

  “All the deaths we have wrought—someone must pay the price.”

  Arashi released the arrow. It pierced Ryu's chest, pinning him to the tree. Breath slammed out of him. A giant fist squeezed his heart until it thudded to a stop.

  *

  In the slanted morning light, Hotaru and the boy stepped through the gate. The song had guided her this far, but she no longer heard it.

  Soldiers ran at them. Hotaru shielded the boy lest he be trampled, but the pale, frantic men paid them no heed, fleeing out the gate. She looked toward a great tree rising behind them. She gasped. An archer shot Ryu, slamming him against the tree, an arrow in his chest.

  The boy pressed against her side.

  Minoru rose from the ground, and signaled the remaining soldiers to set the tree alight.

  “No!” she cried out, surging forward, but hands clamped her arms and held her back. The boy kicked against his captors until they pushed him down. Still he struggled.

  Minoru raised a hand. “Let them see a fool’s folly.”

  A soldier prodded Hotaru forward. Grief pinned her feet to the ground. He shoved her again, and she stumbled toward the One Tree. The heat of the flames, however, pushed everyone back until they stood in a wide ring, watching.

  The near side of Ryu's face was untouched. Mother had said he resembled the late emperor when young, and he appeared the right age to be the lost grandson. Before the emperor died, did he think the same? If he had, he would never have let Ryu serve in the imperial guard. Or, perhaps, he sought to shield him by concealing the truth. And what better way to secretly keep his grandson close but by appointing him as his personal guard? Joy and pain at once.

  She took small comfort Ryu could not feel the flames.

  Beside her, one soldier said to his fellows, “Eat up.” He tilted his head toward Ryu. “He has no need of it.” As soon as he picked up one of the fallen serpent fruit, however, Arashi's arrow quivered in his chest. He fell, and the apples rolled out around him, their shiny blue-green skins alive with dancing flamelight.

  A grimace of pain and hatred twisting his face, Minoru stretched forth his hand as if casting a spell. Serpents unwound from the apples and slithered among the soldiers, twining and biting. Men fell, screaming. The sweet scent of burning applewood rose like funeral incense.

  Hotaru knelt and placed her brush box on the ground. From her back she took a bamboo tube filled with rolled rice paper. She spread a sheet of it on the ground, and anchored the corners with stones. Then she uncapped a pot of ink and chose a thornwood brush. At first her hands shook, but she steadied as she worked.

  First she sketched Arashi's face but with Ryu's scars. From across the circle, the archer cried out in pain, but Hotaru did not look up.

  Next she drew Minoru, a dark beast looming over his shoulder. He, too, cried out, but in fear. At the corner of her eye, Hotaru saw his boots turn in stagg
ering circles as he tried to escape himself.

  The fire's heat created a searing wind. It stirred her hair and fluttered the paper.

  Now she drew the One Tree, strong and whole despite the flames kindling its branches—the fiery wake of a dragon rising.

  Letting out a long breath, she set down the brush and sat back on her heels, her hands quiet in her lap. She looked up. The surviving men had all withdrawn, arms covering their faces, pushed further back by furnace-like heat. Minoru and Arashi had collapsed, both rocking back and forth in agony.

  Then a roar sounded deep in the flames, and they pushed outward in two great wings.

  *

  He woke in the One Tree's embrace, surrounded by light. A blood-stained hole marked where the arrow had pierced his garments, but the arrow itself was burnt to ashes. He pulled back the cloth and put a hand on the wound. Only a scar remained.

  Fire surged along Ryu's bones. His skin transformed into glittering scales. A roar thundered from his mouth. Flames gathered to him and formed great wings, lifting him up through blazing branches and into the sky.

  Soldiers cowered or lay dead. Genji huddled, shielding a child. Hotaru sat among her drawings and looked up. Her body seemed lit from within.

  His sight sharpened, catching the gleam of serpents as they scattered in the grass, hiding from the inferno. No. No more. Ryu swooped down. He opened his mouth, and from it poured waterfalls, quenching the flames, burning the serpents. He circled the dōjō then rose above the forest, scattering raindrops until the fire inside him cooled. When he landed, he was only a man again, with his own skin and no wings.

  The One Tree stood tall and green, untouched by the fire. The song returned—not a hum or a lullaby or a chorus, but something new, as if the tree laughed.

  6

  Genjii paced before the wide window of the main house while, inside the house, chin propped on his fists, the boy watched from the stairs as Hotaru and the scarred man stood in the great room and stared at one another in silence.

  Rightly, he was no longer scarred, but the boy could not yet think of him otherwise.

  A long, strange day it had been.

  The shōgun was mad. He crawled in circles and jabbered at the dead emperor. Grey-faced and silent, Arashi placed him in a cart, and a handful of soldiers escorted them to Minoru’s estate, far from the city.

  Who would occupy the palace now? Not that it mattered to the boy.

  Using the apples, the scarred man had healed the remaining soldiers, even the dead ones, raising them up, bidding them rest, eat, wash away blood and soot. They called him sensei or sama, and bowed when he passed.

  The boy did not trust them. He and Genji collected and locked away their weapons. Yet the scarred man gave them food and bid them stable their horses, saying they could stay until morning. If they remained past breakfast, they must decide: Stay and learn—or never return.

  “Though you remember the place,” he said, “you will not remember the way.”

  How could he know such things? Did he have the power to wipe clean their memories?

  “Yet, go or stay, you must reveal the truth. The fruit of the One Tree is for all who seek it, and its song will guide their feet, but ever after they must live ready to tell others.”

  No more would that tree or any other be called serpent-fruit, but thornwood. And, indeed, as the boy heard and observed in passing years, the trees absorbed the enwrapping thorns into themselves until they became like the One Tree, their trunks twined by the pattern of the thorns, no longer wounding anyone who sought the fruit high in the branches.

  But, at this moment, the scarred man faced Hotaru in the large, empty room. “You gave me wings.”

  “I am, after all, a firefly.” She touched the glittering scales at the base of his throat. “You breathe water and fire.”

  “I am, after all, a dragon.”

  They smiled as if sharing unspoken words, a jest known only to them. Then, as if realizing they were not alone, the scarred man turned his head.

  Startled, the boy almost fell off the step. Hotaru nodded at him and smiled. He descended the steps and approached.

  “What is your name?” asked the scarred man.

  The boy shrugged.

  “You have no parents or home?”

  The boy shook his head.

  The scarred man grew somber. “You have them now.” He rested his hand on the boy’s head like a blessing. “Ryutaro.”

  Ryutaro. The boy rolled it around, feeling the lilt and cadence of it, the weight and the meaning. Ryutaro. Son of the dragon.

  Outside, Genji stood with arms flung wide and laughed at the sky.

  The End

  Author Note

  I do not speak Japanese, nor am I deeply acquainted with the culture, the mythology, or the country. However, my father spoke highly of the people he met there during his tour in the Navy (late 1960s). Sometimes, on the West Coast of the United States, I would stand and look out over the ocean, wishing I could see the other side. Japan has remained one of the places I’d like to visit if I ever am able to see the world.

  Like most others, this story has traveled a winding road, becoming something far different than I originally envisioned. It was supposed to be heroic fantasy, a rough-edged assassin’s tale. Instead, it became introspective, steeped in memory and allusion, a mix of East and West.

  Despite the differences, I hope readers enjoy the story and are inspired to explore other lands, languages, and lore.

  Keanan Brand

  September 2017

  Dragon’s Rook

  website