by Kavich, AC
“Hiro, please!” she cried from out of view.
“Just hold on!”
He eased away from the rocks to look down between his legs. Just in time to see her foot slip through the harness.
“NO!”
A strange calm came over Eva in the instant she started her fall. She had heard that one’s life flashes before their eyes in times like these. Perhaps the calm was her mind’s way of preparing for those memories and allowing her to enjoy them – the last pleasure she would experience before her life was snuffed out by the greedy water below, so eager to swallow her whole.
But no, there were no memories for Eva. There was only the calm and a rush of vivid observations. She smelled the salty coating on the rocks before her and the sour stench of algae on the rocks below. She heard the seagulls circling the harbor in search of any edible morsel. She tasted the blood from her lip as she bit it. She felt the rush of cold air as it whipped through her clothes and covered her skin in goose bumps.
As she fell past the rocky shelf protruding from the cliff face, past the rocky curtain that shielded it from direct view, she saw the gnarled black roots that had dug their way through the rock to point defiantly skyward. She saw the black trunk of the tree that grew underneath the shelf in thick, braided cords like a tangle of black wire. She saw the trunk flair outward in all directions, its branches like thick black snakes slithering into the abyss. She saw the coarse black fruit hanging like macabre ornaments from the branches. She saw a single drop of blood red juice that formed on one piece of fruit and readied itself to join in her fall.
And then she saw a bulky form leap over the edge of the cliff above Hiroki – too strangely-shaped to be recognizable – and plummet toward her with an otherworldly screech.
Her moment of perfect calm ended when she felt her body snatched out of its freefall by powerful hands the size Volkswagons.
But no. They weren’t hands.
She was too close to the creature to see its full form. For her, there was only an expanse of scaled blue flesh that heaved with rapid breath. There were only thick black claws – gleaming like polished marble – that clutched her body firmly but somehow failed to slice her open. There was a great blue wing stretched translucent over arcing bones that flapped angrily.
There was gray water, and brown cliffs, and gray water and brown cliffs as the creature that held her in its paw spun wildly – out of control – down and down and down. And then there was only the gray water and white foam and the press of blue flesh as Eva’s protector plunged into the harbor like a boulder.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When the hulking creature had appeared above him, Hiroki lost his grip on the cliff. He swung his arms wildly until – miraculously – his right hand brushed the nylon rope. It was swinging loose now that Eva’s weight no longer held it taut, but he managed to wrap three fingers around the rope and hung on for dear life.
He spun himself around in time to get a clear view of the beast before it plunged into the bay. The pale blue wings were at least forty feet long from tip to tip, their elastic thickness fluttering with wind resistance as the beast pumped them frantically. The heavy body between the wings was a darker blue, mottled with uneven rings that were darker still. The creature’s tail hung uselessly at the rear of the body, but Hiroki could make out short plates protruding along its length.
He could not see the creature’s head from his angle, but he cringed fearfully and painfully at its cacophonous screeching. Seconds later, when the creature plunged into the water, the boom of the impact snuffed out the screeching.
So massive was the creature that struck the water that the splash it caused reached up the cliff wall all the way to Hiroki’s legs. His jeans were soaked and his shoes filled with cold water that sent a chill up his spine.
“Eva!” he screamed, unsure where she had gone. The horrifying creature had blocked his view of her for the precious moments it would have taken for her to complete her deadly fall and strike the water.
The tears came fast to Hiroki’s eyes. He tried to blink them away and focus on the rope in his hands, but his sobs only worsened. He managed to reach the rock shelf above Billy’s mysterious tree, and swung himself to the side to plant his feet on its surface. As the sobs wracked his entire body, he collapsed to the ground.
“Billy! Can you hear me? Billy!”
Even as he called out Billy’s name, he knew it was futile. The realization came to him with crystal clarity. The magnificent creature he had seen – the horrifying creature – that was Billy. He had seen the early stages of Billy’s transformation. He had seen Billy’s skin turn gray then eerily blue. He had seen the scales push their way up from somewhere under the skin. His black and bottomless eyes had been so unnaturally wide on his face.
Billy had transformed into a dragon.
He struggled to his feet and wiped away his tears. Unsteady on his feet, he crept closer to the edge of the shelf and leaned to one side to peer around the rocky curtain that shielded it. He could see the interior edge of the harbor where the cold Pacific water lapped against a rocky, crescent-shaped beach.
And there it was, lying still in the foaming surf. There he was.
Billy.
The dragon.
Hiroki’s climb down from the rocky shelf was much easier than the climb from the plateau to the shelf. There were deep grooves running almost horizontally in the cliff. It made his descent nearly as easy as walking down a flight of stairs.
When he reached the rocky beach, he shuddered as an offensive image entered his mind: Eva lying on the jagged rocks below the cliff. If she fell straight down, she could not have fallen past the rocks into deeper water. Her body would be broken on those rocks, her raven hair across her face and her limbs nudged by the rising tide.
He couldn’t bear the thought. He didn’t have to.
“Hiro!”
He spun around to see the owner of the voice he knew so well. There she was. Eva! Her clothes were soaked through and there was a thin trickle of blood on her forehead, but even on her wobbly legs she was able to stumble toward him.
Hiroki forgot his own fatigue and sprinted to meet her. He wrapped her in his arms and lifted her of her feet, swinging her back and forth like a child. He wasn’t especially strong – not as strong as Billy or Aidan – but the exaltation he felt at seeing her alive and well gave him the strength of ten men.
“Okay, not too rough” she chuckled. “I’m pretty sore.”
“You’re not dead,” he muttered so softly it was almost a whisper.
“I’m not dead.” She kissed his cheek and pulled out of his firm embrace. “He saved me. Billy saved me.”
She turned and pointed at the creature – at Billy – lying in the shallow water. His tail and haunches were submerged, but one wing floated on the surf and his enormous head had plowed a trench in the rocky beach. His eyes were almost closed, but their lids fluttered as he rolled his head their direction and blinked.
“How do you know it’s him?” asked Hiroki. “You didn’t see. On the cliff, you didn’t see what was happening to him.”
“Help me get him out of the water.”
Eva hadn’t known she was good at holding her breath until she had to be good.
The dragon’s plunge into the bay displaced so much water that there was a momentary vacuum around her. She instinctively filled her lungs with air and closed her eyes as the water rushed back in from all sides and enveloped them both. It was roiling in all directions at once, like the inside of a washing machine. She was ripped from the dragon’s paw in the first few seconds and watched, amazed, as the mighty creature slipped deeper and out of view.
She kicked hard for the surface and broke through just as her air ran out. Gasping, she flattened her body and swam for the cliffs. She couldn’t see the beach above the cresting harbor whitecaps, but she was familiar enough with this body of water to pick a good line. Her tired legs gave out when the beach was in sight, and she crawled the rest of the way t
o solid ground.
The creature had returned from the depths of the water and had been swept up on the beach twenty yards to the north. The moonlight wasn’t strong enough for Eva to make out any detail, but the shapes she saw were unmistakable: she was looking at a dragon.
She should have been terrified, but her treacherous climb and perilous fall had cured her of fear – at least for the moment. She wrapped her arms around her torso to stave off the evening chill and stumbled up the beach toward her animal rescuer.
Teen feet away, she finally got a good look at him.
“Your eyes are different, but they’re still your eyes,” said Eva with an excited lilt in her voice. “You saved me, Billy.”
Billy’s massive black eyes were locked on hers, but he struggled to keep them open. The fall had been as nightmarish for him as it had been for her, despite the protection of his huge body. He was exhausted at the very least, if not injured. He tried to lift his head to acknowledge her, but couldn’t.
“No, don’t. Just lie there.” Eva looked back at the cliffs and saw Hiroki’s slender form descending at a rapid pace. “Hiro’s coming.”
Billy’s dragon form was so massive, there was nothing that Hiroki and Eva could do to help him out of the water. They struggled under the weight of one broad wing, their knees wobbling as the icy surf churned around their feet. But it was a valiant effort by Billy to drag himself ashore that finally brought him out of the water.
There was a large indentation in the base of the cliff. It wasn’t quite a cave, but it offered some shelter. A breathless Eva guided Billy toward the shelter like a ground controller on an airport tarmac. He trudged through the rocky beach on colossal paws, huge belly inflating and deflating with every strained breath, then collapsed against the rocks.
“How do I not have my camera?” asked Hiroki with a shiver. “Oh my god, of all the times to leave it at home— I need photographic proof later to convince myself that this is actually happening.”
“You know it is,” said Eva with a mischievous smile.
“Do you think he still has his own brain? Not that it would be a good thing, exactly, to have Billy’s brain. But at least it’s still a human brain.”
Billy rolled his head toward Hiroki and struggled to open his bony jaws, exposing the violet cavern of his throat. A rumble started deep within his neck and worked its way up to the gaping mouth.
“Um, Billy—” Eva protested.
The rumble turned into a guttural growl and exploded from Billy’s jaws like the bellow of a foghorn. A column of hot gas billowed out just behind the growl and ignited in a brilliant orange flame that illuminated the underside of the shelter.
“Okay, I’m sorry!” Hiroki howled as he backed up a step.
“I don’t think he’s mad,” said Eva as she moved closer to Billy. She worked her way toward one muscular ear – as long as she was tall – protruding from the side of his head. There was a nest of wiry black hair inside the ear, shorter than the whiskers beside his flaring nostrils but thicker. “I bet you can hear my heartbeat with ears this big,” she whispered.
Billy grunted. She took it as affirmation.
“I don’t think he can speak, Hiro. If he tries to speak, he just growls.”
“And lights us on fire!” Hiroki kept one eye on Billy’s mighty jaws and flaring nostrils as he backed up against the shelter wall. He leaned against it and crossed his arms. “Of all the people to turn into a mythical creature. How long before he sets Hudson on fire just to watch it burn? No, he’ll go straight for Alpine. Alpine sucks, right Billy?”
“Leave him alone, Hiro.”
“Leave him alone? You almost died because of this asshole!”
Eva walked over to Hiroki and placed a hand on his elbow. She waited for him to look at her before speaking softly. “No one made me climb down the cliff. I almost died because of me. And he saved me.”
“I was trying to save you too, you know.”
Eva nodded her head, sudden tears in her eyes. “I love you for it.”
Hiroki was so thrilled by her words that he had to look away. But the moment was short. He looked up again and saw Billy the dragon – the dragon! – staring right at them. No privacy at all! He shook his head angrily and slipped away from Eva, embarrassed now.
“We have to get out of here,” said Hiroki bitterly.
“Your parents will freak out that you stayed out all night—”
Eva shook her head. “The cross country team is having a team building overnight. I’m supposedly there right now... bonding.”
“We still have to go or we’ll freeze.”
Eva shook her head. “We can’t leave him like this.”
Eva and Hiroki collected all the driftwood they could find up and down the beach. They dumped it in a pile at the edge of the shelter, then stared at it for a few minutes with no idea how to light it. It was damp and probably wouldn’t ignite even if they had matches and gasoline.
Then Billy started grunting.
Hiroki immediately understood what he meant. He picked up a chunk of wood, cautiously dropped it in front of Billy’s lolling head then bolted for cover in anticipation of a blast of fire.
It took Billy a moment to harness his physical capability – so new to him – and produce fire. At first he merely growled and gurgled and burped. But after a few failed attempts, he finally coughed up a cloud of sparks and the log ignited.
Eva clapped excitedly then rubbed underneath Billy’s chin to thank him.
Hiroki watched the display of affection while he used the flaming log to light the rest of the driftwood. He shook his head disgustedly, but soon found himself laughing instead.
It’s like being jealous of a golden retriever, he assured himself.
Billy was so exhausted after his first flight and spectacular fall that he fell asleep quickly near the fire. Hot exhalations from his nostrils blew sand and grit all over the shelter.
Eva and Hiroki huddled on the opposite side of the fire, staring at the dragon slumbering a few feet away. They were still too pumped up with adrenaline to even consider shutting their eyes. And thankfully, the fire had dried their clothes and warmed them.
“I’m telling you, it was the fruit from that tree,” whispered Hiroki. “That poisonous crap got into his blood and turned him into… into…”
“A dragon,” sighed Eva. “If we’re going to have a serious conversation about this, let’s stop pretending that’s not what he is. I’ve read enough fairy tales to know a dragon when I see one, and he couldn’t fit the bill better.”
“A little convenient isn’t it?” asked Hiroki. “He just happens to look exactly like we expect from all those silly stories. The wings and the tail and the claws. Breathing fire. All of it. It’s like we took a poll from a few centuries of fantasy and cobbled him together based on consensus.”
Eva tossed a pebble in the fire and wiggled her bare toes. Her shoes were lying next to her, drying more slowly than any other item of her clothing. “It makes perfect sense if dragons are real – and we now know they are real – that they’d look the way they do in the stories. All those stories came from somewhere. They were passed down through generations. If those stories started out as actual experience people had millennia ago, then the physical description should be pretty close.”
Hiroki wasn’t satisfied with her answer, but he didn’t have a better one. “What about the tree and the fruit? I don’t remember reading about either in any fairy tale.”
“There could be other things about Billy’s new form we haven’t learned yet. Things people never knew back then.”
“Like whether he prefers Japanese food or Mexican,” said Hiroki with a grimace. “You really want to be there when he gets hungry? You really want to be his friend when the government sends a bunch of fighter jets to blow him out of the sky? That’s how this ends, Eva. It ends with the whole world terrified of Billy and willing to do anything to kill him.”
That moment, Eva caught
sight of a ship puttering across the harbor and headed out to sea. The deck was covered in industrial equipment, a few sailors standing idly at the railings and smoking their morning cigarettes. The name Alpine Angel was stenciled on its side.
Eva jumped to her feet and ran out of the shelter, positioning herself between Billy and the boat. Her eyes were full of panic every bit as intense as she’d felt while hanging on to her life by a foot the night before. “That fishing trawler is one of Aidan’s father’s! The harbor will be crawling with boats any minute now!”
“Even if it is, I doubt Mr. Humphries is aboard. I doubt he gets his hands dirty on deck too often, and even he decided to play fisherman today he’s got about thirty of those boats. What are the chances he’s on that one?”
“I don’t care who’s on board, Hiro! We can’t let anybody see Billy like this!”
Hiroki rose and walked over to her, holding up both hands in a futile attempt to calm her down. “We can’t hide him, Eva. He’s way too big and we’re way too small. It might not be today or tomorrow, but eventually… someone will see him.”
“Then he needs us that much more,” she whispered.
The long night had come to an end, and the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon. Hiroki and Eva couldn’t see the sun rising from their place at the base of the west-facing cliff, but when they looked back inside the shelter they saw its effect.
Billy was changing again.
It started at his leather tail. The clumsy appendage gradually shrank into his haunches. His bulky body contracted and shortened as well, and his limbs thinned. His folded wings shriveled and the webbing dematerialized into a wisp of faint blue smoke. All the while, his boulder of a head withdrew into his broad and leathery shoulders, shrinking as it went, until it was the size and shape of Billy’s own head.
“It’s the sun,” said Eva with a relieved smile. “He changed when the sun went down, and he’s changing back as it rises.”
Hiroki nodded absent-mindedly, unable to take his eyes off of Billy as he lost every characteristic of his animal self. His reptilian ribs telescoped down to human dimensions and his blue skin lost its pigment. His snout shortened and his jaw compressed until he was recognizable again. His arms and legs were covered with bruises – from his violent splash into the harbor, Hiroki thought – but the bruises were all he was wearing.
