The Dragon Tree

by Kavich, AC

  With his huge black eyes – all pupil and no iris – he could see perfectly despite the minimal light. Up ahead he saw the curved belly of a cloud and happily charged toward it.

  He closed his jaws to reduce drag and punched a path through the cloud. The gray white condensation that enveloped him snuffed out his visibility, but he didn’t care. There were no obstacles up here that he might crash into, nothing to slow him or turn him aside. The sky was his to navigate however he pleased.

  He blasted through the clouds into open air and tried to turn around to plunge back into them. He was traveling so quickly that the abrupt change of direction was a complete failure and sent him somersaulting the way he had been flying. He screeched with delight as he struggled to regain his bearings, spreading his wings to slow his momentum and wagging his tail to balance himself.

  Okay gravity, your turn.

  He rolled forward like he was leaning over a railing, then pinned his wings to his body, straightened his tail directly above him and dove.

  He passed through the clouds twice is fast and shot toward the earth like a meteor. The formless black sheet of the ocean quickly gained definition as he rushed toward it, the crests of waves drawn with delicate silver moonlight. He focused on the water, trying to judge the distance. He needed to learn how to land. Perhaps this was the best way? If he misfired, if he judged the distance incorrectly, the water would be more forgiving than the rocky cliff. Right? Right?

  A second later, he realized he had indeed misjudged the distance. Unable to slow himself or change direction, he had no choice but to test the theory.

  He shut his eyes as he plunged into the downward slope of a twenty-foot wave snout-first. The front edge of both wings strained against the water and they felt like they might tear off, but the movement of the wave broke the surface tension in advance of his body. He sliced through the surface and disappeared into water twice as black as the night sky.

  Under the water, Billy’s brilliant eyesight was every bit as effective. He could see fish large and small dart out of the way as he passed. He could see bits of plant matter twirling in the current. It couldn’t be true – simply couldn’t – but he thought he could see the currents themselves!

  His ears began to hurt with the pressure. His voluminous lungs began to burn.

  You’re a dragon, not a fish. Get going.

  He rolled playfully and whipped his tail to send him rocketing up toward the surface. Back toward the sky.

  His new playground.

  As he soared across ocean swells and opened his mouth to taste the salty spray, he was dumbfounded to hear a voice in his head. A female voice.

  It sounded an awful lot like Eva.

  ***

  Hiroki began holding his breath the moment Billy raced off the cliff. He kept holding it when Billy immediately fell straight down, screeching all the way. He continued holding his breath as he crawled to the cliff edge and looked down, expecting to see a massive blue object torn open on the rocks.

  But Billy had somehow arrested his fall and was pumping his wings back to the plateau! Hiroki stumbled away from the edge, his astonishment so great he hardly noticed his face was turning purple from lack of oxygen.

  The massive blue dragon spun and took off for the greater reaches of the night sky. Hiroki finally exhaled and then, gasping, remembered his camera. It took him half a second to locate the device dangling in the center of his chest. He fumbled with it as he raised it to his eye and started tapping the trigger on top.

  Snap snap snap!

  Billy was out of view, so Hiroki lowered the digital camera and toggled through his shots. In every photo, without exception, all he saw was night sky and billowing clouds.

  “Oh, come on!”

  He hadn’t had enough time to properly frame up his shots, but he knew he was aiming in the right direction to catch something. Mumbling criticisms at himself, he took a quick shot of Billy’s clothes lying on the rocks.

  It was a poor consolation prize.

  Shaking his head with frustration, he climbed in the Buick and tossed the camera in the passenger seat. He had no intention of walking circles on the rocky plateau – freezing his skinny butt off – while Billy soared across the sky overhead.

  No, he had a mission to execute. He had to get to that tree.

  Why climb down when you can climb up?

  He drove halfway around the bay before he found a road that would give him access to the harbor. It didn’t go all the way to the beach, but he found a decent shoulder where he could park. Bracing himself against the night chill, he slipped his arms through the straps of his canvas backpack and hiked the rest of the way down.

  He passed the beach shelter where he had spent the previous night with Eva and Billy. The remnants of their fire had been strewn about at full tide, but he could still clearly see an imprint where the heavy bottom of a dragon had recently reclined.

  Without the fear of Eva’s death or injury to flood his body with adrenaline, he found the easy climb to the rocky shelf to be surprisingly daunting. He used the same step-like grooves that he’d used so breathlessly the night before, but he worked slowly in case a foot or a hand betrayed him. The shape of the harbor cliffs whipped the ocean wind into frenzy, and it chilled him to the bone.

  When he reached the shelf he slipped off his backpack and rested for a few minutes. As he rubbed new warmth into his arms, he was grateful for the protection offered by the rocky curtain.

  Any chance this whole thing has been an elaborate prank by Billy and Eva? Is Billy wearing the most elaborate Halloween costume ever made and riding a remote control helicopter? If there’s no magical tree under here, I’ll kill them both.

  Lying on his belly, he drew a deep breath and leaned over the edge of the shelf.

  His head was upside-down, so the tree looked right side up. It matched Billy’s description perfectly – and Billy’s crap photos – which somehow aggravated Hiroki that much more. The impressive trunk comprised of braided branches. The branches themselves snaking out in every direction, heavily laden with black leaves and hairy black fruit.

  With a groan, Hiroki fumbled for the digital camera dangling from his neck and snapped a few photos.

  Good photos, this time. Composition. A little contrast.

  Satisfied with his work, Hiroki hoisted himself back onto the shelf long enough to set the camera aside. Then he assumed the position on his belly for a second time and looked for the closest branch.

  Hiroki’s arms weren’t as long as they could have been, and the branches weren’t as close. He slid a few inches farther over the cliff and extended his arm as far as he could and managed to grab the end of a branch. There was a cluster of black leaves a few inches down the branch and he tried to bend it to bring them closer to his hand. The branch resisted him like it was made of steel. He couldn’t get it to budge!

  Blood was rushing to Hiroki’s head and made him dizzy. He had a sudden sensation of falling that terrified him, so he scrambled back onto the shelf to catch his breath and regain his composure.

  Wait a minute? How did Billy reach the fruit?

  Hiroki peered over the shelf edge again and saw that only some of the branches had fruit, and they were all even farther out of reach!

  Hiroki had two bad options: He could climb down from the shelf with nothing to show for his efforts, and expose himself to untold amounts of ridicule from Billy and disappointment from Eva. Or he could do the same insane, moronic and reckless thing that Billy had done.

  You’re too smart to let your ego get you killed, Hiro.

  Hiroki pulled a pocketknife out of his backpack. He crawled toward the cliff wall, steadied himself, and used the knife to dig into the rocks. Carving such hard material was difficult, but he threw his weight into the work. Leaves or no leaves, he had made up his mind about this part of his mission hours ago.

  When he was done with his carving, he sat Indian-style for at least five minutes, laughing dismissively one moment t
hen shaking his head angrily the next.

  And then he crept to the edge of the shelf and dangled his legs over the side.

  The climb down from the shelf wasn’t been quite as dangerous as Hiroki expected. There were plenty of places to jam his fingers or toes into the rock, and he didn’t have to lean far at all to reach a branch heavy with leaves. He snapped them off with surprising ease and stuffed them in his backpack as quickly as he could. He was surprised to find that clearing away a cluster of leaves revealed several pieces of black fruit. He hesitated for a moment, but the fruit was too inviting in its own macabre way. He picked both and dropped them in his backpack along with the leaves.

  One for me. One for Eva… if she wants it.

  He probably should have waited until after Billy ate the leaves – to see if they had any effect – before eating the fruit. But the image of Billy vaulting off the cliff and soaring into the clouds was a powerful motivator. He was intensely jealous of Billy’s freedom, and he wanted a taste for himself.

  Leaves first, so you don’t change right away. Fruit later.

  The leaf on his tongue was extremely bitter. It crumbled dryly on his tongue like ash and he struggled to choke it down. The chalky layer that remained on his tongue was so revolting he reached for the fruit in his backpack reflexively. He gave it a quick sniff, detected no offensive odor. He peeled off the coarse black fiber and he took a bite.

  At last, he had his taste.

  ***

  When Eva stormed out of the Humphries’ drawing room and rejoined the backyard reception, her mother was waiting for her. With her hands planted firmly on her hips and her husband standing hangdog beside her, Rosa locked eyes with Eva and willed her forward.

  “Just because Aidan is your boyfriend doesn’t mean you can go exploring the house without an invitation!”

  “Not now, Mom!” Eva yelled as quietly as she could.

  Rosa was stunned into momentary silence. “Why I never… to speak to your own… what kind of daughter…”

  Eva took advantage of her mother being flustered to sidle up next to Salvadore. She threw her arms around her father and laid her head on his shoulder. She felt tears coming, but fought them off.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she whispered.

  “For what, sweetheart?”

  “You’ll know in about ten minutes. When Mom loses her mind and starts screaming, don’t let her give herself an aneurysm, okay?”

  Salvadore leaned back to get a look at Eva to see if she was joking. It was perfectly clear that she wasn’t.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “Close enough,” she answered.

  On her way around the house, Eva passed Douglas Humphries. He was standing alone against the gazebo, downing another glass of champagne and growling into his cell phone in a language Eva didn’t recognize.

  “Your dead animal collection… sucks!” Eva yelled.

  Humphries glanced at the angry girl in the pink dress, but she was already ten steps past him.

  At the front of the house, Eva marched up to the valet stand. She handed the valet the ticket she had deftly lifted from Salvadore’s jacket pocket while she hugged him, and the valet ran off to collect her father’s SUV.

  Sorry Dad.

  Despite never having formally learned how to drive, Eva had no trouble with the SUV. The transmission was automatic and her father had walked her through the basic concepts once or twice as legal driving age loomed near.

  Check your mirrors. Turn signals. Don’t speed… Got it.

  Why did you say that to Aidan? Why try to make him think that you and Billy… that you and Billy…Why slap him in the face like that after you actually slapped him in the face?

  She had a much harder time finding the route Hiroki drove to get up to the cliffs. There were no road signs – none that she spotted, anyway – and she had to navigate by landmarks alone. The poor condition of the back roads didn’t help much, but the SUV had new suspension and quality tires as tall as the twins.

  Billy would be smirking like a jackal if he heard what you said to Aidan…

  Eventually, after backtracking more than once, she found an access road that looked familiar and took it all the way to the plateau.

  When Eva stepped out of the SUV, all she found was a pile of clothes. She was fairly certain they belonged to Billy. Unless he had taken up nudism since that afternoon, the clothes could only mean that he had broken his promise to eat the leaves from the dragon tree. She was too spent from her fight with Aidan to get angry.

  You’re not surprised, are you? If Billy did the responsible thing, he wouldn’t be Billy.

  She noticed deep grooves cut into the rocky surface of the plateau. They were uneven and less reliable than footprints, but she followed them from the center of the plateau to its very edge.

  This is where he took off. Or fell off.

  She leaned over the edge, frightened of what she might find. There was no sign of Billy on the rocks below – in dragon form or human – and she backed away from the precipice with a relieved smile.

  Billy wouldn’t hesitate to betray their agreement, but Hiroki was a different story. The absence of his Buick depressed her suddenly. It meant that Hiroki had finally had enough of Billy and had abandoned him on the cliffs. Unless…

  She moved to another spot on the edge of the cliff – the spot where the neon green nylon rope was still rigged from her ill-advised descent – and peered over the edge. She expected to see Hiroki on the shelf, dutifully collecting stiff black leaves from the dragon tree. But no. There was no sign of him.

  Hiro. I thought I could trust you.

  That moment, she heard an animal screech emanating from the dark sky. She peered up, quaking with excitement and expecting to see a hulking blue dragon descending toward her. All she saw was night sky and clouds.

  Wait. What’s that?

  There was a strange quality to one area of the sky – an area of color that didn’t quite match the space around it – that grew right before her eyes. It took a moment for her eye to decode the visual puzzle, but she soon realized that the non-matching patch of sky was in the loose shape of a dragon.

  He’s camouflage. He’s… he’s camouflage!

  Billy flapped his wings to slow his descent as he neared the top of the cliff, and Eva saw that she wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t quite camouflage. Rather, the underside of his body – his belly, wings and limbs – were all reflective. The effect was such that while he flew across a black sky, the reflection of the black water below masked him from view almost entirely.

  When he landed on the cliff, she saw an oddly distorted reflection of her own face on his mottled, pale-blue throat.

  “You’re reflective, Billy. On the bottom of your body.”

  Billy stretched his wide wings one final time then folded them against his body. Creeping forward on his powerful legs, he lowered his head to rest it on the rocks. His cavernous mouth was pitched open as he panted breathlessly, his thick tongue pulsing just behind his teeth. The air from his throat was musty and warm, but there was no off-putting odor. It felt like a space heater blowing on Eva’s face. The air was pumping out of his nostrils as well, powerfully enough that it lifted up the hem of her pink dress and exposed her legs.

  “Hey now, I’m not that kind of girl!” she yelled, immediately embarrassed by how 1930’s she must have sounded.

  Just like the night before, the hulking blue creature before her was unmistakably Billy. Not only were his huge black eyes an impossibly perfect match for the blue eyes Billy had in his human body, there were other details as well. His bony brow was shaped like Billy’s. His ears stuck out just a bit like Billy’s. And the gaping mouth had an almost imperceptible lift at one corner… just like one of Billy’s obnoxious smirks.

  “You look like you’ve had a good time,” she said with a tired smile. “It better have been fun, since you totally broke your promise.”

  Billy’s dragon smirk disappeared and he l
owered his head to the rocks with a thud. He kept one big black eye on Eva as he rolled his head to the side, pinning one massive ear to the rocks. The other ear stood straight up like a thick blue flag, coarse hair poking out comically.

  “I hate you, but I can’t hate you,” she sighed.

  Eva cautiously approached Billy and scratched under his chin, just as she did the night before on the beach. His skin was so thick with scales she doubted he could actually feel her tiny fingers, but he purred at her touch nonetheless.

  “You’re just a big kitty cat, aren’t you? Hey, whoa!”

  Billy had surreptitiously slipped a paw behind Eva’s legs and gracefully scooped her up. She clung to one of his black talons as he swung her upward and deposited her – gently – on his shoulder.

  Well this is new. I am now standing on a dragon.

  One of her high heels fell off on the ride up, but the other was still on her foot and she accidentally jammed it between two scales.

  Ow!

  Eva heard Billy’s voice in her mind… She actually heard the word “ow”. It was strange beyond description, and she was about to ask him how he had placed the word in her head, when Billy flinched and shifted underneath her.

  “You have to stay still, Billy!” she yelled.

  She doubled over to take off the offending shoe, but lost her balance. She fell onto her hands and knees and scrambled to find a grip. The only thing she could find was Billy’s oversized ear, so she latched on. A few of the hairs from inside his ear brushed against her face and she unleashed a scream so loud and high-pitched it could have woken the dead.

  Sorry, I won’t move, said Billy inside her mind.

  “You’re telepathic, Billy. That’s amazing! You’re telepathic! Say something else, in my mind!”

  Billy grunted a few times as if trying to muster words, but quickly grew frustrated. Nothing traveled from his mind to hers.

  “That’s okay, just relax. We can try again later,” said Eva.