The Dragon Tree

by Kavich, AC

  A hulking chainsaw.

  “It’s gone, you asshole!” Billy screamed.

  “What are you doing with this saw, Billy?” Hiroki yelled back. “What the hell are you going to do?!”

  Billy took three heavy steps forward. “The tree is gone!”

  Hiroki didn’t back down. He stepped forward to meet Billy, eye-to-eye and chest-to-chest. “You cut it down? Are you crazy?!”

  “I was going to cut it down, just like your grandfather said we had to do. When I got to the cliff it was already… the curtain broken away, juice all over the rocks… and your stupid warning carved in the cliff wall!”

  Hiroki gasped. He had forgotten all about the words he carved into the rock with the dull edge of his pocketknife.

  “What did you think, Hiro? Someone would read your message, shrug and walk away? You can’t be that naïve. You can’t be that stupid!”

  “I didn’t think… I wanted to make sure…” Hiroki fumbled his words, his knees going weak under his weight. He was ten feet from the edge of the cliff but felt he might tip over it at any second.

  “All you did was tempt them,” Billy growled. “Whoever found the tree, whoever saw it from the water and climbed up… all you did was guarantee that they would eat the fruit. And take the tree with them!”

  Billy pounded the hood of the Buick, leaving a deep dent in the metal. He threw open the rear door and climbed in behind the chainsaw, still muttering angrily to himself. Hiroki was still in shock. He felt a terrible pain in his chest, like a hundred wild buffalo were stampeding on his heart. It took him several minutes to exhale the breath he held and to lower himself into the driver’s seat.

  “What do we do?” Hiroki muttered, staring straight ahead.

  “What can we do?!” Billy yelled.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eva reclined on the bed in her newly constructed bedroom, on the newly constructed second story of the Diaz house. The drywall was barely dry and still emitted a faint odor that was unpleasant, but she was tired of sleeping downstairs with the twins babbling in their sleep. She had persuaded her parents that the fumes were their imagination.

  It was Thursday evening – three days since her last flight – and she still hadn’t heard from Billy or Hiroki. When she was unable to reach either of them by phone on Tuesday afternoon to make plans for that night’s flight, she was uneasy. The sun would set soon. Unless she wanted to risk another indoor change and more destruction, she had no choice but to eat the ground dragon tree leaf from her mason jar.

  Wednesday and Thursday she ate two more spoonfuls of black powder.

  She was busy with track practice each afternoon – in preparation for the Invitational on Saturday – but every minute she spent running she was actually thinking about the boys.

  It wasn’t surprising for Billy to disappear, especially after he had shown so much vulnerability that night. He might be embarrassed that what he confessed was too personal and afraid to face Eva again. But Hiroki? In all the years they had been friends, they had never gone more than 24 hours without speaking.

  If something had happened to either of her friends, if they were hurt or injured, she felt sure she would have heard about it one way or another. No news was probably good news. And there was no news.

  Until… just before midnight she heard a knock on her bedroom window.

  “Hiro!” she cried a bit too loudly. As she wrenched open her new bedroom window, she clamped her hand over her mouth to prevent another excited outburst. Hiroki climbed in silently. He wagged his thumb back toward the window, and Eva was amazed to watch Billy climb through after him.

  “Hiro makes it look easy,” Billy whispered. “But it’s a tough climb getting up here.”

  Eva kept her hand over her mouth as she scurried across her bedroom floor. It wasn’t carpeted yet, and the floorboards made a slap out of every footfall. She pulled a bathrobe out of her closet and stuffed it along the gap between the door and the floor. It wouldn’t do much to make her room soundproof, but she felt a little better.

  “You guys are crazy sneaking up here together,” Eva whispered. “Why didn’t you just call me back, huh?”

  “Did you call me?” Billy asked. “We don’t have an answering machine or voicemail or whatever. My dad is still living in the ‘90’s.”

  Eva turned to Hiroki. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Didn’t want to talk on the phone,” Hiroki mumbled. “Someone might be listening.”

  Eva caught herself about to guffaw and covered her mouth again. “Since when do you suffer from paranoid delusions, Hiro?”

  “Since some asshole stole the dragon tree,” Billy answered for him.

  After Billy and Hiroki took turns catching Eva up on the events from Monday night, she was so unnerved she was shivering. She pulled her covers off her bed and wrapped them around her bare shoulders. “This is bad,” she said.

  “That’s why we risked coming here,” said Hiroki. “We all have to decide, together, what we do about this.”

  Eva turned to Billy, her brow furrowed. “You were going to cut it down yourself without even telling us.”

  “It was the right thing to do, Eva. You know it was.”

  “Then what do you care if someone else beat you to it?” she asked.

  Billy clasped his hands together and squeezed, obviously upset with Eva’s tone. “I would have destroyed it. Then the blood inside of us would have just… died.”

  “But now,” Hiroki continued, “we have no idea if the tree is dead.”

  “It has to be dead,” Eva offered. But as soon as the words left her mouth, she realized the flaw in her logic. “Unless the person who took it—”

  “Replanted the tree somewhere else,” said Billy, growing impatient. “You think they climbed all the way up there just to chop it down and use it for firewood? No chance. The only reason to go to so much effort is to keep the tree.”

  “Someplace safe,” said Hiroki. “Someplace secret.”

  Eva considered for a few moments. “It has to be your grandfather, Hiro. He’s the only other person who knows about the tree.”

  Hiroki allowed himself the tiniest of smiles. “He’s in his eighties, Eva. Even if he could muster the energy to go on a mission like that, we never told him where the tree was growing. Even if he did know, he had no transportation to get to the cliffs, no way to climb to the tree, no way to cut the tree down and no way to haul the tree away.”

  “Plus he’s in his eighties,” Billy added.

  “I already said that,” said Hiroki.

  “It was worth repeating.”

  Eva tossed her blanket aside and paced across her room, forgetting to shuffle her feet to prevent them slapping on the bare floorboards. “Is it possible the tree just… died? Maybe they only live for a certain amount of time, for a century or two, and we just happened to find it close to its, um, death. Or maybe we killed the tree by ripping off too many of its leaves. Without leaves it can’t make, what’s the word? Chlorophyll! That’s how plants live, right? They turn the sun’s energy into food by—”

  Billy placed a hand on Eva’s arm to stop her pacing. “You’re raising your voice, and you’re talking crazy. It’s a tree that grew from the bones of a dead dragon – a supernatural tree – not a weeping willow.”

  “The only thing that makes sense,” Hiroki continued, “is that someone discovered the tree. That curtain of rock was broken up enough you could probably see the tree from the water. And with the side of the cliff all red from fruit that dropped and smashed, it was only a matter of time before someone found the tree.”

  Tears came fast to Eva’s eyes. “Oh my god, it’s my fault.”

  “No Eva,” said Billy sympathetically.

  “Yes it is! The night of the storm, the first night I changed. I… I panicked. I wanted to turn human again right away so I, I… I bashed into those rocks that were hiding the tree. I knocked off the branches and I… I smashed the fruit. If I hadn’t… if I ha
dn’t panicked…”

  Billy and Hiroki could only stare at Eva as her confession spilled from her mouth in spurts. Her tears flowed freely as well. Neither of the boys saw fit to move forward and comfort her, not when her mistake had put them so at risk.

  “I’m sorry,” she finished in a whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  They sat in awkward silence for at least a minute before Hiroki drew a deep breath and spoke. “This weekend, we’re going to go hunting for that tree. We’ll start Saturday morning, at the cliffs, and we’ll treat it just like a crime scene. There has to be evidence of who was there. Evidence of how they accessed the shelf, how they extracted the tree and which direction they took it.”

  “You’re sure it’s a ‘they’?” asked Billy.

  “Of course I’m not sure,” Hiroki scoffed. “But for a job that hard, it was probably at least two people. Tomorrow when we investigate we’ll stay open minded and just think it through. Between the three of us we should be able to—”

  “Tomorrow is the Invitational,” said Eva quietly.

  “So?” asked Billy.

  Eva glared at him. “So I’m running in the event. I’m the top runner for my school and if I don’t show up, everyone will be suspicious. My teachers, my family… everyone.”

  “Tell them you’ve got a tummy ache, Eva! This is a little more important.” Billy had now taken to the bedroom floor to pace. His steps were heavy enough that the floorboards groaned under him.

  “No, Billy, she’s right,” said Hiroki. “Whoever took that tree will be looking for the people who found it first. They’ll be looking for clues, just like we are. If they see anyone acting suspicious—”

  “They don’t know someone found it first,” Billy pleaded.

  “Of course they do,” Hiroki sighed. “My stupid warning. Do not eat fruit.”

  Another long, silent minute passed. Sounds of footsteps on the stairs outside Eva’s bedroom finally stirred them from their thoughts.

  “Eva honey, want to come downstairs? Your sisters and I are going to watch a movie and we’re making popcorn!” It was Rosa, her voice full of cheer. If her hand was on the handle of the door, it could open any second.

  Eva shooed Hiroki and Billy back out her bedroom window. “Meet me after the race. We’ll figure out a plan then,” she whispered.

  The boys disappeared just as her bedroom door swung inward. Rosa’s hair was in curlers and there were balls of cotton between her freshly painted toes. “Well what’s it going to be, sourpuss? Movie night with the girls or sulking?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The cross-country Invitational brought together runners from all over the county. Twenty schools were invited to participate, each one bringing their top two male runners and their top two female runners. It was considered a goodwill event and not a true competition, but the runners themselves and the legions of fans that traveled to cheer them on took the race seriously.

  A year of bragging rights were on the line.

  It was impossible to completely eliminate “home field advantage”, but the race organizers minimized the effect as much as possible by moving the race each year. For the first time in over a decade, the organizers had chosen a stretch of coastal forest just south of Hudson and Alpine as the race site and both communities were rallying behind their local athletes.

  The crowds began gathering in the park that morning. They pulled barbecues out of truck beds and filled coolers with ice. They unfolded lawn chairs and chanted fight songs. The race wouldn’t start until late afternoon, but the race was an all-day event for a community starved for activities.

  Salvadore wore Alpine colors from head to toe to make sure all the out-of-towners knew which runners he supported. Rosa would have been embarrassed by her husband’s display, but this was the second year the Diaz family attended the race and there was a certain charm to being a rabid fan. The twins got into the fanfare, too. In a rare show of solidarity with their father they painted their faces and drew Eva’s jersey number on their cheeks. While the adults ate hotdogs and drank beer all afternoon, the kids staged impromptu races and created general commotion.

  Eva and the three other runners from Alpine High School had a designated prep area near the park ranger’s offices. Two other schools prepped in adjacent areas, all the racers eyeing each other for any possible advantage they could bring to the contest. Eva’s teammates stretched incessantly and hopped around nervously. Eva mimicked their actions and joined their whispered conversations about their rivals. But it was all an act. In truth, her mind was on a rocky shelf above the harbor where only the black roots of the dragon tree remained.

  I wish I could talk to the boys with my mind while I’m in this body.

  But it wasn’t so. Only her dragon mind allowed her to send thoughts telepathically. Even though she stood in the heart of the packed race grounds, she felt isolated and alone.

  ***

  Reiko knew Hiroki was spending a lot of time with the boy from Hudson, but she wasn’t happy he planned to attend the Invitational with Billy instead of her. She didn’t want to go to the race alone, so she decided to invite her father.

  Hideo had recently been spending most of his hours upstairs behind his closed bedroom door. When she knocked and opened the door, she was surprised to find him already on his feet and dressed to leave the house. He held a scrap of cloth in his open palm and gently closed his fist around it.

  “Yes, daughter. I will go,” he muttered in Japanese.

  “I didn’t say anything yet, Dad,” she answered with a curious smile.

  Reiko and Hideo ambushed the boys in the parking lot of the event grounds. As soon as Hideo laid eyes on his grandson, he walked toward him with obvious purpose and severity of his expression.

  “Uh oh,” said Billy. “He looks intense.”

  Billy waved at Hideo and Reiko and hauled Hiroki away. As they made their way through the crowd in search of the starting line, Billy was surprisingly animated. “Your grandpa was weirding me out, man. Are we sure it wasn’t him who took the tree? Are we absolutely sure?” Billy asked, his voice betraying deep concern.

  “You said yourself, he’s eighty,” Hiroki reminded him.

  “Maybe that drop of dragon blood he drank is still in his body and he can still read minds. Do you know for a fact that he can’t?”

  “No,” admitted Hiroki, exasperated, “but I doubt it.”

  Billy and Hiroki found a spot near the starting line. Neither of them wore school colors or looked very excited to be at the race. Billy scanned the crowd looking for a familiar trio of letterman jackets.

  “Think my Alpine buddies will come at me again?” Billy asked.

  “Not after what happened last time,” said Hiroki. “The week after, when I saw them around school, Dudley and Gabe looked like they’d just wet themselves and were afraid someone would find out.”

  “What about Aidan? How pissed was he, scale of 1 to 10?”

  Hiroki shook his head. “Never saw him. I don’t even know if he was at school. His dad probably hired tutors or something, until his face could heal.”

  Hiroki caught sight of the runners moving from their prep areas to the starting line. He ignored everyone not wearing Alpine colors and finally laid eyes on Eva. Her raven hair was pulled back in a ponytail, as usual, but instead of holding her chin confidently high, she was staring at her sneakers.

  “She’s drawing attention to herself. Just by looking miserable, she’s drawing attention to herself,” Hiroki said.

  “After what we dumped on her last night, can you blame her? Cut her some slack, man.”

  Hiroki gritted his teeth and turned to face Billy. “You’ve been in her life for a few weeks and you’ve been nothing but trouble. I’ve been there for her, supporting her through everything, for years. When her mother was driving her crazy, when she struggled with her classes, when her dumbass boyfriend treated her like crap. I was there, Billy. No matter what it cost me, I was there.”

/>   “All right, calm down,” Billy mumbled.

  Hiroki jabbed Billy in the ribs with his elbow. “You don’t get to say anything to me about Eva.”

  Billy looked down at his ribs, his own frustration building. “Do that again and we’re going to have a real problem, Hiro.”

  “Like I care anymore,” said Hiroki.

  Billy noticed that Hiroki’s lip was quivering. He felt guilty seeing Hiroki in a moment of vulnerability and turned back to the racers now taking their positions at the starting line. The crowd was cheering excitedly, hollering the names of the schools and racers they supported.

  “Look Hiro, I know you’re in love with Eva,” said Billy.

  Hiroki felt his hands shaking and crossed his arms to hide them. “Shut up, Billy.”

  “It’s obvious, man. It’s been obvious since the first day you two showed up at my trailer. It’s not like I blame you for it. She’s an amazing girl. If I’d been pining away for her for years, I’d be pissed about a guy like me showing up and… getting in the way.”

  “Just stop talking, Billy. It’s bad already, but you’re gonna make it worse.”

  “I want her to be happy. I want both of you to be happy. If she feels the same way about you,” Billy went on, “the last thing I want to do is stand in the way of you two being together.”

  Hiroki squeezed himself with his crossed arms, once again feeling the buffalo stampeding on his chest. He would have walked away from Billy, but there was no clear path through the crowd that boxed them in. “Just stop,” he mouthed, but no volume came out.

  The racers were all lined up now, performing final stretching rituals as a race organizer stepped out onto the track and raised a starter pistol to the sky.