The Dragon Tree (12 page)

             
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 then 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.