The Dragon Tree (13 page)

             
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 lowered 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.

             
She released her death-grip on his cartilage. She extended both arms like she was walking a tightrope and – with a smile from one ear to the other – she walked along the raised ridge of Billy’s dragon spine. His body was rising and falling under her, but she gave the challenge all of her concentration. She sped up as she neared Billy’s tail, then pirouetted gracefully and raced back toward his head.

             
“This is really weird but really fun!” she cried happily.

             
When she reached Billy’s head, she collapsed on his cheek. His massive black eye was inches away from her normal-sized hazel eyes. It should have made for an uncomfortable moment, but Eva was somehow comforted to find him looking up at her. And she could see the corner of his mouth turning up again in a classic Billy smirk.

             
“I’m going to stand on your head when you turn human again,” said Eva with as straight a face as she could manage. “Fair warning.”

             
Billy started to purr again. This time for show, she was certain. Eva flopped down on his cheek and let her tired eyes flutter closed.

             
“You two look comfortable.”

             
Eva sat up so quickly she slid right off of Billy’s head and landed hard on the rocky plateau. She picked herself up distressed to find she had sullied her pink dress, but she couldn’t stop smiling as she looked at Hiroki.

             
“There you are!” she cried. “I thought you gave up on him.”

             
She hadn’t heard Hiroki’s Buick as he drove it onto the plateau and parked it behind her father’s SUV. Nor had she heard him close the door and stride across the rocks toward Billy’s lounging dragon form.

             
“I tried to talk him out of it – changing again – but he wouldn’t listen. I’m surprised he came back to the cliffs so soon,” said Hiroki with no emotion in his voice. “Thought he’d fly too far out to sea and wouldn’t notice the sun about to rise. Thought he’d get caught out there when the change happened.”

             
“He didn’t. He’s here and he’s fine,” said Eva. “What about you? Are you… okay?”

             
Hiroki’s backpack was dangling from his fist. He lowered it to the ground and kneeled to unzip it. “They were too hard to reach, but I climbed down a little farther. Just like Billy did. I filled up the backpack as much as I could.”

             
Eva crouched by Hiroki and reached into the backpack. She pulled out a handful of stiff black leaves. “Amazing! You did it!”

             
“They don’t blow in the wind, so I thought they’d be hard to snap off. They weren’t.”

             
Hiroki gathered up a handful of leaves and slowly crossed the plateau until he was standing in front of Billy. Like Eva, he felt hot exhalations on his face. He stared at the same big black eye that Eva had stared at, but the black eye had narrowed.

             
“Eat these, Billy,” said Hiroki firmly. He dropped the black leaves on the rocks in front of Billy’s snout. “It’ll be dawn in an hour or two. We need to find out if they work before the sun rises and you change anyway.”

             
Billy pushed himself up off the rocks, stretching his limbs and swaying his tail behind him. He shuffled his wings and dipped his head to sniff the pile of leaves. The odor didn’t please him, and he emitted a low growl.

             
Hiroki wasn’t swayed. “You want to be a dragon for the rest of your life, Billy? Every night, totally out of your control? If not, you
have
to do this.”

             
Billy stretched his neck and angled his head to look past Hiroki… at Eva. She was leaning against her father’s SUV, feeling the evening chill in her pink dress. They found each other’s eyes again and Eva nodded.

             
Billy grunted a small protest, but he opened his jaws and rolled out his leather tongue. He held it inches above the rocks and extended it – endlessly – toward the leaves. Then, with the quickness of a magician performing sleight of hand, he slurped up the leaves in a flash.

             
Hiroki nodded his approval and walked to the edge of the cliff where the nylon rope was still secured. He carefully worked to unfasten the knot and hauled the rope back up to the cliff. “Can’t risk someone seeing the rope and finding the tree. Can’t risk it,” said Hiroki quietly, to no one in particular.

             
Hiroki carried the rope back to his Buick and tossed it in the passenger seat. Eva followed him, now shivering badly as the warmth she temporarily absorbed from Billy’s hulking body left her own.

             
“How long will it take,” she asked.

             
Hiroki opened the Buick’s door and climbed inside. “I don’t know. But I want to be warm while I wait.”

              Eva watched Billy’s return to human form from behind the wheel of the SUV.

             
She wanted to wait with Hiroki in his Buick, but he had closed his door so abruptly – and without looking at her – that she didn’t feel welcome in his passenger seat. After reclaiming her pink heels, she climbed into the SUV. It was closer to the edge of the cliff than the Buick, so she turned on her headlights to cast light on the great blue dragon curled up on the precipice. His clothes were lying on the ground at his paw, so small by comparison. It was hard to believe that the hulking beast with the flared nostrils would soon fit inside those clothes.

             
What if Hiro’s grandfather is wrong? What if the leaves are poisonous? What if Billy ate too many of the leaves and the
amount
will be poisonous?

             
The fearful thoughts came rapid fire, but the change soon started and purged them all from her mind. She massaged her throat nervously as Billy’s wings dissolved and his tail shrunk and his head compressed.

             
It’s even faster this time. The leaves make the change faster.

             
When most of Billy’s characteristics were once again human – when his frame was human-size and his skin regained its natural color – Eva remembered his imminent nudity. She blushed and turned off her headlights so he could dress in darkness.

             
Billy wobbled as he walked across the rocks, as if regaining the ability to walk on land after many months spent living on the deck of a ship. He appeared to be in pain, but no amount of discomfort could remove the grin from his face. He approached the driver’s window of the SUV and Eva rolled it down.

             
“Was it amazing?” she asked.

             
Billy drew a deep breath and nodded. “I’ve never felt more alive. Lame to say so, I know, but it’s true.”

             
“I think you should ride back to town with Hiro,” said Eva. “I know you don’t care, but he’ll be angry if you ride with me.”

             
“I’m sorry I didn’t eat the leaves like I promised. I’m sorry I let you down. I just… I couldn’t…”

             
“We can talk about it later. Just ride with Hiro, okay?

             
Billy nodded. “You look nice in that dress, by the way. You look beautiful.”

             
Eva felt herself blushing again. Cool air was flooding through her open window, but she didn’t feel it.

              Hiroki was surprised when Billy climbed into the Buick rather than the SUV. He was even more surprised when Billy leaned over and bear hugged him awkwardly.

             
“I know what you had to do to get those leaves. Thank you, bro.”

             
Hiroki pushed Billy off of him. “All right, whatever. Let’s just go.”