The Dragon Tree (23 page)

             
Billy was ready to do just that.

             
Hiroki would be furious. Eva would be upset, too. That’s why he had to sneak up to the tree without them and do the deed himself. By the time they knew his intentions, it would already be too late.

             
Billy paused for a moment to catch his breath and looked up toward the rocky shelf. He was nearly there, but the darkness made it difficult to see any details of the curtain of rock or the tree itself. He knew the grooves at his feet would take him directly to his destination, but it was disconcerting to see nothing but blackness.

             
But wait. There was something else.             

             
The moon slid from behind a cloud and cast silvery light on the cliffs. Billy saw that the rocky curtain was much smaller than he remembered, and its edge was very rough as if it had been broken away. But that wasn’t the strangest part. Beneath the broken curtain the rocks appeared to have a reddish hue.

             
Looks like blood.

             
Billy had a sinking sensation in his stomach, a cold nausea, as he hurried to traverse the final stretch of groove and reach the rock shelf above the tree. He was moving too quickly and the heavy chainsaw was dragging him backward, but he managed to maintain his tenuous grip.

             
Just before he stepped out onto the rocky shelf, he lowered himself enough to peer underneath it. What he saw terrified him so severely his head began to spin.

             
Below the shelf, the dragon tree was gone. Above the shelf, a single sentence was carved roughly into the rocks.

             
Danger! Do not eat fruit!

***

              The night simply wasn’t long enough for Hiroki.

             
He flew almost nonstop, soaring high among the clouds or swooping low to dart and dodge among the treetops. He left the sky only once, as the first hint of light appeared in the east. He drifted down slowly and perched on the upper boughs of a mighty fir tree and felt it sway beneath his weight. He had intended to fly out to the cliffs well before sunrise, but the joy of flying was so strong he needed the threat of the change to finally force himself west.

              When he reached the cliffs, he didn’t see the Buick.

             
Billy! I know I couldn’t trust him!

             
But then, on cue, the Buick rolled onto the plateau from the access road and slowed to a stop. Billy stepped out just as Hiroki glided to his perch at the cliff edge. He screeched his frustration at Billy and turned his back to him. It would be better, he thought, if Billy weren’t here to watch him change. It would be better if he could enjoy this sunrise alone.

             
Or with Eva.

             
He shuddered as he realized these thoughts might be drifting through space and entering Billy’s mind. Billy didn’t deserve to know what Hiroki was thinking. Not about his amazing night above the trees and certainly not about his feelings for Eva.

             
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Billy was pacing in the Buick’s headlights. The beams were painfully bright in Hiroki’s big black eyes and he raised a wing to shield himself. But not before he caught sight of a large object sitting in the passenger seat of his car.

             
What the hell is that thing, Billy? And bring me the sheet, would you?

             
Billy continued pacing. If he heard Hiroki’s voice in his mind, he wasn’t listening.

             
The change began as soon as light from the new day’s sun crept across the length of the plateau. Hiroki was pleased to find that the transformation was even quicker than the previous day’s, and entirely painless. His only complaint was the cold wind that buffeted his skin as he rose naked to his feet.

             
“I asked for the sheet, man. Couldn’t you hear me?” Hiroki asked as he turned back toward the Buick.

             
Billy was running straight at him. Hiroki barely had time to spin sideways and avoid being knocked on his naked rear end.

             
“You crazy bastard!” Hiroki yelled. “What are you doing?!”

             
Billy was still fuming, but instead of charging Hiroki again he resumed pacing along the edge of the cliff. Hiroki covered himself as best he could and jogged back to the Buick where he quickly pulled on his clothes. He was looking for his car keys, ready and willing to leave Billy behind on the cliffs, when his eyes fell again on the object sitting in his passenger seat.             

             
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 hadn’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?”