The Dragon Tree (8 page)

“But Mortimer, what if she leans out the
window and calls for help?”
“I’ll screw the window shut.”
“What if she breaks the glass?”
“I’ll cover it with chicken wire.”
“But what about those bratty kids next
door? They’ll see her!”
“I’ll close and lock the shutters.”
“Well, but”—Mrs. Moon thought it over—
“what if she turns the light on and off? You
know, like a signal?”
“My dear, do you think I’m a fool? I’ll
remove the light bulb.”
“Oh, good for you, Mortimer, dear. You’ve
thought of everything. But, oh, what a bore.
Now I’ll have to carry her meals up two
flights of stairs.”
“Not for long, my dear. Not for very long.”

H
UGO’S PRINTOUT OF
Frieda’s schedule was taped to the refrigerator. “Your turn again, Georgie dear,” said Aunt Alex, consulting it. “This afternoon from one to three. Will you be all right? If you need me, give me a shout.”

The day was hot. Now that the tree house was finished, there was nothing for the gallant Knights of the Fellowship to do but take turns keeping watch, so today all of them were somewhere else. Then Eddy untangled his bike from the bushes and rode away to goof off somewhere with Oliver Winslow. The only knight left was Georgie.

Slowly she began the long climb to the tree house, moving up from the first ladder to the stout branches that spiraled up and around the massive trunk, reaching all the way to Cissie’s mother’s step stool, the grand approach to the trapdoor in the floor of the tree house.

Nimbly Georgie crawled through the opening, then made her way across the floor to the sunlit square of the window. Below her through gaps in the leaves she could see Cissie’s horse drowsing on the grass with lowered head. Mr. Moon was not marching out of his house with a chain saw, although if Georgie had looked higher, she might have seen a flicker of movement in the attic window. But she didn’t.

Turning around, she settled down on the soft pillows that Rachel had brought from home. Rachel had wanted to bring the velvet cushions from her mother’s sofa, but her mother had cried, “Rachel Adzarian, you bring those back!” So Rachel had brought pillows instead, along with a cute picture of kittens to hang on the wall, a low stool for a
table, and a pink bath mat for a rug.

The pillows were comfortable, but Georgie was bored. She should have brought a book. Turning back to the window, she rested her elbows on the rough edge of the sill and looked out at the great branch that supported the tree house on that side. The branch was round and solid like a powerful arm. All the apples within reach had been picked and turned into pie, but there were the usual sprays of bright green leaves. Idly Georgie reached out, picked a leaf, and turned it over to look at the insect trail on the other side, the scribble that looked almost like writing.

Then she sucked in her breath. It
was
writing. The scribble was words, real words. Joyfully Georgie held the leaf to the light and read the scribble again.

Uncle Fred had said that the whole earth was covered with alphabets, but the chickens had not known their ABCs, and neither had the moss nor the rock nor the cat. But the tree was different.

On the underside of the leaf, distinct and clear,
were the words

HUMPTY DUMPTY.

I
T WAS NO LONGER
a game. Uncle Freddy understood it at last. The silly schedule of tree-guarding, the crazy routine of getting up in the middle of the night, the general bedlam and hubbub and the takeover of No. 40 Walden Street by an army of holy terrors—everything had turned out to be important.

The growing tree that spread its broad crown high and wide over the house was not just a tree, it was an enchanted library.

He threw himself into the task of guardianship. “I’ll stand watch all night,” he told Georgie stoutly.

Aunt Alex volunteered to do double duty, and Eddy forgot to be heroic. “Me too, Georgie,” he said humbly.

And when Georgie called Frieda to tell her the news, Frieda whipped her phone out of her pocket and passed the information along to everybody else. At once they all came running, and soon all the Knights of the Fellowship were clambering into the tree.

Sidney was first on the ladder. He raced to the top and snatched at a leaf.

“I don’t see anything,” he said. “This leaf is blank.” He picked a whole handful and said loudly, “They’re all blank.” He looked accusingly at Georgie as she scrambled past him. “You’re out of your mind, Georgie Hall.”

Georgie was undaunted. She stepped off the ladder and took a firm hold on a thick spray of twigs over her head. “Higher, we have to climb higher.”

“Okay.” Eddy lunged past her and disappeared in a tangle of foliage. “Higher it is.”

Oliver was right behind him, swinging up like a chimpanzee. He caught up with Eddy so quickly
that Eddy stepped on his hand by mistake. Oliver howled, fell, caught himself, laughed, and vaulted still higher.

Now they were swarming all over the tree: Cissie and Otis, Rachel and Hugo, Sidney and Frieda, Oliver and Eddy. All of them surged past Georgie, but she was the first to find a scribbled leaf. Tracing the scribbles with her finger, she mumbled them to herself,
“‘Two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark.’”
And then she shouted, “The ark, it’s Noah’s ark!”

At once everybody began snatching the scribbled leaves and screaming them out loud.

“‘The wolf in sheep’s clothing!’” hollered Hugo. “That’s Aesop! Remember the wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

“‘A fresh west wind singing over the wine-dark sea,’” crowed Cissie, but then she whispered, “
I don’t get it.
”

Oliver couldn’t figure out his scribbles either. “There’s this monster moving through the night,” he bellowed. “What monster is that?”

“It’s
Beowulf
, stupid,” cried Frieda. “
Everybod
y
knows that.” But then she was puzzled too. “‘Sweet showers of April,’ what’s that all about?”

“Good gracious me,” said Hugo, smirking down at Frieda. “It’s
Canterbury Tales.
I thought
everybody
knew that. Hey, listen, this one is really gruesome. ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ What’s that?”

Nobody knew, but then Eddy whooped. “I know this one: ‘Tilting at windmills,’ it’s
Don Quixote
.”

“Hey!” screamed Cissie. “This one’s no good. It’s some crazy language. Eskimo? Zulu? This whole branch is no good.” Leaves showered down from Cissie’s fingers, fluttering through the sunlit spaces below, turning end over end and floating to the ground.

“These are no good either,” complained Otis. “Oh, wait, here’s one.” He stood up, hanging on to a twig with two fingers, and read in a funny snarling voice, ‘Bah, humbug, said Scrooge.’ Okay, you guys, what’s that?” And everybody shouted, “
A Christmas Carol
.”

Then Eddy yelled joyfully from his perch high overhead, “Uncle Fred will like this one. It’s Henry
Thoreau. ‘Old shoes will serve a hero.’ Remember that from last summer?”

Now they were all climbing higher and higher, swaying in the top of the tree. “‘A white-headed whale with a crooked jaw,’” bawled Oliver. “What’s that?”

“
Moby-Dick
, stupid,” shrieked Rachel. “But, okay, I don’t get this one. ‘You feel mighty free on a raft.’ What’s that?”

“Don’t be dumb,” said Frieda. “Everybody knows that. It’s
Huckleberry Finn
.” But then Frieda too was bewildered. “What’s this about an apple barrel? ‘I hid in the apple barrel.’ What’s that?”

At once a chorus of voices shouted, “
Treasure Island
,” and Oliver said in a squeaky Frieda voice, “Oh,
everybody
knows that.”

By now they had had enough. Their pockets were stuffed with scribbled leaves. They were hungry, and the air was misty with rain. Blundering down the tree, dropping from branch to branch, they climbed down and around, around and down, all the way to the lowest ladder, and stepped off at
last on the ground. Then, patting their bulging pockets and grinning at one another, they abandoned the tree and hurried indoors, expecting praise and hoping for lunch.

Behind them dangled a hundred thousand other stories, epics of gods and heroes told beside Greek campfires, sagas unfolded in Danish royal halls, ballads sung by traveling minstrels, sacred stories from Hindu temples and Buddhist shrines, animal fables passed down through generations of children in the African bush, holy parables inscribed by monks in faraway lonely places, fairy tales read to children in London nurseries and frontier cabins in the American wilderness.

The tree that had appeared only last May as a twig in the ground and had grown to such a gigantic height, the tree that had borne sweet-smelling flowers and shining apples, the tree that was now a legend in the neighborhood, had turned out to be something more than a freakish giant. It was the tree of myth and fable. It was Thoreau’s great dragon tree of the Western Isles.

S
PREAD OUT ON
the kitchen table, the leaves refused to lie still. They lifted at the edges and tumbled over one another. Noah drifted sideways and changed places with Scrooge. Huck Finn jumped over Aesop, Henry Thoreau skipped across Dante’s
Divine Comedy
and settled down between
Moby-Dick
and
Little Women
, Mother Goose sailed around the kitchen and landed on the teakettle before fluttering back to the table and floating gently down beside
Don Quixote
.

“Look at that,” whispered Aunt Alex. “They’re rearranging themselves.”

“In time,” said Uncle Fred. “They’re rearranging themselves in time.”

The nine members of the Fellowship crowded around the table to look at their harvest of scribbled leaves. “What I don’t get,” said Sidney, “is why some of them are blank. You know, way down at the bottom of the tree.”

“Me neither,” said Hugo.

“Wait a sec,” said Eddy. He struck a dramatic pose. “The mighty brain of your hero has plumbed the depths of this mystery.” He looked around, grinning. “How sad that the rest of you are such nitwits.”

“Mercy me,” said Hugo. “How disgusting that our hero is such a twit.”

“Such a jerk,” agreed Rachel.

“Such an asshole,” said Sidney. “Excuse me, Miz Hall.”

Aunt Alex smiled and then, very carefully, she began picking up the leaves while Uncle Fred found a paper bag and Eddy said, “Hey, listen, you guys, do you want to hear it or not?”

“Oh, please tell us,
darling
Eddy,” said Frieda.

“Well, okay then.” Eddy threw open the screen door. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Hey,” said Cissie, “it’s raining out there.”

“Our hero,” began Eddy, but Cissie said, “Oh, never mind,” and they all ran outdoors and huddled under the vast umbrella of the tree. Eddy reached up to a low branch and pulled off a leaf. “See?” he said, turning it over in his hand. “It’s blank because at first nobody knew how to write. For thousands and thousands of years they could say ‘ugga-ugga,’ but they couldn’t write it down.”

For a minute they stared back at him in silence. Then Rachel said, “Oh, I get it,” and repeated it softly, “Ugga-ugga.”

“Ugga-ugga,” whispered Georgie.

“Ugga-ugga,” gabbled Hugo, laughing and beating his chest.

“Ugga-ugga,” bawled Oliver. He sprang to his feet and bounded around in the rain like a caveman, whooping, “UGGA-UGGA, UGGA-UGGA.”

Then they all danced out from under the tree and began hopping up and down and shrieking, “UGGA-UGGA, UGGA-UGGA,” while the rain
drenched their hair and ran down their faces and soaked their shirts and sneakers, and high overhead, peering down through a crack in the locked shutters of her attic window, Emerald murmured softly to herself, “Ugga-ugga, ugga-ugga.”

E
MERALD’S ATTIC PRISON
was a bare room furnished with little more than a chair and a narrow bed, and under the bed a chamber pot. Emerald leaned against the chicken wire over her window and peered through a crack in the shutter at the crazy kids next door, until the rain at last drove them indoors. Then she sat down on the cot and tried to think.

If only she had a candle, she could light it with one of her precious matches. She could wave it back and forth like a signal. But there was no candle. Stretching out on the cot, Emerald wondered what
they were thinking about downstairs, and began to be afraid.

When she woke up next morning, she knew what to do. At once she jumped up and went to the window. Perhaps she could slip a piece of paper through a crack. Reaching her fingers through the chicken wire, she tried to rattle the lower sash, but it was too closely jammed in its frame.

But there must be a hole. There had to be a hole. Emerald moved the chair to the window, climbed up, and looked through the broken slat. The morning was bright. She could see green leaves, a bird in a nest, a flash of butterfly wings. Below the tree she could just make out a wisp of the sandy hair of the professor next door.