Chapter 6

James makes a new friend and is scarred for life. Again.

It wasn’t a red bull--whatever that was.

Hiko had come for him a while later. She was still wearing her schoolteacher outfit, but it was scuffed and a little bit torn. She’d followed his scent to where the dragon’s hole was. James was a little worried for it, as it hadn’t come out in days, and had thought this was far enough away from Hiko’s hill of trees that served as their home, so he’d come here.

He sat by the hole with his knees pulled to his chest. His nervous shaking had calmed a bit, but he still glanced nervously toward the “house”, which was far out of view. He hadn’t caught a glimpse of what had thudded into the side, and it scared him to think of Hiko still back there. What if she got hurt?

He held a berry over the hole, murmuring to the dragon that it was okay, it was just Jim. There was a little scratching, but no head popped out, no little click of the beak.

“Still not coming out?” James flinched as a voice came to his ears, but relaxed when Hiko came into view. She looked exhausted, and a worried frown was spread on her lips.

That was wrong. Hiko was always smiling at him.

“What was…”

“I think you’d better come and see. But don’t let your friend come.”

James stared wide-eyed at the sight that greeted him.

Hiko’s house was literally a row of trees, curved inward and covered in moss to make a strange-looking hill growing out of the mountain. The points didn’t quite touch, creating a natural light source for the inside. The trees would part at Hiko’s whim, but sometimes she’d wave a hand for what she liked to call “dramatic flair”.

The trees at one side were bowed inward. James knew the trees were really thick, so it must have taken a huge force to make that happen. And judging from what was currently struggling weakly between the saplings, it had.

The creature looked like a bigger version of the baby dragon--same drab brown colors, same body type. It was making similar sounds, too, but they sounded more pained. It must have crashed into Hiko’s house. Before Hiko could stop him, he was dashing forward and kneeling by the huge creature’s pointy head.

It snapped weakly at him, but James shushed the poor thing, placing a hand gently on its cheek. The head was easily the size of his torso. Its wings jerked, as if trying to flap. James looked down the length of its body and spotted what looked like a hole in its soft underbelly.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Hiko, can we help her?”

Hiko raised her brows, coming forward slowly. The dragon looked up at the approaching kitsune and snapped her beak, and the fox stopped.

“They won’t let me near,” she said. “How did you know they’re a girl?”

“Well, I don’t, really, but it looks like she’s the baby’s mom.”

Hiko pursed her lips. “If you don’t know if someone’s a girl,  you need to use gender-neutral pronouns,” she said. “Anyway, they won’t let me near, but I can see from here. That’s not a normal wound. It was created by something cursed.”

James looked down at the dragon, biting his lip. It was panting softly, blinking slowly. He could tell there wasn’t much time left for it.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, running his hand gently down the side of the dragon’s neck. “That is your baby up in this forest, isn’t it? You were trying to get back to it. I’ll make sure it’s okay, just for you, okay?”

The dragon made a soft sound through its snout. It strained to get up, clicking its beak, but it didn’t get its head off the ground by more than a few inches.

To his surprise, it spoke in a hoarse, throaty voice.

“Friend,” it said. “Eggs...under Squaw Peak. Danger.”

Then it fell still, and James stared wide-eyed at it a few moments before he realized the creature had died. He looked up at Hiko, his eyes blurring, and asked, “Did you hear that?”

To his surprise, Hiko hadn’t. She looked at him with confusion in her blue eyes. “Hear what?”

“It spoke to me,” he said, looking down at the dull eye of the dead dragon.

Squaw Peak was apparently in a different canyon. Hiko almost didn’t want to take him, but James was insistent. So Hiko showed him something he hadn’t quite expected.

The kitsune transformed. There was a puff of white smoke and when it cleared a white dragon, about half the size of the dead parent, stood in front of him. Hiko crouched, letting James clamber onto her back, and then took off. They flew toward a sharp outcrop of the mountains in the north, James holding as tightly onto Hiko’s neck as he could without strangling her.

Not far from the peak, James could tell something was wrong. There was a high-pitched sound that almost sounded like a cry of pain. Something golden and red was writhing against a sunset-dusted canyon wall, and from what James could see from this distance, there was something poking at it.

“Hiko, hurry!” he squeaked, hanging on as the dragon took a dive. They ended up yards away from what was happening, but James jumped off Hiko’s back before the fox-dragon could stop him. He hid behind a large stone, vaguely noting that this canyon was more rocks than trees compared to the canyon they lived in.

The golden dragon had red under her wings--and this time he was sure this dragon was a girl, because the human accosting her kept saying, “C’mon, Bessie.”

That made James mad. Not only was this human poking the dragon with a stick, trying to get her with the loop of rope on one end of it, but he was calling her a cow’s name. His skin prickled, the earth shifting under his feet.

“Calm down, you’re sprouting,” Hiko--back in her normal form--said in a barely audible murmur as she came up behind him. James looked down and spotted what she was talking about; several thorny vines had sprung up around his feet. He wondered for a moment how he had done that, but he didn’t feel much like thinking about it with this poor creature in danger.

“What do we do?” he asked under his breath.

“We stop him,” Hiko answered matter-of-factly. She smiled at him. “I think you can handle this on your own, but I’ll be here for backup if you need me. Now think; where is he standing?”

James looked again. The man had the dragon backed up against a wall, but he was a little backed up, himself. A few feet behind him was a long, wide, shallow depression, lined with smooth, white stones. At least, he thought they were white. They appeared golden in this light.

“Is that a dry river?” he asked.

Hiko nodded. “Now, do you think you can get him to trip backward?”

James smirked.

He crept forward, closer to the riverbed. He focused on his anger--the stuff that seemed to make him grow plants so quickly. But instead of letting it take him over, he focused it forward. A crack appeared in the ground beneath his feet, and one single vine poked out. It lengthened and whipped out,  grabbing onto one of the man’s ankles.

Crying out, the man fell forward, his big-brimmed hat falling off and the other end of his loop-stick--the sharp end--was jettisoned forward.

James’s moment of victory was short-lived as he saw the sharp stick fly through the dragon’s wing. But Hiko appeared at his side, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay. They’re not dead. You take care of the dragon, and I’ll see if I can deal with our cowboy.”

Nodding, James stood and ran across the dry riverbed, stopping a few feet away from the panicked reptile. He heard Hiko follow him and stop over the “cowboy”, who’d had the wind knocked out of him.

James held his hands up. “No stick,” he said. “No weapons. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m James, what’s your name?”

The dragon, who’d been growling with hackles raised, eyed him curiously. Its head came forward, nostrils flaring as it sniffed at him. It seemed to gain a new expression, but it was hard to tell with scales covering its skin; until it uttered a mournful sound.

“Oh...you smell your friend on me, don’t you?” James said softly. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help, but it was too late. Hiko says they were hurt by a cursed thing--”

A thought struck him. The dragon had warned him of their friend being in danger, meaning they had mostly likely fled from this fight, but the only weapon he could see was the sharpened stick jutting out of the grieving dragon’s wing.

Oh, no.

“Hey, hold still, okay?” he said. “I need to take that stick out of your wing. It’s probably going to hurt.”

The dragon growled initially, but it sounded sad. James reached forward, gently patting the dragon’s snout. A dangerous dare, so close to that many fangs, but he didn’t think the dragon would hurt him.

And he was right. There was a slow blink, and he heard a deep, throaty, “Fine.”

He patted the dragon’s snout a couple more times before he made his way toward the wing. The stick was protruding not far from the edge of the membrane, but it still had to hurt. He laid one hand on the weapon, the other grasping the membrane to hold it still before, with a quick yank, he tugged out the weapon. The dragon cried out, its tail thrashing.

He looked at the loop-stick, but nothing seemed too weird about it. It was made out of some kind of plastic painted to look metal, while the sharp end and the loop he thought was a rope actually were made of metal. It didn’t seem cursed. He looked over at Hiko, about to ask about it--

And that was when he saw a flash of sickly pinkish-yellow as something metal entered Hiko’s arm.

Panic flowed through him and he reflexively shot out another vine. He thought he was aiming for the man’s wrist, but instead, the sharpened end of his thorny weapon pierced the human’s chest. Hiko looked up with horror, the cursed knife stuck in her arm. The man fell limp, blood seeping through his shirt.

James went wide-eyed.

“I j-just…I missed,” he said faintly, staring at the wide-open eyes of their would-be assailant.

Hiko blinked and stood. “No, James, it’s okay, honey. You were trying to prot--”

She fell to her knees, grabbing the knife with a pained gasp. James snapped out of whatever funk he’d fallen into and raced to her side.

“P-pull it out, quick,” Hiko said, holding her arm out. James nodded and grabbed the handle, fumbling with it for a moment before he yanked it out, just like the dragon’s stick.

“Is it okay if we stay?” James asked, turning to the dragon. “I c-can’t get her back home like this...Hiko, are you going to--”

“No,” Hiko said determinedly. “I’ll still be around for a long time. I just need a few plants and a lot of sleep.” She smiled at him. “It’ll be okay, Jimmy.”

The dragon, meanwhile, was scrabbling at the ground, eventually coming up with a click of its beak. “Through here,” it said. James nodded and helped Hiko to her feet and toward the dragon, who had opened a sort of entrance in the rocky cliffside. The stone shut behind them, leaving the corpse of the unfortunate poacher lying outside.