The Dragon Tree by AC Kavich

to look at the stall.
                  Inside the stall, Eva was shifting her weight uncomfortably in Hiroki’s lap. She was having a hard time keeping her feet off the ground, and not sure she could take much more cheerleader babbling. Hiroki was struggling as well, his thin legs quivering under Eva’s weight.
                  “Did you enjoy eavesdropping?” said Grace in the direction of the stall. “Hope you did!”
                  Giggling, Grace headed for the door with Penny right behind her. As soon as they were outside of the bathroom, they resumed their cackling conversation.
                  Eva jumped off Hiroki’s lap with a groan and threw open the stall door. He followed her out, rubbing life back into his thighs.
                  “Sorry you had to hear that,” said Hiroki.
                  “Whatever, I don’t care. He can talk to other girls.”
                  “He’s a jerk,” said Hiroki as he stooped to recover his damaged photo. It was torn on one corner and creased diagonally. “Please just admit that he’s a jerk.”
                  “Are you gonna show me this amazing tree or not?”
                  Hiroki folded the damaged photo and slipped it into his pocket, but handed Eva the folder. She opened it with a frown, expecting to be unimpressed. But the top photo immediately captivated her. She moved it closer for a better look then held it at arm’s length.
                  “That looks like a face,” said Eva. “Like eyes and a mouth and… teeth.”
                  The trunk of the tree was heavily knotted. It played tricks on the eye. There were strange protrusions that gave the impression of a jutting jaw and gaping throat, pitch black at its deepest point. And thorny protrusions along the edge of the knot that looked like a row of shark teeth.
                  “Like the face of an animal,” added Hiroki. “The face of a creature .”
                  Eva flipped through the other photos, shaking her head unwittingly as the images washed over her. The eyes that seemed to look out from the trunk of the tree were the most haunting feature of the image. She closed the folder slowly and handed it back to Hiroki, who couldn’t help but smile at her reaction.
                  “We have to go back to that tree,” said Eva.
                  She didn’t look happy about it.

                                          CHAPTER SIX
     
                  Billy and William had driven up the mountain for more than an hour before they finally reached the top. Billy couldn’t believe the view. The peaks and valleys unfolding before them were so completely covered with mature timber that they looked like a sea of frozen green waves.
                  Billy was still rattled by the strange transformation his body had undergone  during the pre-dawn hours.
                  “If you’re gonna heave,” said William, “roll down the window.”
     
                  Lumber work was grueling work.
                  A team of men had already gone through the slope with heavy buzz saws to fell hundreds of trees. A follow-up team led by William patrolled the ravaged slope in hard hats and waited for the men at the top to send hooks zipping down heavy wire lines. They wrapped the lines around severed logs and fixed the hooks, then signaled for the men up top to trigger their heavy machinery and haul the massive logs up and out.
                  At the top of the hill, another team of men helped guide the cut logs into stacks. They used smaller saws to cut away any protruding branches and to cut clean both ends so the logs weren’t too long for the semis they would ride back down the mountain all the way to the processing