Without thought, Song flung himself down the waterfall trail, bounding over ledges until he reached the level ground beside the pool. Then shrieking like an angry wind, he careened through the meadow grass.
As the girl’s figure loomed closer and closer, time seemed to slow. He stumbled and fell, catching a whirling glimpse of the dragon closing the distance above their heads. He pushed himself to his feet and found he still held the wooden box. He rushed on, driven by pure instinct.
He could see the girl clearly now. It was Lord Dolisu’s daughter, escaped again from the manor. She was leaning forward, her arms raised toward the dragon, her face not terrified but expectant!
He reached her at the same moment as the dragon. Just as the monster’s clutching claws opened to grasp her, Song flung himself between them. With a surge of adrenaline, he screamed, throwing up his arm and thrusting Grandfather’s box like a shield before the dragon’s face.
The dragon shrieked with rage and snapped its billowing wings. It hovered overhead, twisting its triangular head back and forth, glaring at one child and then the other. Song could see the monster’s overlapping scales. He could smell its rancid breath and feel the red heat of anger behind its slitted eyes. But the box protected him from the seeping chill. He held his arm stiff, each beat of his heart sounding like a gong in his own ears.
With a mighty flap and another screech of outrage, the monster beat its way back to the mountain’s heights.
The girl crumpled on the ground like a doll whose support had been snatched away. Song gave her no time to collect herself. Grabbing her by the arm, he yanked her to her feet. “Come on!” he demanded. “It could come back!”
He hauled her up the steep path just as he had hauled Karina, dragging her to the mouth of the cave and shoving her inside. She stood panting, her cheeks flushed with color, her eyes sparkling like diamonds. She looked—thrilled!
“Are you crazy?” Song burst out. “Did you want the dragon to eat you?”
She didn’t answer.
A wave of exhaustion overtook him and he collapsed in a heap on the cave floor. The shock of his actions was wearing off, and his body began to shake so violently he could hardly sit upright.
Karina went to the girl and draped a comforting arm around her shoulders. “You are safe now,” she murmured. “The dragon is gone.”
But the girl brushed her off and went to stand in the doorway of the cave, her shining eyes searching the heavens.
“Why didn’t you run?” Song asked her.
The girl ignored him. She remained a long time in the doorway.
Karina knelt beside Song. “Are you hurt?”
“I do not think so,” he panted. “Just shook up.”
Her eyes shone admiringly in her scarred face. “That was a very brave thing you did.”
“Foolish,” he corrected.
“How did you know?” Karina asked with a significant glance at the box in his hand.
Song stole a quick peek at Lord Dolisu’s daughter, who still scanned the sky, and hid the box behind his back. “I didn’t. I simply reacted.”
They looked at each other, both realizing the importance of the discovery.
“You must speak with your grandfather when you get home, Song.”
He heaved a weary sigh. “I know.”
They sat in silence, watching the waterfall catch the light of evening and project its colors onto the cave wall. And they waited, none of them exactly sure what it was they waited for.
At some point Song must have slept, for when he awakened, it was fully dark.
“I heard something,” Karina whispered, sitting stiffly upright.
Song strained his ears, listening for any sound in the darkness. For long moments, the air was dead silent. Then he heard it, too, an indistinct voice wavering across the valley below.
Lord Dolisu’s daughter lifted her head from where she slumped against the wall near the cave’s mouth.
The sound came again, stronger.
“It sounds like someone calling,” Song said.
“It’s my father,” the girl said, jumping to her feet to peer into the darkness.
Other voices joined the first, now clearly repeating a name over and over. “Nori! Nori!”
“Here!” she yelled into the night. “I am here!”
Now torches could be seen flickering among the trees and pouring out into the meadow, their light reflecting off the pool’s still water.
“I’ll help you to the valley floor,” Song offered, but she had already skipped over the ledge to join her rescuers. He watched her climb nimbly down the cliff face. Soon her shadow merged with the crowd of armed troops. She would be safe.
He picked up the wooden box. He and Karina would be, too.
Grandfather was waiting up beside a small fire. Song dragged himself across the clearing, forcing his hand to hold the box in plain view, and stopped opposite the old man.
Mutely, Grandfather observed the heirloom. His eyes traveled to Song’s battered face and furrowed brow, and he waited for the boy to speak.
Song fidgeted. Facing the dragon had been easier than this.
“I took it,” he finally blurted, “the day you forgot to lock the chest. I found it, and I took it, and I’m sorry.”
Grandfather looked long into Song’s eyes, his gaze unwavering beneath bristly, gray brows. “You are forgiven.”
Relief flooded Song. But the age-old weariness that now seemed to characterize Grandfather stole over the old man’s features. “You were wrong…but perhaps I was, too. Perhaps I should have shown it to you before now.”
Song’s apprehension instantly morphed into eagerness. Dropping to his knees beside the fire, he studied the box in the light. “Can you tell me where it came from?”
“It was your father’s.”
Song sat back, stunned. In all his speculations, he never once considered his father. “Where did he get it?”
But Grandfather had picked up the handle of his staff and was muttering to it. “The boy is still so young—so young. How is an old man to know what to do?”
“Grandfather, it repels the dragon.”
The old man cut off his murmurings. “How did you learn of this?”
“Today in Mamuri Valley.”
Starting with the day he found the box in the chest, Song explained everything that had happened, ending with the rescue of Lord Dolisu’s daughter.
“I thrust the box in the dragon’s face out of pure instinct,” he concluded, “and the dragon flew away up the mountain.”
Grandfather considered his words for many minutes. “I am glad, then, that you had the protection of the box, but you should not have left the hut. You have been lucky. In the future you must do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand? You must not take any more chances. Promise me!” he said with sudden intensity.
“All right, I promise.”
The old man relaxed. “It is far more important than you realize.”
“You are still keeping something from me,” Song prompted, but Grandfather’s eyes had grown vague as he stared into the fire.
“At least tell me where my father got the box,” the boy insisted.
“It was passed down from his father.”
“It used to be yours, then?”
For just a moment, the man looked up, startled. Then his eyes resumed their preoccupied stare. “Yes, I suppose it has belonged to me.”
“But where did it come from? I mean, where does it get its powers?”
Grandfather was quiet for such a long time, Song thought perhaps he had dozed off, as he sometimes did in the warmth of a blaze. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed to rise out of the flames.
“It was made from the limb of the Guardian Tree.”