The dragon was sitting in the branches of a dark tree. His emerald body blended into the leaves, making him almost completely invisible in the moonlight, but something shivered and he snapped into focus. Once I saw him, I couldn’t unsee him.

“Come to me,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. I’d never met a dragon before, so I was not afraid, but his teeth were sharp like tigers’ teeth, and they shined among the green leaves.

“I want to whisper in your ear,” he answered.

“No, thank you. I can hear very well from here,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes. “Whose garden do you think this is?” he asked. It seemed like a trick question.

“James and I found it, so it’s ours,” I said.

“It is not your garden,” said the dragon.

“Who are you talking to?” James, who was in the bushes chasing fireflies, asked.

“A dragon,” I told him.

James emerged from the bushes and looked around.

“I don’t see a dragon,” he said.

“He’s up there.” I pointed into the canopy of the tree.

“I still don’t see anything.”

“Well, he’s right there. He says this isn’t our garden.”

“Whose is it?” James asked.

“It’s mine,” answered the dragon in the tree.

“He says it’s his,” I told James.

“We found it fair and square,” said James. “No one’s been here for years. It’s wild and overgrown. We’re the ones who cleared the paths and pulled out the weeds. It’s ours.”

“Tell your little friend to calm down,” said the dragon.

“Why can’t he see or hear you?” I asked.

The dragon lifted his shoulders in a shrug, which seemed oddly familiar to me, though I couldn’t place why. “I didn’t create the world, I just live in it,” he said. “Who am I to explain why things are the way they are?”

James got bored with me and wandered back into the garden to look for a fox he’d seen earlier. The dragon reached out a claw and said, “Have an apple.”

He shook the leaves of the tree, and a single red apple was revealed at the end of a branch just over my head. It was very pretty. I reached up and plucked it.

“Oh. One little thing,” he said.

“What?”

“About the apple.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve heard that if you take a bite …”

“What?”

“Well, there’s a rumor. If you take a bite … afterward, you’ll know everything in the universe.”

I held the apple in front of me and noticed the way the moonlight glinted off its glossy surface, which looked as hard as rubies. “How would that happen?”

The dragon shrugged again. “How should I know?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing, to know everything in the universe.”

The dragon raised its eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s good or bad.”

“You do,” I said. “You think it’s bad.”

“What do you think?”

“It would make school easier.”

“You would never fail a test again, that’s true,” he said. “But it’s not just facts.”

“What do you mean? What else is there?”

“Oh, there’s so much more. There are secrets, and illnesses, and horrors you can’t imagine. There are stories and myths and lies and dreams. There are civilizations being born and people you love dying. There’s everything to come, and everything that’s ever been. All that could be yours.”

“It’s impossible to know everything in the universe,” I said after a moment.

“Is it?”

“Wouldn’t that make me like … God?”

The dragon smiled. “Aren’t you the clever one?” he said.

I looked at the reflection of myself in the surface of the apple.

“What are you waiting for?” asked the dragon.

“I’m thinking,” I said. “If I knew everything, there would be no mysteries.”

“I suppose that’s right. No more mysteries for you.”

“There would be no wonder.”

“Perhaps not.”

“There would just be … answers. You don’t feel wonder at things you know the answers to.”

“I guess not,” said the dragon.

“Life without wonder seems sad.”

The dragon shifted in the branches. “Do you think God is sad?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

A shiver went down my back, though I wasn’t sure why. I looked around for James but didn’t see him. “James?” I called out. “Where are you?”

There was no answer. The night grew darker.

I looked up at the dragon. “Where did he go?”

The dragon shrugged again, and I realized why the shrug seemed so familiar. James shrugged the same way.

“Maybe he’s gone,” said the dragon.

“He was just here two seconds ago.”

“Time is funny in the garden,” said the dragon. “It speeds up and slows down in the strangest ways.”

“James!” I called, louder now. I felt hot, like I was standing near a fire. The garden was quiet. I tried to remember exactly how long it had been since I’d last seen James. I had no idea. Everything seemed different somehow, except for the dragon, who seemed as if he’d been there forever. “Please,” I said. “Where is James? What happened to him?”

“Find out,” said the dragon, nodding toward the apple in my hand. “Go ahead. Take a bite.”