Free The Dragon Tree by AC Kavich

“Eva!”
                  One moment he couldn’t see her at all. Only the taut nylon rope that hugged the cliff face then disappeared under an overhang. But a moment later, the rope scraped against the overhang and Eva swung into view just beyond. He saw one foot pointing up at him, locked into place above the harness. The rest of Eva’s body was flailing chaotically below the harness. He caught a glimpse of her terrified eyes just before she swung back out of view.
                  “EVA!”
                  Without thought, Hiroki swung his legs around and lowered them over the edge of the cliff. He latched onto the nylon rope as he found his first footholds, but the sound of the rope scraping against the rocks brought a rush of horrifying imagery to his mind: frayed strands of nylon; a sudden snap; two teenage bodies plummeting toward the water with nothing to catch them but cold Pacific air.
                  The rope couldn’t hold both of them. He let go.
                  One foot at a time, Hiro. Get a grip.
                  His inadvertent pun made him laugh. Laughing while hanging onto a sheer cliff face by the tips of toes and fingers was inexplicable, but Hiroki didn’t over think it.  He tried not to think at all. His world had just gotten very small, and only two things existed in it: Eva and certain death.
                  “I’m coming Eva!”
                  He was still going very slowly – one handhold or foothold at a time – but he was going less slowly every passing second. He felt the uneven surface of the rock pressing against his stomach as if prodding him to let go. He felt his pants ride up above his calves and up above his waist. He felt his shirt flapping crazily in the wind that buffeted the rocks to pry him off and send him soaring. None of it mattered. Only Eva mattered. He was getting closer.
                  “Hiro, please!” she cried from out of view.
                  “Just hold on!”
                  He eased away from the rocks to look down between his legs. Just in time to see her foot slip through the harness.
                  “NO!”
     
                  A strange calm came over Eva in the instant she started her fall. She had heard that one’s life flashes before their eyes in times like these. Perhaps the calm was her mind’s way of preparing for those memories and allowing her to enjoy them – the last pleasure she would experience before her life was snuffed out by the greedy water below, so eager to swallow her whole.
                  But no, there were no memories for Eva. There was only the calm and a rush of vivid observations. She smelled the salty coating on the rocks before her and the sour stench of algae on the rocks below. She heard the seagulls circling the harbor in search of any edible morsel. She tasted the blood from her lip as she bit it. She felt the rush of cold air as it whipped through her clothes and covered her skin in goose bumps.
                  As she fell past the rocky shelf protruding from the cliff face, past the rocky curtain that shielded it from direct view, she saw the gnarled black roots that had dug their way through the rock to point defiantly skyward. She saw the black trunk of the tree that grew underneath the shelf in thick, braided cords like a tangle of black wire. She saw the trunk flair outward in all directions, its branches like thick black snakes slithering into the abyss. She saw the coarse black fruit hanging like macabre ornaments from the branches. She saw a single drop of blood red juice that formed on one piece of fruit and readied itself to join in her fall.
                  And then she saw a bulky form leap over the edge of the cliff above Hiroki – too strangely-shaped to be recognizable – and plummet toward her with an