The Dragon Tree (5 page)

At four in the morning Uncle Fred’s alarm clock went off, blasting him awake. It woke up Aunt Alex too. “Oh, what is it?” she said, lifting her head from the pillow.

But at once Georgie popped up in the doorway in her unicorn pajamas like a sergeant at arms. “Your turn now, Uncle Fred,” she said brightly.

He rolled out of bed, his hair in a frowze. “Yes, sir, captain, sir.” He groaned, shuffling his feet into his slippers and wrapping himself in a blanket.

Eddy was glad to see the mounded shape of his uncle shambling out of the house. “Greetings, oh gracious deliverer,” he whispered, and stumbled away to bed.

Uncle Fred sat down on a lawn chair and huddled drowsily in his blanket until Georgie skipped out of the house at dawn. Beaming at him, she said, “Okay, Uncle Fred, it’s my turn again.”

“Oh, Georgie, dear,” said Uncle Fred, whimpering and standing up stiffly, “we can’t go on this way. It just won’t work.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Uncle Fred,” said Georgie.
“I’ll call Frieda right away.”

“Well, then,” said Uncle Fred, limping away with his blanket trailing behind him on the dewy grass, “I will await further orders.”

F
RIEDA’S MOTHER
answered the phone. “Why, good morning, Georgie. How are you, dear?”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Caldwell,” said Georgie. “Is Frieda there?”

There was a bustling noise in the background, and Georgie could hear Frieda say crisply, “I’ll take that.” The phone crackled, and then Frieda said, “Caldwell here.”

Georgie explained the crisis about the tree, and at once Frieda said, “Gotcha.”

Frieda Caldwell was small for her age, but she
was a ball of fire. In the fourth grade she had taken charge of all sixteen thousand kids in Georgie’s Pilgrimage of Peace. She had shouted through a megaphone to keep everybody in line beside the highway, all the way to Washington.

And that wasn’t all. Last year Frieda had been the majordomo of the great Mysterious Circus. She had bossed the whole thing, telling everybody what to do, from the clowns to the elephants.

Now of course she came right over, marching firmly all the way from her house on Hubbard Street. Georgie led her around the house to see the glorious tree.

Frieda looked up, and at once the tree fluttered its leaves politely, as if saying “How do you do.”

“Well, okay,” said Frieda, “I get it. No problem. All we need is a bunch of bodyguards, night and day.” She looked at Georgie and grinned. “Like, you know, a protection society, right?”

“Oh, yes,” said Georgie, “that’s right.”

Frieda frowned. “It needs a name. You can’t have a society without a name.”

Georgie thought a minute. “How about the Tree
Protection Society?”

“It’s got to be more exciting than that.” Frieda had been reading some terrific books. “Knights of the Tree? No, wait a sec. How about a fellowship? The Fellowship of the Tree?”

“Great.” Georgie’s eyes sparkled, because she had read the same books.

But Frieda still wasn’t satisfied. She ransacked her store of fancy words. “I’ve got it. How about ‘noble’? How about the Fellowship of the Noble Tree?”

“Perfect,” breathed Georgie.

“And how about being knights? We could all be Knights of the Fellowship of the Noble Tree.”

“Super,” said Georgie.

Reverently the two knights looked up at the tree that was to be in their keeping from now on. Modestly the tree stood quietly, as if growing ten feet in the night had been nothing special, as if the thousands of new insect trails in the leaves were nothing to brag about.

But the time had come for action. Frieda whipped out her phone to call Hugo and Oliver, Sidney and
Rachel, Otis and Cissie.

“Hugo,” barked Frieda, “we need a Director of Communications for the Fellowship. Right away, Hugo.”

“I’m sorry. This is Hugo’s father. May I ask who is speaking?”

At once Frieda became the sweet little girl that she was not. (Anything but.) “It’s Frieda Caldwell,” cooed Frieda. “I’m in Hugo’s class at school.”

“Oh, I see. Well, Hugo’s still asleep, but I’ll get him up.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Von Bismarck. Tell him it’s
immensely
important.”

“Immensely important. Right you are.”

There was a long pause. Frieda frowned and looked at Georgie. Georgie giggled. At last there was a grumbling “Hello?” and Frieda took command.

“Listen here, Hugo, it’s brand-new. It’s a fellowship. We’re all going to be knights. I’ll explain at Georgie’s. Come right over.”

“Now? You mean like now? Hey Frieda, I’m kind of, like, you know, busy.”

“Drop everything, Hugo. This is really important
stuff.”

“But—”

“I said
now
, Hugo.”

Over the heads of Frieda and Georgie the noble tree stretched itself taller and popped out a dozen twiggy branches all at once. One stroked the glass of the window where Eddy lay zonked out in bed, while across the way another brushed the screen of the second-floor window where the maid-of-all-work stood behind a curtain looking down.

And from a window on the floor below, another pair of eyes stared at the founding members of the Fellowship of the Noble Tree. Mortimer Moon was making a plan. Turning it over in his mind, he went looking for his wife.

W
HEN
F
RIEDA TOLD
them to come, they came, and she rounded them up in the shade of the tree—Hugo and Rachel, Sidney and Cissie, Otis and Oliver. “Look, you guys,” said Frieda, “do you see this tree?”

They saw the tree. They all said, “Wow,” and Oliver said, “Like, it’s new, right? It wasn’t here before, right?”

Georgie said, “Right,” but she too was astonished, because the tree had changed. Only a few weeks ago it had burst out of the ground as a little green twig, but now it seemed hundreds of years
old. The leafy top was level with the chimney and the roots were like enfolding arms or caves or mossy thrones, sending twisted fingers snaking over the grass.

“Good,” said Frieda. “Now hear this,” and she nudged Georgie.

“Hear what?” said Georgie. Her mind went blank.

“The man next door,” hissed Frieda. “You know, the guy with the saw.”

“Oh, right.” Georgie was not used to public speaking. She began in a whisper, but soon the words began pouring out, because the tree was so much in danger. “Mr. Moon owns half of it, you see, and he wants to cut it down.”

Then Frieda, who was an old hand at public speaking, took over and explained about the Fellowship of the Noble Tree. “So listen, you guys, we’re all going to be, like, knights. You know, Knights of the Fellowship.”

For a moment they were too much in awe to say anything. The only sound was the warbling of a bird high in the noble tree. But when Eddy strolled out of the house with a bagel in his hand and said,
“Okay, Frieda, what’s up?” they all began talking at once.

“Badges,” said Rachel. “I’ll make badges. You know, with trees on them.” She coughed importantly. “Heraldic devices, that’s what they’re called.”

“How about a tree house?” yelled Otis. “My pop’s got all this lumber down-cellar, because, you know, we tore down the old garage.”

“Terrific!” yelled Sidney. “I’ll help.”

“So will I!” howled Otis.

“Me too!” boomed Oliver.

“An intercommunications command post!” bellowed Hugo. “Up in the tree house. I’ll wire it up.”

“My horse!” screamed Cissie. “I’ll bring my horse. Knights, they always had a horse.”

“I’ll be your page!” shouted Georgie.

“Great!” shrieked Cissie. “I really need a page. I mean, speaking as a knight on horseback.”

“Kid stuff!” hollered Eddy. “But okay, your hero will condescend to be your king.”

It was bedlam. Frieda was disgusted. She pierced the tumult with a blast from her whistle
(left over from last summer’s circus). “Hey, everybody, what are we here for anyway? We’ve got to guard this tree night and day.” At once they stopped screeching and looked at her blankly.

Flipping the pages of her notebook, Frieda snatched a pencil from behind her ear and said, “Okay, you knights, raise your hands. Who’ll take nine to midnight, Monday through Friday?”

M
ORTIMER
M
OON GLOWERED
down at the Knights of the Fellowship as they milled around under his bedroom window. The next day he took revenge by attacking with his chain saw the wooded grove along the banks of the Mill Brook across the street.

It was true that they were not handsome trees, but it was painful to hear the
swish-thump-splash
, as one after another came crashing down.

“Oh, Fred, dear,” said Aunt Alex, covering her ears, “can’t the Selectmen make him stop?’

Uncle Fred squared his jaw and said, “I’ll do my best.”

At the next meeting of the board in the Town Hall, he complained about the destruction of the Mill Brook trees, and flung out his arms in warning. “Our new tree warden,” he said, “is turning this town into a graveyard.”

“But all those trees were diseased,” said Chairman Jerry Plummer. “That’s what Mortimer tells me.”

“And after all,” said Donald Swallow, the new member of the board, “Mortimer should know.”

“Of course he knows,” said Jemima Smith. “He has a degree in forestry.”

“Mortimer explained it to me,” said Annabelle Broom. “All about some kind of beetle and then there’s this virus that jumps from tree to tree.”

“He says the oaks have canker worm,” said Jerry.

“And there’s blister rot in the white pines,” said Jemima.

“And gypsy moths in the maple trees,” said Donald.

“He explained it to me philosophically,” said Annabelle. “He said that beauty in the future means a wee bit of ugliness now.”

“Ugliness now!” croaked Uncle Fred. “Ugliness for the next quarter of a century!”

“Shhh, Fred,” said Jerry as the door opened. “Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Moon. How kind of you to take time out from your busy schedule of—” Jerry stopped, unable to think what sort of things a tree warden did all day, but Uncle Fred finished his sentence by growling, “Murder.”

But Mortimer Moon only grinned at him, and said, “Why, greetings, neighbor.”

“Oh, Mortimer,” gushed Annabelle, “you must explain it to us again, the importance of your crusade. Some of us”—Annabelle nodded at Uncle Fred—“don’t seem to understand.”

“Well, it’s perfectly simple,” said Mortimer Moon, sitting down and beaming around the table. “If we don’t take out the sick trees, they’ll infect all the rest. In fact my neighbor and I”—he smiled forgivingly at Uncle Fred—“have a little disagreement about a badly infected tree right on the property
line between us. It’s sad, because unless the tree is dealt with promptly, the contagion will spread into my yard. You should see the leaves. They’re infested with chewing insects.”

“How dreadful,” said Annabelle, scowling at Uncle Fred.

“Oh, by the way, Mortimer,” said Donald Swallow, “my own trees look pretty healthy, but maybe you should take a look at them. I confess I’d hate to lose my purple beech, but if it’s infecting the whole street, I’d certainly sacrifice it, although it would break my heart.”

“Glad to be of service,” said Mortimer Moon.

Donald Swallow lived on Laurel Street, right around the corner from the professors Hall. Therefore everybody at No. 40 Walden Street heard the scream of Mr. Moon’s chain saw and the smashing fall of one mighty limb after another as Donald Swallow’s magnificent tree was lopped and chopped and brought to the ground.

Donald stood watching the massacre with tears running down his face. His gigantic beech tree had been the wonder of the neighborhood. With its
broad spreading universe of purple leaves, it had been a piece of midnight in the middle of the day.

“Aha, I told you so,” said Mortimer Moon, holding up a leaf. “Thrips! See there? All those specks?

Donald bent to look. “I don’t see them,” he whimpered. “But I’ll take your word for it, Mr. Moon.”

T
HE OTHER TREE
, the new fast-growing tree on Walden Street, was like a city under siege. The houses on either side were fortresses with windows like loopholes in enemy battlements.

But there was a crack in one of the ramparts, because a secret agent had begun to burrow inside the walls.

Mr. Moon’s second cousin, three times removed, had been told to beware of the vicious boy next door, but Emerald was beginning to doubt. After watching the delinquent boy and his dangerous little sister from her window and obeying the
warnings of Mr. and Mrs. Moon, she had begun to dodge behind doors and hide in closets and listen to their whisperings.

Slowly the world was turning upside down. Good was no longer good, and therefore what had happened to bad? What about the boy and his little sister? What about the other kids who were now swarming in and out of the house next door?

Who, after all, had told her to beware? Her stepmother and stepfather, the same two people who had dragged her away from everything she had always known and loved. Even her cherished family pictures were gone. “Oh, Emerald,” her stepmother had said, “I knew you didn’t want those dusty old things, so I threw them away.”