A Girl and Her Tiger

by Zoey Gong

  All around her, the wind roared. She had been through some powerful storms in her life, but nothing like this. And she had always been in the safety of her home, in the warmth of her mother’s arms when a storm passed by. The salty sea air caused her feet and her grip to slip and she feared that at any moment she would be tossed into the unforgiving ocean below. She had never been so frightened.

  Even though the salt water stung, she opened her eyes to see what was happening around her. She watched as some of the animals and men jumped over the side of the ship. She had no idea why. Wasn’t it safer here, out of the water? She saw some of the birds open their wings and try to fly away, but they were quickly lost from her sight in the wind and clouds. Other animals and men were like Priya, hunkering down and trying to hold on and ride out the storm. But as she felt her feet slip behind her, she could feel that the ship was still sinking. Even if the storm miraculously stopped, they would soon all be lost, alone on the water.

  She didn’t see Nabhitha anywhere.

  She felt the ship tip further and her feet continued to slip out from under her. She needed to move. Find something more secure to hold onto. She grabbed onto whatever she could to help her move toward the middle of the ship where several men were huddled together.

  “Help me!” she yelled, but to her own ears, in the howl of the storm, it sounded like little more than a whisper. But some of the men did hear her and looked at her in surprise. One of the men stretched his hand toward her. She reached for it, straining against the wind and rain to reach him.

  She heard what sounded like the crack of a whip. She looked up and saw several ropes that had snapped waving in through the air.

  “Look out!” a voice rang out, but it was too late. The pylon the ropes had been holding in place was falling toward her, swinging at a great speed as one lone rope still held it fast.

  She put her arms in front of her to brace for the blow and held her breath. The force from the impact was like being hit with a cannonball. It knocked the breath from her lungs and she felt herself flying backward. She expected to hit the railing, but she didn’t. She just kept falling, and falling, and falling.

  She felt as though she had fallen into a bucket of needles as she slammed into the ocean that had once been below her. The pain and the cold rushed through her skin and into her very bones. It hurt so much, she couldn’t move, she could only feel herself sinking, the world turning dark and silent. But then, she started to float upward, and slowly she felt feeling return to her limbs. She kicked her legs and waved her arms, pushing herself back toward the surface.

  As she emerged from the water, she took a deep breath. Then another, and another. She coughed and sputtered, but she was alive. Somehow, she was still alive.

  She looked around, trying to figure out what to do now. If she should go back to the ship or try to find some sort of raft. She looked at the ship and saw that it was sitting at an impossible angle, with the bow of the ship slowly rising into the air.

  She then heard a great moaning sound. A groaning. Like the cry of despair from a hundred elephants. She then heard the same cracking sound she had heard before the ship began taking on water and she realized the ship was snapping in two. She looked up and saw the last of the men who had been on the deck jumping into the water and doing their best to swim away. She tried to follow suit, but she was not a strong swimmer, and as the boat sank under the water, she could feel herself being sucked under as well.

  She screamed even though it would do her no good. She took a deep breath and was dragged under.

  She flailed about, trying helplessly to get back to the surface or grab onto something that would help her float. But she could feel nothing. Nothing except the current that was still tugging at her, pulling her deeper and deeper. She could feel herself growing weak with exhaustion. The pressure on her skull was painful. And her lungs burned, begging for air. She knew she was going to die.

  She prayed to the gods one last time. But not to be spared. She knew her life was lost. She prayed for her parents. That the customs official would tell them he had seen her alive, on a ship bound for the Americas. She prayed they would take comfort in knowing that their daughter survived and was living a new life far away. Even if they would never see her again, they could take comfort in believing that she was alive and safe, maybe even living a good life, somehow. Somewhere.

  She felt something brush by her fingers. With the last of her strength, she closed her hands around it tightly. She brought her other hand over and gripped the mysterious object with that hand as well. She then felt the thing move and take her with it. Slowly, slowly, bit by bit, she could feel the object taking her through the water and up toward the surface.

  When she broke through the water and took a breath, she realized that she was clutching Nabhitha’s fur! At first, she started, releasing her grip. But Nabhitha seemed to send her a look of warning, telling her to hold on. In her daze after nearly drowning, Priya did not try to make sense of what was happening. She draped her arms over Nabhitha’s back and held on tightly.

  Nabhitha then swam away from the ship quickly. She was a powerful swimmer and in only a moment, she was well away from the sinking ship. After a few more breaths, Priya looked up and saw that Nabhitha was heading toward a longboat. Some of the men must have managed to release them before the ship went down.

  “He…help me,” Priya muttered weakly as they neared the boat. Two men looked out of the boat down at her, but they quickly backed up when they saw Nabhitha.

  Nabhitha growled at them and grabbed onto the side of the boat with her paws, her claws extended. Her weight tipped the boat sideways and the men screamed. One of them grabbed an oar and tried to hit Nabhitha over the head with it, but that just made Nabhitha angrier. She growled and put all her weight on the side of the boat, tipping it further and enabling her to slide half of herself up into it. The men screamed and jumped into the water.

  Priya grabbed the side of the vessel and pulled herself off of Nabhitha’s back and into the boat. Nabhitha then pulled the rest of her body into the boat. Priya collapsed to the floor as Nabhitha crouched down at the other end. Priya looked up at the sky as the rain fell on her face. The clouds were no longer churning and she could no longer hear thunder. The worst of the storm had passed.

  And she was alive.

  The ship had sunk, but she was safe in a boat with only a gentle rain falling on her. She felt tears flow out of her eyes. Tears of gratitude for whatever goddess had seen her worthy to be spared this day.

  She felt exhaustion settle over her body and she gave herself over to it. She let herself fall asleep with no thought to the fact that there were no longer iron bars between her and the ferocious Nabhitha.

  Chapter Twelve

  Priya woke to the warmth of the sun baking her brown skin. She opened her eyes and was nearly blinded by the bright sunlight. Was it the same day? Or the next one? Or the one after that? She had no idea if she had slept for a few minutes or several days. It took her a moment to remember everything that had happened. The terrible storm. The ship splintering. The captain trapped under the broken mast. Almost drowning. Nabhitha rescuing her.

  Nabhitha!

  Priya sat up quickly. At the other end of the small boat, Nabhitha sat licking the salt water off her paws, emitting a low rumbling sound. Priya felt a small sense of panic rising up in her stomach. Wait. Was that panic? She felt sick. She put her head over the side of the boat and retched up salt water into the sea. Then she retched again. Again and again until there was only bile left and the taste of seawater on her tongue. She must have swallowed quite a bit after she fell off the ship. She felt a little dizzy, so she sat down in the boat, laying her head back and looking at Nabhitha, who seemed to pay her no mind.

  She should be dreaming. She was on a boat with a tiger. Her mother would never believe such a thing. It was like a story from the Mahbharata, the great Indian epic. She then remembered how she had prayed for salvation, for a way home
. Could the gods have sent the storm? And guided Nabhitha to save her? Ugh! No! That was even more ludicrous. Why would the gods take note of her? Just a stupid girl who got herself into this mess. It was all just…just a series of terrible events.

  Nabhitha stood, stretched, and then sat in a new position where she could clean the saltwater off a different part of her body.

  Priya started to relax. Nabhitha was obviously unconcerned about Priya’s presence. Priya knew better than to turn her back on Nabhitha, but she thought that if Nabhitha was going to eat her, she’d have done it by now.

  Or she might eat her later if she got hungry enough.

  Priya moved from the bottom of the boat to one of the planks that served as seating. She looked all around them and saw nothing but ocean in every direction. There were no ships or any hint of land anywhere. Well, she did see several crates and a few shards of wood floating about. The only remnants of the once great ship that had threatened to carry her away. The ship—and all the men and animals and goods that had once been on it—were gone. Only Priya and Nabhitha remained. Well, she supposed it was possible that other longboats of sailors might have escaped as well, but they were nowhere in sight.

  She looked in the bottom of the boat to see if there were any supplies. She found four oars and some fishing supplies, including a net, a spear, and some fishing poles. She picked up one of the oars first and stuck it in the water. She made a paddling motion, but it took far more effort than she ever imagined and they barely moved. Nabhitha made a chuffing sound and cocked her head.

  “You could help me, you know,” Priya told her. “You probably weigh ten times more than I do!”

  Nabhitha snuffled at the insult, but made no move to help. She might have been a powerful swimmer, but she was useless at paddling a boat.

  Priya tried paddling again a few more times, but she was using far too much energy and making no progress. She had no food and no water. She needed to conserve her strength. But how were they going to make it back to land? As she looked around, she realized paddling might not get them any closer to land anyway. She didn’t know which direction to go. She might just make things worse by paddling the wrong way. She supposed the best thing to do for now was to just sit and wait. Eventually, they would drift closer to land, or she would see birds, who would never fly far from a tree to land on, or a ship would pass by. At some point, she would see something that would indicate the right way to go.

  Or they would sit in the boat until they died.

  If they didn’t find water, death would come rather quickly. In only a couple of days, Priya thought. She wondered if there was a way to strain the salt out of the saltwater that surrounded them. Of course, if there was a way to do that, she was sure she would have heard of it. There would never be a drought again if people were able to make drinking water out of salt water.

  Maybe she could work on finding food. She couldn’t remember when she last ate, and she had thrown up so much, she was rather hungry. Maybe the moisture inside some fish they could catch and eat would help sustain them. She looked at Nabhitha out of the corner of her eye. Nabhitha might be calm now, but who knew what she might do if she got hungry.

  Priya was not a very experienced fisher; she didn’t need to fish to survive back in Bombay. If the Parker family, or even her own family, wanted fish, they just bought them in the market. She had been fishing with her cousins in the river a few times when she had gone to visit them, but it had only been for fun. She knew the basic premise, how to bait a hook and drop it in the water. But she didn’t have anything she could use for bait. There were also a spear and net in the boat. She wondered if those might be more useful.

  She picked up the spear to examine it, trying to figure out if there was a trick to using it. The spear was multi-pronged and looked rather nasty, as though it was designed to both stab the fish and grip hold of it. She imagined it must be rather painful to be caught by one.

  As she was looking at it, she heard Nabhitha growl behind her, and her heart froze. She slowly turned and saw that Nabhitha was in a crouch, her fangs bared.

  “Nabhitha,” she whispered, her voice quavering. “What…what is it?”

  Nabhitha continued to growl and crouched lower. Priya tried to figure out what had Nabhitha so upset when she realized that Nabhitha wasn’t looking at her, but at the spear. She remembered how the captain had stabbed Nabhitha with the sharpened stick to stop her from eating the man who had attacked her. Now that Nabhitha saw Priya holding the spear, she must have thought Priya might use it on her as well.

  “It’s okay,” Priya whispered. “I’m…just…gonna…” She slowly moved her arm out over the water. Nabhitha did not take her eyes off the spear. Priya then opened her hand and let the spear fall into the water. “See. It’s gone. I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”

  Nabhitha seemed dubious, but she stopped growling and sat up from her crouch. But she didn’t go back to cleaning herself. Instead, she sat and watched Priya with renewed interest.

  Priya exhaled, glad to still be alive. She needed to be more careful, more conscious of Nabhitha’s feelings if she wanted to have any hope of surviving in this boat with her.

  And she still needed to figure out how to feed them.

  She still had a net and a fishing pole. She decided to see if any of their dumb luck held out and tossed the netting out into the sea. She watched it sink, then she dragged it back to the boat.

  To her surprise, she did manage to snag a couple of tiny fish, about the side of her finger.

  “What do you think?” Priya asked Nabhitha as she held up the fish. “Are we going to eat like kings tonight?”

  Nabhitha snuffled her disappointment. Priya tossed the net out again and pulled it back. Again, she caught only a couple of tiny fish.

  “I think the bigger fish must hang about in deeper water,” Priya said as she leaned over the side and looked down. “If only we had some bait, we could—” She paused, then she laughed at herself. “But now we do have bait!” She picked up one of the little fish. “Forgive me,” she said to the little fish as she quickly stabbed a hook through its side. Then she dropped the line into the water and let it out. She then held her breath as they waited.

  When she felt a little tug on the line, she was so excited she nearly squealed. Then she remembered that she needed to be calm in case Nabhitha was still on edge. She reeled the line back in at a steady pace even though her fingers were shaking with anticipation. She watched the water as she pulled the line up. She couldn’t stop smiling as she saw the shimmering glint of scales coming toward her.

  “I did it!” she exclaimed when she pulled the fish, as long as her arm and very fat, into the boat. She held the fish up proudly for Nabhitha to see. Nabhitha sat up with interest, nearly licking her lips at the sight. “Oh, of course.” Priya was more than willing to give the first catch of the day to the hungry tiger she shared her boat with. She worked the hook out of the fish’s mouth and then tossed the fish to Nabhitha.

  Nabhitha grabbed at the fish with her paw and ate it in two bites. She then sat back and cocked her head at Priya, as though asking for more.

  Priya smiled and baited the hook with another one of the tiny fish. She pulled up four more fat fish and gave three of them to Nabhitha. She had been so excited over the prospect of catching fish, she hadn’t thought ahead enough to how she would have to kill and eat the fish herself. And she would have to eat it raw.

  Priya had never killed an animal before. Indians rarely ate meat, but when they did, slaughtering was usually considered men’s work. Her father would kill a fish, for example, quickly and humanely, and she and her mother would prepare and cook it. But here on the boat, she didn’t have a knife or hatchet to dispatch of the head, and of course she had no way to clean the fish or cook it.

  She quickly lost her appetite. She was about to toss her fish to Nabhitha when she realized that she needed to eat the fish. She needed the sustenance and the moisture. If she didn’t eat th
e fish, she would die. Then Nabhitha would eat her. And then Nabhitha would die without someone to fish for her.

  Priya sighed and lamented how cruel and unfair the world was, then she did what had to be done.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Every inch of Priya’s skin hurt. Her once brown skin was now a deep red. She felt as though she was roasting. There was no shade in the boat to protect her from the sun. She had lost her sari wrap in the ocean and, of course, hadn’t grabbed any of the supplies from her room. She had little more than a choli around her breasts and dhoti wrapped around her waist and legs. She unwrapped her dhoti and covered different areas of her body when she could, but something was always exposed. She tried pouring water over herself, and even jumping into the ocean a few times—always while keeping a careful hold on the boat—to try and cool off and give her skin some relief, but the salt in the water was drying her skin out, causing the burned skin to crack and bleed, which made the saltwater even more painful to touch.

  Nabhitha was in a similar pathetic state. Priya didn’t know if tigers could get a sunburn, but the sunlight and heat were definitely upsetting the tiger. All day, Nabhitha sat with her head on her paws, panting and looking longingly out over the water, as though she could will land to appear. She barely moved during the heat of the day, but she ate eagerly in the evenings when Priya forced herself to fish.

  They were both exhausted and losing hope.

  “I’m sorry, Nabhitha,” Priya said. She wasn’t sure why she was apologizing. She might have gotten herself into this mess when she went to Lord Fullerton’s house, but she had nothing to do with Nabhitha getting captured. She also didn’t have anything to do with the storm or getting them stranded on this little boat. Without Priya, Nabhitha would have gone down with the ship. Still, apologizing seemed to be the only thing she could think to say. Nabhitha looked at Priya out of the corner of her eye without moving her head and made a little grunt, but otherwise did not acknowledge her.