“Sohan,” Ana said and wrapped her arms around me.
I buried my face in her neck and didn’t realize at first that she was using her powers. It was a natural, mindless sort of thing on her part. Ana sensed my tension and wanted to soothe me in her own sweet way, and the world around her responded. A light breeze stole into the tent, carrying with it the scents of her garden, which was one of our favorite places. People turned one way and another, wondering if it was some trick of the circus, but I knew what it was. It was the unconditional love of the goddess.
Just as Kelsey was turning toward us, I channeled the power of the Damon Amulet to turn us invisible.
We sat there, Ana’s arms around me, as the crowd began to disperse. Since we weren’t visible, Anamika told the scarf to switch us back. I felt the tingling on my body as my physical form shifted, but it did nothing to ease the anxiety pooling in my gut. Kelsey got up and began working. She was apparently on clean-up duty. It was amazing how quickly everything was broken down and how much of a mess a couple hundred people could make. When we were finally alone, Ana asked, “How are you feeling, Sohan?”
I laughed sadly. “I feel…I feel sorry. He went through so much and I was the one who did it.”
“Yes. You did. But he told you he trusted you. Did he not?”
“Yes. He trusted me.”
“Would he not go through it again to be with Kelsey?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. The girl in question entered the building and started moving boxes from one part of the building to another. As she struggled with her burdens, I waved a hand and made half of the boxes disappear and reappear in position on the other side. It shocked me that I had the ability to do it with a mere thought. Now that I considered it, the boxes that moved were full of food, so it must have been the scarf and the fruit combining to do the work. “He would,” I said finally.
Kelsey stopped and turned, hefting a box under her arm and scanning the benches as if she could hear us talking.
When Kells moved on, Ana said, “This is what you spoke of before. The barrier to romance. Ren and Kelsey were separated by time and physical location. Of course, in their case, they were also kept apart due to Ren’s tiger nature. Was this the third thing you spoke of?”
The corner of my mouth lifted. Ana had a way of distracting me from my sour moods. It wasn’t always something I liked, but it worked regardless. “No,” I said. “Most romances aren’t thwarted by one person shifting into an animal.”
“Then what is the third thing?” she asked, rising and waiting for me to follow. “Is it the approval of the family?”
“That was true in past times,” I said, following her down the rows of seats. “But not so much during this time. Children date who they like for the most part.”
“Date?”
“A modern term for courtship.”
“Oh. Did you…date Kelsey?”
“After a fashion. We had dinner together.”
“Eating is courtship?”
“It’s not so much the consuming of food as it is being alone together, getting to know one another.”
She puzzled this out in her mind as we waited for Kelsey to return so we could follow her to Ren. Ana told me that Ren couldn’t transform until she touched his head. I’m not sure why that was important. It just was according to Mr. Kadam’s notes. We watched Kelsey all afternoon and evening, but she never approached Ren during that time.
Ana frowned as we waited for Kelsey to finish dinner. Placing her hand on top of Kadam’s paper, she channeled her energies, and both of us felt the small pulse that thrummed on our skin. “The timing is wrong,” I said.
“You felt it too?” she asked. “This is my fault. I was…distracted when we leapt.”
Tilting my head, I waited for her to finish her explanation but she chose to say nothing. “Do you know how to fix it?” I asked.
“Hold on to me,” Ana said.
I placed my hands on her shoulders and she fast-forwarded time. The stars moved overhead in a blur, and then the sun rose and set within a manner of minutes. Still, there was a thrum of time being slightly off, and when she finally slowed us down, it was almost as if we’d dropped into a notch created just for us. It was late afternoon and the circus had already begun a show. Ren’s act had just been announced.
We crept invisibly into the tent and took a seat near the front. There weren’t too many people attending that day so we ended up very close to the cage. I immediately knew something was wrong. He didn’t take the mark the trainer pointed to. Instead, he ran around the cage, his head lifted in the air.
“He can smell me,” I said as I waved my hand, removing my scent. “We’re too close and I forgot to mask my scent.”
“Maybe that’s not it,” Ana answered. “He seems to have settled down now.”
Ana was right. Whatever had caused him unrest before, you wouldn’t know it now. He performed quickly and was as obedient as those blasted dogs. I tugged at the collar of my shirt, unnerved, feeling like I was tied down with invisible shackles.
When the show was over and Kelsey finished cleaning, we followed her to a large barn. I could hear Ren’s pacing before we even entered the building. He was clearly agitated. Careful to be as quiet as possible, we stole forward, keeping our distance from both Kelsey and Ren.
“Hey, Ren,” Kelsey said, approaching the cage. “What’s going on with you today, mister? I’m worried about you. I hope you aren’t getting sick or something.”
The moment he saw her, he calmed down. His eyes were trained on her and he was as ignorant of our presence as Kelsey. She seemed as transfixed by the white tiger as he was of her. Slowly, she reached out her hand and touched his forehead. I gave Ana a meaningful glance but she just shook her head and mouthed, “Not yet.”
I heard Kelsey gasp as he licked her fingers. She thanked him for not eating her and sat down to read him a poem. I rolled my eyes. Some things never changed. If any two people were meant for each other, it was the two of them. The fact that I even had that thought startled me. Do I really feel that way? Was Kelsey meant to be with him even from the beginning?
Despite my general dislike for poetry, I found myself caught up in the poem about cats. I liked that one. It served to fix the tiny rift in her character I’d allowed to rankle me over the past hour. Kelsey was young. She didn’t yet know who we were or what we’d been through. I couldn’t blame her for being fascinated by a tiger, even one who was in captivity.
As I listened to her read and talk with Ren, I realized two things. The first was that she and Ren were always destined to be together. The second was that it was time to let her go. To let Kelsey be free to live the life she had chosen for herself.
The moment she whispered, “I wish you were free,” I could almost feel the magic thrumming through the barn. It circulated through me as much as it did through her and Ren. The power of the goddess and her tiger rose, golden light lifting up and away from both me and Ana, and after a brief nudge from Ana, it settled on the two people standing by the cage. Ren and Kelsey responded to it. Whether they could see us or just our power, I wasn’t sure, but they could definitely see something.
The truth stones that hung on our necks gleamed, and we saw the white light of Ren’s and Kelsey’s auras become golden and bright as the sun. Kelsey fell back against a hay bale as she gasped and lifted her fingers to her mouth and Ren, snarling, scrambled to the back of his cage. Approaching my brother, I let myself become visible and used the Damon Amulet to give him back the ability to transform to man, albeit for only twenty-four short minutes a day.
When we left them, they had no memory of us or of what had happened. As far as they knew, the only magic was in a girl touching a tiger. We headed back to the forest.
“What’s next?” I asked.
“The Cave of Kanheri,” she mumbled after perusing Kadam’s list. “We have to create it.”
“Create it?” I echoed incredulously. “I’m not sure what i
t’s supposed to look like.”
“Since I am entirely unfamiliar with it, I will have to rely on your expertise.”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck, thinking, and then snapped my fingers. “I have an idea. We’ll have to be sneaky though.”
She willingly stepped into my arms so I could channel the power of the amulet, and I took her back to my home in India. Moonlight filtered through the wide windows as we snuck down to Kadam’s office. He snored softly in his room nearby. Using my tiger night vision, I perused his files and finally found what I was looking for—digital images of the Cave of Kanheri. Kelsey had taken them when she was there.
Turning, I bumped into a vase full of peacock feathers and knocked it over. Anamika shushed me, and I heard the thump of Kadam getting out of bed and the tick of tiger claws on the tiles in the kitchen. Clutching the files to my chest, I pulled Ana close and we disappeared, leaving behind the fallen vase.
Back at our home, we carefully perused the images.
“The monolith looks easy enough to fashion,” Ana said.
“There were traps,” I explained. “Thankfully, Kadam kept copious notes.”
“These sound dangerous,” Ana said.
“They were,” I mumbled, distracted by what I was reading. “Kelsey almost died.” I pointed to a note made by Kadam. “The cave is ancient,” I said. “We’ll have to figure out the approximate year. Also, there were carvings on the walls.”
“If she almost died, we will have to stay and guide them,” Ana said. “We cannot risk letting them go through it alone.”
I glanced up. “Yeah. Okay. We can do that.”
“But what if we aren’t meant to?”
Shrugging, I said, “Does it matter? Kadam said we were in charge of this. He was purposely vague.”
“I suppose,” she said. After a moment, she thrust a paper at me. “What do we do about this?” she asked.
My breath stopped as she held out a very clear photo of the Rajaram royal family seal. I took the photo and studied it. It was even more obvious to me now that the thing I’d abandoned carving would one day become the family heirloom in the picture.
“Yes, that might be a problem.”
“You don’t have it?”
“Not exactly. I haven’t…uh…finished it yet.”
“Finished it? What do you mean?”
I gave her the abbreviated version of the truth stone carvings I’d done. She knew they came from the egg, but I hadn’t yet found a way to share the origins of my family seal with her.
She said, “I see no reason why this should stop us. You’ll have plenty of years to finish the stone and you know what it’s supposed to look like. Surely, you can fashion a secret entrance to the cave based on its shape.”
“I suppose I could,” I said.
“Then let’s get going.”
With the power of the Damon Amulet, it took a surprisingly short time to fashion the cave. We went back to the time when Kadam estimated it had been discovered and created the entire underground structure using the earth piece of the amulet. We had photos and rubbings of the monolith, and Ana took great pride in creating that while I set up the various booby traps.
We opted not to do much to the surface leading down into the cave. Kadam had said that Buddhist monks would settle there sometime in the third century A.D. We did, however, create a mark that fit the seal and fashioned it to open the doorway into the cave when pressed and twisted. To disguise it, Ana used her power to recreate all the glyphs from the picture Kelsey had taken. Neither of us could read it, and we weren’t even sure it was an actual language, but there it would remain as the centuries passed.
We opted to create the bugs when Kelsey and Ren entered, otherwise, we were liable to have either a cave full of bugs or a bunch of petrified, extinct insects. When we fashioned the door where the monolith would be, I told Ana about the handprint that allowed Kelsey access and the henna drawing. Ana paced for a time, puzzling out how to make it work.
“How did he create a magical henna print?” Ana asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe the power to open the door comes from the lightning power of the fire amulet,” I said, then thought differently. “No. That’s not possible. Kells didn’t get that piece of the amulet until later.”
“Can we not simply do the same thing we did with our own home?” she asked. “Create a lock that will open when she touches it?”
“But that only answers to the two of us.”
Musing, Ana said, “We saw how the power of the goddess and her tiger enveloped the two of them at the circus. Perhaps the door will respond to that.”
“I suppose we can try it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something else to let her in.”
Ana touched her hand to the stone wall near the door and I pressed mine on top of hers. A silvery light bloomed beneath her palm. When we lifted our hands away, a glowing print remained.
When we were confident that we’d recreated the cave in the right way, we sped through time until we arrived at the exact moment Kelsey and Ren entered the cave. The Rajaram seal hung around Kelsey’s neck, so even though it didn’t technically exist for me yet, I knew I would one day finish this immensely important object.
Invisible once again, Ana and I led them through the labyrinth. We glided on a breeze she summoned with the amulet. That way, our feet never touched the ground to make Ren suspicious. Though he might have sensed us, causing his instincts to warn him of danger, it would only serve to make him more alert and wary. We were trusting this innate sense of his to protect both of them from the traps we’d created.
When Kells almost turned down a wrong path, I caused a gate to appear and block her from backing up. Though it scared her, Kelsey moved forward and headed to the place where they were to find the bugs. Personally, I considered bugs the ultimate pests. Fleas, lice, gnats, flies, mosquitos—these things were irritating to a tiger at best, pestilence spreaders at worst. But Anamika loved animals of all kinds, even bugs.
We walked through the tunnel before Ren and Kelsey arrived. Anamika raised her arms, and not a moment later, swarms were crawling overhead, up the walls, and on us. They moved out of her way with each step she took, the floor appearing just below our feet, and when she held out her hands, they flew to her palms, lifting their sharp mandibles and clicking them as if they were pets asking for a treat. While she cooed over them, I shivered with disgust.
After exiting, I jerked my body back and forth, trying to shake them off. She hissed and made me stand still while she patiently pried them from my clothing and hair. Gently, she placed them back inside the tunnel as we waited for Ren and Kelsey to emerge.
When our two charges ran out of the tunnel, Ana scowled, angry at seeing so many of her creations being destroyed. She huffed quietly, waved her hand, and the two of us rose in the air and moved on to our next trap, letting Ren and Kelsey recover from the experience. The next trap was the poisoned barbs. They weren’t really poisoned. I just floated the scent of poison to Ren’s tiger nose.
It was tough on them, no doubt, and they were frightened, but they were never in any danger. I moved time slowly as they progressed, watching every move they made very carefully. Even when Kelsey slipped, I could have easily made the spike vanish. Instead, I allowed it to go through her backpack just to make sure Ren was properly motivated to take care of Kelsey from then on. There was nothing like watching your girl almost die to get rid of complacency.
The next trap was the tank of water. I worried for the several long moments it took them to escape. It was a fairly straightforward trap, I’d thought. Kelsey just had to use the seal to open it and drain out the water. They still seemed to have a good sense of humor about it afterward, which was a good sign. Poor Ren and Kelsey. I wished I could have just told them I was there or helped them solve the whole thing using my power, but doing so would have ruined their timeline, and as Kadam often warned me, there were consequences, sometimes disastrous, for doing such a thing
.
When Ana and I were positioned on the far side of the chamber, she raised her arms, and the earth shook as a chasm appeared. She used the power of the wind to help them across. I looked away, uncomfortable at seeing the tender way Ren held Kelsey. When I turned and saw Ana also watching them, I felt heat creep up my neck. Then, finally, they were at the door where the monolith was hidden.
Kells pressed her hand to the print on the door, and she exclaimed over the light but Kelsey couldn’t see what we did. To her the henna simply glowed red, but to us, we saw the connection between her and her tiger. Both Kelsey and Ren glowed with their golden light, the aura that showed their bond and their hearts that were in tune with one another. It wrapped around their bodies and the lock responded, not just to us but to the other version of the goddess and her tiger.
The door slid open and Ana and I followed them in.
Kelsey went through the necessary steps to trigger the monolith and Ana lifted her hands, causing a chemical reaction that exposed the carvings. The two of us sat up on top of a large rock as the acid began to spread down the sides of the stone and across the floor. We wanted to remain long enough to ensure they didn’t get burned and that the two of them were able to exit safely before we destroyed the cave.
Unheedful of the spreading golden liquid, Kelsey was bent over a stone, making a rubbing and taking pictures. Ren had seen the danger already but Kelsey was oblivious. He growled softly. Ana thought giving them a little jostle might get them going, so she shook the cavern slightly. A rock fell from the ceiling and splashed into the acid.
A spot of golden liquid landed on my hand. I hissed, shaking it, and Ren’s eyes darted up to where we were as if he could hear us, but I was confident he couldn’t see us or smell us, and he was much more concerned about Kelsey anyway than he was about any strange sounds in a collapsing cavern.
Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5) Page 38