Tiger's Dream (Tiger's Curse Book 5)

by Colleen Houck

  The future I’d once planned for myself seemed like a faraway dream now, like a mirage that drew farther away each time I sought it out. I’d resigned myself to a life of serving the goddess. To helping others. I thought that I wasn’t meant to have a happily ever after. That it was time to let the idea of children and a woman who loved me fade like a colorful shawl that had hung out too long on the line.

  But then there was that kiss. That dream. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every time I closed my eyes, I relived it. Was Ana indeed the woman in my dream or was she just the one in my arms when I woke? Maybe it wasn’t real. But it certainly felt real enough. That woman had said she loved me. I’d responded in kind, and when I said it, the words rang true. I wished I had a truth stone around my neck so I could ask.

  Night came on and with it a stiff breeze, the kind that was weighty and water-filled. It ruffled my fur and tickled my nose. The sky opened in a storm and thunder boomed as the darkened world was lit by lightning. I tried to sleep, but when I did manage to ignore the storm, I was assaulted by a tempest of memories—those of sculpted lips moving on mine with the softest of kisses, the feel of silken hair tickling my arms, and of two bodies melding together in a frantic sort of harmony.

  By the time the ash-gray sky gave way to the steel blue of the morning, I decided that I needed to know how she felt and if there was a chance for us at all. The centuries ahead looked much brighter if the future I dreamt of could come to pass. I wanted to ask Anamika if she’d meant it when she said she loved her tiger. Even if she couldn’t love the man yet, it was a start.

  Thoughts of what might be possible between us filled me with a new hope. My heart had been broken more than once, but it beat still. I was still capable of loving someone. I had something to offer. Rising, I shook the damp from my coat and stretched in a way only a tiger could. After popping my jaw in a huge yawn, I trotted down a familiar trail. Being in my jungle was rare now and I wanted to pay my respects to my parents.

  When I neared the place where they were buried, I caught the scent of someone familiar. Not knowing the year meant I needed to be careful, but if I had to cross paths with anyone, the best person would be him. Maybe I could ask him some of my burning questions. I followed my nose to a copse of trees on the far side of what used to be my mother’s garden. There I found him crouching behind some plants. He’d made quite a hiding place for himself.

  I growled softly and he spun, his hand on his heart. “Hello, son,” he said warily after he caught his breath.

  Switching to human form, I crept through the plants and peeped through the brush. “Kadam.” I nodded, then raised my brows. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s a good question.” He licked his lips nervously.

  Just then, I heard the unmistakable sound of a plane. He froze in place, his eyes sunken.

  “Did you have something you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

  “No. That is…if you have a question, I’m certain I can—”

  I raised a hand, cutting him off. “I have a lot of questions, the first of which is, what are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same.”

  “Well, as for me, I’m trying to figure out how I feel about Ana and…”

  “Ana?” His thick eyebrows furrowed.

  “Yes. Ana. You know, the goddess Durga?”

  “The goddess?” Kadam’s mouth fell open. He looked dumbfounded in a way that scared me. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I asked, concerned for him. “Is traveling through time taking a toll?”

  “Traveling through… Oh, I see. You are roaming as I am.”

  “Yes.” I drew the word out as I peered into his eyes, looking for signs of a breakdown. Kadam’s cheeks were hollow and his skin was pallid.

  He let out a deep breath. “That is a relief, Kishan. I was worried I had been discovered.” Reaching over, he gripped my arm. “I confess I feared I was venturing into madness. My heart is cold with apprehension, and I cannot tell you how much comfort your nearness gives me. Will you stay with me until it’s over?”

  “Until what’s over?” I asked.

  “My…my burial?” he whispered.

  “Your burial?” I echoed. The veins on his neck and arms bulged as he gripped my arm. Understanding filled me. “Yes,” I said softly. “I’ll stay with you until it’s over.” The plane circled again and I frowned. “Did you create a runway?” I asked, then glanced down at the time portion of the amulet hanging around his neck. No. He couldn’t. I answered my own question. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll only be gone a moment.”

  With that, I froze time and headed over to the part of the jungle where I remembered us landing. Channeling the earth portion, much as Ana did in Shangri-La, I moved trees, leveled bushes, shifted dirt, and caused hard minerals to rise to the surface to make a strong enough runway for Murphy to land the plane. When I was done, I moved back to Kadam’s hiding place and shifted us both in time so he no longer had to hide.

  “They won’t be able to see us,” I said as I beckoned him out. “We’re safe enough.”

  His voice was faint. “Are you certain?”

  “I am.” I tried to give him a reassuring smile. “I’ve done this before.”

  He nodded and followed me hesitantly. We hiked up an acclivity that overlooked the new runway and watched as the plane set down. We stood together, watching silently, as Ren and my old self carefully removed a shrouded form from the plane and headed down the path. I jerked my head toward Kells and Nilima and he trailed along behind. We arrived in time to hear Murphy ask, “Why in the world would he want to be buried in the middle of nowhere? I just don’t understand it.”

  Murphy then launched into his memories of meeting Kadam back in World War Two. Kadam sat down and listened while I checked in on Ren and my former self. Tears ran down Ren’s face as he struggled with a shovel. My former self was pounding the ground violently with a pickaxe. It was surreal watching that moment again and seeing it from a new perspective. I remembered how hard that day was for all of us.

  Touching the amulet, I softened the dirt and melted away a good portion of it so there wouldn’t be as much of a struggle. I tried to make it easy without making it obvious that someone was helping, but Ren still noticed and remarked upon it.

  Remembering how the casket had been ready and not seeing one, I headed into the old home and created long pieces of wood that would easily fit together. Instead of using a hammer and nails, I used the power of the earth piece to shape the corners to lock together tightly naturally. When the lid was ready, I connected it as well so that it opened and closed easily with natural wood hinges. Then I put the casket where it would be easily found.

  Satisfied, I headed back to where I left Kadam by Kelsey, Nilima, and Murphy and sat down beside him to listen to the others reminisce. Many tears were shed. Kadam’s included. As for me, I just felt the heaviness of the pressing memory.

  By the time Ren and my other self returned, Kadam seemed ready. How strange it must be for him to watch his own funeral. He never told me he’d done this. He’d said he’d seen things no man should see. Perhaps he was talking about this.

  Monkeys chattered overhead as we made our way down the path. I didn’t bother hiding either of our scents since both of us were there anyway, though one of us was no longer among the living. Kadam reached out and clutched my shoulder as they took his body and placed it into the casket. I caught the scent of death and twirled my fingers, creating a breeze to carry it away. It was the least I could do under the circumstances.

  My old self touched his fingers to my father’s marker.

  “What does it say?” Kelsey asked.

  My old self answered, “It says ‘Rajaram, beloved husband and father, forgotten king of the Mujulaain Empire. He ruled with wisdom, vigilance, bravery, and compassion.’”

  “Just like your seal,” Kelsey said.

  I thought
of the seal then. The one I had yet to carve. I’d left it back home with Ana.

  “The marker is actually a replica if you look closely,” Ren said, then he knelt by our mother’s grave and read her inscription. “Deschen, dearly loved wife and mother.”

  As I thought of our mother, my heart swelled. I remembered how she and Father loved Ana. She wasn’t like Yesubai or Kelsey at all and yet she’d gained their trust immediately. They would have approved of her as a match if I had asked. Maybe not for my adolescent self, but surely as a match now. I smiled, thinking how my mother would have asked her to spar. Not even my mother, as good as she had been, could beat Ana.

  My mind turned back to the scene at hand when Ren mentioned the tiger bones. I frowned and glanced at Kadam, but he was no longer at my side. I inhaled, trying to catch his scent, but couldn’t find it other than his remains in the casket. Had he gone home without telling me? There were no tracks either.

  As the group began the funeral, I dashed back to the house and then checked his hiding place in the trees, looking for him. I heard my own voice echoing through the garden. “It has been our privilege to fight by your side…”

  I was becoming frantic. Had he left? Where was he? Why would he leave now?

  Kelsey began her poem and the words followed me as I searched the entire area. Finally, I came back to the coffin and stood on the opposite side. As Ren spoke of Kadam, I looked down at the body. Ren said, “Close the door; the shutters close; Or through the windows we shall see, the nakedness and vacancy of the dark deserted house…”

  There was a flash of something, a tiny bit of movement inside the coffin. I thought perhaps it was a trick of the light but then the eyelids fluttered. No one else noticed except me. Ren finished his eulogy and then Kelsey approached with her white rose. She placed it inside the coffin and I blinked. Time phased around me and Ren and my old self lifted the lid in almost slow motion. As they did, my vision blurred and beneath the sallow, dead flesh, I saw a man hidden within. One very much alive.

  And he was screaming.

  The others closed the lid.

  I froze time and flicked my fingers. The lid flew off and crashed into a tree, splintering into fragments. I couldn’t worry about that. At that moment, I needed to figure out how this had happened. Bending over the casket, I shouted, “Kadam! Kadam, can you hear me?”

  His frightened eyes slid toward me and away as he writhed inside his fleshy trap. It was like what happened to Ana when she came into contact with her younger self, but this time there was no spirit inside to merge with hers. Instead, Kadam was imprisoned inside a vessel that could barely hold him. As I watched, he lifted his arm, but the flesh enveloping it was no longer animated by the soul inside. As a result, the arm flopped about in the casket, as awkwardly as a fish on a riverbank.

  His mouth yawned widely, and as he gasped, I realized the lungs of the body were no longer taking in air. I had to get him out of there. Quickly. “Hold on!” I shouted, though I still had no idea what to do. I figured the first object was to get him oxygen. Using the air portion of the amulet, I filled the lungs of his body with air. Luckily for both of us, it worked.

  No longer worried about his suffocation, I considered my next move.

  Lokesh had been able to use the amulet to resuscitate the dead. He reanimated them but they weren’t living, not exactly. What Ana had done with desiccated bones had been different. Pacing back and forth, I thought. Ana, I sent a mental summons. I need you. When she didn’t appear within the span of a few seconds, I took it as a sign she either hadn’t heard me or didn’t want to be bothered.

  Okay, I thought. I can do this. Carefully, concentrating on what I’d seen the goddess do, I clasped both of my hands around the amulet and said, “Damonasya Rakshasasya Mani-Bharatsysa Pita-Rajaramaasya Putra.” The amulet in my hands began to glow. I remembered that every time I pulled someone back from the brink, the amulet had demanded a price from me. To save Ren’s life before, I’d had to give up part of my own. To rescue Ana, I’d forever linked myself to a tiger. What price would it exact now to save Kadam?

  Flames licked my skin and sweat poured down my chest and back. My arms shook and I fell to my knees. Power left my body and poured into the amulet. It was like a part of me died in that moment, but at the same time, a small bubble of light lifted up and then shot toward the casket. It pierced the flesh and lit Kadam’s struggling form inside.

  He screamed but the sound didn’t penetrate the body. Light consumed him and then his spirit form disintegrated. If the pattern followed what happened with Ana, Kadam would have ended up back home. When I regained my breath, I staggered to my feet and looked inside the box. The Kadam I knew was gone. All that was left was the inanimate corpse of the man I considered a second father.

  Gently, I repositioned his hands, putting the flower on top. His lips parted as the air I’d filled his lungs with slowly dissipated. Using the amulet, I remade the lid and placed it back on top of the casket. Then I phased myself invisible and restarted time.

  Wearily, I trudged back to the ruins of my parents’ house and sank down on the steps. I didn’t move at all, even when my old self came down the path with Kelsey and offered her a tour. Voices carried from inside the house and I could make out the conversation clearly. Ren walked up the path after filling in the grave and washed his face. As he shook the water from his hands, he stared up at the house, listening. That he could hear them as well as I was evident on his face.

  “Do you love him, Kells?” my old self asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love me?”

  She waited a heartbeat before answering. “Yes.”

  I could almost hear the desperation in my voice. “You’re sure you want to choose me?”

  Ren sucked in a breath, the pain clear in his expression. Both of us strained to hear her answer though I already knew what it would be.

  “Yes,” Kelsey said softly.

  Ren turned away, his shoulders slumped. He picked up a rock and slammed it into the trunk of the nearest tree. It cracked and the rock sunk in flush with the trunk as we heard Kelsey say they’d have to leave Ren. It would be too painful otherwise.

  How could I not hear the catch in her voice as she talked about leaving him? I remember being delirious with happiness just at hearing her validate my deepest wishes. Never once had I considered the cost of a future without my brother or what it would have done to her to leave him behind.

  Would I have even been happy leaving India? Leaving everything? At the time, I thought I would be. That love was all I needed. Now, I knew differently. I did need love. But I needed it with the right person. With one who loved me wholly. Someone who would never look back. And that someone deserved the same from me.

  “I’d like to come back here someday,” I heard Kelsey say. “I want to plant some flowers at Mr. Kadam’s grave and trim back the jungle. Maybe we could stay here sometimes,” she continued.

  I’d taken that as a sign that we’d set up house in the jungle. Kelsey had never wanted that. She’d visit, sure. But live there? I stood and walked across the grass, touching the rock embedded in the tree—a sign of Ren’s sorrow.

  There was only one person I could picture living with me in the jungle. Kelsey was right that this place felt like home. It was important to my family. It always would be.

  Turning around, I waited until everyone headed back to the plane, and when I heard the thrum of the engine, I lifted my hands and channeled the power of the amulet. Closing my eyes, I imagined what the home had looked like back when my parents lived there. Trees and plants shifted. Some grew. Others shrank. The screech of monkeys told me I was disturbing their home but I didn’t care. Flowers and shade trees grew in my mother’s garden. The broken pieces of wood and the fallen walkways mended themselves before my eyes.

  When it was done, a lovely home stood where the ruins were just a moment before. The plane carrying my family flew overhead, the light glinting off the windows. If the
y’d looked down just then, they would have seen a lush garden had grown in the place they had just been, but I knew they were all too emotionally overwrought to notice.

  A hand touched my shoulder. I spun in alarm and then laughed when I recognized my mentor. His elongated face was lined with weariness but his color was fair.

  “Thank you for saving me,” he said.

  He seemed more himself than he did before.

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to see you. What happened back there?”

  “Do you recall when I said to use caution around your past self?”

  I nodded. “It’s why I had to save Ana.”

  “Yes, well, in this case, the version of me you just met was the one who disappeared from the Deschen during the attack. I had just discovered I had the ability to travel in time and was attempting to navigate its pathways. I’d only recently learned of my imminent demise, and to say it shocked me was an understatement. Even though I witnessed it with my own eyes, I had a difficult time accepting that I wasn’t trapped in a dream. Thinking I’d shake myself awake, I touched my own hand in the casket and, well, you saw the result.”

  “What about Nilima? Wasn’t she with you?”

  “I never told you or her that she was lost to me for a time. It took quite an effort and what amounted to several years to locate her, then even longer for her to knit back together.”

  “Knit together?” I frowned. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

  “Trust me when I say it wasn’t.”

  “What happened after you left your body?” I asked.

  “Something similar to what happened to Nilima. Do you remember the pull you feel in your gut when you travel in time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Imagine its effect on mere mortals. Because you, Ana, Kelsey, and Ren were, and are, connected to the power of the amulet, it protects you from the effects. As for the rest of us…let’s just say we’ve been remade. Your gift literally ripped me apart into atoms and it took quite a while to complete the puzzle. Suffice it to say, I am not the same man I used to be.”