by Jeff Wheeler
Waracabra Tigers
By Gwendolyn Clare | 6,000 words
Temaro told no one about the dreams, even with his rite of passage fast approaching. Even when he dreamed of waracabra tigers.
Dreams were not portents, he told himself.
* * *
“What do they sound like?” Temaro said, his hands busy with the weaving. The night’s rain clouds had dispersed and the morning grew bright and hot, so he worked in the shade beneath the eaves of his family’s hut.
Sitting on the steps beside him, Kainu picked through the pile of narrow palm strips, finding the best ones—green and supple—to hand to Temaro. “Oh, very scary,” he said.
Temaro paused his weaving to give his older brother a look. “Scary” was not the helpful description he’d been hoping for. Kainu seemed not to notice, suddenly quite intent on selecting the perfect strips of palm.
Temaro sighed and went back to weaving his new warishi. He had never shown much aptitude for men’s crafts like weaving, and he would need the warishi for the rite of passage tomorrow. But even more useful would be any information he could get about the tigers, so as to not get eaten on his first day alone in the forest.
“Don’t worry,” said Kainu, “you’ll see your tiger and return home a man.”
“I’ll be happy to return home alive,” he grumbled.
“The trick is to see the tigers without letting the tigers see you.” Kainu flashed a wide grin.
Temaro wove in silence after that, listening to the low murmur of the river as it flowed around his village’s island. Kainu had become insufferably confident since completing the rite of passage, and Temaro was in no mood for his brother’s jokes. He worried that he would not see the tigers on his rite of passage, not prove he had the bravery and cunning of an Appenuni man; even more, he worried that he would see them. He did not feel brave enough, or cunning enough, to survive an encounter with the wild spirits of the forest.
And his dreams worried him. Every new moon for years now, strange dreams disturbed his sleep. In one, vivid strands of color twined together like a nest of snakes, shivering and writhing in some dark, narrow den. In another, he ran through the forest at night, called onward by a woman’s voice whispering his name. But the new moon twelve nights ago brought such vivid and incomprehensible dreams that Temaro awoke well before dawn and did not dare attempt more sleep.
He tried to forget the dreams. They were not signs of anything—he would finish weaving his warishi, go out on his rite of passage, and return alive. He hoped.
Temaro’s fingers fumbled with the half-woven palm strips of the warishi, struggling to fold two sides up and tighten the strips together into a corner. Beside him, Kainu let out a little sigh, which meant his brother was resisting the urge to reach over and do it for him. One more thing Temaro would never be able to do properly, like Kainu and all the others could.
A sudden prickling sensation on the back of his neck made Temaro jerk, and the palm strips slid from his grasp. A deep disquiet settled in the back of his mind, shifting and nudging at him for his attention. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the feeling. It was nothing. It meant nothing.
A moment later, a piercing call reached his ears, pitched high to cut through the noise of the river. “Oooo-eeee!” The sound came from a distance, a dugout on the river or perhaps a hunting party in the forest. But Temaro had heard of no hunting parties, and the river was high and fast from the previous night’s rainstorms—a hard time to be paddling against the current.
Someone on the downriver end of the island answered the call in kind. Temaro looked at Kainu, who pressed his lips together with concern. Temaro set aside the half-woven warishi and they both rose from the steps of their family’s hut, trading comfortable shade for sharp sunlight. From where they stood, the island’s huts—built on stilts to accommodate the worst of the rainy season floods—obstructed their view. Kainu walked in the lead as they wove between the huts toward the downriver end of the island to find out what was going on.
A half-dozen men already crowded the landing spot, ready to greet the newcomers, and a few wives brought out bowls of freshly fermented kasiri to offer them. As Kainu slid forward into the crowd, two dugouts landed on the island. Temaro hung back a ways, trying to convince himself that the prickling feeling he’d had was a meaningless coincidence. He did not want to think about what else it could be.
Bad enough that he would never be a man in his father’s eyes, but to have magics as well—to face banishment from the Appenuni—was an intolerable thought. Better to live in shame at home than to have no home at all.
From where he was standing, Temaro could not see the occupants of the dugouts until they were climbing out—boys no older than himself, from the Appenuni village downriver. They were talking all at once, and the men of Temaro’s village could not calm them.
Temaro caught phrases here and there: “the city-men come,” and “dredge the river for diamonds.” One of the boys had a smear of blood on his face, as if he had tried to wipe the blood off but missed a little.
Temaro’s stomach felt like he had swallowed stones. He didn’t need to hear a full account to imagine what was happening—the city-men were ruining the village’s fishing spots and killing anyone who got in the way. The boys’ village was less than a day’s ride in a dugout. Would the city-men be content with what they found there, or would they come upriver seeking more? The disquiet in the back of his mind seemed to reach out a dark tendril and poke at him.
After speaking with the others, Kainu left the group and walked back to Temaro, his expression stoic.
Temaro said, “How bad?”
Kainu shifted his weight, ushering Temaro away. “Don’t concern yourself with it—you must focus on your rite of passage tomorrow. This is a problem for us men to deal with.”
Temaro hesitated, reluctant to admit his brother was right. The feeling of inferiority was all too familiar. Kainu was skilled at farming and popular with the girls and had heard the waracabra tigers on only the third day of his rite of passage. Temaro cared little for manly activities like farming and weaving and women, and now he would not even be here to defend the village against the city-men.
He would never make their father proud.
* * *
In the morning, Temaro rose at first light and checked his finished warishi to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to pack anything: a hammock, several day’s rations of cassava flatbread, a hatchet, his slingshot. Everything was in order.
His father rowed him to the bank of the river in the family dugout. No one came to watch; ceremony and celebration were reserved for after the boy returned a man. Temaro shouldered his warishi, climbed up the bank, and nodded once to his father before plunging into the forest.
The understory grew thick and gnarled along the bank of the river, and the branches clawed at his face and arms as he pushed his way through. Farther in, though, the dense foliage of canopy trees blocked the light and the undergrowth was sparse. Lianas dangled from the high branches, and broad-leaved bromeliads clung to the trunks. The air felt cool and moist under the canopy, and Temaro paused to let his eyes adjust to the diffuse light.
The sense of disquiet lingered in the back of his mind, and he struggled to suppress thoughts of the city-men. There was nothing he could do about them. Until he proved himself a man, the village tushau would not permit him to lift a spear, would not assign him a post. He shook his head to dispel his worries, knowing he needed to focus on the task before him.
Temaro oriented himself southeast, away from the river, and set a fast pace. He hoped to reach the first of the ironstone ridges before nightfall—a good place to make camp. The walking helped him push the city-men from his mind. He concentrated on survival, now.
The rain came early in the day, Cloud Children weeping down sheets of water loud as a drum and so thick they made it difficult to see. Temaro cursed his luck and hopped from root to root, avoiding the ground between, which q
uickly turned to sucking mud. His hair and his clothes, both drenched, stuck to his skin, and the rain streamed from his chin, his nose, his fingertips like tiny waterfalls.
The Cloud Children had calmed and daylight was starting to fade by the time Temaro climbed the steep slope of the nearest ridge, tired but grateful to have made it that far. He trudged up into a stand of enormous palaway trees, the kind that topped all the ironstone ridges. Each tree grew forth from a broad mat of roots spilling over the forest floor and sprouted many trunks, intertwining and growing together, a living net of wood. The oldest were so large that four Temaros could not link hands around the base.
Palaway made excellent firewood—even fresh-cut palaway burned easily and smoked little. But more importantly, the older trees were good for climbing and hanging hammocks in. And this was what Temaro did as soon as he arrived; tonight, at least, he would hang safely away from hungry tigers.
Under the dense palaway canopy, twilight arrived early and descended fast into a thick, black night. His village on the river would be bathed in moonlight by now, bright enough to work by, but here the darkness hobbled him. The only pattern his eyes could discern was a faint, mottled glow given off by decaying leaves on the forest floor.
Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears and the sky pestered him with erratic rain showers. In the morning, he could cut palm fronds for thatch and make himself a real shelter, but as it was, he spent the night wet and shivering and blind, waiting for the return of the sun.
* * *
Drifting in and out of sleep in the hour before dawn, Temaro dreamed of waracabra tigers. Growls and huffs. Pairs of eyes glowing in the darkness. The pale bones of prey picked clean. But the slow light of morning washed through the understory, revealing Temaro to be alone in his stand of palaway trees.
He glanced around suspiciously. Those dreams had felt as vivid as new-moon dreams, full of dangerous prescience. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he still half-believed they were a vision foretelling real tigers.
What nonsense. There were no tigers, and there was no magic woven into his dreams.
He climbed down from his perch, relieved to have at least survived his first night alone in the forest. There was plenty still to be done, though, if he wanted to keep surviving. Water, food, palm fronds for thatch. Temaro left his hammock hanging in the palaway, shouldered his warishi with the rest of his supplies in it, and set out to familiarize himself with his immediate surroundings.
After a little searching, he found a narrow blackwater creek, the water stained dark reddish brown from fallen leaves. He knelt and cupped his hands, scooping up mouthfuls until his thirst was sated. The blackwater tasted faintly astringent, but it was safe to drink. Then he sat beside the river and chewed a few bites of the dry cassava flatbread he’d brought with him.
The most urgent of his needs met, Temaro explored until he found a spot where a falling tree had cleared a large gap in the canopy. Vines and saplings choked the clearing, fighting for a taste of direct sunlight, but among the plants were some young palms. Temaro took out his hatchet and began hacking off the long, rough fronds.
The tangled undergrowth at the edge of the tree-fall gap offered little protection from the sun, and sweat beaded on Temaro’s forehead while he worked. Somewhere above, a bird warbled, and another answered from farther away. The palm fronds rustled as he piled them together.
Then a low, scratchy animal call sounded nearby, and Temaro froze. He carefully laid down the palm frond in his hands, trying not to make a sound, and he inched forward to part the mess of vines and branches. Not twenty steps away, lounging atop the fallen trunk of the tree, sat the tawny rump and long, swishing tail of a tiger.
* * *
This is what Temaro has heard about waracabra tigers:
They travel in large packs, like a flock of waracabra birds, which is why they are called waracabra tigers. No, this is wrong, they are “waracabra” because their call is loud and rough like the bird’s call.
The waracabra tigers are many kinds of cat coming together in one pack—jaguar and ocelot and margay all together. No, they are one kind of cat, different from jaguar and ocelot and margay. They are enormous and speckled with brown spots—no, white spots—no, white bellies—no, they’re black all over.
A lone tiger can take down a full-grown tapir with no help from its pack. No, they always hunt as a pack, but the pack can devour a whole herd of peccaries and leave not a single scrap behind.
Even more than tapir or peccary, waracabra tigers love to eat people. Everyone agrees about this.
* * *
Temaro backed away as quiet as he could, placing each footfall carefully. His heart pounded so fiercely he feared the tiger’s ears would catch the sound. He abandoned his pile of palm fronds where it lay, taking only his warishi with him. When he stepped free of the overgrown tree-fall gap and back into the relatively clear understory of intact forest, he broke into a run.
Across the blackwater creek, up the hill, through the stand of palaways, and finally Temaro scrambled up among the intertwined trunks of his chosen tree. Breathing hard, he looked down and back the way he’d come, waiting to see if he was pursued.
Moments later, the tawny tiger slinked into view, its muzzle held low with nostrils flaring. The tiger moved sluggishly, as if its thick limbs were heavy from sleep. It sat on a clear patch of forest floor and yawned an enormous, gape-mouthed yawn that showed off gleaming fangs as long as Temaro’s little finger.
Temaro held very still and prayed that tigers were not fond of scaling tall trees.
The tiger sniffed around the base of the palaway, climbing all over the tree’s root mound to search out his scent. Then it stared upward and locked gazes with Temaro, the tip of its tail twitching as if vexed. Temaro could hardly breathe.
After an uncomfortably long time, the tiger finally looked away and sauntered off between the trees.
But Temaro knew it was out there, somewhere close by, probably waiting for him to return to the ground and the realm of easy prey. He was no agouti in a burrow, to be duped into a false sense of security by feline patience. He would have to outwait the tiger.
All afternoon, Temaro stayed in his aerial hideout, watching and listening for signs of waracabra tigers. The tawny one did not make a second appearance. Was the way clear? Were they waiting just out of sight? He could return to the village now, his rite of passage complete, if only he could be sure to get out of the forest with all his limbs attached.
He couldn’t stay in the tree forever. There was food enough for several days in his warishi, but water would become a problem. He found a bromeliad growing high up in the palaway and drank stale water from its cupped leaves. But only a little—the taste made him wary that the water might be bad. He could not afford to get ill.
Temaro spent another damp night in his roofless hideaway. Never had he thought it would be possible to be so wet and so thirsty all at once.
* * *
When he awoke, he saw a tiger and a deviant.
Temaro was not certain, at first, that the figure below him was a person. He stood as tall and slender as a city-man, but with skin so pale he might have been carved from bone. He could only be a foreigner from the frigid northlands, or else a spirit of some sort.
When the figure shifted, he disturbed the leaf litter around his feet and the leaves floated up around him, swirling in slow eddies as if suspended in water before sinking back to the forest floor. Then Temaro knew for sure that the northerner was also a deviant.
Trailing behind the stranger, a sleek black tiger stalked between the trees. It was not so large as the tawny one, but its yellow eyes seemed to glow in contrast to its midnight-dark coat, and the sight sent a shiver down Temaro’s spine. The tiger paid little attention to the northern deviant, settling down to lounge on the forest floor instead.
The northerner approached Temaro’s tree quite deliberately and squinted up at him.
“Hello up there,” called the stranger in flue
nt Appenuni.
Temaro stared mutely down at him, thinking it odd that he spoke the local language. But maybe that was one of his deviant magics.
“Why don’t you come down? You don’t have to worry about the tigers.”
Tigers. Plural. As if the word invoked them, another pair of tigers wandered over to sit beneath Temaro’s tree, joining the first.
“You’re crazy,” called Temaro. “A sorcerer and a deviant, both.”
“I profess some guilt on all three accounts. But I swear on my magics that I won’t let harm come to you if you descend to speak with me.”
This proclamation made, the stranger turned away and set about making a camp of sorts. He dropped his pack, which was woven of palm but wider and taller than the usual warishi, and he unwrapped a long metal-bladed cutlass of the type the city-men carry in the forest. With it, the stranger cut green wood from a young palaway and built a fire to drive off the morning mosquitoes; this told Temaro much about the man’s proficiency in the forest. Maybe he was not as foolish as he seemed.
Temaro swung down out of his perch in the tree, but just as his feet hit the top of the root mound, three more tigers padded into view. He froze, heart pounding in his chest, and waited to see what the newcomers would do, but they merely flopped down a few paces away from the stranger’s fire.
The stranger seemed utterly unconcerned about the steadily increasing number of tigers. “I’m called Naxeen,” he said, and stuck out his hand as Temaro approached.
Temaro hesitated a moment before finding the courage to clasp the stranger’s hand in his own. “Temaro.”
“Come, sit.” Naxeen settled on the ground with his back to the lounging tigers.
Temaro squatted near the fire, his gaze flicking warily between the northerner and the tigers beyond. He did not know what to expect of either the tigers or the man.
“So, your people seek the tigers as a rite of passage?” Naxeen’s lips curved into a wry smile. “That is a dangerous proposition for most.”