by Collen Houck
clouds had moved in. I felt little sprinkles hit my face, and the path got wet, but the downpour didn’t hit until I was back at the campground.
It seemed like the storm was coming up from behind me. I wondered if it was now raining on Ren and Kishan. I figured that would probably be a good thing so it could wash the blood off their faces and drive
off the flies. I involuntarily shuddered. The idea of food disgusted me. I climbed into my tent and sang songs from theWizard of Oz to get my mind off disturbing images, hoping that it would help me fall asleep. It backfired on me, though, because after I fell asleep, I dreamed of the cowardly lion tearing chunks out of Dorothy.
CHAPTER 16
Iwas running in the darkness. It was always that way in nightmares, wasn’t it? I couldn’t find Ren.
Something evil was chasing me, and I had to get away. Strange, grasping fingers reached out to pull my clothes and hair. They scraped my skin and tried to pull me off the path. I knew if they could, they would
ensnare and destroy me.
I turned a corner and entered a large room. I saw a man dressed in rich amethyst robes. He was standing in front of a large table. I watched from a dark corner as he raised a sharp, curved knife in the air, and I listened as he began chanting softly in a language I didn’t understand. I peeked around him and saw another man tied to the table.
I knew I had to save him. I launched myself at the man with the knife and pulled on his arm, trying to wrestle the knife from his hand. My hand started to burn bright red and crackled sparks.
“No, Kelsey! Stop!”
I looked down at the altar and gasped. It was Ren! His body was torn and bloody, and his hands were bound over his head.
“Kells…get out of here! Save yourself! I’m doing this so he can’t find you.”
“No! I won’t let you! Ren, change to a tiger. Run!”
He shook his head frantically and said loudly, “Durga! I accept! Do it now!”
“What is it? What do you need Durga to do?”
The man began chanting loudly, and, despite my feeble efforts to stop him, he raised his knife and plunged it into Ren’s heart. I screamed and watched Ren’s blood pump out of his body; my heart beat in sick rhythm with his. With each thud, his strength diminished. His damaged heart beat slower and slower
until it stalled and stopped forever.
Tears rolled down my face. I felt a terrible, cutting pain in my heart. I watched Ren’s lifeblood drip down the table and pool on the tiled floor. I slumped to the ground on my hands and knees and choked on my emotions. My tears splashed into the growing red pool of blood. The pain of Ren’s death was unbearable. If he was dead, then so was I. I was drowning in sorrow; I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have any will left to drive me. There was no incentive, no voice urging me to fight back, to kick for the surface
and rise above the pain. Nothing could make me breathe again. Make me live again.
The room disappeared, and I was in blackness once again. The dream changed. I was wearing a golden dress and ornate jewelry. Seated on a beautiful chair on a high dais, I looked down to see Ren standing on the floor in front of me. I smiled at him and held out my hand, but Kishan grabbed it and sat down beside me.
I looked at Kishan, confused. He was smiling smugly at Ren. I turned back to Ren again. His anger was white hot, and he glared at me with hatred and fiery contempt.
I struggled to free my hand from Kishan’s grasp, but he wouldn’t let me go. Ren changed into a tiger and
ran into the jungle. I screamed after him, but he couldn’t hear me. Hewouldn’t hear me.
Wind whipped the cream-colored drapes, and storm clouds rushed in, pushed along by a brisk wind.
They blanketed the trees and darkened the sky. Lightning struck in several places. I heard a mighty roar echo across the landscape. It was the impetus I needed. I wrenched my hand out of Kishan’s and ran into the squall.
Rain began to beat the ground, and it slowed my progress as I searched for Ren. My beautiful golden sandals were stripped away, stuck in the thick mud created by the downpour. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I pushed my dripping hair out of my eyes and shouted, “Ren! Ren! Where are you?”
A thunderbolt struck a nearby tree with a mighty boom, and fragments of burnt wood shot out in every direction. The tree cracked, and the trunk twisted and splintered. It crashed down and pinned me to the ground with its branches.
“Ren!”
Muddy rainwater pooled under me and slowly rose around my body. I carefully twisted my bruised, aching body and climbed out from under the tree. The golden dress was ripped and torn, and my skin was covered with bloody scratches.
I yelled, “Dhiren! Please come back! I need you!”
I was cold and shaking, but I continued running through the jungle, tripping over roots and shoving aside
gray, prickly undergrowth. Searching and yelling while running, I wove between trees looking for him.
I forlornly begged and cried, “Ren, please don’t leave me!”
Finally, I spied a white form loping through the trees and doubled my efforts to catch up to him. I caught
my dress on a thorny bush, but I fiercely dug my way through it, determined to reach him. Lightning struck in the jungle nearby several times, and I followed its path.
I wasn’t afraid of it; in fact, I felt like the lightning was guiding me to him. I found him lying on the ground.
Large burn marks scorched his white fur where lightning bolts had repeatedly struck him. Somehow, I knew I had done it. I was the one responsible for his pain. I shifted his tiger head, knelt beside him, and maneuvered my legs underneath him to lay his head carefully in my lap.
I stroked his head and the soft, silky fur of his neck and cried, “Ren, I didn’t want this. How could this happen?”
He changed to a man and whispered, “You lost faith in me, Kelsey.”
I shook my head in denial. Tears streaked down my cheeks. “No, Ididn’t . Iwouldn’t !”
He looked sulkily to the side. “You did. It hurts too much. You left me.”
I threw my arms around him desperately. “No, Ren! I’ll never leave you.”
“But you did. You left me alone. Was it too much to ask you to wait for me? To believe in me?”
I sobbed forlornly. “But, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
“It’s too late now, priya. This time, I’m leaving you.” He closed his eyes and died.
I shook his limp body. “No. No! Ren come back. Please come back!”
Tears mixed with rain and blurred my vision. I angrily brushed them from my eyes, and when I opened them again, I saw not just him but my parents, my grandmother, and Mr. Kadam. They were all lying on the ground dead. I was alone and surrounded by death.
I cried and shouted over and over, “No! It can’t be! Itcan’t be!”
A black anguish seeped through my body. Thick and viscous, it oozed through my core and dribbled down my limbs. I felt so heavy, so full of despair, and so alone. I held onto Ren and rocked his body back and forth, unconsciously trying to comfort myself. But I found no relief.
Then, I wasn’t alone anymore. I realized that it wasn’t me rocking Ren, but someone else was rocking me, and holding me tightly. I became alert enough to know that I had been dreaming but the pain of the dream still engulfed me. My face was wet with real tears and the storm had been real. Wind surged through the trees outside and a hard rain beat against the canvas. A lightning bolt struck a nearby tree and
briefly lit up my small tent. In the flash, I made out dark wet hair, golden skin, and a white shirt.
“Ren?”
I felt his thumbs wipe the tears from my cheeks.
“Shh, Kelsey. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.Mein aagaya.
With great relief and a hiccupping sob, I reached up and wrapped my arms around Ren’s neck. He slid his body farther into the little tent to get out of the rain, pulled me onto his lap, and tightened his arms around me.
He continued to soothe me with words from his native language until I felt the dream fade. After a few minutes, I thought I was recovered enough to pull away, but I made a conscious choice to stay right where I was. I liked the feel of his arms around me.
The dream made me acknowledge how alone I really felt. The thought occurred to me that, since my parents died, no one had held me like this. Of course, I hugged my foster parents and their kids, but no one had embraced me with…love, since then.
That was the moment I knew he loved me. Whether it would become romantic love or not didn’t matter.
I knew he cared deeply for me, loved me, like my parents had.
People needed to have someone who loved them. For me, it had been four years without that love. For Ren, it had been centuries. I felt my heart open to him. I already loved and trusted the tiger part of him.
That part was easy. But, I recognized that the man needed that love even more. Not being familiar with romantic love didn’t mean I had no experience with love at all. So, I held him close and didn’t break apart from him until I knew he was out of time.
I whispered in his ear, “Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re a part of my life. Please stay in the tent. There’s no reason for you to sleep outside in the rain.”
I kissed his cheek and lay down again, spreading my blanket over me. He changed to a tiger and lay down next to me. I snuggled against his back and fell into a dreamless, peaceful sleep despite the storm raging outside.
I felt rested when I awoke the next morning. I stretched… well…like a cat and laughed at the irony, then
crawled out of my tent to find the sun shining on a wet jungle. The warmth of the morning turned the area
into a steamy sauna as the rainwater evaporated. The storm had torn off branches and leaves, and they littered the campground. The fire that we had kept lit was a sopping wet moat full of ashy, black water surrounding charred black lumps of wood.
The waterfall was rushing faster than usual, and there were sodden pieces of flotsam spilling over and floating in the now muddy-looking pool.
I sighed. I’d been meaning to bathe again today, but the water was moving too fast, and there were too many things plunging over the falls.
When I mentioned it to Ren, he surprised me by changing into a man. He said, “It doesn’t matter anyway. We’re heading out today to meet Mr. Kadam. It’s time we resumed our journey.”
“What about Kishan? Is there any way that you can convince him to come with us?”
“Kishan’s made his position clear. He wishes to remain here, and I’m not going to beg him. Once he’s made up his mind, he rarely changes it.”
“But, Ren—”
“No buts.”
He approached me and tugged lightly on my braid. He smiled at me and kissed my forehead. What passed between us during the storm had repaired the emotional rift that had put us at odds, and I was happy that he was my friend again.
“Come on, Kells. Let’s pack up.”
It took only a few minutes to get the tent rolled up and get everything stowed in the backpack. I was relieved to get back to Mr. Kadam, but I felt troubled over the way things had gone with Kishan. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
I took a long final look at the place. As we began hiking out, I swept past the flowered bushes to stir the butterflies into the air again. There were not as many as when we had first arrived. They clung to the sodden bushes and flapped their wings slowly in the sun drying them out. A few took to the sky one last time, and Ren waited patiently while I watched. I sighed as we began the trek back to the highway where
Mr. Kadam was camped.
Even though I hated hiking and camping, this place was special. Ren was right. How often did people get to camp in paradise? Ren led the way as usual, and I traipsed along behind, trying to avoid his muddy
paw prints and walk on drier ground. To pass the time, I decided to talk to Ren about what had happened while he was away on his hunt. I told him about how I’d talked to Kishan about palace life and
about how he carried a bag full of food in his mouth so that I wouldn’t starve. I decidednot to share the things Kishan had told me about Yesubai for two reasons.
The first reason? I was selfish. I didn’t want him thinking about her. The second reason was that I felt Kishan needed to talk it out with Ren himself. When I got to the part about Kishan and me looking for him and described the things I saw on the hunt, Ren exploded.
One minute I was calmly babbling away while following my white tiger on the trail, the next minute, he spun around as a man and grabbed my arms, startling me.
He shouted, “You saw…what?!”
Confused, I repeated, “I saw the…the hunt. I thought you knew. Didn’t Kishan tell you I was there?”
Grinding his teeth, he said, “No, hedidn’t !”
I walked around him and stepped on a series of stones. “Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m fine. I made my way back myself.”
He grabbed my elbow, spun me into his arms, and then set me down in front of him.
“Kelsey, are you telling me that not only did youwatch the hunt, but that you hiked back to the campground byyourself ?”
He was very angry.
I squeaked out, “Yes.”
“The next time I see Kishan, I willkill him.”
He pointed his finger in my face. “Youare not to be trusted. You could have beenkilled or…oreaten ! I can’t eventell you all the things that are in the jungle out there that could’ve ended your life. You arenever
leaving my sight again!”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me ahead on the trail. I could feel the tension radiating from his body.
“Ren, I don’t understand. Didn’t you and Kishantalk after your…uh…meal?”
He grumbled, “No. We went our separate ways. I came straight back to the camp, and he lingered over the…food, a bit longer.” He pondered, “I must not have caught your scent because of the rain.”
“Maybe Kishan is still looking for me, then. Maybe we should go back.”
“No. It would serve him right to let him search the area for you after the rain.” He laughed spitefully.
“It’ll
probably take him days to figure out we’re gone.”
“Ren, you really should go back and tell him we’re leaving. He helped you on the hunt. It’s the least you
could do.”
“Kelsey, we arenot going back. He’s a big tiger and can take care of himself. And what do you mean by he needed tohelp me on the hunt? I was doingfine without him.”
“No, you weren’t. Isaw the hunt, remember? He helped you take down the antelope. Also, Kishan said that you hadn’t hunted for yourself in about two hundred and fifty years. That’s why we went after you.
He said he knew you’d need his help.”
He scowled but said nothing. I paused and put my hand on his arm. “It’s not a sign of weakness to need help sometimes.” He grunted. “Ren, what exactly happened to you two hundred and fifty years ago?”
He stopped and turned to me. I smiled at him and saw his scowl slowly disappear and the tension melt from his shoulders.
“First of all, it’s a lot easier for a black tiger to hunt than a white tiger. I don’t exactly blend in to the jungle. It’d be easier for me to hunt in the arctic than here. That’s one of the reasons you don’t see white tigers except in captivity. They’d have a hard time surviving. They’re an anomaly anyway, or so I’ve learned from listening to zookeepers. It’s a birth defect that makes the tiger white. The only reason you see so many in captivity is because of inbreeding.”
“Hmm. Well, that still doesn’t explain why you haven’t hunted in so long.”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Two hundred and fifty years ago is when I was captured.”
“You wer
e in captivityall those years? How’s that possible? They would’ve figured out how old you are.”
He twined his fingers in mine and kept walking. “Yes. I was in captivity all those years. They never figured out how old I was because I got moved around a lot, and they didn’t know as much about tigers back then as they do today. In the last hundred years, Mr. Kadam made sure I was moved around enough for them not to notice that I wasn’t aging.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Kadam just buy you himself and take you home?”
“He couldn’t. He was prevented every time. He sent people in to buy me and even tried purchasing me himself. It never worked. When he sent people in to steal me, they were always captured. When he tried to buy me, they’d never sell at any price. But hecould send potential buyers with a genuine interest my way. Hewas able to influence good people to buy me, but only if he had no intention of getting me for himself. Eventually, he just kept tabs on me.”
He swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck and reflected, “At first, when I was taken, I thought it would be easy to escape. I’d just wait for night to fall and pull the latch on the cage, but once I was captive, I was stuck in tiger form. I couldn’t become a man again, not until you came along.”
“How were you captured?”
“It was a standard tiger trap.”
“A tiger trap? What happened?”
He shook his head wryly. “I wasn’t paying attention. I knew what tiger traps were and how they worked and I knew how to avoid them. In fact, I often enjoyed tricking the men by figuring out their trap, stealing
the meat, and then turning it around to trap them.”
“Was it a steel trap? Like the kind trappers use on bears or wolves?” I shuddered. “You know, I’ve heard animals will often chew their own legs off just to get out of those.”
“There were some of those. There are actually quite a variety of large animal traps.”
“Like what?”
“Well…for example, a large pit is dug and lined with sharpened bamboo skewers dipped in poison, positioned so that the animal would be impaled. Farmers mostly used that one because they preferred the animal dead and didn’t care what happened to the fur. Other traps shot arrows automatically. Some dropped heavy stones onto the animal as it fed. Those were the roughly made ones created by people who just wanted to be left alone.