by Nghi Vo
The sailors stopped, because they had no wish to chance the tiger’s teeth or claws again, and they stepped back slightly.
“Listen,” said Dieu more softly, and she locked eyes with the tiger, always a dangerous thing to do. “Only listen. My love has gone from me, and I will never again laugh. My love has gone from me and she has taken all light with her.”
The tiger was silent, glaring from the cage, and the sailors looked skeptical.
“I sit in the moon-viewing pavilion, the hem of my sleeves wet from tears, and I cannot see for the grief has stolen my eyes, and I cannot speak for the grief has stolen my tongue.”
The tiger growled, a deep and resonant sound, and Dieu went closer. She was aware of the sailors on the dock, of the clangor of the city behind her, but nothing mattered more than the caged beast in front of her.
“I sit, weeping, eyeless, tongueless, without laughter and absent from light. I sit, and I wait for the answer that only my wife could give.”
Finally, the tiger spoke, and her words were soft as a summer wind, as gentle and smooth as Dieu’s own.
“I am yours, and so I will be your light and your laughter. I am yours, so open your eyes to look at me, and open your mouth so that I may kiss it. I am yours, I am yours, and nevermore will I leave.”
The dock fell silent at the poet’s words in the tiger’s mouth, and then Dieu opened the cage.
She released the tiger, who with her first bound came out of the cage, and with her second bound, she had swept Scholar Dieu on her back, and with her third bound, she and the scholar were away, and no one ever saw them again.
So, then, is the story of Scholar Dieu and how she wed the tiger Ho Thi Thao, and how—
* * *
“No. That’s enough,” said Sinh Loan sharply. “I hate this story, and if you finish it, I shall hate you too.”
“I would not want that,” Chih said without thinking, and at Sinh Loan’s hard look, they coughed a little. “It is only the story as it was told and written and then told to me.”
Sinh Cam shook her head.
“I don’t think I like it at all,” she said finally, “I like the poetry, but . . . But I do not think that’s what happened. I don’t like Ho Thi Thao in the cage. I don’t like that she was waiting for Scholar Dieu to free her because she couldn’t do it herself. I don’t like it.”
“Because it isn’t true,” snapped Sinh Loan. “It’s something stupid that humans made up. Imagine thinking that a little scholar could tame a tiger with poetry and a few nights of love, what foolishness.”
“Madam . . .” Chih began, and for just a moment, a certain tension in Sinh Loan’s shoulders, a certain single-minded set to her grass-green eyes suggested that the tiger had decided to end the storytelling once and for all.
Then Si-yu spoke up, her voice calm as if she couldn’t see the tiger’s killing look or the way that Piluk was snorting, throwing her trunk from side to side and shuffling her broad feet.
“Well, then? What’s the real story?”
Sinh Loan glared at her and nodded angrily.
“Fine. If only so you do not die believing that terrible nonsense.”
* * *
Ho Thi Thao stalked the streets of Ahnfi for three days and three nights, and by the end of that time, every door was barred against her, and her sides were as hollow as a drum. She killed, for she was angry, and she did not eat what she killed, for she was heartsick.
Instead she grew slower and more tired, and her head swam with taunting ghosts and bright lights. A tiger cannot go so very long without eating, and Ho Thi Thao’s days of young starvation were long behind her. She ached with hunger, and the fire that lived in her heart was apt to go out.
Finally, late one night, she found Dieu, who had married again, dressed in red robes edged with black, her face as pale as moonlight on snow. She smelled of unhappiness, and she smelled of regret, and she stood in a golden cage that kept her back from the tumult of the city.
“Well, haven’t you done well for yourself,” Ho Thi Thao said angrily. “Look at how many people have come to your wedding, and how very happy you are!”
“I am not happy at all,” Dieu said, her face full of sorrow. “I have made a terrible mistake.”
“And what mistake was that?” asked Ho Thi Thao, who wanted to hear every evil thing she could about Dieu’s new spouse.
“I have wronged you,” Dieu said to Ho Thi Thao’s surprise. “I was wrong to leave you. I was wrong to starve you. If you let me feed you now, I will go home with you to the mountains, and yours will be the only name I speak at night.”
“I don’t even know your name,” said Ho Thi Thao haughtily. “I have not asked for it.”
“Ask me for it now,” Dieu begged, but Ho Thi Thao, even starving, was possessed of a terrible pride.
“I will not ask for the name of a woman wearing her bridal clothes,” Ho Thi Thao said with dignity.
“Fine,” said Dieu, and in the golden cage with all the wedding guests watching in horror and fascination, she stripped off her robes. First came the fine red clothes trimmed in black, and then came the pale green under-robe that was sheer enough that it could be shredded with a breath. Then there was her skirt, which she kicked off, and then the embroidered band that fit over her breasts.
“I am keeping the shoes on,” Dieu said.
“I don’t care about that at all,” said Ho Thi Thao, looking her up and down.
“Ask me for my name now.”
“I am too hungry to think of that,” said Ho Thi Thao, even as she could feel the ground slipping underneath her feet. “I will not eat unless it is from your hands.”
Dieu did not hesitate. She brought her hand up to her mouth, and though her teeth were small and sad human things, she snapped them together on the heel of her hand until the blood ran and Ho Thi Thao grew faint from hunger and from love.
Dieu reached her red hand between the bars of her cage, and greedily, Ho Thi Thao lapped up her blood, taking Dieu’s hand in her mouth for a single moment before she remembered herself. When she let go, she was dizzy with bliss, and when she turned back to Dieu, there was a happy smile on her face.
“Ask me for my name,” Dieu said, and Ho Thi Thao nodded obediently.
“Give me your name,” she said. “I want it now.”
“My name is Trung Dieu,” she said, and with a single blow, the tiger broke the bars on her cage and carried her away amidst the shouting of her would-be husband and his family.
Together, they ran all the way back to the Boarback Mountains, and for the rest of their nights together, Ho Thi Thao would eat every meal from her wife’s fingers and kiss the scar on her hand before she went on to kiss the rest of her as well. They lived well-fed until they were only bones, and even their bones were happy, turning white and sharp as teeth in the moonlight.
Chapter Eleven
ALL SIX OF THEM, seven if you counted Piluk, were silent as Sinh Loan ended her story. Chih wondered if the sky behind the tigers was growing a little lighter, if the air was a little warmer and easier to breathe.
“Thank you very much for your story, madam,” Chih said, stretching out their writing hand. “I am very grateful that you decided to tell it to us.”
“You should be,” Sinh Loan said shortly, “and I hope you took very good notes, because now we are going to eat you.”
“Oh don’t,” exclaimed Sinh Cam, and her elder sister turned to her in annoyance.
“I am hungry, and I am sure that you are as well . . .”
“I’ll go down and get us a cow from the lowland farms,” said Sinh Cam, “or I can bring us back a farmer if I cannot find a cow. Only I want to hear the cleric tell us another story.”
“They’re not going to be any better,” argued Sinh Loan.
“Then we can fix them,” replied Sinh Cam earnestly, but Sinh Loan shook her head.
“I’m tired of fixing things,” she said. “I am bored, and I am stiff, and I am hungry,
and if you had a grain of common sense, you would be too . . .”
Their raised voices woke Sinh Hoa, who reached out to cuff blindly at whichever of her sisters she could reach. It was Sinh Loan instead of Sinh Cam, unfortunately, which got her a sharp smack to the nose, which made her grunt and wake up a little more.
Si-yu leaned in closer to Chih, grabbing their arm.
“All right, when I give you the signal, run under Piluk’s legs.”
Chih didn’t have enough time to ask what the signal was when Si-yu uttered a piercing whistle, two high notes with the final one swooping low.
Piluk grunted loudly in response and took three steps backwards, putting her broad rear to the corner of the barn and lowering her head so that her short horns were positioned to gore.
Oh, that must have been the signal, Chih thought, already moving, and they dashed blindly towards the mammoth’s legs. Si-yu was right behind her, and when Chih slid to their knees, half-blinded by Piluk’s hanging fur, they turned just in time to see Bao-so getting shoved towards them.
“Pull him in, pull him in!” Si-yu was shouting, and Chih gritted their teeth and, latching their hands onto Bao-so’s coat, dragged him back as far as they could. They were blinded by fur, they were sweating under their coat, and they were in terror of Piluk’s feet, stomping up and down.
They drill so that their feet come up and down in the same place, Chih thought desperately, but they wrapped their arms around Bao-so, grabbing on to his body as tightly as they could and keeping him close to the space directly under Piluk’s belly.
“Come on then!” Si-yu shouted. Her voice came from above, and Chih realized that she had scrambled up into her saddle again. There were two loud thumping sounds, Si-yu’s lance against the rafters. “I’m tired of you talking about eating us, come and eat us if you think you can.”
“Actually, please don’t,” Chih muttered, too numb and tired to be anything more emphatic than that.
Through the space between Piluk’s forelegs, Chih saw three tigers and not two and a woman any longer. They looked as enormous as cart horses, and even if the two smaller ones hung back, the third was large enough and hungry enough to make up for it.
“Think I can, little scout? I do more than think it. What do you think you are doing, with that little stick and your squealing calf? I told you I would let her go if I ate you, but if she is hurt protecting you, I won’t care.”
One of the younger sisters, Sinh Hoa, Chih thought, made a sudden dash forward, cutting left so fast that Chih only caught a glimpse of green eyes and a velvet muzzle wrinkled in ferocity. Her hunting roar turned into a shriek as Piluk swung trunk and tusk hard at Si-yu’s call, and then a hefty thwack against the tiger’s hindquarters sent her scampering back for cover.
Sinh Hoa hung back, but Sinh Loan came forward, head lowered and her paws barely clearing the ground.
“How long do you think you can last?” she asked, as if she were terribly interested in the answer. “One mammoth, one lance, one half-dead man and one weaponless cleric with bad stories . . .”
To Chih’s surprise, Si-yu laughed, the sound bright and wild.
“Oh, I should say for just a brief count longer, madam,” she said. “Just another little while . . .”
Then it came, a low and throbbing roar that seemed to hit the lightening sky and bounce back, a sound that up close would be a wall and from far away still had a weight that could crush. Piluk squeaked, stamping her forefeet up and down as Chih yelped with panic, and then she bugled in return, her voice higher and less powerful than the first call, but just as carrying.
Chih would have cheered, but then Si-yu shrieked and Piluk screamed, rearing up in panic as a furry orange and black shape rolled off her back to thump to the ground below, followed immediately after by Si-yu, lance falling from her hand.
It was Sinh Cam, Chih realized, who must have scaled the bales of hay by the wall to jump down from the rafters. Sinh Cam shook off her stunning and put her teeth into Si-yu’s back as Chih stared in silent panic. Before they could break it however, Piluk lunged forward, but now the other two tigers swarmed her. Chih flattened themself on the ground just in time to avoid a stunning blow from one of Piluk’s rear legs, and they looked up to see Piluk toss her large head and throw Sinh Cam off of Si-yu’s body.
Sinh Loan, obvious in her larger size, roared, and she threw herself up towards Piluk’s saddle. If she could get a good grip, if she could reach the back of Piluk’s neck . . .
Then there was a deep bass thundering, and two more mammoths, one the classic russet red, the other with patches of gray over her eyes, rammed into the space, filling it as much with their trumpeting as they did with their bulk. With a curse, Chih dragged Bao-so’s prone form back to the corner, because trampling was as nasty a fate as being eaten. They had just turned around when there was a final scream from the tigers and everything went still.
I’m still alive, Chih thought with surprise. Or I will be as long as my heart doesn’t beat out of my chest . . .
“Anyone alive down there? I see . . . that’s Piluk, isn’t it? Si-yu, Si-yu, girl, where are you?”
There was a long moment in the fallen hay bales and the forest of treelike legs when Chih was afraid there would be no answer.
“Here! Over here, damnit, Hyun-lee, move Malli back before she scares Piluk even more.”
Upon hearing Si-yu’s indignant voice, Chih collapsed back against the back of the barn, letting themselves shake to little bits as they had wanted to do since all of this started. They felt as if they were swimming in sweat, and all of the strength that they had been using to sit up straight and talk to tigers abruptly deserted them.
When they looked up next, there was an intent-looking man working over Bao-so, and a tall fat woman was offering them a hand up. Chih took it without thinking and then nearly stumbled into the woman’s arms before she set them upright again. Si-yu clapped them on the shoulder with a grin.
“Didn’t think we’d make it out of that, did you?” she asked.
Before Chih could respond, the man who had been tending Bao-so hauled him up to his feet, one shoulder shoved under his armpit to support him. To Chih’s surprise, Bao-so was awake, and though his eyes were a little vague, they could see the sense in them.
“We should bring out a medic to look him over and a holy man to make sure that nothing came to live in him while he was down.”
The tall woman nodded, and Chih, despite their exhaustion, noted with interest that the coil of mammoth hair pinned at her shoulder was beaded with carved ivory beads where Si-yu’s was bare.
“Good thing for you we were escorting the Great Star himself up through to Borsoon. We would have camped at sundown, but Malli was all twitchy, wouldn’t stop, and you know if Malli won’t, then Sooni won’t, either.”
Si-yu looked up from comforting Piluk with a grin.
“Lucky for all of us. Thanks for the rescue. I was afraid the cleric was going to run out of story before you got here, but it turns out there was just enough.”
“How in the world did you know that they were coming?” asked Chih, and Si-yu laughed.
“I didn’t. Piluk did. She started to get excited a little while ago. She was talking to someone, and she’s no dummy, my baby, is she?” cooed Si-yu, leaning up to thump Piluk’s shoulder. The mammoth swayed in a way that was decidedly smug, and her trunk knocked against her rider’s hip with pleasure.
“How did she know?” asked Chih, baffled.
“Calls we can’t hear,” said Hyun-lee. “That’s what I think it is, anyway.”
“Uncle says it’s a kinship connection, that they can always talk to their relatives no matter how far apart they are. Piluk is Malli’s third cousin on her dam’s side. That would do it.”
“Your uncle still thinks that they should get meat every solstice. That’s not right.”
Abruptly, they both seemed to remember that Chih was there. They couldn’t quite tell if the pair were embarr
assed to be caught quibbling or protecting trade secrets, but Hyun-lee changed the topic abruptly.
“And you, cleric. What’s your story?”
“I needed to get through the pass and then south to Kephi. Si-yu was kind enough to escort me up to the way station, and then . . . tigers.”
Hyun-lee laughed, her eyes lost in the cheerful lines of her face.
“And then tigers sounds about right. Those are probably the three they were talking about on the circuit. We’ll keep an eye out. Ingrusk will probably set a bounty on their hides before too long.”
Chih couldn’t help feel a pang of regret at the fact. It wasn’t as if bounties weren’t set on human outlaws as well as tigers, but it seemed . . . a shame, perhaps. If they hung Sinh Loan’s skull on the ice wall at Ingrusk, the only place she would live on was in the archives of Singing Hills.
“Well, Borsoon’s a little out of your way, but you can likely hitch a ride from there,” said Hyun-lee, coming to a decision.
“But . . . we’re going to sleep first, right?” asked Chih plaintively, and Hyun-lee slapped them jovially on the shoulder.
“Of course, we’re not savages. Go ahead and go lie down in the way station. You look like something the mammoth trampled flat.”
Chih turned straight into a hug from Si-yu.
“You did pretty good for an out-of-shape southerner,” she said cheerfully. “Get some sleep. Dream of meat.”
Chih was so shaky on their legs that they thought they might collapse before they got to the door of the way station. The ground seemed to tilt underneath them, and they kept seeing flashes of orange and black out of the corner of their eyes.
They were close to falling asleep on their feet, but then something made them turn their head, and they stared.
The big bull stalked the edge of the clearing, ears standing out from his head, and tossing his head from side to side. He wasn’t saddled, but his curving tusks were capped with polished steel, and they guessed that his back was easily level with the roof of the way station, far larger than the cows, far heavier and mountainous.