The Tiger's Apprentice

by Laurence Yep

  At the higher depths they saw broken plates and old bottles and bits of board as well as brick, but as they went deeper, the garbage began to change. They saw bits of rotting straw baskets and arrowheads and piles of discarded mussel shells and charred wood from fires. Still deeper they went. Sidney gave a yelp when he saw a giant skull glaring at him.

  “It’s a dinosaur fossil,” Mistral said.

  “Watch out,” Sidney said as he swam into a rib whose point was still sharp. But he was grateful to see that he passed right through it.

  And then they were all blinking and ducking instinctively as they went through what once had been the floor of an ancient sea. Here shells had gathered and fossilized by the thousands and it was reflex to try to avoid them, though they could not feel them.

  Descending through the sandy soil was easy, but the lower depths were rock, which resisted them. Both the tiger and monkey looked as if they were trying to swim through thick mud and even the dragon began to breathe heavily.

  Finally they came to a chamber with walls of some strange smooth stone streaked with blue, red, white, black, and yellow.

  Within the swirls of color, they thought they saw faces—some of them human and some so monstrous that even Mr. Hu shuddered. And there were shapes like trees in parks but others that were plants with tentacles.

  Sidney was so busy trying to see pictures in the patterns that he stumbled. The floor, like the walls and the ceiling, was not flat but lumpy, and the slick surface made it easy to slip.

  Before them was a set of great bronze doors, green with age. The halves formed the split face of a great scowling beast; its eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and cheeks were shaped by other creatures that seemed to wriggle as if alive.

  “Beware,” the beast from the doors growled in a deep voice. “The Empress sleeps after her great labors for the world. Do not disturb her slumber.”

  Mr. Hu, however, stood his ground.

  “The Guardian of the Phoenix has an urgent request for the Empress,” he said with a bow, and then held up the coral rose.

  The beast gazed at the rose as if it could see right through the disguise. “Be it on your heads,” the beast finally said, and with a loud groan the doors swung open. Instantly flame rose from rhinoceros-shaped lamps on the walls within.

  Inside, they felt a presence so strong that it was almost heavy—as if it were a thick fur coat wrapping itself around their minds and bodies. It wasn’t hostile like the Watcher, but it wasn’t benevolent either. This was . . . almost indifferent—just as Mistral had said.

  They entered a chamber that was shaped like a beehive. The walls were of the same colorful stone as the tunnel, but instead of being smooth, the walls were covered with strands of bumps, almost like cords.

  To one side sat a chariot gray as a storm but with bright stripes of gold like lightning bolts. In front of the chariot was a team of four dragons. Two with wings lay on the inside while a pair of green, hornless dragons rested on the outside.

  “Are they statues?” Sidney asked, reaching out to touch one.

  Mistral batted his paw hand away. “No, but in such a deep slumber that it’s like death. Sleep on, brothers and sisters, and dream gentle dreams.”

  The dragons’ harness was not of leather but of some kind of yellow vapor. Its outline kept shimmering and shifting as they watched. The bed within the center of the chamber was also of the same mist.

  Upon the bed, looking almost as if she were napping upon a cloud, lay a girl of about sixteen in a gown of iridescent golden scales. Her black hair was coiled, rising like a tangle of snakes above her head.

  Setting down the flashlight, Mr. Hu nodded for Monkey to lay Tom down on the floor. Kneeling, the tiger took off his coat and made a pillow of it for the boy’s head. Then, holding the rose in a paw, he bowed.

  Careful to stay behind Mistral, Monkey was doing the same; Sidney was keeping close to them. For once, all his greedy thoughts were replaced by fear.

  With his forehead still against the floor, Mr. Hu said politely, “The Guardian of the Phoenix begs an audience with you.”

  When the girl remained lying still, Mr. Hu repeated himself again and then a third time.

  “Yes, yes, I heard you the first time,” Nü Kua grumbled, opening her eyes. Even though she had spoken in a low tone, her words resonated within them, almost as if their bodies were trumpets through which someone was blowing notes. Sitting up, she started to yawn and put a ringed hand to her mouth. “Why are you pestering me? Haven’t I done enough for the world?”

  “I have need of your great wisdom and guidance,” Mr. Hu said.

  “Oh, do straighten up,” Nü Kua said, yawning again. “We’re not in my throne room so we don’t have to stand on ceremony. And it’s harder to understand you when you talk into the floor like that.”

  “Thank you,” Mr. Hu said, lifting his head.

  “That’s better,” Nü Kua said, swinging her legs from the bed. “Now be quick about it. Has Kung Kung risen from the dead?”

  “No, but his followers are still trying to steal the phoenix egg,” Mr. Hu said, and told her briefly about the events of the last few days.

  Nü Kua kicked her feet back and forth. “I admit it’s serious, but there should be plenty of creatures around who can handle those kinds of things. I don’t see why you came here to pester me.”

  “In the fight, my apprentice was mortally wounded.” Mr. Hu nodded down to Tom.

  When Nü Kua jumped off the bed, she wobbled as if she had not stood up in a long time and had to put out her arms to balance herself. Little bits of the yellow vapor clung to her ankles like misty anklets. With each step, she grew stronger until she was striding to the injured boy and the anklets had become solid gold.

  She felt the pulse in his wrist and then, opening his mouth, she sniffed at his breath. “His time is done, Guardian. He’s beyond healing.”

  “But not beyond sharing,” Mr. Hu said, dipping his head respectfully.

  Nü Kua glanced at him, startled. “You would willingly give some of your life to him?”

  “He gave his life for me,” Mr. Hu explained affectionately. “I owe him a debt.”

  A smile teased Nü Kua’s lips as if the elderly tiger’s words were only an infant’s chatter to her. “Such payment should be made out of love, not obligation.”

  Mr. Hu gave a little shake of his head. “Please don’t talk about love. He will leave me as soon as he is well. But I must keep my oath to keep him alive.”

  “If he had not come to feel love for you, he would not have made the sacrifice in the first place,” Nü Kua said gently. “And if you did not feel love for him, you would not be here now.”

  The tiger looked thoughtful, almost as if he wanted to believe her, but then he spread his paws. “All we have in common is a love of his grandmother.”

  Nü Kua pursed her lips. “But then you came to see a bit of her in each other and perhaps came to care for that. And caring became love—whether you knew it or not.”

  Mr. Hu pondered the strange empress’s words and then looked down tenderly at the boy. “I think this cub may have taught me a greater lesson than anything I have ever taught him.”

  “Then,” Nü Kua pressed, “if you truly love him, do not do this.”

  Puzzled, Mr. Hu said, “But I must. In the short time I have known him, he has come to be as precious to me as the phoenix.” It had been so hard to admit before, so easy now.

  Nü Kua’s eyes were golden slits and they gazed at him intently. “Precious, indeed. But are you thinking with your head as well as your heart?”

  “I’m not afraid of the sacrifice,” the tiger insisted proudly.

  “I was thinking of the boy.” Nü Kua folded her arms patiently. “Have you considered what will happen to him if you bring him back from death this way? You are of a different species, but if I do this, he will combine yours with his.”

  “And have the virtues of both,” Mr. Hu said confidently.

 
; “I have not always slept. Sometimes I have watched the world.” The Empress gestured to a large, circular bronze mirror. “I have seen terrible things done for the wrong reasons, but I have seen even worse done for the right ones. I think your apprentice may come to regret your keeping him alive.” Though Nü Kua’s face was as youthful as ever, her strange eyes held a great wisdom—and a deep sadness because of that wisdom. “One last time, I warn you: Let him go, Guardian.”

  “I . . . I cannot,” Mr. Hu choked.

  Nü Kua turned her gaze from the tiger to the wall as if studying the patterns there.

  “Very well.” She nodded. Resting her arms against her sides, she began to sway slowly back and forth, whispering a sibilant chant until her whole body seemed limbless—as if her arms and legs had fused together. She curled and straightened like a golden flame. Suddenly she began to drift in circles around the Guardian like a serpent sliding across a floor. The hem of her scaled dress hissed on the floor in counterpoint to her chant.

  Monkey, Sidney, and even the dragon could feel their bodies swaying in time to the spell as if this magic was so primeval it called deeper than flesh and bone, commanding the very cells of their bodies.

  Finally, with one last swirl, Nü Kua stopped and took a jade dagger from her belt. “Give me your wrist.”

  Mr. Hu crept over respectfully until he was beside her and then, setting down the rose, held out a forepaw. “Thank you.”

  “But will the boy thank me or curse this day?” Lifting Tom’s wrist, she murmured a spell that did not seem to have any words, just sounds, sometimes harsh and guttural, sometimes rising in a lilt like a bird soaring through the air.

  Then, with her dagger, she made a quick slit in both the tiger’s and boy’s wrists and pressed them together. “Say these words: With my blood, I join you.”

  “With my blood, I join you,” the tiger intoned solemnly.

  “Now blow into the portal I have opened,” she commanded.

  Bending over, Mr. Hu breathed upon the bleeding cut.

  “With my breath, I bind you,” she said.

  “With my breath, I bind you,” Mr. Hu repeated.

  Nü Kua turned and gestured to Mistral. “You, dragon, grasp his arm like so.” She wrapped her fingers higher up on Tom’s arm to stop the flow of blood.

  Mistral hurriedly obeyed.

  Then Nü Kua nodded to Monkey. “And you, ape. Tear up your robe for bandages.”

  Frightened, Monkey began to rip up his clothes immediately.

  With their help Nü Kua bound up the wounds of both the tiger and the boy. Then she swung her strange gaze toward Monkey, Mistral, and Sidney. She stared at them so long that even Mistral began to squirm. “Yes, nice to see you again.” She rose then and waved her hand as if she were shooing away pigeons. “Now let me rest until our next meeting.”

  “You have a foreseeing?” Mr. Hu asked, resting his cut forepaw against his stomach.

  She smiled mysteriously. “Call it destiny. My life has been intertwined before with all of yours.” She plucked a shining scale from her gown and pressed it against Tom’s cheek, where it clung. “Tell the boy that when he has need of me, he must plant this in the earth, slap the ground, and call my name. I will come.” Then, returning to her bed, she lay down, clasping her hands over her stomach. “So farewell until the next time.”

  And closing her eyes, she fell into a deep slumber again.

  Chapter 14

  “What did she mean?” Sidney whispered, glancing nervously at the resting empress. “I’ve never met her before.”

  “Me neither.” Monkey shivered as he spoke in a hushed tone. “I’d have remembered someone like her.”

  Mistral touched the glittering scale on Tom’s cheek. “I, for one, don’t want to see her again.”

  “You would have to be as desperate as I was, and yet I would never have expected such a privilege. Somehow Master Thomas was important to her in another life,” Mr. Hu said, and then staggered as he tried to rise. “I’m afraid this whole affair has left me a little dizzy.”

  The dragon caught him with her paw. “Who wouldn’t be after giving up some of their soul?”

  “Mistral, the egg.” Mr. Hu waved feebly.

  “We’ll take care of everything,” she promised as she passed Mr. Hu over to Monkey to lead into the tunnel.

  While Mistral got Mr. Hu’s coat and tucked the phoenix’s egg into a pocket, Sidney snatched up the flashlight. “I have to take the boy,” Mistral said to the rat. “Don’t you dare go through the pockets.”

  “Steal from a partner? Never,” Sidney said indignantly as he took the coat.

  Gathering up the sleeping Tom, Mistral brought him from the chamber while Sidney followed. They all looked relieved when they were standing outside Nü Kua’s chamber.

  The rat had barely snapped on his flashlight before the doors slammed shut behind them with a clang. In the beam of light, he saw the sign hanging against the bronze. He wrinkled his forehead as he looked at the series of little pictures. “Is it like a comic book?”

  “No, it’s the ancient script. Every picture is a word,” Mistral said, adjusting her grip on Tom.

  “What’s it say?” Sidney asked.

  “A short translation would be: ‘Do Not Disturb,’” Mistral said after studying it.

  “And the long version?” the rat wondered.

  “It’s a list of terrible but very inventive punishments if you do,” Mistral said.

  Sidney gulped as he helped Mr. Hu put on his coat. “But she wouldn’t really carry them out, would she? I mean, she sort of knew us.”

  Monkey nudged the rat. “Let’s not find out.”

  As the rat tried to move to the front with his flashlight, he noticed that his paws stuck to the floor. “Hey, what gives? The stone’s gotten soft.”

  Monkey’s foot made a noise when he lifted it. “It’s like melted candy.”

  Mr. Hu sagged against him. “It’s hard to hold the Way open.”

  “We’d better hurry,” Mistral said, nodding to the rat to grab hold of her again.

  As they fought their way back up to the surface, they found that hurrying was difficult even for the dragon; the stone seemed to have gotten thicker so that it was like trying to swim through glue.

  “Hey, it’s starting to stick,” Sidney said, wiping away stone with the consistency of bread dough.

  “Tell me about it,” Mistral said. The dragon’s scales were half covered in the goo. She was having the most trouble, as the rock solidified around her. Finally she puffed, “Take Tom and save yourselves.”

  “We wouldn’t leave you now any more than we would Tom,” Sidney said. If this had been on the land, the rat would never have had a chance of pulling the massive dragon; but the earth was still more liquid than solid. Sidney took one of the dragon’s forelegs and began to kick. Somehow the rat managed to help Mistral keep rising up to the layers of sand.

  Even here, the going was not as easy as the last time, for the sand was also hardening and with it the fossil shells. The group bruised and scraped themselves as they moved through them. Finally their progress was more like digging than swimming, and it was hard for all of them to breathe. As the ground grew more solid, it became harder to see the others.

  “It’s just a little more,” Monkey called from above. “I’ve reached the store with Hu.”

  “Any moths?” Mistral shouted.

  “No, but the doorway is shrinking,” Monkey said. Even so, the brave ape plunged back to give them a hand with Tom. They emerged from the floor to see Mr. Hu waiting for them.

  As Mistral crawled away from the hole, she collapsed. “That was close.”

  Sidney gave a yelp as the hole shut with a pop on the tip of his tail, which he had carelessly let dangle into it. “It was a lot closer for some of us.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mr. Hu said as he sat down heavily on a chair. “I was so tired that it was hard to focus.”

  “You need to rest, Mr. H,” Sidne
y said as he helped the tiger off with his coat and hung it on the back of the chair. Snapping off his flashlight and returning it to his fur, he examined his tail for damage.

  Mistral lay Tom back down on the stretcher and nodded at Monkey. “In the meantime, this furbag and I will see to things.”

  Monkey took out his staff but he said, “I don’t think we’ll be enough. Now that we have the rose again, Vatten will be coming after us with all his forces. We need a refuge.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll be all right.” Mr. Hu struggled to stand up but plopped back down on the seat. “In a little while.”

  Mistral tried to brush some of the sand from her scales. “Where can we go?”

  Monkey rested the staff upon his shoulder. “To the dragon kingdom. The egg will be safe there.”

  Mistral sank her chin against her chest while she thought about it before she looked back at them. “For once I think the ape is right. The egg should be taken to the dragon kingdom for now. And the sooner the better.”

  Mr. Hu turned to look at Tom on his stretcher. “Yes, but we’ll have to wait until he’s stronger. We can’t leave him to be taken hostage.”

  Monkey clapped the dragon’s leg affectionately with his paw. “And then you’ll get your wish. Our paths are finally going to part.”

  “You’re always trying to tell me what to do, furbag,” Mistral snorted. “Maybe that choice should be mine.”

  “But it would be death for you to go there,” Mr. Hu protested.

  “I think the phoenix will be my token of safe passage,” Mistral said.

  “But what if it isn’t?” Monkey insisted. Despite all his teasing, he looked worried for Mistral.

  The dragon’s long neck bent downward. When she raised her head, it was with a smile. “It’s already too late. I’ve had a taste of the sea again. I am weary of the hardness of the land with its rocks and dust, where the sun sucks the moisture from your scales. I would return again even if this must be the last time. And perhaps before I die I might be able to say enough to gain you the dragons’ protection. Though I have been outlawed, there are still many who think well of me.”