by Daniel Fox
Which left it for him in the end, as it had to, as they could not conceivably leave it to rot. It was rotten enough already; the reek of it was almost tangible. Perhaps it was too late for harvest now. If he had been a true doctor, he would have known. Tien would know.
Tien was not here. He was; and he was the best they had, these frantic clans. Yes, he could take what he wanted of the tiger’s parts. And no, they would not linger here to watch him at his harvest. They could not abide that. They would scour the forest for strangers, each clan to its own valley, no more marching together. Already they were pulling apart, each inclined to blame the other for allowing some intruder through, some monster, human or otherwise.
They would warn their farther neighbors too. The mountains would be closed. No one would get through, who had not fled already.
They would leave Biao to his work.
He wanted nothing else just now, than that they should leave him.
In a pit, with a stinking fly-blown corpse.
He took what he could, always, whatever came in reach. There was power here, influence. Opportunity. They would know him now to be the man with the tiger’s parts. What he actually took—unwatched, unsupervised—would matter far less than what he was believed to have taken.
He had a knife, he had pockets and a pouch. The forest was full of leaves that could be folded, creepers to bind one parcel with another. Above all he had time and solitude and his own wily craft, his long history of making do.
He turned to the head first, because whiskers were easy: easy to name, easy to harvest, easy to prescribe.
A jade tiger’s whiskers were stiff as bamboo splinters, stiff and sharp. He could blunt his knife, just trying to hack them off. Perhaps they could be plucked more easily than cut, if the flesh that held them was as rotten as it smelled …?
He gripped one as tight as he could manage in the wet, and tugged. Felt resistance, and wrenched at it—and felt his fingers slide along the slippery length of the wire-fine whisker, and felt the pain that followed, and looked down to see bright blood welling where fingers and palm together had been sliced open.
And cursed, and danced a little against the pain; and might have kicked the corpse if it weren’t so foul, might have kicked the head rolling into the blood-sodden mud if it hadn’t been set so high on its separate rock, if it hadn’t been blind and glaring at him.
Was sensible instead, fumbling in his pockets for something that might make a bandage. He couldn’t go back to the compound oozing blood.
And could find nothing on him, and of course the tiger had nothing to offer; so he lifted his eyes to the lip of the hollow, thinking to try the forest, and so found that he was not after all alone.
YU SHAN had not gone with his clansfolk, or else he had come back.
He crouched up there on his own, unbearable company even to himself. Discovered, he stepped down into the mud with a bitter reluctance, shuddering at the touch of it on bare feet.
He stared at Biao, eye to eye. That was high strategy, Biao knew, all the boy had. Look at something, one thing, not to see what else was there, that he could not bear to look at. Biao had done the same thing often and often, with the reverse intent: hold their eyes, not to let them see what he could not bear to have them discover.
Yu Shan had discovered the worst thing already, which was not Biao’s incompetence any more than it was the carcass itself, though that was what his eyes avoided. The worst thing was not here.
“She did this.”
“What? Who—?” And why tell me? Tell your clan, they’re on fire to know.
“Jiao, of course. She was here, she followed me. I spoke to her, I sent her away …”
It’s my fault, he was saying, I did this. Which might even be true by his own harsh reading. Biao thought people were both more simple and more complicated than that, but boys tended to feel what they wanted to feel, and guilt was always high on that list.
Biao said, “Well. Your people will find her, if she’s still—”
Yu Shan shook his head. “She will be that way,” a jerk of his chin, up the mountain. “She will go up. She will be hurt.”
“How can you …?”
“There is blood here, blood and blood,” though he still wasn’t looking at it. “The tiger’s blood, and yours. There must be hers too. I could smell it, if yours wasn’t fresh and the tiger’s so rank. She will have been hurt here.” It was an article of faith, apparently, you don’t kill a jade tiger and walk away unharmed. “She will have gone up high. I could follow, I could track,” I could sniff her out, “but I need to go back to the compound, to be with Siew Ren when she hears. She will hate this. Hate it.”
Biao looked at Yu Shan, looked up the steep bare wet rock of the mountain. “I am no tracker, and no hunter either.”
Yu Shan shrugged. “She will be up there.” My people will not go, he seemed to be saying, and someone should.
“She will have to come down. Eventually.” No one could live up there for long; Biao didn’t see the urgency. She would come down, and the clans would find her in the forest.
Yu Shan’s eyes were jade-hard, all glitter and depth. “She will be hurt, and you are a doctor.”
“You want me to heal her?”
A shrug. “Perhaps. I want you to find her, and do what you do. Me, if I found her, I would kill her, I think. I can’t look,” for her or at the tiger. “I have to go to Siew Ren.”
“Your people will kill her anyway. When she comes down.” Let her die up there if she’s hurt as badly as you think, as you want her to be.
“Perhaps,” but his eyes were compelling. Lethal. “You go, Biao. You find her.”
If Biao understood anything, if he had learned only one thing in all his life, it was to recognize when a man had no choice.
Himself, or any man.
IN THE END, it was easy.
Terror attracts.
Sometimes, it does.
On the barren slopes of a strange mountain, where you can see nothing but rocks and sky and the threat of eventual night, when you dare not go back down without what you were sent for, which you have no hope of finding; when you hear a woman’s voice in the clear air, and are afraid; when you hear a tiger’s rumble in that same air, and cannot tell where on the mountain it might be coming from, and are mortally afraid.
That kind of terror, yes, can draw you on.
Biao scrambled over scree and rough tussock-grass toward the sound he heard, one of the sounds, the woman’s low murmur.
The other sound, the tiger, he really had no idea. Was it behind him, hunting? Was it ahead, alluring? He couldn’t tell; he couldn’t stop. All he could do was hurry on and hope to find Jiao, and hope to help her, such that she would not kill him.
Such that she would kill the tiger for him, if that was necessary, if it was coming after him. His little knife would be no help, no hope at all, even if he had the courage to fight a tiger on its own mountain. Which … Well. He thought not, probably.
HERE, SOMEWHERE here: the sound rolled down this slope. The sound that he was following, her voice. She seemed perhaps to be crooning. Perhaps she had run mad.
Mad might be better, almost. No sane woman would tackle a tiger.
Tackle and kill it, kill and skin it and then hide up on its own mountain, where its own kin stalked.
Perhaps he should hope that she was mad, that she might do it again.
THERE WAS an overhang, a great scarp of rock above; between that and this sliding, cruel slope, there was a darkness.
It could be a cave of sorts, at least a shelter from sun and rain. If not from tigers.
Yu Shan might look at unstable scree and see blood-traces, where she’d scrambled up. Or smell them.
Biao’s own hand bled again as he scrambled on all fours up a slope that slithered away beneath him as he went.
Nothing was solid, there was nothing to grip, it wanted technique and speed and he had neither. What he had was the persistence of terror, just
a little more frightened of what might lie behind him than he was of what might lie ahead. And besides, fear itself had become irresistible now, like a toothache to the tongue, he had to probe it.
Up he went, then, cursingly, scrabble and kick and slide and scrabble again; and eventually—quite a long time after the woman’s voice had fallen silent, though the tiger’s still sang somewhere—he did come up far enough to seize a hold that didn’t give beneath his weight, solid rock that did indeed bring him into a sheltered space that a desperate woman might just think a cave.
IF SHE were desperate, she didn’t show it.
Her face showed nothing, it was only a blank in shadow. Her blade was just as dull, with no source of light to reflect as it waited, as she did.
The blade she held in one hand. The other lay on the neck of the tiger.
WAS THAT growling, or purring? Did tigers purr?
Whatever the noise was, it resonated dreadfully beneath the rock of the overhang. It rolled out and down the mountain like a threat, the fearful sound that he had been bold to climb into, except when he thought it was behind him; in here, under here, it was not a threat at all. It was worse, far worse than that. It was a statement, an inevitability: as certain a promise as the edge of that blade.
More certain, perhaps, than the blade. Biao was a man who noticed such things. Jiao was a right-handed woman, and it was her right hand that lay on the tiger’s scruff. The long blade of the tao looked less dangerous, in her left. He thought it drooped rather, toward the floor of the cave.
It was the blade, nevertheless, that made him certain this was Jiao. That was Jiao’s blade. The rest … Well. Her face was hidden, and her body too, largely. Something was wrapped around her, more than the lightless quality of the cave. With her long legs also drawn up out of sight, there were only her arms to announce her.
One that held a tiger, and one that held a blade. Droopingly, unconvincingly, not like Jiao at all. Even left-handed, she should have been more compelling than that, and simply stronger.
Nevertheless, it was Jiao’s blade.
He said, “Jiao, come out into the light and let me see how you are hurt.”
For a long time, too long, she didn’t respond. Perhaps the point of the tao dipped lower, but he didn’t think that was at her choosing, or under the influence of his voice.
When there was movement, it was the tiger that moved, unless some little pressure from her hand had moved it. It rose to fill that cramped space between rock above and rock below; its voice rolled on like thunder appallingly contained, so that Biao had to shout shrilly through it: “Leave the tiger, let it stay within …”
Now at last Jiao answered him. With a laugh first, a savage broken thing; and then her voice, all scorn, all Jiao. “What, do you take him for a trained dog? Kitten in a basket? If he chooses, he will come.”
“Is he … is he safe?”
“Safe from you, I think,” and that laugh again, harsh and horrible. “Safe in the world? Perhaps not. The world is a cruel place, it killed his mother. I try to keep him safe, but do not promise. Is the world safe from him? No, not at all. It killed his mother. But will he eat you? Perhaps not. I do not promise; I think he must be hungry now. Back away.”
Biao was doing that already, edging to the limit of the cave-mouth and beyond, out into the fall of light, onto the scree again.
The tiger followed him.
And stood sure-footed on the shifting slope, vast paws spread wide. Too wide, Biao thought, too vast for the size of cat above; gods and demons, was this thing only a cub yet? It was a monster already, longer in the body than Biao was tall. Longer than Jiao, perhaps. Heavier than both of them together. And young, yes: ferocious because it was afraid, perhaps, still growling deep in its magnificent throat, staring at Biao with hot jade eyes, its body set like a trap to snap and fling at a moment. At a move, at a word—and the move might come from Biao, but he thought perhaps Jiao would have the word ready on her tongue in case she needed it.
The tiger’s eyes shifted to look back into the cave. Here she came now. Biao didn’t relax. The creature might be less dangerous in her presence, but only because she was more so. On its own, it was unpredictable, unknown; with her, he thought it was another weapon to her hand. One that she could handle more easily just now than the tao.
Here she came, bent over and moving more awkwardly than the overhang could justify, not just crouching to avoid a cracked head. And she was still wrapped in, wrapped in—
The sun struck at her, and he saw what she was wrapped in.
He should have known, of course. He could not possibly have forgotten: only that a jade tiger in the hot distrustful flesh was a little distracting, and Jiao in this mood was almost more so.
It was, of course, the skin of the tiger’s mother.
Jiao clutched it around her like a blanket, and it trailed in the dust behind her like a gown. She seemed almost bowed under the weight of it. It was hard even to look at her, except in revulsion: she was weak and broken, she was human, and wearing—wearing!—this extraordinary object that should have clothed a living wonder.
On the cub, light ran like rippling water between the shadows of his stripes.
On Jiao, on a dead tiger’s fur, the sun could only show its proper colors, green and black. And the dark spill of blood, dried in spots and streaks and patches everywhere, breaking all the vivid patterns of the hide, telling a wrongful, woeful story. And it was stiff to fold and difficult to handle, and frankly it smelled of days-old blood and inadequate cleaning; and still it was strong and brilliant, still it spoke to the power and the glory of the living beast, the shame of this woman who had taken it.
This woman who was shrugging it off now in the sunlight, letting it fall anyhow onto the scree.
This woman who was naked underneath and slicked with sweat, grimy with dried blood and mud, but the filth of her was only another coat, another covering.
Underneath was the truth of her, the torn ruin of a warrior.
Spare flesh and muscles like cables, tendons like wires, skin that had been cut and burned and scarred a hundred times, a hundred different ways, and patched indifferently together to heal as it would.
And now, new damage that should probably not have healed at all.
Biao had seen a thousand soldiers’ bodies, he was intimately familiar with the damages of war, of steel and wood and stone. Flame too, now, flame above all.
He had never seen anything like this.
Jiao had been mauled, of course, ripped open by the tiger. Ripped apart, almost, from neck to hip, all down her left side: deep and terrible gashes, through skin and flesh and bone together. The shoulder—well. He could see how she would have trouble holding up the tip of her heavy blade. He couldn’t actually see how she managed to use that arm at all, with the muscle shredded and the joint misshapen, the bone past any hope of true alignment.
And yet, and yet …
All this horror had been wreaked on her bare days before, she’d had no treatment and no care. Biao thought she should probably, almost certainly be dead. Surely feverish, racked with pain, dying. Surely that.
And yet. Here she was, walking, standing, albeit not very straightly. There was a glitter of strangeness in her eyes, but that was not fever. Pain, perhaps, but if so it was a pain that she could manage.
All those open wounds, that should be scabby and wetly ripe with infection, gleaming with pus—they looked all to be skinned over already, far too soon. She might never be rightly shaped again, but the shape she was, something was preserving.
She looked at him, at his astonishment, and laughed again. The croak turned into a cough, and she wheezed at him. “Have you water? Little fat bewildered man?”
“Yes, yes, that I do …” He thrust the skin at her and she snatched at it one-handed, tipped it, drank with a clumsy greed that spilled as much over her skin as down her throat.
“Ahhh …”
The tiger cub came to her, and licked that run
off from her skin. Her smile was savage, as she took one more swallow for herself and then pushed the spout roughly into the cub’s mouth as it if were a nipple.
As if it were a nipple, the tiger sucked and swallowed.
Drained the skin entirely in two swallows and then closed its jaws more finally, bit off the spout, pierced the bag, played with it, shredded it with claws and a shake of its head.
“That’s what he would have done with me,” Jiao murmured. “Nearly did.”
“Wait, what? The cub did that …?”
“Yes, oh yes. Did you think his mother? She wouldn’t have been so uncertain. Have you food? I could use food. So could he.”
Dried fruit, Biao carried. He had nothing else to offer, and she didn’t offer any to the cub. She ate with a dreadful earnestness, her one hand letting the tao dangle utterly while the other filled and filled her mouth; then, smiling through stained teeth, “Need more water now.”
“Sorry, I haven’t …”
“No, of course not. Perhaps I can chance the forest.”
“They are looking for you, the clans. The word is spreading already, valley to valley.”
“Of course.”
Surprising himself, he said, “Wait one more day, and I will bring you food, and water-skins. Medicine too, something for the pain. You do have pain?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes, doctor, I have pain. It is … extraordinary.”
He was pleased, almost, to hear that not all the laws of nature were revoked here. She should have pain; the state of her body demanded it, and so perhaps did justice also.
He said, “How did this happen?”
He didn’t say that information was the price of his help, but perhaps she heard it anyway. The glance she gave him was amused, in a terrible way. Terribly amused.
She sat, slowly, and drew the skin up again around her shoulders. He helped, on the left side, where she couldn’t manage with any grace or comfort. The skin side of it felt raw and stiff, nothing like leather; it smelled and was sticky like aging meat. He wiped his fingers on the fur, which was coarse, almost harsh to the touch, but still set a tingle in his flesh.
