Contents
Cover
Blurb
Logo
Map
Characters
Places
Part 1: Now
Prologue
Part 2: 700 Years Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part 3: Now
Epilogue
Glossary
Historical Notes
About The Author
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Dedication
TIGER EYES, TIGER SPIRIT, TIGER STONE. ONLY A DAUGHTER COULD UNLOCK THE STONE’S POWER.
Java, fourteenth century. The villagers are fearful of Mbah Merapi, the rumbling volcano that overshadows their lives. Kancil, the lowliest kitchen servant, knows the real danger is human but she is fatherless and mute – and she will lose everything if her identity is revealed.
How can Kancil warn the villagers of the danger they are in?
CHARACTERS
Aryani (ari-yani): A modern-day girl from Java, Indonesia
Ma: Her mother
Bapak Surya (bah-pahk sooh-ree-ya): Their neighbour
Kancil (kahn-chil): A fourteenth-century girl from the Sunda Kingdom
Mother/Sumirah (soo-mee-rah): Kancil’s mother from the Majapahit Kingdom
Father: Kancil’s father from the Sunda Kingdom
Agus (ah-goos): Kancil’s brother
Small Aunt/Ibu Jamu (i-booh jah-moo): Kancil’s aunt (her mother’s younger sister)
Big Uncle/Bapak Thani (bah-pahk tah-nee): Kancil’s uncle (her mother’s older brother)
Big Aunt/Ibu Thani (i-booh tah-nee): Big Uncle’s wife
Citra (chit-trah): Kancil’s cousin
Bibi (bib-bee): The cook
Ida (i-dah): A kitchen servant
Kitchen Boy: A kitchen servant
Ibu Tari (i-booh tah-ree): A village woman
Bapak Pohon (bah-pahk poh-hon): A village man (Ibu Tari’s husband)
The juru kunci (joo-roo khun-chee): A village elder, responsible for communicating with the spirits
Ki Sardu (ki sar-doo): A village elder, the priest
Bapak Iya (bah-pahk ee-yah): A village elder
The prince/Bhre Mataram (bray maht-arr-ahm): A prince of the Majapahit Kingdom/Ruler of the Mataram lands
The parasol bearer, Itam (i-tahm), Fatty, Scar, Tor and Red: Servants of the prince
Dalang Mulyo (dah-lahng moohl-yoh): A puppet master
PLACES
Bubat: A place on the northern outskirts of the Majapahit capital, Trowulan.
Lawucilik: A village that might have existed somewhere in Java.
Majapahit Kingdom: A kingdom from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. From its capital, Trowulan in eastern Java, the kingdom dominated much of South East Asia in the fourteenth century.
Mataram lands: An outlying region of the Majapahit Kingdom. During the first Mataram Kingdom (eighth to tenth century) many temples, including Prambanan, were built here. Little is known of the people who lived here in the fourteenth century but by the end of the sixteenth century it was again an important centre, this time for the second Mataram Kingdom.
Mbah Merapi: A mountain in the centre of Java and one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes (Mbah Merapi = Fiery Grandfather).
Muara Jati: A port on the north coast of the Sunda Kingdom where modern-day Cirebon stands.
Nusantara: Literally “the islands between”, this term originally referred to the islands outside Java. It is now used as an alternative name for Indonesia.
Pekalongan: A port on the north coast of central Java.
Prambanan: A village at the foot of Mount Merapi near where the Prambanan temple complex stands.
Salatiga: A mountain village in Java, north of Prambanan.
Sunda Kingdom: A kingdom in western Java from the seventh to the sixteenth century.
Trowulan: The capital city of the Majapahit Kingdom.
Yogyakarta: A city in the centre of Java, south of Mount Merapi. In the fourteenth century it was a part of the Mataram lands.
PROLOGUE
Aryani peered at herself in the bathroom mirror while she combed her fringe to cover her eyes. Ma said her teak-coloured eyes were pretty, and Grandma loved them of course – they reminded her of her son, who died less than a year after Aryani was born. Aryani didn’t like drawing attention to herself so she hid her eyes from strangers.
It didn’t matter so much in the village, where everybody knew her as the quiet girl with the big brain. Now that brain had won her a scholarship to a high school in the city. She had never left the village in her life and she was about to get on a bus to Yogyakarta where she would be surrounded by staring strangers.
The cardboard suitcase was packed and waiting on the verandah, where Ma was drinking tea with Bapak Surya, the neighbour who would accompany Aryani to the boarding house in the city.
“Are you ready, Ani?” Ma called.
Aryani took a gulp of sweet tea from a glass in the kitchen. The cold tea helped to calm the sick feeling that was rising in her throat. “I’ll just say goodbye to Grandma,” she called back.
Why had she ever thought that going to high school in the city was a good idea? Ma didn’t want her to go and none of the neighbours had anything good to say about the city. In fact, the only person who had encouraged her to go was Grandma. “Yogyakarta is not like other cities,” she had said. “It’s a place of learning.”
Aryani squared her shoulders. She couldn’t disappoint Grandma.
The room was dark and the smell of kayu putih oil hung in the air. “Is that my little Kancil?” Grandma said when Aryani opened the door. Grandma had always called her Kancil. Everybody assumed it was because she was small and timid like the kancil, the mouse deer that lived in the forest. Grandma told Aryani that she meant the kancil in the fables, the clever mouse deer that outwits the bigger, stronger animals by being better with words. “One day you will find your voice, my little Kancil,” she would say.
“Come and let me have one last look at you,” Grandma said, drawing Aryani close. She reached up and brushed Aryani’s fringe away from her face. “Why do you wear your hair like that? It hides your lovely eyes. Why don’t you wear your hair in a bun like a proper young lady?”
“Oh Grandma, nobody under forty wears their hair like that any more,” Aryani said.
“I guess not,” Grandma sighed, “but you shouldn’t hide your eyes.”
“I don’t want to go, Grandma.” Aryani’s voice trembled.
“Oh, come now,” said Grandma, patting her hand. “You must be brave, my girl. Your father would be proud of you.”
Grandma reached under her pillow and pulled out a small parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. “I have something for you,” she said. “Best keep it a secret, though. Your mother wouldn’t understand.” She unwrapped the cloth to reveal a necklace.
“Open the window, dear, so you can see it properly,” Grandma said.
Aryani took the necklace to the window and pushed the shutters open. The necklace was made from knotted twine. One end of the twine was plaited into a loop, and the other was tied through a tiny cowry shell, which fit snugly through the
loop to form the clasp. A polished stone pendant set in a thin frame of tarnished silver hung from the twine. The stone was striped with bands of golden and chocolate brown that shimmered like layers of light. It reminded Aryani of the tiger’s eye gem that her uncle wore in a signet ring. Except that her uncle’s ring only shone when he held it to the light. The pendant’s shimmering light seemed to come from within.
“What is this?” Aryani asked.
The bed creaked as the old woman hauled herself to her feet and joined her granddaughter by the window. Her white hair was pulled into a neat bun, her back was straight and her eyes, though rimmed with the milky blue of old age, were the same colour as her granddaughter’s.
“Tiger stone,” she whispered. “It has been passed down through our family for many generations.”
Grandma clasped her hands around Aryani’s, enclosing the pendant. The stone felt strangely warm against Aryani’s palm.
“I may never see you again, my little Kancil,” said Grandma. Aryani opened her mouth to speak but Grandma silenced her with a shake of her head. “Soon it will be time for me to go. Don’t be sad,” she said. “I have lived a long life and have had many adventures. It’s your turn now. You mustn’t wear the necklace until I am gone. When you do, you will understand.”
1
UNDER THE BANYAN TREE
“People call me Kancil after the mouse deer in the fables.”
Kancil looked up at Small Aunt, her mother’s younger sister. The expression on Small Aunt’s face was the same as the one Mother wore when she inspected cloth sold by untrustworthy traders; the traders who chose the badly lit stalls at the back of the market.
“Funny name for a girl,” Small Aunt said.
Kancil looked down at her hands. “It was my father’s name for me,” she said.
“Well, I’ve never heard of any fables about a kancil,” Small Aunt sniffed. “What’s wrong with your birth name, Sejati? A name that means ‘true’ is a good name for a girl. Then again, maybe not – people might shorten it to Jati and that means ‘teak’. You don’t want to draw attention to the colour of your eyes.” Small Aunt turned to Mother. “I take it they come from her father – he was that incense seller you were besotted with, wasn’t he? Where was he from again?”
For a moment, indignation flashed on Mother’s face. Then she bowed her head and made her voice meek. “He was from Sunda, but his father came from over the sea. Kancil and her brother Agus were both blessed with his teak-coloured eyes.”
“Hmpf,” Small Aunt grunted. “Not much of a blessing.”
Kancil had grown up listening to Mother’s stories about Small Aunt. About how clever she was. How, by the time she was in her fourteenth year, the same age as Kancil, she already knew what herbs to use to cure almost any illness. Kancil had been looking forward to meeting her and had hoped that they might stay with her, although Mother had said that wasn’t possible.
“She left the village to be a servant to a holy woman in the forest many years ago,” Mother had said. “We cannot stay with her. We must travel on to Prambanan village and beg shelter from my brother.”
Now that she had met Small Aunt, Kancil wasn’t so disappointed not to be staying with her. Yet the thought of Prambanan filled her with dread.
She gazed at the path that she and Mother had followed down the mountainside and out of the forest earlier that morning. She had lost track of how long they had been travelling. It had been many months – first hidden in the clove trader’s boat from their home in the Sunda Kingdom to the port of Pekalongan, then in bullock carts and on foot all the way from the coast and over the mountains to reach this place, the Mataram lands, her mother’s birthplace, and the most out-of-the-way corner of the Majapahit Kingdom. A place where they would be safe, according to Mother, so long as Kancil could pretend to be someone she wasn’t.
“We can trust my sister to keep our secret,” Mother had said. “To everyone else you must pretend to be a Majapahit girl. If my brother finds out you have Sunda blood, he won’t let us stay and there is nowhere else we can turn.”
Kancil had begged to stay in Muara Jati, her home town beside the sea in Sunda. “What will happen when Father and Agus come back? How will they find us?” she had asked.
“They will never return,” was all Mother would say.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. Now here they were, sitting under a sprawling banyan tree less than a day’s walk from their destination, Prambanan village. It was time for Kancil to show Small Aunt how good she was at pretending to be from Majapahit.
“If my sister is impressed,” Mother had said, “then it will be easy to fool my brother.” Kancil tried not to think about what would happen if her aunt was unimpressed.
“So tell me your story,” Small Aunt commanded in Jawa language.
Everything now depended on Kancil sounding like someone who had been speaking Jawa all her life. Her language lessons had begun in earnest between bouts of seasickness in the hold of the clove trader’s boat. Even now, months later, speaking Jawa made her feel a little queasy.
“I was born in the village of Lawucilik, one month’s journey east of here,” she began shakily. “My father’s family were farmers. They took my mother in when she fled Mbah Merapi’s wrath many years ago.” Kancil took a breath and looked up at the mountain, Mbah Merapi, the volcano that brought both life and death to the Mataram lands. A plume of smoke slipped lazily over the mountain’s peak.
“Two months ago the earth swallowed Lawucilik. My father and brother both perished. All I have left is my mother. We return to the village of her birth to beg for shelter.”
“And how was it that you and your mother did not perish?”
“We had gone to Trowulan to trade Mother’s fine cloth.”
“Hmm,” said Small Aunt. She turned to Mother, who was leaning against the banyan tree’s broad trunk. “The story’s not bad. News of what happened to Lawucilik has reached here, so they’ll believe you. And it’s far enough away that nobody would know you weren’t there. The part about going to Trowulan is a bit much, though. What if someone asks her what the capital is like?”
“She could make it up,” said Mother. “It’s not like anyone else from these parts has ever been there.”
Small Aunt turned back to Kancil. “Well?” she asked.
Kancil froze. They hadn’t practised this part and she had no idea what Trowulan was like. She began to describe her home town, Muara Jati, in Sunda. At least that was a proper town, unlike the ramshackle collections of huts that passed for civilisation in these parts.
“There is a glittering harbour,” she said, “full of ships from all over Nusantara and beyond, and in the market you can buy–”
“Enough,” Small Aunt said, holding up her hand. “Trowulan is inland, everybody knows that. Why don’t you say you went to Bubat? That’s somewhere near Trowulan. Nobody here will know it so you can say whatever you like.”
Mother turned pale. “Not Bubat,” she whispered. Kancil had been trying to keep her head bowed respectfully. Now she looked up and glared at Small Aunt. How could she be so cruel? Small Aunt looked back at her blankly. Was it possible that she didn’t know?
“Why not Bubat?” Small Aunt asked. She looked from Kancil to Mother. “I’m only trying to help.”
“It was in Bubat–” Mother began then she fell back against the tree trunk like a spent rice husk. Kancil looked at her anxiously. All the way from Muara Jati Mother had been so strong and determined but now that they had almost reached her village, it was as though the life had drained from her. Her body shook as she tried to suppress a cough.
“It was in Bubat that my father and brother met their fate,” Kancil took over from Mother. “They were crew on the ship carrying the King and Queen of Sunda to the marriage of their daughter, Princess Pitaloka, to King Hayam Wuruk of Majapahit. It was a trap. They never returned.” The words came out in a rush, as though saying them fast would stop them from hurting. She didn’t
believe, as Mother did, that both Agus and Father were dead, but thinking about them hurt her just the same.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Not much news from the capital makes it this far inland.” Small Aunt shrugged.
“It is why we are here,” Mother said. “Being from Majapahit once gave me an advantage in the marketplace in Muara Jati. The other traders thought I must be shrewd because I came from such a sophisticated place.” She smiled weakly. “Everything changed after the news came from Bubat. In their grief, our neighbours took revenge on anything they knew to have a Majapahit connection. Our home, my cloth, it was all burned. We were lucky to escape with our lives.”
“I see now why you had to leave,” said Small Aunt. Then she looked at Kancil with that same look in her eye, as if inspecting poor quality cloth. “Bringing her here was a mistake, though. You’ve trained her well to speak Jawa, I’ll give you that, but she’s not good enough – when she’s cross she sounds pure Sunda, and you know how people here feel about Sunda. It’s for the best that she stays mute. Do you think she can do it? She doesn’t seem the type.”
“She has done since we reached Pekalongan,” Mother replied. “It’s not so hard. In our town in Sunda there were three children who could not hear. They had their own language of signs that the other children soon learned. It was like a game. Kancil taught me as we travelled and we manage well enough.”
Small Aunt looked doubtful. “It’s all very well when it’s a game, or when she’s travelling and only has to fool people for a day or so before she moves on to the next place. But day-in, day-out? As a fatherless child, it won’t be easy for her in the village, you know, and I can’t see her holding that tongue of hers for long. Then there are her eyes – it’s long enough ago now that people might not make the connection with her father, but even so, there’s definitely something a bit foreign about them. They will make people wonder where she is from and then it would only take one slip of the tongue for them to realise she’s from Sunda.”
Kancil had had enough. “What’s wrong with being from Sunda?” she fumed. “We had to leave our home because your king started a war and made everybody in the Sunda Kingdom hate the Majapahit Kingdom. But what did we ever do to you?”
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