The Tiger's Tale

by Nara Malone

  After hours of waiting, heaven turned to prison. Lost in space. That’s what he thought now. A dark, tight space. Those loving hands had turned to manacles. No stars glittered here. It was pure black. Black crawled through his brain. He floated on a black sea. It floated on him, maybe through him. It seemed to breathe when he did. He could feel the rise and fall of his own lungs and the swell of this endless sea within them.

  What? What was this?

  How could he escape?

  Should he?

  His eyes…were they open? Was he blind? Panic took hold, sizzling along his nerves. He felt rapid fluttering where his eyelids should be. The sea swelled, churning around him, under him, through him, boiling.

  He gave up the effort to open his eyes and the churning subsided. He tried to think. How long had he floated in this nothingness? Was this death? Was it hell?

  Nothing to touch. Nothing to see. Nothing to smell. A silence so loud it hurt his ears. The sheer sensory deprivation forced his senses into overdrive, wrapped him again in the sensual garden that was his lover. His mind creating the stimulation he needed. The delicate tendrils of her hair trailing along his body, that sweet feminine perfume from between her parted thighs. Soft, throaty moans rose and fell like music when his tongue licked her honey-soaked slit. Her response never failed to make his cock rise. She made him hot. So hot.

  He moaned, a silent moan. The black sea swallowed everything. Everything but his memory of her.

  He remembered the moist heat of her breath running across his balls when she sighed. He imagined her hot wet tongue, the way it stroked up his cock, and down again, the pull of her lips sliding over his shaft. She would cup her small hands around the base of his cock while her throat seemed to swallow and squeeze him. Milk him.

  She kissed. She licked. She sucked.

  While he licked. While he kissed. While he sucked at the swollen bud of her clit until she cried out, singing his name to the night. Or to the morning. Or to the afternoon. His mind remembered but his body didn’t feel.

  He must be dead.

  This had to be hell.

  The panic closed in again. His eyelids flapped their useless wings against the darkness and seismic tremors rattled the black sea enveloping him. It was like being shaken about in an ink-filled snow globe. Without the snow.

  When the shaking stopped, he heard crickets, soft chirps in the darkness that grew and grew until he thought he would lose his mind and the tremors took hold again.

  * * * * *

  Ean followed the magus’s orders without protest. He didn’t believe any of this nonsense would save Marie but so far he hadn’t been asked to do anything that would hurt. The lights were off, a lone candle glowed on the dresser. Music played, the sound of water and crickets chirping, a summer night melody. Melted wax, laced with vanilla and spices perfumed the air. The magus had a calming effect, on the babies, on Marie, on Ean.

  Anything that calmed should at least lower her blood pressure a few points. It had remained stubbornly at 190/100 since he’d brought her home.

  If the magus wanted to shake bone rattles over her body and sprinkle her with eye-of-newt to get her pressure down, Ean would have let him.

  He was giving her an ordinary enough medical examination, checking her pulse, the dilation of her pupils. He bathed her face and fed her some ice chips as Ean had. Except for briefly touching his forehead to hers while he held her face between his hands and humming what sounded like a lullaby, he’d done nothing magus-like.

  “I don’t understand,” Ean told the magus. “Her blood pressure is still through the roof. The seizures keep coming. She’s not responding to the magnesium sulfate. I don’t know how many more of these seizures she can go through.”

  The magus removed the pillows Ean used to keep Marie on her side. If nausea hit again, she might choke. Thankfully, that stage of the eclampsia passed soon after the last baby was born.

  Ean had to busy his hands with the baby to keep from snatching the pillows away and putting them back where he had them. He looked at the pillows tossed to the other side of the bed and touched his daughter’s petal soft cheek, felt the tug of her tiny mouth find his fingertip and pull. She should be pulling, but at her mother’s nipple. His callused finger was a sorry replacement.

  The baby was curled in her warm sling, eyes two bright blue stars, a tiny pink tongue that kept poking out. He’d just washed his hands so he let her have his finger again. She latched on and sucked, closing her eyes with pleasure. She made throaty infant noises. He wondered how he could avoid losing his heart to a life so fragile and fleeting. He suspected it was too late to be asking that question.

  Ean itched to go search for Adam. He imagined Adam’s father did too. He wondered where he found the discipline to keep from flying apart as one obstacle after another delayed their search. Maybe it was just unshakeable self-control developed over centuries of practice. The living came first.

  “Ean,” he asked. “Is there any warning a seizure is setting in?”

  The magus was a medical doctor—among other things. You could pile up many degrees over the centuries. Ean tried to hold onto that thought. He might know a trick, some offbeat remedy.

  “It usually starts with twitching. Her eyelids will flutter. Then her eyes roll back and tremors take over.”

  Maya hovered in the doorway. “Can you help her, Magus?”

  Ean eased out of the baby sling, cupped her in his hands. Her arms spread wide like bird wings. Maya had a blanket over her shoulder. She gathered it around Marisa when Ean put her in Maya’s arms. He’d named the babies while he waited for Maya to bring help. He thought it gave them permanence. Mostly, he needed some piece of each he could hold tight to, something no one could take.

  “We’ll see what we can do,” the magus was saying. “We’ll see.”

  He leaned over Marie, suddenly intent. “Is this what you mean, Ean? This flutter?”

  He grasped Marie’s head, pressing his thumbs into the bony ridges of her brows. Ean grabbed the doorframe with both hands to keep from snatching the magus away from her. He could not endure much more of this.

  Another seizure ripped through her and brought Ean to his knees beside the bed. When she stopped shuddering, he squeezed her hand. “I will go crazy if you do that again,” he wept. “I swear I will go insane.”

  The magus put his hand on Ean’s shoulder. “You’ve done all the right things for eclampsia Ean. There’s nothing you neglected.”

  “Then why doesn’t it help?” He pushed up from the floor. Turned away. He didn’t want to watch her die. He couldn’t leave her to go through it alone.

  “Because, eclampsia isn’t doing this.”

  That spun Ean around. “What then?” A faint rush of hope swelled in his chest.

  “Adam.”

  That answer flattened it. Perhaps the magus had beat him to insanity.

  “What? You’re trying to tell me some kind of soul crisis causes this?” He wanted to grab the magus by the shoulders, shake him hard. He might have if Maya hadn’t stepped between them.

  Ean shoved his hands in his pants pockets but he was sure his glare made his opinion of this silliness clear. The magus didn’t flinch.

  “From what you told me, I think she tried to go to Adam since he couldn’t get to her. And while I can’t explain how they managed it, somehow Adam wound up inside her when she shifted.”

  “Are you crazy?” The words exploded from Ean’s mouth.

  “He is inside of her. They are entangled. She has his eyes.”

  “That’s impossible! He was outside by the river, Magus. She was in the barn.”

  Maya was leaning over Marie. “Ean,” she said.

  “They were nowhere near each other. No way for them to entangle. Whoever heard of such a thing anyway?”

  “Nevertheless, he is trapped inside her.”

  “Ean,” Maya said. “I think you should shut up and see for yourself.”

  Ean didn’t believe it. N
ot for a minute. The magus was a ridiculous old man with ludicrous explanations. He knelt again at Marie’s side, exerted pressure on the upper ridge of her eye sockets with his thumbs. Her lids popped up and he saw it too, her iris shifted from blue to silver then back. She was slipping away from them, only minimally responsive.

  “Adam,” she whispered. “Adam can’t leave me.”

  She’d been saying that, over and over. Ean had thought she meant she didn’t want Adam to leave. Had she been telling him the source of her problem all along?

  Ean shivered and sat back on his heels. “What do we do? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ean hadn’t expected that answer. If the magus, supreme millennial being, wisest of all didn’t know, who did?

  “There are mysteries even ridiculous old men haven’t unraveled,” the magus said.

  It was a reprimand. One he deserved. He should have been guarding his thoughts better. Ean stood, head bowed respectfully. “I’ll do anything you need, Magus. Anything!”

  The magus frowned and waved his hands. “Let me think a minute.”

  He walked away from them and stood looking out through the balcony doors. Night had settled. The windows were black squares in white wood frames. Ean knew Adam used black glass as a thinking tool, to solve complex problems. It didn’t require anything so fancy as the mirror he had in his lab. A dark windowpane would serve. Adam said it gave the imagination a canvas to paint ideas upon and served as an elevator of sorts to take the mind to higher states, states that could bend time and space to their will. Ean half expected to see the magus vanish before their eyes and reappear with Adam and Marie, properly separated in their own bodies. Another part of him knew that just because the process defied rules he knew, that didn’t mean there weren’t rules.

  You couldn’t punch random buttons on a calculator and come up with the total for a row of numbers. What the magus did was akin to punching those buttons mentally while they shifted positions on the other side of a dark curtain. Wishing and fairy dust didn’t provide solutions. Applying the right mental formula could.

  The magus turned and pointed at Maya. “She is the key.”

  Maya edged toward Ean. “Me?” she squeaked.

  “No. The baby. Bring her here.”

  Maya’s arms tightened. The baby squirmed.

  “He won’t hurt her, Maya,” Ean said.

  She relinquished the baby. Reluctantly. “She’s so fragile, Magus.”

  He unwrapped her and she fretted, her arms and legs batting the air. He put her on the bed, lifting the sheet and tucking her close to her mother’s breast, skin to skin. One little arm waved, her tiny fist batting her own nose. Ean knelt beside the magus, ready to snatch Marisa away should Marie start to seize. The baby’s pupils were huge, dark orbs rimmed in sapphire. The fine hairs on her head were so blonde they were near invisible. She seemed focused on her mother’s face.

  The movement made Marie open her eyes. She looked clearer, more alert. She panted, her respiration still too fast, as if she was breathing for two.

  “Say hello to your daughter,” the magus said. He brought Marie’s hand to the baby’s cheek, cupped it there. Marie looked down. Their eyes connected.

  Ean saw light, the first thing to pierce Marie’s pain, the first time she’d shown any interest in the babies she worked so hard to give life.

  Marisa went still under her mother’s gaze. Marie stroked the infant’s fist with one finger, the tiny hand opened. They pressed palms together, the look of love so intense it made Ean squint. Marie smiled. They vanished.

  Ean closed his eyes and opened them again. As if he might erase what had happened. Both gone.

  Ean’s head snapped up. “What have you done?” he shouted.

  The magus looked shocked. He held out both hands, palms up, staring at them. “I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me.”

  “Then who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ean got to his feet, hands on hips and glared. “That answer is unacceptable, Magus.” He didn’t believe the magus didn’t know. He believed the magus didn’t want to say. “You have lived a thousand years. How could anything surprise you?”

  “Ean, maybe if you’d let him think.” Maya tugged at his shirt.

  Ean stared at the bed. Just a rumple of sheets. He waited for his mate and child to reappear. He counted to ten. Then to twenty. He lost patience.

  He was going to shake some sense into the magus if he had to, but he was going to find out what happened.

  The magus held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.” Then he blinked out too.

  “I cannot believe this,” Ean shouted. “It defies the laws of probability that this many things can go wrong in one birthing.”

  “Or one day,” Maya added.

  Ean sat on the edge of the bed, hands dangling between his knees. He had no idea how to begin, or end, or do whatever was required to mend the situation. Babies could not withstand shifting. He closed his eyes. What had he been thinking to hand her over to the magus like that, without a question?

  Maya sat beside him and put her arms around him. Her cheek rested on his shoulder. “We can hold on to the hope that now that we have surpassed the quota of things that can go wrong, something has to go right.”

  An insistent newborn wail started up in the nursery. Another took up the cry. There wasn’t time to hope.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adam was belly-deep in snow. He dropped and rolled in it, feeling light, happier than he could remember being. It sparked, like each flake carried an inner flame, which was ridiculous. And it sang. The woods rang with the music of falling flakes that chimed when they bumped together.

  This was a delicious opposite to the world he’d been locked in.

  Marie raced past and he tackled her, his magnificent white tigress. She licked his face, as if she couldn’t get enough of him. His heart lifted. He’d been afraid she’d find his mutant colors repulsive. He’d endured a lot of teasing from other tigers over his black fur and silver stripes when he first learned to shift. She was not acting repulsed.

  He rolled away from her and raced along the river. She chased after. Definitely not repulsed. He whirled and stood his ground. She skidded to a stop, snow spraying around her. She blinked those beautiful blue eyes at him. He blinked back. Her tail rose, twitching seductively. His rose. His twitched. She crept closer. They rubbed noses.

  A throat cleared. Adam knew who it was without looking. Impossible!

  Marie dropped to her belly, refusing to look in his father’s direction. Her tail dropped to swish along the ground. Clearly, she wasn’t happy with the interruption.

  “Adam,” his father said.

  Adam looked down at his lovely tigress. He realized they’d landed in the next realm and that Marie didn’t belong here. The magus had come to call her back.

  Adam moved toward the forest away from his father’s call. The trees swayed and danced, a silver light glowed in their centers and ran upward like fiery sap. Crystal he thought, a crystal forest. He moved toward it, feeling a sense of peace grow as he closed in. He knew this place, had a vague memory of it that felt eons old. A sense of coming home left him dizzy.

  There, on the other side of the forest, another world waited. Memories of that world didn’t travel from one life to the next. His mind didn’t remember but some part of him craved that place. Joy filled him, filled his soul the way air filled a collapsed balloon.

  Marie trotted after him. He turned, blocking the way with his body, nudging her back when she tried to go around. When she wouldn’t back down, he bumped her chest with his head, warning her back with a stern huff.

  “Adam.”

  He whirled. Irritated. He was doing everything he could to turn her back. His father might lend a hand.

  His father waited on the other side of the river. His reflection wavering over ripples and eddies. The river song on this plane was a deep booming bass that seemed to bubble up from the
earth realm. A blue-eyed cub, whiter than the snow, batted at her reflection in the black waters. She didn’t belong here either. The sight of her near the water set anxious sparks snapping in the air around him.

  “Take them back,” he told his father. “It’s not their time.”

  “Is it yours?”

  “I only know I can’t go back.” Returning to that deflated, pain-racked state had zero appeal.

  “I see.” His father went down on one knee to pat the cub’s head. She put her paw on his knee and looked up into his face. He covered her paw with his hand. Understanding, a silent conversation Adam couldn’t penetrate, passed between them. His father got to his feet and stepped back. Pain glittered, clear and bright, in his eyes.

  He hadn’t expected that, grief from a man always so firmly in control. Adam tried to explain. “I’m soul weary. I can’t take any more.”

  “I know, son.” His voice carried a weariness that only those centuries old can express. “I know.” He turned and walked away.

  The cub pawed the snow where he’d been, but didn’t follow.

  “I’m not coming back,” Adam roared. “It’s no use threatening me with them.”

  He felt light here, joyous, more comfortable in his skin than he had ever been. He wouldn’t give that up. He wouldn’t trade it for a world bereft of hope, oozing misery.

  His father paused. “I’m not threatening you, Adam. I respect your decision.”

  He nodded toward Marie. “She came here on her own. They both did.”

  He started walking again. “Wait,” Adam cried. “Wait.”

  Adam raced back to Marie. He roared. He bumped her. He bullied. She crouched in the snow, tail curled round over her nose, face hidden in her paws.

  He raced back, growled at the baby, trying to scare her back from the water. She sat her dainty bottom in the snow, swatted the air with her paw and tried to imitate him. Her growl sounding more like the quick tick of a clock.

  He looked at his father. “Please. Please, take them back.”