The Time Traveller and the Tiger

by Tania Unsworth

  Two shadowy, caped figures were standing beneath the trees.

  ‘Who… are you?’ she gasped. Then she saw that it was only a pair of termite mounds.

  ‘I knew that’s all you were,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t fool me.’

  It took a lot of stabbing and ripping, but at last the turn-ups were cut away. Her jeans felt strangely light once she’d put them back on.

  ‘I’ve got you a bandage,’ she said, returning to the fire.

  John didn’t answer.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to look?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me I could open my eyes!’ John said.

  Elsie sighed. ‘Well, you can. Obviously.’

  Having been kept safely rolled, the fabric in the turn-ups was still relatively clean. Elsie made a long strip of it and wound it around John’s leg.

  ‘Better?’

  He nodded. ‘No use keeping this, though,’ he said, picking up his blood-stiffened sock. He hesitated, and then threw it on the fire.

  They sat for a while without talking, watching as the flames found the woollen shape and devoured it with a satisfying hiss. It was a clear night, with more stars than Elsie had ever seen before. The forest was quiet; a watchful, living kind of silence, filled with a million unheard things. Deep in the darkness, an animal yelped with a wailing, mewing sound.

  ‘Jackal,’ John said.

  ‘Are we… safe out here?’

  ‘Pretty safe. With the fire.’

  Elsie inched closer to the warmth. ‘I don’t know how it can be so cold. It was hot during the day…’

  ‘Just wait till the summer. Heat’s awful, makes you ill. And then there’s the monsoon.’

  ‘Is that why you have to go away to school for most of the year?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Don’t you get homesick?’

  John jabbed at the fire with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks. ‘No use making a fuss about it,’ he muttered. ‘Everyone’s in the same boat, you know.

  ‘I say,’ he added, quickly changing the subject, ‘I don’t suppose you thought you’d be spending the night in the jungle when you got up this morning.’

  ‘No,’ Elsie agreed. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘When did you arrive anyway?’

  Elsie wasn’t sure how to answer this. She could hardly say, ‘I’ve only been here a day,’ because then John would wonder how she had managed to wander so far in such a short space of time.

  ‘Um, yesterday?’

  John whistled. ‘Well, that explains a lot. Don’t worry,’ he said kindly. ‘You’ll soon get the hang of the place. Is your house in town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder if my father knows your father,’ John said. ‘Does he go to the club?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elsie repeated, reverting to her tactic of agreeing with everything.

  ‘They probably know each other, then. Probably old friends.’

  ‘Probably…’

  ‘Just yesterday,’ John said, marvelling. ‘Well, you’ll be able to write a jolly interesting letter to your friends back in England about your first day in India!’

  There was such camaraderie in his voice as he sat there, the firelight playing over his thin, earnest face, that Elsie suddenly wanted to tell him everything. Where she had really come from, the open greenhouse door, the strange scent of the blue lily in its ancient pot. The way he’d said, ‘You can’t go wrong with bacon!’ as he heaped her plate. How it felt to know something impossible: that even though she was sitting right there beside him, it would be ages and ages before she was actually born.

  She couldn’t. He would think she was completely insane.

  ‘Back when… we were arguing,’ she said, ‘you shouted that I’d spoiled everything. Why?’

  John gazed at the fire, studying the embers. His shoulder gave a little twitch, as if he’d been about to shrug and then changed his mind.

  ‘The tiger, I suppose.’

  ‘I stopped you shooting it, but why does that spoil everything?’

  ‘It’s a man-eater.’

  Elsie wished she hadn’t brought it up. He looked so angry, all his friendliness gone.

  ‘It’s a man-eater,’ John repeated.

  Not angry, she realised. More as though he was about to cry.

  ‘I would have shot it, and then I’d have got it home and everyone would have seen,’ he said.

  ‘Seen what?’

  John didn’t answer. He sat hugging his knees, his eyes still locked on the fire.

  ‘Hugh was good at everything,’ he said at last.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘He was all my parents cared about. Now he’s dead. And he’s still all my parents care about.’

  It was Elsie’s turn to be silent. She knew what it felt like to be overlooked.

  ‘I wanted to do something… amazing,’ John said.

  Elsie nodded.

  ‘Just for once,’ John said, his voice bleak. ‘I would have been…’

  A main character, Elsie thought.

  ‘You saved me from the elephant,’ she pointed out.

  John shook his head. ‘I gave you some good advice. Anyone could’ve done that.’

  Elsie wanted to tell him that when he grew up, he would become a doctor and help people get well – perhaps even save their lives. But she had a feeling that even if he believed her, it wouldn’t count. He would probably think being a doctor was giving ‘good advice’ too.

  ‘Well, I think you were really, really brave,’ she told him.

  ‘What rot,’ he said, although Elsie could tell he was pleased by the way he rushed to change the subject.

  ‘We should dig a hole for what’s left of that jungle fowl and build up the fire. Get some sleep.’

  ‘You mean, just lie on the ground?’

  ‘Where else? You can cover yourself with some of those dead leaves.’

  ‘Not even take off our shoes?’

  ‘Best to keep them on. You don’t want to wake up in the morning and find a couple of scorpions hiding inside, do you?’

  Elsie wished he hadn’t mentioned scorpions. She lay down facing the fire, her body tightly curled. Nobody could rest like that, she thought. On the ground, under a scratchy blanket of dead leaves, with scorpions running around trying to get into her shoes. It was impossible.

  Twenty seconds later, she was fast asleep.

  The night brought weight to the forest, turning the meadows and groves into solid blocks of darkness. Only the tiger was immune. The denser the shade, the more insubstantial he seemed to become, until he was as grey as smoke and almost as transparent.

  He had been on the move for most of that afternoon, walking steadily, with an unhurried, undulating pace, pausing every few minutes to turn his head in the direction of some sound, before going on his way. Out in the open like that, stark against the green foliage, he was impossible to miss. Yet he was built to vanish when he chose, the outline of his body splintering among the grass, his stripes dissolving into shadow, each back paw placed exactly where the front had been, to leave the fewest prints.

  He paced on, slipping between patches of cover, his eyes wary. He was in unknown land here, a threat to any other tiger whose territory he crossed. And territory was all. A tiger fought to gain it and must fight to keep it, as long as his strength held. He needed fifty pounds of meat a week merely to stay alive, and fearsome though he was, might attack many times without success before he made a kill. Territory was precious, ceaselessly patrolled, its borders marked and marked again.

  The tiger had come across several such markings in the course of the afternoon. Rocks bore the scent of spray, and high up the trunk of a tree there were deep gashes left by claws. Disquiet grew in the tiger.

  Another had walked this way. A female. But the scent was old, and the bark already healing over the claw marks.

  In the evening he came to a pool, sunk between boulders, and entered it to rest. He stayed there for a long time, soot
hed by the water and the cool. Yet he was still far from home and his hunger was growing, a coil in his chest that tightened by the minute.

  At last he emerged. The moon which had risen huge and yellow above the trees was smaller now and high in the sky. Night was the best time for hunting, the deer huddled, blinded by the dark. The tiger crossed a thinly wooded clearing and stopped short, his attention caught by an unfamiliar thread in the air; the scent of water and burned wood, the faint, tantalising aroma of meat. He lowered his head and sniffed the ground around a pair of termite mounds. Then he padded forward.

  Burning embers. Humans lying still, light playing on the pale ovals of their faces. The tiger gazed at them for a moment. Then the breeze shifted, filling his nostrils with the harsh scent of wood smoke. His nose furrowed into deep grooves of distaste and he turned away, his eyes glowing green in the moonlight.

  It might have been the cold, or the sudden chorus of birds, but Elsie knew differently. It was beauty itself that had woken her.

  She opened her eyes to a world turned silver and gold. A bright haze hung over the stream, dazzled by rays of sun and the luminous sheen of water. Everything was shining; the wet stones, the feathery-tipped grasses, the termite mounds glittering with tiny specks of mica. Even the webs of the funnel spiders at the bases of the trees seemed to glow, like scraps of dream left over from the night.

  And there, by the edge of the water, stood a deer. It had tiny, pointed hooves and velvet horns and white spots dancing over its back as if it had brushed against the stars.

  ‘Ohhhhhh,’ Elsie breathed.

  The deer lifted its head, listening. Then John shifted on the ground nearby and the deer leaped away, disappearing into the mist with a single bound.

  ‘You scared it off,’ Elsie said.

  John sat up blearily, leaves sticking to his hair.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s freezing.’

  They stood up, shivering and stamping their feet.

  ‘Do you have any tea left?’ Elsie asked hopefully.

  John shook his head. ‘Take too long to get the fire going anyway,’ he said, kicking stones over the heap of ashes. ‘Nothing to eat for breakfast either. We might as well get going.’

  ‘Maybe we should wait until someone comes to find us,’ Elsie suggested. ‘Your parents must be looking for you.’

  ‘They’ve probably sent people out to search,’ John said, sounding depressed. ‘There’ll be a fearful row when I get back.’

  They washed their hands and faces in the icy stream, and then took stock of their surroundings. There was a hill in the distance, with a flat top and relatively few trees growing on its slopes. John stared at it, shading his eyes with his hand.

  ‘Good view from up there. Might be able to get my bearings.’

  ‘But it’ll take you ages.’

  ‘Not if I run.’

  Elsie remembered her first sight of him, tearing down the path towards her.

  ‘I like running,’ he said.

  ‘What about your leg?’

  John prodded the denim bandage and flexed his knee a couple of times. ‘Feels fine.’ He slid the gun off his shoulder and handed it to Elsie.

  ‘If anything attacks you, shoot it,’ he said.

  ‘But I don’t know how!’

  John made a face. For a second Elsie thought he was about to call her a fathead again. But he restrained himself.

  ‘Won’t be long.’

  Elsie thought he’d been lying about his leg, but as soon as he took off across the clearing, she knew he’d been telling the truth. Nobody could run like that if they were badly hurt. She stared after him in amazement.

  It wasn’t just that he was fast. It was the way he ran. Effortlessly, all his awkwardness gone. As if his skinny body suddenly made sense.

  As if running was what he was meant for.

  He reached the edge of the clearing, disappeared into a thin band of scrub, then emerged and began making his way up the slope to the summit of the hill, still moving at what seemed like incredible speed.

  Fifteen minutes later he was back. Elsie knew because she’d been counting. Which meant that it was probably a lot less than fifteen minutes, because she always counted too fast. It was probably more like ten. And that was with an injured leg. Elsie looked down at her dusty trainers.

  An injured leg and no proper running shoes.

  They hadn’t been invented yet.

  John leaned from the waist, panting, his face bright.

  ‘You’re really good at running,’ Elsie told him. ‘Really, really good.’

  ‘I know where we are!’ John said, his breath still coming hard. ‘Or how to get back, at least. I saw the river.’

  All they had to do was follow it, he explained. It would lead them to the village. From there, his house was no more than a mile away. As soon as they arrived, his father would contact her parents and they would come and pick her up.

  ‘They must be going crackers,’ John said, ‘wondering where you are.’

  ‘Yes, they must,’ Elsie said, looking down at the ground.

  They set off in the direction of the river, John walking confidently ahead while Elsie lagged behind. She couldn’t help worrying about what was going to happen next. If she didn’t find a way to get back to her own time pretty soon, she’d have to go home with John, and she didn’t like that idea at all.

  She felt certain his parents would ask a lot more questions than he had done. And Elsie had a feeling that simply saying ‘yes’ to everything wasn’t going to work. Perhaps she could pretend to have lost her memory. If she kept repeating, ‘Sorry, can’t remember!’ they would have to give up, sooner or later…

  ‘Come on,’ John called. ‘Keep up!’

  She heard the rushing of water and hurried towards it, pushing through thick bushes. The river was wider than she’d imagined, the water brown and swift, swirling around boulders and fallen branches. Elsie looked downstream. From somewhere just out of sight came a roaring, white-water sound.

  Rapids, she thought. Big ones.

  ‘It looks deep,’ she said.

  ‘Not really,’ John said. ‘You should see it after the monsoon.’

  They were standing close to the water, at a spot where the ground dipped to form a narrow, muddy beach. Further along, the riverbank grew steep again, dense with roots and tumbled rocks. Elsie was about to point this out and suggest it might be easier if they retraced their steps slightly and followed the river from a distance, when John gave a start, and dropped to his heels.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He peered at the ground, his hands on his bony knees.

  ‘It’s the same one, I’m sure of it!’

  ‘The same what?’ Elsie asked, although she had a sinking feeling that she already knew the answer.

  ‘See the claw mark? It’s definitely the same one.’

  ‘It crossed the river,’ John said, straightening up. ‘Prints leading down to the water, but none going in the other direction. That proves it.’

  The wretched tiger, Elsie thought. Again.

  ‘They’re pretty fresh,’ John said. ‘It must have passed close to our camp last night.’

  ‘Well, it can’t be a man-eater, then, can it?’ Elsie said. ‘Otherwise it would’ve eaten us,’ she added.

  John didn’t reply, his eyes scanning the opposite bank. ‘I bet I could find the spot where it came out of the water.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We have to go back to your house, don’t we?’

  John squatted again. ‘Yes, pretty fresh,’ he repeated to himself. ‘I could pick up the trail on the other side.’

  ‘But we have to go back! You said your parents will be worrying. You’ve been gone for ages.’

  ‘All the more reason to have something to show for it, then.’

  ‘You can’t cross, it’s too deep.’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’

  Elsie stared at the fast
-flowing water. ‘You’ve crossed it here?’

  ‘I need a stick, that’s all.’ He turned and began rummaging in the bushes, tugging at the knotted branches.

  ‘You mustn’t go after that tiger,’ Elsie pleaded. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘You said that before.’ John was still searching among the bushes. ‘I don’t know what makes you so sure.’

  There was nothing for it, Elsie thought. There was no other way of preventing him. She drew a deep breath.

  ‘I’m sure because you told me. You said killing that tiger was the worst thing you ever did.’

  ‘But I haven’t killed it!’

  ‘I know.’ Elsie sat down on a rock with an air of resignation. ‘I’m from the future,’ she said.

  ‘Stop messing around.’ He took out his knife and began sawing at a branch.

  ‘I’m not, it’s true. I’m from seventy-four years in the future and you’re my…’

  Elsie paused. She had to explain things to John, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to completely freak him out. ‘I was visiting you,’ she said in a rush. ‘You live in a village in England and after you killed the tiger it was made into a rug and you have it in your spare room and you still feel bad about it.’

  ‘Seventy-four years in the future?’ John said. ‘I must be jolly old!’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘Stop talking rot. If you want to get across the river with me, you’ll have to find yourself a stick.’

  ‘But it’s true!’ Elsie cried. ‘One minute I was there and the next I was here!’ John was staring at her as if she’d gone mad, but she ploughed on, describing the greenhouse and the strange flower, and how she’d told herself she must be dreaming.

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t tell you where I lived, because I don’t live anywhere. My dad isn’t friends with your dad. He doesn’t even exist. Look at my clothes!’ Elsie lifted one of her feet. ‘These are called “trainers”. You’ve never seen anything like them before, have you? That’s because they haven’t been invented yet.’