The Wildings (17 page)

“Haloom!” he said, growling as loudly as he could.

Mara listened to the keepers’ chatter and the kitten’s whiskers came down in relief. “It’s all right, Rudra,” she said. “All they want is for you to go and join your parents. They’re bringing something in, not taking any of you out, so I guess it should be fine.”

The keepers watched in puzzlement and surprise as the small tiger cub suddenly seemed to listen very hard, his big ears cocked, and then padded over to his parents. They stared even more when the cub rubbed up against Ozzy and Rani, offering a few halooms, and when all three of the tigers turned and stalked into their artificial cave.

“Well, that was easy!” said the head keeper in some surprise. He made sure they had the grille leading to the cave securely
locked, though. He had no idea why the tiger clan was being so co-operative but he wasn’t about to take any chances. “Bring her in!” he called.

Mara stared as a small, covered cage on wheels was trundled in. As the scent from the cage reached the tigers in the cave, they all heard a slow, enraged rumble from Rudra, much louder than his “haloom” had been. Rani growled, low in her throat. Mara could see the beautiful white tiger pacing up and down the length of the cave, her eyes blazing. Ozzy was up on his feet, too, his paws slamming against the walls as he roared.

Across the rest of the zoo, the roars and growls of the tigers rippled outwards, setting off a chain reaction. The bears woke up and slouched out of their cages. The hoolock gibbons howled and gibbered, racing each other to the very tops of their cages. The sambar deer barked; the nilgai antelope shivered and pawed the ground, seeking shelter in the cool, dark bushes at the backs of their enclosure. “Heee heee heee
heee
heee!” called the hyenas, their laughter rising in manic waves.

The keepers were opening the cage doors cautiously, using long, wooden poles. The cover was lifted off and the keepers backed away en masse. Mara blinked as a small, golden-and-black striped cub with glittering green eyes walked sedately down the ramp.

She paused at the foot, taking in her new surroundings, and stepped out daintily, ignoring Mara and moving straight to the pool that served as tiger wallow and water bowl. The cub washed her face and her whiskers with perfect serenity, as if she couldn’t hear Ozzy’s bellows or Rudra’s snarls.

One of the keepers took a cloth out of the cage and Mara smelled the new cub’s scent on it. He shoved it into the tigers’ cave at the end of a pole. There was a murderous roar from Ozzy and the steel grille shook as the tiger charged at it, but the grille held, and then there was silence, as the tigers took turns sniffing the cloth.

Tantara reappeared in the trees, watching cautiously as the new cub stretched and walked around the enclosure, checking out the food bowls, stepping around the mud wallows. The keepers backed out of the enclosure, taking up positions just outside the walls with their tranquilizer guns at the ready, Mara noted. The langur and the kitten stared at the intruder, who seemed stunningly pretty by tiger standards, and very poised.

Mara felt a tug on her line and sighed. Her Bigfeet were back. “I have to go,” she told Tantara. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Hurry back,” said the langur, whose black face and liquid golden eyes seemed uneasy. “I don’t know what to make of this, Mara. Come back as soon as you can.”

But the kitten had a difficult time getting away from her home in Nizamuddin West. The Bigfeet had brought her catnip mice and her favourite feathery toys from the market, and they wanted to play. Mara wrestled with her instincts, which were urging her to comply, and her conscience, which was suggesting she should go back to the zoo, pronto. Her instincts won, and the kitten spent a guiltily happy hour playing Kill-The-Fearsome-Feather with her Bigfeet. Then it was time to eat, and she was so tired after the morning at the zoo, and an afternoon of rough-and-tumble, that she went to sleep in a small, untidy heap on a pile of cushions. Her naps were always deeper, and longer, after
she had spent time at the zoo—sendings were fun but tiring, and her Bigfeet sometimes murmured among themselves about the kitten’s extraordinary ability to sleep through all the friendly clamour and bustle of the neighbourhood.

Mara meant to go back the next day, but the Bigfeet had an unexpected visitor, and between trying to steal the new Bigfoot’s shaving brush and socks and finding time for Beraal’s lessons, a week went by before the kitten could get to the zoo.

When she did, she popped up near Tantara, who was rocking moodily on a high branch. “Sorry, my Bigfeet kept me really busy,” the kitten said. “Where’s Rudra?”

“With his new friend,” said Tantara, wrapping her tail around herself and rocking harder. There was a rough patch on her tail that Mara hadn’t seen before, an abrasion with an ugly scab like knotted wood.

Down on the ground, the two tiger cubs were exploring a brand-new sandpit.

“Shall we join them?” said Mara.

“Oh, I’m not welcome,” said Tantara. “Her royal highness doesn’t think tigers should consort with common langurs, and after the last play session with Rudra—never mind that. You go join them if you want to.”

The kitten shimmered in confusion. “But I thought he spat at her when she came into the enclosure?”

Tantara looked sad. “Not for long. Rani smelled the scent of the cub on that piece of cloth, and when they let her out an hour later, she went over and made friends. Rudra followed, and he spat at the cub the first four times she tried to talk to him. So she went off on her own with Rani, and soon enough, he began to
follow them around. Now they’re the best of friends, as you can see.”

“So maybe we can all play together—one more cub means that we can play different games, can’t we?” said Mara.

The langur groomed her long paws, looking down at the kitten, who was hovering in mid-air just under a branch.

“Mara,” she said gently, “I know we’ve had a lot of fun together, but something that cub said some days back made me think hard. One of the reasons why I come over here so often is that I don’t have other langur friends. There were no other langur babies when I was born in the zoo, and the orangutans and chimps are just—different, that’s all. I can’t talk to the other monkeys; they can’t help their instincts, the macaques run away from our kind. Rudra’s like me. He was brought here when he was really little, and though there were always the leopards and the lynxes, there were no other tiger cubs. And I sometimes wonder whether you shouldn’t be making friends with cats back home, wherever your home is.”

“But we’re friends,” said Mara. “What’s wrong with being friends?”

The langur shook her head sadly. “Nothing’s wrong with being friends, Mara,” she said. “It’s just that it’s—well, as young Tawny said, who ever heard of a tiger being friends with a langur and a kitten?” Mara looked from the langur’s lonely figure in the branches back to the two tiger cubs. “But she doesn’t understand, Tantara, she only just got here. I’m going to go over and introduce myself. I’m sure it’ll be fine once I’ve explained the situation.”

“Mara—,” Tantara began, but the kitten had already left.
The langur watched her thoughtfully. And near the tiger cave, Ozzy watched, too. The tiger’s grave eyes met the langur’s golden ones, and both silently acknowledged a mutual sadness.

“—we never did that in the jungle, of course, but I suppose you have different rules here,” the golden-and-black tiger cub was saying. “Hey, Rudra! Sorry I couldn’t come over earlier. What are you playing? Can Tantara and me join in?” Mara brought herself down to hover closer to Rudra’s face.

The new cub let out a surprised growl. “What on earth is
that
?” she demanded.

To Mara’s astonishment, Rudra seemed embarrassed. “This is a friend—well, a visitor. Mara comes by from time to time to see me, though she lives quite far away. Mara, this is Mulligatawny, but she prefers to be called Tawny.”

“Hello,” Mara began to say, but the tiger cub interrupted, her tail lashing slowly to-and-fro.

“You poor, poor fellow,” she said sweetly to Rudra. “I can see how difficult it’s been for you, having no friends.”

“But he does have friends,” said Mara indignantly, bobbing into Tawny’s space so that the tiger cub had to acknowledge her presence. “Tantara and I are here every day. We’d love to get to know you, too, of course.”

She stopped when the lovely tiger cub’s whiskers began to tremble with laughter. “She’s a scream, Rudra!” said Tawny. “No wonder you allowed her to entertain you.” The tiger turned to face the kitten. “It must have been so tiring for you, Mara, coming all the way from—wherever. You don’t have to do that any more now that I’m here. But you’re welcome to drop in once in a while.”

The kitten’s hackles rose. “Rudra, you’re not going to let her talk to us that way, are you?” she demanded.

Tawny stretched, and Mara saw how beautifully her muscles rippled, taut under her striped skin. “Us?” she said. “Kitten, I don’t know what world you live in, but me, I live in the real world and it truly is a jungle out there. There’s no room in the jungle for a cat who—” swiftly, she unsheathed her claws and swatted lazily at Mara, her paws passing right through the image of the kitten—“doesn’t even actually exist in this cage. And as for a tiger making friends with a langur, oh please. Ask Miss Golden-Eyes there whether she enjoyed their last little wrestling match. Go find your own kind, kitten. No hard feelings, but it’s like calls to like in this world.”

Mara’s tail and whiskers had gone all the way down. The orange kitten stared from one cub to the other. When she looked back at the tree, Tantara made a wry, I-told-you-so gesture with her expressive paws.

“So that’s it?” she said slowly. “Rudra, you don’t want to be friends with us because Tantara’s a different species, and because I’m not really here? That’s what you feel?”

“Yes,” said Tawny. “That’s what he feels.”

The white tiger cub was standing there, looking from Mara to Tawny, his tail switching uncertainly. He turned to his mother, but Rani was impassive, and didn’t come forward. Ozzy’s great head was turned away. The two adult tigers sat motionless and silent by the watering hole.

“Tawny,” said Rudra, “would you go away for a moment, please, and leave me alone with my friends?”

Tawny’s green eyes narrowed and then flashed with anger.
“If you insist,” she said, padding away with her bristly chin up and her back held very, very stiffly. She settled herself under a tree, with her back to Rudra and his friends.

“Come down here,” said Rudra to Mara. The kitten hovered stubbornly above his head. “Please? The three of us need to talk.”

The cub padded over to Tantara’s tree, and after some hesitation, the langur came down to the lower branches.

“I’m sorry about the way Tawny spoke,” the cub said. “She isn’t used to our kind of friendships—she’s grown up in the jungles, and there the rules are different.”

Mara’s tail began to rise every so slightly. “So we can still be friends?”

Tantara and Rudra exchanged glances. “You know, Mara,” said the langur, “perhaps this is a good time for all of us to step back a bit, take some time out. I’ve been thinking that I never hang out with the lemurs, even though they’ve often tried to make friends. And Rudra and Tawny need time to get to know each other.”

The kitten couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Why can’t all four of us be friends? We never cared before about being different species, did we?”

Rudra sighed. “It didn’t matter before, Mara, because in a way we were all cubs, or kittens, or younglings—we were just babies playing together. But Tantara’s right, and while Tawny may be harsh, both of them are saying the same thing. We need some time to find our own friends.”

Mara flicked her ears stubbornly. “I don’t see why the differences matter,” she said.

The tiger cub caught his mother’s gaze, and for a long time, he and Rani seemed to be engaged in a quiet, private exchange.

“All right,” he said. “I hate doing this, but maybe you should see this for yourself.”

And with that, he opened his mouth and roared.

It was not a small haloom this time. His voice had broken, and this was a full-throated, slow growl that deepened into the menacing roar of an adult tiger. Rudra’s fur rippled and as he roared, his chest expanded. Mara mewed and mewed in instinctive fear at the metamorphosis of her friend. Tantara had shinnied back up, all the way to the top of the branches, and she gibbered and chattered, sending out deep warning cries.

It was only by a whisker that Mara managed to hold on to her control, and it took all of her efforts not to break down and broadcast her terror across the general cat link. But Beraal’s lessons held, and when the kitten finally opened her eyes, Rudra had stopped roaring and was watching her with compassion.

“I’m growing up, Mara,” he said quietly. “For the last month, it’s been harder playing games with the two of you and keeping it gentle. It’s the hunting instinct. I can’t help it. I—no, you should ask Tantara to tell you the rest.”

Tantara, who had slid back down the branches, rejoining them but staying several lengths away from Rudra, felt a pang go through her at the sight of Mara’s miserable face. “Mara,” she said gently. “Look at my face. Look at my tail.” The Sender’s whiskers went taut as she saw the claw marks on the langur’s face, understood the meaning of the healing scar on her tail; familiar scars, left by a paw so much like her own.

“You mustn’t blame Rudra,” Tantara went on. “We were
playing a game of chase-and-catch the other day, while Tawny was napping. It was an accident, at first. His claw scratched at my tail—just a scratch, nothing more. But we both smelled the blood. He’s not a cub any more, Mara. He’s a young tiger, a hunter. He couldn’t stop himself from attacking me.”

“If Rani hadn’t bounded up and stopped me, I don’t know what would have happened,” Rudra said. His voice was low and sad, but when he raised his head, he held Mara’s gaze with steady eyes. “Tawny doesn’t understand the friendship the three of us had, but she’s my kind,” he said. “I can play-wrestle with her without worrying that she’ll be hurt, or worse. But Tantara can’t join in any more.”