Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) (3 page)

“You should be honored,” I told him. “You’re nothing but a stupid soldier, but I chose you to be part of something greater. When I discover the secret to immortality, your blisters will be mere scratches and your hungry stomach a distant memory. My father will be so proud. Our kingdom will be mightier than Alexander the Great’s and wealthier than the Persians’! The Hebrew name shall be revered as it was intended, not a nation obsessed with messiahs and afterlives. We will establish the Kingdom of Heaven today, not generations from now.”

Abijah buried his face in his hands, and when he looked up, I saw tears smearing his filthy cheeks. “You are insane,” he declared. “All those lives. Lost in the shipwreck. You don’t even mourn. You don’t even understand that you are marooned, ten thousand leagues from home. Don’t you understand, Princess Maya? Your father approved your voyage so he could get rid of
you
.”

“Shut up, old man.” I pulled the scraps of my dress tighter together, ignoring the unpleasant feeling of chilly air nipping at my bare skin. “Then I shall claim the secret of immortality for myself.”

“Still with your mad rants!” Abijah rasped. He tore at his hair, and I noted more froth dripping from his mouth. “Dear Yahweh, what did I ever do to earn your displeasure? Why have you banished me here, to die in the company of this Jezebel? I shall not have it!”

“Calm down,” I admonished. “You’re sick from the sea. It’s all right. I forgive you your ill-tempered words.”

“I don’t forgive you!” he screamed. “I may die in a strange land far from home, but at least I can avenge all of those poor souls lost at sea on the whim of an insane princess!”

He staggered toward me, thick arms dripping with salt water. I tried to run, but my legs buckled like rubber.

“Captain Abijah. Captain Abijah! In the name of my father, the King of Judea, I order you to stand down!”

“That’s right. Run, coward.” The light left his eyes. I knew Abijah was gone, then. I wasn’t seeing him. This is how Death comes, slipping into susceptible minds, seizing control of their bodies, and raising their hands to do His bidding.

He grabbed a loop of my hair and forced my head down upon a limpet-encrusted stone. I could hear nothing but the rise and surrender of the sea. His shadow fell over me, and the rock he held blocked out the sun.

A growl split the air, reverberating over the thunderous toll of the ocean. A blur of white streaked past, and then Abijah flew off of me. The sea dragged him away.

I slipped off the rock, suddenly frightened, suddenly truly alone. Except for the beast.

The white tiger padded toward me, light refracting in azure eyes so wise and sad at the same time. I had never felt a gaze that held so much weight. Inky black stripes painted its face, rippled down the ruff collar at its neck, and looped around its tail.

I ducked, but the white tiger leaped over me in a graceful bound and disappeared into the bush. I hurried to follow. My limbs had begun to twitch uncontrollably, and the sea didn’t glisten as bright.

I knocked against someone.

“Khyber?” I whispered. “I want to escape. I don’t like this place.”

“Ssh,” he hushed me. “There’s still more you need to see.”

It was too dark here. The shadows hid everything. Sometimes they emerged as people—faceless, but bent on murdering me. I ran a different way until I couldn’t run. I walked until I couldn’t walk. I crawled until I couldn’t crawl.

A string of autumn leaves rattled over my head, and they sounded like my shuddering breaths.

The white tiger slipped out of a thicket of bamboo saplings, ruff rising as she circled me.

–Poor child– she said suddenly. –Too have come so far only to die here–

“You!” I raised a blood-encrusted finger. “You speak!”

–I speak because you are entering my world: Eve. The spirit realm. This is where all spirits come as twilight draws to a close, when it’s time for them to pass on–

“Impossible. I’m not dying.”

The white tiger regarded me. –You are. And your spirit is aggravated, trying desperately to hold on. You must reconcile with yourself if you ever wish to pass on in peace–

“But I can’t be dying! I came here to discover the secret to immortality! To live forever!” I was truly panicking now. “What will happen to him without it?”

–Who is ‘him’?–

“My son.” I placed a hand on my stomach. “My illegitimate child. Who has carried a death sentence on his head even before his birth.”

The white tiger edged closer, and I buried my face in her white coat, the guard hairs scratching my face.

 –We are all dying– she told me. –Even something of the immortal will die–

“What?”

–Meaning–

***

The white tiger received me graciously into her spirit kingdom. I wandered after her, helpless. We scrambled up the craggy slopes of Ulsanbawi, prowled beneath ice-crystal waterfalls, and prayed with the monks in cliff temples. I saw many lion-dog and horse statues perched on the sloped roofs of temples, and I asked the white tiger what they were.

–Demons converted by Confucius– she said. –Now they protect us from the Dark Spirits–

And all around us, the leaves spun golden and rosy, the embers of a dying fire. I shuddered every time one fell. Winter was almost upon us. When it came, I would not be around to see it.

“Why do you know our kind so well?” I asked the white tiger one day.

The Lady of Eve turned to me with those sad, teardrops eyes, knowing regrets only a human could.

–A long time ago, when animals still spoke and the gods listened, my friend Bear and I thought how wonderful it would be to be human. We prayed–

“What happened?”

–We were told to stay in a cave for one hundred days and eat only the sacred garlic and mugwort. When next we emerged in the sunlight, we would be human–

The white tiger paused, staring up toward the lofty reaches of Geumganggul Cave high above us. Her clear eyes reflected the sky. –I couldn’t stay. I was too hungry. All of my instincts over-powered me, urged me to hunt. So, after twenty days, I left. When next I saw my friend the Bear, she walked on two legs and was wife to the god of our people–

I winced. “Ouch.”

–Yes. Ouch– This time when she stalked ahead of me, there was a restless twitch in her tail.

One day, I scampered ahead of the white tiger, up a cliff face only a human could climb. She stopped at the bottom and waited. I yanked myself up on azalea shrubs and sticker branches, pulling myself higher and higher. Light mist touched my cheeks, warning of a coming storm. I brushed it aside. Another reminder of winter. I wouldn’t have it. It couldn’t take me. Not yet. Not now.

The clouds moved in so fast that by the time I reached the top, the world was shrouded in white. I scoured around vainly for a safe path down the mountain and tripped. My hands grabbed wildly for a handhold, but in the rain-mist, the rocks were too slippery. I tumbled down the slope, landing heavily on a pile of rocks. Red pain blossomed in my stomach. No, not my pain. Another’s. I tried to keep all of the blood in, even cupped it with my hands, but it leaked out anyway: my son’s life, seeping away through my fingers. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted.

I couldn’t move. A soundless scream gathered in my throat, even though there would be no one around to hear it. I thought I saw the ghost of a sleeping infant, a blissful smile on his face, drift away in a cradle of clouds.

I tarried on the mountain top too long, alone in the rain and my tears. Finally, I heard heavy, dragging footsteps behind me.

It didn’t sound like the nimble gait of the white tiger. I hid.

It was a Dark Spirit, attracted by the scent of blood. It beckoned for me to have a drink with it.

“How dare you?” I shrieked. “Don’t touch his blood!”

It backed away from me. The rain battered its pale, sunken chest. Its black hair fanned around its naked shoulders, and when it looked at me, I couldn’t stop staring at its black lips and the holes where its eyes should be, half in fascination, half in horror.

“You’re hideous.”

–I am immortal–

“No. An immortal would never look like this—a monstrous demon.”

–I will be beautiful. I will wait–

“Wait for what?”

–For you to die. Then I will drink your blood and be beautiful again– The hollow eyes stared at a spot over my head. I suddenly didn’t want it to look at me. It was very important that it never looked directly at me. But then it did.

–Tell me. Why doesn’t your friend, the white tiger, tell you how to save yourself?–

“I must reconcile with myself.”

The thing’s black lips stretched in silent laugher. It laughed so hard that its skin split apart at the seams.

–The last steps the dying take. She is showing you how to die–

“No. She wouldn’t do that. Unless”—my heart thudded—“there was no other way.”

–There is another way. Become immortal. That is the reason you came here, am I right–

I looked up quickly. The Dark Spirit was laughing again. Without ever making a sound.

A curtain of rain hid them from view.

I buried my face in Khyber’s arms.

“What are the Dark Spirits?”

“Spirits of sin and ruin. While the white tiger lived, they were kept at bay.”

“Now?”

Khyber didn’t answer for a second.

“Now they own this world.”

There was a way. I slipped and slid my way through the rocks. Water dribbled from the cliff’s crinkly cheeks above, running cold down my forehead. Through the shifting mists, I saw the tail of the white tiger below. She’d curled up for a nap while waiting, in a dry patch of cave.

As soon as she smelled the smoke, she bolted upright. I watched the intelligence in her eyes fade and be replaced by something animalistic and feral. She’d failed to become human, unlike her friend, the Bear. She still feared fire.

But there was nowhere for her to go. The wormwood of the Dark Spirits burned when I told it to burn, spread when I told it to spread, and steered her into the very back of the cave so I wouldn’t have to see the look in her eyes.

A while later, when the last of the smoke hissed into the skies, I told the wood to stop. I could see her now: mighty head drooped, white paws stiff and curled into her chest. I entered the cave and beheaded and donned the skull of the white tiger.

The soul fled like They’d told me it would, but I trapped it with a leash of red ribbon. I watched the white tiger cub buck and mewl, but I felt no pity for it. There had been a way to save my son, and the white tiger had kept it from me.

“You should have left me to die on the beach,” I told the cub. It looked at me with wide blue eyes. And then it bit me.

“How dare you!” I hissed. Something collapsed inside me, and my whole world slid toward a drain. Just as it reached that bottomless drop, everything righted, and I could see normally again.

“Nice try,” I said, panting, “but you’re the prisoner now.”

It strained and clawed at the red collar, whining piteously.

 I smiled and turned to survey my rain-shrouded kingdom. There was work to be done. Winter’s chill had closed in around my numbered heartbeats.

Chapter 4: Revelations

The quiet of the night was unsettling after the downpour of unceasing rain in the memory well. Khyber kept an icy arm around my shoulder as we strode through the long halls of the palace, as if worried something might jump out and grab me. Memories were indeed powerful. I was no longer uncertain that I’d bought Khyber the wrong wedding gift.

“You’ve said nothing about what you saw.”

“Why did the white tiger ever help her?” I exploded bitterly. “Why couldn’t she see what a delusional, back-stabbing bitch Maya was?”

Khyber chuckled. “You sounded like your half-sister right then.”

I blinked. Citlalli. I had to cut through murky webs just to see her face clearly. The euphoria of Khyber’s bite was wearing off, and a queasy feeling, like slimy snakes, slipped up and down my stomach. The white tiger had been an ancient, beautiful creature, a power that existed before time. When Maya had killed it, the shock had cut through the bliss sugar-coating my mind. I glanced at Khyber suspiciously.

“When Maya killed the white tiger, she upset the balance of power in Eve, didn’t she? She released those…Dark Spirits.”

“The vampyre’s true nature.” Khyber’s pace quickened. “The longing hunger that can never be filled.”

“She lost her son…so she made you.”

“She made us,” Khyber responded harshly. “I was the sacrifice. Her…payment for a free-reign-immortality, to spend however she liked. Maya performed many tasks for the Dark Spirits, before she desired to be independent of them. They told her that could happen.”

I looked swiftly at him. Una had said Khyber was the first vampyre Maya ever created. He clenched the balcony, pebbles crumbling beneath his fingers.

“An innocent. In order for Maya to gain her vampyric freedom, she needed to give the Dark Spirits an innocent soul. Hers hardly qualified. The Dark Spirits like bright, brilliant souls, burning with energy. So. Maya offered to give the Dark Spirits another.

 “She intended to go after my sisters.” Khyber bowed his head, black hair hiding his face like a raven’s wing. “I waited to climb the rope last. I knew I could make it. Micha and Sunni were never good at climbing, but me, I could scale the highest tree faster than a squirrel. I told them I’d see them up there. But she was so fast. She grabbed me. And I fell. The only time I really needed to climb, and I fell.

“Maya was greedy. It wasn’t enough that she’d harvested my soul for the Dark Spirits. After she drained me completely of blood, she laid me in the ground for three days, with the mark of the Dark Spirits upon me. When I awoke, I was a vampyre. And we were tied together. Now, as long as Maya lives, I live. So, too, as long as I live, she lives on as well.”

“Are your brothers like you?” I whispered.