Page 117 of Tiger's Dream
“If she almost died, we will have to stay and guide them,” Ana said. “We cannot risk letting them go through it alone.”
I glanced up. “Yeah. Okay. We can do that.”
“But what if we aren’t meant to?”
Shrugging, I said, “Does it matter? Kadam said we were in charge of this. He was purposely vague.”
“I suppose,” she said. After a moment, she thrust a paper at me. “What do we do about this?” she asked.
My breath stopped as she held out a very clear photo of the Rajaram royal family seal. I took the photo and studied it. It was even more obvious to me now that the thing I’d abandoned carving would one day become the family heirloom in the picture.
“Yes, that might be a problem.”
“You don’t have it?”
“Not exactly. I haven’t…uh…finished it yet.”
“Finished it? What do you mean?”
I gave her the abbreviated version of the truth stone carvings I’d done. She knew they came from the egg, but I hadn’t yet found a way to share the origins of my family seal with her.
She said, “I see no reason why this should stop us. You’ll have plenty of years to finish the stone and you know what it’s supposed to look like. Surely, you can fashion a secret entrance to the cave based on its shape.”
“I suppose I could,” I said.
“Then let’s get going.”
With the power of the Damon Amulet, it took a surprisingly short time to fashion the cave. We went back to the time when Kadam estimated it had been discovered and created the entire underground structure using the earth piece of the amulet. We had photos and rubbings of the monolith, and Ana took great pride in creating that while I set up the various booby traps.
We opted not to do much to the surface leading down into the cave. Kadam had said that Buddhist monks would settle there sometime in the third century A.D. We did, however, create a mark that fit the seal and fashioned it to open the doorway into the cave when pressed and twisted. To disguise it, Ana used her power to recreate all the glyphs from the picture Kelsey had taken. Neither of us could read it, and we weren’t even sure it was an actual language, but there it would remain as the centuries passed.
We opted to create the bugs when Kelsey and Ren entered, otherwise, we were liable to have either a cave full of bugs or a bunch of petrified, extinct insects. When we fashioned the door where the monolith would be, I told Ana about the handprint that allowed Kelsey access and the henna drawing. Ana paced for a time, puzzling out how to make it work.
“How did he create a magical henna print?” Ana asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe the power to open the door comes from the lightning power of the fire amulet,” I said, then thought differently. “No. That’s not possible. Kells didn’t get that piece of the amulet until later.”
“Can we not simply do the same thing we did with our own home?” she asked. “Create a lock that will open when she touches it?”
“But that only answers to the two of us.”
Musing, Ana said, “We saw how the power of the goddess and her tiger enveloped the two of them at the circus. Perhaps the door will respond to that.”
“I suppose we can try it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll do something else to let her in.”
Ana touched her hand to the stone wall near the door and I pressed mine on top of hers. A silvery light bloomed beneath her palm. When we lifted our hands away, a glowing print remained.
When we were confident that we’d recreated the cave in the right way, we sped through time until we arrived at the exact moment Kelsey and Ren entered the cave. The Rajaram seal hung around Kelsey’s neck, so even though it didn’t technically exist for me yet, I knew I would one day finish this immensely important object.
Invisible once again, Ana and I led them through the labyrinth. We glided on a breeze she summoned with the amulet. That way, our feet never touched the ground to make Ren suspicious. Though he might have sensed us, causing his instincts to warn him of danger, it would only serve to make him more alert and wary. We were trusting this innate sense of his to protect both of them from the traps we’d created.
When Kells almost turned down a wrong path, I caused a gate to appear and block her from backing up. Though it scared her, Kelsey moved forward and headed to the place where they were to find the bugs. Personally, I considered bugs the ultimate pests. Fleas, lice, gnats, flies, mosquitos—these things were irritating to a tiger at best, pestilence spreaders at worst. But Anamika loved animals of all kinds, even bugs.
We walked through the tunnel before Ren and Kelsey arrived. Anamika raised her arms, and not a moment later, swarms were crawling overhead, up the walls, and on us. They moved out of her way with each step she took, the floor appearing just below our feet, and when she held out her hands, they flew to her palms, lifting their sharp mandibles and clicking them as if they were pets asking for a treat. While she cooed over them, I shivered with disgust.
After exiting, I jerked my body back and forth, trying to shake them off. She hissed and made me stand still while she patiently pried them from my clothing and hair. Gently, she placed them back inside the tunnel as we waited for Ren and Kelsey to emerge.
When our two charges ran out of the tunnel, Ana scowled, angry at seeing so many of her creations being destroyed. She huffed quietly, waved her hand, and the two of us rose in the air and moved on to our next trap, letting Ren and Kelsey recover from the experience. The next trap was the poisoned barbs. They weren’t really poisoned. I just floated the scent of poison to Ren’s tiger nose.
