Page 137 of Tiger's Dream
“Kishan—” she began.
My old name lit a fire in me. I yelled, “I told you not to call me that!”
“How about if I call you buffoon, you thick-headed tiger?”
Behind us the little tree shook, and now that I was paying attention, I felt it responding to us. The small leaves curled up on the branches and the color dulled.
“Stop!” she said, raising a hand and fingering a leaf. The dying foliage detached and fell to the ground, dropping at her feet. “Now do you see what you have done?” she yelled, pushing me away from the tree. “You killed it!”
“Ikilled it?” I said, slapping a hand on my chest. “Whose big idea was it to kiss in the first place? I’d say you’re the one who killed it.”
Both of us froze when we heard the groan of a heavy branch overhead. “Shh,” Ana said, grabbing my hand and squeezing my fingers. “We have to stop fighting. We might destroy the great tree otherwise.”
“If I admit you’re right, can we just drop this and finish our work?”
Ana gave me a long look and then nodded.
As we walked to the giant trunk, I thought about what she’d said.Is it possible that the land responds to her? Absolutely. What I didn’t get was how kissing her could create a giant tree.
Standing at the base, she closed her eyes and murmured, “Fanindra, I have need of you.” Ana twirled her hand in the air and touched the amulet that hung around her neck. Light shimmered around her hand, and a moment later, Fanindra was there, her golden head lifted to the goddess.
“I need your assistance,” she said, and pressed her hand to the ground. Fanindra hissed and then lifted her upper body, opening her hood. She swayed back and forth hypnotically. Soon a green snake slid out from the grass and touched his nose to hers.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a bit too small. Like I said, the snake was giant.”
“Why do men have so little patience?” Ana asked Fanindra. “They cannot perceive what lies right beneath their noses.” The golden snake twisted her head as if considering me and stuck out her tongue. Leaning down, Ana stroked the green snake’s scaly head. “How would you like to do a favor for your goddess?” she asked.
After waiting a beat and cocking her head as if listening to an answer I never heard, Ana worked her magic. She channeled a few different abilities using the kamandal for healing and Fanindra as well as the earth and air portions of the amulet. Twisting them all together in a new, unique way, she imbued the snake with her gift.
Before my eyes, the snake grew and gained the power not only to camouflage himself but to speak. Ana gave him instructions, and he bowed his head to her before disappearing around the side of the tree. His body made a peculiar kind of sliding noise, and it took several minutes before the end of his tail finally vanished.
“I hope he remembers everything,” Ana said.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
She shrugged. “He is rather simple-minded. Fanindra says she will help him though.”
Straightening, Ana made a door in the tree, and just as she had with Shangri-La, she lit the inside of the tree with her power, remaking and refashioning it far beyond what I could see. “Come, Sohan,” she said. “Fanindra, you may return to Kelsey if you wish or accompany us for a time.” The snake answered by wrapping around Ana’s arm.
Enclosing us in her bubble, Ana lifted us into the air, remaking the wood inside the tree into steps and hollowing out places inside where we could ascend. It only took a moment to create the house of gourds. When we came to the house of sirens, she fashioned the place easily enough, the dark wood ceiling stretched high above us, but didn’t know where to find sirens.
A trickle of water ran down the inside of the trunk and Ana let the water pool on her fingers. “My teacher, I mean, Kadam once told me that sirens were mermaids, a sort of half fish, half mortal who live beneath the sea.”
“In some stories, they are.”
“Perhaps, like the Kappa demons sprung from tears, these creatures come of their own accord.”
“What are you saying?”
Anamika didn’t answer. Instead, she opened her palm and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The trident materialized in her hand. Touching the tip of it to the stream of water and closing her eyes, she whispered a summons.
At first, there were no signs that her call was understood, and I was about to approach her to discuss other options, but then she lifted a finger and pressed it to her lips. “Do you hear them?” she asked.
I shook my head.
She cocked hers and smiled. “You may show yourselves.”
A grayish fog streamed from knotholes in the wood and grew, forming into human shapes. When they materialized, they bowed to the goddess. I recognized them immediately as the sirens that trapped me and Kelsey. As one of the handsome young men bowed over Ana’s hand and pressed his lips to her skin, my own grew hot.
