Page 148 of Tiger's Dream
My mind turned back to the scene at hand when Ren mentioned the tiger bones. I frowned and glanced at Kadam, but he was no longer at my side. I inhaled, trying to catch his scent, but couldn’t find it other than his remains in the casket. Had he gone home without telling me? There were no tracks either.
As the group began the funeral, I dashed back to the house and then checked his hiding place in the trees, looking for him. I heard my own voice echoing through the garden. “It has been our privilege to fight by your side…”
I was becoming frantic. Had he left? Where was he? Why would he leave now?
Kelsey began her poem and the words followed me as I searched the entire area. Finally, I came back to the coffin and stood on the opposite side. As Ren spoke of Kadam, I looked down at the body. Ren said, “Close the door; the shutters close; Or through the windows we shall see, the nakedness and vacancy of the dark deserted house…”
There was a flash of something, a tiny bit of movement inside the coffin. I thought perhaps it was a trick of the light but then the eyelids fluttered. No one else noticed except me. Ren finished his eulogy and then Kelsey approached with her white rose. She placed it inside the coffin and I blinked. Time phased around me and Ren and my old self lifted the lid in almost slow motion. As they did, my vision blurred and beneath the sallow, dead flesh, I saw a man hidden within. One very much alive.
And he was screaming.
The others closed the lid.
I froze time and flicked my fingers. The lid flew off and crashed into a tree, splintering into fragments. I couldn’t worry about that. At that moment, I needed to figure out how this had happened. Bending over the casket, I shouted, “Kadam! Kadam, can you hear me?”
His frightened eyes slid toward me and away as he writhed inside his fleshy trap. It was like what happened to Ana when she came into contact with her younger self, but this time there was no spirit inside to merge with hers. Instead, Kadam was imprisoned inside a vessel that could barely hold him. As I watched, he lifted his arm, but the flesh enveloping it was no longer animated by the soul inside. As a result, the arm flopped about in the casket, as awkwardly as a fish on a riverbank.
His mouth yawned widely, and as he gasped, I realized the lungs of the body were no longer taking in air. I had to get him out of there. Quickly. “Hold on!” I shouted, though I still had no idea what to do. I figured the first object was to get him oxygen. Using the air portion of the amulet, I filled the lungs of his body with air. Luckily for both of us, it worked.
No longer worried about his suffocation, I considered my next move.
Lokesh had been able to use the amulet to resuscitate the dead. He reanimated them but they weren’t living, not exactly. What Ana had done with desiccated bones had been different. Pacing back and forth, I thought.Ana, I sent a mental summons.I need you. When she didn’t appear within the span of a few seconds, I took it as a sign she either hadn’t heard me or didn’t want to be bothered.
Okay, I thought.I can do this. Carefully, concentrating on what I’d seen the goddess do, I clasped both of my hands around the amulet and said, “Damonasya Rakshasasya Mani-Bharatsysa Pita-Rajaramaasya Putra.” The amulet in my hands began to glow. I remembered that every time I pulled someone back from the brink, the amulet had demanded a price from me. To save Ren’s life before, I’d had to give up part of my own. To rescue Ana, I’d forever linked myself to a tiger. What price would it exact now to save Kadam?
Flames licked my skin and sweat poured down my chest and back. My arms shook and I fell to my knees. Power left my body and poured into the amulet. It was like a part of me died in that moment, but at the same time, a small bubble of light lifted up and then shot toward the casket. It pierced the flesh and lit Kadam’s struggling form inside.
He screamed but the sound didn’t penetrate the body. Light consumed him and then his spirit form disintegrated. If the pattern followed what happened with Ana, Kadam would have ended up back home. When I regained my breath, I staggered to my feet and looked inside the box. The Kadam I knew was gone. All that was left was the inanimate corpse of the man I considered a second father.
Gently, I repositioned his hands, putting the flower on top. His lips parted as the air I’d filled his lungs with slowly dissipated. Using the amulet, I remade the lid and placed it back on top of the casket. Then I phased myself invisible and restarted time.
Wearily, I trudged back to the ruins of my parents’ house and sank down on the steps. I didn’t move at all, even when my old self came down the path with Kelsey and offered her a tour. Voices carried from inside the house and I could make out the conversation clearly. Ren walked up the path after filling in the grave and washed his face. As he shook the water from his hands, he stared up at the house, listening. That he could hear them as well as I was evident on his face.
“Do you love him, Kells?” my old self asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
She waited a heartbeat before answering. “Yes.”
I could almost hear the desperation in my voice. “You’re sure you want to choose me?”
Ren sucked in a breath, the pain clear in his expression. Both of us strained to hear her answer though I already knew what it would be.
“Yes,” Kelsey said softly.
Ren turned away, his shoulders slumped. He picked up a rock and slammed it into the trunk of the nearest tree. It cracked and the rock sunk in flush with the trunk as we heard Kelsey say they’d have to leave Ren. It would be too painful otherwise.
How could I not hear the catch in her voice as she talked about leaving him? I remember being delirious with happiness just at hearing her validate my deepest wishes. Never once had I considered the cost of a future without my brother or what it would have done to her to leave him behind.
Would I have even been happy leaving India?Leaving everything? At the time, I thought I would be. That love was all I needed. Now, I knew differently. I did need love. But I needed it with the right person. With one who loved me wholly. Someone who would never look back. And that someone deserved the same from me.
“I’d like to come back here someday,” I heard Kelsey say. “I want to plant some flowers at Mr. Kadam’s grave and trim back the jungle. Maybe we could stay here sometimes,” she continued.
I’d taken that as a sign that we’d set up house in the jungle. Kelsey had never wanted that. She’d visit, sure. But live there? I stood and walked across the grass, touching the rock embedded in the tree—a sign of Ren’s sorrow.
There was only one person I could picture living with me in the jungle. Kelsey was right that this place felt like home. It was important to my family. It always would be.
