Page 67 of Tiger's Dream
The poor horse, I mean man, whinnied to the window above, trying to get the attention of his lady. Although he was successful, she seemed hesitant to climb down to him despite the fact that she had a rather obvious bunch of fabric tied together, ready to drop to the ground.
I rubbed my hand over my head. “This isn’t going well,” I said. At least the soldiers had walked past, ignoring the horse. But now the man-turned-animal, thinking he was in the clear and seeing that he’d caught the girl’s eye, was making such a ruckus that he was sure to bring them back.
His cries had become insistent and high-pitched. When the girl ducked back inside, pulling her mound of fabric with her, he kicked the bricks in frustration and rose up on his hind legs.
“That did it,” I said, pulling the chakram from the loop on my belt and preparing to fight. The group of soldiers was returning, and if this was going to work, we’d have to enter battle mode.
Ana touched my back. The warmth of her hand shot tingles all the way down my spine. “Wait, Sohan,” she said.
Just as I predicted, the soldiers responded to the noise. They circled the poor horse, who was now screeching and baring his teeth. I sighed as they captured him and dragged him off to the nearest stable. Rising, I prepared to trail along behind, but I found Anamika standing still, staring up at the window. The girl was leaning out watching the men drag off the horse, and she was in tears; the faint sounds of her weeping carried to us across the courtyard.
As I watched the men and the horse disappear into the shadowy darkness, I shook my head. “They’ve made a real mess of this,” I said to her.
“Yes,” Ana replied distractedly as she took hold of my outstretched hand. “Or, perhaps, we have.”
“We have?” I asked her. “None of this was our fault.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction the horse had been taken. “The guy’s been bumbling around for hours.”
Ana didn’t answer. Her entire mood was fretful. She bit her lip and allowed me to lead her toward the stable without even cloaking us. Unlike the young man, I knew how to be silent and unseen. The darkness melted around us. With my heightened sense of smell and hearing, it was almost too easy to avoid detection.
We crept into the barn and found our charge banging his feet against the wood of his stall. More time passed before he finally settled down and the last guard departed. Ana approached the young man and patted his side. “I am sorry that this has happened. We will do the best we can to fix it.”
The horse whickered and blew air out of his nostrils. Ana touched one hand to the amulet and kept her other against the side of the horse. She closed her eyes and drew upon her power but nothing happened. Again she tried. The torches outside flickered and went out. Air stirred the bits of hay in tiny whirlwinds. Her hair lifted from her shoulders and fanned out all around her.
Even I could feel the strength of her power. It filled my frame and made all the hairs of my body stand on end. The ground shook with a tremor, and it was the possibility of causing an earthquake that finally made her stop. “I cannot change him back,” she said. “The amulet will not allow it.” She sunk down onto the hay and buried her face in her hands.
The horse-boy lowered his head and blew a breath onto her hair.
“Hey,” I said, crouching down next to her. “The kid’s fine. We’ll just leave him here and go find the girl on our own. Once we get her out safely, we’ll break him out and set them up on a nice silkworm farm somewhere far, far away.”
“You make it sound so easy, Sohan.”
I gave her a winning smile. “Not everything needs to be hard, Ana.”
Taking her hand, I pulled her up and saw a shining tear fall onto her cheek. Lifting my fingertip, I gently caught it and thought of the time she’d turned one of Kelsey’s tears into a diamond. Just as I thought of it, the sparkling tear transformed. Ana gasped in awe as I moved the diamond to my palm.
“How did you do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I saw you do it in one of your temples, and I was just remembering that when it changed.”
She touched her finger to it, rolling it around on my palm. “What did you do with it? The one I created for you?”
“I…I gave it to Kelsey the day I asked her to marry me.”
“I see.”
“It’s a tradition in her time for a man to give a woman a diamond ring when he proposes marriage.”
For some reason I felt very uncomfortable telling her about Kelsey and our engagement. It wasn’t like she didn’t know. I stammered, “She still wears it, you know. When I saw her on her wedding day, she wore a mangalsutra. Ren had it made for her and the diamond was there.”
She turned away from me. “We are wasting time,” she said over her shoulder.
I captured her arm to stop her from leaving. “Ana, I…”
Her eyes met mine and there was something there I’d never seen before. “You do not need to explain, Kishan. I was merely curious.”
Taking a step closer, I cupped her arm gently. “I think I prefer it when you call me Sohan,” I said, my voice low and gravelly.
Her breath caught and we stood immobile, just looking at each other. The hoot of an owl startled both of us and she blinked and stepped back. “We have work to do,” she said.
