Page 71 of Tiger's Curse
“Kishan might still be looking for me, then. Maybe we should go back.”
“No. It would serve him right.” He laughed spitefully. “Without a scent to track, it’ll probably take him days to figure out we’re gone.”
“Ren, you really should go back and tell him we’re leaving. He helped you on the hunt. It’s the least you could do.”
“Kelsey, we are not going back. He’s a big tiger and he can take care of himself. Besides, I was doing fine without him.”
“No, you weren’t. I saw the hunt, remember? He helped you take down the antelope. Also, Kishan said that you hadn’t hunted in more than three hundred years. That’s why we went after you. He said he knew you’d need his help.”
Ren scowled but said nothing.
I paused and put my hand on his arm. “It’s not a sign of weakness to need help sometimes.”
He grunted, dismissing my comment but tucked my hand under his arm and started walking again.
“Ren, what exactly happened to you three hundred years ago?”
Scowling, he didn’t speak. I elbowed him and smiled encouragingly. The scowl slowly disappeared from his handsome face and the tension melted from his shoulders. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and explained.
“It’s a lot easier for a black tiger to hunt than a white tiger. I don’t exactly blend into the jungle. When I got really hungry and frustrated in hunting wild game, I’d occasionally venture into a village and make off with a goat or a sheep. I was careful, but rumors soon spread of a white tiger, and the hunters came out in force. Not only were there farmers who wanted to keep me away, but big-game hunters wanted the thrill of capturing an exotic animal.
“They set traps for me all over the jungle, and many innocent creatures were killed. Whenever I found one, I’d disable it. One day, I happened upon a trap and made a stupid mistake. There were two traps right next to each other, but I focused on the obvious one, which was the standard meat-dangling-over-a-pit-trap.
“I was studying the pit, trying to figure out a way to get the meat, and I tripped a hidden wire. It triggered a shower of spikes and arrows that rained down on me from the tree above. I leapt to the side as a spear came down, but the dirt underfoot gave way and I fell into the pit.”
“Did any of the arrows hit you?” I asked, on the edge of my seat.
“Yes. Several of them grazed me, but I healed quickly. Fortunately, the pit didn’t have any bamboo stakes, but it was well made and deep enough that I couldn’t get out.”
“What did they do to you?”
“After a few days, the hunters found me. They sold me to a private collector who had a menagerie of interesting creatures. When I proved difficult, he sold me to another who sold me to another, and so on. Eventually, I ended up in a Russian circus and have been passed from circus to circus ever since. Whenever people became suspicious of my age or hurt me, I would cause enough trouble to inspire a quick sale.”
It was a terrible, heart-breaking story. I stepped away from him to circle a log and when I moved back next to him, he twined his fingers in mine and kept walking.
“Why didn’t Mr. Kadam just buy you himself and take you home?” I asked sympathetically.
“He couldn’t. Something always happened to prevent it. Every time he tried to buy me from the circus, the owners refused to sell at any price. Once he sent people to try to purchase me, and that didn’t worked either. Mr. Kadam even hired people to try to steal me, but they were captured. The curse was in charge, not us. The more he tried to intervene, the worse my situation became. We eventually discovered that Mr. Kadam could send potential buyers with a genuine interest my way. He was able to influence good people to buy me, but only if he had no intention of getting me for himself.
“Mr. Kadam made sure I was moved around enough so people didn’t notice my age. He visited me from time to time so that I knew how to contact him, but there was really nothing he could do. He never stopped trying to figure out a way to break the curse though. He spent all his time to researching solutions. His visits meant everything to me. I think I would have lost my humanity without him.”
Ren swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck and reflected, “When I was first taken, I thought it would be easy to escape. I’d just wait for night to fall and pull the latch on the cage. But, once I was a captive, I was permanently in tiger form. I couldn’t become a man again—not until you came along.”
He held back a branch so I could pass under and said, “What was it like, being in the circus all those years?”
I tripped over a stone, and Ren reached out to steady me. When I was standing firmly again, he slid his hands reluctantly from my waist and offered a hand to me again.
“It was boring mostly. Sometimes the owners were cruel and I was whipped, poked, and prodded. I was lucky, though, because I healed quickly and was smart enough to do the tricks other tigers refused to do. A tiger doesn’t naturally want to jump through a flaming hoop or have a man’s head in his mouth. Tigers hate fire, so the tiger has to be taught to fear the trainer more than he fears the flame.”
“It sounds awful!”
“Circuses back then were. The animals were placed in cages much too small. Natural familial relationships were broken, and the babies were sold. In the early days, the food was bad, the cages were filthy, and the animals were beaten. They were trekked from city to city and left outdoors in places and climates they were not accustomed to. They didn’t survive very long.”
Thoughtfully, he went on, “Now, though, there’s more study and effort to prolong the lives of the animals and better their quality of life. But, captivity is still captivity no matter how pretty the jail is.
“Being caged made me think long and hard about my relationships with other creatures, especially the elephants and horses. My father had thousands of elephants that were trained for battle or heavy lifting, and I had a favorite stallion once that I loved to ride. As I sat there in my cage day after day, I wondered if he felt like I did. I imagined him sitting in his stall, bored, just waiting for me hour after hour to come and let him out.”
Ren squeezed my hand and changed back into a tiger again.
