Page 97 of Tiger's Quest
I touched his now healed neck and said softly, “And I’m lucky to have such wonderful men in my life.”
He brought my hand to his lips and pressed a warm kiss on my fingers. “He wouldn’t want you to suffer for him, you know.”
“He wouldn’t likeyoubeing the one to comfort me, either.”
He grinned at that. “No. Indeed he wouldn’t.”
“But you do. Comfort me, I mean. Thank you for being here.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. Get some sleep,bilauta.”
He pulled me close and nestled me against his chest. I felt guilty for feeling comforted lying in Kishan’s arms, but I fell asleep quickly without further incident.
The next two days of travel were short by necessity. I tried to walk on my own, but the pain was too much so Kishan carried me. We walked back down the mountain slowly, stopping to rest from time to time, saving the last hour for Kishan to set up camp and tend to me. Most of my wounds were healing, but the deep one had started to fester.
The skin around it became ruddy, swollen, and inflamed. The wound was obviously getting worse. I began running a fever, and Kishan started to feel desperate. He cursed the fact that he could only travel with me for six hours of the day. He used every herbal remedy he could think of. Unfortunately, the Golden Fruit could not produce antibiotics.
A storm hit, and I was vaguely aware of Kishan carrying me through icy sleet. Not moving on my own made me more susceptible to the cold. I was freezing and drifted in and out, unaware of how many days had passed. At one point, the thought occurred to me that Fanindra might heal me as she did in Kishkindha, but she remained stiff and frozen. I knew the weather wasn’t exactly snake friendly, but, perhaps she knew I wasn’t quite at death’s door yet either, despite all outward appearances.
We became lost in the storm, not knowing if we were going back to Mr. Kadam or forward to the spirit gate. Kishan was constantly worried about me falling asleep, so he talked to me as we walked. I didn’t remember much of what he said. He did lecture me about survival in the wilderness and said that it was important that we stay warm, eat, and keep hydrated. He had those three things pretty much covered. When we stopped for the day, he would wrap me in the sleeping bag and crawl in next to me so his tiger body could keep me warm, and the Golden Fruit provided as much food and drink as we could handle.
I lost my appetite when I became sick. Kishan forced me to eat and drink, but I was shaky, and the fever made me feel like I was either freezing or too hot. He had to change to a man often to keep me covered with the sleeping bag because, in my fever, I constantly tried to push it off.
I was weak now and spent my time either staring at the sky or at Kishan’s face as he spoke of various things. Bushman’s rice was one topic I remembered because it was disgusting. He talked about how he had managed to live when he’d been the only survivor of a battle deep in enemy territory. He said that there was no food to be found, so he ate Bushman’s rice, which was not rice at all but the white pupae of termites.
I grunted softly in reaction but was too sleepy to move my lips to form a comment. I wanted to ask him how he learned about Australian Bushmen back in his time, but I couldn’t speak. He looked down at me worried and drew my hood closer over my face so the snow wouldn’t fall directly on me.
He leaned over and whispered, “I promise I’ll get you out of this, Kelsey. I won’t let you die.”
Die? Who said anything about dying?I had no intention of dying, but I couldn’t exactly tell him that. My lips felt like they were frozen.I can’t die. I have to find the next three items and save my tigers. I have to rescue Ren from Lokesh. I have to finish school. I have to. . . I fell asleep.
I dreamed of tracing my finger down an icy window. I had just made a heart with a Ren + Kelsey in the middle and had drawn a second heart withKishan + . . .when someone shook me awake.
“Kells.Kells!I thought we had turned back, but I think we found the spirit gate!”
I peeked out of my hood and looked up at an amethyst-gray sky. Painful, icy sleet pummeled us, and I had to squint to see what Kishan was pointing at. In the middle of a barren white stretch of snow stood two wooden posts about the size of telephone phones. Wrapped around each one were long ropes of material that flapped wildly in the storm like homemade kite tails. A line of colorful flags were attached at different sections of the posts. Some of the ropes were tied to the opposite pole. Some were attached to rings in the ground, and others just flapped loose in the wind.
I licked my lips and whispered, “Are you sure?”
Fortunately, his tiger hearing was extremely good. He bent over close to my ear and shouted over the wind, “It could be a monument or a memorial created by nomads, but there’s just something different about this. I want to check it out.”
I nodded weakly, and he set me down in the sleeping bag near one of the poles. He’d taken to carrying me in the sleeping bag to keep me warmer. I slipped into a deep sleep. When he woke me, I wasn’t sure if it had been hours or seconds.
“This is the right place, Kelsey. I found a handprint. Now, should we go through it or turn back? I feel we should turn back and return later.”
I reached a gloved hand out and touched his chest. I whispered, feeling the wind gobble up my words and tear them away just as they passed my lips. Fortunately, he heard them. I said, “No . . . we won’t be able . . . find it . . . again . . . too hard. Ocean Teacher said . . . prove our . . . f . . . faith. It’s . . . a test. We . . . must . . . tr . . . try.”
“But, Kells—”
“Take me . . . the . . . handprint.”
He looked at me with indecision battling in his eyes. Gently, he stretched out his gloved hand and brushed the snowflakes from my cheek.
I caught his hand in mine. “Have faith,” I whispered into the wind.
He sighed deeply, then slid his arms under me and carried me to the wooden post. “Here it is. On the left of the pole, under the blue fabric.”
I saw it and tried to get my glove off. Kishan stood me up, supporting all my weight on one arm. He pulled off my glove with the other hand and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he guided my hand into the cold depression carved into the bark of the wooden marker. Now that I was closer, I could see intricate carvings all over the wood that had been partially covered by the snow. If I’d felt better, I would have loved to examine them, but I couldn’t even stay upright without Kishan.
