Page 73 of Tiger's Tale
Shut up, youIrik-tating thorn in my paw.
Just save your breath for the mountain, Your Royalness Queen Anastasia. And while you’re at it. Mush!Iriko quipped, slapping his hand against his thigh.
23
WHEN MANY TAKE HOLD, THE LOAD ISN’T HEAVY
I’ll mush him, Stacia thought, before grunting and beginning the hard pull up the mountainside, taking the lead.
They climbed for several hours. The ascent was easy at first. Snow was packed along a trail that led up a winding, gradual climb. As long as they stayed single file, they were safe enough, so there wasn’t any danger of a fall or a snowslide.
When Iriko said the tigers needed a break around midday, they ate and boiled enough snow to refill their waterskins. The tigers drank heavily of the snowmelt they poured out for them and ate enough deer meat to energize them without weighing them down.
The daylight disappeared quickly, but they continued with the light of the stars and the moon to guide them, and they arrived at a stopping point that had obviously been used by others before. The trail ended abruptly in the clearing, and the moment they stopped, the magic boots began to retract from the sleds and harnesses they’d created and changed into boots once more.
Danik and Iriko explored the area, while Nik and Zakhar began assembling a fire in a circle of blackened rocks that had seen a great amount of soot in days gone by. By the time Danik and Iriko returned, the others had a crackling blaze going.
“What did you find?” Zakhar asked.
“Nothing good,” Iriko replied.
“There’s no place we can see with a path to the top,” Danik explained. “At least not one that can accommodate tigers.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Iriko said, contradicting Danik’s report.
Glancing at him in confusion, Danik asked, “What do you mean?”
Iriko rubbed his jaw and turned to the sheer rock wall behind them. “I think this is the turning point.”
“Turning point?” Zakhar said, dusting his hands on his robes and standing up. “What do you mean?”
“A turning point. A choice. Most tigers can change back and forth between human and cat. But not us. Something’s wrong with the three of us. We don’t know what. Maybe it’s our upcoming trials, or that we weren’t meant to be tigers in the first place. But true cats can go back and forth. They can retain the power of the tiger even when taking their human form. A cat can’t scale a sheer rock mountainside like that one behind us, but a man with the strength of a tiger could, at least in theory.”
“Hold on. I thought getting up the mountain was the trial,” Danik said.
“Oh no,” Iriko explained. “That’s only the beginning. Some ascend the mountain, some don’t. All trials begin and end with a dream. Let’s just say, you’ll know your trial when it happens.”
“But didn’t your sister go through them?” Nikolai asked.
“No. Like me, she had the power of the tiger, only she could transform at will. But she hadn’t come to the Dreaming Mountain for her trials yet. Our goal is to remove the tiger, not go through the trials. That’s why we don’t want to fall asleep. Get it?”
“Wait, Iriko,” Zakhar said. “Let me understand. So even without the trials, you have the tiger’s gifts?”
“That’s right.”
Zakhar pressed, “So you’re implying you could scale that rock there, even blind, and get up to the next ledge, however high it may be, just by climbing? And that your people could do this without the aid of ropes or tools or other such helpful implements? Second, you are indicating that this particular ledge may be some sort of choice?”
“I believe so. It might have been a test, not a trial but a... well, like I said, a turning point. Those who lay down and go to sleep end up back at the bottom. They have a dream. One that will guide them in their duty, help them navigate their lives, but they never reach the shaman. Those few who are determined, who conquer the mountain, may in fact attain their goal. It hasn’t happened often that any are successful, but there is a record of it happening.”
“Ascend the Dreaming Mountain...” Zakhar mumbled to himself. “Wait just a moment.” He pulled out a paper from his bag and scanned it, then read, “It says, ‘Learn from those who came before, should you ever start to drift...’ Perhaps that means drifting asleep. We should take a lesson from those of your people who have been here before. I agree with Iriko’s summation. I think we should climb.”
“Wait just a minute. Let’s assume you two are correct, and those of us who aren’t filled with the strength of a tiger somehow manage to climb this rock face and survive it. How are we going to get Stacia and Veru up there?” Nik asked. “There’s no way a tiger could climb that.”
Iriko walked over to the rock and put his fingers into a crevice, feeling carefully for a handhold. Then he placed one foot and a second. He scaled the cliff wall three or four feet, testing each hand and foothold carefully, then he turned and let go, falling gracefully into the snow twenty feet below.
“Easy,” he said, dusting his hands in such a way that caused his arm and chest muscles to ripple, which made Nik roll his eyes in disgust. “I’ll harness them to me and carry them up.”
Absolutely not.
