When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle, #2)

by Nghi Vo

You can only praise a mammoth when you are alone with her and no one else can hear.”

the imperial examinations were dazzlingly complex, dangerously competitive, and thanks to some eight generations of mysterious deaths in the Hall of Ferocious Jade, more than a little haunted.

Dieu’s great-grandfather had finagled a pass to the imperial examinations and then got assassinated before he had gotten a chance to use it. Her grandmother would have gone to the examinations, but she got distracted by a life of crime in the high mountain passes. Dieu’s father might have been a fine scholar, but he died young with his wives in a river fording as they fled from their enemies one terrible autumn night.

“Oh!” Sinh Cam exclaimed, sitting up in surprise. “That’s right! A bundle of bones tied up with their own guts, that’s what we say.” “It’s a tiger’s term?” Chih asked. “I thought it was just what the ghosts of the examination hall did to those scholars who who didn’t follow the proper sacrifices . . .” “No, it’s ours,” said Sinh Loan pleasantly. “It’s what we call someone who is a disappointment. Because that’s what we turn them into. Please continue.”

She had turned out to be a better traveler than she had thought, or at least, she had not been eaten by hungry ghosts or had her skull stolen by fox spirits yet.

Priestesses smelled like forbearance and cheap incense, not raw earth and full bellies, and Dieu did her best not to pull her hand from the woman’s grasp.

The woman still smelled full, but there was something in her voice that suggested that was a temporary state, and her eyes, which were round and very lovely, took on a kind of sharp hunger.

“Goodness,” said Sinh Loan, looking faintly scandalized. “You mean she didn’t know?” Chih raised their eyebrows at the tiger’s tone. “She knew that she was sitting down with someone that might have eaten her, madam,” they said politely. Sinh Cam shook her ears impatiently. “She didn’t know that Ho Thi Thao was flirting with her! She was being so sweet and romantic, and Scholar Dieu didn’t even appreciate it!”

“Oh, are these the weapons of your ancestors?” asked Dieu politely. “No, they’re the ones that my ancestors took away from those who would reproach them,” said Ho Thi Thao.

They were Dieu’s favorite lines, and she was almost afraid to look up to see how the tiger took them. When you love a thing too much, it is a special kind of pain to show it to others and to see that it is lacking.

“Because it is not such a good story for humans if they get randomly eaten and do not deserve it,” said Sinh Loan, somewhat to Chih’s surprise. “I suppose they mostly tell this story to humans after all.”

“She’ll make you watch her cubs while she goes to carouse at the floating ghost palaces,” said the younger. “She’ll leave you alone all the time, and a fox would never do that to you.” The turnip-head patriarch was shaken in vigorous agreement, but the son only looked on nervously because he had few illusions about what kind of husband he would be, and even fewer about how well he would fare against a tiger in a matrimonial duel.

“There are more answers to that than you may think,” Chih temporized, because there were, but they could see that there was only one answer that really mattered to tigers. They made the appropriate notations.

then with a young woman with wide eyes painted on her eyelids who felt the lumps on Dieu’s head and predicted for her a future of strange beds but good sex.

Then there was her skirt, which she kicked off, and then the embroidered band that fit over her breasts. “I am keeping the shoes on,” Dieu said. “I don’t care about that at all,” said Ho Thi Thao, looking her up and down.

They lived well-fed until they were only bones, and even their bones were happy, turning white and sharp as teeth in the moonlight.