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

by Nghi Vo

It seemed to Chih that they regarded the fence with a friendly condescension. If she wished to do so, the smallest among them could knock the rails aside. Instead, they chose to display their good manners by refraining and dozing on their feet, occasionally sweeping fodder into their mouths from the sheltered troughs.

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

Neither ghosts nor bandits would bother two people on a mammoth, however,

“And we’re meant to take the charity of others where we find it. It’s significantly worse to turn down genuine charity than to momentarily put aside the strictures of your order, or so I was taught.”

It was as if the mammoth they rode were the world, and the world had gone stock still with fright beneath them.

CHIH REMEMBERED A STORY that said it was tremendously unlucky to hear a tiger laugh, but they couldn’t remember why. Was it a cultural taboo? Was it a curse? Was it simply that tigers thought that killing and eating people was funny? They wished they could remember. They wished they could stop shaking. They wished the tigers would simply leave.

“Why are we talking to tigers?” asked Si-yu. “Because they are talking to us,” Chih said, stifling a somewhat hysterical giggle. “They can talk, and now they’ve seen that we can. That’s—that means that they’ll treat us like people.” “But there’s still a chance that they’re going to eat us.” “Oh yes. Some people are just more . . . edible than others if you are a tiger.”

“Flattery, cleric,” said the tiger. “It doesn’t taste very good, and it has never filled a stomach.”

To be anyone who was anyone, you should have been born in the capital to one of the six great families, ideally as an able-bodied eldest boy, ideally without a single mark on your skin and without a taste for esoteric magic or radical politics. Since most people in the capital could not even manage this small thing, the next best thing was to excel at the imperial examinations, held every four years in the Hall of Ferocious Jade.

“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.”

“Of course, or do you forbid yourself the privilege of slaying a guest who displeases you at the dinner table?”

“Please tell me how it went instead, lady,” Chih said respectfully. “I can only tell the story as it has been told to me.” “Even if it is wrong and wicked?” asked Sinh Loan coldly. “Even if, as you said yourself, you knew it to be imperfect?”

If the words had come from someone less interesting, who smelled less good, who was less beautiful, Ho Thi Thao would have killed them immediately, so insulted she might have left them for lesser things to eat.

“And so you came to my house on the soft pads of a midwinter kitten, the whisper of your black tresses sweeping your heels, and so you came to my heart just as quietly. Why, then, did you make such a terrible noise when you let go of my hand and departed, a great trumpeting of horns, a great beating of drums? We had always kept our home in the sweetest of silence, broken only with a dropped spool of scarlet thread or a soft cry from your lips early in the morning. Now your departure crashes like a thunder, and the timbers of the house shake with the force of the space you left behind.”

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.

“I’m a tiger, I am invited wherever I care to go,” replied Ho Thi Thao.

My love has gone from me, and I will never again laugh. My love has gone from me and she has taken all light with her.”

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