Tiger's Quest (40 page)

I heard the admonition, “Reeeemainn stiiilll,” and decided it was good advice to follow.

With frenzied flapping, the bats took off, carrying us higher and higher into the tree. It was not a fun ride, but I also recognized that this would save us several hours of climbing. I thought we’d be flying straight up vertically, but, instead, the bats circled, ascending slowly and steadily.

Eventually, I noticed our surroundings were increasingly brighter. I made out an opening, a crevice that allowed dappled orange sunlight to move across the walls. I felt a cool breeze waft over my skin and smelled fresh living tree instead of the rotting musty odor of fungus, ammonia, and burned citrus. Our winged companions flew out of the opening and, flapping loudly, carefully set us on a branch. The branches were thinner here, but they were easily strong enough for both of us to walk on.

With a final warning of, “Beeee viiiiggiiilaaant,” they flew back into the tree and left us on our own.

“Hey, Kells, throw me the backpack. I want to change out of these black clothes and put some shoes on.”

I threw him the backpack and turned around so he could change.

“Yeah. Too bad your fairy clothes are gone now. They’ve disappeared into the tiger ether. They were handy to have around. Luckily, Mr. Kadam insisted on a couple of pairs of shoes for you, just in case.”

“Kells? The fairy clothes are in the bag.”

“What?” I turned around to find Kishan stripped to the waist and averted my eyes. “How did that happen?”

“Not sure. Fairy magic I guess. Now turn around unless you want to watch me change.”

Red-faced, I spun quickly. It was sunset, and we decided to eat and rest. I was worn out but afraid to sleep on a branch, even if it
was
double the width of a king-size mattress.

I sat dead in the middle. “I’m afraid I’ll fall off.”

“You’re tired. You need the rest.”

“I won’t be able to.”

“I’ll hold you. You won’t fall.”

“What if
you
fall?”

“Cats don’t fall out of trees unless they want to. Come here.”

Kishan put one arm around me and cushioned my head on his other. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I did.

The next morning, I yawned, rubbed my sleepy eyes, and found Kishan watching me. He had an arm wrapped around my waist, and my head was resting on his other arm.

“Didn’t you sleep?”

“I catnapped.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“For an hour or so.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You needed the rest.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for making sure I didn’t fall.”

“Kells? I want to say something.”

“What?” I tucked my fist under my cheek. “What is it?”

“You . . . you’re very important to me.”

“You’re very important to me too.”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean . . . I
feel
. . . and I have reason to believe . . . that we could come to mean something to each other.”

“You mean something to me now.”

“Right, but I’m not talking about friendship.”

“Kishan—”

“Is there no possibility, not even the smallest chance that you could ever let yourself love me? Don’t you feel anything for me at all?”

“Of course I do. But—”

“But nothing. If Ren wasn’t in the picture, would you consider being with me? Could I be someone that you could come to care about?”

I put my hand on his cheek. “Kishan, I already care about you. I already have feelings for you. I already love you.”

He smiled and leaned in a little closer. Alarms started going off in my head, and I jerked back and felt like I was falling. I grabbed his arm and held on for dear life.

He steadied me and studied my face. He surely noticed my look of panic and probably recognized that it wasn’t due to losing my balance. He bridled his emotions, leaned back, and said quietly, “I’d never let you fall, Kells.”

I wasn’t handling this well, but the best I could give him was, “I know you wouldn’t.”

He let me go and rose to make our breakfast.

The stairs were narrower now and wound around the outside of the tree. The trunk was much smaller too. It took us only about thirty minutes to circumnavigate it at this height. After a few frightening hours of stairs that narrowed more and more, we came across a woven rope that dangled from what looked like a tree house.

I wanted to continue up the stairs, but Kishan wanted to climb the rope. He agreed to go up the stairs with me for another half hour, and, if we didn’t find anything, we’d come back to the rope. It was a moot discussion anyway because, not five minutes later, the stairs became just knobby bumps on the side of the tree trunk and then disappeared altogether.

As we started back to the rope, I said, “I don’t think I have the arm strength to climb up that high.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got enough arm strength for both of us.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?”

“You’ll see.”

When we got to the rope, Kishan took the backpack from me and put it on. Then he beckoned me forward.

“
What?
”

He pointed at the ground in front of him.

“What are you going to make me do?”

“You’re going to wrap your arms around my neck and twist your wrists into the top loop of the backpack.”

“Okay, but don’t try anything funny. I’m very ticklish.”

He lifted my looped arms around his neck and picked me up, which brought his face very close to mine. He raised an eyebrow. “If I did try something, I can
promise
you, it wouldn’t be to get a laugh.”

I laughed nervously, but his face was intense, serious. “Okay. Let’s go already,” I mumbled.

I felt his muscles tense as he prepared to leap but he looked down at me and his gaze drifted to my lips. He ducked his head and pressed a warm, soft kiss on the side of my mouth.

“
Kishan
.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist. You were trapped and for once you couldn’t turn away from me. Besides, you’re very kissable. You should be happy that I restrained myself as much as I did.”

“Yeah, right.”

With that, he leapt in the air. I let out a squeal at his sudden move. Calmly, he started climbing the rope. He pulled us up hand over hand, stepping onto limbs when he could, sometimes keeping one hand on the rope and one on a branch for balance. Kishan was always careful not to injure me. Other than the bouncing, the swinging hundreds or maybe thousands of feet into the air, and the stomach dropping leaps from branches, I felt pretty comfortable. In fact, it was a little too comfortable being pressed up against him.

Tarzan-like men are my weakness, apparently.

When we reached the tree house door, Kishan climbed the rope a little higher and hung still while I carefully disengaged myself and jumped onto the wooden floor. Then he kicked off, swung, and landed with a flourish. Clearly, he was having fun.

“Stop showing off, for heaven’s sake. Do you realize how far up we are and that you could fall to a grisly death at any moment? You are acting like this is a great, fun adventure.”

He replied, “I have no idea how far up we are. And I don’t care. But, yes. I’m having fun. I
like
being a man all the time. And I
like
being with you.” He wrapped his hands around my waist and drew me closer.

“Hmm.” I extricated myself as quickly as possible.

I couldn’t blame him for the being human part and didn’t know what to say about the being with me part, so I said nothing. We sat down on the wooden floor of the tree house and searched through all of Mr. Kadam’s notes. We read through them twice and waited, but still nothing happened in the tree house. This was supposed to be the house of birds, but I didn’t see any. Maybe we were in the wrong place. I started to get antsy.

“Hello? Is anybody here?” my voice echoed.

A flapping and hoarse croaking
rrronk
answered me. Up in the corner of the tree house, we saw a hidden nest. Two black ravens peeped over the edge to watch us. They called to each other with a thumping sound, a knocking that came from deep in their throats.

The birds left their perch and circled the tree house, performing acrobatics in the air. They did somersaults and even flew upside down. Each pass brought them closer to us. Kishan unlatched his chakram and raised it like a knife.

I put my hand on his and shook my head slightly. “Let’s wait and see what they do.”

“What do you want from us?” I asked.

The birds landed a few feet away. One twisted its head and stared at me with one black eye. A black tongue tasted the air from the beak’s rictus as the bird moved closer.

I heard a rough, scratchy voice say, “Wantfrumus?”

“Do you understand me?”

The two birds bobbed their heads up and down, stopping occasionally to preen feathers.

“What are we doing here? Who are you?”

The birds hopped a little closer. One said, “Hughhn,” and I could have sworn the other said, “Muunann.”

I marveled incredulously, “You’re Hugin and Munin?”

The black heads bobbed up and down again. They hopped a little closer.

“Did you steal my bracelet?”

“And the amulet?” Kishan added.

Heads bobbed.

“Well, we want everything back. You can keep the honey cakes. You probably already ate them, anyway.”

The birds squawked hoarsely, snapped their beaks loudly, and flapped their wings at us. Ruffled feathers puffed up, making the birds look much bigger than they were.

I folded my arms across my chest.

“Not going to give them back, huh? We’ll see about that.”

The birds hesitantly danced closer, and one hopped onto my knee. Kishan was immediately concerned.

I touched his arm. “If they are Hugin and Munin, they whisper thoughts and memories into Odin’s ears. They may want to sit on our shoulders and speak to us.”

It appeared I was right, because the minute I tilted my head to one side, one of the birds flapped its wings and settled on my shoulder. It stuck its beak near my ear, and I waited to hear it speak. Instead, I felt a curious pulling sensation. The bird tugged gently on something in my ear, but I felt no pain.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Thoughtsrstuck.”

“What?”

“Thoughtsrstuck.”

I felt another gentle tug, a snap, and then Hugin hopped away with a filmy, web-like strand hanging from his beak.

I covered my ear with my hand. “What did you do? Did you steal part of my brain? Do I have brain damage?”

“Thoughtsrstuck!”

“What does that mean?”

The strand hanging from the beak slowly dissipated as the bird clacked its beak. I sat there, staring, mouth gaping wide in horror, and wondered what had been done to me.
Did it steal a memory?
I racked my brain trying to remember everything important. I searched for some gap, some emptiness. If the bird did steal a memory, I had no idea what it could be.

Kishan touched my hand. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

“I feel fine. It’s just—” My words fell away as something shifted in my mind. Something was happening. Something was dragging across the surface of my mind like a squeegee over soapy glass. I could feel a layer of confusion, mental clutter, and dirt, for lack of a better word, peeling away like dead skin after a sunburn. It was as if random fears, worries, and dismal thoughts had been clogging the pores of my consciousness.

For a moment, I could see everything I needed to do with perfect clarity. I knew we were almost at our goal. I knew there would be fierce protectors guarding the Scarf. I knew what the Scarf was and I knew what it could do. In that moment, I knew how we’d use it to save Ren.

Munin hopped back and forth in front of Kishan, waiting for its turn.

“It’s okay, Kishan! Go ahead. Let it sit on your shoulder. It won’t hurt you. Trust me.”

He looked at me doubtfully, but he cocked his head to one side anyway. I watched with fascination as Munin flapped its wings and landed on Kishan’s shoulder. He kept its wings open, flapping them up and down lazily as it worked on Kishan’s ear.

I spoke to Hugin, “Is Munin doing the same thing to Kishan?”

The bird shook its head and shifted from foot to foot. It started preening its feathers.

“Well, what’s the difference? What will it do?”

“Waitforit.”

“Waitforit?”

The bird nodded.

Munin hopped down to the floor and held a wispy black strand in his mouth about the size of an earthworm. It opened its beak and swallowed it.

“Uh . . . that looked different. Kishan? What happened? Are you okay?”

He responded quietly, “I’m fine. He . . . he showed me.”

“Showed you what?”

“He showed me my memories. In full detail. I saw everything that happened. I saw Yesubai and me all over again. I saw my parents, Kadam, Ren . . . all of it. But with one major difference.”

I took his hand in mine. “What is it? What’s the difference?”

“That black thread you saw—it’s hard to explain, but it’s like the bird removed a dark pair of sunglasses from my eyes. I saw everything as it really was, as it really happened. It wasn’t just from my perception anymore. It was like I was an outside observer.”

“Is the memory different now?”

“It’s not different . . . it’s clearer. I could see that Yesubai was a sweet girl who cared for me, but she was encouraged to seek me out. She didn’t love me the same way I felt for her. She was afraid of her father. She obeyed him completely, but she was also desperate to leave him. In the end, it was her father who killed her. He threw her viciously—hard enough to cause her neck to break.

“How did I overlook her fear, her anxiety?” He rubbed his jaw. “She hid it well. He took advantage of my feelings for her. I should have seen what he was all along, but I was blind, infatuated. How could I not see this before?”

“Love makes you do crazy things sometimes.”

“What about you? What did you see?”

“I sort of got my brain Hoovered.”

“What does ‘Hoovered’ mean?”

“A Hoover is a vacuum. My thoughts are clear, like your memories are clear. In fact, I now know how to get the Scarf and what comes next. But first things first.”