When You Trap a Tiger, page 10
Sam groans. “Enough with the tiger story, Lily. That story is the worst.”
I don’t understand what she’s saying. We loved the sister story. We ran into Halmoni’s room every night. Tell us the story about the sun and the moon. “What do you mean?”
“Well, first of all,” Sam starts, “the sisters are stupid. A tiger is scratching at their door. It’s clearly not their halmoni. Why can’t they see that?”
“Because he’s dressed up in—”
“And also, the older sister goes on and on about protecting the younger sister, and then she goes and opens the window for the tiger.”
I lean back. “The older sister doesn’t open the window. The younger sister opens the door.”
Sam shakes her head. “No, that’s not right.”
“It is. That’s how the story goes.” In the story, the tiger picks the little sister. She’s the one it calls to. She’s the one who answers. She’s the special one.
I’m not sure why Sam is so confused. I tell her, “Eggi opens the door, the tiger chases them, and when they tell a story, the sky god saves them.”
“No.” Something in Sam’s voice scares me. A sharp edge that wasn’t there before. “The sisters end up on opposite ends of the sky, and they can’t even talk to one another. They see each other every day, but only to wave hello and goodbye. They’re alone.”
I pull my knees into my chest. “It’s not sad. It’s happy. The sisters escape the tiger. They’re safe forever.”
But now I’m not so sure.
“The whole point is that it’s a sad story, Lily. All those old fairy tales are meant to scare kids. It’s a lesson. You know: don’t open the door for strangers. And: run from danger.”
Silence swells in the room, filling every crack in the creaky wood. I clear my throat and force words out. “What if the sisters didn’t run?”
Sam sighs. “What do you mean?”
“If it were your story, if a tiger was chasing you…would you run or would you…face it?”
She hesitates. “You’re not talking about the stories being real again, are you, because—”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “That was a mental stress reaction. I know. I mean it hypothetically.”
Silence, until Sam barks a laugh. It’s so startling that it frightens a laugh out of me, too. For a second, my anxiety eases, and her laugh is a bright spot in the darkness.
“Lily! Are you kidding me? I would run! Tigers, you know, eat people.”
“Yeah,” I say. She’s right. That’s the reality of what I’m facing, and I can’t tell her about it.
Sam gets up and flops back onto the bed, and I assume this talk is over. Sam doesn’t end conversations anymore. She just escapes them.
But a few minutes later, she says, “If it were me in the story, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d run. I’d want to do the brave thing. It’s just, in that scenario, I’m not really sure what the brave thing is.”
Carefully, I pull the square green star jar out from under my bed. Sam is asleep. The whole house is asleep. And I am ready.
As quietly as possible, I slide open the drawer where I’ve hidden Halmoni’s mugwort. I break off a piece and slip it into my pocket. I clasp Halmoni’s pendant around my neck. And finally, I lift Ricky’s hat from my dresser and place it on my head.
Because you never know. Maybe it will help. Maybe it will make me special. Maybe it will turn me into a hero.
Holding the star jar and wearing my protection, I tiptoe out of the attic room and down the stairs. I call on my invisibility, and the night wraps me in shadows. The sound of rain cloaks my footsteps.
Everybody else sleeps as I creep past Halmoni’s room, past Mom on the couch, toward the basement.
“Am I making the right decision?” I whisper to the corked jar.
No response. Even the house is still tonight, like it’s waiting for my next move.
I turn the basement door’s knob, and the door swings open, inviting me in.
This time, I won’t be afraid. Halmoni faced tigers once, and now I will, too.
I am Lily, and I am brave. I am my halmoni’s granddaughter.
I am not hunted by tigers.
I am the hunter.
And a tiger is no match for me.
I hold the jar—the bait—in my hands, and I sit on the stairs with my back to the door, looking down at the boxes.
I wait.
* * *
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but apparently I do, because I wake up to a rustling.
I spring to my feet, and as soon as I see my trap, I’m filled with a shock of excitement and panic—because I did it. But also: I did it—and now there’s a tiger, in my basement. Trapped.
With one hand, I grab the star jar. With the other, I pinch my leg, just to be sure. But this is not a dream and it’s not a hallucination.
Surrounded by my ring of boxes, the tiger sits back on her hind legs, still except for her tail flicking back and forth. The moonlight spills through the window, making her black stripes look almost silver, and she’s even bigger than I remembered—almost too big for my trap.
“Amusing,” she says flatly. She looks annoyed but unconcerned.
I keep my distance, staying where I am in the middle of the staircase, looking down at her. One of the tiger facts flashes through my brain: A tiger’s tooth can cut through bone!
But so does another one: If you look a tiger in the eye, it’s less likely to kill you.
I force myself to stare into those glowing yellow eyes, those pupils like pools of black ink. I stand taller, acting braver than I am. “You found my trap,” I say, deepening my voice so I sound older.
The tiger’s lips curl into a smile. “I will admit, I was not expecting this.”
I clear my throat. “You said you could heal my halmoni. Now that you are trapped, I demand that you help her.”
“Interesting. I wouldn’t have considered you the type. Unfortunately for you, I am not trapped. I am merely…testing you.” She picks a dried herb from her sharp teeth. “Nice mugwort, by the way.”
I feel for the mugwort in my pocket, but it’s gone—and in a flash of orange and black, the tiger disappears, too. My trap is empty.
“Tigers do not give in to demands….” Her voice comes from behind me, and I spin around to see her standing in the doorway, at the top of the stairs.
She’s so much bigger than me, and she steps forward, forcing me down one step. Then another. And another and another until I am in the basement, pressed up against my own wall of boxes. Silly, to think I could trick a tiger. Silly, silly, little girl, and now—
“But we do offer deals.” Her voice is more curious than menacing, somewhere between a growl and a whisper. “I told you I would only offer once, but for you, Super Tiger Girl, perhaps I will make an exception. Perhaps I will offer a new deal, one that’s a little more fun.”
The star jar is slippery in my damp palms, and I squeeze it tighter. “What’s your offer?”
“You return the stories, your halmoni feels better. But here’s the fun part: in order to return the stories to the sky, I must tell them.” She flashes her teeth. “And stories are always better with an audience.”
I take a deep breath. Part of me wants to hear the stories. But Halmoni said they were bad. And they made people bad, because everyone who heard them felt pain. “The stories are dangerous,” I say.
“They are powerful.”
“You said they have the power to change someone.” I shudder, and for some reason I think of Halmoni, throwing up in the bathroom. How, for just a moment, she looked like a monster.
The tiger’s eyes glint in the dark. “This is my offer. Take it or leave it.”
I’ve got about twenty layers of fear stacked over my heart right now. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of doing the wrong thing. Fear of hurting Halmoni. Fear of not saving Halmoni. Fear of a magical talking tiger.
But if I peel back all those layers—there’s something else, burning deep inside me. There’s that tiger-hunting fierceness, and I imagine myself grabbing that feeling, gripping so hard it hurts.
I am small, but I am not easy prey.
I clear the whispers from my throat, and when I speak, my voice is strong. “Will releasing the star stories really make Halmoni feel better?”
“Of course.” Her eyes flash in a way that tells me her promises mean nothing. “Open the jars, listen to a story, heal your halmoni. That is painfully reasonable.”
The jar feels hot in my hands. Upstairs, it glowed faintly, but now it’s like holding a lantern. Maybe the light from the small basement window catches the jar just right, or maybe my eyes play tricks. Or maybe it’s magic inside the jar, waking up after sleeping for so long. What I thought were dust motes in the jar look like stars now—an entire miniature galaxy, captured in glass.
“I don’t trust you.” I have to say that, just for the record. I have to say it because I know: I’m going to do it anyway.
I’m sick of being a QAG, too afraid to do anything. For once I want to be the hero.
“Come on,” she purrs. “What do you say? Do you accept?”
I grip the jar tighter as I brace myself. “Yes.”
Her sharp teeth glow.
And I open the jar.
The cork slips from the jar with a loud pop. Then, softer, a hissing sound.
The starlight in the jar seems to spill out, a whole Milky Way tipping over the edge, and the tiger moves closer. She closes her eyes, presses her whiskers against the rim—and drinks the stars.
The basement dances with color, deep blue and orange and purple, and for a second, I can almost hear the roar of an ocean. I can almost taste the scent of the sea.
As the tiger drinks, the glass in my hand gets lighter and lighter until it feels like air. And when she finishes, she steps back, smacking her lips.
“Ah,” she says, “I have missed that one.”
Then she begins.
* * *
Long, long ago, when man walked like tiger, when nights were dark as ink, long before the sun and the moon and even the stars—there was a girl born of two worlds. She had two sets of skin and she could shift as she pleased: tiger to human, human to tiger.
She loved her magic, and she loved both worlds equally. The problem was, she had to keep it secret. The world around her was divided in two—humans didn’t trust tigers, and tigers didn’t trust humans, and neither wanted a traitor sleeping in their caves.
So the girl of two worlds lived two lives. By day, she was human. By night, she was tiger. But this, I’m afraid, is an exhausting way to live.
Tigers are wild, out of control. They speak the truth and swallow the world. They are always wanting more. But human girls, she was told, are not meant for wanting. They are meant for helping. They are meant for quiet.
And sometimes, the tiger-girl would mix up her lives. She would feel the wrong things at the wrong time. Too much feeling as a human, too much fear as a tiger. It would be much easier to be only one thing.
Even worse, her secret made her lonely. She had friends and family in both forms, but nobody knew her true heart.
What a terrible way to live, she thought. But she lived that way anyway. She carried her secret, locked away inside her, until one day, her body shifted and changed in a new way: she was going to have a baby.
A baby born of two worlds. Born with the same magic—the same curse.
But the tiger-girl, now a tiger-mother, knew what she had to do. She wouldn’t let her child live a life split in two. So the tiger-girl asked her human mother to protect the baby, and left to climb the tallest mountain, up and up, until she reached the sky god.
I have never once complained, she told him, but I am doing this for my daughter. I am asking you to spare her. Take away her magic. Turn us both human and lock our tiger side away.
The sky god was not pleased. He does not typically grant favors. But she begged and begged. So the sky god said, Yes, fine. I will grant your wish. I can take away your magic, and your baby’s, but first…hmm…your baby must live alone in a cave for one hundred days, without the sun. Oh, and she can only eat mugwort.
The tiger-girl was horrified. She wouldn’t trap her baby in a cave! Was there another way? Please, please, please. She begged and begged some more.
The sky god was annoyed. What a difficult woman. But he figured this whole situation was kind of his fault. He’d accidentally given her a second skin. So he said, Yes, fine. There is another way. I will lock away your daughter’s magic in exchange for your help.
If you must know, I am getting old. (I mean, of course, I am still smart and strong and handsome, et cetera.) But one day, I will need someone to replace me.
Come live as a sky princess, in my sky castle, and learn my magic. In return, I will grant your wish.
So the tiger-girl agreed, and the sky god, oh so generous, gave her one last day with her daughter.
The tiger-girl was sad to leave her baby, but she knew her child would be safe. Her daughter would never be lost and lonely in her secrets.
Before she left, the tiger-girl hugged her baby goodbye and cried and cried, and when the last tear fell from her eye, it turned into a pearl—a final goodbye, a pendant for her daughter to wear, right above her heartbone.
Goodbye, she whispered, and be safe.
Then she had to go. The sky god sent down a rope (or a staircase—it depends who you ask), and she climbed up and up, into her castle.
Living in the sky kingdom is expensive, so the tiger-girl found a job: the night was very dark, and somebody needed to light it.
* * *
When the tiger is done, the night seems a notch brighter, as if there’s one more star in the sky. But I could be imagining it.
The tiger licks her lips, slurping up bits of stardust. Her eyes close, as if she’s savoring it.
I can’t quite explain the way the story settled in my chest. I know what it’s like to carry a tiger secret, unable to tell my family because it would scare them. And I feel like the story lit up a piece of me, a piece I thought was hidden.
I don’t know how I feel about that, but I know how I feel about something else: I hate that the tiger-girl left her baby. “What if the baby needed her? She could have figured out another way. She didn’t have to go.”
“You’re angry,” the big cat says softly.
“I’m not…I don’t…” I feel silly, because it’s just a story. I know it shouldn’t affect me so much, and I don’t know why it did. Maybe this is what Halmoni meant by a bad story.
“It’s okay,” she says, “to feel out of control.”
“Why did Halmoni want to hide this story?” My fingers find the pendant around my neck, and I pinch it tight. “Is this pearl…was that about her? Was that her story?”
“Little one, this is an ancient story. Do not worry about who it once belonged to. It belongs to the sky now—for all of us to see.” There’s something sad and lost in her voice. Something that says there’s more to the story. I try to read her, but when she tilts her head, her eyes fall into shadow. In the dark, they are unknowable, like a night without stars.
I spin the necklace between the pads of my fingers, feeling like there’s something I’m missing. “So, what now? Will Halmoni feel better?”
“Eventually,” she says, “but not yet. We’ve only just begun, and there are consequences to telling the truth.”
I pause. “I thought you said this would help her.”
“The truth is always painful, especially when it’s been hidden so long. There are bound to be unexpected complications.” She shrugs, trying to look casual, but her muscles are tense as they ripple beneath her fur. “Anyway, bring me the next star jar tomorrow, at two a.m., and I will tell you another story. Oh, and bring some rice cakes, too. It’s the least you can do, if we must meet in this stuffy basement.”
“Wait,” I say, “what consequences? What if I don’t like them? What if I change my mind?” I realize, now, that I’ve agreed to something I don’t understand.
She licks her lips again. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice. You’ve already released the story. You’ve heard the beginning, but your halmoni can’t heal until we reach the end.”
She turns away from me and walks back up the stairs. The steps don’t creak beneath her—it’s like she’s made of air. “It will get worse before it gets better, Little Egg,” she says without looking back. “But if you do what I say, it will get better. Trust me.”
The next afternoon, I announce, “I need to make rice cakes.”
When I walk downstairs, Mom and Halmoni are sitting together at the dining table, and I join them, plopping myself into a chair. I try to smile like, Ha ha. Normal. No tigers here.
“Oh, yes,” Halmoni says. “That sound good, little one. We make that later.”
“Or, um, now? What about now?”
Sam’s sprawled out on the couch, cell phone hovering in front of her face, but she glances over at me with a raised eyebrow. I ignore her.
Mom takes a breath and plasters a grin on her face. “Actually, I was thinking we should all go out today. It would be nice to get out of the house and do something. As a family.”
“We could make rice cakes as a family,” I say. “Halmoni can teach us how.”
Mom’s fake smile gets even faker. “Lily. That sounds so fun. Maybe after we go out.”
Sam lowers her phone. “Mom’s obsessed with going out because Halmoni keeps bugging her about the boxes.”
Mom clears her throat. “That’s not—”
