Tigers

Fiction

I think it was the fourth or fifth time I took a shift at the straits. A huge storm had washed up some outrigger canoe, and this guy, maybe thirty-five, was trying to put it back together.

He was pretty skittish when he saw me, and to be fair I was looking kind of imposing and mysterious, hooded coat and linear antenna. Maybe I looked like a wizard to someone whose great-something-grandparents thought an uncommonly-strong aurora looked like a nuclear war.

While I was ferrying him back south, he said “the bones” had told him to go fishing that day. They do some bone-burning and read the cracks, or maybe they throw some ribs up in the air and see where they land. I didn’t remember that part of the story. When I asked him about it, he launched into a fable. I got the impression it was something he normally told to kids. About five seconds in I thought to start recording.

“...happens to ones like you. Yer sent out looking for an old lifery, because the village girl ye been looking at for years is suddenly up for taking, even if ye don’t notice anything different about her, and she’s needing a story-name and yer brother’s just wrapped and floated so yer the elder-boy in yer family and its yer tern, and yer mum’s wrapped and floated the last year so nobody’s telling ye not to, even if yer a bit young.

And maybe yer brother being wrapped, so ya follow the bones as ye head over to John’s-on-briar, thinking sod it, you’ll just take yer chances in the thorns because the boys back home are already started humming Yer a black sheep’s head when yer about and so yer wondering if maybe they really would be better off if y’were dead, anyway, but if ye get a really really good name-story for the bare-un things might turn around...

And in the end ye find a bit of a lifery, and ye find something serious and yer reading and ye never were one for fiction so ye spend a long while reading it, and its something about the old arts of reason, and then the next thing ye read is something heavier, where corners of the paper curl outwards from under the plastycover and it’s water-damaged but ye find a bit in the middle and ye realize it’s about Tigers...

So yer reading about Tigers but ye can’t make sense of it, and everyone knows it’s because Tigers arn’t for knowing but ye never believed in that, and then a little orange kit comes crawling out of the wall behind ye, and it rubs up against ye and purrs and sits in yer lap, and it looks over towards the pages and says “The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest extant feline. Contrary to common myth, they very rarely hunt humans.” and then it goes back to sleeping in yer lap, and the next hour it sits there until it gets up and leaves...

And back with yer daddy ye look at the black and white and tabby kits who live round yer house, and ye think of what that orange kit said to ye, and in yer head ye daddy says “Tigers arn’t for knowing” but ye never believed in that anyway...

So the next day ye say to yeself “sod the bones” and head right back along the same path, since ye really really want to find a good story-name, and after all they say three times is too many, so it’s probably fine...

And ye notice that the second time back, the way ye went is nice and smooth and ye get there easily, even though John’s-on-Briar is normally all thorny, and ye do find a story this time, and sure it’s about a cold, pale man who never touches the sun and drinks blood and lives forever, and ye think that maybe Tigers are as fake as that...

And that same orange kit comes out and he don’t say nothing today just rolls around on his back and goes meeew meeew meeew, and ye give him a rub on his belly, and then ye remember yer girl, and run back as fast as ye can, and ye give the story to her and take her hand and her mummy says “come back tomorrow at midday”

And ye wake up the next day, and the sun’s not quite over the horizon and ye realize yer outside, and yer feet are already carrying ye back to that same place, and ye think to yerself “three times is too many” but yer already halfway there, so ye think “I might aswell keep the one about Tigers too”

And ye keep going, and ye take the book, and the little orange kit is nowhere to be seen, but as yer heading back ye see the kit ahead of ye, sitting in the path, and it says to ye “Three times is too many, didn’t you remember that?” and ye never even see the Tiger behind ye.

And that’s why ye never trust what’s in the old stories. There’s some things that are for knowing, and theres things out that arn’t for knowing. There’s things that’ll take yer knowing and turn it against ye, and eat ye right up for it.”

I dropped him off, and he thanked me.