A Girl and Her Tiger Page 10

  Nabhitha was still watching her.

  So, the tiger had not abandoned her after all. She was still there, protecting her, and now providing for her as well.

  She nearly laughed. Apparently, this amma tiger had taken Priya under her paw. Priya had fed Nabhitha in the boat. Maybe Nabhitha was returning the favor. She was almost sad she couldn’t eat the rabbit. She had no fire to cook it over. Still, she was grateful. She used her knife to skin and gut the rabbit and she rinsed it off in the seawater. She then tied the carcass to her belt. She decided that there was still plenty of daylight left and she didn’t want to waste it. She needed to find people. A village. Anything. If she could find people, maybe she could offer to share her rabbit with them if they shared their fire with her. Then she could learn where she was and come up with a plan for getting home.

  “Thank you, Nabhitha,” she said as she walked, and this time, she knew the tiger was not far behind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Priya remembered that she needed to find water before she trekked too far, and she wouldn’t find any here on the beach. So she went into the jungle. Even though it had been bright and sunny on the beach, after only a few steps into the jungle it was dark and cool. The trees were thick and luscious, blocking out most of the sun. The air here was fresh and clean, but in a different way from the clean beach air. The trees seemed to filter out most of the salt, so the air was crisp and refreshing. If she didn’t find a village tonight, she would have to find somewhere in the jungle to sleep.

  As she walked, she felt as though she was being watched, and she glanced over her shoulder repeatedly. She hoped it was Nabhitha. She couldn’t see or hear her, but she didn’t feel as though she was in any danger from whoever might be there.

  She hadn’t walked far when she heard a trickling sound. She followed it and found a small creek that fed into a pool. She dropped her bag and fell to her knees as she dipped her hands into the water. The water was cool and sweet as she brought it to her mouth. She drank and drank and felt as though she could never drink enough. When her stomach was finally full, she took off her clothes and climbed into the pool. She sank under the water, allowing her body to absorb the water through her skin. Her burned skin and parched lips thanked her as they stopped aching for the first time in days. She hadn’t realized how much constant pain her body had been in until she stopped hurting. She dreaded getting out of the water, but she was in no rush, so she soaked in the water until she started to grow cold.

  She washed her hair as thoroughly as she could without soap and rinsed the salt and sand out of every nook and crevice before climbing back out. She tossed away her old dhoti and used a new strip of silk instead. But as the old dhoti hit the ground, she heard it clink and she remembered that she had put some gold coins in the pocket. She pulled out the coins and held them in her hand for a moment, watching them gleam as they burned hotly in her hand. There had been crates of gold on that ship. Gold stolen from the Indian people, though the British called them “taxes.” But the money wasn’t used to improve the lives of Indian people, it was shipped back to England to improve lives there. But in the end, all that gold, all that opium, the spices, the silk, the smuggled animals and slaves couldn’t save the dozens of men who had been on that ship. They all died—and only Priya remained.

  She smirked at that as she put the gold into her bag.

  She kept her old choti, since she didn’t have a replacement for that, but she washed it out as best she could before putting it back on. She wrapped the green silk around her shoulders, put on her boots, wrapped her hair, picked up her skinned rabbit, and then resumed walking, feeling fresh and clean for the first time in days.

  It was nearly dark by the time she saw signs of a village. She saw a boy tending to his goats. She could smell the smoke from fires. And she could hear voices and laughter from somewhere nearby. She asked the boy the way to the village and he pointed to a trail that led through the jungle. She thanked him and followed it. But she had not gotten far when she heard a rustling sound in the underbrush and muffled voices. Voices that sounded angry.

  As she got closer, she heard stifled crying and more angry words. They were the sounds of a man and woman, and Priya’s heart grew hot. When she finally found them, she was not surprised by what she saw.

  A white man in a British uniform had pinned an Indian girl to a tree. His hand was over her mouth, but tears were streaming down her face. With his other hand, he had the girl’s sari hitched up nearly to her waist and he was pounding her with his hips.

  Priya was blinded by her rage. Without thinking she ran forward, using the whole weight of her body to push the man away. In his shock, the man was knocked to the ground.

  “You monster!” Priya screamed at him.

  The man shook his head and looked up, his eyes wide in shock at the sight of her. Then his mouth twisted into a snarl. “You’ll pay for that, darkie!”

  Priya pulled out her knife and held it in front of her. “You’re the one who will pay!” she screamed.

  The man jumped up and lunged at her. Priya brought her knife down, but he blocked it easily, knocking the knife from her hand. Then he slapped her so hard across the face, her neck popped. He pushed her to the ground, and the back of her head hit the dirt hard, causing her vision to spin. He tried to pin her arms down, but her hands—dry from the saltwater—easily slipped from his grasp and she slapped and clawed at his face.

  “I’m going to kill you!” the man yelled as he grabbed both of her small wrists in one of his large hands and finally pinned her to the ground. He then started to fumble with her sari.

  “No!” Priya screamed. “No!”

  Priya wasn’t sure which came first—the scream from the man or the roar from the tiger. Nabhitha seemed to come out of nowhere as she leaped over Priya, knocking the man to the ground and then dragging him deep into the woods. Priya sat up, panting, her eyes wide. She hadn’t even considered that Nabhitha would save her, even though she had done it before. She had stupidly thought she could fight the man on her own.

  The other girl’s screaming broke Priya out of her thoughts. Priya jumped up and took the girl in her arms. She grabbed her knife from where it had fallen to the ground and then ushered the girl along the trail and into the village.

  The screaming and blubbering from the girl brought many people toward them as they walked into the village, both Indians and British soldiers. It seemed to Priya that there were far more British soldiers here than was normal.

  “What happened?” someone asked.

  “A soldier was raping her,” Priya said. “I knocked him away. Tried to fight him.”

  “Who was it?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “I…I don’t know,” Priya said.

  “Well, what did he look like?” the soldier pressed.

  “I…umm…light hair, light skin,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead. A tiger killed him.”

  The people let out a collective gasp.

  “You,” the soldier, who Priya realized was the commanding officer, said, pointing to another soldier. “Gather the men. We have a dangerous tiger to find.”

  “What?” Priya asked, still holding tightly to the girl. “That tiger saved our lives. He would have killed us both.”

  “Hmm, says you,” the commander said with an air of disdain. “How do I know you didn’t try to lure him into the woods with promises of sex just to kill and rob him?”

  “What?” Priya nearly screamed. “Are you out of your mind? He was raping this girl!”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” the man said. “Just as soon as we find the remains of our comrade and dispatch the tiger.”

  “This is ridiculous—” Priya said.

  “My daughter!” a woman cried, cutting Priya off as she made her way through the crowd. “My precious baby.”

  The woman’s words made Priya’s heart ache for her own mother. She let the girl go, only to watch her collapse into the arms of her mother. />
  “My darling,” the mother cried. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  The girl could not speak, but she shook her head as she cried.

  “She is alive,” Priya said. “It could have been much worse.”

  A man came up beside Priya and took her hands, squeezing them tightly. “You have brought out daughter home to us. Please, come to our house.” Then he leaned in and whispered in her ear so the soldier couldn’t hear him, “We can speak more freely there.”

  Priya nodded and followed the family to a small hut. They all went inside where a fire was burning and the woman seemed to have been in the middle of boiling rice for dinner which was now burning, filling the hut with smoke. Priya ran over and removed the pot. She could tell that the mother did not want to let her daughter out of her arms for even a moment.

  “Thank you!” the mother said to Priya as she sat next to her daughter on a crude wooden couch. “You are such a capable girl! Your own mother must be very proud of you.”

  “I…I am a long way from home,” Priya said honestly.

  “Please, give me a few minutes, then I will find something for you to eat as thanks,” the mother said.

  Priya then remembered her rabbit. She unhooked it from her belt and held it up to the father. “I’m sorry. I was looking for someone to share this rabbit with. It’s not much. It…well, it looked much better before I fought with the man in the forest.”

  The father smiled and took the rabbit from her. “It will be more meat than we have eaten in weeks,” the man said as he took it with a grateful bow.

  “Is what you say really true?” the mother asked. “You fought the man? And then a tiger? What happened?”

  Priya then remembered that the soldier had wanted to put a band of men together to go find and kill Nabhitha. “It is true,” she said. “The tiger saved us. Please excuse me. I must try to stop the soldiers. I’ll be back.” She ran out of the hut and over to where the soldiers were gathering.

  “Look alive, men!” the soldier was saying. “This tiger is apparently dangerous and has a taste for human blood. Keep your wits about you and shoot on sight!”

  “Stop!” Priya said. “The tiger is not a threat to you. She only attacked the man because he was hurting me.”

  The man laughed. “You act as though you know this animal.”

  “I do,” she said. “I’ve seen her before. We were on a ship together.”

  “I don’t have time for a child’s fanciful tales,” the man said waving her off and turning away.

  Priya grabbed his shoulder. “But it’s true!”

  The man turned and grabbed her wrist, squeezing it with so much force, she was nearly sent to her knees.

  “Don’t ever touch a British officer, you lowly ingrate,” he sneered.

  “Why should I be grateful?” Priya asked through the pain. “You seem to care more for some worthless rapist than justice.”

  The man released her wrist. “That man was a soldier in the Queen’s army! I’ll brook no slander against him without proof. We will find him and send him home for a proper burial, then dispatch his killer.”

  “My word is proof!” Priya said.

  “Your word means nothing to me,” the man said, then he turned away again back to his men.

  “You can’t—!” Priya started to say, but she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re only making this worse,” a voice said.

  Priya turned and gasped. It was the young customs official from the ship!

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You!” Priya said, her eyes wide.

  His face grew from serious to smiling when she looked at him. His teeth showed, brightening his whole face, his eyes shining. He let out an awkward chuckle as though his words had left him.

  Priya shook her head in shock, but she couldn’t stop from smiling back and resisted the urge to hug him. It was so strange. She had only met him for a moment, and he had left her on the ship to be stolen away, but she was so happy to see a familiar face, even if it was one she had only seen after she had been kidnapped.

  The man grabbed her hand and led her away from the bustle of the village center, behind the hut of the girl she had saved.

  “You’re alive!” he finally said. “And here! How? How did you escape?”

  “You left me!” she blurted out. “How could you?”

  His face fell and he shook his head in shame. “I know,” he said, squeezing her hands tightly. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that moment and hating myself for it. I will understand if you never forgive me. But you must know there was nothing I could have done.”

  Priya hated to admit it, but she knew he was right. She supposed it was why she wasn’t angry with him.

  “If I had protested anymore or tried to free you,” he explained, “my commander could have tried me for insubordination and had me executed. If I had gotten off the ship at all. If the captain had pressed me into service, I might have ended up locked in a cage with you.”

  Priya nodded. She knew it was true.

  “As it is, as soon as I got back to shore, my commander had me reprimanded and sent me here,” the man said. “I’m just an infantryman again. I lost my position, my salary. I haven’t even had a chance to figure out how to tell my mother. She’s going to be so disappointed in me.”

  Priya squeezed his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. “She will be proud of you for speaking up.”

  He laughed. “I don’t think you know my mother.”

  Priya chuckled. “Actually, I imagine she is a lot like mine. She thinks we should submit to the British in order to have some semblance of a safe life.”

  “And yet you ended up in the hull of a slaver’s ship,” the man said. “How did that happen?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “I wrote to your parents before I left Goa,” he said. “I told them that you were alive and on a ship bound for America.”

  “Oh!” Priya gasped, her eyes watering. It was the first bit of good news she’d had since the disastrous meeting with the Evans family. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”

  “It was the least I could do,” he said softly. “I…I can’t believe you are here. Thank the gods!”

  “Jahangir!” a voice barked.

  “Yes, sir!” the man said.

  “What are you doing with that girl?” the commander asked. “There’s a man-eating tiger on the loose! We need to get a move on! Report!”

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied and he started to follow after the soldier, but Priya grabbed his arm.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t help them kill the tiger!”

  “What?” he asked. “Why not?”

  “Because she saved my life,” Priya said. “That tiger…” She paused because she knew it was going to sound crazy, but it was the truth. “That tiger is my friend. We were on the ship together. We escaped together. We came to this village together.”

  His mouth dropped open. “Are you saying the tiger is tame?”

  “Far from it,” Priya said. “Nabhitha does only what she wants.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “They are getting a hunting party together.”

  “We have to stop them,” Priya said.

  “Jahangir!” the commander barked again.

  “Yes, sir!” he said and tried to pull away from Priya, but she held fast to his arm.

  “Jahangir!” she tied to say firmly, but it came out strangled. The man laughed.

  “Zayn,” he said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “My name is Zayn,” he said. “Jahangir is my family name.”

  “Oh,” Priya said. “Of course. Zayn.”

  “Look,” Zayn said, gently gripping her arms. “I’ll do what I can to distract them or mislead them. But you need to stay here in the village where it is safe.”

  “But—” Priya tried to object, but Zayn finally pulled away and went to join the other troops. He
looked back at her as he ran off, and she wondered if he immediately missed her as much as she missed him. She shook her head in confusion. Why did she miss him? They only just met. And he was just as submissive to the British as her parents were. He was not the sort of man she would ever be attracted to. Even if he was incredibly handsome. She couldn’t see his hair because of the hat he had to wear with his uniform, but he had kind, gentle eyes and a strong chin with a dimple in the middle. When had she had time to notice that?

  “Snap out of it,” she told herself as she walked around the hut and watched the soldiers line up and head into the jungle, Zayn included. She didn’t think they would ever find Nabhitha. Nabhitha was too smart to be caught by a bunch of dumb soldiers. Unless she put herself in harm’s way by lingering around the village looking for Priya…She had been caught before, and perhaps because she had been protecting her cubs. What if she felt the need to protect Priya in much the same way? She felt anxiety rise in her chest, but she wasn’t sure what to do. In fact, she felt a bit light-headed and her stomach ached. She then realized that she hadn’t eaten in a while, and only had raw fish for days before that. She wandered back into the hut and her stomach growled and her mouth watered at the delicious smell of roasted rabbit.

  The father walked over and led her to a low table. He then gave her a bowl of rice, a leg of the rabbit, and some boiled turnips. It was a poor meal, certainly, but Priya ate it ravenously, nearly brought to tears by how nourishing it was. She barely took a breath while she ate and ended up panting toward the end.

  “You can take the rest of the rabbit with you on your journey,” the father said with a smile.

  “Thank you. And I…I’m so sorry,” she said when she was finished as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I hadn’t eaten for days.”

  “And you still found the strength to fight that terrible man?” the father asked.