“The next part is a little odd,” they said.
“Oh?” asked Sinh Loan as Sinh Cam buried her nose under her paw with a chuffing sound. If Chih didn’t know better, they would have said it was a giggle.
“Yes. The story of the tiger Ho Thi Thao and Scholar Dieu came down to us long after they were both dead, through a traveling actor who told it to a literate friend. The distortion of some fifty years, a natural storyteller, and a monk from Ue County can be immense . . .”
“Well?” said Sinh Loan.”
“All right. The text as it was given to me says . . .”
* * *
So Ho Thi Thao showed Dieu all the treasures she had, ending with her sleeping place. The bed was covered with a lavish embroidered quilt featuring water bison, pronghorn deer, goats, rabbits, and humans, all running, and stretched over the bed as a canopy was the glorious pelt of an enormous tiger.
“And that,” she said proudly, “is the skin of my mother, who I killed.”
* * *
Sinh Loan’s eyes narrowed and Sinh Cam’s head came up in surprise.
* * *
“Why would you do such a thing?” said Dieu.
“Why, because I wanted what was hers, and because all things are mine. Come here, and let me show you the things I have killed, embroidered on my bed.”
Dieu went to listen to the tiger’s tales of everything she had killed, and the next morning, the tiger gone hunting, she left without a scratch.
* * *
“Well,” said Sinh Loan, her voice as taut as a zither string. “Is that what they say happened?”
“It is,” said Chih. They were aware that Si-yu had stood up, her lance in her hands again.
“How awful!” said Sinh Cam, shaking her head. “How could they, that’s the best part and they ruined it, that’s not how it went at all.”
Sinh Cam came to her feet, forcing Sinh Loan to sit up in irritation, and she paced back and forth, occasionally biting the cold air as if she wanted to get a bad taste out of her mouth.
“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?”
There was a primitive part of Chih’s mind that was telling them to run right now, but they ignored it. Instead they took a deep breath and then another because Sinh Loan considered them a person and would give them some warning before she killed them. Probably.
“It is the only version of the story I know,” Chih said. “Tell me another, and I’ll tell that instead.”
“Or you will keep them both in your vault and think one is as good as the other,” said Sinh Hoa, speaking up unexpectedly, her voice gravelly with sleep. “That’s almost worse.”
“I can’t do anything until you tell me what’s wrong, lady,” Chih said, and then they shut their mouth.
A complicated sort of three-way communication passed between the tigers. Sinh Loan looked coldly furious; if a tiger could be said to pout Sinh Cam pouted ferociously; and Sinh Hoa looked sleepy, but perhaps that was only how she always looked.
“So, are they going to eat us because of your story?” Si-yu asked. “If it’s any consolation, I thought that you told it well so far.”
“They might,” Chih said, and because they knew the tigers were listening with at least half an ear, “or they may not, and instead tell me the true version.”
Finally, Sinh Cam and Sinh Hoa settled to the ground again, and Sinh Loan sat up straight, shoulders square and eyes gleaming in the light.
“All right, cleric. This is told to you in good faith. If we allow you to return to the Singing Hills, I trust that you will tell it there in good faith as well.”
* * *
With the pride of the tiger who had eaten one of the sun’s sacred calves, Ho Thi Thao took Scholar Dieu by the hand and led her through her house, pointing out the treasures she had won through longer teeth, sharper claws, and a greater belly than her enemies.
Of all the tigers living in that era, Ho Thi Thao was one of the greatest, proud and hungry, and she had many treasures to show off. It must have been that she already favored Scholar Dieu more than a little because not only did she show her a jar containing the hand bones of a giant and the teeth of the last talking bear in the Boarbacks, she also led her to the deepest parts of her house, so far inside the mountain’s heart that only the oil of dead whales lit the way.
Canopied over Ho Thi Thao’s bed was the pelt of a great tiger, one almost as large as the scout’s calf’s there. The paws swung down, still tipped in silvery claws, and the orange was bright and living and the black was deep and dead.
“Who was that?” asked Scholar Dieu, and Thao smiled.
“It is the skin of He Leaps and Leaps, killed by my grandfather in lawful combat,” she said. “Some people say that he was only ever a story and that his bones are words and his eyes are laughter, but no. He was real, he was hungry, and now his skin stretches over me like the sky when I sleep.”
“And are you worthy of such a thing?” asked Scholar Dieu.
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. Instead the words came from Scholar Dieu, and they only made Ho Thi Thao smile.
“Come and see,” she said, pulling her beneath the skin of He Leaps and Leaps. “Let me show you.”
And so Scholar Dieu stayed in Ho Thi Thao’s bed for three nights, and on the morning of the third day, she woke alone, so she dressed and went down the mountain without a single unwanted mark on her body.
* * *
“Thank you, madam,” said Chih, sketching a bow from their seated position. “I have recorded your story here, and if I return to Singing Hills, it will be copied into the archives.”
“Or even if your records return without you,” observed Sinh Hoa sleepily.
“You didn’t tell it right,” Sinh Cam said sulkily, but Sinh Loan ignored her, instead folding her hands neatly on her lap and nodding to Chih.
“Continue.”
“Of course, madam.”
Chapter Seven
SCHOLAR DIEU CAME DOWN from Wulai Mountain to the banks of the Oanh River. It was broad and wide, placid as a water buffalo except for the places where it bucked and swirled with a secret strange madness. She found at the foot of the mountain a flat-bottomed boat complete with a long pole hitched to one side, but instead of a boatman, there was the tiger resting in the boat, a satisfied look on her face.
Dieu looked left and look right, and the tiger, her eyes half-closed, spoke with Ho Thi Thao’s voice.
“There is a bridge five days north, and a proper ferry seven days south,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
Dieu bit her lip nervously.
“I have no more food,” she said. “I had intended to stop at the village of Nei after the river crossing.”
“That’s not very interesting to me,” the tiger said, and Scholar Dieu resisted the urge to pick up a river stone and to pitch it as hard as she could at the tiger’s round face.