Page 11 of A Thousand Painted Hours

“Nor have I.”

“That must not be true,” I said. “You have your sister, your many cousins.”

“Not the same as this,” he said, moving his finger to indicate our bodies.

“Truly?”

He pressed a hand to his heart. “Truly. Perhaps we have been friends in other lives, and in some part of ourselves, we remember.”

I was not unfamiliar with the concept of rebirth. It permeated the cultures around us, but I had never considered that perhapsImighthave had other lives. It opened something in my heart, giving spaciousness to my thoughts.

Narrowing my eyes against the bright light, I tried to imagine our friendship in some other time, perhaps in some other land, like Egypt. “Perhaps we built the Pyramids.”

“You are a girl!”

“Perhaps I was a boy in another life, and you were a girl.” My spirits lifted, and I leaned forward, apple in hand. “Perhaps we were both girls, or both boys!”

He frowned. “I do not think I was ever a girl.”

“Why not? If people can be oxen or birds, why not boys or girls?”

His scowl deepened. “I have not been a girl.”

I laughed at him, but when he didn’t soften, I allowed his myth. Chewing another apple, I thought to myself that men never wanted to be women, but I wanted—deeply—to be a man. To have that power, that choice. “I don’t like being a girl,” I said.

It surprised him. “Why?”

“Why don’t you want to be one?”

“Because girls—” His forehead beetled. “Because.”

“Because everyone tells girls what to do!”

He measured me for a long moment. “That is the way of things.”

“Why?” I said back to him.

“Because you are small and weak and need protection.”

I snorted. “Your sister doesn’t need protection from anyone.” And when I saw his recognition that I was right—Gurdaya was a fierce girl, and her father indulged her, to a point—I said clearly, “Neither do I. I am your equal, Tanveer Singh, and you know that’s true.”

He continued to look at me, the waters of his dark eyes roiling with his thoughts, light and dark. At last, he took a breath. “I fear I must admit you are correct.”

I laughed. “That is why we are friends!”

It took them three days to track the tiger down. By the time the party returned, grimy and still half drunk on both Scotch and bloodlust, it was twilight. We saw them from the roof, the motley group with the body of the tiger strapped to a long wagon. I cried out, seeing her, and Tanveer gripped my hand. We shared a moment of deepest grief, both of our faces streaming with tears.

“We should go down and pay our respects,” he said.

“I cannot bear it.”

He said, “She died. We can manage to bear witness.”

Nodding, I followed him down. By the time we reached the yard, others had poured out of the palace, eager to see the slain tiger. Tanveer and I ducked between them until we stood by the wagon.

She was so much larger than I had imagined, her paws the size of my entire belly, her nose as long as the body of Tanveer’s cat. Her golden eyes stared sightlessly out at us. A terrible pain rose in my chest, through my throat, and poured through my eyes, a stream of hot tears that did nothing to ease the sorrow of her loss. I looked at Tanveer, and his jaw was set hard against his tears, tears he dared not shed in this company, but he looked at me, and gave a faint nod.

I looked back, took her in, tried to truly see her, this creature of infinite beauty, her fur thick and even more orange than I had imagined, the stripes clearly defined. A wound on her chest showed the death mark, and I hoped she had died quickly and without pain.