Page 9 of A Thousand Painted Hours

“Yes,” Tanveer said, and gave me a conspiratorial glance.

“I am going to read,” she said. “Do not follow me.”

“Do you swear you will not tell?” Tanveer asked.

“I will not tell,” she said, and was gone.

He looked at me, and I at him. We were almost exactly the same height, eye to eye. “She will not tell, not now,” he said. “And when the tiger kills again, it will be too late.”

“When? Do you think she will?”

“Of course,” he said, ever clear eyed. “We are simply prey, after all.”

Worry rose like a miasma, blotting out my joy. “But won’t we then be responsible for those deaths?”

“No,” he said firmly. “She has a right to live in her world, even if we don’t like what she does.”

I shivered. “She is so beautiful. I want to go downstairs and paint her before I forget.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “The stars will be here another night.”

As we turned away, I looked over my shoulder. What if she did kill someone else? How would I feel?

I didn’t know.

—6—

Not long after we spied the tiger in the trees, she attacked a woman doing laundry at the river and dragged her into the forest. Her husband found her empty sari on the banks, and tracked a trail of blood into the forest, where it disappeared. Her body was not found.

A party of villagers arrived at the maharaja’s palace, demanding the tiger be hunted. My father was invited.

It was distantly horrifying that it had killed another person, but the tiger was a hundred times more real. I’d seen her. When I heard, I marched to my father’s study, where he was preparing himself. I said, “You can’t kill the tiger!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Elsie,” he said. “It’s killing people. You could very well be next. Would you want that?”

“No!” I thought of what Tanveer had said. “But it’s her land. She was here first.”

“Progress has brought us here now.” He dropped his booted foot to the floor, shook down his trouser leg. “God gave man dominion over the beasts, and at times they must be subdued.”

He stood and made to pass by, but I grabbed his arm. “No, please, Father! I saw her. She’s so beautiful.”

“Many beautiful things must die,” he said more gently. “This tiger will not halt until she’s brought down. How many people would you agree were enough to trade for her death, hmm? Twenty, fifty? There’s a tiger to the east who has killed hundreds. Would that be cause enough?”

I wept, pulling on his arm, aware that I was out of control, but unable to rein myself in. It seemed so brutal to hunt her. “No, please, don’t!”

“Enough,” he said, and yanked away harshly. “When you grow up, you’ll understand that nature must be subdued.”

He left me collapsed in a heap on the floor, unsubdued and unwilling to be.

The maharaja, along with other ICS members, formed a party with my father, and the maharani brought Tanveer and Gurdaya to our villa to wait. The children gathered in the nursery, quiet in our games but taking comfort in each other’s company.

“When do you begin school?” Gurdaya asked. The hunt didn’t bother her, and she was plainly attempting to distract her brother and me.

“Not long. I think in September.”

“As will I,” Tanveer said, shading the stripes of the tiger on his page. Unable to bear drawing the tiger, I focused on sketching his hands against the page. He had long fingers and oval nails. The angle of thumb to wrist was quite elegant, and I tried to decide why.

I looked up. “Will you go to the Diocesan Boys School?”