Excerpt (Prologue)

The beginning…

No one knew for certain how old the woman really was. Those who had quietly seen their own hair turning gray could only recall from distant childhoods that she had always been as old as they themselves were now becoming.

She slept on a low [...]]]>

Excerpt (Prologue)

The beginning…

No one knew for certain how old the woman really was. Those who had quietly seen their own hair turning gray could only recall from distant childhoods that she had always been as old as they themselves were now becoming.

She slept on a low bed made of straw, and silk, and clouds, and she slept very soundly until she felt the breath of Bendihara, the tiger, blow hot across her cheeks and brow. He had padded through the halls of the temple to find her, to join her.

“Your breath!” she said. With her eyes still closed she reached up to push away the tiger’s chin, but he was persistent, and would not let her rise until that chin of his was properly scratched.

“All right, all right!” she said, with pretended anger. “Only, don’t drool!”

Bendihara turned his chin this way and that to make certain she got all the spots that itched, and then, feeling more content, he stretched out alongside her bed, and waited.

The old woman sat up and took one of the green leaves from the clay pot beside the bed and slipped it into the side of her cheek. Night-to-day, sleep-to-wakefulness, even, life-to-death; these were transitions that required dignity and she was not going to rush any of these events.

It was a while, then, before she stood.

Barefoot, she ambled through the archway that opened to her private garden, where the morning sun was illuminating the ferns and warming her favorite spot. “Are you coming?”

Bendihara followed at her heels and watched as she ascended the stone with some effort. Bendihara leapt up beside her with no effort at all. The broad, flat granite had been worn smooth over the centuries, by the old woman and those who came before her. The sun quickly penetrated her thin, white tunic, entered her shoulders and rejuvenated her blood. She sat, lotus-like, as she did each morning, and invited the tiger to rest his head in the hollow of her lap. She scratched behind his ears and adored the fire in his perfect, golden eyes.

The old woman began to feel the power flow from the leaf that was softening in her toothless jaw.

When the tiger had fallen asleep, his head heavy in her lap, she tuned her own breathing to the rhythm of his primordial purr, and she entered the dream-sleep of meditation. There she gossiped freely with her younger selves.

Before the trance evaporated, before Che’ Wan approached her with a cup of warm, green tea and kissed her brow, it was they, the blissful inhabitants of dream-sleep, who on this morning foretold the coming of the rat and the bird of paradise.

Excerpt (partial chapter mid-way through the story)

The King, the Datuk Agung Nasrudin bin Abdul Asuhd, was very pleased with his new title, and very pleased with his new horse, the withers being a full hand taller then he was himself, in the way that the English measured the stature of a horse. The long legs of the fine animal assured a gentle and rhythmic trot, an easy, melodic canter, and an exhilarating gallop that almost rivaled the speed of his Arabians, though it had been bred for hunting. And, sitting upon the saddle of his dark, chestnut mount (the English diplomat who had given him the stallion told him what a chestnut was as he explained the horse’s smooth brown color), he was indeed the agung, the highest, an advantage that he rarely enjoyed when standing erect among men on the ground.

The riding crop seldom touched the hind quarters, for the horse loved to run, the weight of its exclusive rider hardly an encumbrance. The King would boast that he had no need of the crop, so swift and responsive was his coveted stallion. But the truth of the matter was that the King feared its power, and the horse was almost unstoppable, and generally indifferent to the slight rider who recently, by title, could claim dominion over man and beast.

The King had an American revolver with a short barrel that he carried in an ornate leather holster on his rides through the palatial preserve, and when he would ride specifically for a hunt, he would select one of several shotguns always close at hand to take down game birds flushed into flight by the obtrusive trot of his horse through the few fields not overrun by jungle. Except for an occasional boar or tapir, larger game was uncommon. The high perimeter wall to the southeast abutted raw jungle that was almost frontier. It was not unheard of to find the impression of tracks on the soft banks of the river, but generally there was too much human activity within the walls of the preserve itself to encourage the presence of a predator, such as a leopard or tiger, which might easily spring the walls from the high trees on the other side.

He had heard that a leopard once had entered the preserve, and probably had gone undetected for weeks before it was found out. There had been no way for it to escape the way it had come, for the wall was too high and the vegetation trimmed along the inner perimeter, leaving no way to climb out. The leopard had been shot.

The King himself had often hoped he might find leopard or tiger tracks on his rides, but it had yet to happen. In any event, as head of state, he had a duty to protect the tiger, for it was their symbol of unity and power. Still, he wondered privately what it would be like to take down such a beast, to confront it fearlessly as a man and then fire only at the final moment as it sprang to attack. The English did it.

With his horse he could run down wild boar, which, in the absence of real predators, would stray from their runs in the dense underbrush where a horse could not pass, and through the open vulnerability of cultivated orchards that provided fresh mangoes and jack fruit, durians and rambutans for the royal table.

King Nasrudin could discharge his revolver at short range, and his horse would not brace or bolt. Occasionally he would send the stable boys for the carcass, but if the boar could be hefted, he enjoyed the sensation of returning home with his kill strapped behind his saddle as bleeding evidence of his prowess.

Alone on his forays, he imagined himself leading charges against armies of infidels, or leading duly impressed English noblemen on a fox hunt. He imagined the English ladies wanting to bed him. He imagined being received by the Queen of England, which was, with his recent ascension to the throne, a distinct possibility. He imagined himself a full head taller. But mostly what he imagined was that there were those plotting his overthrow.