Tooth and Nail, Fur and Scale Page 21
The king spat on the ground bitterly. ‘You took that kill from me!’
‘You forced my hand, lowlander,’ said the chieftain, and indicated for his men to bring him a flaming brand. ‘And then you dared to hunt one of the creatures at the height of his power. We do not respect these creatures because of tradition alone. We do not call them man-tigers just because of the shape of their heads. Here, in the Forest, they are the masters. You thought you were hunting them . . .’ The chieftain smiled, despite himself. ‘I will have you put your seal on this charter here and now, when you might remember that I saved your life and that you have an oath to keep.’
He peered into the king’s eyes, which met his gaze for a moment before they flashed with uncertainty and looked away. The chieftain put the red sealing wax over the fire and let it drip on to the parchment. The king’s right fist moved towards it, trembling, the signet ring gleaming in the firelight.
‘The antidote will put you to sleep,’ the chieftain said. ‘You shall wake up in the village.’
Eventually, the woods around them had fallen silent and they had known that they were free to go.
The descent to the village took far longer than the climb because of the darkness, and because the king and his men had to be borne on a litter by men on foot. Halfway down the mountain road, the master-at-arms rode up beside the chieftain.
‘Can your told-you-sos not wait until we get back?’ asked the chieftain.
The master-at-arms clicked his tongue. ‘No such thing, sir,’ he said. ‘The decision was taken by the council at large. It was not yours alone.’
‘But I was the one proposing it.’
‘The only call you took on your own was to let those ingrates bumble into the Forest by themselves.’
The chieftain was silent.
‘What do you think that was?’ asked the master-at-arms, his voice pitched low. ‘It was as though . . . as though they had planned it.’
‘It certainly looked that way.’
‘If they can do that—if they can strategize—they truly are the masters of these lands, and we their vassals.’
They considered this for a while, their breath steaming in the cold night.
‘We understand the Forest less and less as time passes,’ said the chieftain at last as a grim realization dawned on him. ‘It seems we have gone astray.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Take the matter with the lowlanders, for instance. We’ve been dealing with them all wrong. We’ve been trying to establish farming settlements in the foothills for generations, and they’ve been rebuffing us with occasional raids. At great cost to us and little expense to them.’
‘What’s the alternative? Should we forgo the foothills entirely?’
‘Of course not. Those are our lands.’
‘Then?’
‘The mistake we’ve been making,’ said the chieftain, ‘is in trying to become like these men of the plains. Our young men have increasingly taken to dressing like them, even speaking their tongue. But they aren’t the only ones to blame. For years, we’ve been watching ourselves less and them more. We’ve begun to envy their lowland luxuries and their superficial embellishments—and we’re remaking ourselves in their image. Though the Forest gave us everything we needed, we cut Him down to farm and to build gardens for our children. Our children don’t need gardens! They’re mountain folk! Forest folk! Tree folk! We’ve discarded the thing that keeps us safe, and invited them to invade us.’
The master-at-arms sighed, a sombre manner coming upon him. ‘What do you suggest we do?’
The chieftain pointed at the dark blanket of trees stretching below and above them, and his voice quavered when he spoke. ‘We will sow the foothills, but not with farms. We will sow it with trees, and let the Forest grow out again. We will bide our time and grow our fortress slowly, over decades. And this time, we shall not trim Him when He bursts beyond His boundaries.’
‘And then?’
‘Then,’ said the chieftain, ‘we’ll hand Him back to the man-tigers, and we’ll wait for them to do as they will.’
MANTICORE
Early Persians thought there was a creature in India that had a man’s head, a lion’s body and a scorpion’s tail with which it shot poisonous spines at people. They called it the mardyakhor, or the man-eater, which honestly seems like the most unimaginative descriptor they could have thought of for a creature like that.
The Greeks heard of this legend and took it west, where ‘mardyakhor’ went through Greek and Latin translations and eventually became the English manticore, which is just a cool-sounding name that means nothing.
By the 16th century, a few English noblemen, having become tired of seeing the same old lions and dragons and griffins on banners, thought it would be cool to put the manticore on their badges. So this Persian legend about an Indian cryptid became famous as a glorified logo in England.
Perceptive readers might have noticed a serious flaw in the design of the creature as it has been described—its human head. When it comes to devouring people whole, the average human mouth doesn’t seem like the most effective starting point, does it? But, of course, the mouth of the manticore isn’t really normal at all. It opens from ear to ear and contains three rows of razor-sharp teeth for thrice the chewing power.
Perhaps it is because of this deviation from the human form that it can’t really talk. Instead, it is supposed to have a call that sounds like a trumpet. With a lion’s body and a ranged attack that pierces and paralyses, I suppose it doesn’t need a terrifying roar.
1 A high-ranking political adviser, similar to a prime minister.
2 A Turkish bathhouse.
3 One who speaks Old Norse, hailing from the Scandinavian region of Europe.
4 One from Nubia, a region along River Nile in southern Egypt and northern Sudan.
5 Derived from the Persian word for ‘sword’, a curved sabre introduced by the Turkish Seljuk Empire.
6 A part of some households in South Asia, occupied exclusively by the women of the family.
1 A physician.
2 A dark-brown tar-like substance that is found within rocks in the Himalayas, it is believed to have medicinal properties.
1 A small two-headed drum that is struck by beads attached to its waist with a piece of string.
1 A South Indian condiment for idli and dosa, it is a powder made with lentils and chilli.
1 Circular symbols representing the cosmos, used in Hindu and Buddhist rituals.
1 Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, trans. George Rawlinson (n.p.: The Tandy-Thomas Company, 1909), http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html. Content and URL may have changed since last accessed.
1 A Mach number denotes how fast a body is moving compared to the speed of sound. If something is moving at Mach 1, it is travelling at the speed of sound. If something is moving at Mach 5, it is travelling at five times the speed of sound, and so on.
2 The Doppler blue shift that marks a decrease in wavelength in visible light when a celestial object is displaced.
1 An unstitched piece of cloth worn around the waist, closely related to the sarong and the dhoti.
1 Elder sister.
2 Grandmother.
1 Central Industrial Security Force of the Indian Central Armed Police Force.
2 Preeti Agarwal, ‘Bhootbilli on the Prowl’, Mid-Day, 5 November, 2010, http://www.mid-day.com/articles/bhootbilli-on-the-prowl/101054. Content and URL may have changed since last accessed.
1 Tuesday.
2 The first month of the Hindu calendar, starting in either March or April of the Gregorian calendar.
3 A garment draped over the upper body in ancient India.
4 An ancient version of the dhoti, used to clothe the lower torso. It is tied in place with a sash known as the kayabandh, and decorated with an embroidered band known as the pataka.
5 An inebriating drink.
6 A mystical diagram used in tantric magic.
&nb
sp; 7 A coin.
8 The centrepiece in a havan (i.e. a ritual burning), which bears the fire and the offerings.
9 Institutions that board and train martial artists.
10 A market.
11 The ancient Indian name for the Greek.
12 Establishments that serve madira.
1 An ancient Indian board game.
Acknowledgements
This book was a lot of fun to make, thanks to:
Harish and Nisha, who were its first readers and left their fingerprints all over it.
Karthik, for his prompt and professional feedback.
Bibo, for being super-generous with his time and advice.
Amma and Aththa, for their unconditional support and crazy enthusiasm.
Nimmy, who was totally this book’s dad—one it was extremely lucky to have. Which would make Kankana the thoughtful and intelligent aunt who taught it elegance and Meena the cool cousin from whom it learnt style.
And thank you, for reading.
THE BEGINNING
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This collection published 2017
Copyright © Anupam Arunachalam 2017
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Jacket images © Meena Rajasekaran
ISBN: 978-0-143-42776-6
This digital edition published in 2017.
e-ISBN: 978-9-386-49597-6
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