Free The Tiger and the Wolf by [email protected] Page A

because the wolf was the fastest, and abruptly
she was running from him, retreating back ten feet and leaping
up the first low barrier before she dared to turn and look.
With no great hurry, Kalameshli was walking after her. His
steps were slow, and yet every one of them seemed to eat up the
ground between them. The stone-toothed branch twitched at his
side. There was no expression whatsoever on his face.
She turned and ran, coursing swiftly, in her wolf shape,
across the clear ground and putting distance between them.
Then there was an earthen barrier to scramble up – human
hands better than animal paws for that – and the tree to balance
over, but she did it without thinking, without a moment’s hesitation, and all the while Kalameshli was following patiently and
without hurry.
Then the wall was before her, seeming twice as high now as
when the acolytes had brought it in. The crowd thronged at
either edge, watching her eagerly.
She backed off, casting a look over her shoulder. Kalameshli
was just reaching the tree.
The wolf could never make it, she knew, but it could still
jump surprisingly high. She took a few more steps back and
then dashed forwards on all four feet, leaping up and then Stepping even as she hit the wall, scrabbling for purchase, feet
kicking, fingers clutching at the slick trunks.
She fell back heavily, Stepping to wolf before she hit the
ground and twisting to get her paws under her.
Kalameshli was close now. Impossible, surely, with all the lead
she had won herself, but there he was. Seeing he had her attention, he cracked the switch again, making that broken sound.
She faced the wall, feeling her heart speed. She tried scrabbling at it as a wolf, getting nowhere. She Stepped to human,
Stepped back, dashing to either side, hurled back by the animosity of the crowd.
And within her, the tiger was awake and demanding its hour.
She would be up and over the wall in seconds with its claws. It
knew no walls or bounds. It was proud and fierce. It wanted to
show them all just how fierce it was.
Again the switch lashed, and this time she felt the breeze of it,
whirling round and backing away from Kalameshli’s steady progress, her tail between her legs, snarling at him in terrified
defiance. His expression was disapproving but not really disappointed. After all, surely this was what he had planned. Perhaps
he had nurtured the thought of this moment for years, knowing
that a time would come when not even her father’s name would
shield her from his hatred.
She had no idea why he loathed her so, only that he always
had. Something in him had looked on her, at the moment of her
birth, and judged her unfit, as if their spirits had been enemies
in past lives, human or animal or both.
Her back, her human back, was against the wall, and the
voice of the tiger was loud in her ears, demanding to be released
from the prison of her flesh. Before her stood only Kalameshli.
His face twisted in a nameless expression she had never seen
before, on his face or any other’s, and he struck out at her.
She screamed and flinched aside, and the switch scarred the
wood beside her head. That could have been my face. That could
have been me.
He drew back his arm again. Everyone there, the entire tribe,
was silent, almost reverent, watching their priest at his work,
driving weakness from the Wolf.
She found that she could do nothing. She would have
Stepped to tiger then, if she could, because she was beyond any
thought of her future in the tribe, but fear of Kalameshli had
frozen her in a strangling grip against the wall.
Then he lashed out again and the flint-barbed head of his
whip tore into her arm and shoulder, splashing blood across the
wood behind her, and he was already preparing for another blow.
She let out a sound that was girl and wolf and tiger all at
once, all in pain, and was up the wall, finding purchase from
nothing, scrabbling and kicking with her breath coming in shuddering