Free In Search of the Blue Tiger by Robert Power Page B

from her lips. Like pearls. Like pearls drifting in a stream to the surface. Way, way above. Further away than the roof of a cathedral.
    â€˜How can you miss the boat if no one shows you the pier?’ asks Mr April, his tears running down his face, mingling with the salty ocean.
    â€˜I will teach you chess,’ she replies, holding out her hand, unclenching her fist to show him. ‘Here, look, I have the black queen.’
    And they both look at the precious object as if it were their child, their very own baby child. She puts her arms around her dead husband’s shoulders and they swim off together, a trail of pearly bubbles whispering in their wake.
    â€˜I will teach you to play. Chess. Chess. Chess,’ she sings as they drift away on the tide.

    â€˜Get that dog out of the house,’ shouts the Father. He is drunk and in that dark place where evil lives. ‘Yapping around. Get it out before I kick it through the window.’
    My Great Aunt is sitting in the alcove with Mother, who is crying but not weeping. I turn to them, but they offer me nothing. Something has gone before.
    Then Stigir pricks up his ears, trots to the door and goes out into the garden. I begin to follow him, knowing there is more sunlight out there than ever inside this house.
    â€˜Where are you going?’ booms the Father.
    I know this is a command to obey. I stop stock-still. His eyes are wild, there’s a brown smudge of stout on his cheek. This is a bad sign.
    â€˜What’s all this tiger nonsense your mother has been telling me about, that you’ve been writing about?’
    His face is close to mine. I can smell the beer and cigarettes on his breath. But I will stand my ground. Stand up to this huge male.
    â€˜My scrapbook, you mean?’ Tears are bubbling in my throat but I’m determined not to let them out, however horrible it all gets.
    â€˜Yes, I do mean. And that librarian woman. What’s the use of it all?’
    He is grinning at me. The grin that can mean anything.
    â€˜So when I go to see animals in the wild, see them for real one day, I’ll know all about them and how to be with them,’ I say, as if life in the House of the Doomed and the Damned has not taught me enough about wild animals already.
    â€˜When you go to see them? How to be with them? Who are you? Saint Francis of Assisi?’ He laughs, taking a half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray, straightening it out, breaking off the burnt hardened end, then lighting it.
    â€˜You’ll be like her,’ he mocks, pointing at Mother. ‘Going nowhere and doing nothing. Useless.’
    I glance over at Mother and Great Aunt. Mother is hunched over in her seat, but Great Aunt has such a look of defiance in her face. Defiance and anger.
    â€˜I will go,’ I say. ‘I will go out in the world and see for myself. One day, you wait and see.’
    Father laughs and laughs. I feel a rage take over me. I fly at him with tears spraying in all directions. But there are no claws on my fingertips, no sharpened teeth in my mouth. He laughs all the more as I pound my fists at him. Hail on a mountainside. He barely troubles to fend me off.
    â€˜You’re weak like her and you’ll go nowhere like her,’ he sneers.
    I am trapped in this orbit of tears and fists and harsh words. I am only a child, but he laughs at my childness, my weakness. I strike him with all my might, but hardly move the flesh against his bones. Then with one sweep of a mighty forearm he pushes me to the floor.
    â€˜Get out, get out the lot of you!’ he yells, his laughter abruptly gone. ‘I’ve had enough of you all, you useless collection of gobshites!’
    Mother and Great Aunt move quietly off to the kitchen. I go out into the garden, slamming the back door behind me, the glass panes rattle and shake. I search the orchard for Stigir, but he is nowhere to be seen. I go to the gap in the fence to see if he is in the