What is a tiger hunter, her father had asked. When there are no more tigers left to hunt?
The tiger hunter. The tiger hunter, in a world with no tigers left. The tiger hunter, with all the guilt and blood on her own hands. Boudika stood in the shade of the trees just off the beach, her eyes a blood-red that did not belong to the island of blue and green and jewel-bright birds. Could time bring him back? She wondered, again and again. Is that what finding the relic meant? Her mind was full of his words, of her own sense of not belonging.
It is in your nature, Orestes had said.
The shade of the trees dappled her, although it offered little coolness. The island was hot, humid—sticky. Boudika felt as though it would never wash from her skin, again, as though it had seeped into every part of her with its strange magic. Her eyes searched the beach restlessly, although her body did not move. The mare stood stoically, with a soldier’s discipline—and there her mind caught, aggressively, you are not a soldier anymore—and not a tiger hunter, so what? What was she? Her eyes stuck on the sea, as though all of her searching for a relic were actually for a man who could appear, at any moment, out of the tossing sea. Her heart swelled with disappointment when each equine that passed was a stranger or, worse, a familiar face of Denocte who she did not know the name of.
And eventually, she regained her morale. Her search was not as futile as she made herself feel. What favour would you ask a god? The question returned to her, unbidden. The question that had driven her across the bridge to nowhere, to the island she now felt stranded on. Boudika was afraid to return across the sea and, perhaps, she never would.
Boudika began to emerge from the shadows and, in doing so, happened to catch sight of an equine that at first appeared nondescript. Only a unicorn. And then Boudika saw the light glance off a scaled stomach, and she recognized the Queen of the Night Court.
Everything within her resisted the urge to approach as Isra engaged in conversation with another mare. But Boudika could not help herself as she crossed the same bone-white beach, coral cracking underfoot. The water hurt her eyes. Why did the water always hurt her eyes?
Before Boudika could decide what to say, she was standing besides Maerys and Isra, catching only, the tail end of the words looking for. And on Boudika’s tongue: tigers, magic, monsters, time but none of it could be said, not aloud. The question was not for her and, even so, her truths were too heavy to admit. It would be like speaking iron, each word dragging her down into something obscure, something dark.
So Boudika did not speak, until standing there, wordless and uncertain, became too humiliating. “I like your dragon,” Boudika admitted to Maerys, at last, staring at the strange of creature with a famished expression.
And what she could not say, what she did not say, was she had heard of Isra’s strange magic. How the world changed at her touch, blossoming like so many flowers. What she wanted to say, but could not say, was how badly she wanted to know if that touch could change her into some shape that would not feel the pain of her guilt so acutely, so terribly. Boudika wanted to be close to the magic that reminded her so much of a monster who was no monster at all, but only a shape-changer, a lover of the sea, strange and incomprehensible and beautiful.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THEY BUILT YOU YOUR OWN NIGHTMARE? DO YOU EAT THE OTHERS OR DO YOU EAT YOURSELF? BULL'S BELLOWS SHAKING AN ENTIRE FRACTIOUS ISLAND; A GIRL IN THE SHADOWS WHO'LL WEAR STARS ONE DAY. A SISTER'S RED SWEET MOUTH AT THE ENTRANCE TO AN ENDLESS MAZE, STRING DRIPPING BETWEEN MILK-WHITE FINGERS. MERCY, SHE WHISPERS INTO THE NIGHT TERROR, EYES FLICKERING. I'M SENDING YOU MERCY.
