Excerpt from chapter 1 of Tiger Eyes and Dragon Teeth, my first epic fantasy novel

Chapter One—Who am I?

Light. Glorious, blue prisms of light sparkled off every leaf and branch. Thick, powdery sap burbled slowly inside the crystalline tree. The Great Sapphire Tree of Jaria was one of only a few hundred sapphire trees that were still known to exist. Its leaves were hard and thick as sapphires, its branches like iron bars. Such trees were rare, most having been harvested long ago.

I brushed the leaves with the tips of my fingers as I passed the tree, and stooped to get to the cave behind it.

I hadn’t made the climb to see the tree, rather to get at the cave and a likely source of milk bulb. I leaned down with a lamp, sniffed the air and listened. A soft scuffling noise reached my ears. Heart thumping, I touched the hilt of my knife, sheathed at my belt.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked.

A faint growling rumbled off the wall of the cave. It was too deep and throaty to be a treelion. I guessed it was something more like a rock panther or maybe even an icetiger.

I tried to keep my breathing even. Today’s journey had just got a whole lot more interesting. Perhaps I would come home with a bond-mate of my own, after all my years of waiting.

There were a dozen Rada with rock panthers in Jaria presently, but no one was bonded with an icetiger.

I told myself not to get my hopes up. The best I can hope for today is to see one and live to tell the tale.

I shuffled further into the cave, holding the lamp high enough to throw light into its dark recesses. I saw only rocks, roots, spiderwebs and bones.

I pulled a pair of spicy dried sardines from one of my pouches and lay them on the ground. Retreating towards the entrance, I set the lamp between myself and the possible predator.

I unhitched my pack, retrieved the leather mask from within and arranged it so that the bright eyes were on the back of my head. Gatherers like me often used them to keep great cats at bay in the forest. A wild cat was less likely to attack if it thought it was being watched.

I took a few deep breaths and decided it was safe to continue my work. I tore a section of milkvine from the roof of the cave. The plant’s roots resided deep inside the walls. It would take much work with my pick-axe to determine where the precious bulbs were concealed.

I began the laborious task of hacking at the cave wall, removing rocks and dirt from around the roots.

After about an hour I detected a pungeant smell behind me. I turned ever so slowly to see a large white paw retreating into the darkness, fish in tow. Then there was the faintest sound of jaws smacking together. I put down the pick-axe, sensing the animal was no threat to me.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

If I was right, then this was some fortunate Jarian’s new Rada-kin. Mine? The words I spoke were probably the first human words it had ever heard and understood. When the great cat still did not show itself, I sighed and went back to work. It would come out when it was ready. Night was not too far away and I wanted to get this finished and start a fire.

About two feet into the cave wall was an impressive cache of milk bulb. The bulbous white protuberances on the roots were nutrient-dense, coveted in Jaria for a substantial vegetarian meal. It would be fortunate if I could manage to carry it all home.

I used my knife to dig away the rootlets and dirt around the bulbs, severed the cords, and hauled them out into a pile.

Having lined them up at the mouth of the cave, I rested on all fours, panting. The day-star hovered on the horizon. From my vantage point on the side of an incline I could see over an expanse of forest. The reddening light made the balls of mist that hung over the landscape glow like fire.

Wild geese flocked across the sky to the east. Harmless though they were, I turned my eyes away from them, barely suppressing a shudder. Animals of all kinds fascinated me, but I detested birds.

Lying on my back with my head propped on my pack, I rubbed at the scar on my left wrist. That mark was responsible for my moniker, but it had left a scar of a different kind on my mind.

‘Who?’ A foreign voice interrupted my thoughts.

‘Talon,’ I replied thinking of the crag hawk’s talons ripping my wrist. My heart thumped with an equal measure of anxiety and excitement. The great cat had spoken to me!

‘No,’ it repeated, with a fierce edge to its voice. ‘Not “who are you?”. Who am I?’

I sat up. This wasn’t my imagination. It was real. That voice in my head… could it possibly be a voice for me? A Rada-kin, finally… for me? My time had come—like my parents before me, I was a Rada!

‘Enough about you!’ the voice accused. ‘What have you done to me?’

I got to my feet slowly, feeling dizzy. There in the shadows behind me was a huge blue and white icetiger, its fur standing on end; puffed up it was even more impressive than I had pictured. Its back was level with my thigh, large yellow fangs gleamed in its snarling maw and the tail thrashed. Thick blue-grey stripes and myriad black and blue spots covered its luscious pelt.

‘How dare you?’ the voice shrilled. The wild cat ran forward and seemed about to pounce on me. I held my ground. A drawn out yowl escaped the cat’s lips. ‘Speak prey! What am I?’

The joy I had felt was joined by a thrill of fear. The great cat’s raw ferocity and mental power stunned me. I blinked, trying to clear my senses, which seemed to have expanded. Smell, hearing, sight and touch vibrated outwards with a depth of perception I could not have imagined.

I was suddenly aware of other creatures, plants, watercourses and wind I had not noticed before. Their sounds and smells were all around the icetiger and me. Each whisker and hair on her body seemed to be receiving and processing these impressions with ease.

Frustrated by my distraction, the icetiger growled and lifted its paw to strike.

‘Who am I?’ the cat shrieked.

You are a magnificent icetiger, I thought. It could hear my thoughts even when they weren’t directed as speech through the waves. You are experiencing a change in your understanding, just like I am. We are joining minds and becoming kin.

‘Stop what you are doing to me!’ she commanded.

‘I’m sorry,’ I replied. ‘I cannot control it. You and I are becoming bonded, Rada and Rada-kin.’

The cat stared at me for a long time, seeing and hearing far more than my words conveyed. I frowned, trying to remember if the other Rada-kin I had escorted to Jaria had been so affronted. I hadn’t been able to hear them in my mind, but I knew the body language of animals well.

Most had seemed confused at first, then grateful, not only for the longer life but also for the expanded sentience and fulfilment living among humans would grant them.

Pulling thoughts out of my wide-open mind the icetiger responded with a menacing tone and a sharp flick of her tail. She took her time pulling the right words from my vocabulary. ‘Easy for you to say. You’ve had... plans and... purpose all your life. Imagine me, awakening one day to find a question in my mind: “is there more to life than hunting and sleeping?” It’s unnatural.’

‘Indeed,’ I replied, smiling at the first hint of the tiger’s sense of humour. ‘You are no longer a natural animal with the simple task to live, reproduce and die. Your lifecycle is now so much more.’

The icetiger padded slowly into the light and walked in a circle around me. She sniffed and eyed me all over, growled and licked her lips.

‘Yet you define yourself by this “lifecycle”,’ she observed.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘“I am alive”, “my parents are dead”—are these not thoughts that define who you are?’

I supposed that at the most basic level I did define myself as alive and those I had lost as dead but to explain the intricacies of life and death to an animal was surely like speaking about it to a child. I hardly knew where to begin.

‘Start with parents. What is that?’ she suggested.

‘Do you not remember your mother?’ I queried. ‘Warm fur, paws kneading, sweet milk.’

She couldn’t yet grasp any familial words, so I tried sending her a visual of what I imagined a tiny icetiger cub would experience. She strained to remember while I edged slightly closer. My thoughts and memories seemed to be open to her, so I wondered if I could reach into her mind likewise. I brushed her back with my hand.

A surge of wild instinct filled me. For a moment all I could think and feel was the need for meat, blood gushing around my fangs. The icetiger’s experiences were so alien to mine that I found myself sinking down to the ground.

It was a carefree life she had given up. Not without pain and struggle but free from the burden of thought. Until now her life had been simple and pragmatic. Hunt, eat, sleep, patrol territory. Now her mind fired with the spark of humanity and emotions she had never experienced before. This spark came entirely from me. Was I worthy?

Crouched on all fours, I locked eyes with her. She stared straight back at me with eyes the colour of sapphire tree leaves. She explored my memories, springing and pouncing on them, devouring the happy times, sniffing and licking dispiritedly at the sad.

Some kind of understanding passed between us. She looked at me and saw me for everything I was. It was the first time I had felt so connected with another living being.

‘Well,’ she said after a while, ‘if I am stuck with you, then how about some more of that fish?’

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