THE LADY AND THE TIGER

Once upon a time, in a strange and distant land, there was a king as strange as the land he ruled. Law and entertainment were one and the same to him. For what should be more pleasing to a king than a kingdom well kept. 

“Mother’s gonna wanna meet her, you know.” Roxanne leaned back against the kitchen counter, eyeing Elaine through long beaded falsies. 

“Cora wants a lot of things from me she won’t be getting.” Elaine laughed through her nose, elbow deep in dish soap as her sister watched her. She stopped once the statement fully registered and changed her face into an immovable mask. 

Anyone accused of a crime faced a trial. A simple, public affair. 

She let her eyes flick over to Roxanne. “You didn’t come here to advocate for her, did you?” 

     “Nah…” Rox smiled at her, the way she always did when she got under Elaine’s skin. Their childhood had consisted of moments like this. Roxanne excelled at putting everyone she met on the back foot. And Elaine never seemed to learn. 

She went back to dealing with the dishes when her sister mumbled, “more of a warning…” 

Again. Elaine stopped. She looked at the wretched creature she called a sister and bit back the urge to bare her teeth. Roxy wasn’t stupid. She had to know what kind of storm she’d have coming if she kept up with this foolishness. 

Roxanne sighed. Let her balance shift over to one side, let her head list that way too. She pursed her lips and averted her eyes. “Mom’s… getting older—” 

“Getting older.” The water around Elaine’s hands started to bubble. 

Roxanne pushed off the counter, taking half a step closer with her arms raised in surrender. “She’s having a crisis about ‘getting older,’ and she… you know how she is.”

“Rox.” Having given up on dishes, Elaine gripped the counter, hands already dry of their own accord. “Rox, I need you to look at me and tell me she’s not on her way.” 

“No, no. She just…” Roxy waved her hands as if to bat the idea away and reclaimed her perch against the counter. Her lips quirked down at the corners where little wrinkles were starting to form. 

They weren’t kids anymore. 

Roxy put a thin layer of frost over her fingers and rested her hand over her sisters. Steam sputtered to life between their hands as Roxy mumbled, “She might be one day. She might come here and look for you and Jean. I’m not gonna tell her where you are, but she has her ways. I mean, she found out you even had the kid.” 

Elaine narrowed her eyes. “So, you’re suggesting I bring my baby into the tiger’s jaws? On purpose?” 

“No. I’m suggesting you arrange a meeting a town or two over. In a public place. Bring Charlie, make her meet him, too.” 

Elaine scoffed, looking back into the sink where the suds were starting to clear over the water. “I don’t want to put Charlie through all that.” 

“He wouldn’t want you to do it alone.” Roxanne ducked her head close to catch Elaine’s eye. 

Elaine held her gaze and started, “I don’t want to do it at all…” 

After a beat, her sister supplied, “...but…” 

“But…” Elaine picked up, feeling something crush like tinfoil in her chest. “Jean’s…  gonna want to know where she came from.” 

Roxy patted her hand, proud to have led her to the proper conclusion. “And if I know anything about you, you’d rather show her than have to explain it to her, or worse end up with her wandering off towards the tiger’s den in search of answers.” 

Elaine’s shoulders drooped. She let her head follow. “...When I moved out, I vowed I was never going to see her again.” 

“That’s the thing about vowing things to yourself, Lainy.” Roxy shrugged. “The you who breaks the vow is always so much less of an idiot than the one who made it. That ‘you’ doesn’t even exist anymore. There’s no fidelity in staying true to things like that. It’s just stagnation.”

Elaine smiled at her, tight and rueful. “First you accuse me of running, now you accuse me of stagnation.” 

“Can’t both be true?” Roxy returned the grin like the cat who caught the canary. She was always far too pleased to be able to throw her older sister’s words back at her.

“Touché,” Elaine relented. 

“I gotta dash.” Roxanne squeezed her hand, lip twitching. “Call me if you do it. If you want me there, running interference, I’m there.” 

“Thanks Roxanne.” Elaine shut her eyes and sucked in a big breath, loading words onto her tongue like a canon. She opened her eyes and opened fire. “It was good to see you.”

Roxy beamed, then. And some part of Elaine felt like she was ten again and unafraid. “You too, you rotten stick in the mud.” 

And Roxy snapped to somewhere Elaine couldn’t see. 

She counted to ten in her head. One of Roxy’s favorite stunts to pull used to be a trick called ‘encore,’ where she’d snap out of a room at the end of a conversation and then, just when you went back to acting like you did when you were alone, she’d snap back in, right behind you and try and continue the conversation like she’d never left. 

1 

In most conversations, Roxy treated you like no time had passed between then and the time you’d last seen her. Today was different. But Elaine couldn’t imagine not acknowledging it. She and Roxy didn’t look much different. It’d be a long time before they would. 

But having a kid meant you paid attention to the passage of time. 

2 

Today had not been comprised of Elaine’s proudest moments. She didn't mean to get in Roxy’s face over all this. And she certainly didn’t mean for Jean to see.

Still it didn’t go as poorly as she thought it was going to. She couldn’t be sure but it didn’t seem like Jean hated her. She liked to think she knew her kid pretty well, but today— 

3 

Jean’d been using magic for weeks— nearly a month— and Elaine hadn’t known. 

4

     When Elaine cut Cora off, Cora had seemed so surprised. At the time, Elaine praised herself for keeping her contempt under a bushel in front of her mother. Maybe, she’d shown it to Roxy or the odd stranger— but she’d shielded her mother. 

Maybe that’s what Cora wanted her to think. Surprise certainly helped the case for victimhood. 

‘I don’t know how it turned out like this.’ 

What a defense. 

5 

But Elaine hadn’t defended herself. 

“That’s on me, this whole thing,” she’d said and took Jean by the shoulders. “I should have told you sooner.” 

And Jean was still looking at her with a naked panic she hadn’t seen since Jean was five and wet the bed for the last time. 

Elaine raised a hand and snapped a wooden spoon off of the counter and into her upturned palm. “You got it from me.” 

And Jean’s face had fallen open with awe. Elaine demonstrated again, snapping the spoon on to the top of Jean’s head. A smile finally cracked through the fear and newness as Jean went to grab the spoon that was now sliding off her cornrows. 

“I’ve been trying to tell you for ages in some last ditch effort against being too late, but it looks like I missed that mark by a bit, huh?” She sighed and hitched up the corners of her mouth with imaginary fish hooks. And decided to be honest with her child. “I just…  When my mother told me… I… it was hard finding out I had a brain and body that needed extra steps— but this isn’t about me— you’re the one growing up. I’m sorry I left you in the dark so long, honey.” 

Jean let out a breath, wringing her hands around the spoon’s handle. “You mean… there’s nothing wrong with me? I just… I got born like this?” 

“Yes, sweetie. You just got born like this. So did I, so did your Auntie, so did our mother and her mother and all the way back. Something about us lets us break a couple of the laws of physics. Stuff changes when we tell it to. And sometimes when we don’t… And as your body continues to do its thing and change and grow, part of what it’s gonna be figuring out is the way your magic sits with you. And it’s gonna be a little bit crazy and all over the place and it can be really sucky, but it won’t always be. It gets easier the longer you have it— but even then, it’ll mean you’ve always got one more thing to think about keeping in check. But you’re gonna have help from me— and maybe from your Auntie. We’ll be here. We’ll help you work with it, alright?” 

6 

Elaine had been pretty stoked about that one. She got to feel like a halfway decent parent for five minutes. 

7 

That part of the day mattered most, Elaine decided. 

8 

More than the part where she’d used that same spoon to threaten Roxy and heard Cora in the low growl of her own throat. 

9 

Or the part where Jean had walked in on it. 

10 

Or the part where Roxy doesn’t come back. 

The whole kingdom gathered in a grand arena where the accused had a chance to prove their innocence. At the center of the arena stood a small structure that had been built such that no sound could escape it. The structure had two doors. Behind one of these doors was a tiger, vicious, proud, and most of all ravenous. The moment this door was opened, the tiger would pounce. And the accused, lacking a weapon with which to defend themself, would be gobbled up. Their guilt sealed. 

Behind the other door was a lady of equal standing to the accused such that she could be a good match for him. The moment this door opened, the King's many servants rang the many grand bells of every nearby church or temple. They gathered the finest bouquets of flowers and silks, from which to form veils. And there, before the entire kingdom, the accused would be

married to this woman— heedless of whether or not he had entered the trial already wed. This was proof to the King that the accused was innocent. 

Once upon a time, the strange king had a daughter who was perhaps just as strange as he. She fell in love with a stable boy and he fell in love with her. 

Elaine ran drills with Jean after school on days when there was no volleyball practice. Elaine would toss something in the air and Jean’s job would be to snap it out of the air and either back into Elaine’s hands or into her own hands. They’d started with tennis balls, but had worked their way up to a variety of things lying around the house, taking note of which things posed which challenges. 

Today had been long and unbearably hot for both of them, so they were mostly just using tennis balls again. Jean had gotten really good at tennis balls. 

“How come you didn’t raise me knowing I was magic?” 

Elaine flinched, but let the tennis ball fly up and out of her hand anyway. She smiled gently. “Well, you might not have been… we’re— you’re a little different. Your dad’s not from a family like mine. You might have grown up like him.” 

“Oh…” Jean snapped the tennis ball back into Elaine’s hand. 

Elaine went to throw it. 

“Would you rather I was normal?” 

“Of course not.” The answer itself was the flinch this time. Elaine clenched her fingers around the ball. “Baby, with or without magic you are everything I ever wanted.” 

“Was I worth it?” The voice that asked was hardly Jean’s, but Elaine hardly heard it because her baby was gone. 

One night, when the king found them together, he had the boy arrested. For what right did a man of such lowly standing have to consort with a princess. The princess’s pleas were no use. Her father was immovable. 

And so the princess set to working out which door would conceal which fate.

Jean had snapped to somewhere she couldn’t see. Elaine whirled around and the sky crunched in on her with the beat-ba-beat-ba-beat of her heart. The wheat all around her fidgeted and twitched in the harsh wind. 

Far. Too far away, two figures. 

Her research rewarded her not only with the location of the tiger, but with the identity of the maiden behind the other door. 

Elaine took off towards them, tore off like a shot. 

“Was it worth it?” 

She gritted her teeth, feet pounding against the ground. 

It cracked beneath her with each step. 

“Was it worth it?” 

Crack. Ba-beat. Crack. 

“Was it worth it?” 

And there in the distance— beat-ba-beat-ba— Cora. Resplendent and glowing in the quick approaching thunderstorm. Ba-beat-ba-smelling like petrichor and smoke and wearing gold beads in her hair and smiling and ba-beat standing next to beat a child. Standing next to, hand on the shoulder of, no, not allowed, 

Elaine opened her mouth to scream. Crack. To call Jean away from there but all that came out was a roar. A hideous snarl, out from between saber teeth. 

Jean flinched and leaned into ba-beat Cora. 

Cora smiled gently. 

Crack. 

Then turned her burning charcoal eyes onto her daughter. Onto Elaine. And she knew she was ba-beat in trouble, 

she was always doing that, 

she “Was it worth it?” 

More bodies filed in behind them. Cousins she hadn’t seen in decades. Aunts, uncles, people who knew more than her. Knew better than her. People who were wise and would teach Jean everything she needed to know.

Elaine roared again, claws digging into the soil as she pushed harder, harder.

“Was it worth it?” 

Crack. 

Thunder boomed from high above. Rain hammered against the window. Elaine clutched at her comforter, shoulders up to her ears. She gasped for air. Charlie mumbled something in his sleep, flipping onto his back beside her. She watched him. 

Watched the rise and fall of his chest. Watched his mustache bristle as he breathed. She thought about running a hand through his thinning brown hair. She thought about kissing his temple and enjoying his warmth. But he looked so delicate.

She turned over onto her other side. 

Ba-beat. 

Her reading glasses and bedside lamp snapped and snapped and rearranged themselves on her nightstand before she could get a grip enough to stop them.

There was a tiger lily next to them. 

Bloom turned towards her. 

Well, that was just heavy handed. 

The damsel was the one of the fairest in the land. Often the princess had seen, or imagined she had seen, this damsel looking at the stable boy with great admiration. Seen them talking. Seen these looks perceived by him, if not reciprocated. 

And perhaps it was the strangeness of her blood, or the standing of her birth, but she hated the maiden. With all her heart. 

Elaine snapped to her feet and ripped the flower from its spot. She snapped into the hall before her feet got the memo that she was supposed to be walking.

Her first step took her to Jean’s door, but she was snapping into the room before her hand could reach the doorknob. She startled herself with it, but it hardly mattered because there was Jean. Still asleep and still in bed. 

No one else was in the room.

     When the day of the trial came, the stable boy, knowing his princess’s heart, looked to her in the stands. It was plain to him that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger. And behind which stood the lady. ba-beat He saw in the small inclination of her head and the flexing of her shoulders which door she was telling him to ba-beat go through. 

Dizzy relief sank through Elaine, heavy and unrelenting until she was on her knees. She crawled on all fours over to Jean’s bedside and sat with her back against it. She was out of breath. She crunched the flower in her fist and bared her teeth at it, holding back a snarl. She knew better than to wake her baby, she wasn’t that stupid. But there also wasn’t a world where she wasn’t wildly pissed. Where she wasn’t going to wait for Cora to show her face and— 

“Mom…?” 

Crack. 

“Hey baby,” Elaine mumbled, letting her head loll back against the side of the bed. Jean was in front of her, holding her shoulders. The bedside lamp made her russet skin look all gold and her little orange bonnet look all fire. It even caught like fire in her brown, brown eyes. 

Elaine could barely keep her eyes open. 

The clock on Jean’s bedside table blazed red hot 6:00AM at her. 

“Are you okay?” Jean’s voice was so small the rain almost swallowed it up, but Elaine could never miss it. 

She hung a hand on Jean’s forearm with a few limp fingers. “Yeah, honey, yeah. Just had a nightmare, is all. Let’s get ready for school, huh?” 

“It’s Sunday…” Jean’s eyebrows knitted together in the center of her forehead.

Elaine laughed, looking down at her other empty hand. It made her laugh harder and she pressed her palms against her eyes. She slid her hands down her face, still smiling. “Oh, don’t mind your mother. She’s just losing her mind.”

Jean bit the inside of her lip and it felt a little like looking in a mirror or at an old picture. She wrapped her hands a little firmer around Jean’s wrists, pulling her kid’s hands off her so she could start to stand. “Head on back to bed, baby. I’m alright.” She was halfway to her feet when Jean blurted out, “You wanna stay?” 

The door on the right. 

Elaine stopped to look at her. 

“I mean like I used to climb in bed with you and dad and watch cartoons and stuff, but if he’s asleep we can just like… talk…?” 

Elaine made a face to keep from crying and nodded. Her joints scolded her for falling asleep both sitting up and on the floor as she climbed into a bed that was most certainly going to make that feeling worse. But when Jean curled up next to her it didn’t matter. She stopped herself from saying anything as Jean turned off the lamp, least of all, “I remember when you were this big,” and scooping her arms against her chest. 

Jean was probably going to be taller than her one day. Not today. But maybe soon. Once she started high school. She put an arm around her and rested her hand against Jean’s head, running over the ridges of the braids concealed by her bonnet. 

Jean looked up at her then, lips all twisted over to one side of her face.

“Oh, that’s a face.” Elaine chuckled. 

“You’ve been weird since I got magic.” 

Elaine made the same face Jean was making. “It’s left me with a lot of thinking, is all.”

“Thinking about what?” 

She kissed her baby on the forehead. “All the things you might be when you grow up…” 

Jean frowned a deep and indignant frown. “And that’s giving you nightmares?!”

“I think it gives every parent nightmares.” 

“Did it give your mom nightmares?” 

Elaine felt her heart beat harder in her chest. Felt her chest get wind tight around the bursts of motion. Nonetheless, she managed a little mirthless laugh. “Absolutely. Most of the time she was treating us like they were already coming true…” 

ba-beat

“I don’t know how you ended up like this. I did everything I could for you.” ba-beat 

Maybe that’s why… 

“What do you mean?” Jean blinked at her. 

And she blinked back. “Hmm?” 

“She treated you like her nightmares were true and that’s why what?” 

“Oh…” She must’ve said that outloud. She really was tired, wasn’t she? How was she supposed to put words to it? All that wanted to come out were a series of snarls and nonsense syllables. Elaine shut her eyes. “Why… I ended up… kinda… being her nightmare.” 

The mattress creaked, Jean’s weight shifted, she must have been sitting up. “What?” Elaine shrugged and cracked her eyes open. “I was kind of a lot as a kid… And I’m still… I dunno.” 

ba-beat 

“You crochet your own cardigans and have a degree in biology. Who’s nightmare are you?” 

Elaine laughed. Really laughed. It was the smallest and quickest relief in the world to be reminded of the truth. She sighed, mulling it over. “You’d be surprised.” 

“Is…” Jean narrowed her eyes until they were closed in thought. “Is she still alive?”

“What, my mom?” 

“Yeah.” 

A voice like a cat's purr slunk to life before Elaine could answer. “She’s alive and well.” 

Crack. 

She held her baby to her chest, glaring into the deep charcoal eyes that were always pulling pulling pulling at her. Wells of gravity always calling her back. Calling her baby out of her arms. Claws and teeth bared, Elaine snarled. “Lay a hand on her, I’ll kill you.”

Her mother’s lip curled. “Watch your mouth.” 

Jean shifted against her. “Mom…?” 

“Stay put, baby.” Elaine snapped to her feet, inches from her mother, chest puffed as though it would obscure Cora’s sight of Jean. 

Cora smiled her fish hook smile and batted her eyelashes. “It’s a lovely little place you’ve got, I do hope it’s usually cleaner than this.” 

“Leave,” Elaine spat, sparks jumping and collecting in her palm.

“Who are you talking to?!” 

Elaine’s blood ran cold. 

Slowly, she turned back to Jean who was staring at her in confusion. 

And fear. 

When she faced toward the door again… Cora was gone. 

The sparks fizzled into nothing on Elaine’s fingertips. 

A series of heavy footsteps lumbered towards the door from the other side. It burst open and Charlie leapt into his daughter’s room with a taser and a cry of: “I heard screaming! What’s wrong?” 

Elaine yelped at the suddenness and fell back onto her butt. 

The stable boy, without hesitation or fear, walked to the door on the right and opened it. 

This is the point of the story. 

Crack. 

Who emerged from the door? 

“I can’t do it.” 

“What do you mean?” Roxy’s voice crackled over the phone. 

“Remember that time mom locked me outside because she thought maybe I was talking to a boy?” Elaine was pacing her kitchen, growling, and pawing at the floor. “Remember how she made you promise not to let me back in?” 

Roxy took so long to say something that Elaine had to check to see if the call was still running. Of course it was, Roxy just didn’t have anything to say. This was always the place where Roxy had nothing to say. And Elaine supposed, how could she say something when saying something always put you on the outside. At least on the inside you were miserable and warm. 

“Remember how she spent the week praising you for doing that to me?”

“Elaine—”

“You were nine, Roxy. You were nine and she tricked me into blaming you all those years. Not her. Never her.” The cutlery rearranged itself, and so did the dishes in the sink, and so could have the sun in the sky for all Elaine cared. “Don’t you ever think about how great of friends we would be if it wasn’t always always always like that?” 

“...Sometimes.” 

“She doesn’t get to be near my kid.” And when she said it, it was final and true and absolute. “If she finds me, I’ll deal with…” 

She passed a mirror then. 

And found herself staring into a pair of fathomless charcoal eyes. At a nose little less wide than hers, lips a little less full. Smile lines and crow's feet, only ever a suggestion, and yet still more defined than hers were. There was a terror on that perfect and regal face that only a nightmare could bring. 

“Lainy? Lainy, you good?” Roxy’s voice sounded a million miles away. If only she would come closer. 

But that would mean coming outside. Opening a door. You never got to close it once it was open. You never got to come back inside. 

The back door swung open and shut, and Elaine jumped, turning to face whoever entered. 

Crack. 

“Hey mom…” Jean slowed down when she saw her. It seems like her kid is always worried about her now. What was she going to do about that? “What’s up…?” Elaine breathed and paid attention to it. “Nothing, baby…” 

“No. You’re all freaked out again.” Jean took half a step towards her. 

“Yeah… yeah, I saw— I saw something that spooked me. I’m alright... You wanna— you wanna say hi to your Aunt Roxy?” Elaine offered her the source of her sister’s voice. Jean nodded and took it. Before speaking, she wrapped her arms around Elaine and held tight. Elaine held her too. For as long as she could keep her. 

And then she was gone. 

Crack. 

And Elaine heard her in the other room, so she was still there. But now Elaine was alone with the mirror. 

It took her several minutes to turn around and face it.

It was broken, now. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the center as though somebody had shot it. Each shard of glass showed something different. In some, she saw golden and orange and white fur. Stripes and fangs and fury. In the other a face. Only she couldn’t tell whose. 

She had lost him, but who should have him? 

“That’s… kinda dumb…” 

How often had she seen, in nightmares both waking and not, those claws and teeth tearing his skin and rending his flesh? 

“Well, if she was smart enough to figure out a way to know this big mystery right? Of which door is which? Then shouldn’t she also be able to figure out a way to like… run away with her boyfriend or whatever? Steal a bunch of daddy’s jewels and skip town…?” 

How often had she seen and seethed at the image of the maiden’s eye alight with joy and triumph as the stable boy rushed to greet her?

“Ya know… I hadn’t thought of it like that…” 

The princess made up her mind. Directed him without hesitation.

And so, I ask you: Was it toward the lady or the tiger?