short story

Hallowed Ground

This was one of my stories published first in chapbook form by MUI Books, remaining a reader favorite for ten years.

y daughter Jacquelaine loved the tigers.

Bleached bones, under the sun. The air twining in streams rising from our cooking fire.

Jacquelaine. Maria Rosa.

But I have to go back.

I met Maria Rosa while finishing my PhD at York. She was a post-grad in anthropology, with dreams of changing the world order. The first day we spoke she grabbed my arm to make a point, tossed her dark braid over her shoulder with one long pianist's hand. We walked under the tall trees in the quad, the light falling through the patterns of leaves on our clothes, on her hair.

Then, like in all fairy stories, I didn't see her for more than a month. It didn't seem like I'd even thought about her until I saw her coming across the quad under the trees again. I don't think I would have had the courage just to call out to her, although I remembered her name just fine. We were headed in the same direction, and I ended up walking beside her up the steps to the library.

And that was that. Maria Rosa untied her braid later that night and spread her dark hair around her shoulders in my little bachelor apartment, and, laughing, looked around and told me she wasn't one of those girls who feel obligated to change the set habits of every man that wanders through her life. And I surprised, nearly shocked myself by getting up right there and then, no regard at all to what I really wanted in that moment, and doing the dishes.

Three years later, I was still in love with Maria Rosa's hair – and everything else about her besides, still doing my own dishes, and wondering if maybe I'd made the right choice after all.

We left for India the year after she finished her doctorate. It was a gentle break with civilization. We had come, both in our chosen fields, about as far as we could expect in the university world without turning into career scholars. I was thirty-two, she was twenty-nine, and life was just beginning. Training was done; it was time to use what we had learned out in the real world.

I packed my spectral analysis equipment, state of the art toys financed by my parents that would be hopelessly out of date long before we planned on setting our eyes on other human beings again. We went to study the tigers, the last great cats, in the dense underbrush, fuelled by Kipling's stories, by writings of the great naturalists, by the strange feeling we both had that India was the only place that we should be in the entire world, and the feeling that we only had to be with each other to have all the companionship we needed.

Jacquelaine arrived two years after.

We had talked, over and over, about what it would be like to bring a child into a world without other children, where there would be more animals than human beings, and more trees than either. In the end, we both were burning to have someone to share our lives, our discoveries with, and to hell with the consequences.

By this time, we were well acquainted with the habits of the tigers we had come to study. There was a group that tolerated our presence, keeping an eye on us, treating us as curiosities. The biggest male we called Thor, and from then on all the tigers became mythic gods. The oldest females were Kali, Hera, Athena, and Nu. The other males were Zeus, Brahma, and Loki. The oldest male was Vishnu, and he we only saw rarely. The Bengals seemed to have a kind of respect for their elders that bordered on awe. Before, I had assumed that they like other wild animals would treat their old as expendable and burdens. Instead, Vishnu was revered. The relationship between Vishnu and the others was one of our most exciting revelations.

So Jacquie was born in the Indian jungle, heir to the memory of two cultures through her parents, and to a third of her own. She was crawling and then walking very early, although her speech came slow. We took her with us everywhere, naturally, and taught her to respect the tigers as fellow creatures who shared our lives, not with a city person's fear or superstition. We told her how they hunted, in pairs near man, but in groups when free of that influence. From the first, Jacquie showed great caution, but never fear, in dealing with our furred neighbours.

The tigers for their part were surprisingly gentle with Jacquelaine. Savage in the hunt but gentle with their kits, the tigers treated Jacquie from the start as one of their own. After she was born, several of the tigers became regular visitors to our camp. In time, we began to trust the tigers, at least where Jacquie was concerned.

Maria Rosa was never as comfortable as I with my notion of the tigers as kind of godparents to our daughter. "They're still animals, Phil," she would say, Jacquie asleep on her lap. She refused always to discuss her fears in front of the child, but the fear was there.

I was adamant in my defense. "They love her, like one of their own," I told Maria Rosa. "They'll protect her more than we can even. I think," and I would laugh, "they believe she's one of them."

Jacquie was harder to keep an eye on by the time she was three. She walked, often ran, everywhere she went, and soon we gave up watching her like hawks and relaxed our vigil a bit. Sometimes she would go on all fours and the tigers would watch from a respectful distance in some kind of silent approval.

"You see," I told Maria Rosa, watching her. "There's not a hunter's stance on any of them. They're guarding her like one of their own babies."

One morning I was up before the sun, but Jacquie had gone ahead. She was five, and dedicated to the tasks we had given her. Her speech was still slow, but it was only naturally considering the few examples she had to work from. I wouldn't have been surprised if Bengal was her first tongue. Maria Rosa was up with the fire, checking our supplies to decide on breakfast. The metal container we used for collecting drinking water was missing, so I knew Jacquie was on her way to the river just over the rise we were camped on.

"Jacquie go alone?" I asked Maria Rosa, and she nodded.

"We have freeze-dried eggs, and a few vegetables. It's a good thing the next drop is so close. When Jacquie gets back with the water, we can eat."

I washed with the rain water from the night before and looked out into the brush for signs of Jacquie. "How long has she been gone?" I asked.

"A few minutes," said Maria Rosa, joining me at the cistern. "I'll go after her."

"No, I'll do it," I said. "She probably stopped to play with the tigers."

A new litter of kits had been born a month before and the tigers had allowed Jacquie to take on the duties of playmate. It was wonderful to watch them, a real Jungle Book coming to life. The capacity of the tigers to be familial was astounding, and had become the focus of my work.

I saw Kali almost as she saw me. "Hi, Kal," I said out loud, raising a hand in greeting.

Instead of her usual gracious bob, Kali's tail flicked and she sprang out of sight into the dense undergrowth. I followed as well as I could, using our trails to parallel her movements. The river lay ahead, and as I burst out of the forest, I saw two things only. One was the water can. The second was blood.

I dropped to my knees and searched the puddle. There wasn't a lot of blood but there it was, pooling in a crevice in the stony ground. A trail led off down river, away from the camp. I looked up, and there was Hera with the kits, herding them into the forest. I was shouting for Maria Rosa while they disappeared.

I thundered back to the camp and she was on the edge of our clearing waiting, not anxious but fully terrified. "There's blood, and she's nowhere," I wheezed out, breathless, already beginning to throw essentials into my backpack. Last came the rifle.

"Wait for me," she said, ready to dash into the tent we used in the dry season. The Kwonset hut we would use in the coming rainy season residence, but currently it functioned as lab and storage.

"No," I barked, then continued gentler. "Please, no. Stay here. Wait for the helicopter. I'll come back with her. We may have to – fly her out."

Maria Rosa nodded. In all the time we had been in the jungle, we had known there was a chance that one of us would get sick or badly hurt enough that we would need an escape. The helicopter was a contingency we both hated, that went against everything we believed we were doing in the jungle, but it had to be done. And now, our daughter's life could be at stake.

Only a couple of minutes had elapsed in the camp before I was ready. Our good-bye was rushed, and then I was back on the forest path to the water again.

The trail of blood made a line down the riverbank. I began to follow it. Every few metres, printed in blood, was a distinct Bengal footprint.

Unencumbered, I would have been hard pressed to keep up to a Bengal hunter moving carefully. As it was, with a pack and rifle, I would never have been able to follow except for the obvious marks of passage – blood, everywhere. And the tiger was burdened too. I didn't want to imagine it.

Near noon, I caught sight of him finally, topping a rise in a sudden clearing. It was Thor, definitely by the size and gait – and in his mouth was Jacquie.

Unable to carry her easily, he settled for letting her extremities drag. Her green shirt was black with blood and her dark hair, so much like Maria Rosa's, trailed over the rocks. My daughter was dead. In the moment I knew it for sure, and though I still denied it to myself, all I wanted was vengeance.

Following Thor at a discreet distance, between him and me, came the others. Kali and the kits were absent but the rest were there. I had seen something similar before. Thor was playing a game with them, keeping his group in line as he sometimes did. The thought of my daughter being killed and eaten by the animals she had trusted, had loved so much, felt like it would drive me berserk.

How to get past the others and shoot that big bastard Thor? I was no great shot with the rifle. It was unwieldy and old to begin with and I was no marksman. No, I would have to keep following and take my chance when I could and get close enough to blow his foul head off. It couldn't be long. The others would hardly stand for any great delay in their dinner.

I trailed them into the early part of the afternoon, not gaining any ground. They were too fast, even with Jacquie to deal with. I stopped for a breather and to drink some water around two, when they had begun to cross a wide expanse of steppe. They would be in the open for an hour at least and I could finally afford to rest without losing them.

The group had spread into hunting formation. Thor was in the lead with a broad fan of tigers around him. Vishnu, an unusual addition to a hunting party because of his age, was at the back, having difficulty perhaps keeping up.

I could see a flash of Jacquie's hair or skin every now and then as I stared after them. My daughter was dead, betrayed not only by the tigers whom she trusted but by the parents who had brought her into this deadly and hostile place. What right had we to imagine we could safely bring up a child in the wilderness? How could she ever have made the transition when we went back to civilization, something that was bound to happen no matter how much we had wanted to be in the jungle forever? No, she was doomed from her birth to be trapped by the jungle. Maria Rosa and I would always have the songs of the birds, the stillness of the air, the scent of the trees in our heads and hearts. What would it have been like for her, child of an impossible world? It had been a fantasy of her parents.

But if I was to stop dwelling on my own sin, I needed diversion. Powerful diversion – and the only idea I could bring to my mind was that of a father’s vengeance. If it took every ounce of will I had, the tigers would pay. I lifted my rifle. It had not been much of a break, but the anger and frustration were driving me on. From my vantage, I could have gotten a couple of them right then, but I wanted Thor first. The others could wait. Instead of fighting for the preservation of the Bengal, I wanted to see this group at least wiped from the face of the earth. Most important, I wanted Jacquie's body back.

I made up for lost time by jogging the steppes. I saw several of the tigers looking back over their smooth-muscles haunches at me, something which served only to infuriate me more. It seemed they were mocking me, and as soon as I had the thought, I found myself cursing my naivety and romanticism. It was all my anthropomorphic talk before that had lulled me into believing the tigers wouldn't harm Jacquelaine. Giving them names, talking about their "human" characters – I had only been deluding myself into thinking of them as people. They were animals, savage, primitive, deadly. They were unthinking, amoral and above all uncivilized.

We passed back into the forest near the end of the afternoon. Night comes fast in the jungle, and I was only now realizing my danger. Without a radio, without flares, I was completely isolated from humanity and at the mercy of the wild. It was clear I wasn't going to catch up with the tigers tonight. All I could do was get as close as possible and set up camp. I closed much of the distance between me and them by dusk, and found a stream conveniently in my way to refill my canteen. The land had been rising steadily for a couple of hours, and I had to pitch my tent on a great angle. When night fell, I had my dinner over a small fire and watched the forest by the torchlight I had set around the perimeter of my camp.

It was late when I woke suddenly, realizing I had fallen asleep by the fire. In the dying torchlight, I saw the bulk of Thor under a tree in front of me. He was just standing, no tension, none of the hunter about him except his ever-present feral grace.

"You bastard," I said softly, afraid to break the spell of the dark night. The moon was behind a cloud, the beams of its fullness trapped away from me. It was the darkest night I could ever remember.

Thor shifted his weight and took one smooth step forward.

That was all the excuse I needed. The rifle was at my side, and in an instant it was in my hands. I fired both barrels and he went down, yelping in surprise. There was some satisfaction in knowing I had introduced him to a gun, something I had never before had a need to use. I was saying in essence, yes, you killed my daughter. But technology will always triumph over the savage, man over beast.

The stricken tiger moaned once, his powerful legs kicking out at nothing, and then he lay still.

I walked over to him to make sure he was dead. I was sure suddenly that I would have been completely unable to reload the gun to put him out of his misery if he had survived the first blast.

It was no consolation for her death to know her killer was also dead, but it was with some jubilation that I crawled into my little tent to wait for morning.

When the sun rose, I climbed out of the tent again and found that Thor's corpse was gone. From where he had fallen, a trail of blood led into the forest.

Feeling a sick sense of deja vu, I collected my rifle and belongings and headed off into the trees.

If Thor hadn't been dead, I should turn in my biology degree. And yet, I had been in a terrible state. I could have made a mistake. But if Thor wasn't dead, why hadn't he come after me? And if the others had taken the effort to move him, why hadn't one of them? The tent would have posed no problems for an angry tiger. I found myself shaking to imagine how close I might have been the night before to death, all oblivious in my little tent. Getting Thor had made me forget everything else. I had put all my grief and anger into one goal – to kill my opponent. When he was dead, I had relaxed. But it wasn't over.

The trail was as distinct as the previous one, leading up the ever-increasing slope. Finally, I broke to the top of the hill and a flat stretch of forest. There was no problem decided which way to go now. An obvious path led me on now, through tall trees and scraggly undergrowth. I was confused now, directionless. The day before, I was sure I would be able to find my way back to Maria Rosa, but now I felt like I was lost. My mind was numb with shock and fear. Always the careful one, wary and quiet in the jungle, I was like a bull elephant crashing through the bush unable to even attempt to see if I was being watched. The tigers could have been at my elbow for all I would have noticed.

Then, like the sun rising on a clear morning, I came to the end of the trees. There was cloud, the kind that warned that the rainy season was upon us if not yet here. The sun came down in shafts like gold falling from the sky and played over the incredible valley stretching before me.

And then I realized that the "me" was an "us.” I was flanked on both sides by tigers. Turning slowly, I saw Vishnu himself take up the position on the trail directly behind me. None of them moved, just the calm twitching of their tails. I realized in a panic that I hadn't taken the time in the morning to reload my gun.

The moment hung like a cloud of flies in a hot afternoon, and then I turned my back on them to look at the valley.

It was a small valley, centred around a river bed that looked a long time dry. The parched floor of the valley was cracked and dusty. I could see the marks of the previous years’ river banks cut clearly through the length of the depression. But the white glistening shapes that lined both sides of the valley nearly to my vantage were wrong, so wrong.

I felt a brush on my leg and Vishnu moved past me. I followed, dazed, unable to believe what I was seeing.

His soft feet took the descent silently and I scrambled after. I sensed the others joining our procession as I passed.

It was bones, thousands of sets of bleached bones under that cathedral sky threatening to break any moment. All tigers, all sizes and stages of decomposition, some with sinew linking pieces of carcass together, most ivory-white with the patina of age, cracked with antiquity. The tigers walked single file now, in procession instead of like a pack. I kept my place in the line hardly daring to breathe.

Then colour appeared amidst the white and I saw Jacquelaine and Thor, side by side on the dried mud. She had been laid carefully on her side, in the same position of a tiger in sleep, arms crossed like a great dog before her. The multiple marks of Thor's teeth circled her small waist. When I was close enough to see her little face, I cried out and dropped to my knees and crawled the rest of the way to her.

Thor's handsome feline face was in line with hers, the horrible gunshot wounds that had destroyed his chest covered in dark blood. I felt intrusive for a moment, to come between them. I was beginning to feel strange, like I was missing something, that I had been wrong about something.

I turned Jacquie's face up to the sky just as the rain started. The wounds I had seen looked superficial, had not even bled, and her face confirmed it. Her lips were blue and puffy, her tongue slightly protruding. The eyes were thankfully closed, but I knew they would show pinpricks of blood in the white. There were tear stains on her cheeks. On her ankle, I found the puncture wounds, in a mountain of swollen flesh. I lifted her head and sat with my daughter in my lap. She would have died almost instantly, asphyxiated. Arriving only a minute after the snake struck, I would have been unable to save her even if I had had the correct serum with me. Jacquie was dead from the moment the snake’s fangs broke her flesh.

The tigers gathered around me, Vishnu's ears flat against his head. I got the sense he was seeking approval, and this time I didn't stop myself from anthropomorphizing. Jacquie had been one of their own after all. While we had treated the tigers as human, imbuing them with our own characters and motivations, perhaps all the time they had been doing the same to us.

And when she had died, she had been accorded some kind of honour, and brought to rest in this hallowed ground, a graveyard for Bengal tigers. Thor I had killed needlessly, but the tigers around me were going to forgive. I doubted, in their place, I could have shown the same consideration.

Then I looked down at Jacquie once more and my tears fell as the rain began in earnest.

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