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His shoulders were draped in a tiger’s slashing skin, and fro talons of hawk and lizard He was a big er, and his lips trembled

“He did not lie!” the man marveled “He did not lie to me! You are here, and real, and alive, and mine!”

“Do not touch me!” I shrieked

He drew back, hurt “Of course not, if you tell me I must not”

“You will burn,” I mumbled

“But you ar

e my wish! You could not harm me!”

“I assure you, I can And what can you mean? What did you wish for?”

The htened in the face of it “Why, what else? I wished for a wife…”

THE TALE

OF THE

TIGER HARP

IS THIS NOT A BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY? YOU COULD be happy here I would build you a den of wattles and tiles, and bring you sacks of down froeese for your blankets I would do both these things for you, and more besides

When I was a boy, ht le partridges and cut open deer in such a way that it hurts theh When nineteen of ress This is very difficult, as tigers are clever, and avered in the snow It et and soft; it tasted of old arrowheads and ave me her liver, then her bones to suck He told er I had killed, and remember her taste, how tall she had been, how many cubs watched us fro froer as well as I knew anything in our house Soup and coats and sausages and rattles and roasts and gloves and lyre strings All these I rieved for er

I called er Li It is a coer had passed, I saw in our village a girl fairer by far than tiger-ink She had hair like black stripes, and eyes black as a cat’s, and her hands were soft and deft; she wove beautiful things, and she tasted like lemons, and warm stones Her mother was a planter of crocuses, and a threader of the priceless saffron culled from their blossoms Her land ide, almost endless Her name was Li I have told you it was coht I could never wed her, being a boy who knew little but the secret taste of a tiger’s heart But I loved the crocus-girl, even as I hunted silent and kind, even as my father died of chill and my mother of fever, even as I cared for er I killed last for a year, in soups and coats and sausages and rattles and roasts and gloves