will
heal; you have my Word on it. You must not worry."
"But I do. I saw how weak you became after the staple was out, how exhausted and pale you were, and how dreadful your burns… I fetched… sustenance for you. I know how much you have endured." She looked across the lake. "You will want to catch more birds tonight, I would guess."
"Not just at this moment," he told her. "You had eggs and cheese today. If I catch ducks tomorrow, that should suffice. Tonight I would like to find heartier fare."
"Will your foot allow it?" She was anxious for him. "You may not want to take on furred game yet."
"Would it trouble you if I did?" he asked, thinking she might have an aversion to his hunting hooved animals, although she had not mentioned it before.
She nodded, her thoughts clearly on something else. "You have taken care of me. In spite of all this, you have taken care of me."
He did not speak for a short while, then he laid his small hand on hers and said, "Not as well as I should like."
"Oh." Tulsi started to pull her hand away, then stopped as her expression changed slightly, as if she had thought of something new.
"You deserve better than I have been able to provide," he said. "If things were otherwise, I would see that you did not have to suffer on my account."
"How would you want to care for me?" Her question was nervous and playful at once; she stared down at his hand on hers. "If you could?"
"First, I would not remain here. I would want to take you to one of my houses, in some part of the world where you could live your life as you liked, a place where war could not reach you and you would be beholden to no one for your livelihood." He heard how forlorn he sounded, and deliberately made his tone more hortatory. "You have great skills. You are clever. You have much to offer. It would be an honor to be able to give you the opportunity to achieve all that you seek for yourself: do you know what that might be?"
For a long moment she considered her answer. "I think I would seek to have my own troupe of tumblers and acrobats and to travel the world freely. I think I would want to be well-fed and safe, and dressed in silks that are not old and torn." She was wistful and revealing so much of her dreams did not come readily to her. "I would like to find the most able practitioners of my art to be in my troupe, so that we would awe all those who saw us perform."
"Then I wish I could help you to have that troupe," he said, so simply that she believed him utterly.
"How could you do that? If you have wealth, as you say you do, you cannot use it now, and we are alone in a part of the country neither of us knows. How can that change? No one can find us, and we cannot reveal ourselves." She was optimistic and discouraged at the same time. "If I could have my troupe, where would it be?"
"You said yourself you would travel the world," he reminded her, watching her as she thought about this.
"Yes," she said at last, "but that was my aspiration, not anything I can have, not in this world. I have been through enough of it to know that." She turned toward the sound of a night-bird's cry. "If it could be, that is what I would want, that's all."
Little as he wanted to admit it, Sanat Ji Mani knew her reservations were well-founded. Twelve or thirteen centuries ago, it would have been different, for then the Roman Circus would have provided a venue for her that included fortune and travel, as she wished to have; now there were very few places that would welcome her alone or with a troupe. "You should be able to have some of what you seek," he told her, hoping to provide a little solace.
"How is that possible in this life?" She pulled her hand away at last. "You are kind to me, and I know that is as much as I can hope for in this world."
Sanat Ji Mani shook his head. "Tulsi, listen to me: you are a remarkable woman, and not because you can do somersaults in the air, or walk on your hands with your feet touching your head." He sat very still. "I will hunt in a while. There are mousedeer in the forest. I should be able to catch one."
"I have heard of them," Tulsi said, her manner becoming politely distant. "Are they really as small as mice?"
"No," he said. "But they are very small, for all that. I will not be at risk trying to catch one." He got to his feet, picking up his sack and slinging its strap over his shoulder. "Let us find you a place to rest while I go hunting." He stared around him, his night-seeing eyes finding much activity in the undergrowth. Finally he spotted a half-fallen tree with a hollow beneath it. "Come," he said, offering her his hand to pull her up. "I will make sure you are not exposed to animals or snakes."
Tulsi followed after him, adjusting her pack on her shoulders as she went. "There are more animals in the forest now."
"And there will be more as we go south: animals are plentiful there, all sorts of animals," he said, casting his mind back almost nine hundred years to the Year of Yellow Snow, and the catastrophe it had been. He had seen reports of thousands of animals dying in the forests
and on the plains throughout Asia, and recalled some of the greatest devastation had been in the south, near the site of the cataclysm that brought the hard years. In the intervening centuries, most of the animals had multiplied again, but there were a few that had vanished forever in that appalling year and the decade that followed.
"What are you thinking?" she asked him, aware that his thoughts were elsewhere.
"I was thinking that life is fragile," he replied, banishing his memories for now.
She could not speak for a bit; an emotion she could not name overwhelmed her. Finally she told him, "Is this what you realized when you lay in a stupor for three days?"
"No; I have known it a longer time than that," he said softly. He motioned her to stop, pointing to show where there were deep impressions in the bank. "Elephants have come here to drink," he said.
"Wild, do you think?" She knew that wild elephants could be dangerous.
"It might be wisest to assume so," said Sanat Ji Mani, continuing on cautiously. "We will hear them moving if they come our way."
"And tigers?" Tulsi glanced over her shoulder.
"We should also assume they are about," he said.
"There are tigers around the Inland Sea," she said. "And in China."
"There are tigers in the snows of Russia and T'u-Bo-T'e," said Sanat Ji Mani. "And many kinds of leopards."
"So you are not the only one hunting tonight," said Tulsi, trying to make light of her sudden fear.
"I am never the only one hunting, night or day," he said evenly. He was half-way to the hollow and paused to look at it again, trying to discover anything that might be dangerous to them.
Tulsi hugged herself as if taken with a sudden chill. "How long will you take to find this mousedeer you speak of?"
"I cannot say; not one instant longer than necessary. I hope I can snare one quickly, so that you do not have to wait long into the night for your supper. If you build up a fire, you should have a meal by midnight." He could not keep from a pang of regret; the mousedeer would provide them both nourishment, but he wished he and Tulsi shared something more than their companionship. He set that notion
aside; she had not sought anything more from him than what he had provided from the first and it was not in his nature to demand.
"If you are not back by sun-up, what then?" It was a question she had asked every night he hunted; he answered her as if he had not done so before.
"Wait for a day and a night. If I do not return by the next dawn, go south and east to the city of Sirpur and find the Parsi merchant known as Azizi Iniattir. I have told you about the Parsi merchants, have I not? Tell him Sanat Ji Mani has sent you and that I will join you there when I am able. Tell him you are under my protection, and that in the name of Rustam Iniattir you are to be his guest." He had no doubt that she was capable of making the long journey on her own, but he was uncertain about her willingness to claim hospitality on his account.
"Who is this Rustam Iniattir?" she asked, as she had wished to do for the last ten nights.
"He was a merchant from Delhi; now he is at Fustat in Egypt, safe from Timur-i. He and I have had business dealings together." Sanat Ji Mani motioned her to halt again. "There is something in the brush up ahead. If you will wait here, I will see what it is." He moved away into the forest, graceful in spite of his limp. The underbrush parted around him; he found his way to a near-by clearing and saw half-a-dozen blackbuck grazing; these large antelopes were opulently horned, and their distinctive black-over-white markings made them easily recognized. They were too large for Sanat Ji Mani to try to hunt them in his weakened condition; he slipped back into the cover of the underbrush and was soon emerging from the screen of leaves not far from where Tulsi stood, her hand on the medical knife he had given her. "You will not need that."
She tried to laugh and ended up making a nervous whinny. "You surprised me," she said by way of excuse.
"That was not my intention," he said, and bent down to pick up a thick section of root that was almost as long as he was tall. "This will let us know if there is anything in the hollow you would not want." He hefted it, letting her see how substantial it was. "You may keep this by you while I go hunting, providing you do not use it against me when I return."
"I would never do that," she said, her face flushing.
"Perhaps not," he agreed. "But it would not benefit either of us if you did."
She nodded, saying, "No. It would not." Impulsively she laid her hand on his arm. "The blood you take when you hunt, is it enough? You have lost flesh, and I do not suppose it is entirely from your foot." There, she told herself, she had done it.
"It is… adequate." He laid his hand over hers once more. "I am grateful that you notice."
"Adequate," she repeated. "As lentils and peas are adequate? It will keep you from starving but you will not thrive."
His dark eyes met her grey-green ones. "Yes."
In the clearing beyond the undergrowth something startled the blackbucks: they rushed away in a burst of noise that set birds shrieking and sent other creatures pelting off through the forest; Sanat Ji Mani hefted the length of root he carried, prepared to use it to fend off any animals that might run toward them.
Tulsi gave a little cry of alarm, looking about as if expecting to see a large, ferocious beast bearing down on them. "Do you have to hunt tonight?" she asked in a small voice.
"No, I do not: if you do not mind going hungry," he answered gently.
"I would rather be hungry than turn into some creature's meal," she said with feeling. "Stay with me. If you need blood, well, I have enough to give some to you." She tried not to be frightened as she made this offer, and very nearly managed it; she was so close to answers she had longed for since the first time she had seen Sanat Ji Mani that she had to contain her excitement or be overcome by it. "I will give you blood, if you want." She tried to discern his thoughts as they stood in the scintillescent moonlight, the dark forest pressing in on them.
Sanat Ji Mani released her hand but only to brush her cheek with the back of his fingers. "You need not sacrifice yourself, Tulsi Kil. I am not such a ravening monster that I must require so much of you."
She looked about in confusion. "I… that was not… I meant…"
"You meant that you will give me blood," said Sanat Ji Mani calmly. "But that is not what I would want from you, were you to give it, or not all I want."
"But… you drink blood. I know you do." She pointed at him, her eyes narrowed. "I have seen you do it."
"Yes. I drink blood." He began to move again, going toward the hollow. "It is my nature."
"Well, if you need it and I have it, why not take it?" she asked. "Is mine less satisfying than that of birds? or mousedeer?"
"No; it is not." He kept walking, his limp more pronounced, as if the weight of his emotions were too great a burden.
"Then why do you refuse?" she persisted. "Why should you not take my blood? Would you kill me?"
"Of course not," he snapped.
"Are you like a snake, and your bite is poisonous?" She slipped on the mud at the edge of a pond and involuntarily reached out to steady herself by grabbing his arm.
"No." He helped her to regain her footing. "It is not like that, Tulsi."
"Then what
is
it?" she implored him. "I do not understand you."
He waited until he had her full attention. "It is that I want too much of you— blood is the least of it."
"Do you eat flesh as well?" Her voice quivered slightly. "I have not seen you do it."
"No, I do not eat flesh," he said testily. "What I would want of you is nothing like that."
"Then what is it?" She had summoned up her courage again. "Sanat Ji Mani, tell me. We have been through too much for you to keep such secrets from me."
