The Color Master: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

four—women and beasts—sat in the sun for at least half an hour, tigers’ chests heaving, women’s hands clutched in their fur. The day grew warm. In the distance, the moaning began again, and two more tigers limped up while the first two stretched out and slept. The women sewed the next two, and the next. One had a bloody rip across its white belly.
    After a few hours of work, the women put their needles away, the tigers raised themselves up, and, without any lick oracknowledgment, walked off, deep into that place where tigers live. The women returned to the house. Inside, they smelled so deeply and earthily of cat that they were almost unrecognizable. They also seemed lighter, nearly giddy. It was lunchtime. They joined us at the table, where Sloane served an amazing soup of curry and prawns.
    It is an honor, said Sloane, to mend the tigers.
    I see, said my sister.
    You will need very little training, since your skill level is already so high.
    But my sister seemed frightened, in a way I hadn’t seen before. She didn’t eat much of her soup, and she returned her eyes to the window, to the tangles of fluttering leaves.
    I would have to go find out, she said finally, when the chef entered with a tray of mango tartlets.
    Find out what?
    Why they unpeel, she said. She hung her head, as if she was ashamed of her interest.
    You are a mender, said Sloane, gently. Not a zoologist.
    I support my sister’s interest in the source, I said.
    Sloane flinched every time I opened my mouth.
    The source, my sister echoed.
    The world has changed, said Sloane, passing a mango tartlet to me, reluctantly, which I ate, pronto.
    It was unlike my sister to need the cause. She was fine, usually, with just how things were. But she whispered to me—as we roamed outside looking for clues, of which we found none—she whispered that she felt something dangerous in the unpeeling, and she felt she would have to know about it in order to sew the tiger suitably. I am not worried about the sewing, she said. I am worried about the gesture I place inside the thread.
    I nodded. I am a good fighter, is all. I don’t care about thread gestures, but I am willing to throw a punch at some tiger asshole if need be.
    We spent the rest of the day outside, but there were no tigers to be seen—where they lived was somewhere far, far off, and the journey they took to arrive here must have been the worst time of their lives, ripped open like that, suddenly prey to vultures or other predators, when they were usually the ones to instill fear.
    We slept that night at the mansion, in feather beds so soft I found them impossible to sleep in. Come morning, Sloane had my sister join the two women outside, and I cried again, watching the big tiger head at her feet while she sewed with her usual stillness. The three together were unusually productive, and sewn tigers piled up around them. But instead of that giddiness that showed up in the other women, my sister grew heavier that afternoon, and said she was sure she was doing something wrong. Oh no, said Sloane, serving us tea. You were remarkable.
    I am missing something, said my sister. I am missing something important.
    Sloane retired for a nap, but I snuck out. I had been warned, but really, they were treating me like shit anyway. I walked a long distance, but I’m a sturdy walker, and I trusted where my feet went, and I did not like the sight of my sister staring into her teacup. I did not like the feeling it gave me, of worrying. Before I left, I sat her in front of the window and told her to empty herself, and her eyes were grateful in a way I was used to feeling in my own face but was not accustomed to seeing in hers.
    I walked for hours, and the wet air clung to my shirt and hair. I took a nap inside some ferns. The sun was setting, andI would’ve walked all night, but when I reached a cluster of trees, something felt different. There was no wailing yet, but I could feel the stirring before the wailing, which