So Brrr allowed himself to stay and be courted by Piyanta and Zibria again, though they seemed less appealing now that he’d met Muhlama. In time he asked to take a nap, and he sent them off giggling and blushing back to their enclave.

3

W AS HE a guest of the Ghullim or a prisoner? He couldn’t answer the question for himself assuredly. If a guest, eventually he’d have to leave. If a prisoner, he supposed he ought to protest his incarceration. Still, what kind of incarceration was this? Exercise, the morning run, and rock-scramble with Muhlama and her companions. Hardly a punishment.

Brrr relaxed; what else could he do? He enjoyed the meals, sometimes cooked by the tree elves, sometimes caught and served bloody raw by the Ivory Tiger hunters. (He’d abandoned vegetarianism when he’d arrived in Shiz, though he preferred the human custom of cooking the meat.) He took part in games of hide-and-seek at which he was always it, because he, alone among the Cats, couldn’t scale the bark of a tree nor hide in the foliage of its canopy. Even emaciated with hunger, he weighed twice what an adult male Ivory Tiger weighed.

Afternoons-a Lion’s laziest time-he dozed a short distance away from where Uyodor H’aekeem held court. Muhlama disappeared. He wondered whether she was conducting her ablutions, or napping in a private boudoir, or-he tried not to visualize this-pursuing a dalliance with some other creature. It was none of his business. And he would never know: in her regal demeanor, she shone, and deflected close scrutiny, too, like a shellac.

Still, the idea burned him and teased him a little.

He had never expected to appeal to anyone. He didn’t much appeal to himself. He conceded the obvious: Perhaps he was being kept around as a spot of comic interest, like the dotty maiden aunt trotted out into the family parlor to amuse the neighbors and ensure that the conversation remained innocent and droll. But so what? He was growing used to Muhlama’s manner. Her high style and her higher disdain, which sometimes flowered into impatience.

Brrr and Muhlama disagreed from time to time, and she even lashed out at him, but he took no offense. Disapproval was better than invisibility.

He’d been with the Ghullim a month, or even two, when the equilibrium was shattered. One night, after a feast of braised loin of warthog served with mushrooms, Uyodor H’aekeem awoke with a start. He claimed he had been snared in a bad dream. (It seemed that Ivory Tigers rarely dreamed, but when they did, it was a bad sign.) The truth was, though, that the raw terrain was being washed with high winds and cracking branches. The chief had probably been startled by the fall of a tree nearby.

Dreams were always warnings. But what did it mean? Unfamiliar with the conventions of dream, Uyodor called Brrr to his side.

“The dream had human men in it,” said the Ivory Tiger, pacing back and forth in the teeth of the dry gale. “You’ve lived in the world of men, you say. Tell me how I should interpret the dream. Tell me why I have had it now.”