Page 50 of The Last Tiger

Seung

It’s just an ordinary cave. Moss hangs over the drooping entrance, which opens mournfully like a bruised mouth over the top of the mountain. Apart from the ancient, worn quality of the faded black stone, there’s nothing in particular to show that this is a sacred place.

But from the whispering I hear echoing somewhere behind my ears, in the space behind my skull—I know that this is no normal cave.

The top of Mount Tangun: We’ve made it.

Behind me, Eunji, Kenzo, and Jin stand with the tiger, looking out over the mountain peak.

The area juts up into a narrow plateau. The wind stirs our clothes, the sun pouring down on us; the horizon here stretches endless kilometers into the distance.

We’re at the highest point as far as the eye can see in every direction.

Below us, at the foot of the mountain, lies the gray-brown urban sprawl of Hannam City. On the other side, the ocean sparkles. A deep river curls up from the seashore, winding its way over the land, wrapping around the mountainside beneath us. It gleams like iron under the sunlight.

Jin glows with a cool blue-green equanimity. Next to her, Kenzo’s shoulders are tense, darkened by fear, which hangs as a shadow over him. And Eunji—I feel her pulled between contradictory impulses, a heady mix of guilt, uncertainty, and awe.

The tiger pads toward the cave entrance. She enters and disappears from sight.

I follow after her.

Together, we file as a group into the cave, ducking our heads underneath the low lip of rock. It takes me a minute to adjust to the cool darkness inside.

The tiger stands at the back of the cave, next to a little stone well.

The low, round wall of carved stones comes up just barely over my waist. A worn bucket on a drawstring rope hangs on a pale metal hook fixed to the wall.

I step forward, looking at the tiger for confirmation. Her deep gold eyes seem to glimmer in the dark. She blinks at me, as if to say yes.

Atop Mount Tangun lies a spirit well from which a mortal with Tiger ki must drink. It can endow an ancient, dangerous power—one with the potential to destroy its possessor. But which, wielded by the right hands, can set our people free.

Here goes nothing.

I raise my hand and take the bucket off the hook. The wood feels damp and aged; if I were to pull hard, I might be able to tear it apart with my own hands. I look down into the well. A white mist swirls there, obscuring a still, gray pool below.

I lower the bucket into the dark. It falls, then lands with a splash.

The bucket sinks into the gray-white liquid, pooling. The white mist sighs. Despite there being no wind here in the cave, the fog in the well swirls on its own, picking up speed—rising up and out, beyond the wall of stones, as I pull the bucket to the surface—

Finally, it’s in my hands. A strangely silvery, metallic water quivers there, lapping at the sides of the bucket. It’s as thick and viscous as mercury.

As I hold the wooden bucket in my hands, an odd whispering in my ears grows louder—becoming voices in my head—I can almost, but not quite, make out the words—

Somehow I know—these voices in my head are the voices of real people.

Actual men, women, and children, ones who are alive today, or perhaps, who were once alive in the past. They build into one another, overlapping, forming a soft murmur of noise that wreathes itself around me.

I can’t quite distinguish what they are saying, but I do know one thing.

All of them speak the Tiger tongue.

I raise the bucket to my lips—and drink.

The water tastes of fresh snowmelt.

Suddenly my throat feels cracked and parched; I drink long and deep, thirstily, feeling the water cooling, soothing my tongue, pouring down my throat, pooling in my stomach.

The whispering in my ears suddenly springs sharply into clarity, becoming real, present, as if the voices were here with me in this very cave—

“I love you, Hyejun—I’m yours forever.”

“Jiyeong, please don’t make me beg. My father needs your help—”

“Umma, look! Look how tall I am!”

Each of their voices is as clear and distinct as if spoken by someone standing right behind me. The voices grow —

My vision swims, distorts—

All at once, I’m swept away from the cave—

I’m sitting in a small cabin built of thatch and baked clay.

A flat pillow lies below me, over the ground.

I look down at my hands—to find that they aren’t my hands. These belong to someone else: a different man, a stranger. They’re large, muscular, the fingernails dirt-smudged, the pads calloused.

The clothes over my body aren’t mine either. I’m wearing a pair of loose-tied pants, an unfamiliar farmer’s tunic light over my torso. Sitting opposite me is a woman, also a stranger. I look up into her face. The woman wipes tears away and takes my hand in hers.

At once, a cascade of memories pours into my mind. Memories from a stranger. Memories from the man whose hands, when I look down, I see.

I see those calloused hands plowing the rice fields outside his home. I see the birth of his children, a young girl and a boy.

I see the girl running through the rice fields, her face pure joy.

And I see her dying from illness, her skin simmering and green. I see those large, warm hands burying her body over the hill behind the rice fields. I feel unfathomable grief pass through me.

I feel that grief mix with rage. I feel him curse the skies above for taking his daughter.

And I feel him waking up the next day, and then every day, for the rest of his life. Going over the hill beyond the fields to watch the sun rise over the mound where this man buried his daughter.

And I see the beauty of that sunrise. I see that pale, fiery sun hanging tall over the rice fields, illuminating everything in sight to a clear, crystal pane. Beauty and grief mix together within him, somehow triumphant, in celebration of what it must mean to live.

This stranger, whoever he is: I feel his life.

The vision swims, dissolving, morphing into something new.

Again, I look down at my hands to see they have changed. This time I have an old woman’s hands, wrinkled and tiny, the nails carefully trimmed and painted a delicate pink.

Memories flow.

I see this old woman as a girl, the first time she tasted a plum. The juice drips down her chin, the bright sugary taste bursting in her mouth. The utter, perfect joy of discovering such a wonderful fruit could exist in the world.

I feel her utter loneliness when she left home for the first time, traveling far across the country as a young woman to marry a husband she had never met in person.

I see her bear children.

I see her children grow into adults, marry, and leave home, like their mother before them…

I see the Dragon marshal haul this woman, now old, before the court for refusing to speak Dragon language in the marketplace.

I feel defiance glowing inside her; I see stars when the policeman slaps her across the face.

I feel the bitterness inside her, the curse she can’t bark back that dies in her throat.

Again, my vision swims—and changes—over and over, I change hands, bodies, memories, lives—

I’m a businessman who, after a decade of struggle, caves and realigns himself as a collaborator with the Dragon government; he sits at home, drenched with guilt, counting in his hands a staggering amount of money, an amount he never thought he’d see in his life—

I’m a homeless woman, scrounging for clothes in the city trash, looking for something beautiful to wear; a colorful scarf catches my eye, and I wrap it around myself, checking my reflection in a puddle—

I’m a soldier in the Tiger armies, hopelessly outnumbered, facing down the enemy’s endless battalions, and I realize that we’re going to lose, that I will never see my home or family again—

I gasp, falling out of one person’s memory and into the next—again—and again—

I’m a young child. An old man. A woman in her middle age.

A rebellious daughter. A disillusioned man with a broken back. A petty thief.

I’m a terrified little girl—and I’m the kind stranger who wraps her in a blanket, who helps her home. I’m the desperate mother who welcomes her back in relief, and I’m the father who scolds her harshly.

I am born—I grow old—I die—

I live one life after another—the memories flashing through my mind, my face and body changing rapidly, whirling between lives—

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of them—

Memories flooding through me so quickly that I can no longer stop at any one—

I blink, unable to process it all at once.

The wheel of lives whirs to a blinding speed, so fast now I can hardly perceive the changing hands, changing faces. It’s spinning so quickly that I am no longer any one of these people at a time, no one particular set of memories, but something somehow greater, something infinitely larger—

From somewhere far away, as if peering through a deep, dark pool, I look down and see Lee Seung’s hands.

He sits at the foot of the spirit well with a faded wooden bucket in his arms.

This reality, the one containing his own body and mind, feels almost transparent. Like one card in an infinite deck, one star in an endless sky…

Is that me? he wonders. This one fragile life?

Seung blinks. I feel the air catch in his chest.

My chest. Me.

“Seung,” someone says, laying a hand on my wrist.

I look up and see the spirit of the tiger standing in front of Seung—in front of me . For a moment, I see double—is she the tiger, or the spirit? She flickers, and I see both of them together, overlapping…She’s both at the same time…

“Wh-what’s happening—” The words feel sluggish, distant on my tongue.

Behind me, I dimly hear murmuring, a concerned voice. The white mist is everywhere, filling the cave, swirling ever deeper around my body—