“Esteemed guest,” the shah says, terribly politely, from the top of the wall — the wall enchanted long ago to be unclimbable and unbreakable, to stand around and be filled with his menagerie — his vizier standing behind his elbow. He’s pretty short; you might expect a shah to be more imposing. His vizier is taller by a head, gloomy and beaky; not terribly sinister, as viziers go, but fond of conducting himself with a mien of skulking.
The tigergirl in the enclosure, draped on her sunning rock like a length of wafted silk, yawns. It’s an arrogantly vulgar thing, wide and bold and displaying an astonishing length of tongue-curl. She does not otherwise acknowledge him. This is fine; tigergirls are insolent and defiant by nature, and why would he have commanded such a creature be placed within his menagerie, if not to prize its essential nature?
“As you requested, I had placed within your enclosure a certain goat-girl for you to devour,” the shah says, and the tigergirl, without otherwise reacting, smiles in a slow and satisfied way. Her tongue snakes out of her tiger-grin, to lick at her lips.
“Was it not to your satisfaction?”
That gets him a single open eye, a bored regard. A brow, peaked in scepticism.
“The court assumed from the screams that the meal was satisfactory, ” the shah says, from atop his wall, where he thinks himself unassailable by the patient designs of tigers. “And yet the screaming — continued for a duration, at a timbre—”
The goat-girl is sacked out in the tigergirl’s great, sometimes-used and sometimes-ignored, bed. Silks and cushions, palatial in size, canopied. She is tousled from sweat and exertion, salt tracks on her cheeks, curled beneath a sheet embroidered with hunting scenes. Bright specks could be meant to represent spring flowers; or perhaps dots of blood.
The screaming had continued in such a fashion, and for such a time, that the more delicate ears of the court were obliged to try to mask it with musicians and loud conversation, and finally to flee it.
“If the goat-girl provided is an insufficient meal for a tiger—”
The tigergirl stretches.
“I think,” she says, rumbling smug and sunned, “I’ll continue to eat her; she took it nicely. But I shall let you know if I require any variety in my diet, O shah,” and she licks her fangs, ostentatious, and returns herself to supine bonelessness.
The shah descends from the wall around his menagerie, with the wickedness and greed of tigers much on his mind, and the imagined — never uttered — words I told you so hanging heavy in his ears.
He firms himself against any admission, even to himself. His vizier may have said, mildly, A tiger? Are you certain that’s wise?— all that time ago, and its vulgarity and beast spectacle may have become disquieting, feeling as though he has brought something near to him which is beyond his command; but he is the shah, and it is confined in his menagerie, and all is right in the world.
The goat-girl turns over, and mewls softly in her sleep against soft pillows for the soreness between her thighs; on her rock, the tiger smiles slow and scheming and cruel.
