CAUTION: This story contains implied sexual activity between minors, mild violence, and profanity. Reader discretion is advised.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Assam Chai
by IndigoNeko
Prologue
Monday, May 30th, 2016
The skin to either side of Ginnie Miller’s beak turned down slightly as her father, Hank, slid a small pamphlet across the dining table to her. She held up the last of the sugar-dusted deep-fried locusts that he’d cooked for lunch between her talons and crushed it between the edges of her beak a bit before tossing it back and swallowing. As much as she liked the crunchy treats, they were kind of awkward to eat; smoothies and trail mix were more her style. At least she wasn’t a woodpecker or hummingbird... or worse, a toucan. Having a beak that big would have been awkward.
The pamphlet showed a picture of a Japanese temple on the front, complete with cherry trees with pink and white blossoms and a stone courtyard where a tiger in a black karate gi was posing in a fighting stance. The label underneath said ‘Winter Creek Shotokan Karate Dojo - Grand Opening’. Ginnie snorted in amusement... she wondered if whoever had made the pamphlet had just chosen the photo because it looked pretty. There was no way that a Buddhist temple in Japan had anything whatsoever to do with whatever martial arts classes they were advertising.
The young bird picked up the pamphlet regardless, since she’d been pestering her father about doing something over summer vacation for the past month, and asking about taking Karate lessons for much, much longer. She used her talons to flip open the pamphlet. Inside was a wide angle photo of the inside of a Japanese dojo with dozens of weapons on the walls. Ginnie shook her head, wondering if they’d found the photos on Shutterstock.
The text underneath was short and concise, stating they were certified with the International Shotokan Karate Federation and that beginner classes were taught Monday through Friday at 7-8PM and were $10 per lesson, capped at $100 per month, and $40 for the uniform. They also offered private lessons for $25. Just below the short description it gave the address and instructions how to get there, following one of the service roads that led east out of town.
The young bird tilted her head slightly as she immediately recognized the organization’s name. It was one of the top three Karate organizations in the world. If this dojo was accredited, as they claimed, she’d be able to look up their dojo on the ISKF website to confirm if it was real or not.
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Rohan Tashi stared out the conference room window into the night, looking down at the lights that speckled the streets and buildings of Delhi. It was a beautiful view, if one liked cities. He preferred the unspoiled mountains of his homeland in the Himalayas. Sadly, he had no choice but to come here for the annual Baghadera Parisada, as he was currently chairman of the council.
After a moment he turned in his chair and looked over the ornately carved circular table at the other tigers that were seated around it with him, all with colorful dresses, fine thawbs, or expensive suits. They were the elders of their families, the twelve largest tiger clans in southern Asia. Ramesh, Tao, Nushi, Fatima, Hassan, Priya, Akira, Jing, Amit, Sunita and Mohammad stared back at him, their discomfort plain in their expressions despite the plush comfort of the leather executive chairs they all sat upon.
While many of them spoke Hindi and a few of them spoke Tamil, Farsi, Arabic, or Mandarin, the only language all of them spoke was English. Rohan mentally sighed with disappointment over the depressing reality that they were reduced to using a foreign language to communicate with each other, rather than their ancestral tongue Bengali. It had been that way for decades now.
The muscular tiger looked down at the paper in front of him through a pair of reading glasses perched on his muzzle. It was a printout, also written in English, that laid out the even more depressing state of their species.
“Last year we lost forty-six of our people,” Rohan stated. “Nineteen of those were to homicide, nine to capital punishment, seven to road accidents, four to heart disease, three to cancer, and two to illness. The last was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death. None of them were over the age of sixty.” The tiger sighed and waited a moment for anyone to speak, but was met with silence. “Fifteen of our people were incarcerated for crimes of violence,” he added, waiting a few seconds before continuing, “We added fourteen to our number: eight boys, six girls. All healthy.”
Rohan took off his reading glasses and set them down atop the printout before looking back up across the table and meeting several eyes. “This is the lowest number of births among the clans for the past thousand years. I went over the records myself. As you know, we have been on the IUCN’s Red List, just like our wild cousins, since it was established in 1964. At this rate we will be reclassified as black in one hundred fifty years. Two hundred at most.”
Mohammad stared back at him, and spoke, his deep and gravely voice making all of them turn to face the elderly muslim, the fur on his muzzle speckled with grey. He was, by far, the oldest tiger any of them knew.
“We lose twice as many as we should every year to violence alone. Allah knows that we try our best... we try to teach our children to live peaceful lives, how to control the ancestral fury. We tell our people to be fruitful and multiply, encourage them to bear as many children as they can. We have trusts to cover the costs of bearing children, to ease the burdens of parenthood. It is not enough,” the old tiger said, hanging his head and looking down at his paws, clasped within his lap. A tear fell from his muzzle. “We are dying.”
“It is the curse,” Sunita cried out, her melodious voice ringing throughout the conference room they sat in. “Damn Durga and her-”
Rohan held up his paw, firmly saying “Quiet!”
Silence hung over the room, and the tiger continued. “We all know the reason. There is no point in crying or praying; the gods will not help us. We must save our people. At any cost.”
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Kayson Pullman flicked his long purple tongue out, tasting the air as he looked up at the blue sky above the Philadelphia skyline. Storm clouds were rolling in from the northwest and he was fairly sure this game would end early. Seeing his coach gesture at him out of the corner of his eye, the young monitor lizard stood up from the bench, grabbing his brand new bat off the ground. As he walked over to the home base, sunlight glistened on his scales. The golden yellow spots that dotted his black hide matched his yellow and black uniform. The boy swung the length of maple wood in his hands a few times as he walked, feeling the heft while scanning the bleachers where all the little league parents were sitting.
The boy spotted his mother and younger sisters at the near end, but his father was nowhere to be found. He frowned as a wave of sorrow and anger washed over him... then he sighed; his dad had already explained that he would be working late for only a month or two at most, and had apologized for missing Kayson’s little league games in advance. It still hurt, but he knew he’d see his dad later that evening for dinner. Hopefully he would be able to tell his father that he’d hit a home run this time.
Smiling to himself at that idea, the young lizard walked up to the plate and took a batting stance to one side of the home plate, determined to make his dad proud. Kayson had no idea what species the pitcher was; most mammals looked the same to him with their brown fur and blunt muzzles, though a few species were colorful enough to recognize, like tigers. Birds and reptiles were much easier to tell apart. He lifted the bat up, readying himself to take a swing.
The mammal standing on the pitcher’s mound raised their arm, their white and blue uniform bright in the afternoon sunlight... and threw the ball straight at Kayson. For a moment he was afraid that he was going to get hit by the ball before realizing that it was curving slightly as it flew through the air. Almost instinctively he took a long step back exactly like his dad had taught him repeatedly over the past few months when they played ball in their back yard.
Kayson grinned, showing a row of sharp white teeth, as he realized he’d stepped back just the right distance. The ten-year-old was one of the oldest in this little league group, probably one of the strongest too, and he swung his maple bat as hard as he could. While he couldn’t make the ball crack like the players in MLB did, he could certainly send it flying. His bat hit the ball with a satisfying thwack, launching it high into the air. It sailed well outside the baseball diamond where most of the other team’s players were standing.
Several of them went running into the outfield, chasing that little white ball while Kayson started sprinting for first base, hearing various parents on the bleachers cheer. Nobody expected reptiles to move fast, with so many of them being cold-blooded, but he could move frighteningly quickly when he wanted to, and he did. He managed to reach first base and was halfway to second before the other team managed to reach the ball, and he’d reached second before they managed to throw it back into the baseball diamond. He watched the ball go rolling as one of the opposing team players missed the pass, and pushed his legs as hard as he could running towards third base, hearing people yelling.
As he ran over the third base plate, he saw the ball go flying past him once again, this time towards home plate. For a second he was tempted to turn back to the safety of third, then realized the ball was going to go wide of the two players near home base... If he hurried, he just might make it. He pumped his little legs as fast as he could, his tail whipping through the air behind him.
Kayson ran over the home plate a split second before the other player reached him with the ball in hand. He hissed like a steam release valve before he came to a stop, and started panting for breath. Parents on the bleachers and his teammates in black and orange began cheering. The grin on the young lizard’s face spread practically from ear-hole to ear-hole. He couldn’t wait to tell his dad that he’d made his first home run.
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Ginnie’s beak dropped open as she crested the well-lit stairs that led up from the small parking lot, coming to a complete stop. The large stone courtyard in front of her was lined with trees with small pink blossoms and dark green leaves, all surrounded by a low stone wall. The building on the far side looked just like one would imagine when envisioning an ancient Buddhist temple in Japan. Other than it being evening instead of daylight, and the missing karate tiger, the view in front of her was exactly the same as the photo on the pamphlet.
Her father, Hank, took a few more steps onto the courtyard before stopping to turn and look back at her. The young thrush felt her red feather crest go up as chills ran up her spine. She’d thought it was a stock photo or something, but clearly the photo on that brochure was real. How the hell had they managed to build a Japanese temple in the middle of nowhere? This belonged somewhere in the mountains of Okinawa... Not outside some tiny-ass town in the mountains of Colorado.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Ginnie stepped out onto the courtyard, not quite believing that she wasn’t in some anime movie... It felt like she’d stepped into Spirited Away, a movie she’d watched a half dozen times now. The young bird felt light-headed and slightly dizzy as she took a few hesitant steps across the stone, noticing that the flagstones had been laid in geometric patterns using slightly different colored stone. The waist-high walls surrounding the courtyard were made of irregularly-sized natural rocks, but all somehow fit perfectly together. The trees, lit from below by hidden lawn lights to offset the evening gloom, rustled as a breeze blew past them, bringing the faint scents of rose, vanilla, and juniper from the nearby cherry and pine trees.
The temple, or dojo, was lit by flood lights at the edges of the courtyard. It stood two stories tall, with dark brown log pillars supporting an overhanging roof covered with grey-blue kawara tiles. Whitewashed stucco walls were interspersed with rice-paper shoji doors and windows. As the young thrush and her father approached the front doors, they silently slid apart, as if beckoning the two birds inside.
The inside walls were lined with various Japanese weapons: katanas, spears, sai, nunchuks, staves of various lengths, and many others that Ginnie didn’t recognize. To the left were two huge murals painted on the walls, a stylized feral tiger in a circle on the left and some kanji on the right. Between them was a tapestry with Japanese and English writing behind a small altar with an incense bowl. To the right was a staircase that led down... and above them was an open atrium that went up nearly twenty feet, with the inner walls of the upper level lined with an irregular lattice of dark wood that matched the log pillars supporting the atrium.
The black and red feathers along Ginnie’s arms and neck stood on end. There was no way this was real; it had to be some kind of illusion. Only... It wasn’t perfect. The inner floor consisted of beige gym mats painted with several large black rings for sparring matches. The floor should have been tatami mats. Ginnie took a deep breath, suddenly feeling as if whatever enchantment that had been laid upon her was broken. She blinked and turned to the right as she heard the rustle of cloth coming from the stairs. A moment later, a tall, orange-furred tigress in a black karate gi stepped up onto the polished wood flooring that surrounded the beige gym mats.
“Welcome. I am Sensei Rain,” she heard the tigress say. Ginnie suddenly remembered the strangely-spelled name that had been listed on the ISKF website: Raenne Andreyev. So that was how her name was pronounced.
