Tyger, tyger burning bright in the forests of the night........
The white tiger stared at Rosa and she looked at it, uncertain what to do next. Should she back away towards the house behind her at the far end of the garden? The gate was still open and it was only a short dash from the garden to the front door.
Had she left the door open and could she cross the cobbled street fast enough, slam the door behind her before the tiger was over the fence and through the door? Surely even a tiger as big as this one wouldn’t be able to break it down?
The tiger certainly didn’t look ready to pounce and eat her for breakfast, lying on one side, head resting on the grass, its white intricately patterned fur glinting in the sunlight. Maybe she should stay where she was and hope that any minute now she would wake from this dream to find herself in bed.
She could feel the rays of the morning sun on her face, hear the birds singing with pleasure at the start of another glorious late summer’s day. The scent of the dew wet flowers was as real as the cool grass of the lawn between her toes. She was surely awake and this large beautiful white tiger was stretched out under the plum tree in her aunt’s garden. There was no doubt about it. There lay the tiger and it was looking straight at her.
Rosa had woken early that morning with the sun streaming through the dormer window. She had slept in one of the attic rooms high above the cobbled street and gardens below. Four floors up in her aunt and uncle’s terraced and mostly (apart from the central heating) unmodernised Georgian house. She could hear the faint murmur of traffic from the back of the house facing onto the road that travelled up the long hill between motor bike shops, a derelict Victorian cemetery, blocks of high rises, Asian delicatessens, down the other side and after two or three miles onto the dual carriageway, out of the city in a long straight line befitting an ancient Roman way.
The West Road.
The rest of the house was still silent. Adults and children in nearly every room sleeping off the effects of the late summer party the night before. A huge celebration to mark Pete and Margie’s marriage after over 30 years of living together. An event that nobody could have predicted given their public rejection of the whole business of marriage, but there it was, for reasons best known to the two of them it had happened. Registry office, witnesses and the signing of the legal document accompanied by a magnificent celebration in the square and gardens around the house.
They had come from all over the country and the world. Friends, relatives and co-workers in the family of street entertainers and outdoor performers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, India and Australia. People arriving from the day before and then throughout the morning, afternoon and into the evening until the square and house were filled with the joyful sounds of over two hundred people partying on a gorgeous hot summer’s evening.
The party had lasted till the early hours of the morning and the sky was already light with the clear promise of another perfect day, when the last of the revellers had fallen into their beds. Tired out by fireworks, bonfires, outdoor candles, food, good wine, excellent marijuana, stilt walkers in amazing glittering, multicoloured and faceted butterfly, bird and spider costumes. Music from drummers and horn players on stilts dressed as ants with guitarists, ouds, violins and sound systems at one end of the garden while flamenco singers and dancers wove their magic duende around the partygoers. Grown ups, children, teenagers, laughing and wailing babies, cats and dogs all had been carried along by the wonderful nature of this unique event.
Friends who hadn’t seen each other for years embraced in a fandango of conversations, exclamations, proclamations amidst a multitude of wonderful edibles and quaffables. The bounty of nature turned into delicious vegetarian food and drink, laid out on tables along the pavements of the square and out into the garden travelling from saucepan, bowl and bottle to plate, glass, hand to hand, hand to mouth.
Mothers suckled babies, women laughed, men wept, children played and tumbled and slept while the night had crept to bed around them and the last guest went home to leave the house full of sleeping companions, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, lovers, children, cats with Pete and Margie now for the first time in their long partnership, husband and wife.
It had been quite some party.
It was still early when Rosa got up. Too good a day to miss. Another beautiful morning to hang like a pearl on the endless string of hot lazy days that had been the summer. She had pulled on a pair of jeans and a white T shirt, run her fingers a few times through her tangled blonde hair, walked quickly and quietly down the flight of wooden stairs to the kitchen in the basement, recognising the different noises that the steps made as she passed through the 4 floors of the slumbering house on her way to feed the 7 cats, crunch a piece of toast swimming with peanut butter and honey, make a cup of green jasmine tea, then out the front door across the street, into the garden to do her morning Tai Chi on the lawn, which was where she had met the tiger.
Though the tiger seemed totally relaxed, its eyes were intensely focused on Rosa hypnotising her and making her unable to move. The tiger looked away from Rosa for a moment, yawning to show a very pink tongue and a mouthful of sharp teeth, moved one of its front paws to its mouth, licked it a few times and then began to wash its face with slow deliberate strokes of its paw.
For a moment Rosa thought it had forgotten she was there. If she moved quietly and slowly, as she could sometimes when her body, mind and breath were totally connected in the flow of Tai Chi practice, she would silently leave the tiger washing itself in the garden under the plum tree already heavy with red plums. Her Aunt Margie had told her that it was the best crop for years. She could get back to the house, wake up her aunt and uncle and tell them….. what exactly?…… that there was a tiger in the garden, a full grown huge live white tiger. Of course they wouldn’t believe her until they came out into the garden and saw it with their own eyes.
Yes, that was the only thing she could do. Go and get help.
It was at that moment, as she was about to move stealthily away from the tiger towards the house, that it stopped washing and returned its intense gaze to her. At that moment Rosa heard or rather felt a voice, ideas, connections, some kind of a presence inside her head.
“ Profuse apologies….not to frighten you….can’t change shape at the moment…. a long journey…rather tired…don’t you recognise me?”
Rosa was almost knocked over by the strength of the words followed by a succession of vivid thoughts.
Massive snow covered mountains……the interior of some kind of church or monastery filled with monks in saffron robes chanting together….. A tall man with long dark hair armed with a rifle with telescopic sights, behind him two other men in furs, all three of them looking straight at her with the rifle aimed at her head…… A blurred series of images at high speed of rocks, ice and snow….. The surface of a beautiful intricate and richly patterned carpet or tapestry.
A mix of visual images, words, smells and sounds as if she was experiencing events as they happened, was actually there, wherever there was.
“Recognise you?”
The words tumbled out of her mouth and at the same time she knew there was no need to say a thing. The tiger could read her mind. It must have heard every thought since she arrived in the garden and realised that she was about to leave and….
“No not every thought. I’m only reading your mind when we’re having a conversation. Like right now. I’m a firm believer in the privacy of thought”
A deep throaty rumble in her head. Each word clear as if it wasn’t just sounds but being written at the same time. Liquid words dropping into her mind and, it was true, there was something familiar about it, a memory of childhood that floated into her consciousness. A memory of similar conversations with her cousin Dorothy’s cat Red on the few times they had met in Devon. So many years ago in the cottage in Hartland. How Dorothy had shared the secret with her when the 3 of them had been together and how Red had told them things that were almost impossible to believe. Then one day Red had disappeared and neither Dorothy nor Rosa had ever seen her again.
“Red. Red the cat!”
“Yes Rosa that’s right. It’s me. Red the cat. Temporarily in the form of this rather superb Siberian or rather Tibetan tiger. I hope we’ll have time to catch up with the intervening years and events since we last met later. Right now however I have to go as it’s not really safe for me to hang around and you have a rather important journey to begin”
“ But you can’t go now. I’ve only just realised who you are. I mean there’s so much I want to ask you……you disappearing like that in Devon….and Dorothy what do you know about Dorothy and…”
“ I’m sorry Rosa but I really don’t have time for any of that, this is only a brief meeting so I need to give you some clear instructions. Do you remember how I told you and Dorothy about journeys to other worlds?”
“ Of course. How could I forget. The upper world and the lower world. Multiple levels of reality. Power animals. Spirit beings”
She could picture them now. Dorothy, Red and her on the bed in Dorothy’s room in the cottage. The January wind off the Bristol channel throwing sheets of rain against the attic window while Red the cat, seemingly curled up asleep between them, told them stories, sent pictures, sounds, smells straight into their minds and bodies so that there was no separation between them. They were actually there in those jungles, deserts, oceans and mountains. Not like those she had read about in books or seen on TV, not places & events that happened in this world or what Red called the middle world. These were events happening in other dimensions that he had called the lower and upper worlds.
She had innocently asked her Uncle David at breakfast one morning when Dorothy and her Aunt Susan were out shopping in Tiverton.
“ David, what’s the Lower World?”
“You’re a strange child. Almost as strange as your cousin Dorothy. Why do you ask?”
What could she say? She realised as soon as she’d asked the question that it was probably a bad idea. But now she’d asked him, how much should she tell him? That Red the cat told her and Dorothy stories about worlds where animals could speak, where beings with incredible powers could do unimaginable things and the normal laws of time and space didn’t apply?
“Umm…..last night I dreamt that I met someone who told me about it”
“And what did this person you met in your dream tell you?”
Her Uncle David had looked at her from across the table, his mug of tea cradled in his hands, his blue eyes studying her. He was her mum’s older brother and she occasionally spent time with him and her Aunt Susan during the holidays when her mum had too much to do to look after her. Sometimes he would be there and sometimes not. Her cousin Dorothy, who was a couple of years older than her and spent a lot of her life in Hartland with Susan & David, had told her that he was on a lecture tour in New York, Buenos Aires, Toronto or some other city. He was one of the world experts on theoretical relativity and temporal spatial distortion. For most 10 year olds this would have sounded like gobbledy gook but Rosa had a brilliant mathematical brain and her favourite spare time reading were books and papers on algebra, arabic geometric patterns and differential equations.
Maths, algebra, trigonometry, geometry and the whole bag of numbers, shapes, forms and patterns had always fascinated and come easily to her. While her classmates complained about the difficulties of equations or geometric propositions she had easily assimilated, retained and manipulated the information she was given almost outstripping her teachers in her understanding and her thirst for more knowledge of what she intuitively understood as some sort of foundation to the world around her and the explanations she was formulating about science, nature and existence. A very precocious 10 year old in many ways like her older cousin Dorothy.
She had always liked David and had very clear memories of New Year as a young child spent with him, Susan and her Mum and Dad, when he had still been alive, along with all the other assorted relations from both sides of her family who would gather in the house in Kentish Town to celebrate the passing of another year together.
“What did they tell you”
“Tell me?”
“In your dream. This person that you met. What did they tell you”
“Oh sorry David. I was thinking about my Mum and Dad.”
“Were they in your dream?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. It was a cat. That’s it. A cat in my dream that told me”
“Maybe it was your power animal”
“Power animal?”
Of course Red had explained to her and Dorothy all about power animals but she thought it best to pretend she was ignorant.
“In the lower world we meet animals that can talk, sometimes they can help us with problems we may have or so some people think. It’s the oldest belief system in the world and its known as Shamanism. Actually an area that Dorothy’s Mum, your Aunt Joanna knows a lot more about than me. Interesting that you have dreams about it. Maybe you’re destined to be a great shaman yourself.”
David had smiled.
“Rosa the shaman. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve always thought there was something out of the ordinary about you”.
The conversation had ended there and for some reason they had never discussed it again. Rosa had also thought it best not to tell Dorothy about the chat she and David had had. Dorothy would certainly have not been happy about sharing any of the information with an adult, even one she liked as much as David.
“Of course I remember but that was over 6 years ago”
“Good. I'm glad you remember. But back to here and now. Tonight when everyone else is sleeping write a note to tell Margie and Peter that you’ve had to go away for a few days”
“ But I can’t do that, they’ll be really worried. So where am I going?”
“To the lower world. Where I will meet you as we have some important work to do and don’t worry Peter & Margie will be fine”
Rosa laughed. This was completely crazy. A hot summer’s day in the Northeast of England and here she was talking to a tiger about..
“I know. It may seem crazy to you but you must do it. Some very unpleasant and dangerous events are about to happen and we may already be too late to stop them. So….”
“Unpleasant and dangerous events . What kind of events?” Rosa asked out loud realising almost instantly that he knew what she was thinking.
Red ignored her interruption and continued.
“So take a number 38 bus up the West Road and get off at the stop by Rutherford Community College . Follow the signs to the Mithraic temple where you’ll meet….”
“Mithraic temple. What temple?!”
The tiger blinked at Rosa. The force of his irritation was a hot fire beginning to burn in her belly.
“If you don’t stop interrupting I’ll leave now and you’ll never know why I visited you”
“OK. I’m listening……sorry Red”
This time Rosa ‘spoke’ the words without opening her mouth
Red continued with his instructions.
“Not much else to tell you really. You’ll know exactly what to do once you get there and I’ll see you later. Oh yes and two more things Rosa, bring some of the plums off this tree with you. Just a few will do. Also keep your eyes open for a small carpet or wall hanging, you’ll know it when you see it. In fact I’ve shown it to you already. Good luck and I’ll see you soon”
Rosa felt a warm sensation on her face as if he was gently licking it. Then he was on his feet, in an instant he had turned away from her and with a single leap was over the wall that divided the garden from the bowling green below, easily dropping the 6 feet down to the path then running in long slow strides across the perfectly mowed and rolled grass.
There was a moment when everything seemed to hang absolutely still. A perfect picture of a summer’s morning with an exquisite empty bowling green shining bright in the morning sun framed by rows of Georgian houses, a convent with a single stained glass window in the background silhouetted against an immaculate blue sky with a large white tiger caught in mid stride at its centre.
Then the picture began to move again. A single cloud travelling across the sky, a car driving down the road in front of the the convent at the other side of the square, a bird flying past the branches of the plum tree and the tiger was gone, no longer in the moving picture. Vanished as if it had never been there.
Long close up of Rosa’s face and pan with slow zoom out to reveal garden, bowling green, square and then pan round to mid shot of front door of house as Rosa enters, turns to look into camera and closes the door.
Fade to black.
.