the Himalayas. Rhododendrons grew wild there, and once I saw a leopard in our garden.”
A strange voice said, “You see mountain lions here. Early in the morning is the time for it—look up on the big rocks as you drive along.”
“Exactly so!” Dr. Prithivi sounded excited. “It was very early when I saw the leopard.”
Little Tib tried to remember what a leopard looked like, and found that he could not. Then he tried a cat, but it was not a very good cat. He felt hot and tired, and reminded himself that it had only been a little while ago that Nitty had washed his clothes. The seam at the front of his shirt, where the buttons went, was still damp. When he had been able to see, he had known precisely what a cat looked like. He felt now that if only he could hold a cat in his arms he would know again. He imagined such a cat, large and long-haired. It was there, unexpectedly, standing in front of him. Not a cat, but a lion, standing on its hind feet. It had a long tail with a tuft at the end, and a red ribbon knotted in its mane. Its face was a kindly blur and it was dancing—dancing to the remembered flute music of Dr. Prithivi’s laughter—just out of reach.
Little Tib took a step toward it and found his way barred by two metal pipes. He slipped between them. The lion danced, hopping and skipping, striking poses without stopping; it bowed and jigged away, and Little Tib danced too, after it. It would be cheating to run or walk—he would lose the game, even if he caught the lion. It high- stepped, far away then back again almost close enough to touch, and he followed it.
Behind him he heard the gasp of the people, but it seemed dim and distant compared to the piping to which he danced. The lion jigged nearer and he caught its paws and the two of them romped up and down, its face growing clearer and clearer as they whirled and turned—it was a funny, friendly, frightening face.
It was as though he had backed into a bush whose leaves were hands. They clasped him everywhere, drawing him backward against hard metal bars. He could hear Nitty’s voice, but Nitty was crying so that he could not tell what he said. A woman was crying too—no, several women—and a man whose voice Little Tib did not know was shouting: “We’ve got him! We’ve got him!” Little Tib was not sure who he was shouting to, perhaps to nobody.
A voice he did recognize, it was Dr. Prithivi’s, was saying, “I have him. You must let go of him so that I may lift him over.”
Little Tib’s left foot reached out as if it were moving itself and felt in front of him. There was nothing there, nothing at all. The lion was gone, and he knew, now, where he was, on the edge of a mountain, and it went down and down for a long way. Fear came.
“Let go and I will lift him over,” Dr. Prithivi told someone else. Little Tib thought of how small and boneless Dr. Prithivi’s hands had felt. Then Nitty’s big ones took him on one side, an arm and a leg, and the medium-sized hands of Mr. Parker (or someone like him) on the other. Then Little Tib was lifted up and back, and put down on the ground.
“He walked . . . ,” a woman said. “Danced.”
“This boy must come with me,” Dr. Prithivi piped. “Get out of the way, please.” He had Little Tib’s left hand. Nitty was lifting him up again, and he felt Nitty’s big head come up between his legs and he settled on his shoulders. Little Tib plunged his hands into Nitty’s thick hair and held on. Other hands were reaching for him; when they found him, they only touched, as though they did not want to do anything more.
“Got to set you down,” Nitty said, “or you’ll hit your head.” The steps of the bus were under Little Tib’s feet, and Dr. Prithivi was helping him up.
“You must be presented to the god,” said Dr. Prithivi. The inside of the bus was stuffy and hot, with a strange, spicy, oppressive smell. “Here. Now you must pray. Have you anything with which to make an offering?”
“No,” Little Tib said. People had followed them into the bus.
“Then only pray.” Dr. Prithivi must have had a cigarette lighter—Little Tib heard the scratching sound it made. There was a soft
“Now you see Deva,” Dr. Prithivi told them. “Because you are not accustomed to such things, the first thing you have noticed is that he has six arms. It is for that reason that I wear this cross, which has six arms also. You see, I wish to relate Deva to Christianity here. You will note that one of Deva’s hands holds a two-armed cross. The others—I will begin here and go around—hold the crescent of Islam, the Star of David, a figure of the Buddha, a phallus, and a
Little Tib tried to pray, as Dr. Prithivi had directed. In one way Little Tib knew what he had been doing when he had been dancing with the lion, and in another he did not. Why hadn’t he fallen? He thought of how the stones at the bottom would feel when they hit his face, and shivered.
Stones he remembered very well. Potato shaped but much larger, hard and gray. He was lost in a rocky land where frowning walls of stone were everywhere and no plant grew. He stood in the shadow of one of these walls to escape the heat; he could see the opposite wall, and the rubble of jumbled stones between, but this time the knowledge that he could see again gave him no pleasure. He was thirsty, and pressed farther back into the shadow, and found that there was no wall there. The shadow went back and back, farther and farther into the mountain. He followed it and, turning, saw the little wedge of daylight disappear behind him, and was blind again.
The cave—for he knew it was a cave now—went on and on into the rock. Despite the lack of sunlight, it seemed to Little Tib that the cave grew hotter and hotter. Then from somewhere far ahead he heard a tapping and rapping, as though an entire bag of marbles had been poured onto a stone floor and were bouncing up and down. The noise was so odd, and Little Tib was so tired, that he sat down to listen to it.
As if his sitting had been a signal, torches kindled—first one on one side of the cave, then another on the opposite side. Behind him a gate of close-set bars banged down, and toward him, like spiders, came two grotesque figures. Their bodies were small, yet fat; their arms and legs were long and thin; their faces were the faces of mad old men, pop-eyed and choleric and adorned with towering peaks of fantastic hair, and spreading mustaches like the feelers of night-crawling insects, and curling three-pointed beards that seemed to have a life of their own so that they twisted and twined like snakes. These men carried long-handled axes, and wore red clothes and the widest leather belts Little Tib had ever seen. “Halt,” they cried. “Cease, hold, stop, and arrest yourself. You are trespassing in the realm of the Gnome King!”
“I have stopped,” Little Tib said. “And I can’t arrest myself because I’m not a policeman.”
“That wasn’t why we asked you to do it,” one of the angry-faced men pointed out.
“But it
