Serpopard

The cat’s feet had not moved, but its mouth was suddenly beside Iru’s ear.

Teti dropped the coil she was carrying.

“Leave your sleeve.”

Her brother looked down. A fold of linen hung between the animal’s teeth. He pulled once, without thinking, and the great spotted neck bent farther around the post. The body remained three paces away, paws planted, tail moving slowly through the dust.

“Leave it,” she said again.

He slid his arm out. The cloth tore as he stumbled toward her, bare shoulder gleaming with sweat. The serpopard lifted its head. Teti followed the neck upward, then back along its curve to the shoulders, trying to make her eyes accept the distance between them.

Iru was eleven. He had been telling people twelve since the handlers hired him that morning.

“It only wanted the cloth,” he whispered.

“Then it can keep it.”

Across the enclosure, Meru slapped his palm against a post.

“Bring that coil. We have daylight for one more attempt.”

There were two animals. The second lay on the other side of the yard, darker along the spine, its neck folded beside its forelegs. Its head rested near a shallow water bowl. From beyond the reed fence came the voices of the men who had come to see them held together.

Meru wanted a circle: the two long necks crossing, the heads turned outward, a space between them as neat as a ring drawn in wet clay.

Teti had been hired to make the ropes that would hold it.

She picked up her coil. Three days of twisting fibre lay against her hip, and the payment would buy grain enough to keep her mother from taking another loan. Meru had pressed a thumbnail into her sample rope and nodded. He had not looked at her face until she asked what he meant to tie.

Now he pointed to the nearer animal.

“Your brother takes the loose end under. You hold the standing line.”

“He stays outside.”

“Then go under it yourself.”

The low line ran from a broad neck strap to a post. A second rope from the same strap would draw the head inward. There was room beneath it for Iru to pass without going near the paws. That was what Meru saw.

Teti looked at a scrap of linen lying in the dust beneath the animal’s mouth.

“Let me move the post line first.”

“You made rope, girl. Let me handle the beasts.”

Iru took the end from her hand.

“I can do it.”

He said it too loudly, for Meru to hear. Before she could catch his elbow, he ducked under.

The Crossing

At first the animals followed the pull.

The nearer serpopard rose through its shoulders, its head passing above Iru. Across the yard the darker one stood, shook dust from its flank, and curved its neck toward the centre. Meru called to his men. The ropes tightened. Two spotted arches leaned inward.

For a moment Teti saw the shape he wanted.

Then the darker animal turned toward the water.

Its neck slipped below the other’s. The pale head came down on the far side, ears flattened. A line that had been clear now lay across both necks.

“Hold there,” Meru called.

Teti felt the change through her palms before she saw it. The rope no longer pulled steadily. It jerked, stopped, then dragged sideways.

“Slack,” she said. “Give it slack.”

Meru hauled his line.

The pale animal backed. Its neck pressed down upon the darker one’s rising curve. Iru, still inside the lines, dropped flat as a rope swept toward his face. It caught behind his shoulder instead. The pull rolled him onto his side and held him against the base of the centre post.

He made a small, furious sound, as if somebody had cheated him.

Teti wrapped both hands around her rope and stepped forward to ease it. On the opposite side, Meru’s men stepped back.

“Stop pulling!”

The darker serpopard opened its mouth. Its neck slid another hand’s breadth beneath the pale one. The upper animal braced its forepaws. Dust rose around the claws.

Now the crossing could not loosen while they pulled away from each other.

Iru’s bare arm was stretched above his head, wedged between the post and a taut line. He tried to bring his knees under him. The rope shifted across his chest, and he stopped.

“Keep still,” Teti said.

His eyes found hers.

Meru left his rope to another man and strode toward the pale animal with a forked pole. He pushed beneath its jaw, trying to lift the head clear.

The head went up. The neck followed sideways.

Meru’s pole struck the post. He lost his grip, fell backward, and the pale animal’s shoulder knocked him against the fence. Reeds cracked. The spectators scattered from the other side.

For the first time, nobody was giving an order.

The rope in Teti’s hands began to burn.

She could drop it. She could run to Iru and cut the line across his chest.

She pictured the released rope striking him, the two necks wrenching apart, the jaws that could reach him without either body taking a step.

“Where does it hurt?” she asked.

“My arm.”

“Can you breathe?”

He nodded, then tried to nod more convincingly.

She made herself look away from his face and follow the ropes.

Her line held the pale animal’s head inward. Its post tether ran low and clear. The darker animal’s head had passed beneath the pale neck, but the rope from its strap had gone over. Neck below, rope above. Between them lay Iru.

It was not a knot. Not yet.

She had spent three mornings shaking tangles out of wet fibre. Pulling both ends only taught a tangle how to hold.

“Meru.”

He was sitting against the broken fence, one hand pressed to his ribs.

“Take this line.”

He stared at her.

“Don’t haul. Just keep it where it is.”

“They’ll go for the opening.”

“Yes.”

“The men outside—”

“Tell them to move.”

He looked past her toward the yard, where Iru lay with his mouth open, measuring each breath. Then he dragged himself upright and took the rope.

The Loose End

Teti stepped inside the reach of the pale head.

The animal watched her. Its whiskers trembled. Above the torn sleeve still caught on one tooth, its upper lip lifted.

She stopped.

There was nowhere in the enclosure that was truly beyond its reach. She had only been pretending there was.

“Iru, look at my hand.”

She held her left hand low, beside the rope that crossed his chest.

“When this lifts, roll toward me. Leave your arm until I say.”

“I can’t.”

“Not yet.”

She took the dark animal’s line where it crossed the pale neck. It was stretched tight as a bowstring. She could not lift it.

“Give me a little,” she called to the man at its end.

He shook his head.

“It’s looking at me.”

“Walk toward it. One step. Keep the rope.”

He took half a step. Nothing changed.

“Another.”

The darker animal drew its head back. A loop sagged between its strap and the crossing.

Teti pushed her forearm beneath that loop.

The pale neck moved against her wrist, hot and solid under its short coat. The muscle drove her hand sideways before she could shift her grip. She turned with it, keeping her elbow free, and raised the slack over the crown of the bending neck.

For a heartbeat the line cleared.

Then the pale animal threw its head up.

Fibre ripped across Teti’s palm. She cried out and nearly let go. The loop dropped against the animal’s ear.

Iru twisted toward her.

“Stay!”

He froze, face buried in dust.

The rope-worker’s payment, her good hands, the work waiting after this: all of it narrowed to the strip of burning fibre she still held.

She pushed upward again.

The ear folded under the line and sprang free.

“Now. Roll.”

Iru dragged his shoulder out from beneath the rising rope. His arm remained caught against the post. Teti could reach his wrist, but if she pulled him toward her, she would bend the arm backward.

“Your knees under you. That’s it. Stand toward the post.”

He struggled up, moving into the pressure instead of away from it. His wrist slipped down the wood.

She caught him by the back of his torn tunic and pulled him behind her.

The darker animal backed one pace. Its long neck drew out from beneath the other like a branch lifting from water. There was no circle now, only two bodies straining toward the gap in the fence.

“Let the inward lines go,” Teti said.

Meru released his. The other man threw his end down and ran.

The heads swept apart. The pale animal struck the limit of its post tether and turned with a sound Teti felt in her teeth.

Iru clung to her waist.

She took her knife from its sheath.

The tether was hers: close-laid, well spliced, stronger than Meru had asked for. She crouched beside the post, outside the snapping line, and sawed through it. The blade found sand in the fibres. Once. Twice. A strand parted against her knuckles.

The rope broke.

The pale serpopard bounded toward the breach, its neck streaming low. Teti pressed Iru against the post as the spotted flank passed. Sand struck her shins. The tail vanished through the reeds.

Across the yard, the darker animal turned after it and reached the end of its tether.

Teti held the knife out to Meru.

He did not take it at once.

Beyond the fence, the pale head rose, turned, and looked back over a shoulder impossibly far away.

Meru took the knife.

When the second rope parted, the darker animal went through the opening without looking at anyone.

For a while Teti heard only her brother breathing against her.

“Did you see?” he said at last. “I didn’t pull my arm.”

“I saw.”

She tried to smooth his hair. Her hand would not close.

Meru returned the knife and looked at the severed ropes. Teti waited for him to name their price. Instead he bent, awkwardly, and gathered one of the loose ends off the ground.

Iru took the other before she could.

Outside, the tracks crossed once in the sand. Farther up the slope they separated, each winding out of sight behind its own ridge.