Chapter 3

“Hey, hello...” Anshul said gently as he moved slowly towards the girl so as to not scare her, regaining a bit of his composure. The little girl just kept staring at him. “My name is Anshul, what’s yours?” He asked as he kneeled in front of the little girl with a small smile on his face.

“I’m Nagisa, but everyone calls me Nia; you did too! Don’t you remember me, bhaiyya?” The kid replied, addressing him as an ‘older brother’. She still stared at him with big grey eyes which seemed filled with concern rather than wonderment.

“Wait, say what?” Anshul’s mouth fell open in wonder and as he looked aside to escape her concern-filled gaze, he saw more people. Standing up with a jolt, he stared in surprise...at kids that he could not remember but could weirdly still recognise.

They were in that rapidly flowing river; topless, flinging water on each other, leaning against the barks of the nearby trees, laying on the riverbank gazing serenely at him and one guy wearing a bandana was even standing at the top of the waterfall near the rock side, grinning like crazy and waving a stick around like a cutlass, as if he was some pirate captain.

“Where did they come from?! They weren’t here a moment ago!”

Anshul could only take it all in and stand there speechless. It was while he was in this trance-like state that a deep growl sounded from behind.

The guy wearing a bandana, whose name he recalled was Varun, called out “Tiger!”

Before Anshul could even cast a look back, all the kids except for Nia disappeared.

Huh? How can kids just disappear within minutes and noiselessly when they were all here just now? Were they swallowed up by the earth or am I hallucinating?

A small warm hand slipped into his and pulled. “There’s a tiger behind us”, Nia said and pointed.

As Anshul was turning to catch a glimpse of the beast he said, “Run away, then. Like the others did.”

“The others?” Nia asked.

Oh boy. I was hallucinating. She was already concerned about me but now she’ll probably believe I’m completely bonkers.

“The others can take care of themselves, but you are the one who always takes care of me, bhaiyya.”

“Huh?” was all he was able to say before he could no more. His breathing started becoming faster and faster though he repeatedly told himself to calm down. He had seen the tiger coming towards them and out of the tree cover.

The great beast was padding towards them as if on a leisurely stroll, it’s striped tail flicking left and right. The tiger had a long cut under its right eye giving it a more vicious appearance.

The sight was frightening enough but what really stopped Anshul in his tracks was that its eyes weren’t like that of a feline at all. Instead, its eyes looked very, very human.

A feline’s eye’s pupil normally looks like a thin vertical line but a human’s seem spherical and that was exactly how this cat’s eyes looked. Those bright-green, menacing and realistically human-like eyes reminded the teenager of something, nay, someone.

Anshul imagined that a person was coming out of the tiger’s body, like some sort of spirit; a man wearing a bright yellow unzipped jacket and a striped Hawaiian t-shirt. He had those bright green eyes and a long cut on his right cheek which stretched from under his eye to his jawline...

He was shaken out of his paralysed condition when a small hand tightly gripped his. Registering that Nia was clasping his hand tightly helped Anshul to drive his terror away for some time.

The tiger is still fifty metres away. If I try to cross the river, it’ll take time and be a tad difficult but by the time this tiger crosses, we’ll be far away. No other option is going to save us. I have to save this child. She’s putting her trust in me though I don’t remember anything about her.

Turning towards the river, Anshul hoisted Nia on his back and hugged her tightly while grunting, “Oof, you are heavy!”

He took a second to look at her and saw she was pouting, “Wait, why are you making a pouty face? You are heavy!”

As he started running towards the river he heard her say, “Don’t you know that you should never call a lady heavy?”

Damn. I can’t believe I’m debating ‘How to speak to a lady’, and that too, with an 8-year old child!

“As if you are a lady,” he retorted.