Cinnamon was a princess, a long time ago, in a small hot country, where everything was very old. Her eyes were pearls, which gave her great beauty, but meant she was blind. Her world was the colour of pearls: pale white and pink.
Cinnamon did not talk.
Her father and her mother -- the Rajah and Rani -- offered a room in the palace, a field of mango trees, a portrait of the Rani's aunt painted on hardwood in enamels, and a green parrot, to any person who could make Cinnamon talk.
The mountains were on one side of the country, the jungle on the other; and from far came the people to try to teach Cinnamon to speak. And they stayed in the room in the palace, and cultivated the field of mango trees, and fed the parrot, and admired the portrait of the Rani's aunt (who was quite a beauty in her day, although she was now old and crabbed and pinched with age and disappointment), and, eventually, they went away, frustrated, and cursing the silent little girl.
One day a tiger came to the palace. He was huge and fierce, a nightmare in black and orange, and he moved like a god through the world; which is how tigers move. The people were afraid.
The people were very surprised to hear him speaking, although this did not quell their fear.
"Maybe you are lying," said the Rajah.
"May be," said the tiger. "But I'm not. Now: I am here to teach the girl-cub to talk."
The Rajah consulted with the Rani, and, though the Rani's aunt was of the opinion that the tiger should be driven out from the city with brooms and sharp sticks, the tiger was shown to the room in the palace, and given the enamel painting, and the deeds to the mango field, and he would also have been given the parrot, but it squawked and flew to the rafters, where it stayed and refused to come down.
"There was a young lady from Riga," squawked the parrot, from high in the rafters, "who went for a ride on a tiger. They came back from the ride with the lady inside and a smile on the face of the tiger."
"See," said the Rani's aunt. "Even the bird knows."<
"Leave me with the girl," said the tiger.
And, reluctantly, the Rajah and the Rani and the Rani's aunt and the palace staff left the beast with Cinnamon. She pushed her fingers into its fur, and felt its hot breath on her face.
"Pain," said the tiger, and it extended one sharp claw into Cinnamon's palm. It pierced her soft brown skin, and a bead of bright blood welled up.
"Fear," said the tiger, and it began to roar, quietly first so you could scarcely hear it, and after that giving out a purr, then a quiet roar, like a distant volcano, then a roar so loud that the palace walls shook.
"Love," said the tiger, and with its rough red tongue it licked the blood from Cinnamon's palm, and licked her soft brown face.
"Love?" whispered Cinnamon, in a voice wild and dark from disuse.
And the tiger opened its mouth and grinned like a hungry god; which is how tigers grin.
The moon was full that night.
It was bright morning when the child and the tiger walked out of the room together.
"Can she talk yet?" asked the Rani.
"Why don't you ask her?" growled the tiger.
"Can you talk?" the Rajah asked Cinnamon.
The girl nodded
"Hah!" cackled the Rani's aunt. "She can not talk at all!"
"Hush," said the Rajah to the Rani's aunt.
"I can talk," said Cinnamon. "I think I always could.
"Then why didn't you?" asked her mother.
"She's not talking now," muttered the Rani's aunt, wagging one thin finger. "That tiger is playing a trick."
"Can no-one make that woman stop talking?" asked the Rajah of the room.
"Easier to stop them than start them," said the tiger, and he solved the problem.
And Cinnamon said, "Why not? Because I had nothing to say."
"And now?" asked her father.
"And now the tiger has told me of the jungle, of the chattering of the monkeys and the smell of the dawn and the taste of the moonlight and the noise a lake of flamingoes makes when it flies into the air," she said. "And what I have to say is this: I am going with the tiger."
"You cannot do this," said the Rajah. "I forbid it."
"It is difficult," said Cinnamon, "to forbid a tiger anything it wants."
And the Rajah and the Rani, after thinking a little, agreed that this was so.
"And besides," said the Rani, "she'll certainly be happier there."
"But what about the room in the palace? And the mango trees? And the parrot? And the picture of the Rani's aunt?" asked the Rajah, who felt that there was a place for practicality in the world.
And so an announcement was made to the people of the city that they were now the proud owners of a parrot, a portrait, and a mango grove, and that the Princess Cinnamon could speak, but would go away for a while to study some more.
A crowd gathered in the town square, and soon the door of the palace opened, and the tiger and the child came out. The tiger walked slowly through the crowd with the little girl on his back, and soon they both were swallowed by the jungle; which is how a tiger leaves.
So, in the end, nobody was eaten, but the Rani's old aunt, whom people remembered by her portrait, which hung in the town square, and was forever beautiful and young.
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