Tiger by Jeff Stone

Author:Jeff Stone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780375891793
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-02-09T23:00:00+00:00

“Come ON!” Fu said to the tiger cub. “The sun will be setting soon.”

The cub didn't budge. It stared up the well-worn trail.

Fu grunted. “We've got to keep moving. I know you're exhausted, but we spent far too much time napping.”

The cub stuck its nose high into the air.

“Why are you being so arrogant? If you …” Fu's voice trailed off. He smelled it, too. Garbage. And garbage meant humans.

The cub's nose recoiled.

“Let's go!” Fu whispered. “I know it stinks, but maybe we'll get lucky and there will be some fresh table scraps or something. I'm starving.”

The tiger's ears suddenly perked up. And then Fu heard something, too. Voices. The cub growled.

“Shhh!” Fu said. He moved off the trail.

Fu took a few steps toward the voices and looked over his shoulder to see the cub still sitting on the trail. Staring straight at him, the cub blinked three times, then it turned and walked back the way they had come.

Fu sighed. He was disappointed, but he understood. The cub wanted nothing to do with the hunters they were tracking. He would miss the cub. He hoped he would see his new blood brother again.

Fu adjusted his robe and got down on his hands and knees. He felt a draft on his backside, and his head slumped. What did I ever do to deserve this? Fu thought. He adjusted his torn pants as best he could and crawled off through the underbrush, following his nose.

After a few moments, Fu reached one side of an enormous pile of waste. The voices were on the other side. The pile was five times as big as the one at Cangzhen, and it stank a hundred times worse. At Cangzhen, the bulk of their pile was vegetable trimmings. Fu wondered what had been discarded on this one. He doubted he could stomach eating anything that had been left there, no matter how clean the scraps appeared to be.

Fu kneeled down behind a large tree, holding his nose as two men carried on a conversation on the opposite side of the pile. One of them took a bite out of something. It sounded like an apple.

“What a shame it is to waste all this fine food,” the man mumbled, his mouth full. “But what else can we do? He told us to dump it, so we've got to dump it. I'm not about to argue with him.”

“Nor I, nor I,” said the second man. “Dump it, dump it.”

Fu sat straight up. He poked his head around the tree.

“Yeah,” said the first man, chomping away, “there's no point in making him feel any worse. If I were him, I'd have canceled the celebration, too. Imagine, your only son attacked by a vicious killer monk for no reason. And on top of everything else that's already happened.”

“Yes, yes,” replied the second man. “So true, so true.”

The first man swallowed, then took another bite. “It couldn't have happened to a nicer boy, either,” he mumbled. “They say he's now deaf in that ear.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.