A Million Shades of Gray (17 page)

The rain eased up as he headed back to camp. Halfway there, he noticed buck marks on some tree bark. His father had taught him that bucks rubbed on a tree with their antlers and cleared leaves on the ground to mark their territory. He decided to try once more. He found a small tree he could climb into and sat with his crossbow and arrows. He waited and waited and began to wonder whether he was wasting his time. He knew it wasn't his fault; everybody went through periods when the
k'sok
and
m'tao
were chasing you and nothing you attempted would work out.

After a while Y'Tin could barely keep his eyes open—that happened a lot in school as well.
Whenever it happened, he was sure that Yang Lie was testing him, trying to make him fall asleep. But he would not give up. He willed himself to keep his eyes open and outlast the buck, just as he always outlasted Monsieur Thorat. He couldn't keep his eyes open, though, and he dreamed that he was sleeping in his hutch.

The next thing he knew, he was in motion. He thumped to the ground. At first he thought it was a dream, since he often dreamed of falling. But the pain was real. His whole body was sore at the same time. All of it. Every bone. Every muscle. He groaned. He cursed Yang Lie.

He realized that it didn't matter whether all of this was his fault or the spirits'. The fact was, one way or another, he had become totally useless. At that very moment he couldn't even get up. But that worked out great, because he didn't
want
to get up. He lay there for several hours as the jungle grew dark. He worried that a tiger might come, and he didn't even have the will to protect himself. On the other hand, why protect himself? He wished a tiger would come and end this all right here. Even his mother would forget him, just like Lady had. He was totally, totally useless.

Y'Tin fell asleep right where he was. He awoke with a start. A snake was slithering across his face. He pushed it away and sat up. But the snake was back. He pushed it away again. Then he didn't feel the snake anywhere around him.

But he heard something. A familiar snort. No. His ears were playing tricks on him. But he heard it again. That snort. He waited, and what he'd thought was a snake touched his face again. “Lady!” he cried. “Lady!” She ran the tip of her trunk across his face, and he started crying.

“Thank you for coming. Thank you.” Then his crying turned into sobbing. He had never
sobbed in his life. His sobs shook his body. It was as if he were possessed. Lady seemed to be trying to figure out what was wrong with him.

When his sobbing let up, he babbled to her, “I was all alone. I fell out of a tree. But it's not that bad.” She rubbed her trunk along the top of his head, still trying to ascertain what was wrong. Then she went back to sniffing his face. “Did you come back because you knew I was miserable, or were you coming back anyway? Never mind. It doesn't matter.” He reached up to clutch her trunk.

He heard something moving a few meters away and feared the worst. But Lady was calm, so maybe it was just a mouse or a lizard.
“Muk.”
She knelt down and he climbed on her and lay there until morning, soaking in her Lady-ness. Maybe it was just his imagination, but his pain seemed to start ebbing as he lay there.

Daylight came slowly, and still he didn't move. He closed his eyes but didn't sleep. “Lady,” he murmured. “You—” He stopped short and opened his eyes at a noise. “Lady . . .” A couple of meters away stood a baby elephant.

He forgot to have Lady kneel as he slid to the ground. He fell over but never took his eyes off the
calf. Lady leaned over her baby, then ran her trunk on his face. Her face. A girl. “Your baby.” He forgot about the pain in his body. “It's your baby.”

He stared at the calf. The calf stared at him. She looked so small. He remembered how big Mountain had been. This new calf was so much smaller that worry washed over him. He was taller than she was. He tried to approach her, but she reared back on her hind legs in fear. He could smell her: a smell almost like dirt, like rich soil. Tufts of hair stuck up from the two humps on her head. Her eyes were the color of the tea Shepard used to drink by the liter. Tin wanted to do something—anything—to help out, but he didn't know what to do. He considered mashing up a banana for the calf but rejected that idea. There was a reason baby elephants had no grown-up teeth. They were meant to nurse. But he had to do something. He spun around helplessly, looking for something to do. “Let's go get some water,” he said. “
Nao
, Lady!”

Lady walked obediently. When he looked back, he saw that her baby was following a few meters back. He waited for the calf to catch up, but when he stopped, she stopped. Then he started walking backward, and she started walking again. Then
he stopped and she stopped. He did that once again, just for fun, and then he turned around and walked, confident that Lady and the baby were following him.

When they reached the river, Lady filled her trunk over and over. The calf walked under Lady and started filling her trunk from there. Y'Tin gulped at the water. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was. That was the positive side of being miserable; it made you forget your thirst. When the baby had finished drinking, she submerged her head a moment and then lifted it up. She sprayed water at Lady, then opened her mouth as if to trumpet. Instead, a squeaky noise came out of her.

Y'Tin waded into the river, turned over, and floated on his back. Lady playfully sprayed water on him while he laughed. It felt good to laugh. It was amazing the way Lady could make him feel miserable by going away and make him feel happy by coming back. It was not good to love something during a war. That was the truth. But it was also not good
not
to love anything during times of peace. Hmmm. So maybe if you thought there might be a war, you should try not to love
anything . . . or in war you should try to . . . It was all too confusing for Y'Tin.

Anyway, he decided to name the baby Mtu because she was as beautiful as a star.

Y'Tin wanted to stay out here with the elephants, but he knew if he didn't return, his mother would be frantic. On the other hand, the elephants would be in danger if he returned to camp. But on the other hand of
that
, if he took Lady and Mtu to the mothers' camp, the commander wouldn't know. Then he could tell his mother he was safe and decide what to do next. So he rode Lady into camp. He sat up extra tall as everybody fussed over Mtu. The children all crowded around the baby, exclaiming how beautiful she was. Y'Tin slid off Lady to protect Mtu. She hid under her mother and took baby steps while Lady took big steps.

He didn't know many of the people in the camp. And he didn't know any of the guards. He realized that even if his villagers refused to eat the domesticated elephants, people from other villages would eat them in a second. Maybe it was Y'Tin's imagination, but one of the guards seemed to be looking hungrily at Lady and Mtu. In fact, all of a
sudden,
everybody
seemed to be looking hungrily at the elephants. Dok and Geng were gone.

“Stand back!” he cried out to the children crowding Mtu. “You're scaring her.” The kids took a step back, but then immediately started crowding the elephants again. He saw Jujubee tearing across camp. When she reached the elephants, she suddenly got all gentle and talked softly. Y'Tin was impressed with how gentle she became. He had never seen her like that before. Still, Mtu leaned her body away as Jujubee reached out.

Ami and H'Juaih came over and oohed and aahed over Mtu. Then the guard headed over. Y'Tin felt a moment of panic and considered making Lady run away. But he decided it was better to stay calm. No need to get everyone overexcited. When the guard approached, Y'Tin said, “She's scared of people.”

“How much would you sell the calf for?” the guard asked.

Why would the guard want to buy a calf if not to eat it? Y'Tin could not think of another reason.

“She's not for sale,” he replied.

Y'Tin told his mother he would be gone for a few days, explaining that he wanted to spend time with Lady and Mtu, just the three of them.

“And then what?” Ami asked.

“I don't know,” he answered. “I need to . . . I need to think.”

She stared so intently into his eyes that he felt as if she could see inside his brain. If she could, then she understood a lot more than he did. Then she said helplessly, “You're just like your father.”

Y'Tin didn't understand. He was nothing like his father. But he didn't try to fathom what she was talking about. That was for another day.

He set off, taking his hook. They walked for several days. He kept trying to touch Mtu, but she wouldn't let him. He wondered why Lady couldn't communicate to her calf that it was safe to let him touch her. But, then, why did he really need to touch her? He didn't need it, he just wanted to touch her more than anything in the world. She was so happy that he almost felt as if touching her would make him happy as well.

He loved traveling with Lady and Mtu. It was only at night when he thought of Geng and Dok. Every night he wondered,
Are Geng and Dok still alive?
On the fourth night he suddenly felt deep inside himself that they were dead.

The next day Y'Tin decided to stop when they
came to a small waterfall. One of his favorite memories was when Y'Siu, Tomas, and he had taken the elephants to a lake, where Y'Tin saw elephants swim for the first time. They were surprisingly graceful in the water. He thought back to when he was still in training. Tomas had told him that many, many years ago, elephants knew how to fly. He hadn't believed Tomas, but when he saw the elephants swimming, it was exactly as if they were flying. So what did Y'Tin know?

Mtu, however, still had a lot to learn about water. She approached the waterfall suspiciously. She stuck her trunk into the waterfall and then quickly withdrew it and stepped backward.

Lady lay on her side while Y'Tin scratched her hide as hard as he could. Then he reached out to scratch Mtu, but she hopped away. He had never seen an elephant hop before!

Later, while Mtu was nursing, she let Y'Tin stroke her bristly neck. She had more bristles than her mother, and they were softer. Tomas believed that elephants would live longer if you stroked them sometimes as they ate. He had learned that from the man who had trained him, who had learned it from the man who had trained
him
. And
so on, Y'Tin supposed. Someday when he trained other elephant handlers, Y'Tin would pass along this belief. Someday . . .

He knew he could not bring Lady and Mtu back to the camp again. Even if he could trust his own villagers not to eat the elephants, he would not be able to influence the commander. He had still never seen the commander, but he liked him less and less every day. So Lady and Mtu needed to bond with the wild herd. That was Mtu's best chance to live. Y'Tin thought about how he had always planned on mashing food for Lady when she got old, so she wouldn't starve when her last set of teeth wore down. He had promised her he would never let that happen to her, but now he realized that you could not always keep promises during times of war.

They spent six glorious days at the waterfall. Y'Tin had experienced many happy days in his life, but he thought these were the happiest. It was weird that the happiest days could come in the middle of a war. Go figure, as Shepard would say. At first he thought that happiness didn't solve many problems, but then he realized it could solve problems after all. It solved the problem of what exactly he should do next. He couldn't keep
the elephants. He could not keep them alive. He simply didn't know how.

On the morning that he decided to send them away, they performed their usual routine: playing in the waterfall, brushing Lady's hide, petting Mtu. The morning passed quickly. He wondered whether he should spend a few more days with them. What was the hurry? But every day he grew more attached to them, and he knew that soon he would not be able to send them away. If he didn't send them away, he would have to stay with them in the jungle. Keeping Mtu alive would be his responsibility. But no one he knew had ever kept a baby elephant alive. Much as he would have liked to believe he would be the first, he just didn't know if it was true. Even Tomas's trainer, the legendary elephant handler James Bya, had failed several times to keep a calf alive. And James Bya was supposed to have been the best elephant handler the village had ever had. Some people thought he was the best elephant handler who'd ever lived, though Y'Tin didn't see how anyone could know such a thing. Like Y'Tin, Bya had not used a hook. Unlike Y'Tin, the elephants always loved him from the first moment they met him.

He had planned to send Lady and Mtu away right after he brushed Lady down, but as the day wore on, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was growing weaker and weaker every moment. Finally, in mid-afternoon, he closed his eyes for several minutes, just staring at the darkness inside his eyelids and concentrating as hard as he could. He didn't know if he had the strength to do it. Then he opened his eyes.

“
Nao,
Lady! Lady,
nao
!” he suddenly shouted. Lady sniffed at his face. He stepped back and said, “No!” Then he called out
“Nao!”
again, this time using the hook. Lady turned uncertainly and took a couple of steps before pausing to look at him. If he cried, she would come back to check on him, so he fought back tears. “
Nao,
Lady!” He waved the hook, and Lady and Mtu walked slowly off. He ran as fast as he could in the other direction. He wanted to run into a tree and bang his head on it until his skull cracked.

When he lost his breath, he stopped and laid his forehead against a tree. Instead of banging his head, he tapped it over and over on the rough bark. He thought about the camp and knew he couldn't stay there, fighting a war that they would
surely lose. He decided he would gather everything he might need for the journey to Thailand, where he might be able to find work involving elephants. His mother would be devastated. But his future did not lie in the land he loved. That was too bad. But that was war.