Days passed.

Leonidas puffed his breath and put his hands on his knees. Looking around, he thought something looked familiar at the top of the mountain on which he stood. “This place looks familiar. Have I been on top of this mountain before?”

“You’ve been on this mountain four times before. This is the fifth time,” the tiger informed him, stretching his back like he had never experienced fatigue.

Leonidas felt a tear threaten to fall down his cheek. “So, you aren’t leading me anywhere?”

“Where would I need to lead you? God is over our heads. We come to the top of a mountain to be closer to God. It’s figurative, though. He can be with us when we’re on the floor of the lowest valley or even buried in the earth.”

Leonidas did not want to explain what he felt. He was exhausted. He was hungry. He was frustrated to his bones. His lips were chapped from the wind. He was out of provisions. Even the cords that held his muscles together felt like strings that would snap.

“Have we gotten any closer to God?” Leonidas asked, his voice was too dry to convey emotion.

The tiger’s eyes were unfathomable. Tigers didn’t have a wide array of facial expressions. That was part of what made them so terrifying. One never knew what they were thinking. They could be thinking of taking a nap or ripping the flesh from your bones.

“I was waiting for you to run out of food,” the tiger explained. “If you ran out of food, would you go home? Then I was waiting for you to run out of water. If you ran out of water, would you forget about Samara to satisfy your thirst?”

Leonidas croaked a chuckle and lowered himself next to a boulder to rest on. “I see. Well, now that I have nothing to satisfy my earthly desires, have I come close enough to death to pass through the veil that separates this world from the world of the divine?”

The tiger did not answer, but instead said something unexpected. “You’ve done a good job not thinking about it.”

Leonidas knew what the tiger was referring to without any further explanation than that. There was only one thing he did not want to think about, and yes, he was very good at not thinking about it.  It happened the night of the coup, the night the King fell, the night he ran through the palace and the harem searching for his brother. That night ended when he met Samara.

“You haven’t strung a bow since, have you?” the tiger continued, baiting him.

Leonidas pulled a sandal from his aching foot. “Am I supposed to repent of that, too? That I haven’t held a bow?”

“I was only thinking of it because there is a bow in the grass behind you.”

Leonidas swung his head around, and what the tiger said was true. Behind him was a bow. It was steel, and it lay on the ground like it had recently been discarded.

Leonidas stood with one bare foot and hobbled over to it.  It looked fresh from the blacksmith like it had never been used.  He bent and picked it up. It was a fine bow in perfect condition.

“Why should something like this be discarded here? Did one of the rebels…” Leonidas cut himself off as he turned to the tiger.

The tiger looked furious as he stared back into Leonidas’s dark eyes, but no words resounded through Leonidas’s mind.

“It wasn’t discarded here,” Leonidas said slowly like it was a fact.

“It was not,” the tiger confirmed.

“It’s a gift from God?” Leonidas questioned. “But why should God give me a bow? It’s not like I will ever want to use one again.”

“No. You had your scimitar… that you never used. You sometimes carry a knife when you’re out minding your father’s sheep, but neither of those is your weapon of choice,” the tiger said, knowing Leonidas’s heart like it was on the outside of his body.

Leonidas touched the bow, running his fingers down the side of it, testing the draw, unstringing it, and then stringing it again. “Does this mean that… somehow… in some roundabout way that I have God’s approval for what I did?”

“You’ve been worried that you were wrong when you killed all your superior officers the night of the coup?” the tiger asked, a growl in his voice.

It made Leonidas feel like the tiger knew something about killing out of necessity.

“If you know my heart, you know I didn’t want to do it. They were being burned at the stake. I couldn’t wait for the flames to kill them. So, I fired every arrow I had down to the last man. I didn’t want them to suffer, and they were dead anyway. I couldn’t have saved them,” Leonidas said stiffly because it was the last thing he wanted to talk about. “Then I dropped my bow and walked away. If I carried my bow, I might have been caught and named as the shooter. The rebels were going to kill me anyway if they caught me in my guard uniform. I didn’t need the extra weight.”

“Are you aware that you are the highest-ranking member of the old King’s army?” the tiger asked.

“I was not,” Leonidas replied blankly. “It was easier not to think about it. It was easier to go home and watch my brother recover, think of Samara, and wonder if my feelings for her would shift if she tried her hand at being the kind of woman I always wanted.”

“The time for playing games of pretend at your father’s house has ended,” the tiger told him with a finality that turned Leonidas’s blood cold.

“What time has arrived?” Leonidas asked, numb with cold, and done with feeling.

“It has been declared in Heaven that you have lost the right to rule Samara,” the tiger announced.

Suddenly, Leonidas wondered if he might not see anything supernatural on the journey he took with the tiger. The tiger itself was supernatural, but Leonidas had grown used to it. He thought that if he followed the tiger, he would follow the tiger to heaven on a journey to save the woman he loved. Love felt like the wrong word. That was why he choked on the words when they spoke of marriage. What he felt for her was more like an awakening, going from being asleep to being completely awake in one heartbeat. He had been a person who did as he pleased, and who owed relatively few allegiances. He had what he owed his parents and what he owed his superiors in the army.  He did not owe a woman anything, not protection, nor care, nor love.  He didn’t feel love. For Samara, he felt a scorching heat that rearranged his insides and made him want things that were not meant for him. He did not want to burn out the core of his being and hand it over to her, merely hoping that what he became after the metamorphosis was the person he desired to be.

Setting that idea aside, Leonidas recalled what he imagined he would see on their journey. Angels? Flying horses? Perhaps even the Lord God himself. Instead, apparently, all he had to do was refuse to give up, and after chasing down God’s path for days and nights, he was suddenly at the end of it.

“If you wish to save Samara, you must rescue her,” the tiger explained.

“From God?”

“From the rebels,” the tiger said. “There is no need for arrows with that bow. If you have the Lord’s blessing when you draw the string, an arrow will be provided. You must have the faith to pull the string. Go down the mountain, back to the capital, seek Samara, and when you find her, you must crown her as your queen. You must make a vow to her on sight. If you do not…” the words disappeared in Leonidas’s mind before the whole message had been communicated.

Leonidas waited, watching the tiger and waiting for the rest of the message, but the next time he blinked, the tiger had vanished, and Leonidas was alone on the top of the mountain. Yet somehow the message was clear. If he did not choose Samara to be his wife, her God… His God would cast him off.