Toi Wah did not move. She only looked, but such a look! It appealed to the merciless devil in my heart. It burned into my soul.
“Kill me!” her great amber eyes seemed to say. “Kill me quickly and mercifully as you killed the darling of my heart. What sayeth the Master: ‘Be merciful, and thy heart shall know peace.’ Today is yours, tomorrow—Who can say?”
As if in a dream, I stood and looked into her eyes. Looked until those amber eyes converged into a dirty yellow pool around the edge of which grew giant ferns and reeds taller than our forest trees. And a misty haze hung over the scene.
Into the pool floated a canoe, a hollowed-out tree trunk. In the canoe was a man, a woman, and a child, all naked except for skins about their shoulders.
The man pushed toward the shore with a pole, and as he made a landing he leaped into the water and pulled the boat upon the bank.
As he pulled at the boat, the reeds quivered to the right of him, and a great yellow-colored tiger leaped from the cover of the ferns and seized the child.
For a moment it stood there, the man and woman paralyzed by fear and horror. Then, blood dripping from its jaws, it leaped back among the reeds and was gone.
The face of the man in the boat was mine! And it was Toi Wah who held my child in her dripping jaws! A great Toi Wah, with sabre teeth and dirty yellow hide, but still Toi Wah.
The pool faded and I stood there, looking into the eyes of my grandmother’s Tartar cat.
But I knew! At last I knew!