The Tiger Spirit
Old Yan, a lone woodcutter at the foot of tiger-haunted Qingya Mountain, frees a trapped cub and tends its wound. For years afterward, meat appears outside his hut each winter; in his sick old age a silent amber-eyed man brings a deer through the snow. When Yan dies, a tiger cries from the ridge. A tale of cross-species gratitude and quiet grace.
The cliffs of Qingya Mountain are thick with tigers. The mountain folk fear them, and the hunters set iron traps along the paths; every year several tigers are maimed.
Old Yan lived at the foot of the mountain, making his living as a woodcutter. Past sixty, with no wife or children, he dwelt alone in a thatched hut. He was a gentle man; though he gathered firewood, he would not harm living things, and whenever he found a trapped beast he set it free.
One winter the snow sealed the mountain. Yan went in to gather dead branches and heard a piteous cry from the valley, sharp with pain. He followed the sound and found a tiger cub caught in an iron trap, its forepaw soaked in blood, unable to walk. The cub looked at him with frightened eyes and whimpered, as if begging. Yan sighed: "Even a beast knows pain." He sprang the trap, tore a strip from his own robe to bind the wound, and carried the cub home, feeding it warm gruel. The cub grew tame and did not bite; it lay by his bed. In ten days the wound healed, and with a bow of the head it took its leave. Yan watched it vanish into the snowy woods and saw it no more.
From then on, every winter, meat would appear outside his hut — a deer, or a river deer, its pelt still dusted with snow. Yan knew it was the tiger's repayment and accepted it without a word. The neighbors found it strange; he only smiled.
Years passed, and Yan grew old, his back and legs failing him. One night a great storm rose. Yan lay sick abed; his firewood was spent and his rice gone, and he could not light a fire. Through a haze he heard heavy steps outside the door. He opened it and, in the moonlight, saw a tall man standing in the snow, a dead deer across his shoulders. He spoke not a word, set the deer on the step, nodded, and left. His eyes were clear and amber, with something like warmth in them. Yan called after him; there was no answer, and the figure melted into the trees.
The next day a neighbor passed and, seeing the deer, asked where it came from. Yan said only: "A gift from the mountain."
After that, on stormy nights, Yan would hear steps outside the door; he would open it to find meat upon the threshold and the giver already far off. So it went for ten years.
Yan died at eighty, quietly, of no illness. The village buried him; as the coffin was borne out, the snow cleared. Someone saw a tiger standing on the ridge, gazing long at the grave, then loosing one great cry that shook the woods and hollows before it walked slowly into the clouds.
The Chronicler of the Strange says: Men call the tiger fierce, yet know not that the tiger repays. One moment of Old Yan's mercy saved a tiger cub and won him ten years of care. A beast's gratitude may surpass a man's. Those who receive kindness and forget it before this tiger, can they feel no shame? Yet Yan spoke of it never, and the tiger spoke not at all; their debt and their grace lie deep in the snowy woods, and need no witness among men.