Tiger's Apprentice
By Laurence Yep
Rebound by Sagebrush
Copyright © 2005
Laurence Yep
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781417700622
Chapter One
It isn't every day you meet a tiger. And certainly not a tiger in a suit and tie. And definitely not
one who knows your first name.
The tiger was the last thing Tom Lee expected as he stumbled up the steps to his
grandmother's home.
It was a grand old house in the Inner Richmond of San Francisco. Gingerbread shingles
covered its sides like scales, and pigeons cooed under its ornate window eaves. It seemed to
have cast some magical spell that protected it and its neighbors from being replaced by the
cheap, ugly apartment houses that had swallowed up the rest of the city.
However, today, Tom didn't want to admire it. As he hurried up the steps, he just wanted to
hide inside - away from all the people staring at the big bruise surrounding one eye and the
torn sleeve of his blue shirt.
At the park Jack, an eighth-grader, had called Tom's grandmother a weirdo - which everyone
in the neighborhood did because of the way she decorated her house. It was full of magical
charms - strange designs on paper, wood, and stone, and words written in a ghostly script.
Hanging everywhere were mirrors with trigrams - sets of three lines, either solid or with a
gap in the middle - from an ancient book called the Book of Changes. They made up patterns
that could tell the future and had magical powers. And incense was always burning before
bizarre statues.
When she walked down the street to do her shopping, their non-Chinese neighbors turned and
whispered to one another. The Chinese in the area treated her as if she were invisible, and the
Chinese shopkeepers were afraid to say a word to her and always waited on her first, as if
they were in a hurry to get her out of their shops - not that she cared. She was proud of
working magic and was even teaching Tom the rudiments of what she called the Lore.
Unfortunately for Tom, the neighborhood's attitude had filtered down to the children, who
stuck Tom with the same label - weirdo. Bullies - Chinese or not - loved to pick on anyone
different, and they had made Tom their favorite target. He couldn't ignore an insult slung at
his grandmother, who had taken care of him ever since he was a baby. His archaeologist
parents had disappeared somewhere in Malaysia when he was only a year old. Everyone,
including Tom and his grandmother, assumed they were dead.
Even though he was small for his age and his opponents were usually much larger, he
defended his grandmother almost every day, and the frequent fights had earned him his own
reputation as a troublemaker. His folder in the school counselor's office was stamped at risk.
So why should today be any different than any other day? Though Jack was an eighth-grader,
Tom had demanded he take back his rude words. Of course, Jack wouldn't, and so there had
been a fight. The real problem was that Jack had brought pals just as big as he was.
It would have been so much easier if Tom could have turned them into lizards, but his
grandmother refused to teach him those spells until she was sure he would not misuse them.
So Tom had had to use his fists. Against Jack alone, he might have stood a chance - which
Jack knew and was why he had dared insult Tom's grandmother only when he had a gang
around him.
"Turning them into lizards is too good for them. Fungus, maybe," Tom said to himself as the
steps creaked under his feet. He couldn't wait to get inside the house. It was his fort, strange
as it was. Within its walls, he felt safe from the rest of the world. And maybe he'd work on her
again to teach him some spells he could use for defending himself.
At the door he fumbled for his key and found he had forgotten it. So he jabbed the doorbell
hard. "Please, Grand-mom. Hurry up," he muttered.
When the door opened, though, it was a stranger who greeted him. "Good afternoon, Master
Thomas. Your grandmother has been telling me wonderful things about you." The visitor took
in the black eye and the torn sleeve and scratched his head. "But I see she might have been
exaggerating a tad."
The stranger looked like an elderly man with a trim, gray mustache and goatee - except for
his furry ears. The stranger brushed his goatee. "Do I have something on my face? Is that
why you're staring?"
Tom's grandmother had taught him some basic spells, and one of them was for showing the
true shape of things - which she said was essential for anyone working in magic. Curious
about his grandmother's visitor, Tom chanted the words under his breath. He jumped when
the next instant he saw a tiger standing there on his hind legs.
In the Chinese folktales his grandmother told him, animals could talk, but he had always
thought those were just stories. He'd never expected to meet a talking animal.
"Is that you, Tom?" his grandmother called from the kitchen. "Where have you been?"
Suddenly Tom stood tongue-tied out of shame. He'd been so small when his parents had
disappeared that he didn't remember them. Whenever Tom wanted a hug or a kind word, he
could always count on his grandmother, but it was her voice he loved best. There was always
a smile hidden behind her words. Her voice reminded Tom of a stream chuckling as it ran over
rocks. He felt guilty for ducking out of his grandmother's lessons today, especially since he
had run into Jack and his gang.
Impatiently the tiger slipped a watch from a pocket in his suit vest and consulted it. "I'd step
inside unless you intend to eat on the porch. Mistress Lee, I think you'd better fetch Master
Thomas if you don't want him turning into a porch fixture."
Continues...
Excerpted from Tiger's Apprentice
by Laurence Yep
Copyright © 2005 by Laurence Yep.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
