The Chosen One (Part 2)

Arik is not sure how to get in; he discovers that getting into the vehicle is not like mounting a horse or getting into a cart; he has to lean forward.

When he puts his bare foot on the edge of the opening and his hand on the frame, he maintains the expectation that the beast will shake or whinny like a wild colt, but it doesn't.

Arik convinces himself that the Sorcerers of the Old World found a way to subdue their creations to their will. After all, the same Sorcerers had ridden machines that went up to the sky beyond human sight; they could even make the air vibrate so they could magically talk through thousands of miles, and they could travel between the Earth and the Moon; therefore, for Arik, it is logical that they had the power to tame such fantastic machines.

Once inside, the boy discovered that everything was very dark, as if it were night; so when his eyes adjust, he discovers that there are four other people sitting inside, on a kind of long and padded bench that runs along the entrails of the beast; the boy manages to recognize one of the occupants; it's his friend Jaff, the son of the village blacksmith; apparently, the boy considered, they have chosen the best specimens to represent the village, surely the villagers must be bursting with civic pride.

"Sit down" the collector orders, pointing to an empty space on the bench that is in front of Jaff's; "I wouldn't want to dirty this glorious beast with my sweat and filth..." Arik replies in a low voice, overwhelmed by amazement and shame of his humble condition. "Sit down!" the collector orders again with a firm and authoritative voice, interrupting the boy's excuses; whereupon the young man finally sat down. "Very well" says the collector while his concentration is focused on his hands, which seem to be busy with a peculiar object.

As the collector stands in front of Arik, he obstructs the view of Jaff, so the boy focuses on the other young men, "By Gesu! Is that a tiger man?" the boy asks, surprised, without realizing the blasphemy he had uttered, which at another time would have earned him a loud slap from his father. But the young man sitting in the corner seems to be from the Tiger Clan, which, according to the stories of the merchants, are groups of savages who live far away in the west, living in tents and moving like nomads, and supposedly worship a brown tiger as their god.

Arik remembers that two years ago, a brown tiger had appeared near his farm briefly, and he had even been able to see it through the window; it was an immense cat with stripes of dark brown, definitely not a puma, it was too big for that, surely it must have been a beast that escaped from an old zoo of the Old World.

The savage boy, who is the same age as Arik, is practically naked, except for the tattered loincloth of leather that barely covers his modesty; his body is smeared with a pigment that has dyed his body and his long hair a brown, alm...