The Traveler and the Tiger's Bracelet

At dusk, on the far side of a marsh, a traveler saw something glint in a tiger's raised paw — a gold bracelet, held up like an invitation.

TigerDo not fear me, friend. I was young and cruel once, but age has made me pious. I bathe each dawn, I give to the poor, and I have no more use for this bracelet than I have for meat. Come take it — it is worth more to a man than to an old animal counting his sins.

The traveler was poor enough that gold outshouts caution, and he stepped toward the marsh's edge, testing the mud with one foot.

Halfway across, sinking to the knee, a line his grandmother used to say rose up in him unbidden, the way old warnings do exactly when they are needed.

TravelerMusk in a jackal, gold in a snake's hood, virtue in a tiger — who has ever truly seen such a thing?

He stopped moving forward. The tiger, sensing the traveler's feet had found more sense than his ears, let the holy voice slip entirely from his own.

TigerPity wastes itself on the cautious. Come no closer, then, and starve a little slower than you would have.

The traveler backed out of the mud one careful step at a time, the gold still glinting behind him, useless as it had always secretly been.

He walked home with empty hands and a debt paid to his grandmother's memory. Some gifts are only the first half of a trap; the second half is the walk toward them.