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The villagers called him Grandfather Tiger. Greatest of the striped cats, he - or possible a series of huge tigers - had lorded over the jungle for time out of mind. Each new generation of children would hear of him, and the stories were all largely the same: Grandfather is the lord of the local jungle. Do not bother Grandfather and Grandfather will not bother you. If you end up inside him, you deserve it.

A generation back some foreign tiger-hunters heard the story of the great cat from a traveller and came to take his striped pelt for a trophy. They had guns and money and paid villagers to teach them the ways of Grandfather so they might catch him.

They killed two other tigers, but not Grandfather. Though a few villagers took the money, most did not, and some of the ones who did lied about Grandfather's habits. The hunters, thinking him a simple animal, set their snares and put out their bait. They were not aware that other villagers had warned Grandfather and they in turn were being hunted.

One by one the hunters disappeared, along with two village men who helped them. Each in turn got the striped pelt they sought, but not the way they wanted it. Each wore it only long enough for Grandfather to digest them.

When all was quiet again the villagers returned to their fields and Grandfather to his haunts. Later another white man and his entourage came to the villages, asking where his fellows had gotten to. The villagers just shook their heads. "Somewhere else," they said. The white man left, still searching for friends he would never see again.

Grandfather's presence kept the peace just as it kept the white man from taking over as he had elsewhere, for to cause too much of a ruckus in his territory was to soon find oneself in a warm, wetly caustic place.

Thinking the disappearances were due to disease since remains were never found and the villagers kept their mouths firmly shut on this subject, outsiders stayed away from the jungle valley and left the villagers to their own devices. It was a peaceful place, changing little over the years. Even guns were a rarity, mostly left behind by various great white hunters who met their end in Grandfather Tiger's guts.

Not everyone liked the arrangement. Every so often, someone tried to do something about it. Sahil was just the latest.

"Come, woman," he snapped, and used the rope he carried to swipe at his companion. Prisha flinched just out of reach, knowing from previous swings how far he could reach. The welts on her thighs showed it took her a time or two to learn.

"Yes, sir," she said, and picked up her pace. She was young and shapely and born to a large farming family which needed boys more than girls. Unable to afford the dowry needed to marry her off, her father jumped at the opportunity to sell her to Sahil. Sahil promised to treat her well and lied in so doing. He had a use for her, it was true.

The loop of rope around her ankle, the opposite end of the one he used to whip her, kept her from fleeing even if she dared try. She thought she'd been sold to an abusive man. If she were very unlucky, perhaps one who meant to sell her to someone even crueller.

It was worse even that that. She found this out when they reached a small clearing and he hammered a stake into the ground. He tied the rope to this, leaving her only a few feet of movement. Then he ripped away her skirt and left her naked in the jungle.

Overhanging the clearing was a broad-trunked tree and soon she heard her "husband" climbing. When he appeared overhead, rifle in hand, she called up to him for release.

"Shut up!" He barked, and pelted her with seed pods from the tree. "I'll let you loose when I have my prize."

Bait. She was bait. Now she knew what was happening.

One hunts a common tiger by staking out a goat. Goats did not appeal to the greatest of all tigers. He was hunting Grandfather, who had a taste for human woman. Not a dietary one, either. If the stories were to be believed the tiger had a regular harem of local woman, replacing them with new ones when one died or wished to leave. Or, some darker tales maintained, when he grew hungry and ate them.

Her role was to lie here and be mounted by the beast, or to fill his belly. Either way, her "husband" would shoot Grandfather the moment he had a clear shot. The odds of her surviving that close to a wounded tiger did not look good, even if she wasn't in its stomach by that point.

She looked at the rope in hopes of untying herself, but that made Sahil curse.

"I only have one use for you, woman," he called from his tree. "If you won't be bait, I will use you as target practice."

And so she sat there through the hot afternoon until the leaves rustled and a striped face appeared.

Grandfather Tiger was twice the size of the other tigers hereabouts, a great sleek cat over four feet tall at the shoulder and as heavy as five strong men. He looked her over from the shade of the ferns, sat back like a great house-cat and licked his chops. Long white whiskers snapped back into place as his raspy tongue passed and Prisha knew she would soon be in his stomach.

Common tigers pull their prey down with their claws and slice it up for eating with their sharp side teeth. Grandfather Tiger was not a common tiger. She would arrive in his stomach whole and alive, for his gape was so great that even fellow tigers sometimes disappeared down his gullet. There were creatures hereabouts too large for Grandfather to swallow. She was not one of those creatures.

Knowing that Grandfather could kill her with one swipe of a paw or casual bite and that Sahil waited overhead with his rifle, Prashi lay back and rolled over onto her belly. With a wriggle of her plump rear end she offered herself to the tiger. The stories held that Grandfather would not refuse such an offer and it would give Sahil time to shoot the cat. Maybe she would even survive.

She watched over her shoulder as the tiger's ears pricked up. He rose to all fours, whiskers alert, and stepped forward. Not to kill her, thankfully. He stepped up next to her, lowered his muzzle to sniff between her thighs, and wrinkled up his chops like a tiger smelling a tigress.

She knew what he would do now. He would turn end for end, step over her to straddle her rump, and then it would happen. She'd seen a barbed tiger's penis when the men of the village dragged a dead cattle-killer into the town square. Now she would feel one.

From overhead came a sound like thunder. Before he could step over her to mount Sahil shot Grandfather in the back.

The bullet went right through the tiger and kicked up dirt two feet from Prashi's face. Grandfather coughed, sounding inquisitive rather than pained, and turned to look upward. Sahil was well practiced with his rifle. The next shot went through Grandfather's forehead.

This bullet, too, passed entirely through the tiger, through skull, neck and torso, and kicked up a geyser of dirt behind his rump. Prashi heard a muffled curse from above and looked, ignoring for a moment the great cat an arm's length away.

Another tiger, just as large as Grandfather, had climbed the tree while Sahil was distracted. Sahil dropped his rifle and clawed desperately at the jaws that had engulfed his entire head.

It could have broken his neck with a simple shake of its jaws. Instead, with its hind claws dug into the tree bark to support it, it dragged its forepaws down over Sahil and ripped his clothes off.

Prashi's eyes followed the scraps of clothing down to where one passed through the tiger next to her as though it were not there. Suddenly she could see the faint outline of leaves through it. It grinned at her as it faded away and just before it disappeared it gestured upward with its chin.

There was only one tiger here, not two. Prashi followed its gaze and watched as the true Grandfather swallowed Sahil whole.

Clutched between the forepaws of a cat six times his size there was no hope of escape, but Sahil still kicked and struggled. It did him no good at all. Grandfather wriggled his maw over the man's shoulders like a devouring serpent and with a swift duck of his head swallowed Sahil to the waist. When his head rose once more a great bulge stood out of stripey neckfur.

Grandfather heaved his muzzle upward and gulped, taking in Sahil's rump and hands. There was nothing left but a set of kicking legs as the tiger began to back down the tree. The same cruel claws that carried it up the trunk carried it back down and when it reappeared from behind the tree there was only a set of feet sticking out of its jaws, one naked and one still in a sandal. Grandfather Tiger padded over to her and sat in the same spot the illusory tiger had before. Only now did she realize there were no pawprints left by the false cat. She would swear they were there a moment ago. Grandfather let her watch from close range as he swallowed.

With a last flip of his muzzle Sahil's feet vanished, and Prashi watched the muscles in his thick neck tense and ripple as he dispatched her "husband" down his throat. The long bulge of man slipped down stripey neckfur and became a lumpy swelling below the tiger's breastbone.

Sahil squirmed and struggled under the fur, but naked, with nothing but fingernails and blunt human teeth, he was doomed. He was doomed the moment the tiger managed to sneak close enough to bite. The only reason he survived the two minutes it took to swallow him was that Grandfather wanted him to arrive in his stomach alive.

And so he had. Grandfather Tiger burped, spat out the sandal that went down with Sahil, and leaned forward. Prashi recoiled in fear, but instead of biting her the tiger clamped its jaws around the rough fibrous rope. With only a moment of effort Grandfather snipped through the rope where it connected the stake to her ankle. She was free.

Grandfather Tiger rose to leave, but Prashi found her hand reaching out as though someone else controlled it. The swelling of a swallowed man drooped the tiger's belly low and she pressed her hand into the coarse stripey fur. Through fur and flesh she felt her "husband" struggle. Sahil lived even now, there in the sloshing acidic cavern of the tiger's gut. Soon the squirming would end, but for now he lived, knowing that his attempt to kill the great cat had only provided it with a meal.

Grandfather Tiger turned his head and regarded her out of impassive amber eyes as she felt her "husband" kick. The tiger sat once more, facing her now. A forepaw wider than her face pressed against the bulge to settle his meal for easiest digestion and the tiger let out a second belch. Droplets of saliva splattered on Prashi's face and naked breasts and very slowly Grandfather Tiger licked his chops. The burp carried Sahil's flavor back up.

Prashi looked at Grandfather Tiger's broad muzzle and knew that if he simply yawned and leaned forward, she would join Sahil in his stomach. One gulp would do it. But he didn't yawn. He just looked at her.

Sitting an arm's length away from a thousand-pound tiger that just swallowed a man whole, Prashi felt strangely safe. Grandfather could kill her in a dozen ways or swallow her alive, yet she remained outside his fur and safe. Instead it was Sahil who struggled his last in the guts of the tiger.

"The stories say that you can talk," Prashi said.

"The stories say correctly," Grandfather Tiger growled. The voice rumbled up out of him and past cruelly sharp fangs, but she still understood him.

He cast a glance down at his twitching belly. "He is not the first to try this trick. I teach a lesson to those who do."

"You ate him," Prashi said.

"Yes," rumbled the tiger. "That is the lesson. You do not get a second chance. If I thought you had helped him on your own, you wouldn't get a second chance either."

There was the unspoken offer. The tiger didn't know her, or whether she loved the man he'd eaten. All she had to do was ask, or lean forward wordlessly and put her head in Grandfather's mouth. She would embrace Sahil one last time (and unknown to the tiger, for the first time) before they were digested together. Hundreds of men and women had taken that trip through the guts of the great tiger. She would just be one more.

"I did not," Prashi said. "He bought me from my father, who had no use and no husband for me, to use as bait."

Sahil kicked one last time beneath the tiger's fur and was still. As went the saying, he ended up inside Grandfather because he deserved it.

She gestured to where the second tiger had sat, almost where he sat now. "How?"

"Ah," growled Grandfather. "I have my secrets. I have lived here a very long time. Before that, other places. In time, perhaps somewhere else. I know many things."

Prashi nodded. Some villagers thought he was some sort of spirit, demon or minor god. There were many such in local mythology. The word 'rakshasa' did not occur to her, but that was as close a label as any. In any event he was long-lived and powerful.

Prashi was a quick thinker. She considered the phantom tiger, which made noise, appeared to move vegetation aside as it walked, and even tickled her with whiskers as it sniffed, and guessed at what might be done with such powers. No wonder outsiders so rarely found their way here. She guessed, correctly, that unwelcome ones were mostly turned away by illusions.

Paths that should lead here petered out or seemed to connect to ones that led away from the valley. Monstrous visions convinced others to turn back. The little valley was left to its own devices under the benign rule of Grandfather Tiger, who no doubt kept an eye out for such things as mapmakers who might lead too many outsiders to his territory. Mapmakers and surveyors were likely high on the list of people who got a short tour of Grandfather's innards, if they could not be induced to produce false maps.

Anyone who stirred up too much trouble, outside visitors, overly clever inventors, or local warlords anxious to gather more power, had a tendency to go missing in the night. The stories suggested they disappeared down Grandfather's throat. She was certain the stories were right.

"Grandfather Tiger," Prashi said. "I cannot go back to my village. And I do not wish to go into your belly. Where shall I go?"

Grandfather, who owed her nothing, but who perhaps had designs on her plump bottom if the stories about him were true, growled. "You may stay with me a while until you find a place. Climb on my back and we will go."

He stood and she climbed up onto his back, gripping the coarse fur of his shoulders. Her knees went just in front of the swaying bulge that was Sahil, who had no more problems in this world. Tiger food does not have problems. It is a concern only to the tiger's stomach.

Grandfather Tiger took them on a circuitous route. Many times he was about to walk into a thicket or nose-first into a rock only to turn at the last moment into an unsuspected gap in the foliage or cliff. She was certain that some of the time he walked through seemingly solid rocks or matted vegetation to get where he wanted to go. Gradually they gained elevation.

Eventually they reached a short tunnel, real or illusory she did not know, and ahead of them was a riveted bronze door. Grandfather Tiger padded forward confidently and the door opened in front of his nose.

Before them opened a vista of gardens. A crumbling, but still palatial structure surrounded them, overgrown with vines and trees around the outside. Even though it stood atop a hill, where some forgotten rajah once had his seat, it must blend perfectly into the jungle when seen from below. It simply resembled yet another overgrown hill.

A voluptuous woman in a finely beaded sarong swung the bronze door shut behind them and slid home a thick iron bar well greased to keep the rust away. "My lord," she said as she knelt before Grandfather Tiger. "We have missed you."

The tiger let out a growling chuckle. "I have been gone only a morning, Charlene." The woman's unfamiliar features and blond hair marked her as an outlander. Not only locals joined the tiger's harem.

Four other women were tending to the gardens, some of which were foodstuffs and some merely flowers. They varied in age and beauty, one sporting long gray hair.

Some of the tiger's lovers stayed with him until they died, she learned. Some fed themselves to their lord when they grew old and sick. A room in the palace held dozens of urns with the ashes of others. A sixth woman she met later was taking an afternoon nap.

"This is Prashi," the tiger said to the women, surprising his rider as she had not told him her name. "She has no home at present, and will stay with us as long as she will."

He craned his head around and looked at her. "The condition of staying here is to help tend the gardens and do whatever repairs are needed. I help with the heavier work. The gardens feed my ladies, and sometimes me. I bring meat back from my hunts and several of the ladies are good cooks. There is a stream at one corner of the estate where fish can be caught. Our main lack is certain spices, which I trade for with villager friends. You may leave if you choose, but you must tell me if you wish to go. The ladies can confirm that others have left, and sometimes returned." He nodded to the gray-haired one tending the flowers. "Some have returned more than once."

Prashi slid off his back as the tiger returned his attention to the buxom blond. A wide, raspy tongue caressed her shoulder and she hugged his thick neck. Two of the other women approached to rub the bulge that used to be Sahil. Already the sharp contours of the bulge softened as the tiger's digestive juices did their work. In a day or so her "husband" would be entirely consumed, converted to tiger flesh, fat and fertilizer for the gardens.

If the rifle and scraps of clothing were found, villagers would just shake their head. He was not the first and wouldn't be the last to try to change the status quo and go missing as a result.

Grandfather Tiger sat with a woman hugging his neck and two more massaging the sloshing bulge of slowly digesting man. His amber eyes turned once more to Prashi.

"Sharing my bed is not a requirement to stay here," he rumbled. "But you are welcome if you so choose. I force myself on no-one except the occasional tiger hunter."

With that he rose and left for one of the sunny upper platforms with the three ladies. From the gardens, too far away to see all the details, Prashi watched him roll onto his back. His underside was white-furred, with the black stripes continuing into it from the orange. The blond woman straddled his hips and lowered herself, her hands resting on the bulge of half digested Sihan. Another similarly stepped over his muzzle, trusting her lord to use only his tongue and not his fangs.

"Let me find you some clothes," one of the remaining woman said. Her name was Judit and she was another outlander, the last survivor of a hunting party. She had not been treated well by her male companions and happily betrayed them to Grandfather, joining his harem when the last white man disappeared down the tiger's throat.

Later, well dressed in expensive clothes from the palace's wardrobes, she had time to talk to the tiger's other companions. It was a tight-knit community and not for everyone. Some got lonely for greater human companionship and left. Replacements mostly arrived as she had, for Grandfather Tiger did not approve of abusive men and women often arrived borne on the back of a well-fed cat.

The ones who stayed most often became his lovers, for no other male was permitted in the palace. There had been an exception or two when a pregnant woman came here. She'd heard of children who had, for a few years, a tiger for a foster father. It seemed those stories were true too.

There was one thing they did not need to worry about, she was told. Grandfather Tiger could not get a woman pregnant, no matter how vigorously he tried.

"And he will try very vigorously if you let him," giggled the oldest woman there as they played chess. The pieces were of ivory and ebony with jeweled eyes, one of the palace's many minor treasures. "I was younger than you when I first arrived here, and there was a woman here older than I am now. I left, had a child, came back. Left, had two more, and here I am again. Between me and my predecessor I can speak for a hundred years in which hasn't tired of human women. There are diaries in the library going back far longer."

She showed Prashi the scars her lord had left on her during a particularly lively bout of lovemaking. What would be a playful nip to a tigress had left four white scars from Grandfather's fangs on the flesh between her shoulder and neck.

"I teased him endlessly that day and made him chase me," Nisha admitted. "Just as he came, oops, he nipped me too hard." She smiled. "He is careful, but most of us have a scar or two. Our lord is very strong and has many sharp points."

Nor could he get tigresses pregnant. For all his power and vigor their lord was barren. Grandfather Tiger was no one's grandfather. Some of the women who left did so as the gray-haired dame did, out of a desire for a family.

"Yes," the tiger rumbled when she tentatively raised the issue. "I am a tiger now. I have been other things before, as needed. There may come a time when I am a tiger no longer. And even when I am a tiger, I am not truly a tiger. I could sire children in you or a tigress if I liked. But then the child would surely want to take my place, for this place is good."

"I am many things," Grandfather Tiger growled, "And one of the things I am, is content."

Then he commenced to lick her all over, even beneath her clothes, until in a frenzy of passion she pulled them off. She had decided that she should couple with him at least once, to see what it was like. Whether she stayed or not might depend on the experience.

He did have designs on her plump bottom, when it was offered. He rolled her onto her belly with a careful claws-in push of a paw, licked her rump and sex until her flesh shone wet and pink from the rasp of his tongue, and only then stepped over her to mount. By this time Sahil was fertilizing the gardens and there was no great bulge of man to get in the way.

She had seen a tiger's barbed penis before. As befitted his statue his was longer, thicker, but thankfully not as sharply barbed. And the gray-haired lady was right. He might not be able to get her pregnant, but he tried very vigorously indeed.

That was how Prashi joined Grandfather Tiger's harem. She learned many things while she was there. The feel, and later the taste of the tiger lord's penis were some of the first.