Champawat

after Jim Corbett, Man-eaters of Kumaon

In the jungles of Kumaon
a darkness descended
in the form of a tigress.

She came from the windswept
forests of Nepal, having taken
two hundred lives.
Soldiers hunted for her,
and she fled to find a new kingdom.

She prowled the fields
around Champawat,
stalking those who strayed
too far from their homes.
She pounced on them
while they gathered dried leaves,
to drag them off into a ravine,
leaving trails of crimson in her wake.

Her roars rumbled
along the road at night,
and her prey shivered in their huts.
The tigress grew bloated
on human flesh,
but another two hundred lives
could not satisfy her.

A pool of fresh blood,
a shattered blue necklace.
The tigress drags her newest kill,
a girl of sixteen,
into the forested ravine.
A severed, abandoned leg
turns the water red.
A rustling in the scrub.
She growls, snarls, retreats into the brush.
She can smell a man's scent.

She follows a stream to the ridge,
but her hunter is persistent.
That night she feasts,
but come the morning drums echo
from the trop of the ridge.
She awakens to see
her pursuers in the marsh.

Two rounds from a shotgun,
and one round from a rifle
send her tearing up the hill.
The drums beat louder,
voices chanting in a frenzy.
She rounds on her enemies
and charges her undaunted pursuer.

A blast, and the tigress stops.
A second blast and she flinches,
ears flattened and bared teeth.
She flees for a rock,
but her hunter is not deterred.
He is the last thing she sees
before the final blast.

The drums turn silent,
the chanting reaches fever-pitch,
and the tigress lies still,
staring up at the hunter
with lightless amber eyes.