Snarling tiger face drawing

The menagerie boat came in on the Tuesday tide, and the men had the cage off the quay before the fishermen had finished their tea. You will not believe the size of the thing inside. Father says it is only a tiger, but I have seen the way it looks at the gulls, and I do not think it counts them as anything worth eating.

Its keeper is a thin man called Sorrell who smells of paraffin and never takes off his cap. He says the animal came from a hill country where the grass is so tall a man can lose himself in it, and that its name is Mireille, though nobody on the quay will say it aloud. The harbourmaster has ordered it kept behind the net sheds until Friday. At night it roars, and the whole harbour goes quiet, the boats knocking at their moorings like they are listening too.

Last night I took the lamp down with a scrap of cod in my apron pocket. The cage door was not latched properly, and the animal came forward slowly, stripes dark as charcoal rubbed in with a thumb. It did not eat the fish. It opened its jaws wide, showed me every tooth it had, and held that stare until my hand stopped shaking. I understood then that it was not warning me off. It was telling the town it had been carried across the sea from somewhere with rain and wild grass, and that it had not forgiven any of us.

When I went back this morning, the cage was open and the sheds were empty. Sorrell was sitting on a bollard with his cap in his hands. The tiger had walked the length of the quay in the dark, sat down at the very edge of the water, and watched the lights of the far town for hours before walking back in on its own. I have asked father if I may keep the broken latch. Write soon.

Yours, Ada