Raven and the Dancing Tiger Read Free Page A

over the pillows. He caught at the fabric, feeling as trapped as a fly in a spiderweb .
    "Don't you know, little boy?" Her voice was low and throaty. "My kind eat your kind."
    She rumbled a deep growl and her eyes turned golden and cat-like.
    Not shiny. Hard. Cold.
    Peter squawked and slid to the side. "No!" He stumbled again, this time falling.
    Claws swung and missed.
    "Don't you want to dance, little boy? We're still going on our first date, right?" Tamara teased.
    Cai crouched inside Peter, his feathers puffed up. The room had already lost its color.
    "No," he croaked. He shivered, aligning himself further with his raven warrior soul, then slipped out of his leather jacket.
    "And you know what my kind do to yours? We pluck out your eyes."
    With a great screech, Peter launched himself forward. He'd already lost his hands to feathers. He batted at Tamara with one of those while kicking out hard with a foot, surprising her with a hit to her shin.
    Then he kept running, throwing himself through the hard glass of the window and out into the night.

Chapter Two
    Â  Petie squirmed, pulling on the car seat straps, trying to get a better look at the sky outside. He looked out the window on one side of the rental car, then the other, then the front again.
    The sky went on forever , all blue and perfect. No buildings or trees stood in the way. Petie could follow it all the way down to where it touched the ground on all sides.
    He'd never seen anything so pretty before.
    Sometimes pillars of reddish rocks grew up out of the ground, blocking a piece of the sky, but Petie didn't mind. They looked like they were made from grown-up building blocks, all piled up, one barely balancing on top of another.
    The air smelled different here, too, like dried grass and flowers. It smelled clean in a way Petie couldn't name, though he wanted to somehow dive up into it, bathe in that cool air.
    A blue sign flashed by on the side of the road. Though it had been fast, Petie still proudly read it out loud.
    "Rest are. Are-a."
    "Area," Dad said from the front seat, directly in front of Petie.
    "Area. Hey! Rest! Can we stop, Mom?"
    Mom caught Petie's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Do you have to go potty?"
    Petie shook his head. "No. I just—want to go." He waved his hand toward the window, the blue sky, all that space out there.
    Wyoming was nothing like their home in Seattle.
    "I don't know," Mom said. "Do you think you'll be able to get him back in the car?"
    "Probably not," Dad said. "The change is too close."
    Dad turned to face Petie. "Can you hold out for another hour, sport? Then you'll be able to run around all you want."
    "Maybe," Petie said. He could wait, but he really didn't want to.
    "Less than an hour," Mom promised.
    Petie sighed. "Okay."
    Next to the rest area exit stood a huge orange block with a creepy, carved head sticking out of it. "What's that?" Petie asked, staring as they drove past. The face had lips that curled back, as if he was growling.
    "That's Lincoln," Dad said.
    "He looks mean," Petie said, no longer looking to the side. He was glad they hadn't stopped at the rest stop—that Lincoln had scared him. Though he still really wanted to get out, under that sky.
    The road turned at the statue and now they went downhill, the sides of rock cutting off the beautiful blue sky.
    They drove quickly through the town at the bottom of the hill, then they were out in the open again. Soon Mom turned off the main highway, onto a skinnier road.
    "Heading north," Dad told Petie. "We'll be there soon."
    Petie wondered why his voice was so rough. He knew they were going to the place Dad had spent a lot of time growing up. None of the boys or girls he'd known would be there, just the buildings and maybe some of the teachers.
    "Okay," Petie said. To the right side now grew a huge white cliff, cutting off the sky. It still looked like it would be fun to climb on. To the left everything stayed open; no rocks, no trees, just fields and sky.