"Tiger! Tiger!"

by Elizabeth Bear
originally published Shadows Over Baker Street, Ballantine, 2003

Magnus Larsen, is a big game hunting guide, hired to lead a tiger hunt in India in 1882.  The entourage consists of Count Kolinzcki (an obese Lithuanian nobleman), Northrop Waterhouse and his teenage sons James and Conrad, Graf von Hammerstein, Dr. Albert Montleroy, and Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes' great love.

The subject of the hunt is a man-eating tiger terrorizing the local villages.  So terrible have been its attacks that Larsen is suspicious that it even is a tiger.

The hunt yields results, in the form of a sick and injured tigress.  But one look at the animals damaged teeth tells Larsen that this is not their predator.

One night, Larsen hears Adler and Kolinzcki arguing, about his taking something that "was not [his] to take." 

Not long after, they are surprised when a crazed, ragged Arabic-looking man comes running out of the jungle - pursued by something that looks like a tiger made out of flame and coal.  This creature is about to make mincemeat of the group, when up rides Col. Sebastian Moran on his fine Arab charger.  Moran throws something in the critters' face, and it flees.

The crazed Arab in Moran's prisoner.  Moran leads the group, including a badly wounded James, back towards civilization, with the burning tiger-thing still stalking them. Finally, it attacks.  Irene Adler kills the Arab with an ornamental dagger Larsen had noticed Kolinzcki carrying earlier.  Larsen passes out after being injured by the flaming tiger-thing.

Larsen comes to, tended by Irene.  It seems she was pursuing Kolinzcki, who had stolen the dagger, which he intended to give to the crazed Arab.  It was to be used in, presumably, some ungodly ritual.  

Elizabeth Bear is one of those writers who turn up all the time in original anthologies, and about whom I know nothing except I see her name a lot in these things, and that she's written a ton of stuff I've never read.

All sarcasm aside, this is in fact a good story.  Well-written, exciting and suspenseful.  It has a rather original monster, to boot.

If I have a gripe - or what, I dunno, it's that it isn't particularly Lovecraftian.  This is the thankless challenge of writing Cthulhu stories - either you pastiche Lovecraft (boo), or you write something original that fails to evoke Lovecraft.  As is the case here - only a couple of shouted references to Hastur link this to the usual Yog-Sothothery.

This is something of an unfair criticism, though.  This is a good, well-done story (albeit no classic), and I wouldn't mind reading more by Ms. Bear.