The Tiger's Egg by Jon Berkeley

at all.”
    â€œWhat happened to Barty Fumble?” Miles asked.
    â€œWhat happened to . . .” A nervous look passed over Tau-Tau’s face for a moment. He busied himself spreading the cards in front of the birdcage. “We will have the answer for you in no time,” he said. “In no time at all, we will have an answer for you. Is that not so, my little feathered prognosticator?” Tau-Tau was mumbling to himself now, glancing at Miles from time to time as if he might disappear at any moment. “Now we shall see,” he muttered, “what our little oracle can tell us.” He opened the door of the birdcage. The little red-beaked bird hopped out onto the row of envelopes laid out in front of her,bent down and tugged one of them free. Tau-Tau took the envelope from the bird and slid the card out from inside it. His bushy eyebrows crept upward, and he glanced at Miles, and back at the card. “Then it’s true,” he muttered. He stroked his goatee in silence, while Miles watched him with growing curiosity.
    â€œCan I see the card?” he asked finally.
    Doctor Tau-Tau looked as though he was weighing this request carefully, then he held the creased card out between his thumb and forefinger for Miles to see. It was covered with a close pattern of little squiggles that looked like they had been painted with a brush. Miles was not sure what he had expected to see, but he felt slightly disappointed. “I can’t make anything out of that,” he said.
    â€œOf course not, my boy, and for two reasons,” said Tau-Tau. He slipped the card back into its envelope. “There are two reasons,” he repeated, “for that. First, the cards are written in Chinese, an ancient language with which you are unlikely to be familiar. And second, only someone with extraordinary skills such as mine can hope to divine their true meaning.”
    â€œWhat does it say?” asked Miles. “Is it the same card she drew the other night?”
    â€œIt is, my boy,” said Tau-Tau, pulling a small stool over to the beanbag where Miles sat, and settling down on it with a sigh. “And it does indeed concern your father, Barty Fumble.”
    Miles felt his heart miss a beat. The hope that someday he might find his father alive was never far from his thoughts, and he feared that the little bird might drown that hope forever. He forced himself to meet Doctor Tau-Tau’s eyes. “What does it say?” he asked.
    The fortune-teller poured another cup of masala tea for himself, and one for Miles. “I was a fool not to trust the card the first time it was drawn,” he said, lowering his voice as though there were conspirators listening from behind every drape. “It seems that the old fraud has been alive all along!”
    Miles looked at him in astonishment. “Are you sure?” he whispered.
    â€œThe oracle is sure, my boy,” said Doctor Tau-Tau. “And that is good enough for me. What’s more, I think I know where we could start to look for him.”
    Miles struggled out of the beanbag and leaped to his feet. The dizziness had left him completely, and in his excitement he barely noticed the less-than-flattering way in which Tau-Tau spoke of his father. “Where?” he asked. “Can we go now?”
    To his surprise, Doctor Tau-Tau also sprang to his feet. “Indeed we had better!” he beamed, “but we shall have to find you something more fitting than pajamas to wear if we are going to be mixing with royalty. To mix with royalty,” he said, looking around his cluttered wagon in a distracted fashion, “you will need something more fitting, my boy, than pajamas.”

CHAPTER TEN
HELL’S TEETH
    D octor Tau-Tau, fez-topped and sparrow-led, huffed through the night at a considerable pace, and Miles had to trot to keep up. He was still in his pajamas despite his appointment with royalty, but wrapped around