Dragonflywriting

The Adventures of Xilophone
By Dur

Xilophone was called that mostly because when he was born, his mother had been very angry with his grandfather. Xilophone's mother was from England, and her name was Mary. Mary was a beautiful, independant, and strong-willed college student, who majored in Biology. Xilophone's grandfather was the Pope.
In Mary's third year of college, she had gone to India, to take a special course from a renowned, Indian professor. While she was there, she had met a handsome, Indian English major, who had taught her to play the xylophone. They were married within a year. After three months, he died of unknown causes, and Mary went back to England, with a broken heart. Six months later, Xilophone was born.
Mary had been mad at her father, the pope, because he had said that she should marry someone else so that she wouldn't have to raise the baby herself. Mary had had a fit, saying that she would never be in love again, and therefore she would never marry again, and to prove her loyalty, she was naming the baby Xilophone, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Xilophone became a source of great frustration to the pope. He was constantly having to explain the perfectly logical reason why his daughter was raising a young, Indian boy by herself. Many people didn't believe his story, and even the people that did didn't really approve. Xilophone was only allowed to stay in England because his mother made sure that he could. When she died of cancer, 4 years later, Xilophone's grandfather sent him to his only remaining relative, in India.
Xilophone's only remaining relative was his other grandfather. His other grandfather was crazy. He liked to walk around, holding a big, long stick, and swingng it randomly at things. Sometimes, especially when he was drunk, one of those things ended up being Xilophone. What his grandfather didn't know, was that the stick was actually an ancient Indian ritual staff, with ancient, magical powers.
One night, his grandfather came home, even more drunk than usual. He grabbed the ancient, magical staff, and started swinging it at Xilophone, while mumbling half-formed words. By a freak coincidence, two of the half-formed words that he yelled, were the two most powerful magic words in Indian Magic. They will not be repeated here, because I don't know what they are.
Anyway, when his grandfather yelled the extremely magical words, which are of yet, unknown to the author, he happened to, by another freak coincidence, hit Xilophone in the very middle of the top of his head. Besides giving Xilophone what could have been lasting brain damage, it also turned him into a tiger.
Xilophone's grandfather was, as previously mentioned, quite drunk, and when his grandson turned into a tiger, he did what any respectable drunk would do, which was to pass out. When this happened, Xilophone was left alone in a small hut on the outskirts of a small town, in India, and he was a tiger. A baby tiger.
Xilophone was very scared. This was partly because he was now a tiger, and partly because he had just been hit on the head with a staff of ancient magical power. He didn't know this at the time. In fact, at the time, he didn't know much, because his brain hadn't adjusted to being a tiger yet, especially not a baby tiger.
Not knowing what else to do, he ran off into the forest, and started his life as a tiger. He was four years old at the time.

Ten years later, Xilophone was hunting a deer. He was now a full-grown tiger, and very good at hunting. He was padding softly along the think forest floor, crouched low and out of sight. As he inched slowly closer to the deer, he got a strange feeling. He suddenly wondered what he was doing in a forest, hunting a deer. He started to look around him as he walked, instead of ahead of him.
This was a mistake. He stepped on a trap. The trap wasn't set for a tiger. It was for small animals. It was meant to kill them. It only caught Xilophone's foot. It hurt. Yowling with pain, and forgetting all about the strange feeling that he had had a moment earlier, Xilophone ripped the chain out if the ground, and ran off into the forest, the trap still clamped tightly to his foot.
Late that night, Xilophone was limping through the forest. He was leaving a trail of blood as he walked. Everything was very dim, even to his sharp, tigers eyes. Then, up ahead, he saw a light. Tigers don't like the light. They prefer to stay away from it. But Xilophone was not a tiger, and even though he acted like one, and had been one for the last ten years, there was still a small part of his brain that knew that he was more than just a tiger. And now, when he was in so much pain, that small part of his brain was almost in full control. It saw the light, and it wanted to go towards it. So he did.
The light was above the door of a hut. Xilophone limped toward the hut, staring at the light. Then it started to get dimmer. At first he thought it was just the light going out, but then he realized it was his eyes. A moment later, he was lying on the ground outside the hut, nearly dead.
When the old man who owned the hut discovered him the next morning, it gave him a terrible fright. But the old man wasn't a normal old man. He knew quite a bit more than most people about most things. He saw almost right away that Xilophone wasn't really a tiger, but a person, turned into a tiger by powerful magic. He also saw that the boy who had become a tiger was badly hurt, with his foot caught in one of the old man's traps. The old man felt bad about Xilophone getting hurt with his trap, and he knew that the only thing he could do was help him, so he found a way, involving quite a bit of magic and a crowbar, to drag Xilophone into his hut.
When Xilophone awoke the next day, he was lying on the floor in the small hut, which was full of strange objects and devices, hanging from the ceiling, on the walls, and wherever else they could be placed. The hut was much bigger inside than it had looked from the outside.
Xilophone tried to move, but a sharp pain shot through his foot. He looked down and saw that his foot was bandaged with a white rag. As well as hurting, it also itched terribly and he started to tear at it with his teeth.
"Now don't do that." said a voice. Xilophone didn't understand what it said, because he hadn't heard talking for too long, and even if he had been human, he had never learned the language that the man was speaking. The voice was soft and commanding, and he couldn't help but listen to it, even if he didn't know what it was saying. He looked up and saw the old man, standing over a table with many different pieces of paper on it, and random pieces of fruit. His first thought was that it was a human, and he should kill it, but the human part of his mind seemed especially in control right now, and he was still in pain anyway, so he just lay there on the floor, staring at the old man with narrow, yellow eyes and flicking his tail in a steady rythym.
"I'm going to try," said the old man, "To turn you back into a human. I think you'll like it better that way."
Xilophone sneezed to show that he didn't understand.
"No, I know you don't understand." said the old man, "You will. But I need you to eat this." he held out a dry, sick smelling fruit. Xilophone recoiled at the smell and growled lightly.
The old man sighed. "I know it smells bad, just eat it."
"I will not eat it." thought Xilophone in his simple, tiger thoughts, "I wont even look at it." he looked at the man instead. He was staring at Xilophone with a strange look on his face. Then he suddenly grabbed Xilophone's nose. He tried to recoil, but found he could not. He couldn't move at all. Xilophone didn't like this very much, and started to struggle, but he felt the sickly fruit being shoved into his mouth, and he felt his throat swallow it.
Then he heard the old man saying strange words, and chanting, and his body started to change. It was not at all like turning into a tiger, which was fast and felt natural. This hurt, and felt like all of his bones were stretching out of shape. The man kept chanting, even though Xilophone was howling, and soon the tiger howls turned into human cries, and his breath left him, and he was left shivering on the floor. His foot hurt, and he felt cold and uncomfortable. He was still wearing the clothes that he had been wearing as a four-year old for one thing. Now he was fourteen, and the clothes were quite a bit too small for him.
The old man helped Xilophone out of the clothes, and helped him wash himself. Then he gave him clothes that fit, and sat him down in a chair. Xilophone was still looking around wildly, and the old man noticed that his eyes had stayed, their yellow colour and slitted shape.
"Nothing to be done about that." he thought.
"Hey." he said. Xilophone looked at him.
"Do you understand me?" said the man. He spoke in English, but Xilophone didn't understand. He had been a tiger for too long. The old man sighed and helped him stand up. He took him to bed made of dried leaves, and let him sleep.

When Xilophone woke up, he was more alert than he could ever remember being in his life. He sat up quickly, and realized that he hadn't been dreaming, and he really was a human again. Then he thought maybe he had dreamed he was a tiger in the first place. But his foot hurt, and he was in a strange hut, lying on a strage bed, and he had a horrible taste in his mouth.
He stood up slowly, getting his balance. He had walked on two feet as a child, but that had been a long time ago, and the ground had been a lot closer then. But walking came back to him fast, despite his hurt foot, and he stumbled out into the main room of the hut a little while later. No one was there. He limped over to the table, and looked at the notes scattered all over it. He had never been taught to read, and didn't know what any of them meant. He saw the disgusting fruit he had eaten yesterday on the far end of the table and wrinkled his nose at it.
Just then, the old man walked in, carrying two dead birds over his shoulder. "Oh." he said, "You're awake. How do you feel?"
Xilophone cocked his head. "Oh right," said the old man, "You don't understand me. We'll have to do something about that." and he headed to the kitchen section of the hut. "Sit down." he said, and motioned with his hand, so that Xilophone knew what he meant. He obeyed.
A minute later the man emerged with a clay mug full of something hot and thick. "Drink this." he said to Xilophone, miming the movement.
With a questioning look, Xilophone obeyed. He took a sip. It was disgusting! Was everything this old man fed him going to be rotten? He forced himself to swallow. Last time the effects had been (somewhat) good.
It felt as if a stream of water was rushing into his head. He felt like he was going to explode. His head was filling with... something. What was it? Numbers, letters... words?
"Wh-what..." he said, "is... this...?"
"I," said the drink, "am dragons blood. And that old man just fed me to you to see if I could really make you understand every language. Apparently I do. I could have told him that."
Xilophone was so surprised that he turned back into a tiger.

When he woke up he was lying on the floor, with the man standing over him. "You've turned back into a tiger." he remarked.
Xilophone gave him the most scathing look a tiger can give.
"Well, you've got to turn yourself back." said the man, "It shouldn't be that hard. Just concentrate."
Xilophone concentrated. He concentrated so hard, he thought his head was going to explode a hundred times over. He turned his mind inside out. Slowly, his body turned back into a human's. His mouth became a shape that could form words.
He glared at the old man with tiger eyes. "You fed me BLOOD!" he yelled, " It could have been poisoned, I could have DIED! What kind of sick person are you?"
"Just a mage." said the old man lightly. "You're speaking African, you know."
"I don't CARE!" shouted Xilophone, "I'll speak weasel if you want me to! No, I won't! I wont do anything you say."
"Calm down." said the old man, "Take a deep breath. I'm not that bad, really."
"Not that bad..!" began Xilophone.
"Whats your name?" asked the old man.
"Er..." said Xilophone, "Its Xilophone. But that's not... "
The old man snorted and then disguised it with a hacking cough. Xilophone stared at him with a mixture of disgust and surprise on his face. When the old man had finished, he held out a dark, wrinkled hand to Xilophone.
"My name is Faraji." he said, "Don't worry, dragon's blood has never killed anyone."
"Don't listen to him!" came a squeaky voice, from the floor, "I don't know if thats true, but he lies all the time!"
It was Faraji's shoes. Xilophone grinned.

Xilophone stayed with Faraji for three years. Being able to hear everything talk was kind of annoying, but he got used to it eventually, learning to just tune everything out. He got to be pretty good friends with quite a few objects around the hut. They came from all over the world. Faraji also taught him many things, not the least of which, to read and write in several alphabets. Faraji never drank any of the dragon's blood, even though it never had any side effects on Xilophone. He said that he was getting old and he didn't want the last thing he heard to be his death bed telling him that he stunk.
"I tell him that all the time!" piped up his bed from the corner, "But does he listen? Noooo..."
Xilophone also found that turning back and forth between human and tiger became easier and easier. He often turned into one to go out and hunt. It was peaceful being a tiger, because although he could understand Faraji talking, he couldn't hear objects saying anything. He didn' t know why.
Faraji also taught him useful magic, and some combat skills that Xilophone didn't really trust. He mostly learned how to fight from a bowstaff he found lying in a corner unused. It claimed to have once belonged to a Chinese warlord. Xilophone wasn't sure if he trusted this either, but it had good tips. The staff, that is.
On Xilophone's seventeenth birthday, he announced to Faraji that he was leaving. Faraji wasn't nearly as surprised as one would expect. For one thing, Xilophone had helped out a lot in the past few years, repairing the hut, and setting up traps. Faraji knew that he could now comfortably live out his remaining years with relative ease. Also, he had noticed that Xilophone had been wandering farther and farther from his usual haunts, and he had been doing a lot more of sitting quietly, and staring off into the forest. Faraji wasn't particularly fond of when Xilophone did this, because it was his way of tuning out everything so he could think, and Faraji could never get his attention, save by physically shaking him.
Xilophone said he had finally remembered how he had been turned into a tiger. He knew he had been living with his grandfather, and that before that, he had lived in England for a short time. He mostly only knew that because he naturally spoke with an English accent though. In any case, he wanted to go and find his grandfather, find out how he had been turned into a tiger in the first place, and if he had any other relatives.
A few days later, Xilophone left. He never saw Faraji again, but he thought of him often, and made himself a promise that he would return someday. Faraji was very old by then, and he died a few years later. Xilophone, meanwhile, was walking towards the part of the forest, where he remembered being as a baby tiger. He talked to birds a lot, trying to find out where the nearest town was, (birds are horrible for trying to get information out of) and hunted and ate as a tiger. Finally he reached edge of the forest, and the small town where his grandfather had lived. After asking around, he found out that his grandfather was, surprisingly still alive, but in bad health, and living in the large city, a few hundred miles to the North.
Not to be daunted, Xilophone sold some of the old things he had stolen from Faraji, and got a ride to the large city. He had found out his grandfathers name from the people in town, who had been very nice, if a bit wary of his appearance. Most people didn't have yellow tiger eyes and chinese staffs on their backs, he found out quickly. In the city, people didn't notice this nearly as much.
His grandfather lived on the top floor of a large apartment. A very rich collector had come by a few years ago and offered a very generous amount of money for the ancient magical staff, which the old man had been very happy to accept. He now lived in luxory for the last few years of his life, with pretty young nurses to attend to him.
The girl who answered the door was very pretty, with pale skin, and asian eyes, but she didn't look like she would stand for much.
"Er..." coughed Xilophone, in cautious English, "I'd like to speak with the man who lives here."
"Why?" asked the girl, "He's not exactly popular." He picked up on her Chinese accent quickly and switched to Mandarin.
"I'm sort of... related to him." he explained.
"How..." she said, "are you speaking my language?"
"I speak a lot of languages." he said simply.
"Uh huh." she said, staring at him, "Why do you have cat eyes?"
"Side effects of being a tiger for ten years." said Xilophone.
"The old guy is related to a tiger?" she said, raising her eyebrows slightly.
"Well," said Xilphone, "Sort of." he raised his eyebrows back.
"Huh." said the girl, "You're awfully cute for a tiger. Okay, come with me."

The old man was sitting by himself in a large, high-tech looking room, reading what appeared to be a dirty magazine. As Xilophone entered with the girl, he put the magazine down and stared at the two of them.
"What kind of scum are you bringing into my house, Li?" he asked the chinese girl, taking in Xilophone's long leather coat and shoulder-length hair, before focusing on his mischevious tiger eyes, which were narrowed seriously at the moment.
"Do I know you?" he asked suspiciously.
"Yes." said Xilophone, "Well, no not personally. You hit me on the head with a staff and turned me into a tiger thirteen years ago."
The old man was so suprised that he had a heart attack and died.
"Oh." said Li.
"Yeah." agreed Xilophone, "Now what?"
"Well..." she said slowly, "Why did you come here in the first place?"
"I wanted to find out if I had any other relations." said Xilophone, "Besides him." He gestured at the dead body."
"He's mentioned he had a son." said Li, "But I think he died. Maybe he was married."
"Can you find out for me?" asked Xilophone hopefully.
"Sure." replied Li, "I don't have a college degree in computer research for nothing, you know."

The information ended up being very hard to find, even for Li. Xilophone finally had to ask the computer personally to find it for him. It took a while, as the computer was maddeningly slow at processing things that were said to it, and replying, as it was really made up of many small parts, which insisted on working together. This meant that waiting for them all to agree on the decision to help him took at least five minutes, and the rest took even longer.
Eventually, though, Xilophone was able to extract the information that his relatives were in fact living in London, England, and that his grandfather was the Pope.
"Wait a minute." said Xilophone, "I thought the Pope had to be celibate."
"I thought all popes were sluts." replied Li, who was sitting next to him with a mug of hot chocolate.
"Well, yeah." said Xilo, "But, I mean, once they found out, wouldn't they, you know fire him?"
"Who's gonna fire him?" asked Li, laughing, "The Pope?"
"God?" suggested Xilo.
"Oh, yeah maybe he'll get hit by lightning." said Li excitedly.
"Hey, he is my grandfather." replied Xilo seriously.
"Yeah." said Li, "So was my ex-employer."
Xilo nodded, "How are you going to pay for college now?"
"Oh, I'll manage." said Li, "Maybe I'll become a dancer."
Xilo looked worried, "You could come to London with me." he said seriously.
Li laughed, "Honestly, I was joking. I'll... deliver pizzas or something. Don't worry about me."
"Yeah, don't worry about her!" said Xilo's hot chocolate excitedly, "We'll take care of her."
Xilophone drank the rest of it quickly.

Piczo