When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

Snowbound at a remote mountain way station, the traveling cleric Chih and their companions are cornered by a trio of hungry tigers — and the only way out is a story.

What follows is a tale told twice: the human account of the scholar Dieu and her doomed love for Ho Thi Thao, a shapeshifting tiger, set against the tigers' own furious version of the very same events. A lush, sly novella about love, survival, and who gets to decide how a story is remembered.

The second book of the Singing Hills Cycle.