"She can't stay, Scar!" Sarabi said firmly. "The Pridelands are overcrowded and there's not enough game to go round. We can't feed ourselves, certainly not one more and a cub."

Her eyes rested on Nuka for a moment. He was about the age her own son Simba had been at the time of his death. How different the two cubs were! Her boy Simba had been handsomer by far, she was sure. This rather plain cub was undersized, thin and scrawny, his greyish fur patchy with mange and from where he had scratched at fleas and bugs. The lad needed looking after, and his young mother needed help and advice.

What would her husband, Mufasa the king, have done if he were in this situation? He would never have got into it in the first place. Scar had over-hunted the lands and driven the game away. When the rains failed and the plants died, Mufasa would have led the pride elsewhere for a season or two rather than staying in a dead land. But if he had found himself in these circumstances, would he have made room for a couple of starving lions? He was just and kind, but also wise, and the good of his pride always came first with him. She looked at Scar.

The king wore the obstinate look Sarabi remembered from their early days. As a cub he never could bear to admit he was in the wrong, to lose an argument or a battle, not to get what he wanted. When all else failed he would shout "No no no no no!" and drum the ground with his forepaws until he got his way. It was clear that Scar wanted this lioness to join the pride and would ignore anyone who disagreed with him, just as he had over the hyaenas taking up residence at Pride Rock and the pride's remaining there when the hunting failed.

Zira lay passively while the Pridelanders discussed her fate. This was not a good place to be. She could sense fear in these lions, a crushing of the spirit, and resentment of their king, the scarred lion who had brought her here. Hyaenas lolled about, not too close to the lions but clearly not bothered by them either, and leered at her when they caught her glaring at them.

Scar also examined Nuka. His gangling awkwardness and the frizzy black mane beginning to appear on his head and chest reminded the king of his own cubhood, a time when everything had seemed so much simpler than it was now.

For a moment he regretted his rash offer of hospitality. The lionesses were rebellious; the only thing keeping them from revolt was their hunger and exhaustion. Introducing a strange female might push them over the edge.

But Sarabi nodded. "Welcome to Pride Rock, Zira."

The mood of the pride shifted; the others followed Sarabi's lead more readily than they did Scar's orders, and joined in her welcome. For what it's worth, the old queen added bitterly to herself. She kept this thought private, however, and gave lioness and cub a warm smile. "Won't you tell us how you came here?"

Zira wasn't used to talking. She had had no company but Nuka for a long time, and his chatter got on her nerves so she seldom encouraged it. She would have preferred to stay quietly in the shadows. But finding herself the centre of a circle of interested lions, she sat erect, curled her tail around her paws and, for the first time, told the story of her life.

She was born many days' journey away, in a hot land. Her mother died when she was barely weaned, and she scraped an existence by fighting and jostling the other cubs for a share of meat. There was no mother to show her the tenderest morsels or clear a space for her at the kill. Yet it was a time of plenty for her pride, and she survived.

The prince of this pride was a young lion named Mazoo. They played together sometimes. One day when Zira was feeling strangely friendly and came up close to rub against him, he played a game she didn't know, and didn't like. He hurt her and she cried and struggled away from under him. After that they avoided each other.

But presently Zira's stomach began to grow large, as though she had the water-sickness. She noticed the other lions whispering together as she passed, and Mazoo held his head low and wouldn't meet her eye. Then she was summoned before the king and queen.

As gently as he could, King Omid explained to the young lioness that she was carrying the prince's cubs. But the prince was not hers; he was promised to his cousin Momra. And her cubs would be born before Momra's and would perhaps try to claim the throne when they grew up. Zira had a choice: either she left the pride, or when her cubs were born they would be taken from her and destroyed.

At first Zira wanted only to stay at home. What were cubs to her? She didn't want cubs, hadn't asked for them. Then she saw the look in Queen Rasha's eyes, the cold anger, and she knew that this wasn't her home any more. She owed nothing to the pride; her life had been trouble and hardship since her mother died, and now Mazoo had filled her with his cubs and it was she who must suffer. She left that night.

If her life had been hard before, it was next to impossible now. She had never been a skilled huntress, but now must improve or starve. When she couldn't catch anything she dug mice out of their burrows or drove the buzzards off some stinking week-old kill. She had always been fierce; now she would have fought to the death over a dry bone. And all the time her belly grew, and the more food she craved the less able she was to get it.

Then there was pain, hours of pain through which she lay on the ground gasping and trying to push the thing that was hurting her out of her body. Carrion birds gathered, attracted by her screams, to watch the lion flopping in the dust. She would surely die soon, they thought. But they were wrong. Life, not death, was what the pain brought.

Zira looked with wonder at her single cub. The cord which connected them hurt her and she bit it through. The cub was dirty, wet with blood and other things. She licked him clean, and he, knowing what to do better than his mother did, crawled between her legs and latched on to her teat.

"So it was you in there? You're a tiny thing to cause me so much trouble." Zira looked at her new little dark-coated baby, and knew love. "I'll call you Nuka," she murmured as she fell asleep.

What chance do a single lioness and her baby cub have in the vast savannah? Zira had to find enough food to keep herself alive as well as providing milk for her son, at the same time guarding him from predators. For the first few days Zira could move no more than a few yards from her little one in search of food, and carried him with her when she went to get a drink from the nearby stream. As soon as Nuka's eyes opened she began to take him on her hunting trips, concealing him in a nest of grass and instructing him sternly not to make the smallest peep while she was away. Even so, she always expected him to be gone on her return.

They were lucky. Nothing touched Nuka, who grew large enough to run by his mother's side and even sometimes to drive smaller game towards her. He was a clumsy youth, but deadly serious about his task. Zira probably lost more kills than she gained because of his help. When this happened she would snap and snarl at him - if he were to have a chance in life, he needed to acquire the skills she had had to teach herself. "I tried my best, Mother!" he would wail. "Not good enough!" Zira would reply.

It was a strange, half-mad love she had for her son. Sometimes his very presence reminded her of the wrong Mazoo and his family had done her, and she could hardly bear to look at him. But at other times she felt that Nuka was the only good thing that had ever happened to her. Poor Nuka - his mother was his entire world, and he loved her with an adoration that was almost worship. He received her smacks and cuddles with equal gratitude, accepting that whatever he got was what he deserved.

They roamed the savannah, mother and son. Never staying too long in one place, for when Zira had time to think she became restless and unhappy. The only cure was to keep on moving - not going towards a goal, but away from the black thoughts that haunted her. At last they came into a land where game was scarce. Zira pushed on, feeling sure that abundance lay beyond the bleak plain. But Nuka became weak, so weak that Zira was compelled to feed him every scrap she came across to keep the spark of life in him burning. The lioness had an iron will, but her body was not of iron, and when the hyaenas came she could fight no longer and had only the strength to fall across her cub so he should not be taken first. Thus Scar had found them.

Zira's tale, told with blunt honesty, touched her audience deeply. Scar felt like a hero, the one who had rescued her from a life of suffering. Sarabi contrasted Zira's life with her own, which up until the death of her husband and son had been the happiest a lioness could have. Zira, who had sat with her head bowed since finishing her narrative, looked up into the faces of friends where hostile strangers had been. Someone had given Nuka a bone, and he was crunching it noisily to get at the tender marrow within. Sarabi again spoke for the whole pride:

"Come, Zira. You must be tired. I'll show you where to get water, then we'll find a spot for you to sleep."