Chapter 11 – The third Path
*** Three years later ***
There was a lot going on in Vitani's mind.
Part of her desperately longed for revenge. For being rejected by her mother, for her first and second exile, for Zira and Nuka's deaths… The feeling of loss was unbearable, and it made her furiously angry. Something inside of her breathed with the lust for blood. This would have been her father's path- Scar's way of dealing with personal injustice. The path Zira blindly followed to her own demise.
Then again, sometimes she felt like it was all for nothing. What was the use? Everything she ever tried ended up in a disaster. Like with that rogue whom she had met one time, who was trespassing in the Outlands… What was his name? She couldn't even remember.
Vitani had no idea why the memory of her encounter with the rogue came back to her at this very moment. Maybe she subconsciously wanted to think of something pleasant and distract herself? After all, the few moments they spent with each other were one of only a bunch of good memories she had from her dry, termite-infested former home.
The rogue was a young male, probably her age, and he had a magnificent golden mane. When she saw him for the first time, she obviously reacted as she would toward any other trespasser, but how she felt inside was… special. Vitani had never felt anything like that before, especially that apart from her brothers, there were no other males in her pride.
Attracted by the rogue's silky voice, she decided not to attack him. They only spoke for a couple of minutes, and Vitani found out that the rogue had been exiled from his former pride by his own father as soon as he became an adult. From that time, he'd been looking for a place… and an appropriate mate for himself.
The rogue invited her to come meet with him the next day, and then ran off. There was nothing Vitani wanted more in the world at that moment. Still, compelled by a sense of duty, when Zira asked her if she had encountered anything during her patrol, the lioness told her mother about the rogue. Vitani thought that maybe Zira would permit him to join their pride and help them in the upcoming war…
Unfortunately, Zira was strongly opposed. She forbade her to ever meet with the rogue again, and personally patrolled the area where they had met to make sure he wouldn't come back. Vitani never saw him again.
As she laid herself to sleep under some tree beyond the border of the Pridelands, Vitani remembered her only failed attempt to find a real friend for herself. It did cause her pain to recall how the whole situation was quickly terminated, but at least she still had some memories of him… The blurry vision of the golden-haired rogue and the sound of his voice were the only things that were able to lull her to sleep that night.
She didn't notice how long she was asleep, but when she was seeing Zira again in her dreams as she sternly denied to her the permission to meet with the rogue again, something hit her on the head. Having the impression of being struck by her mother, she woke up with a sudden gasp. It was only a dream, but somehow, the pain in her head was real.
-"What the…?"
Completely disoriented, she blinked a couple of times to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then she noticed that she had been sleeping under a baobab tree, and that an unripe piece of fruit from its top was lying by her side- the very piece of fruit that had just fallen on her head.
She looked up toward the branches of the tree. It was odd, because it wasn't the time for this type of fruit to fall yet…
And then she saw that there was someone sitting up in the tree.
There came a loud thud, and suddenly Vitani noticed that there was now a whole shower of unripe fruit heading her way. She barely managed to dodge them. Looking back toward the top of the baobab with a growl, she noticed that the one who was knocking the fruit of the tree was some sort of a monkey with a stick in his hand. And the monkey was laughing at her.
-"Is this your idea of fun? Disturbing lions in their sleep? Well, we'll see who's gonna be laughing in a sec…" – said the irritated Vitani, and then, with lightning speed, she pounced at the tree with her claws sticking out and started climbing.
Vitani had the opinion of a skilled climber, better even than Kovu. Although by the time she reached the branch on which the monkey sat, it had already jumped down to the ground. Not wasting any time, Vitani leapt at him, but he sprung to the side right from under her claws and by the time she regained her balance, the ape was back on one of the tallest branches of the baobab. And he started laughing again.
Vitani growled at him angrily.
-"Fine! We'll see how long you can sit up there! I can wait here for days until I can have you for breakfast. Silly mandrill!"
Yes, the monkey was indeed an old mandrill. And the longer Vitani looked at this ridiculous, chortling character, the more she thought that he looked kind of familiar…
-"Wait a minute… I know you! You're that crazy shaman from the gathering!"
The monkey didn't do anything else than hit one of the branches of the baobab with the staff he was wielding, sending another bunch of unripe projectiles Vitani's way. After she managed to dodge them, he said:
-"Ha-ha, ho-ho, he-he! Promise you won't hurt a friend an' den we can talk civilly!"
Having enough of being the mandrill's target, Vitani agreed. The agile old ape grabbed a branch with his arms, made a 360-degree swing and, in a flash, he was down on the ground.
-"Rafiki, at your service!" – he introduced himself with a bow. But the lioness didn't return the courtesy.
-"Give me one reason why I shouldn't eat you" – she confronted him.
The shaman chuckled and rattled his staff. His crazy behavior was slowly starting to bore Vitani, and she was becoming impatient with him.
-"Ooh, you better not! Not if you want to know which way to go!"
That was strange. How could he possibly know which way she should be going?
-"I don't have time for your nonsense…" – Vitani rolled her eyes and prepared to walk away. But then Rafiki did a sudden back-flip and there he was facing her again.
-"Stop! I know who you are. You are Vitani- de Forgotten One, de Daughter of Darkness… But you do not want to be like that. An' dere is darkness in your heart dat haunts you, a heavy darkness dat makes it hard for you to find de right path…"
There was something mysterious in the old crazy shaman's voice. How did he know all this? – Vitani thought. Sure, Simba might have told him some things, but why did she have a feeling that he could see what was going on inside her? She quickly dismissed the disturbing thought.
-"Look, Rafiki, whoever you are. I was banished from the Pridelands and I have places to go now. Leave me alone, I'm not in the mood for games…"
But the mandrill, as if not paying attention to what she was saying, gazed at her with his piercing look and continued in a low, cryptic voice:
-"Two paths you see before you, unsure of which to follow. But both are gateways to de darkness. You left Simba's kingdom for a reason. You must discover de truth. Dere are still many hidden secrets, but only de path of light will lead you to de answer."
Rafiki's words caused a turmoil in Vitani's mind. Two paths… She had been considering two possibilities. Yes, one of them is Scar's path- to go back and kill Simba. The other- to go drown myself in the nearest river, just as Zira had done, and get it all over with. But both are gateways to darkness…
-"What is this… truth you are talking about?" – she asked, feeling more and more confused. Rafiki, as if in a trance, leaned on his staff and closed his eyes.
-"De truth will answer all questions, yours and otherwise. Or better yet- if you follow de right path, it will teach you to answer dem yourself. But I cannot tell you what it is. Only she can- de Old Lioness… Hurt is she, and now close to death. Go, seek her. Seek de truth Vitani, Daughter of Darkness."
-"The Old Lioness? Who's that? Where can I find her? Tell me!" – Vitani demanded. She knew that his was important somehow, but she had no clue why.
Rafiki laughed.
-"Hahaha! You ask me, but you already know yourself! Which road leads away from de darkness? A cub's question!"
With a smile on his face, the mandrill pointed with his staff toward the halo on the horizon, where the sun was almost about to rise and where its first rays were already visible.
East. Where the Outlands were.
-"I will not go back there!" – the lioness growled when she understood what Rafiki had in mind. – "You can't make me. There must be some other path!"
All of a sudden, Rafiki swung his staff at her and Vitani was just barely able to lower hear head and dodge the attack. She snarled at him angrily, but the way he looked at her prevented her from harming him.
-"You have learned how to run from de pain, Daughter of Darkness. Dat only works for a while" – the mandrill spoke as if trying to calm her down, continuing to point east with his stick. – "But de sun rises over lands of darkness to fill them wit' light. So it will be wit' your heart, if you chose not to run from de light."
And then, as if by some sort of a spell, a great flash illuminated the horizon so brightly and so suddenly that it seemed that night turned into day in a matter of seconds. Completely astonished, Vitani stood there, gazing at the rising sun until she had to turn away because of the blinding light.
-"How the hell did that…" – she started saying, but there was no one there to answer her question. Rafiki was gone, and Vitani was left alone, surrounded only by unripe fruit.
Turning her head around and finding nobody there, she suddenly started to laugh in a mad, unbridled chortle. She laughed so hard she needed to lie down on the ground, almost losing her breath.
-"Ha! I never thought things would get as bad I'd start seeing things, especially crazy monkeys telling me some stupid secrets, ha-ha… Darn it! Why couldn't I imagine somebody else, like that rogue with the golden mane? Life just ain't fair…"
But then, as Vitani regained her self-control and was able to think clearly, she considered if maybe all that she saw wasn't a mirage at all. Then again, what did she have to lose? At least now she had a destination to follow, even if she'd be following a hallucination.
-"Ah, to hell with it all!" – she said to herself as she stood up, finally ready for her journey east. – "I'm going to where I came from. Who cares? If the Outlands made me who I am, maybe I should go back."
She started walking, repeating the words she heard over and over in her mind. Whether it was really Rafiki who said them (and who knew what sort of powers he was in contact with?) or just her tired imagination, she didn't care anymore. She headed toward her old home in the forsaken Outlands, and turned from the path only for a moment in order to steal one more piece of game from Simba's border for her breakfast.
AN: A little help from a very unexpected sourse. Rafiki speaks in riddles, but where will following them lead Vitani? Right now, her mission is to look for the truth about the Pridelands outside of the Pridelands- to throw a new light on old secrets.
